Elliott C. Back: Internet & Technology

I was really excited about the remaster of Snoop Dogg’s Tha Last Meal, titled Tha Last Meal: USDA Edition, but listening to it, I can’t tell any difference between the two albums. They contain an identical number of tracks, with an identical length per track. Pulling up the old/new versions of Hennesey N Buddah (Feat. Kokane) (Produced By Dr. Dre & Mike Elizondo), I imported them into Audacity to look at their spectrums:

This is just the first six seconds of the stereo tracks, with old on top, and new “remaster” on the bottom. I see no difference layering them on top of each other at 50% opacity:

As far as I can tell, the newer remaster of Snoop’s classic album is a reissue, rather than any actual remaster. Perhaps you are paying an extra $5 for new album art?

Ronnie James Dio (July 10, 1942 – May 16, 2010) just passed away. Famous for heavy metal vocals in bands Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Heaven & Hell, and his own band Dio, his musical contributions will be missed. A year ago, Dio was diagnosed with stomach cancer. His wife, Wendy, leaves the following message on his site:

Today my heart is broken, Ronnie passed away at 7:45am 16th May. Many, many friends and family were able to say their private good-byes before he peacefully passed away. Ronnie knew how much he was loved by all. We so appreciate the love and support that you have all given us. Please give us a few days of privacy to deal with this terrible loss. Please know he loved you all and his music will live on forever.

My favorite Dio song, a cover of Dream on.

TechCrunch refuses to let their claim that Last.FM gave CBS user data which was passed onto the RIAA lie. In a post called Deny This, Last FM, they claim that:

CBS requested user data from Last.fm, including user name and IP address. CBS wanted the data to comply with a RIAA request but told Last.fm the data was going to be used for “internal use only.” It was only after the data was sent to CBS that Last.fm discovered the real reason for the request. Last.fm staffers were outraged, say our sources, but the data had already been sent to the RIAA.

Reddit has noticed that TechCrunch is censoring comments critical of the post. Last.FM emphatically denies handing over the data:

Any suggestion that we were complicit in transferring user data to any third party is incorrect. [...] It really seems like someone is trying to slander us here.

Here’s a more realistic, simpler explanation of what happened–one that wouldn’t require any special access to Last.FM’s private user data at all. The RIAA either asked CBS for the data, or got it themselves, from the public song timeline of Last.FM users. For example, at http://www.last.fm/user/elliottback/tracks you can download ~400 pages of songs I’ve listened to:

This gives them the following data: user, song, time. This is enough to tell that a user is listening to unreleased music, which is probably part of what the RIAA would use in trying to make a case against music pirates. For example–the Eminem Relapse album came out on May 15th, so theoretically anyone listening to it before then is a pirate.