I'm baaacckkkk!!!!!

Right. The maintenance outage I was assigned to is over, and I'm back to my regular job and schedule. After 2 months of working alternating day and night 12 hour shifts (switching every 5 or 6 days!), I'm certainly ready for a rest. Unfortunately, most of the extra money I earned doing this was sunk into that black hole called debt. Oh well.

Anyhoo....

I came across this little gem on Wil Wheaton's blog. It's a music service called Magnatune, and it claims to be not evil. They boast CD quality downloads (MP3's are NOT CD quality), no DRM "broken by design" crap, 50% of revenue to the artist (as opposed to the pittance the RIAA deigns to give them, despite all their claims otherwise), Full previews (listen to it all before you buy), and pay what you think is fair! Plus a few other things. This sounds exceedingly cool. And the music is stuff you won't get from the mainstream.

I haven't checked it out entirely yet (or purchased anything), but this is a breath of fresh air amid the vile copyright servitude coming from the major producers these days with their "Just because you paid for it, you have no rights to do anything with it, and we're installing a secret spy program on your computer to make sure you don't, btw it also wrecks your security so hackers can have their way with you, and one more thing: we now own your spleen. The surgeon will be around next Tuesday. Any attempts to bypass this security will result in our horde of lawyers sueing you and everyone you've ever met. Remember this is for the sake of the artists, whom we give one-billionth of a percent of all sales." attitude.