Universal Music CEO: Record industry can't tell when geeks are lying to us about technology
Universal Music's CEO Doug Morris did a Wired interview in which the 68-year-old man said that he didn't really understand technology, that the record industry couldn't respond to Napster in 1999 because it didn't even have the in-house expertise to figure out whether a technologist was lying or not -- also, he compares his industry to a character from the comic strip Li'l Abner (which, New York magazine reminds us, stopped running in 1977).
"There's no one in the record industry that's a technologist," Morris explains. "That's a misconception writers make all the time, that the record industry missed this. They didn't. They just didn't know what to do. It's like if you were suddenly asked to operate on your dog to remove his kidney. What would you do?"Link (via Michael Geist)Personally, I would hire a vet. But to Morris, even that wasn't an option. "We didn't know who to hire," he says, becoming more agitated. "I wouldn't be able to recognize a good technology person — anyone with a good bullshit story would have gotten past me."
Chris sez, "One of my favorite songwriters, Kristin Hersh (Throwing Muses, 50FOOTWAVE, and solo) has founded the Coalition for Artists and Stake Holders, on the assumption that both artists and fans are stakeholders in the production of music. She's built a framework to distribute music on the internet while taking donations (sort of Radiohead-style: pay what you want) and taking full advantage of the medium -- including offering ProTools tem files via BitTorrent so you can remix her song!" 
Last time you saw the SCH-u900, it was 
Compact fluorescent bulbs get more popular every day because of their energy-saving characteristics, but their conventional corkscrew/spring design leaves something to be desired. Enter Hulger, a bunch of British designers with a bent for the unusual, who have bent those tubes around into crazy configurations, making something that once appeared rather prosaic into an artform. You're looking at a prototype of the spaghetti-like bulb, and we're all hoping to see a shipping version before too long. Now if they can just make them instant-on and light 'em up with a warm color temperature of 2700 Kelvin, they'll really be onto something. [
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