University bans iPod adverts
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
Published Wednesday 27th July 2005 20:00 GMT
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In case you had any doubts, ladies and gentleman, your children are truly up for sale, and you're paying tens of thousands of dollars to put them on the market. That's what we learned this week from the University of Washington, which has struck a broad music rental deal with Napster and Dell.
Dogged reporter Kayla Webley of The Daily pressured UW, Dell and Napster to release the financial details of their agreement. Napster has so far banned schools from revealing such information. UW, however, is a publicly funded school and was forced to disclose the data by open records laws.
Napster typically charges customers between $10 and $15 per month to rent music from its service. Customers must pay extra to obtain permanent downloads of songs. As you'll see though, the schools receive massive discounts.
UW, for example, will pay Napster $24,000 for 8 months of its service. Napster is charging just $2 per student for 1,500 students. As part of the promotional partnership, Dell will also chip in $24,000 for another 1,500 kids. Then, Dell will deliver $53,000 worth of servers at no charge to the school, the student paper reported.
But here's the real rub.
"Under the provisions the University must exclusively promote the Dell branded DJ, secure two Dell kiosks on campus to feature Dell products and services, facilitate a Dell launch event in the back-to-school timeframe, host Dell information on the UW website, execute an email campaign and participate in a case study," The Daily reported.
So students have been put on a music meat market where they're being force fed a service that doesn't work with Mac OS X, Linux or even older versions of Windows and that doesn't work with the leading MP3 player. Instead, the kids will have to listen to a sales pitch for Dell's embarrassing device and nothing else.
It's no secret that Napster's college deals reek of dot-com business model madness. At the University of Rochester, for example, students recoiled against Napster, showing their disaffection for the service by not buying a single song from it. The damaging social undercurrents of such deals have also been well publicized.
Thankfully, UW has some real brains on its side. It will pay for the Napster service by selling royalties to software and other technology developed by the school to various companies. Er, here's guessing Dell needs a new calculator app.
Hopefully, you parents don't mind paying for your children to appear in a Dell commercial. After all, they are learning a valuable lesson about renting music that's sure to last them a lifetime.
There's more on this shocker here. ®
This article is from The Register. All rights reserved.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Monday, July 25, 2005
Thursday, July 21, 2005
EU and Neo-Conservatism
 | Making My Ears Bleed... Show Must Go On Classic Queen By Queen |
I read this on BERI.com, and I thought it was worth posting for all to read. Many predictions and a leftward slant but no worries.
Letter from Europe by Dietrich B. Knickerbocker (Zurich)
Has the Neo-Conservative Wave from Texas Reached Europe?
A New Wave in Europe Since WWII, many ideologies and lifestyles have followed the same direction: They are first developed and established on the West Coast, then they move across the USA, and then they cross the Atlantic to Europe. Anti-authoritative education, consumerism, feminism, the student movement, sex morals, and gay parades are all examples. The recent U.S. elections showed a strong trend toward conservative thinking on the grass roots level. Has this “Neo-Con Weltanschauung” already reached Europe? And if so, what are the implications for U.S.-European relations and U.S. policies?
Observers of the political scene in Europe were surprised when, after the murder of Dutch movie-maker van Gogh by an Islamic extremist in November, the “multi-cultural society” fell out of favor. For decades, it had been the mantra of greens, liberals, and socialists that the more people from foreign cultures enter our country, the better it is. Suddenly, opinion leaders in the media admitted that it had been a mistake to allow the widespread immigration from far-away foreign countries. Only weeks before, this would have been considered as an unacceptable violation of another mantra: that of “political correctness”.
The next signal came with the sudden drop in popularity of such politicians as Berlin’s socialist mayor Wovereit or Guido Westerwelle, leader of Germany’s liberals. There was no specific event that triggered this fall from high ratings in the polls, except for the increasing awareness that the political problems of the country were too serious to be entrusted to politicians who had deliberately cultivated their “party-going, let’s all be gay” image. Joschka Fischer, secretary of state and de-facto leader of Germany’s green party, suffered a similar fate. For years, he had been the darling of the media, who made him the most popular German politician. Suddenly, the same media that had promoted him reversed gears and criticised him as ineffective. Crucify him!
Another indication of a new mood in Europe was the wide-spread sympathetic attention given to the suffering and burial of the Polish Pope by hundreds of millions of Catholics, Protestants and agnostics alike. They mourned and watched the ceremonies on TV. Simultaneous events such as the marriage of Prince Charles to Camilla Parker-Bowles or the burial of Prince Rainier of Monaco, which at other times would have received top media exposure, went almost unnoticed. Ralph Dahrendorf, the former Director of the London School of Economics and now member of the House of Lords and columnist for several European newspapers, summed it up: it showed the deep admiration and respect for a religious leader who had lived-up to his convictions and refused to compromise these values. He contrasted sharply with political leaders in Europe and elsewhere who lacked a vision, a convincing commitment, and strength of character. Sitting in front of their TV screens, Europeans gave a no-confidence vote to their political class.
Death of a Concept The final proof of the changed mood was the result of the referendums for the new European “Constitution” by French and Dutch voters. This proved three points: First, the political strategy to develop the EU into a centralized political power with global ambitions was a project promoted by a political elite which lacked broad public support. Second, voters wanted to keep their identity as citizens of their respective country and were not prepared to sacrifice it’s autonomy for a United Europe. Third, the political class had totally misjudged the will of their own voters. A few months before, the same elitists had invited Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan to the signing ceremony of the European constitution. There was no justification for inviting him because negotiations on Turkey’s acceptance as an EU member had not even started. However, Europe’s politicians and the technocrats of the EU Commission wanted to demonstrate to their own citizens that Turkish EU membership already was an irreversible fact. They should have listened to P. T. Barnum: ”You can fool some of the people some of the time, you can’t fool all of the people all of the time."
The Outcome of More Conservative Policies in Europe Important leaders of the Centralized United Europe strategy such as Schröder, Chirac, and Berlusconi are now deceased. New political leaders will soon take their place who have received a useful message: if they continue to follow the old EU strategies and let distant and underdeveloped countries such as Turkey or the Ukraine join the EU, they will be voted out of office. This is one thing no politician wants to happen.
With all the talk about spreading democracy around the world, few have recognized that European democracy has triumphed again. Fifteen years ago, the citizens of East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania had the courage to demonstrate and chase their communist rulers out of office. This time, they just voted and changed the political direction of the continent.
What are the Implications? There is no EU crisis, only politicians, bureaucrats, and media commentators crying that their wonderful plans were swept away. The EU will grow slower and will be forced by the people of Europe to identify it’s borders. There will be more emphasis on such common projects as new East-West superhighways and rail links, scientific research projects etc. There will be less pressure from Brussels on harmonizing administrative standards and procedures such as specifications for the food kindergartens in Lisbon, Frankfurt, and Warsaw can or can not serve their kids for lunch.
Turkish and Ukranian EU membership have disappeared over the horizon.
EU policy will be more pragmatic, especially towards the USA. Symbolism such as calling for a termination of the weapons embargo against China will be a thing of the past, cooperation with the USA on this and similar matters will improve without losing Europe’s own interests in trade, foreign relations, energy policy, etc. But Europe’s new conservative mood will be mild. No need to fear that the EU will build Guantanamo-style concentration camps or make unprovoked attacks on other countries.
Monday, July 04, 2005
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