.......thass a LOTTA music.

I have finally finished ripping all of my CDs to digital format for use with iTunes and my iPod. Two CDs (at least) have gone missing, Type O Negative's "October Rust" and Gary Hoey's "Animal Instinct". All the rest, however, have been digitized.

Final total: 10745 songs, 36.1 days, 58.76 GB.

This means, of course, they don't all fit on the iPod itself (because of the way marketing people calculate a GB of space, vs. how the operating system actually calculates it, the "advertised" space is 60 GB while the actual capacity is about 55.7 GB. So, I had to make some tradeoffs and remove a few CDs that I don't listen to much or that I really ought to get rid of (for example, some budget-price classical discs with no-name conductors and orchestras).

The iPod itself now holds: 10077 songs, 34.2 days' worth, 55.75 GB used........and 700K of free space left. Can't cut it much closer than that. :)

In a while, I'll begin the somewhat annoying process of importing all the hundreds of random MP3s I've collected over the years into iTunes as well. If I want to add those to the iPod, I'll have to do some more shuffling. There are still several discs on here I can stand to lose, though, so I expect I'll be pretty much OK.

Hooray for modern technology.

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[[The Oracle has no questions today as He is going to spend the next several days in a music-induced coma.]]

Fucking hypocrites.

From technoshaman comes this little gem: MPAA admits to unauthorized movie copying.

A quote from the article:

This Film Is Not Yet Rated looks at the motion picture ratings system created and run by the MPAA. Director Kirby Dick submitted the film for rating in November. After receiving the movie, the MPAA subsequently made copies without Dick's permission. Dick had specifically requested in an e-mail that the MPAA not make copies of the movie. The MPAA responded by saying that "the confidentiality of your film is our first priority."

Can you say "hypocrites", boys and girls? I knew you could!

The MPAA loves to scream about how unauthorized movie copying is ruining their business. They trumpet it to the rafters on billboards, in radio commercials, and -- most annoying of all -- in advertisements before movies you've already paid to see and DVDs you've already bought. They ignore the fact that the movie industry is going downhill for a dozen reasons, none of which has anything to do with unauthorized movie copying: skyrocketing ticket prices, steadily declining film quality, noisy and rude patrons at the theater, the booming DVD/home theater industry and (for people like me) those incredibly annoying CAPS red dots that are randomly inserted into frames of movie prints. No, none of those things have anything to do with the movie industry's steady slide, to hear the MPAA tell it -- it's unauthorized movie copying that's the culprit.

Except the rules don't apply to THEM, apparently. Here we have a director who not only wants his copyrights protected as any artist would, but also made a special request above and beyond that: "Please do not make any copies of this film, even for promotional purposes." But because they're the MPAA, they chose to ignore that. Their justification was that Dick had "invaded the privacy of some MPAA staffers." So, because he did something you disagreed with, you can break the law you're SO keen on having enforced? I don't think so.

You can't have it both ways, MPAA people. If you're going to scream about unauthorized movie copying, you don't get to make any fucking copies yourselves either.

So. Who wants to bet that there won't be any prosecution on this and the people responsible will somehow manage to wiggle out of it?

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

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[[The Oracle would like to know if you've ever copied a movie yourself (VHS, DVD, whatever). The Oracle will, of course, tell the MPAA to fuck off if they come sniffing around for the answers.]]