About those weapons of mass destruction...

Republicans post nuke cookbook on line | The Register

The persistent delusions of senior Republicans in Congress and the President have led to the leaking of sensitive documents on nuclear weapons via the Web, the New York Times reports.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (Republican, Michigan), and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (Republican, Kansas) were instrumental in establishing a Web archive called the "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal". It was Hoekstra's, Roberts's, and apparently the President's, hope that by disseminating documents recovered from Iraq, some right-wing amateur researcher might eventually find a flaky shred of evidence suggesting that Saddam's regime had been involved in banned weapons production, which could then be trumpeted to the press.

The problem with clinging to vain hopes in this way is that a number of the documents (since removed) were believed to be far too graphic in describing nuclear weapons technology to be suitable for public exhibition.

The future of big music labels

Big labels are f*cked, and DRM is dead - Peter Jenner | The Register

Interview Few people know the music industry better than Peter Jenner. Pink Floyd's first manager, who subsequently managed Syd Barrett's solo career, Jenner has also looked after T.Rex, The Clash, Ian Dury, Disposable Heroes and Billy Bragg - who he manages today. He's also secretary general of the International Music Managers Forum.

And he doesn't pull his punches.

The major four music labels today are "fucked", he says. Digital music pricing has been a scam where the consumer pays for manufacturing, distribution, and does all the work - and still has to pay more. Labels should outsource everything except finance and licensing.

tracks: Mushrooms

Spent about 45 minutes working on take-3 of "Mushrooms" (having decided that a botched edit makes take-4 unuseable). It's working fairly well except that there's an annoying clicking sound. Weird. It'll have to be scrapped. Good exercise in evening out a variable guitar part, though.

That makes three to do over (Sunday at the earliest, given the state of my throat), and six that need additional parts. I'm not certain I'm making progress here.

Three weeks plus Thanksgiving (a write-off because of Loscon) between now and December. Not going happen. I'm pretty confident I'll have a final mix before GAFilk, though.