Napster and the recording industry.

Napster has been cracked

That was the headline. As many know, Napster has recently launched a subscription service to download legal copies of songs. Great, wonderful. Well, some guys have found a way to rip off the DRM (Digital Rights Management) and distribute the songs they get as many times as they want.

I realize that is illegal, but when is the RIAA going to get their head out of their ass long enough to find a way to use modern technology in a way that people like me want? I doubt if I will ever buy another CD, although I would like to be able to burn songs to a CD to listen to in the car if need be. If they would simply offer a way to get to music that is cost effective, they could quit spending the MILLIONS they currently do on DRM and lawsuits.

Oh well, /soapbox....

Internet radio

I used to love internet radio stations. They all played songs that I had never heard before, and would never have heard because they would not have made it on any infinite Clear Channel stations that shove total junk down the throats of America... (ok, saving that rant..deep breaths).

But now I have decided that those radio stations really are not as good as I once thought. About one thing can describe my musical tastes: varied. This morning I was listening to one of the heavy metal stations as I am want to do fairly often, and realized I was tired of hearing the same stuff over and over. These stations think they HAVE to be unique and stay in one exact genre. That's not what my ADHD inclined mind needs. I need varity. I swapped over to the "Party Shuffle" feature of my iTunes. In in the past few songs, I have heard Sevendust, Dream Theater, Hootie and the Blowfish, and Frank Sinatra!

Maybe I should attempt to start a station with a ecletic mix of music such as that. There are so many hurdles preventing that though. Copyright issues, ASCAP fees, etc. It's just not worth it. So I will go on listening to the stations until I get tired of the same sounds over and over, then swap over to my more varied mix. And I guess I will be happy about it.

Twain class for .NET

Hello all,

For my first posting, I'll put up a .NET class I just wrote that encapsulates the TWAIN functionality in Windows. I used a LOT of the work of someone that he posted on the codeproject.com.

The full source can be found here.
Have fun with it. Basically, instantiate the Twain object, call Init, then use Select to choose which TWAIN object you want to use. Make sure your application handles the Twain.ScanEvent event. This event is raised when a scan happens. Call the Acquire method to start that process. Once the inside the ScanEvent, you can call the TransferPictures and receive an array of System.Drawing.Image objects corresponding to the pics transferred from the source.

Laters....