Apparently no one appreciates the Socratic Method anymore.  A snippit of conversation from Twitter:

brooksbayne: we did close it [it being WWII] successfully. that’s why u won’t find anyone arguing otherwise. learn from the successful models.

zornog: Do you think that the Iraq war has the same merit as WWII?

brooksbayne: i think the global war on terrorism has the same merit as wwII, of which iraq is part.

zornog: Okay, answer this question: When does the war on terrorism end?

brooksbayne: it ends when it ends.

zornog: And how will you know when it’s ended?

brooksbayne: as i said, it’s over when it’s over and not one day earlier.

zornog: Okay, so let’s say one day the War on Terrorism ends. Does that mean terrorism ends?

brooksbayne: u need to reread my last two tweets. i’ve been quite clear.

zornog: No, you haven’t. “It ends when it ends” is actually a very vague statement. I’ll ask again: when does the War on Terror end?

brooksbayne: it’s not vague. when a outcome is based on participation of disparate parties, it’s up to all. so, it ends when it ends, finally.

zornog: Vague vague vague. “It’s up to all”? To what? To win? How do you “win” a war on terror? Is a peace treaty signed?

brooksbayne: examine those questions within the context of my response. you’ll find ur answer there. it looks like ur close to getting it.

zornog: No, actually, I get more confused. You don’t understand my questions. My point is that the whole War on Terror is worthless

zornog: because it cannot be won. There is no way you can stop terrorism by fighting a war on it.

brooksbayne: says who?

zornog: Says me! I’ll ask again: HOW do you end the War on Terror? At what point is it considered “over”?

brooksbayne: forgive me for not putting much stock in ur opinion. the question has been answered. u simply don’t like the answer.

zornog: Are you kidding me? Are you actually being serious? You did NOT answer the question. “It ends when it ends” is not an answer!

zornog: Do you think leaders during WWII said “It ends when it ends?” No, they said, “It ends when we kill Hitler.” That’s a reason.

brooksbayne: lol, ur so close to getting it.

zornog: Then why don’t you just tell me, O great leader of the free world?

brooksbayne: ”give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day; teach a man to fish, and he’ll eat for a lifetime.”

zornog: Ohhh, so you think establishing democracies is going to end the War on Terror. Well, good luck with that.

brooksbayne: that’s not something i said or implied.

zornog: Then what? Christianity? What are you implying? Why are you being so vague?!

And he stopped replying at that point.  Leaving me with absolutely no answers whatsoever.

I don’t really have anything to blog about lately.  The only super cool thing that’s happened is that my blog port about college piracy was posted on the Artists House Music blog.  Those guys are very nice.  I met them on Twitter, of all places.  I didn’t think you could meet people on Twitter.  It seems pretty extreme, as in, either you’re very insular and don’t add anyone ever, or you’re constantly adding people all of the time.  I can’t even imagine what the middleman is.  And how do you find people to add?  Do you just pore through other people’s Twitter friends?  I guess websites help.  It’s all very foreign to me.

My post on AHM didn’t really augment the visits to my own site, which is fine, but it adds to  my theory that people generally don’t check links back to something.  I could be wrong.  I’m not expecting Slashdot levels of hits, of course, but it’s always interesting to see how many people become interested in this site through other sites.  So if you found this site because of the Artists House Blog or some site relating to the article I wrote: hello and welcome.  I hope you enjoy yourself.

I was thinking about whether or not I should write a second part to that article, a “how to” piece about what would be needed to successfully create a music service superprogram for college and universities, but then I remembered that I don’t know anything about computer programming.  I’m just the idea man.  Still, it would be fairly simple.  You’d just need the students to login with their student ID number or e-mail address, thereby confirming that they are who they claim to be.

The College Music Network, as I’ve been calling it in my head (or CoMN for short, pronouned “Common”), could possibly be a humongous multiversal social networking site if launched correctly.  Think of all the fun things you could do with it.  First there would be “hubs” for specific colleged.  Boise State, for example, would have its own homepage and specialized music centers (and would, in my world, have info on new and established bands from Idaho, major or indie label).  Then you could have statistics from all the universities regarding what’s popular.  This would be available for all students to look at, but would obviously benefit music labels as well, since they would have concrete evidence of what is popular in what section of the country, to the most egocentric and money-spending demographic in the country.

This is essentially a thing that Facebook could’ve easily integrated into their social networking site back when it was a college-only site.  I applaud them for taking it in an obvious direction and making it into a global networking site, but now, because of Facebook, we have a solid architecture that we can study and build upon for our own goal of creating a secure music sharing website/program.

I’m still wrapping my head around the logistics of the entire thing, but I think it’s more than possible.  If anything, it’s probable.  And if anything more, some smart programmer somewhere out there has read this or already come up with a similar idea, and will make it happen and I will receive no acknowledgement whatsoever.  It’s okay, I can deal with it!

I guess you have to patent intellectual property, don’t you?  Or copyright it?  Stupid law stuff.

The fine fine people at Artists House Music Tweeted this article and it immediately caught my attention.  I wanted to reply to them but 140 characters is not enough for what I want to say.  Then I thought, I have a blog!  Yay!  I’ll just write something there.

AND THE REST WAS HISTORY.

So I’ll just reprint what the article says, since it’s pretty short and some people (like me) don’t like to click on a bunch of links sometimes.  It reads:  

A few legislative notes:

Yesterday (the very day the CMA Awards were hosted in Nashville) Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen signed into law SB 3794, a bill that requires all public and private universities and colleges in the state to take proper steps to assure that their networks are not being used to illegally trade copyrighted material. It also requires each school to develop and enforce a policy for computer usage, network usage and ethics. The House IP subcommittee was abolished and will be bumped up to a full Judiciary committee.

My immediate thought upon reading this was: they’re gonna screw it up and get a bunch of college students pissed off at them.

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