Mp3 Sparks Can Read My Mind

Mp3 Sparks

So I've been upset ever since AllofMp3 went offline. The University of Richmond signed up with Ruckus, but it was a poor substitute. Thanks once again to the BBC though, I found Mp3 Sparks. During the time AllofMp3 was offline, the owners set up another site, Mp3 Sparks, which is basically the same thing. I was planning to wait for AllofMp3 to go back online, but the first time I visited Mp3 Sparks, they had an ad for the New Pornographers album, the second time I visited, they had an ad for the new Josh Ritter album. Both are albums I really wanted, so I went ahead and signed up. As I was downloading them, I saw an ad for the new Rilo Kiley album that I didn't even know was out yet.

So what makes Mp3 Sparks and AllofMp3 so good?
1) Songs only cost a few cents
2) Price is based on the length of the album, no more overpaying for short albums
3) What to save money? You can download lower quality song files
4) You can download songs in a wide variety of formats

What was terrible about Ruckus?
1) Entire secure apparently based on the idea that everyone had Windows Media 12
2) I was able to find a way to get around the security, because I don't Windows Media 12, in only a few minutes. Good for me, but bad for them
3) Only students are supposed to be able to get the free tracks, but all that's needed to get a student account is a .edu e-mail account. So even though I'm no longer a student, I can still use it and even sign up a friend as I have two .edu accounts
4) Couldn't download tracks that had an apostrophe in the title
5) To download tracks, I had to download some terrible, ad-filled program that could not be fully minimized
6) Even if I downloaded the whole album, the tracks would be listed alphabetically and not how they appeared on the album. Not a problem for most albums, but matters for a few
7) If the download was interrupted, the track had to be deleted and redownloaded

Kind of makes me wonder how a business of questionable legality can perform much better, both for itself and its customers, than a fully legal one.

Mountains of Olives

I Like Olives

My sister has a blog now. Actually she's had it for awhile and I completely forgot about it until she told me to read her post about Trivial Pursuit Pop-Tarts. So yes, if you read this blog, you should read it to. Unfortunately, I think the only person that reads this is my sister, so I doubt I'll be increasing traffic to her blog.

Good News Everyone!

TV Squad

It appears the final word has been spoken on the new Futurama. It will be released November 27th on DVD as well as appearing on Comedy Central. So will it be a movie or a new season? Apparently both. Four DVD movies of Futurama will be released which will be cut up into 16 episodes to be shown on Comedy Central.

Supercomputers and Such

Top 500

So another 6 months has passed and the list of the top 500 fastest computers has been updated. BlueGene has now held the top spot longer than any other computer, 2 and half years. I found a way to see the total FLOPS of all 500 computers, which has been telling. On average, the total FLOPS the top 500 can do increases about 35-36% every 6 months. The top computer of any given year typically can do the same number of FLOPS as the total of all 500 from about 4 years earlier.

This past 6 months, there seemed to be a shift towards mass-building of supercomputers instead of building just one big one as there wasn't much change at the top of the list but over half the list are new entries. Many of these were groups of computers all running at the same number of FLOPS. It may help that the price of running supercomputers has dropped dramatically making it more cost-effective to more institutions to build supercomputers. According to answers.com, the price of performing at one GFLOPS has dropped from $30,000.00 in 1997 to $0.42. A typical PC processor can now perform 5 to 10 GFLOPS.

Gay Marriage in Sweden

The Local

The Moderate Party, the leading party in the current conservative government, has decided to support gay marriage in Sweden. There have been few calls for gay marriage because same-sex couples already have many of the same rights and protections of heterosexual couples. The reason for this willingness to change the status quo may be the fact that socialist coalition has been leading in recent polls by as much as 15%. This leaves the Christian Democrats the only party in the Riksdag to oppose gay marriage.

Zombies!

Fido

One of the most creative movie premises I've seen in awhile. I don't know if that's a good thing.

Name Trends Update

Social Security Online

Apparently I had been misinformed back in January that they would update the popular baby names list in February as apparently it wasn't updated until May. Anyway, here's how my predictions held up.

Alexander didn't make it into the top 10, maintaining its position at 12th.

Joseph was instead replaced by William.

Sophia made it to the top 10, but Mia only made it to 13th, still a strong sign in growing popularity as it was 17th in 2005.

Ashley fell out of the top 10, Samantha fell to 10th.

Ava continued its strong rise, going from 9th to 5th.

Joseph and Micheal did not switch positions.

So I'd say I got about 50/50 on that, maybe slightly less because I didn't think William would return to the top 10.