Saturday, October 31, 2009

Introducing Google's New Music Search

On October 29, 2009, Google rolled out a new feature to their current web search technology - music search.

To take advantage of this new feature, all you have to do is type in the name of a song; this sometimes is not enough if the song title is a common word or set of words; in this case, add the name of the artist.

For example, let's say you want to hear the song Ironic by Alanis Morissette.

First, go to Google. Since the name of the song is a dictionary word, the title by itself will not be treated as a song: You need to include the name of the artist as well.

Search for "Alanis Morissette - Ironic". (For the truly lazy, this link will do the search for you)


Do you see the little blue play button? Good! Click it and the song will play!

But after the first play of the song, you only get 30-second previews after that. iLike, Google's partner in this music search has this to say:

How come when I play music from Google search it doesn't always play the full song?

For most songs, the first time you play the song, it will play in full, but if you play the same song again, it will subsequently play it as a 0:30 second sample clip. If you want to hear the full song many times, we encourage you to purchase the MP3 using the convenient "Buy" link. 

For some songs, due to our contracts with record labels, we can only play them as 0:30 second clips for now. 

Well, now you have it. But there is a way around this: Use imeem! If you see a little iMeem link available, you can hear the full-length song as many times as you want - the only catch is that you need a (free) imeem account.

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

SCO Finally Gives McBride The Boot

After many years of raping and pillaging so many companies, under their laughably false claims that Linux contained code stolen from SCO UNIX and given by IBM, SCO has finally seen the light and fired their shit-spewing leader, Darl McBride, before the county water department starting billing them extra for the high volume of McBride's total bullshit that kept clogging the county sewers.

Darl McBride, as seen here in this 2004 edition of Fortune, has cursed the Linux kernel and community for years, claiming up and down that Linux contains stolen code from his company's UNIX operating system, to the point he was forcing corporations to buy IP indemnity licenses - basically an agreement that SCO won't assrape them which wasn't even worth the paper it was printed on - or he would sue - which is what he did to IBM and DaimlerChrysler.

Well, SCO bit off more than they could chew, and McBride drove the company into the depths of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. However, the other employees could only take so much of his utter bullshit, so they hired this guy to have him terminated:

I hope that criminal charges come up against Darl McBride, and that he ends up being put in prison, where he'll do good as Bubba's "McBride".