I’ve been working on a side project called “SongBoxx” over the last few weeks. It’s a meta search engine that searches several of the cheapest music sites out there simultaneously and produces results that are easily sortable in your browser, so you can quickly find that track or album you’ve been looking for. Not only is it a time saver, but you can also find out about music sites that you might not have known even existed - and probably find any obscure track you can think of.

I’m hoping to improve the search results over the next few weeks and add more sites to the search engine. Currently it searches over 4,000,000,000 tracks, 300,000 albums, and 162,000 artists - by far the largest search of its kind. Those numbers will probably double over the next month or so.

My goal is to search as many sites as possible so that people can quickly locate exactly what they want without having to go to ten different places to find it. The way it works is simple: you type in what you want (artist name, album name, or track name) and then it searches all of the music sites at once, compares the results for duplicates, and puts the results into a sortable table. When you next click on an artist, for example, you get all of the albums (from all websites) related to that artist. If you then click on an album you get the tracklist, the album cover image, and a list of websites that have it and how much it costs at each website. You can follow the links from the album page directly to the store that sells it.

While developing SongBoxx I’ve had the pleasure of sharpening up some python skills, learning a bit about mod_python and apache interaction (specifically the unusual caching behavior that occurs), and basically the issues you have to deal with when developing a meta search engine. I also tried some simple AJAX bits for the first time ever. AJAX is actually a lot simpler than the hype makes it out to be, and it’s certainly nothing new.

Check the site out right here.

AllOfMP3 has been under attack for the last 6 months, and it’s showing: there are practically no payment methods left to use. So what are decent alternatives to AllOfMP3? Are there any, even?

I did a little research and came up with what I think are the top alternatives. One thing is obvious: there are plenty of options out there, and finding a decent music service isn’t as hard as you might think. In the following I’ve reviewed the top six sites that I think are the best out there, and that will suit most people - possibly even better than AllOfMP3 in some ways.

For some people, just the fact that this site has it’s own download manager with search capability will make LegalSounds.com more attractive than all the other sites - in fact, this is the site I personally recommend. With a download manager, the chore of downloading and searching for tracks is made easier. Although similar in purpose as the AllOfMP3 Explorer (or AllTunes), it isn’t quite the same - for a few reasons.

First of all, the catalog is searched online - not offline - which means that you always have the latest catalog search results, without storing the database on your PC. Secondly, it obviously has a somewhat different design than the AllOfMP3 or Alltunes programs did - but it is easy to get used to.

Track prices are $0.09 for every song - the bargain of all of the inexpensive music providers online as of this writing. With such a low price, you’d think that the encoded bitrates must be low - but all tracks are between 192kbps and 320kbps - which is better than several of the other music providers out there.

Payment options include VISA, MasterCard, Diners Club or JCB and several e-wallets: WebMoney, Yandex.Dengi, Rapida, e-port, and Kredit Pilot.The site interface has a classy design, and is available in English and Russian.

LegalSounds.com also has a bonus program: for each payment of $25 or higher, you get free track downloads. For $25 you get 25 free tracks, $35 gets you 50 free tracks, on up to $100 with a total of 200 free tracks. If you use the $100 bonus option, this effectively bring your total price per track down to about $0.076 per track.

Perhaps the biggest selling point of JustMusicStore.com is the enormous catalog - over 159,000 albums are claimed to be online (much more than AllOfMP3 had). The extensive catalog contains lots of older tracks, too - which may make this site the holy grail for specialized listeners.

There are two “classes” of track prices: those between $0.11 and $0.15, and those between $0.28 and $0.39 - and there doesn’t seem to be any clear cut reason for a track to belong in a particular class (popular albums seem to all be in the cheap range). Your price per track depends on how much credit you purchase ($50 of credit gets you the $0.11 price, for example). You can pay with all major credit cards and PayPal, which will suit most people. The recorded bitrates are good, usually 192kbps or better. If you’re looking for the widest selection available , then this is the site for you!

JustMusicStore downloads are fast, and with the aid of an external download manager (FlashGet or the like), you’ll be good to go. This site also offers free previews of individual tracks or entire albums (albeit at lower quality).

iSOUND.be seems to be right on par with the pricing of JustMusicStore.com, but they don’t claim to have the incredible number of albums that JustMusicStore does. That probably won’t matter, since the catalog is still large (almost 60,000 albums), and the encoding rates are good (192kbps or more).

Similar to JustMusicStore, there are two “classes” of track prices: those between $0.11 and $0.15, and those between $0.28 and $0.39 - and again there doesn’t seem to be any clear cut reason for a track to belong in a particular class, although it most popular albums seem to all be in the $0.11-$0.15 range. Your price per track depends on how much credit you purchase ($50 of credit gets you the $0.11 price, for example). You can pay with all major credit cards and PayPal.

iSOUND.be also provides pre-listening to entire albums, so you can be sure you really want an Album before you purchase it. Downloads are fast, and with the aid of an external download manager (FlashGet or the like), you should have no problem managing your downloads.

Perhaps the biggest advantage of using mp3sugar.com is the large bonus offered when charging up your account: if you buy $34 worth of credits, you get an extra $10 on top of that. The fixed pricing means you may get a better deal on some albums here than other websites; however, you cannot pick the encoded bitrates of the tracks. There seems to be no default encoding rate, with some albums being encoded entirely at 192Kbps, and others using a mixture of encoding rates.

Major credit cards are accepted (VISA, Mastecard, JCB, DinersClub), but nothing else for topping up your account. If you want to use PayPal or some other more exotic payment method, you’ll have to go elsewhere.

If your tastes aren’t too exotic and obscure, the catalog at GoMusic.ru will probably serve you well. With predictable pricing per song, you’ll make out better getting some larger albums here than on other websites. They accept major credit cards, but not Amex or Discover. Alternatively, you can pay with Webmoney, the PaySafeCard, UKash, or use an interesting feature that allows you to charge directly onto your home phone bill. If this kind of payment method interests you, then this site may be for you (as of this writing, no other sites offer this feature!)

Like most sites, you don’t get to choose what bitrate you’d like to have the MP3 encoded in, and there are no formats other than MP3 available. The songs are encoded at various rates (including Variable Bit Rate, or VBR). The website interface is available in either English or Russian, and seems to flow well.

A long-time player in the MP3 world, MP3Search.ru isn’t leaving the scene anytime soon. With predictable pricing per song, you’ll make out better getting some larger albums here than on other websites. They accept major credit cards, but not Amex or Discover. Alternatively, you can pay with Webmoney, the PaySafeCard, UKash, and some other less popular payment types.

Like most sites, you don’t get to choose what bitrate you’d like to have the MP3 encoded in, and there are no formats other than MP3 available. The songs are encoded at various rates (including Variable Bit Rate, or VBR). The website interface is available in either English or Russian. Downloads seem fast and the website is pretty easy to use.

Not living in the US, I sometimes hear about hot news items there that permeate the airwaves that never seem to make it far outside the US. It’s hard to imagine, I guess, that most of the world doesn’t know who Anna Nicole Smith was (I didn’t either), who the latest candidate is as the next “American Idol”, or who Dick Cheney has shot at lately. It’s not that the rest of the world is somehow being censored; it’s just that in some places people recognize the difference between gossip/propaganda/frivolous titillating novelish stories and what might be considered actual news. The bias of news media outlets in the US automatically disqualifies much of the content from being re-broadcast at “news” : entertainment has taken the front seat, and so US news is generally treated as such.

I imagine it like this: the news guys here are aware of the US news reports (and probably watch them), and patiently make a list of the topics and subject matter. Then they cross most of them off, saying “This is not news, that either, that either, this is entertainment, this is just sensationalism, that’s just political blubbering, ….” until they find the few and core news stories that matter. If most people in the world don’t care about the death of a former model waning on a drug induced lifestyle, then there is a good chance that it probably isn’t actually worthy of being news.

Anyway, I’m happy about having the European News Filter (ENF) in place. It keeps my mind from growing dumber, and I don’t even come close to the likes of FOX news and the ridiculousness that sometimes appears on the tube.

Why did we invade Iraq? Was it because, as the White House claimed, Saddam Hussein was an immediate and serious threat to America. Or did Bush mislead the public, the Congress and the UN by consistently overstating this threat?

Bush claims he was forced to to invade Iraq as a last resort. But Bush wanted to invade Iraq from the very beginning of his presidency. Many of his team came from the PNAC, a thinktank which urged the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and pointed out the need for a “new Pearl Harbor”. “From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Ron Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.”

This is not a situation where Bush said ten things and one of them was wrong. Basically everything Bush said about the threat from Iraq was false. He had no solid evidence of any threat but still led us into this deadly and costly war. Here are the main lies about the threat from Iraq given by Bush and Cheney:

• Lie #1 - Uranium from Niger - Bush said “The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” in his State of the Union Address. The documents supporting that statement were forged.
• Lie #2 - Iraq and 9/11 - Bush led people to believe that Iraq was involved with 9/11 by repeatedly linking them in his speeches. This was so effective that at one point 70% of Americans actually believed Saddam was behind 9/11. Bush has since admitted that this was not true.
• Lie #3 - Congress Knew - Bush has stated that Congress had access to all the same information that the White House had. Thus he should not be blamed for making the mistake of going to war. But Bush was briefed many times about the falsehood of various stories and this information never reached Congress. [ZNet]
• Lie #4 - Aluminum Tubes - Bush, Cheney, Rice and Powell said that some aluminum tubes Iraq attempted to buy were intended for use in a uranium centrifuge to create nuclear weapons. These were the only physical evidence he had against Iraq. But it turns out this evidence had been rejected by the Department of Energy and other intelligence agencies long before Bush used them in his speeches. [NYTimes] [MotherJones] [CNN]
• Lie #5 - Iraq and Al Qaeda - Bush still insists that there was a “relationship” between Iraq and Al Qaeda. But the 9/11 Commission released a report saying, among other things, that there was no “collaborative relationship” between Al Qaeda and Iraq. The nature of the relationship seems to be that Al Qaeda asked for help and Iraq refused. Al Qaeda was opposed to Saddam Hussein because Saddam led a secular government instead of an Islamic government. [ZNet] [CNN] On 9/8/06 a Senate panel reported there was no relationship. [ABC]
• Lie #6 - Weapons of Mass Destruction - Bush insisted that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but his “evidence” consisted mostly of forged documents, plagiarized student papers, and vague satellite photos. The United Nations was on the ground in Iraq and could find nothing. After extensive searches Bush was finally forced to admit that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction.
• Lie #7 - Mobile Weapons Labs - Bush and his team repeatedly claimed that Iraq possessed mobile weapons labs capable of producing anthrax. Colin Powell showed diagrams of them at his speech before the UN to justify invading Iraq. These claims originated from Curveball, a discredited Iraqi informer who fed Bush many of the stories related to WMD. On May 29, 2003, two small trailers matching the description were found in Iraq. A team of bio-weapons experts examined the trailers and concluded they were simply designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. But, for over a year, Bush claimed these were part of Iraq’s bio-weapons program. The expert’s report was suppressed and only recently made public. [WashPost] [ABC]

Bush wanted so much to convince people of the need to invade Iraq that the White House set up a secret team in the Pentagon to create evidence. The Office of Special Plans routinely rewrote the CIA’s intelligence estimates on Iraq’s weapons programs, removing caveats such as “likely,” “probably” and “may” as a way of depicting the country as an imminent threat. They also used unreliable sources to create reports that ultimately proved to be false. [Mother Jones] [New Yorker] [Wikipedia]

By lying to Congress, Bush violated US Laws related to Fraud and False Statements, Title 18, Chapter 47, Section 1001 and Conspiracy to Defraud the United States, Title 18, Chapter 19, Section 371.

Resources

• Timeline of Iraq Lies by Jodin Morey
• Senate Intelligence Committee Reports from September 8, 2006
  • “Postwar Findings about Iraq’s WMD and Links to Terrorism and How They COmpare to Prewar Assessments” (PDF 6.9 MB)
  • “The Use by the Intelligence COmmunity of Intelligence Provided by the Iraqi National Congress” (PDF 9.3 MB)
  • “Key Judgments” from Rockefeller website
  • CBS News Report
• “IraqOnTheRecord” - database of 237 lies by administration officials about Iraq, compiled by Congressman Henry Waxman. http://democrats.reform.house.gov/IraqOnTheRecord
• ‘CONSPIRACY TO DEFRAUD THE UNITED STATES: Misrepresenting the Truth in Order to Sell a War is A “High Crime”’ by Elizabeth de la Vega
• “Ex-CIA official: Bush administration misused Iraq intelligence“, statements by Paul R. Pillar, CNN, 2/10/06
• “Bush and Iraq: Mass Media, Mass Ignorance” by Jeff Cohen
• List of Lies and News Links from BuzzFlash
• “Key Bush Intelligence Briefing Kept From Hill Panel” 11/23/05, by Murray Waas
• Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States - Title 18, Chapter 19, Section 371
• Fraud and False Statements - Title 18, Chapter 47, Section 1001
• Disarm Saddam Hussein, the White House’s own summary of lies about Iraq.
• “U.S. ‘Almost All Wrong’ on Weapons Report on Iraq Contradicts Bush Administration Claims” By Dana Priest and Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writers, 10/7/04

I’ve read a lot online about how users of AllOfMP3.com are unhappy (and even upset) about not being able to buy credits anymore to purchase music from the USA. Apparently, political pressure from the media industry in the US forced the big name credit card companies to withdraw their service. So what can you do? Is there a way to buy more credits from the USA anymore?

Yes, there is! A website called SongBoom popped up that allows you to buy gift certificates easily with PayPal. So if you live in the USA and still want to use AllOfMP3.com, check it out! They charge more than the card is worth, however; but you’re still getting a good deal: a song that previously cost $0.15 would now cost $0.18 when you include the price of the added on fee. Definitely a site to bookmark if you are (or used to be) an AllOfMP3.com user!

A warning to Skype users: you may be getting charged too much for your service! I have US phone number through the internet service “Skype”, which lets me have a local number there for people to call me wherever I happen to be in the world. When I went to renew it today, I was astounded to see that it would now cost me $60 to keep this number, despite there being no mention of this price increase anywhere on their website. I read through all of their pricing detail pages, and there simply wasn’t any mention of it: it should have cost me $38 per year just like the last time - right?

After some poking around, I noticed that the Skype prices were being shown to me in Euros, despite the fact that I had my currency setting set to USD, and my location as being the USA. Apparently, the good folks at Skype charge you different prices depending on where your IP address originates: my IP address originating in the EU costs me 58% more if I try to renew my Skype service. That’s quite a price hike! Take a look at these screenshots:

The first one shows what it costs if I log in from an EU IP address, and the second one from a USA IP address. It costs the normal $38 to renew from the USA, and $60 to renew from Germany.

First of all, I was surprised to find out that this kind of practice exists. It’s probably done a lot, but I just never personally ran into it. It seems kinda fishy that a company that sells a service that is supposed to travel with you (”locationless”) would want to charge you different prices depending on where you happen to be at the time when you want to renew or buy more service.

So how to get the cheaper, US prices?

I happened to have access to a PC in the USA that I could log in with, so this wasn’t a big deal to get around for me. If you don’t happen to have access to a USA IP address, then try out CosmoPod - it’s free, and it’s a nifty service as well! You get a remote Linux desktop, which you can use like a normal computer - and connect to the internet from a US IP address. It’s pretty cool to try out, regardless of whether or not you have the Skype overcharging problem.

Simply sign up for an account there, login at Skype, and you’ll get the normal USA renewal price for SkypeOut.

Glad to find out I’m really not the only person that wondered this: what about the other guilty men? Granted, G.W. and co. didn’t gas anybody; they didn’t invade Kuwait - just Iraq. However, hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians have died as a result, and thousands of US soldiers have been killed. After torturing, murdering, and brutally killing innocents, why are we supposed to forget the depth of badness done by the Bush regime after a dictator created by us is killed?

Who encouraged him to invade Iran in 1980 (his greatest war crime)? The US did. Who sold him the chemical weapons components he used against Iran and the Kurds? The US did. Our support of the dictator now disposed of by the US wasn’t talked about during his trial; it wouldn’t have been, as that would directly involve the USA with his war crimes.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, a world where people are responsible for their actions. Next let’s imagine a powerful world leader, directly responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in an illegal war based on lies and ulterior motives (sounds similar to that Saddam fellow, eh?). It seems obvious that a person displaying such an abuse of power resulting in the deaths of so many people should somehow be forced to accept responsibility for such an action. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

In the real world, this rarely happens. Saddam ultimately (unwillingly, he had no choice) accepted punishment for his actions - in part for the deaths that were directly attributed to his actions as a leader. So what about all the other bad guys, the ones that are responsible for the brutal deaths of so many innocent people in Iraq as a result of an egregious abuse of power? When will they be held responsible? Is Iraq the only place in the world where the government believes in this strange “leaders taking responsibility for their actions” concept?

If leaders were held responsible for their actions, then G.W. and co. would have thought twice about lying to America and attacking a country illegally. Because, as we just recently experienced, when you’re the big man in charge - you never imagine its going to be your neck in the noose.

Ahh, the big holiday time of year. It has always been exciting - usually it means no school (or work); it’s a time to stay at home and play video games, hang out with the friends or family, or frolic through the snow. The end of December and beginning of January brings back memories of school vacation and visits to the grandparents, and playing outside for hours until my gloves-made-of-socks became soggy and wet, making throwing snowballs ineffective (as they stick to the sock-gloves). This year, however, I did a couple of new things that I’m sure I will remember fondly: I broke my thumb and got teargassed.

Not in the same day, mind you. The thumb just so happened to get stuck in a car door (not in the nice part that has the rubber strips, that would have been far more pleasant). Aside from the pain that came shortly after the crunch noise, I can certainly say that it was the most awake/alive I’ve felt in some time (what is it about pain that does that? Is it the accompanying adrenalin?) Incidentally, alcohol wasn’t involved, which is notable since it seems to always be included as part of the seasons festivities, which somehow increases the possibility of things like this happening.

As far of the teargas goes, first a bit of explanation: in other countries (like the USA), you can easily buy pepper spray, tasers, shotguns, and other nice self defense mechanisms from your local WalMart. In Germany, one of the few things you can buy along those lines is teargas. Now, I didn’t know that before I found out what it smells/tastes like, but hey - live and learn. Anyway, some jokers put some in the ventilation system in a bar that I happened to be in a few nights ago, which led to a prompt evacuation of the place (its a rather small place, so it took under a minute).

I imagine if the same thing happened in the US, it’d be an “act of terrorism”, probably with a terrorist conviction too boot for the juvenile that pulled the prank. After the air cleared and one of the guys I was there with loudly proclaimed that he was the responsible one, we all shuffled back in and the DJ put some tunes back on. But hey - it made the night more interesting.

At this rate, I hope that New Years is a little less exciting.

Recent reports confirm a theory that many had dismissed about the war on terror going on in Iraq. “Operation Honeypot”, as it might be called if the State Department releases any more details on this most recently reported turn of events, has actually been an active and successful anti-terrorist operation aimed at containing as many terrorists as possible to one known and completely controllable location.

While many (if not most) people see the Bush/Republican war in Iraq as a dismal failure, it has obviously turned out some good things, such as Operation Honeypot (as well as giving civilians the freedom they didn’t have under the tyranny of Saddam). The sheer genius of this operation is hallmark of the well thought out War in Iraq as well as most Middle East policies of the US. While most of the world wasn’t looking, the Bush administration was able to set up a real-world honeypot in Iraq, drawing in thousands of unsuspecting terrorists for future monitoring/capture/intelligence gathering - like tens of thousands of Winnie-the-Poohs jumping to one gigantic pot of honey. As persons who are familiar with honeypots will tell you - there is no better way to see into the mind of your enemy than watching them when they think they’re in their own environment and not being monitored. So what is a honeypot, anyway?

In computer terms, a honeypot is a trap set to detect and capture illegal activity on a network. It can be, for example, a computer set up on a network that appears to be part of a larger network, but is completely isolated. The attempts - perhaps successful - of a would-be hacker to compromise the computer give direct information into the mind of the hacker, his methods, and his goals in attacking the network.

The real genius occurred at the moment that the Bush administration took this honeypot idea from the IT sector and applied it to the overall strategy of the War in Iraq. Terrorists now have a place to breed ideas and train, build dirty bombs, plan world-wide attacks, and conduct terrorism over the internet - or so they think. In reality, Operation Honeypot has succeeded where others have failed, has strived where others stumbled: now even more terrorists are contained in a known, controllable area than ever before. And this is all thanks to the far-sightedness of the Bush administration. As president Bush said , “My judgment is, if we weren’t in Iraq, they’d find some other excuse, because they have ambitions”. He’s exactly right: people have ambitions. Why not corral these ambitious people into a small, secure location?

Certainly critics of the Bush administration will try to twist Operation Honeypot into something other than what it really is. While some will claim that the Iraq War has actually increased the number of terrorists in the world, they are missing the real point: these “closet terrorists”, those that perhaps have thoughts of retaliation against the US for whatever reason but have been actively supressing those feelings, are being forced to “come out of the closet”. In effect, the Bush administration has exposed the true thoughts deep down in the hearts of those sleeper terrorists, something that hours of expensive one-on-one therapy wouldn’t unearth. By heightening the anger of these wannabe terrorists to new and before unseen levels, they transform from opinionated observers to active participants. And this is exactly what Operation Honeypot is there for - to attract all kinds of terrorists, especially the ones that are trying to hide it. And there are probably hundreds of thousands of them. If you’ve ever had a thought of anger against the US government, or a moment of weakness where you question the goings-on of the Bush regime: be careful - you could also be a target of Operation Honeypot. You don’t actually have to go to Iraq, you just have to be there in spirit.

All this news of the Iraq War fueling terror is misguided. The Iraq War is just exposing more terrorists than ever before, and additionally containing many of them inside a country roughly the size of California. While Winnie the Pooh might balk at Bush’s inclusion of his honey addiction as a strategy in Iraq, I for one think that someone should get awarded for creating Operation Honeypot. Or at least there should be a party. Perhaps with costumes.

Cluster bombs, the main purpose of which is to kill personnel (”soft targets”), have been the subject of wide debate for some time now. Views range from comparisons with landmines to the “they are perfectly legal for our use” viewpoint. Cluster bombs are no new thing in modern warfare; the US used them extensively in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Cluster bombs are interesting in that they do not do selective targetting: they have the same effect as a “shotgun of bombs” would, except over an area about the size of two or three football fields. It is easy to imagine why the UN and Red Cross (among others) oppose the use of cluster bombs.

Aside from the problem of indiscriminate killing due to the use of cluster bombs, a second problem exists with cluster bombs that affect people for generations after their use: unexploded ordinance. The “bomblets” dropped from cluster bombs do not always explode: between 1 and 40% do not. This means that very often unexploded bomblets end up laying in unexpected places (backyards, roofs, etc) waiting to explode when picked up by the unsuspecting civilian. Much like land mines, in fact, except they’re prettier and look more like toys.

Now, this is nothing new. Probably everyone knows about this already. What is new and interesting is that the UN has discovered unexploded bomblets in Lebanon, left there to do more killing and maiming - more than 100,000 350,000 1,000,000 [estimated] as of today September 26th, 2006. Not only is that almost unbelievable (and somewhat sickening), it is aggravated by the fact that 90% of them were dropped 72 hours before the end of the conflict - when Israel knew there would be a resolution. It’s a bit like leaving a lasting impression for the generations to come, sort of a going away present. Nice!

[Edit: I changed the numbers twice as they started increasing. I thought that 100,000 was a lot: I didn’t know it would turn out to be more than ten times that as time went on.  That is really unbelievable.  But, on the other hand, its only 1% of the total number of landmines worldwide - just a shame they were so incredibly necessary.]