PlasticBoy

The album of the week is M.I.A.’s Kala.

The Wal-Mart music store is now selling DRM-free downloads for 94 cents per track or $7.88 per album. They are 256 kbps CBR MP3s. Boing Boing reports that they were blocking non-Windows machines but I didn’t have any trouble buying an album from Linux.

The album of the week is Luke Vibert’s Chicago, Detroit, Redruth.

My friends Ian and Nisha are on a four month tour of Asia and are keeping a travel blog. Ian has been posting some nice photos to Flickr. Choice quote:

Sick of pedestrians stepping out in front of your car and making you stop or slam on the breaks? In Japan no one crosses a street without being at a crosswalk and having the walk light be on. Even if there are no cars around. Really. You would look like such a Jerk if you walked without the light, that even I don’t do it anymore (except for at 5 AM this morning, where is was really ridiculous. I did it, and I know that I have brought eternal shame down on me and my family, and it was worth it).

The album of the week is Okkervil River’s The Stage Names.

Universal is the latest record company to try selling its music with no DRM. The music will be available through several music stores, but not iTunes, on a trial basis through January. Boing Boing says the files will be MP3s but the Times article doesn’t say anything about format.

Deepleaf Audio has Illuminatus! audiobooks. I just finished the Harry Potter audiobook so I may have to try this next. They also have the first of the Historical Illuminatus Chronicles, which I never finished reading. [via RAW Data]

I like Jorn’s del.icio.us feed. del.icio.us adds annoying links at the bottom of each post but at least I get a feed with one item per post.

The album of the week is Editors’ An End Has a Start.

The Massachusetts Information Technology Department received 460 public comments on its recent policy document which adopted Microsoft’s OOXML format as an acceptable format for state documents. The comments appear to be almost unanimously anti-OOXML, but yesterday the ITD announced that they don’t give a rat’s ass what the public thinks.