PlexNex

Hiser on Don Marti's LinuxWorld Podcast

Don Marti was Editor of LinuxJournal during its long and important middle phase. He's now back at LinuxWorld.com as Senior Editor.

MP3 (24:02)

Don & Gary Edwards and I spoke together a few weeks ago about the GPL-ing of Java and the conversation turned to our file format work on ODF at the OpenDocument Foundation. This led to the LinuxWorld Podcast, which Don recorded late last night after my return from Boston.

Hiser...

"We have to stop being coy...if we're serious about the success of Linux in the market-place -- either desktop or server -- we have to be realistic about aggressively attacking some of the choke-points these gorillas are exerting..."

Don's questions were excellent -- they're questions we've been hoping to field from the Linux sector for years now. I ramble through the points (am fixing that), but the conversation represents our views clearly,and hopefully for a wider than usual audience.

The Best Band Since Electricity...

Kraftwerk

The unbelievably wide Gary Crowley's BBC Radio interview with Florian & Ralf (Real Player):

Number 1 (9mins, 8secs)

Number 2 (5mins, 41secs)

Number 3 (5mins, 25secs)

Number 4 (4mins, 15secs)

Kraftwerk toured in 2004 -- with laptops instead of a lot of gear & wires -- and the excellent recording released last year is called Minimum-Maximum.

Students at School of Rock, take notes. Which of the following are Kraftwerk NOT responsible for?

(a) Depeche Mode
(b) Euro-Pop
(c) Human League
(ci) New Order
(cii) Joy Division
(d) Boy George
(e) the interstitial music of all sports programming and car commercials
(f) disco
(g) irony
(h) none of the above

INTERVIEW: Jon King, Gang of Four

Gang of Four reformed and were touring last summer. Their new-ish work, Return the Gift, purports to be a live (studio) recording [as opposed to asynchronous multi-tracking] of all the gems.

Apparently, Hugo Burnham gets a bigger drum sound here. The drums, they did sound a bit papery -- like almost everything between Sgt. Peppers and Abbey Road -- but for the Gang of Four this never detracted from their thunderous, angular Gestalt.

This one, Entertainment! (1979) -- Gang of Four's very first -- is on my Desert Island Disc list.

Here's a really interesting recent interview from Radio Holland with Go4's singer Jon King (MP3, about 15 minutes).