Bell Sympatico's decision to throttle torrents, even at the wholesale level, combined with the CBC distributing television via the very same technology makes me suspect that net neutrality is about to become a big deal in the Great White North.

read more | digg story

Last week, Nine Inch Nails released Ghosts I, part of the 36 track Ghosts I-IV for free, under a Creative Commons licence. It's hardly surprising, as Trent Reznor is one of the few 'established' artists who's willing to try new approaches to distributing his music.

The link below is direct to the NINOfficial torrent:

Nine Inch Nails - Ghosts I (2008)

From the torrent's readme.txt:

Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I (2008)

Hello from Nine Inch Nails.

We\\\'re very proud to present a new collection of instrumental music, Ghosts I-IV. Almost two hours of music recorded over an intense ten week period last fall, Ghosts I-IV sprawls Nine Inch Nails across a variety of new terrain.

Now that we\\\'re no longer constrained by a record label, we\\\'ve decided to personally upload Ghosts I, the first of the four volumes, to various torrent sites, because we believe BitTorrent is a revolutionary digital distribution method, and we believe in finding ways to utilize new technologies instead of fighting them.

We encourage you to share the music of Ghosts I with your friends, post it on your website, play it on your podcast, use it for video projects, etc. It\\\'s licensed for all non-commercial use under Creative Commons.

We\\\'ve also made a 40 page PDF book to accompany the album. If you\\\'d like to download it for free, visit http://ghosts.nin.com/main/pdf

Ghosts I is the first part of the 36 track collection Ghosts I-IV. Undoubtedly you\\\'ll be able to find the complete collection on the same torrent network you found this file, but if you\\\'re interested in the release, we encourage you to check it out at ghosts.nin.com, where the complete Ghosts I-IV is available directly from us in a variety of DRM-free digital formats, including FLAC lossless, for only $5. You can also order it on CD, or as a deluxe package with multitrack audio files, high definition audio on Blu-ray disc, and a large hard-bound book.

We genuinely appreciate your support, and hope you enjoy the new music. Thanks for listening.


http://ghosts.nin.com

For those interested in the full Ghosts I-IV, you can check out the NIN Ghosts sub site, which also includes a free 40 page PDF download, aka album inserts for the digital audio age.

Labels: fun stuff, tech

I've always had a bit of interest with urban spelunking, and when I was younger used to do a bit myself. Of course, I wasn't aware of the term then. My friends and I would just go places we weren't supposed to, whether it was construction sites, old sewer systems (or new ones almost complete in fresh subdivisions), abandoned hotels etc. One of the more disturbing discoveries we made was that within 3 manhole covers of every storm drain entrance, one could find an antechamber littered with old beer bottles, an absolutely foul looking mattress, and worst of all, opened condom wrappers.

Certainly not the Love Shack the B-52s had in mind I'm sure.

What brings me to this post though is the following...

Imagine a tunnel more than ten storeys underground, a hundred years old, bricklined, wet, and completely inaccessible save by descending through a narrow slit in its ceiling thirty feet above the floor, and then returning up the same rope you came down.

Now imagine that this tunnel flows into Niagara Falls, emerging behind the pummeling curtain of water that nearly everyone in North America journeys to see at some point in their lives.

This tunnel exists...

It's the old Niagara Tailrace built by the Toronto Power Company about 100 years ago, and Michael Cook of vanishingpoint.ca (along with others) went into it. There's some spectacular photos, that seem more at home on a big budget sciene fiction film set than in a power plant. There's also more details about the project, and links to historical photos, at the Sleepy City site.