With music services increasingly turning to DRM infested music files to squeeze every buck out of the customer, it comes as sweet surprise that a few sites out there do actually provide DRM free music at affordable prices. One such find is MusicMP3.ru which sells songs from about 4 to 15 cents depending on the length of the track. That’s quite an affordable price considering I’ve seen some sites charging close to a dollar for each song. And no, it’s not illegal, their faq page clarifies that they do in fact pay the licensing fees.
The Album Reviews give you a lot of background info which you probably won’t need but try out their sampler which you can use to hear a song before you buy it. I’ve bought a song from them and I’ve just played it on my computer and on my Discman. No DRM at all. Nice.
In case you’re one of those heavy downloaders you can try out their affiliate program where they will pay you for linking to them. The extra dough can be used to buy more music. An incredibly simple interface adds to the ease of use of the whole site. Check out their Music News section for an idea of what I’m talking about. Ignore the occasional grammar mistake since it’s a Russian site.
I’ve been finding it difficult to fund my account though. Presently, they don’t accept credit cards or PayPal. That leaves me with E-Gold which I have just exhausted. I’ve got to see if I’ve can fund my account off their affiliate program.
Maybe I should rephrase that to ‘Why don’t the majority of engineering colleges affiliated to Anna University have a student union?’. This has been bothering me for one very good reason. Every Arts and Science College I see has one and they seem to do some pretty good stuff. Even with a 3 year course schedule they manage to find time for student unions and week long culturals while engineering colleges despite their 4 year course can just about find time for a one day symposium. I just don’t get it.
Lack of time due to a cluttered course schedule isn’t an excuse. Technically, we’ve got a whole extra year to work things into the schedule. No one in their right senses would say that there isn’t a need for a student union. On an average, Engineering colleges charge more than Arts and Science colleges so funding shouldn’t be a problem. So there, they’ve got the need, the time, the money and the students. Whats their problem then?
Another sad observation is that its becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish a symposium from a carnival. Nobody ever discusses anything worthwhile and half the time the food is what is most interesting. Its heartening though, to see IITM get it right. They seem to know exactly what they’re doing when organising Saarang and Shaastra. Why can’t their model be replicated? They’ve shown it can be done.
Little Babooshka’s Grind is a Chennai based band that has some awesome music to its name. If you’ve come here before chances are that I’ve told you all about them. Why? For once an Indian band had the sense to get a decently designed site. TAAQ’s got a decent blog though their site looks rather haphazard.
LBG’s got this rather nifty flash music player. The last time I saw they had about four songs listed from each album that you could listen to. Now you can listen to all the songs from both their albums. Nice huh?
Someone try out their ‘Buy Now‘ link and tell me if they support Cash On Delivery. Their form freaks me out. Too little info besides the text boxes. I don’t like those.
I get a day off from college to do project work. I’m supposed to come up with an idea I’m interested in and then work on implementing that idea. Nice! Really. Of the 8 semesters that I’m expected to be in college I was hoping that this semester would be the most interesting.
Interesting ideas are not hard to come by. I can’t say the same about reasonable professors. I don’t mind if my ideas are shot down because they aren’t feasible or are completely insane but rejecting it because some senior did something similar last year or because it’s mostly a simulation or because it’s a term they’ve heard of and hence its not cutting edge enough? Seriously, WTF?!
The best recommendation they could give me was to go to a project centre. After spending a month trying to convince them that I could do a project on my own and failing miserably, I finally go to a project centre. These people hand you a booklet with projects that are nicely categorised under headings like IEEE, Embedded Systems, Networking, Communication, VLSI. How nice? Like vegetables arranged in your neighbourhood grocery they’ve got everything all nicely arranged for your picking. You listen to their rehearsed, almost retarded explanation of the project, pick a project that sucks the least and pay up. Ask them what you’re expected to do and their answer is (translating quote from Tamil to English) “cash apart, you’re expected to attend classes and not mess with the kit once it’s handed to you (smile)”. And to think the project costs 20,000 bucks. They’re fleecing us and I can’t do a damn thing about it. The only consolation is that I’m assured of my project being accepted and a ‘guarantee’ that it’ll work.
Anna University finally lets us do something creative and my college goes and screws it all up. Another sem wasted. I’m not sure what I feel right now. I’ve run out semesters to make my college education worthwhile but that would also mean I’m done with this whole load of crap. Oh well, one less day of college per week. I guess I should be glad.
