(no subject)

I'm an uncle! Again!
At about 5:30am EST, my sister had a little girl, Caitlin Marie.
That makes her fourth child, and her second daughter.

(no subject)

Go Google!
Wait, can I say that? Should I have an attorney present?
I'll note, also, that subpoena can be written by desk clerks; I've never liked them much for that reason.

Battle of the Bands

So, I've been playing around with this Napster thing, and I think I really like it. Which, at $0.99 a song, could become hazardous to my back account! -laughs- I was talking to my friend Laurel, though, who asked why I didn't get iTunes. And I really didn't have much of an answer for here -- iTunes has always made me feel uncomfortable, for no good reason, and Napster just feels like 'home'; they are, after all, how I started this whole thing, anyways.

So I'm curious if any of you out there can give me feedback on iTunes vs. Napster. A few points on Napster that I find pertinent for those who have iTunes but not this:

-Huge, searchable databases of songs, artists, and albums they've liscences to; very user-friendly in my estimation, including 'Artist Pages' that show pictures, discographies, and 'hot downloads' for almost every band.

-They let you preview any song; most of them in full, which you can often download to your machine free of charge (no burning rights), though some are buy-only and just have 30-second snips. This preview feature is key for me, 'cause the whole *point* is to know what I'm buying. Laurel said iTunes has a similar feature, but I wasn't aware of this.

-Songs download as .WMAs. This is a negative for me, as .WMA is Microsoft's filetype, and I just don't like Microsoft. I'm *much* more comfortable with mp3s, but those seem to have a stigma to them. (Avast, ye.)

-Built-in 'radio' feature, which selects a limited-random selection (based on the 'station' you pick) of songs in Napster's system to play there on your machine. In particular, I spent an hour or more listening to "Undercover" last night, a 'station' full of songs covered by different bands.

-The subscription fee for all of this is $9.95 a month; without the subscription, you can still buy tracks for $0.95 and albums for $9.95, but you can't download, and may not be able to preview. The subscription also gives a discount to buying albums, only $6.95