The most powerful MPC ever takes its rightful position in our Akai Professional product line. Along with the MPC2000XL, and the MFC equipped Ultimate XL the MPC4000 joins the legendary music production tools of our time. Using the new Z-96 sampling engine the MPC4000 boasts the first full feature sampler ever in an MPC product.

Features:
The new Z-96 sampling engine, combined with a high-performance Intel™ CPU provides ultra-fast processing and 24-bit audio resolution with sample rates up to 96kHz

64-voices, or 32 voices at 96kHz sample rate

16 MB onboard memory, expandable to a massive 512 MB

Balanced stereo XLR-1/4 in. TRS combo inputs with reference-grade preamps, with switchable phono inputs to allow direct connection of turntables

Four MIDI Out ports control up to 64 independent MIDI channels

Four Q-Link™ knobs, and two note variation sliders for real-time modulation control

Real-time control of filter cutoff, resonance, pitch, LFO rate, and depth — and more

IntelliSample automates sampling, naming, program creation, and sample assignment

Virtual sampling streams sample playback directly from hard disk

Full sampler implementation provides compatibility with Z-Series and S-Series Multi, Program and Sample files. The MPC4000 can create everything from powerful beats, to expressive piano and strings parts

Project (.PRJ) files save all sequences, songs, samples, programs, and multi’s in a single file

New! 4-channel 56-bit effects processor (standard)

USB host port accommodates USB floppy, CD-R, HD, MO, ZIP drives for storage, and an ASCII keyboard for naming

USB slave port provides for ak.Sys Network and Control System software

192 filters/26 filter types with to 3 simultaneous filters per voice

Dual independent LFOs with internal/external modulation control

Internal IDE hard drive (standard in North America Only) plus external SCSI connection

Built-in sample rate converter on the digital input to eliminate rate-matching problems

Large 320 x 240, multi-angle graphic LCD

FAT32 disk format is fully compatible with S5000, S6000, Z4, Z8, DPS24, and most PC’s

Native .WAV sample format allows data sharing with anything supporting .WAV files

Built-in CD Recorder (standard in North America Only) for master archiving or Sample Loading

ak.Sys Control and Networking software enables Mac and PC connection via onboard USB interface

2 assignable footswitch inputs

Wordclock input for sync with external digital devices (optional)

Graphical sequence event editing

Memory meters display remaining free sampler memory, sequence memory, and CPU memory

Audition samples directly from hard disk

Graphic editing of sample waveforms

6 pad banks provide quick access to up to 96 different sounds

SMPTE I/O Standard

And much, much more!

There are imaginary countries which no one can ever reach. We had criss-crossed the world from the distant province of Shaanxi to the banks of the Maroni, from Salvador de Bahia to Venice, propagating our Latin funk over seas and oceans, looking ceaselessly for our cherished city. We had come and come in peace, from town to town and from continent to continent. At times, at a bend in the road some wise man would call out to us, Are you also looking for Electropica? Tom Darnal, Paris, February 2002.

In 1995 the fantastic adventure that was Mano Negra finally hit the buffers and came to a grinding halt. Keyboardist and graphic designer Tom Darnal retreated to start answering the big “what next?” question. Armed with hours of video footage and aural ephemera collected on Mano Negra’s many trips to Latin America together with a sampler and few other essential bits of equipment, Tom and his crew began to work on new material. In 1996 the collective released their first œuvre, an break-beat powered hard-step EP called ‘Light And Fire’ on their own label. They baptised the band ‘P18’ because they are located in the 18th district, the funkiest and most cosmopolitan part of Paris. That same year Tom travelled to Havana, Cuba, to stay with the Teuntor family, respected act of the Cuban music scene and fixtures of the lively Centro Habana ‘hood. One steamy summer night, Tom and friends partook in one of those typically frenetic Cuban yard rumba parties. Whilst the whole neighbourhood slinked their way through steamy rumba routines, a ghetto blaster pumped various electronic beats cooked up by the P18 collective and Ir頉r鬠the Teuntor family’s traditional Cuban rumba group, chanted and partied over the top. The fire, passion and energy of that night was a revelation to all involved and it inspired the idea to create a truly epochal hybrid of Latin or rather Cuban sounds and urban dance electronica.

Between thought and expression lay three years of hard work. Countless trips across the Atlantic, sessions in Paris 18th and elsewhere, mixes, remixes and the involvement of a whole tribe of musicians and DJs of every holler and hue eventually produced ‘Urban Cuban’, P18’s debut platter which came out in 1999. The group played their first concert in front of thousands at the Transmusicales de Rennes on December 4th 1998, a day sacred to Chango, one of the many ‘Orishas’ or saints in the Afro-Cuban religion known as santeria. During the two years of constant touring which followed, the band were moulded into a powerful and combat-ready live unit, able to bring the primal power of Afro-Cuban music to audiences across the globe and take no prisoners in the process. “The show was really good,” Tom remembers. “Really wild and savage, with two percussionists at full throttle and all the machines pumping. I experimented a lot to get the machines right and fully integrated in the sound. It wasn’t just the energy of electronic music. It was more primal than that!” The group performed their last concert in October 2000 in the Chinese city of Xian. It was time to rest and think about the next album.

Tom got to work in his Paris studio. “I wanted to incorporate that incredible feel of the live gigs because I figured that if you have a unique sound it’s really worth keeping. So I laid down live recordings that had been made whilst on tour on one track, and since it was machine-driven, I could synch it up and put other elements on top. That way I always kept that live energy.” Tom had already recorded some new material in Havana with the Teuntor family and legendary Cuban afro-rumba crew Clave Y Guaguanco. One day a friend called him and suggested that he needed the help of a electronic music head and mentioned Laurent Collart, sound engineer to French Techno guru Laurent Garnier. Tom loved that artist and so Collart seemed heaven sent. “During two years of touring I listened to loads of things. I think there’s a fantastic scene in the US…guys like Joe Clausell, Fran篩s Kervorkian, Body and Soul, Kerri Chandler and I realised that this was the sound that P18 was looking for. That electronic element is not only a sound, it’s a culture, a school, a way of doing things. Although I had a feel for it, I didn’t have the technique whereas a guy like Laurent, he’s been working on it for a long time.

The big challenge was to avoid a cheap and easy ‘Latin House’ type of fusion. “I wanted to achieve a maximum amount of coherence between the Afro-Cuban and the electronic side of the project,” says Tom. “I wanted the Cubans to be able to recognise their own music in there somewhere. So I spent a lot of time talking and explaining how it all works to Laurent. I also explained the whole story of Santeria and Yoruban mythology because each Orisha is a colour, a natural element, a personality and more besides. I wanted the listener to feel the Orisha in the colour and texture of each of the ‘religious’ songs. It was a great exchange because Laurent also lead me to another planet.

Tom found other collaborators and contributors in the latter day Babel of Paris. Cuban percussionist and composer Raoul Hernandez was recruited and proceed to contribute the oh-so-funky ‘Entre Sol Y Palmeras’ to the new album. Other veterans of the P18 collective like the drum and bass producer DJ Sree, trumpeter Christian Lechevretel and bassist Gilles Rodriguez also played their part. Femi Kuti, son of the late great Fela, found time to make a beautiful contribution with his sax. The luscious fruit of all these collaborations and partings, years of touring, experimentation, moments of pure dance-fuelled joy and at times harsh frustration is ‘Electropica’. It’s definitely a collective effort, spanning continents and cultures, the work of a virtual band of like-minded musical fortune-seekers spread out across the globe but united by the same spirit. “I don’t think we’re a Latin band as such. We’re more to do with funk, Afro-funk, house, Afro-beat, call it what you will. But there is a certain Latin angle. I don’t know if the culture adopted me whether I adopted the culture. Everyone is talking about fusions and all that. It’s a term which is becoming outdated. We’re not at that stage anymore. We’ve already created the hybrids. They exist and now we’ve got to make them grow.”

http://www.p18international.com

Have you ever suddenly been struck by the realization that a scene in your film just had to be set to a particular song? Maybe it was the Tom Waits cut that served as the soundtrack to your adolescence; or a Moby track that someone in your crew was playing during production; or a piece of classical music that would do for your movie what Mahler’s Fifth Symphony did for Visconti’s “Death in Venice.” The right piece of prerecorded music can make a vast difference in how a scene plays. The problem is figuring out how to get permission to use it without draining your budget. Learning about how to acquire the rights to prerecorded music on an independent filmmaker’s budget can be discouraging–more than a few low-budget filmmakers have discovered that music licensing, particularly of songs recorded by current, well-known artists, can be both costly and time-consuming. But if you are determined to use a specific piece of music, and want to take the legal steps to ensure that you won’t wind up in litigation after your film becomes the next indie sensation, you’d better cast off the bliss of the innocent.

First of all, determine which licenses you need. The most important ones for use in films are “synchronization licenses” and “master recording licenses.” Synchronization, or “sync,” licenses pertain to the synchronization of a piece of music to any visual medium, from TV to film to Web broadcasting. When you obtain sync rights to, say, Blondie’s “One Way or Another,” you may legally use a rerecorded version of the song in your film. To use Blondie’s version, however, you will need to obtain a master recording, or “master,” license. It is important to understand and be aware of this distinction, because the owner(s) of the copyright of the composition may differ from the owner(s) of the copyright of the recording you want to use.

Conduct Thorough Research

Your goal is to determine both who owns the copyright of the song you want to use, and with whom you will need to negotiate to obtain the necessary licenses. There are several avenues where you can find this information (see sidebar), but try starting with BMI and ASCAP, the two performing artists’ rights organizations that, between them, represent nearly every songwriter and composer working today. BMI and ASCAP do not issue the licenses you will need, but they each have a vast database that contains reliable information on the publishing of the artists they represent.

BMI or ASCAP will refer you to either the publishing company itself, or to an agency that represents the publishing company. These agencies, the best-known of which is the Harry Fox Agency, negotiate licensing agreements on behalf of the publishers of the song. If the song you want is shared by more than one publishing company (which is nearly always the case), such an agency often represents the interests of all the publishers involved.

If neither BMI nor ASCAP gives you the information you need, call the artist’s record company and request contact information for the artist’s publishing company. However, depending on who answers the phone at the record label, you may be speaking with someone who doesn’t have a complete understanding of the publishing scenario for the song you want. Copyright ownership is often complex and convoluted. To cover all your bases, try to get contact information for the artist’s attorney as well, and make sure that the attorney’s depiction of the publishing scenario matches the record label’s.

After you successfully contact the song’s publisher, or the agency that represents the publisher, the publisher or agency will communicate your interest in the song to the copyright owner. The copyright owner will then determine a fee for the license agreement, and the publisher or agency will make you an offer. Licensing fees are not standardized and vary widely. If you want a song by Prince or the Rolling Stones, you might expect to pay tens of thousands of dollars, or more. If you are interested in a distinctive but lesser-known artist, you might pay a fraction of that amount.

When Your Name Isn’t Spielberg

Some independent filmmakers have taught themselves the basics of music licensing by trial and error. Mark Osborne, writer-director of the popular IFILM short “More” and the feature film “Dropping Out,” which will screen at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, was inspired to make the six-and-a-half-minute “More” by the New Order song, “Elegia.” Osborne analyzed the song’s structure and wrote the animated film to respond to the musical twists and turns of the song. So, of course, by the time he had completed the film, no other music would have suited his needs, and he went about trying to license the song.

Osborne contacted New Order’s management, and after three months, the band agreed to grant him permission to use the song. Unfortunately, their permission turned out to be relatively unimportant–Warner Brothers and other interests own publishing rights to the song as well.

“I thought I was free and clear,” Osborne says. “But months later their manager said, ‘Oh, you never contacted the label?’” Osborne went on to contact Warner Brothers and after six more months of making phone calls and writing letters he was able to license the sync rights to the song, as well as worldwide perpetuity rights, which entitle him to use the song in the film forever.

The struggle to get permission to use “Elegia” highlighted Osborne’s relative lack of clout as an independent filmmaker. “It can be a difficult process to navigate,” he says. “If you blindly go to the tables, you might have trouble.” For “Dropping Out,” Osborne contacted a music clearance consultant, Greg Dawson, to help with licensing. It is a step he would recommend to other filmmakers whose budget can sustain the extra cost. “It was great to just hand him a list and let him do the work,” he says.

If you have the extra financial padding, there are music clearance companies out there that will make your music licensing experience relatively painless. When you retain the services of a company such as Dawson Music or Signature Sound, their employees will determine which rights you need, conduct all the necessary copyright research, obtain license fee quotes, negotiate the most favorable terms for your agreement, review the agreement and deliver the licenses to you, ready for execution. The costs will be significantly higher than if you were going it alone, but if you have 20 songs to license, as Osborne did for “Dropping Out,” and you can afford to hire someone to do it for you, then by all means, do it.

Otherwise, get ready to start making those phone calls.

DETROIT (AP)–The Detroit Electronic Music Festival drew more than 1 million people in each of its first two years. This year, organizers are emphasizing a wider variety of performers–and wondering why techno, which is hugely popular in Europe, is less well-received in the United States.

The lineup of nearly 70 performers represents a blend of urban music, and includes Parliament Funkadelic’s George Clinton and the Los Angeles-based hip-hop trio Dilated Peoples. The three-day festival starts Saturday.
“What we’re seeing now is a combination between hip-hop music and electronic music, and I think the Detroit festival is capitalizing on that,'’ said M. Tye Comer, the editor of Mixer Magazine in New York, which focuses on DJ culture.

“The roots of the music–the funk and the soul–the roots are all the same. … It’s expanding to become a celebration of urban music as a whole.'’

Mike Grant, who sits on the festival’s seven-member artistic board, said, “I think that diversity is what keeps the festival fresh. No one likes to eat the same food everyday.'’

Detroit DJs Kevin Saunderson, Derrick May and Carl Craig are often credited with inventing the techno sound while spinning in Detroit clubs in the early 1980s. The sound really took off in Europe, however.

When the Detroit techno group Inner City became popular in the early 1980s, for instance, most people assumed they were British, said Dan Sicko, 33, the author of “Techno Rebels,'’ a book about the musical movement that led to the festival.

“The festival is like a reunion for the artists and the city that spawned it,'’ Sicko said.

“The American media to some degree loves to focus on music that comes from abroad … and I think for at least a decade Detroit was overlooked that way.'’

Saunderson, May and Craig were instrumental in getting the festival off the ground, but they won’t be performing this year because of a dispute with the organizers. Fans can still catch them performing at various parties after the festival wraps up each night.

“The nightlife will be bright,'’ Saunderson said. “It’s not often you get all the Detroit talent together.'’

Sicko said this year’s festival is aimed at closing the gap between techno’s original, black, Detroit audience and the white kids who picked up on it later.

Comer said George Clinton “expands the scope'’ of the event, which he called “one of the most important dance festivals America sees every year.'’

The festival bills itself as the world’s largest free music festival. “It draws ravers from all across the country,'’ Comer said. “It brings out families. It’s more than a party.'’

For performers such as Dilated Peoples’ DJ Babu, “This might be our biggest crowd ever.'’
___

On the Net:
http://www.electronicmusicfest.com
http://www.technotourist.org

LONDON–Technology buffs have cracked music publishing giant Sony Music’s elaborate disc copy-protection technology with a decidedly low-tech method: scribbling around the rim of a disk with a felt-tip marker.

Internet newsgroups have been circulating news of the discovery for the past week, and in typical newsgroup style, users have pilloried Sony for deploying “hi-tech” copy protection that can be defeated by paying a visit to a stationery store.
“I wonder what type of copy protection will come next?” one posting on alt.music.prince read. “Maybe they’ll ban markers.”

Sony did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

Major music labels, including Sony and Universal Music, have begun selling the “copy-proof” discs as a means of tackling the rampant spread of music piracy, which they claim is eating into sales.

The new technology aims to prevent consumers from copying, or “burning,” music onto recordable CDs or onto their computer hard drives, which can then be shared with other users over file-sharing Internet services such as Kazaa or Morpheus MusicCity.

Sony aggressive anti-piracy push
Monday, Reuters obtained an ordinary copy of Celine Dion’s newest release “A New Day Has Come,” which comes embedded with Sony’s “Key2Audio” technology.

After an initial attempt to play the disc on a PC resulted in failure, the edge of the shiny side of the disc was blackened out with a felt tip marker. The second attempt with the marked-up CD played and copied to the hard drive without a hitch.

Internet postings claim that tape or even a sticky note can also be used to cover the security track, typically located on the outer rim of the disc. And there are suggestions that copy protection schemes used by other music labels can also be circumvented in a similar way.

Sony’s proprietary technology, deployed on many recent releases, works by adding a track to the copy-protected disc that contains bogus data.

Because computer hard drives are programmed to read data files first, the computer will continuously try to play the bogus track first. It never gets to play the music tracks located elsewhere on the compact disc.

The effect is that the copy-protected disc will play on standard CD players but not on computer CD-ROM drives, some portable devices and even some car stereo systems.

Some Apple Macintosh users have reported that playing the disc in the computer’s CD drive causes the computer to crash. The cover of the copy-protected discs contain a warning that the album will not play on Macintoshes or other personal computers.

Apple has since posted a warning on its Web site at: http://kbase.info.apple.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/kbase.woa/wa/query?searchMode-Assisted&type-id&val-KC.106882.

Sony Music Europe has taken the most aggressive anti-piracy stance in the business. Since last fall, the label has shipped more than 11 million copy-protected discs in Europe, with the largest proportion going to Germany, a market label executives claim is rife with illegal CD-burning.

Now that we have updated the Forum (click on PostBoard) you can now fully search all of the posts. We are still however synchronizing the 2 separate user databases.

@go there: FORUM

May 23, 2002 (New York, NY) – Land And Water LLC, a comprehensive entertainment company based in New York City, announced today that it would be launching an independent record label, called Land And Water Records. According to Robert E. Villanueva, Vice President of Business Development at Land And Water LLC, “the label has been created to pursue a vision where barriers to entry are removed and replaced with a universal common ground for the expression of creativity and imagination.”

Land And Water LLC www.landandwaterllc.com will be launching Land And Water Records www.landandwaterrecords.com on May 31, 2002. Private investors back the independent record label, often referred to by the “L.A.W” acronym. The company will be based in Washington Heights, New York City.L.A.W Records will be focused foremost on the Rap genre, making Washington Heights a seemingly ideal setting. Washington Heights is the home of many early 1970 graffiti pioneers, most notably “JULIO 204″ and “TAKI 183.” It is land marked by one of the first Hip-Hop clubs in the country, The Audubon Club, and the neighborhood where members of the High Times Crew shocked the media, when arrested for break-dancing in the Subway back in 1980. Hip-Hop pioneers in Washington Heights have contributed immensely to the culture, with its own code of behavior, slang, and esthetic standards.

“Having been raised in this community, a community that’s played such an integral role in the establishment of Hip-Hop mores and traditions, it’s a natural progression for our company to base its operations in Washington Heights,” said Rene Marcano, a Brown University alum, and Vice President of Land And Water Records.

The first release from Land And Water Records will be a Single by the “other-ground” group ‘Krimzon’ (Anebawk and Modtrikz). The Single will include two electrifying and emotionally charged recordings, “Live Wire” and “Every Ghetto Got.” L.A.W Records will release the 12″ Single, with guest vocals and production by Al-Shid of Bigger Picture Productions, on June 11, 2002. Other singles will follow shortly thereafter. The Krimzon Album, “Le Sacrifice” (Creole translation of The Sacrifice) is set to drop Fall 2002.

Land And Water Records will embrace the Internet as its primary communication media. The website will add visual life to the labels name, provide its fans with unparalleled access to and interaction with the label�s ground, and in essence, manifest its liberation for users of this digital community.

About Land And Water LLC - Land And Water LLC is a New York based, comprehensive entertainment company. The company holds diversified business operating groups in a variety of vertical market segments, including audio and video production; digital graphic arts; entity development; e-business professional services; and interactive, web-enabled marketing. Land And Water LLC leverages the technological capabilities, market reach, content, and overall managerial efficacy of its extended company network to optimize success, exercise industry leadership, and foster growth across the greater economy.

Contact:
T.877.898.7934 F.646.349.3357
info@landandwaterrecords.com
thelabel@landandwaterllc.com

###

Since PostBoard offers no searching feature and countless other Forum features, we will be switching to a new and improved Forum in the next week. Watch for it…

Your Friendly Neigborhood Admin.

Please feel free to COMMENT.

KaZaa, already used by millions of people worldwide to swap free music and movies, this week will begin sprouting a parallel network designed to be a legal, money-producing answer to piracy.

The new Altnet, the creation of a Woodland Hills (Los Angeles County) online advertising firm called Brilliant Digital, will be bundled with the latest updates of KaZaa, creating a separate network that shares files and the computer power of its members.
The idea is to use the power of millions of people using peer-to-peer file sharing networks popularized by Napster in a way that satisfies businesses that own the rights to content like music and movies, said Brilliant Digital President Kevin Bermeister in an interview last week.

Although analysts familiar with Altnet’s plans are highly skeptical, Bermeister said Altnet “is the one and only model that really could sustain the content distribution business.”

KaZaa, which is being sued by the major motion picture and music companies for copyright infringement, is regarded as the successor to Napster. More than 65 million copies of KaZaa have been downloaded, according to Sharman Networks,

the Australian firm that markets KaZaa.

KaZaa users can search for music or movie files through the vast network of other members, then download the files they want.

Through a licensing agreement with Sharman Networks, Altnet would create a second peer-to-peer network that would tap into the same searches from KaZaa members. But through Altnet, KaZaa users would get the choice of downloading files that were authorized for distribution or sale.

The technology includes a feature called TopSearch, which lets content owners promote their material by paying to have their files listed first on KaZaa searches.

Bermeister believes the majority of KaZaa users would rather pay for legal, authorized content than not compensate artists for their work.

A second component of Altnet, allowing content owners to store files like video commercials on Altnet members’ computers, will start to appear in July. Altnet users who allow their hard drives to be used for storage will be compensated with rewards points redeemable for some future purchase.

The Altnet concept originally raised alarm bells because KaZaa users feared the Brilliant Digital software would take over their computers against their will.

But Brilliant Digital decided to change how it would distribute Altnet, offering it as a separate program to the KaZaa upgrade that will be available this week, Bermeister said. And KaZaa users will have the chance to reject the Altnet program, he said.

However, Altnet won’t have much to offer initially – only a few demonstration video games supplied by Infogrames Entertainment and an EMI Group artist.

Susan Kevorkian, a research analyst with IDC, said Brilliant Digital will have an “uphill battle” convincing major record labels and studios to offer their wares on a network that distributes the same products without their authorization.

The idea would have been “more viable” before Napster, she said. “But content providers, both film companies and music companies, have become more adamant about controlling the way they distribute content.”

P.J. McNealy, research director for GartnerG2, was also skeptical.

“Everybody’s trying to capitalize on the Napster crowd, but the fact that they base their prospects on customers trading free intellectual property does not bode well,” he said.

Brilliant Digital, which is publicly traded, reported a net loss of $1.31 million (7 cents per share) for the first quarter ended March 31, compared with a net loss of $2.13 million a year earlier.

Brilliant Digital shares closed Friday at 68 cents per share, up 21 cents.

SISTER is a place for female DJs to get gigs without bias, providing a supportive, friendly platform for any female DJ, MC or live performer to enjoy their music where gender is not an issue… a place where women are neither fighting to be heard nor imported merely to fulfill a gimmick quotient. We’re not raging feminists - we just think it’s better to be viewed as a DJ first, and then as a woman, when you’re behind the decks.

SISTER was formed in October of 1997 as both the independent idea of several women, and the continuation of an itinerant women’s collective that ran from 1993 to 1995 called Your Sisters’ House. While DJs were definitely a focus of YSH, social activism, inspiration and the celebration of woman as powerful creative beings were equally important - part of their belief was that all aspects of throwing an event could be managed by women. This is just one of the ethics SISTER SF also holds true. Liz Roberts, the Baroness, DRC, Polywog, Shana Kleyman, Susan 28 and Dani were among the people actively involved in YSH.

@see http://www.sistersf.com/

Come join us for the CD release party of Doc Martin’s new mix CD “Sounds You Can Feel” on Classic Music @ Wax (Location next page).

Date: May 17th 2002 Friday

Location:
Wax Records 7201 Melrose Avenue Suite A
Los Angeles, CA USA 90046
Ph: 323.932.6211 Fax: 323.932.0205
wax@waxrecords.com

@see http://waxrecords.com

We are revamping the Directory section of muziqnet using Velocity and Ant. If you have recently submitted your site, look for a new Directory build in the next week.

First, and most important let me remind everybody, make backups before you try any adjustments to your os, or registry, ie, please create restore points or registry backups before you try each one of these ideas!

MY PERSONAL ORDER, FOR TURBO CHARGING MY OS, AFTER REFORMAT
1) A restart button on your desktop:

1. Create a shortcut (Right-click on desktop, select New > Shortcut). 2. For location, type the following:

shutdown -r -t 0

3. Click Next, enter a name for the shortcut ("Restart” is appropriate), and click Finish

2) Since I use the system restore as my registry backup, and I backup often, I put the system restore shortcut on my desktop also, the target is %SystemRoot%System32restorerstrui.exe

3) I love device manager on my desktop, target %windir%system32mmc.exe c:windowssystem32devmgmt.msc
I’m also in the registry a lot, so that’s on the desktop too, target C:WINDOWSregedit.exe

4) I turn off all the startup programs possible, in msconfig.

5) I turn off all the services possible; go from administrative tools, to services, turn to manual or disable whatever you can, go to http://www.blkviper.com for ideas on what you can safely turn off.

6) I increase the icon cache, On XP the Max Cached Icons is set too low,
to changed this got to regedit,HKEY_LOCAL_
MACHINE-Software-Microsoft-Windows-currentversion-Explorer

in the right window, double click max cached icons, type the value 8192.
If you don’t have this, open up your registry and make your way here:-
HKEY_LOCAL_
MACHINE/Software/Microsoft/Windows/currentversion/Explorer
in the right side, right-click a blank area and choose “New” “String Value” and call it
Max Cached Icons
Double-click this new Key and type the value
8192
into the box
P.S.
If you want to try the DWORD version, follow the above but instead of making a new String Value, you should make a “New” “DWORD Value” and call it
MaxCachedIcons
and give it a Value of
2000 in Hexadecimal, or
8192 in Decimal.
then reboot you should see a big speed boost icon load, and opening folders.

7)I can’t stand logging in, I do it automatically,
Enabling/Disabling Automatic Logon
1. Click Start on the Windows taskbar, and then click Run.
2. In the Open box, type “control userpasswords2″ (without quotes),
and then click OK.
3. In the dialog box that appears,
You’ll see: “Users must enter a user name and password to use
this computer” check box.
Enabled will require users to logon, disabling will make XP
automatically logon to the Administrator account.

8) Xp does not manage the page file very well, to set it correctly, I follow allans advice,
To get to the Paging File Settings: Control Panel / System / Advanced Tab / Performance (Settings button) / Advanced Tab / Change Button

If you have more than one hard drive, put it on the fastest one. If you have only one hard drive with multiple partitions, put it on the largest partition.

XP sets a page file on each partition by default, you only need one. Follow the above instructions on where to put it, then disable the others.

The size of the Paging File should be approximately 1.5x (one and one-half times) your installed ram. That is, if you have 512 meg of ram, then the page file should be approximately 768 meg.

This “static” setting will minimize fragmentation of the page file.

9) I eradicate the messenger, the easiest method; Click Start / Run, and paste
RunDll32 advpack.dll,LaunchINFSection %windir%INFmsmsgs.inf,BLC.Remove

Press ENTER
Restart Windows

10) Of course, I disable balloon tips; from regedit;
HKEY_CURRENT_USERSoftwareMicrosoftWindowsCurrentVersionExplorerAdvanced
then set the value of ‘EnableBalloonTips’ to 0.

Or if you have TweakUI, disable tips is in tat program

FEEL FREE TO POST YOUR OWN TURBOCHARGE IDEAS, I WANT TO TRY EVERY TWEAK I CANGET MY HANDS ON

1. Swirl Peepz - Tandoori Chicken - Amenti Music
2. Fries & Bridges - 7AM (Vocal) - Vista
3. Bobby Konders - Nervous Acid (Jay-J rmx) - Downtown161
4. John Ciafone - Everyday - Boombastic
5. Souldoubt - Music (Johnny Fiasco Mix) - Freaked #7
6. Oh Dee - Feel Alright EP - Aroma
7. Jay-J & Chris Lum - Jungle - Vista
8. John Julius Knight - Find A Friend - Soulfuric Trax
9. David Duriez - A1 - Freaked Records #8
10. De Sardi + Cameron - Let’s Do Lunch - Lowndown08
11. CPEN - Follow the Shine - Aesoteric
12. Yann Fontaine - My Love (Lance De Sardi rmx) - Amenti02
13. Chorduroy Music - ?B2 - Ultrasound Recordings
14. Julius Papp - Move Your Body - Large Music
15. Brett Johnson - Stopmakingsense - Hi Phen

Eminem could become the latest high profile artist to have his album protected against copyright infringement.

The controversial rapper and his Universal label are in talks to release the forthcoming The Eminem Show with technology that would prevent widespread copying.

The record label is also being extremely cautious about where promotional copies of the album’s first single, Without Me, are going, fearing leaks on to the internet will affect sales.

If Universal go ahead with the plan, it would mark the company’s biggest attempt to protect its artists from piracy.

There has been a strong push from the major labels towards copy-proof material but until now it has tended to be on a limited basis.

Sales slump
Albums from Celine Dion, *N Sync and Natalie Imbruglia have all had technology added to prevent them being copied.

The widespread leak on to the internet of the Oasis comeback album Heathen Chemistry will further add fuel to the industry’s concerns about piracy.

Eminem’s third album is due for release on 3 June, so any decision on copyright protection will need to be taken swiftly.

Piracy has recently been blamed for a 5% drop in the world’s music sales.

The music industry took quick action to try and halt the illegal downloading of music from the internet which can easily be copied on to CDs.

Consumer complaints
Sites such as Napster were shut down by legal wrangles because unlicensed music was being swapped on its service.

But some consumers have complained that albums with anti-piracy equipment attached have hindered their ability to play them on their computers or in-car stereos.

Because it has not been used on such an eagerly awaited album before, it has been difficult to gauge reaction.

“Clearly, we will have a better sense of how the market feels about copy-protection when a release of Eminem’s stature, should we decide to do it, comes with copy-protection on it,” said Universal Music spokesman Adam White.

“Mass-copying has gotten to such a level that we had better take a stand to protect the artists,” he added.

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What is KaZaA?
KaZaA is a distributed, self-organizing network and one of Europe’s most promising p2p services. KaZaA aims at solving problems other programs generate like slow search results, failed downloads and limited search results. KaZaA is similar to gnutella by offering all media types to be shared, including web based searching capabilities. Revolutionary in ways, KaZaA has solved three major flaws that bewilder most p2p utilities. In terms of business model and legality: KaZaA is currently in discussions with European collecting rights organizations. They intend to launch a subscription model where their users can pay a subscription fee and the bulk of this fee will be passed on to the collecting rights organizations who in turn will redistribute this to the artists.

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8:10 a.m. May 7, 2002 PDT
WASHINGTON – A Microsoft official acknowledged Tuesday that the company uses a new feature in its Internet Explorer Web browser to play digital music files even if the user has already chosen a different music player.

The newest version of Internet Explorer has the ability to play music files within the browser, though it uses Microsoft’s Windows Media Player technology to do so. Rival media companies such as RealNetworks have complained that Microsoft frequently overrides user preferences. Under questioning from John Schmidtlein, a lawyer for nine states suing the company for antitrust violations, Microsoft executive Linda Averett said Microsoft could use RealNetworks software to play music in Internet Explorer, but chooses not to.

“The reason it is not replaceable is that Microsoft does not allow it to be replaceable, correct?” Schmidtlein asked.

“Correct, it is an integrated feature,” Averett testified.

RealNetworks also complained that the search feature in Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system fails to find RealNetworks files.

“It was clearly a mistake by the search team,” Averett explained. She said the problem was fixed two weeks ago – over a month after the states’ top lawyer, Brendan Sullivan, showed the search problem during opening arguments as evidence of Microsoft’s wrongdoing.

Nine states have asked a court to force Microsoft to release a modular version of its Windows operating system in which some features, such as the Web browser and media player, could be removed and replaced with competitors’ products.

The original judge in the antitrust case, Thomas Penfield Jackson, ordered Microsoft to be broken into two companies after concluding that it illegally stifled competitors. An appeals court upheld many of the violations, but reversed the breakup order and appointed U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly to determine a new punishment.

The states released a June 2000 Microsoft e-mail that showed a plan for Microsoft’s media player to play music files in proprietary formats by rivals RealNetworks and Apple.

“Remember the ‘embrace and extend’ campaigns we’ve used in the past,” Microsoft employee Frasier Mocke wrote to colleagues, “and personally I want us to rule the airwaves.”

Another Microsoft executive, Dave Foster, cut the discussion short: “No more replies,” he wrote. “We need to keep all of this off the airwaves.”

Averett said she personally disagreed with the tactic because she respects the rights of software developers to control how their formats are used.

States that rejected the government’s settlement with Microsoft last fall and are pressing for tougher penalties are Iowa, Utah, Massachusetts, Connecticut, California, Kansas, Florida, Minnesota and West Virginia, along with the District of Columbia.

Hundreds of millions of songs may illegally trade hands online every month, but file swapping may actually be causing people to spend more money on music, according to a new research report.

A study released this week by Jupiter Research reports that about 34 percent of veteran file swappers say they are spending more on music than they did before they started downloading files. About 14 percent of heavy file traders say they now spend less on music.
The findings, which are drawn from a survey of 3,319 people conducted last summer, are contrasted with claims from the record industry that file sharing and CD burning have been key contributors to a drop in major-label music sales in 2001.

“It is safe to say that active usage of online music content is one of the best predictors of increased consumer purchasing,” lead author Aram Sinnreich wrote in the report. “Music sellers should devote their limited resources to online marketing and distribution–rather than eradicating the phantom threat of file sharing–if they truly wish to stanch the blood flow and turn the music market around.”

The report comes at a moment when file sharing has reestablished itself as a hugely popular mainstream phenomenon, despite Napster’s disappearance. Software such as Kazaa, MusicCity’s Morpheus and Audiogalaxy continue to attract millions of downloads a week.

According to Jupiter’s report, about 19 percent of average online music fans say they buy more music than they did before going online. About 34 percent of “experienced file sharers,” or those who have used file-trading networks for more than six months, say they now buy more music. About 36 percent of people who are veteran file traders and have CD burners said they have increased spending.

Among those who own recordable CD drives and subscribe to high-speed Internet access–but don’t swap files–the report found that about the same number of people reported increasing and decreasing spending on music. Jupiter concluded that each of these technologies has little net affect on record sales.

The Jupiter study did note that the average drop in an individual’s music spending was larger than the average increase in spending. That effect could explain the overall drop in record sales, the authors noted.

Critics of this type of study, including some in the record industry, have speculated that people don’t always tell the truth to researchers on controversial issues such as this.

Figures released by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) last month reported what appeared to be a different effect. The global industry trade group said that 35 percent of people who download more than 20 songs a month say they buy less music as a result.

The figures from both sides of the debate have been key bits of evidence as policy-makers try to decide how to address the issue of digital piracy. A closely watched bill in Washington, D.C., would ultimately require all consumer-electronics manufacturers and computer companies to include technology that blocks piracy.

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