Dry Gulch News

Here you can find out all the Mule's latest news.

5-04-99
JUST IN!       As a result of Geocities unorthodox closing of web sites for unproved allegations, Lycos, Internet search engine giant, said that they were filtering out Geocities sites from their search results. This is bound to put pressure on Geocities to correct their actions.

5-02-99
UNPROVED ALLEGATION SHUTS DOWN WEBSITE
On May 25, 1999 Geocities, a major internet provider, received notice from a person that a site they were hosting was distributing something illegal. Without investigation or contacting the website owner prior to doing this they shut the website down.
      Yes, Deb Ackley's MIDI Haven is shut down again! This time by Geocities. Deb is working to get this straightened out, and hopefully her site will be back on line soon. Also closed down was Laura's MIDI Heaven.

4-25-99
Andy Bakke's first publicly released CD for sale...A.K.A. Accordion Man
      As usual, I'm late with this. Our friend Andy Bakke has a new CD out. It is available from http://www.mp3.com/AccordionMan. The price is only $5.99 for the CD, Which includes audio tracks

PLUS MP3 Files! If you have the Real Player, you can listen to a sample right here. Of course the sound quality of the CD is much better, and it's only $5.99. This man has talent! Buy the CD so he'll make more! Information about Andy, Including his Web Page and E-mail address, is abailable from the Mule's Tribute page found in the Index above.
Jolie Blonde
Valse de Grand Mamou
Allons à Lafayette
Bayou Teche 2 Step
© By Andy Bakke.
4-25-99

Of Local Interest       Again, as a response to a personal request, I have made a page of local interest to the folks of North Alabama. And especially to the relatives and decendents of John and Leila Lusk.

4-12-99
Texas Wild flowers       As a response to a personal request, I have made a page of Texas Wild Flower Images. (See the Index at top of page) What I don't know about flowers would fill a big book, so if anyone can respond with the correct names of these, I'll make the corrections and note your name, email, etc.

3-26-99
Live Update 4.0       Just in! Crescendo has released Crescendo 4.0. AND it has the capability to display the information inside all MIDI files! Plus it has great sound. Both Crescendo Plus and the free version, have this capability. Previously, you had to know some old MS-DOS tricks or have the kind of software that was used to sequence the file. Get it NOW, at Crescendo's Live update. Available for Netscape and Internet Explorer.

3-26-99 From the Headquarters of the International Union of MIDI Lovers       Received from Dean Macy. Dean has been a major voice in the "midifight". He is the author of "the midi conspiracy" article that has been published in numerous Web pages and newspapers.       The vote by elected officials has taken place on the copyright issues and your site "midifight" would probably need a new focus. They voted "yes" on all proposals. Most of them did not understand exactly what the proposals were and since they didn't sound unreasonable they went along with it. This was not a big issue in their books since most of them have very little web contact other than email. The information age has not reached Washington it seems.       As far as the vote went midi files were not named specifically and the proposal to name midi as a form of sound recording never made it to a vote. It was lost somewhere. So midi status is still up in the air and may be for several more years. Fox has withdrawn their midi filing instructions and midi is no longer mentioned on ASCAP, RIAA, BMI, NMPA or any other of the big agencies. One of the smaller international organizations has tentatively placed midi as a published work as to copyright but they don't know what kind of form to use to license a midi file.       My friend congressman asked me to curtail the thousands of emails and letters pouring into their offices since the vote has already taken place. He said that most of the mail has ended up in wastebaskets anyway since most of them did not have the slightest idea what we were protesting. The technical terms were not understood.       It really amazed me of how "dumb" our elected officials are and how easy it is to sway them one way or the other with enough pressure. My friend "the senior congressman" is into computer tech so he is one of the exceptions. The others are a lost cause.       There is still a midi fight but it should be aimed at MMA and sound card companies who are the ones now trying to convince midi as a sound recording. FOX states in their newest release that midi is not a sound recording, so we got to them. SUCCESS on one front.       Meanwhile on another front, Trycho is into extortion and anyone who is being threatened by them should laugh in their face and refuse any offer of settlement. I understand that in all their suits they are calling these same people and offering them a chance to settle out of court for between $3k and $50k provided that the site owner pays them for their costs in hiring investigators and for their court costs and promises two things: 1. That they will never tall anyone about the suit or settlement and 2. That they agree to pay $50k fine each for any Trycho midi file found on their site for the rest of their life.       Believe it or not, a couple have already settled for this. How stupid. Trycho is doing this because he CAN NOT WIN IN COURT! 3-24-99 MIDI HAVEN is back on-line! Welcome back Deb!       In an E-MAIL from Deb Ackley, dated Mar 24, 1999, she explains that after a lawsuit was filed against her on Feb 13, 1999, she did not have time to sort through the 20,000 plus MIDI files at MIDI Haven, so she closed the site in order to take care of this. The suit was brought by Stephen Kern of Trycho Music Intl. There were also uncertanies about HFA, ASCAP and BMI and the status of MIDI files as copy protected media.       She has now re-open MIDI Haven. And I'm sure everyone is very glad to see MIDI Haven back up. I understand files are restricted to ones which have passed a certain criteria check. Welcome back Deb, we love you! Deb Ackley MIDI Haven http://midihaven.com/midi.html 2-24-99 Why all MIDI files were pulled from the Mule site Sometimes things just happen       I guess I just got spooked. A left over from the first days of putting up the site was some old versions of the Index. I had renamed them instead of deleting, and had, frankly, forgotten about them. But two contained code to activate a JAVA Applet to e-mail me info when the page was hit. There were NO links to these pages. No one knew they were there, except me.       Then on Feb. 16, I got four e-mails from the Applet and on Feb 17, two more. Thats three hits each page over two days. It hasn't happened again. I inquired about this from the server administrator, and was told, "No we haven't messed with anything". I asked the major search engines if it could have been one of their robots. All who replied, said they ONLY followed links to explore a site. There were no links.       So, it looked as if some was snooping my site with software that didn't come from Best Buy. Now my site was realitively small and unnoticed, so I didn't much think I was in any trouble. I drive a 1967 Ford Pickup and already have one foot in the grave anyway. What could they do to me? But I became afraid one of my friends who had given me permission to use their sequences might be getting into trouble over the copyright issues. My friends were the most valued possession I had other than my family. I had no idea how it could be done, but I became afraid someone would get into trouble because I had posted their sequences on the net. So I decided to pull them all until things cleared up. After receiving the notice from the MIDI Lovers Union, (above), I decided to re-post them. I still have a file on the server that isn't linked and has the code for the JAVA spy, just in case this happens again. I also change the name of the file ever now and then. <--Ed--> CodeMaster Proud Memeber Send e-mail to codemaster@htcomp.net Copyright © 1999 wwCodeWorks. Produced with Webford 2.01.