I applaud Trent Reznor's efforts on this. It's really refreshing to read about an artist and business person who is earnestly working on solving the problems and exploiting the possibilities that artists deal with in these times.

The commenter who wrote about buying the cow is completely missing the point. The reality is that nowadays, with P2P, the milk is already free. Restricting access, offering lower-quality downloads, etc, are not solutions when the smart consumer can always turn to the P2P networks (which don't seem to be going anywhere) and get high quality versions of whatever they want.

Most of the discussion in this issue seems to be just fighting about whether downloading is the best thing since sliced bread or whether people who engage in downloading are thieves and parasites who deserve to rot in hell. Neither of these attitudes are productive, and neither will solve the problem. I think the future of the music and entertainment business will belong to those who figure out how to make money with free content.

Of course, touring, merchandising, and licensing are all still good sources of revenue, and all are helped by an artist being widely heard. Various types of sponsorship and patronage and pre-ordering (for example, the album doesn't come out until some threshold is reached) are also interesting possibilities. I definitely hope that people like Trent Reznor and Radiohead continue to explore the possibilities.

Once upon a time it would have been a dream come true to be able to distribute music to millions with zero overhead. Certainly somebody has the brains to put the resources of P2P to work for them.

The most interesting thing about this article was Susan Jacoby's claim of surprise and disappointment that she should find herself preaching to the choir on her tours. She should certainly be prepared to find more of the same with a book entitled "The Age of American Unreason." Who but the choir would even think to crack it open?

As a previous poster said, it looks to me like just one more in a long string of lamentations about how everybody these days is a bunch of idiots. Couldn't say I don't agree, but it seems odd that writers in this tired polemic genre don't seem to have much of a sense of history. Which era of American history was the age of reason? 1940-1945? 1860-1865? Have we really fallen so far since the golden days of the Salem Witch Trials? Are there fewer bestselling books promoting atheism now than there were 20 years ago?

Could it be that Susan Jacoby just finds iPods annoying?

It seems obvious to me that being rejected for obvious and blatantly discriminatory reasons would be less damaging to a person's self-esteem than being rejected for less clear reasons that may have to do with actual performance. Generally, we try to rationalize our failures, and being told outright that the rejection was due to discrimination would help that a lot. I would expect similar results for any form of discrimination or reverse discrimination. If white men in an experiment were told "sorry, but you're being rejected due to affirmative action" I would expect to see very similar results. The white men would feel justified and not be as inclined to doubt their own abilities.

But it's not clear what the difference is here between "subtle" discrimination and "no" discrimination. This research may well have tried to model subtle sexism, but a woman who is rejected from a job has no way of knowing exactly what factors played a roll in her rejection. It is not clear that she would feel any better or worse if discrimination played no part at all.

So, it seems to me that the real results of this research seem to be that rejection sucks, it hurts, and it causes us to doubt ourselves, all the more if there's no obvious injustice to rail against. The research seems to have very little to say on the subject of sexism, or on problems specific to women.

There's another interesting thing that seems to follow from this research, though. It seems that blatant discrimination itself may actually have an empowering, encouraging aspect to it. If we believe that our failures are because we have been discriminated against, we are less likely to question ourselves our doubt our abilities. The fact of the discrimination itself obviates our own weaknesses and flaws. It would not be surprising then that one might begin to wear one's perceived victimhood as a mark of pride, and seek evidence of it even when it is absent.

Where should one go to find out about the new search engine called "cuil" I wonder?

http://www.cuil.com/search?q=cuil

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=cuil&btnG=Google+Search

Good thing Google does caching, too, because I doubt the actual website's going to be around in six months.

It turns out that all the hoo-ha in Salon about sexism and Hillary Clinton was just so much meaningless cheerleading. Now that the lady's on the other team, it's gloves off with the sexism.

I'm an Obama supporter and I am terrified of a McCain/Palin administration, but this article and picture represent a really astonishing degree of hypocrisy on Salon's part. They will do nothing but support Palin's claims of sexism. And frankly, although I really don't like anything about Palin, Salon's (and HuffPo's) coverage of her has really begun to get me thinking that liberals really have run out of arguments.

I'll be voting and supporting Obama regardless of the crap you publish, but if Obama loses, I'll put part of the blame on the hysterical and offensive response to Palin on the part of the likes of Salon and HuffPo.

Stop making her look better than you, please.