The Silverdale by the Bay Resort Hotel in Silverdale, WA, will be the site of the second annual Vacuum State of the Art Conference, scheduled for August 21-24. The conference will feature new and vintage equipment, tube electronics seminars, a used-gear swap meet, and demonstrations of audio creations by both amateur and professional designers.

<B>DAVE ALVIN: <I>Blackjack David</I></B><BR> Hightone HCD 8091 (CD). 1998. Greg Leisz, prod.; Paul duGre, Dave Ahlert, engs. ADD? TT: 50:24<BR> Performance <B>****?</B><BR> Sonics <B>****</B>

Frequently a hot topic in the hallowed pages of <I>Stereophile</I>, DVD-Audio will be among the agenda items at the third US DVD Conference on October 1-2, 1998, in San Francisco. Presented by the <A HREF="http://www.dvdforum.org/">DVD Forum</A>, the international association working to develop universal DVD formats, the event will take place at the Grand Peninsula Ballroom at the Hyatt Regency SF Airport.

New companies are springing up all around the web to provide songs for custom CD compilations. (See previous articles <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10185/">1</A&gt;, <A HREF="http://www.stereophile.com/news/10157/">2</A&gt;.) You go to the site, choose up to 70 minutes of music from their catalog, and the finished disc is mailed back to you in a couple of days for between 10 and 20 bucks. The challenge for these companies is to have an attractive catalog of artists and songs to choose from.

In the children's fable, Chicken Little, the archetypal alarmist, induced fear and panic in his community by running amok and shouting, "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" The hysterical fowl has many relatives among journalists and economists, who regularly issue dire warnings about the forthcoming Year 2000 problem.

The intentional deafening of monkeys by researchers at the <A HREF="http://www.ucsf.edu/">University of California, San Francisco</A> has provoked a strongly worded protest by Paul McCartney. In a letter dated July 6, McCartney complained to UCSF Chancellor Michael Bishop that "there can be no excuse for inflicting such misery" on animals used in such experiments. The letter was the latest salvo fired in a controversy going back to early February.

He's got his own bonds on Wall Street, houses all over the world, a fashion-model wife, and more wealth than any other rock star to date. But what he really wanted was his own Internet Service Provider. As a result, David Bowie goes online September 1 with the first rock-star-based ISP: <A HREF="http://www.davidbowie.com">BowieNet</A&gt;.

As digital distribution grows, the protection of copyrighted material---music, film, video, photographic images, paintings, drawings, and text---becomes ever more important. Tied to this are widespread concerns about maintaining security during online transactions---keeping credit-card numbers and customers' identities hidden from would-be thieves.

The process becomes the product: in an announcement tinged with shades of <A HREF="http://www.spinaltap.com/"><I>This Is Spinal Tap</I></A>, the band LIVE says it will be recording its next album under the scrutiny of a live internet camera. The webcast, which began July 17, is available on LIVE's <A HREF="http://www.friendsoflive.com">website</A&gt; 24 hours a day, offering fans and the simply curious an "unblinking" glimpse of the creation of their new album, from "start to finish."