Arriving Somewhere

There has been much hype about iTune’s Billionth download, and many flames regarding Thomas Hawk’s blog entry on the topic, iTunes, One Billion Suckers Served. Kudos to Thomas for writing a brave, if misguided rant. In general I agree with him, but the real culprit here is DRM, not Apple. Check out iTunes iSbogus – they get it right.

Simply put, when buying from iTunes:

• The format is proprietary so you’re stuck using iPod (Apple’s real cash cow). Sure you can burn to cd, then rip to a different format, but why should you have to go to the trouble in the first place?
• The bitrate (quality) is 128kbps? Come on, that might sound okay on the Subway, but on your home stereo?
• The artist receives no more money than they would if you bought a CD.

One guy commented on Thomas Hawk’s blog, “Apple’s products are for people who have more money than sense.”

That’s right, because in the end Steve Jobs is just as evil as Bill Gates.

Technorati tags: iTunes, Apple, DRM

I have been quite frustrated with NBC regarding their coverage of the 2006 Winter Olympics. However, this comes as no suprise since they did a similarly awful job back in 2002… so awful I was inspired to write a rant four years ago. Well, I won’t subject you to another rant so I’ll just let Jakob Nielsen, THE web usability guru, make his point. He’s much kinder than I would be.

Readers outside the U.S. can count themselves lucky not to be subjected to NBC’s coverage of the Winter Olympics. But even NBC is tolerable when watched on a digital video recorder: I set it to start recording every evening at 8 and then I start watching at 9: this gives me an extra hour to analyze eyetracking data and I can use the DVR to skip over commercials
and boring events. It’s easily possible to watch 3 hours of NBC broadcast in 2 hours of viewing.

The entire concept of watching a broadcast at the mercy of the producers’ desire to stretch out the good parts across as much time as possible is getting to be obsolete. The experience from using the Web makes people impatient and forms a desire to control your own experience: to get what you want, when you want it. Non-clickable TV provides a sub-standard user experience for events like the Olympics with multiple components, where different people are interested in different things.

[edit: 2/26] Dave Zurin has a fantastic write up at The Nation, The Olympics We Missed.

Technorati tags: NBC, olympics

16/03/2006 SXSW festival / The End Records showcase, Austin, TX
17/03/2006 The Masquerade, Atlanta, GA
19/03/2006 Jaxx, Springfield, VA
20/03/2006 The Middle East, Boston, MA
21/03/2006 The Knitting Factory, New York, NY
22/03/2006 t.b.a, to be announced [U.S.A./Canada dates]

I will probably be going to the show on the 19th at Jaxx. Also playing with The Gathering will be Todesbonden, Giant Squid and Unexpect. If you plan on going to the show, Laurie Ann Haus, lead singer for Todesbonden, has requested that you purchase your tickets through the band. Scroll down to the concert poster on the band page and there is a link to buy tickets.

If you are unfamiliar with The Gathering, you have to check them out. Their music is considered “Trip-rock” or “Atmospheric rock” and their lead singer Anneke has the most amazing voice in popular music. Their page on MySpace has some samples: http://www.myspace.com/gatheringofficial

While Super Bowl XL wasn’t the worst championship game of all time, it certainly ranks in the bottom ten.

I’m neutral when it comes to the Seattle Seahawks and Pittsburg Steelers – I have no great love or hate for either team. I thought it might be nice for Jerome Bettis to finish his career a Super Bowl champion, but I also thought it would be nice for Seattle to win their first Super Bowl ever. I ended up rooting for Seattle – mostly because they’re from the west coast.

What an incredibly disappointing game. Bad play from both teams and horrible officiating. It was quite obvious who the refs wanted to win. How about the Seattle touchdown that was called back for offensive pass interference? Okay, so maybe Jackson bumped the DB, but that was a totally weak call. Can anyone honestly say that Big Ben actually got the ball across the goal line during his TD dive? There’s no way! How about when it was 14-10 in the fourth, and Seattle’s Stevens made the catch to make it first and goal at the two. Oh wait, that one’s getting called back for holding. Except, the official must have been hallucinating because no one was held. To aid insult to injury, Hasselback’s tackle following his interception was deemed a personal foul.

I’m not saying Pittsburgh didn’t deserve to win. Seattle certainly had many dropped passes, or passes just barely out of bounds to look like a Super Bowl winner. But Pittsburgh sure got a lot of love from the zebras.

There were a few highlights: the beautifully executed trick play in which Antwaan Randle El threw a touchdown pass; the 76-yard interception return by Seattle; the blocking on the 75-yard run by Willie Parker. Hm, I guess that would be about it. Which would make the highlight reel about 10 seconds long.

In the end Bettis got his ring – even if performance left something to be desired. And I suppose you can’t help but be happy for Bill Cowher, the man has coached Pittsburgh for 15 years and finally won the big one.

I guess it would take too much karma to have a great Super Bowl only a month following a one vs two, USC vs Texas national championship game.

Technorati tags: Super Bowl

Wikipedia has banned the IPs of the staffers who have been politically motivated in their editing of Wikipedia articles. They are also considering further punishment of House and Senate IPs… from the discussion on Wikipedia:

This RFC is being opened in order to further a centralized discussion concerning actions to be taken against US Congressional staffers and possibly other federal employees who have engaged in unethical and possibly libelous behavior in violation of Wikipedia policies (WP:NPOV, WP:CIV). The editors from these IP ranges have been rude, abrasive, immature, and show disregard for Wikipedia policy. The editors have frequently tried to censor the history of elected officials, often replacing community articles with censored biographies despite other users’ attempts to dispute these violations. They also violate Wikipedia:Verifiability, by deleting verified reports, while adding flattering things about members of Congress that are unverified.

The offending editors have been blocked. This RFC is needed to gather community comments. It is proposed that a one week block is not enough.

Woo! Go Wikipedia!

The word is out on the streets that Google is developing it’s own version of Linux – and some are holding their breath for a possible release of the operating system to the general public.

This article at the Register [Google at work on desktop Linux] reports:

Google is preparing its own distribution of Linux for the desktop, in a possible bid to take on Microsoft in its core business – desktop software.

A version of the increasingly popular Ubuntu desktop Linux distribution, based on Debian and the Gnome desktop, it is known internally as ‘Goobuntu’.

I am a big fan of Google AND a big fan of Ubuntu (also its sister distro Kubuntu) – but I seriously doubt that Google is willing to invest the effort required to seriously compete in the desktop OS arena. It seems reasonable to assume that Goobuntu is only for the developers who work at Google, as confirmed by a Google employee at Slashdot:

Goobuntu is our internal desktop distribution. It’s awesome, but we’re not going to be releasing it. Unless you work here it wouldn’t work anyway.

My guess is that we won’t be seeing Goobuntu any time soon, if ever. What I am excited about is seeing Google products released for Linux.

Technorati tags: Google, Ubuntu, Goobuntu, Linux