Last week I achieved my goal of becoming DRM-free before the end of the year. I have purged all the DRM tracks from my music library and replaced what I could—thanks to the Amazon MP3 […]
Category: Society
My Math Team Memory
One of my best friends (there were only two) from my senior year of high school tracked me down over the weekend. I had wondered about her for years. She’s back in Maine, although she […]
Nerd Test 2.0
This afternoon, I took the revised nerd test. I scored a “0” on the original test, which indicated that I am not a nerd. I always thought that maybe the test was too limited to […]
In My Dreams, 33.8 Hours
New Labor Department jobs report is out. Average work week is 33.8 hours. Geez, I easily work twice that some weeks, and never fewer than 50. What a life to work only 34—or even 40 […]
Nerd’s the Word
On Friday, another journalist and I chatted about the geek speak from Microsoft’s financial analyst conference, the previous day. He remarked how during their speeches, Microsoft executives “spoke a different language”—that the way they spoke was really tough to follow. But during hallway breaks and over lunch they spoke more like “normal” people.
What Will Be the Returns?
Today’s New York Times column “An iPhone Changed My Life (Briefly)” hits at the device’s fundamental problem: Hype. There was too much of it—and not really from Apple—that may have over-raised many people’s expectations. The issue Michelle Slatalla raises is one of returns. Will she return her iPhone? She writes, “I have started thinking seriously about returning the $599 phone, despite a 10 percent restocking fee. It hasn’t really changed my life in the ways I’d hoped”.
But she may have started with overly unrealistic expectations, which the runaway hype helped foster. The name includes “phone” for a reason. Apple didn’t promise a device that would cure cancer or feed the starving.
Kiss My DRM
I have been laughing at Universal Music’s refusal to sign another long-term contract with Apple. Universal demonstrates the same thick-as-a-brick mentally that has made music labels perhaps the most loathed organizations on the planet. It’s one hell of a contradiction: The folks selling beloved music are hated by their tune-loving customers.
The iPhone Moment
Maybe the iPhone phenomenon is about purpose or community, making people feel like they can participate in something important or unusual.
My wife put forth that theory this morning as we discussed my experiences covering the iPhone launch at Montgomery Mall in Bethesda, Md. No question, the people I talked to in line yesterday had a sense of being caught up in a historical moment.
iTunes Music Madness
On May 29, Apple opened up iTunes Plus as a subset of its broader music store, offering DRM-free songs and albums encoded at 256kbps. Apple also offers to upgrade lower-bit-rate, DRM songs for 30 cents a piece. It’s a good deal. But the licensing is downright confusing. While browsing iTunes Plus, yesterday, I saw “Pat Benatar’s Greatest Hits” available DRM-free. I thought, “Huh? I’ve got other Pat Benatar music, and I don’t remember getting an offer DRM-free replacements”. I upgraded 25 other songs from other artists.
Sure enough, my iTunes library contains three Pat Benatar songs, from three different albums. My version of “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” from album “Pat Benatar: Best Shots” is available DRM-free from iTunes Plus. But Apple offered me no 30-cent replacement option. Is it a glitch? I don’t think so. The song in my library lists publisher as Chrysalis, while the DRM-free version is Capitol Records.
Tragic Mall Sighting
The toy is dead.
Do You Like Pie?
The best definition I have seen for describing U.S. conservatives and liberals came from a sociology book, which used analogy of a pie and who gets it.
The liberal philosophy is equal share, that everyone should get the same slice of the pie. By contrast, the conservative philosophy is equal access, that everyone should get equal chance at the pie but not necessarily equal piece.
Michigan’s Jail-Time-In-No-Time Wi-Fi
Sometimes I worry that in a decade, China will have more freedoms than the United States. Case in point: The lunacy of raising felony charges against a guy for using a coffee shop’s open Wi-Fi connection […]