I agree with everything he wrote

That doesn’t change my conclusion that I won’t buy any more content from the iTunes Store until I can play it on my Sonos and TiVo systems. I don’t care if the source of the issue is Apple or the record companies, I only care that I can’t play it on devices I own and enjoy using.

If Steve is serious about offering non-DRM-wrapped content on the iTunes Store, there should be non-DRM-wrapped content on the iTunes Store

There are non-big four labels ready to do away with DRM yesterday, including those behind artists like Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies, and Avril Lavigne. Steve’s letter is currently undermined by the lack of any unprotected content on the iTunes Store. If he’s serious, that should change. That would put additional pressure on the big four labels to think about dropping DRM, as well as reduce pressure from the groups that are currently after Apple to open up FairPlay, redirecting it at the same big four. That seems like such a big win for Apple, I expect it to be their next move in this particular game.

The “big four” have to change something

The heart of Steve’s argument goes basically like this: (a) All DRM systems rely on secrets. (b) Once the secrets are known, it is possible, common, inevitable that the DRM will be broken, worldwide. ( c) If the DRM is broken, Apple is required by contract to rapidly fix it, or lose the ability to sell the majority of the music in the iTunes Store. (d) Licensing FairPlay means more people have the FairPlay secrets, which increases the risk of the secrets escaping. (e) The increase in risk is not acceptable, which is why Apple won’t license FairPlay.

That’s a pretty strong argument. It’s hard to suggest that Apple should significantly increase their business risk to assist their competitors, by licensing Apple technology to let those competitors improve their products. Yeah, it would be good for customers too, but the current situation, as Steve points out, only causes problems for 3% of people’s content. It’s a trade-off, and it’s reasonable for Apple to come down on the side of Apple.

The big four record companies are already suggesting that Apple is wrong and should work to license FairPlay. Fine. All they need to do is take ( c) above out of the equation. That’s something totally under their control, and if they are serious about wanting to see interoperability, instead of dropping DRM entirely as Steve suggests, then they need to put their lawyers were their mouthpieces are.

As Roman Strauss said in Dead Again, I think this is all very far from over.

In any event, your best bet for getting actual news of what’s going on in America will be from NPR or the international edition of the “BBC”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/.

Like the Matrix films, V certainly is the kind of movie that benefits from the extra detail on the IMAX screen. I highly recommend seeing it, even if you don’t have an IMAX theater in your area. But if you do, spend the extra money and see it on the huge screen.

Video Shows Bush Warned before Katrina Hit
The Associated Press, March 1 2006

No wonder the administration doesn’t want to “play the blame game.”:http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/2005/09/meet_the_fucker.html

Audible.com’s features provide support for receiving paid content using the same process for subscribing to the free podcasts which have recently become very popular. Although his article uses the very nice iPodder application to demonstrate the features, there’s no reason why you can’t use the built-in podcasting features of iTunes 4.9, and skip the extra application.

Here are instructions and a couple of screenshots, which you can splice into Phillip’s article where he’s working with iPodder.

Subscribing to Audible.com Podcasts in iTunes

Note: These instructions require iTunes 4.9 or later, available as a free download from Apple.com. These instructions may be used with both the OS X and Windows versions of iTunes.

1. Visit Audible.com, log in, and go to the My Audible Podcasts page (irritatingly non-linkable, currently in the Gifts & Tips box on the left side of Audible.com pages).
   
2. Copy the personalized Audible.com podcasts URL provided there. (These first two steps are exactly as documented by Phillip.)
3. Switch to iTunes, and choose Subscribe to Podcast… from the Advanced menu.
   
4. Paste in your Audible.com podcasts URL, and click OK.
   

You can now view and manage your Audible.com podcasts in the iTunes podcasts window, just as you would any other podcast:

Note: I don’t have any periodic subscriptions at this time, so there’s not much to see in my Podcasts list. I currently use Audible.com exclusively for audiobooks…

Global Frequency ringtone (MP3, 12 kbytes)

Note: You may need to Right-Click on the link and choose Save As… to get it to download, instead of playing in your browser.

Another Note: I cannot help you install this on your phone, so hopefully you can figure that out on your own.

1. Search Livetorrents.com for the Global Frequency pilot TV episode. (When you find it, it might look something like this.) Download the torrent, and watch the show.
2. Read some comments of the show’s writer/producer. You can read the front page of his weblog or just some of the most relevant posts:
   1. GF wow
   2. It’s a ‘Global’ Frequency Now…
   3. One Last GF Question…
3. Await further instructions on this and other channels.

   ---

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If a month goes by and Pascal Rigo doesn’t buy something or open a new cafe, I feel like I’m missing something. Well, he’s back at it. Eight months after opening Rigolo, he has bought Movida Lounge at 200 Fillmore St. (at Waller Street) in San Francisco, and will turn it into Le Cafe di Soleil.

Monsieur Rigo is the restaurateur behind our favorite bakeries, Boulangerie Bay Bread and Boulange De Cole Valley, among other establishments. The croissants made at his bakeries are better than most I had in Paris, and their walnut baguette is a staple at our parties, because it goes so perfectly with cheese.

I’m not kidding about tearing up when I read this; it’s the most exciting food news for our neighborhood since Memphis Minnie’s opened up across the street. Having one of M. Rigo’s establishments right around the corner will probably not be good for my waistline, but I will certainly enjoy the fight!

I dunno if anyone thought of that scenario when they decided to run the spots during the Tournament, but if they did, all I can say is wow.

I wrote “looks like” above. It would be more impressive if that entry didn’t have Syracuse in the Final Four. Which is to say, I have nowhere to go but down, and with Gonzaga’s loss, I’m already headed that way. And you can see from the copy below my entries, there were nearly 7,000 people with perfect brackets after the first round. Unbelievable! There were 3, 4, 5, and 6 seeds that were upset, and those are hard to call, let alone all of them.

Though I kind of wonder, with almost three million entries, if that isn’t the equivalent of a million monkeys banging on typewriters. Somebody somewhere has to end up with a perfect bracket, right?

Not me, not this year…

• Illinois is overrated; I’ve picked them to go deep in the past, and always regretted it. Of course, they have a new coach this year, so maybe that’ll change. But I have Oklahoma St. in the Final Four.

• Speaking of coaches that have let me down, I don’t have Kansas going very far.

• On the other hand, I think this is Roy Williams’s year, and predict UNC to win it all.

• If it isn’t North Carolina, it’ll be Connecticut.

• I’ll be rooting for Duke in every game, but I’m afraid they probably aren’t deep enough to really go as far as I’ve picked them.

• If Duke and Kentucky meet up in the regional final, well, that would be cool.

• Is this Gonzaga’s year to reach the Final Four? I’ll definitely take them over Wake Forest (yet another team that has busted my brackets in the past, by losing way before they are supposed to).

• My biggest upset pick is West Virginia over Wake. My 12-over-5 is Old Dominion over Michigan St.

• I dunno about Washington. A #1 seed from the Pac 10 that’s not Arizona? I just haven’t seen them play enough to think this is a good thing.

• I expect that East Coast basketball fans are hoping for a Washington-GT matchup in the third round, so they can watch the ACC deliver a good thumping.

• I definitely expect GT to beat out Louisville. Conference USA teams are consistently overrated. Cincinnati, I’m looking at you.

• Texas, Stanford, and Cincinnati all out in the first round.

• I like UCLA over Texas Tech…but not enough to bet on it.

Let’s play!

The nutshell is, the Dell is missing a lot. If you need any of those things (and some of them, such as anti-virus software, are essential to everyone running Windows), the Dell stops being so cheap.

But first: I think the Mac mini is a grand-slam; I expect Apple to sell a million units a quarter through the rest of this year (assuming they can make that many), with only a modest impact (cannibalization) of sales of existing products. Most of these will be to first-time Mac owners. The price point and the packaging are both trying to suggest that the Mac mini is an impulse buy (even if the idea of switching platforms on an impulse is ridiculous).

My one surprise and concern is that the unit is so small. Normally a good thing, but small means it’s using more expensive laptop-style components (photos on the Mac mini Design page seem to confirm this). Making the device a little bigger, say the size of a dictionary, would have allowed them to use full-size hard disk and optical drives, and a less miniaturized logic board, which I think would have taken $50 off the manufacturing cost, without making the device unattractive. Seems like that $50 could have been a nice extra discount, or a nice extra profit.

On the other hand, a switcher doesn’t have to find room for the Mac mini at its current size; finding a spot on your desk, or even setting atop an existing beige box, should be child’s play. That might turn out to be important.

I think the iPod shuffle is also a home run product.

There are already people — analysts, competitors, and other “experts” — who are already comparing it to other products, and describing its flaws. And there are flaws, the iPod shuffle will not please everyone. But the comparisons and complaints of flaws miss the point. For the people it works for, and there are a lot of them, it is a nearly perfect device. Stupendous design, great sound, great size, great battery life, great price point, and more-than-good enough controls.

Two things I haven’t read elsewhere about the iPod shuffle. First, don’t underestimate the value of having rechargeable batteries. They allow you to always leave the house with a full charge in the unit. With the standard batteries most flash players use, because they cost money and are toxic waste when spent, you want to eke out the last remaining ergs of juice before disposing of them. With the Otis flash player I inherited from Rochelle when she got her iPod mini, I ran out of batteries in the middle of my commute — when I cannot change them, because I’m driving — several times. Incredibly aggravating. Rechargables, while they take time to recharge (instead of an instant swap with disposables), let you juice up when you’ve still got half a charge in the unit, so you can be confident it’s not going to die unexpectedly on you.

Second, and far more important, comparing the iPod shuffle to other devices with the same capacity or at the same price point, or complaining about the lack of a screen, is leaving out a major part of the story. The unit itself is only half the experience. The other half is iTunes, the software which runs on your desktop computer to push audio onto the device. And iTunes stands head and shoulders (and full torso) above its competitors, both in general use, as well as providing ways to work with the lack of a screen on the iPod shuffle itself:

iTunes lets you manage the contents of your iPod shuffle, in such a way that not having a screen is not a major liability for most uses of a music player.

Personally, I think Steve Jobs should have sent the CEOs and marketing executives of Apple’s competitors some clean underwear, set to arrive the morning of his keynote. They may not admit it in public, but I know they needed it.

It looks like the story might have gotten chopped up a bit in editing, because I am a San Francisco-based software developer, not LA-based. And, while the Klausners may also have done so, I know we told the reporter about our trip to Chicago to eat at Charlie Trotter’s, which turned into a week-long eating binge though much of Chicago’s best-rated food establishments. (Our vacation eating focus is much less high-end these days.)

If I was going to offer once piece of advice to other food enthusiasts who were going to plan a vacation around that passion it would be this: walk everywhere you can. There’s no way you can put everything of interest in a spreadsheet before you get on the plane; walking will take you past things you could not possibly have planned for. And if nothing else, it’ll keep you from gaining too much weight while you’re eating your way through the local food scene.

After doing all of that, the noisiest item in the office was once again my Mac, which lost the title when I took out the noisy hard disk, but had a couple of fans that were quite a bit louder than the now-very-quiet fans in the two PCs.

When I got my new girlfriend, that noise went away. My PowerBook is normally completely silent, because laptops run cooler than desktops and the aluminum case dissipates heat extremely well. There is a fan, and it makes noise when it’s on, but that’s only when the CPU is really crunching. Now, although they are pretty quiet, the server and Rochelle’s PC are again the noisy items in the office.

It’s really not a lot of noise. A quiet radio or a conversation would cover it, as does the street noise most of the time. But, it’s still there, and since I’m most efficient at night, when everything else gets quiet, it’s starting to be annoying. Which is crazy, because 6 months ago the reduced noise level from those systems made me ecstatic.

I’ve realized that I’m becoming a crank, someone obsessed with something most people find trivial, and I’m sure I will ultimately go mad trying to squeeze that last decibel or two out of the office. My only consolation is that I am not alone, and it’s now possible to find plenty of components, and even whole systems, that make computing quiet.