WYSE

At work, I'm learning to support one of our old software products that runs on SuperDOS off of 20 year old WYSE terminals.

Every day is an exercise in modern technology appreciation.

Slowtastic

Comcast has been acting like turds lately, and it's high time something was done about it.

"An investigation by the Associated Press caught Comcast secretly inspecting online communications and crippling users' ability to share information with one another.

This is a gross violation of Net Neutrality -- the longstanding principle that ensures a free and open Internet. Free Press has filed a legal complaint demanding that the FCC take action to protect the Internet's free flow of information. By sending the letter you join the fight to stop Comcast and other gatekeepers. "

Translation: Comcast has been prioritizing certain Internet traffic and de-prioritizing other (such as bittorrent) traffic. This would be like if your city's police department decided to re rout your car on the way to your work so that other, more important people wouldn't experience as much traffic on their way.

Fill out this form to send a letter to the FCC.

As Much as I Love Digital Media, This News is Comforting

From Wired:

As counterintuitive as it may seem in this age of iPods and digital downloads, vinyl -- the favorite physical format of indie music collectors and audiophiles -- is poised to re-enter the mainstream, or at least become a major tributary.

Talk to almost anyone in the music business' vital indie and DJ scenes and you'll encounter a uniformly optimistic picture of the vinyl market.

"I'm hearing from labels and distributors that vinyl is way up," said Ian Connelly, client relations manager of independent distributor alliance IODA, in an e-mail interview. "And not just the boutique, limited-edition colored vinyl that Jesu/Isis-style fans are hot for right now."

Pressing plants are ramping up production, but where is the demand coming from? Why do so many people still love vinyl, even though its bulky, analog nature is anathema to everything music is supposed to be these days? Records, the vinyl evangelists will tell you, provide more of a connection between fans and artists. And many of today's music fans buy 180-gram vinyl LPs for home listening and MP3s for their portable devices.

"For many of us, and certainly for many of our artists, the vinyl is the true version of the release," said Matador's Patrick Amory. "The size and presence of the artwork, the division into sides, the better sound quality, above all the involvement and work the listener has to put in, all make it the format of choice for people who really care about music."

Because these music fans also listen using portable players and computers, Matador and other labels include coupons in record packaging that can be used to download MP3 versions of the songs. Amory called the coupon program "hugely popular."

Portability is no longer any reason to stick with CDs, and neither is audio quality. Although vinyl purists are ripe for parody, they're right about one thing: Records can sound better than CDs.

Although CDs have a wider dynamic range, mastering houses are often encouraged to compress the audio on CDs to make it as loud as possible: It's the so-called loudness war. Since the audio on vinyl can't be compressed to such extremes, records generally offer a more nuanced sound.

Another reason for vinyl's sonic superiority is that no matter how high a sampling rate is, it can never contain all of the data present in an analog groove, Nyquist's theorem to the contrary.

"The digital world will never get there," said Chris Ashworth, owner of United Record Pressing, the country's largest record pressing plant.

Golden-eared audiophiles have long testified to vinyl's warmer, richer sound. And now demand for vinyl is on the rise. Pressing plants that were already at capacity are staying there, while others are cranking out more records than they did last year in order to keep pace with demand.

Don MacInnis, owner of Record Technology in Camarillo, California, predicts production will be up 25 percent over last year by the end of 2007. And he's not talking about small runs of dance music for DJs, but the whole gamut of music: "new albums, reissues, majors and indies ... jazz, blues, classical, pop and a lot of (classic) rock."

Turntables are hot again as well. Insound, an online music retailer that recently began selling USB turntables alongside vinyl, can't keep them in stock, according to the company's director, Patrick McNamara.

And on Oct. 17, Amazon.com launched a vinyl-only section stocked with a growing collection of titles and several models of record players.

Big labels still aren't buying the vinyl comeback, but it wouldn't be the first time the industry failed to identify a new trend in the music biz.

"Our numbers, at least, don't really point to a resurgence," said Jonathan Lamy, the Recording Industry Association of America's director of communications. Likewise, Nielsen SoundScan, which registered a slight increase in vinyl sales last year, nonetheless showed a 43 percent decrease between 2000 and 2006.

But when it comes to vinyl, these organizations don't really know what they're talking about. The RIAA's numbers are misleading because its member labels are only now beginning to react to the growing demand for vinyl. As for SoundScan, its numbers don't include many of the small indie and dance shops where records are sold. More importantly, neither organization tracks used records sold at stores or on eBay -- arguably the central clearinghouse for vinyl worldwide.

Vinyl's popularity has been underreported before.

"The Consumer Electronics Association said that only 100,000 turntables were sold in 2004. Numark alone sold more than that to pro DJs that year," said Chris Roman, product manager for Numark.

And the vinyl-MP3 tag team might just hasten the long-predicted death of the CD.

San Francisco indie band The Society of Rockets, for example, plans to release its next album strictly on vinyl and as MP3 files.

"Having just gone through the process of mastering our new album for digital and for vinyl, I can say it is completely amazing how different they really sound," said lead singer and guitarist Joshua Babcock in an e-mail interview. "The way the vinyl is so much better and warmer and more interesting to listen to is a wonder."

The Amazing Toilet Phone

My Samsung cell phone fell in a public toilet, was fully submerged in nasty toilet water for several seconds and after just a few hours dry out time, was completely unharmed.

I'll be honest, I was nervous at first when nothing was working right, but one by one all functions returned to normal.

Samsung, I tip my hat to you; for making a toilet-proof phone.

WTF Creative?

I just upgraded my version of Creative's Zencast Organizer. Basically it's just a podcast aggregator. It jumped from version 1.0-something to 2.0-something, so I thought I was getting a pimp update. Not the case. It's exactly the same. I couldn't find a single difference. No new features, no new options, nothing looks different, nothing. Angry, I checked the Zencast website for an explanation, here's what they say has been changed:

"-Allows you to subscribe to Flickr® and Windows Live Spaces™ photo feeds.
-Allows photo channels to be displayed in Thumbnails view.
-Adds the option to transfer ZENcast pictures into your player's photo library."

Picture crap? Excuse me?

To Creative: There were limitations to version 1.0, for instance when transfering to my Zen it doesn't organize audio podcasts at all unless I convert them to video. You havn't even addressed that fundamental issue with this new release. Adding support for photo feeds IS NOT a 1.0->2.0 release jump. At best, this should be called 1.2. That would be like Microsoft putting out a whole new whole number version of Word because they added support for PNG picture files. Shame on you Creative. Fix your fucking software.

Microsoft's Asshole Complex

Further example of how whenever something good happens outside of a ruling/dominant party and they're not making money off of it, they'll do anything to squash it. This isn't about Sun supposedly stealing patented code, it's about Microsoft trying to kill any chance of free open-source software that works better than theres becoming dominantly popular.

May 15, 3:14 PM EDT
By JESSICA MINTZ
AP Business Writer

SEATTLE (AP) -- Microsoft Corp. cranked up the rhetoric against open-source software with new details about the ways it says free programs violate its patents.

While the world's largest software company said it prefers licensing deals to legal action, it also indicated it won't ignore what it sees as infringement.

"There is no reason why any segment of the industry needs to be exempt from intellectual property rules," said Horacio Gutierrez, a Microsoft vice president for intellectual property and licensing.

At the most basic level, open-source software is built by a community of companies and independent programmers. It's distributed, often without charge, to businesses and consumers and programmers to modify, build on, and distribute again - also for free.

While proprietary software companies like Microsoft make money by selling licenses for programs, open-source companies usually make money selling support services.

On Monday, Microsoft said open-source programs step on 235 Microsoft patents. The core of the free Linux operating system violates 42 patents. Open-source programs' graphical user interfaces, or the way menus and windows look on the screen, breach 65. E-mail programs step on 15, and other programs violate 68 patents, the company said. The patent figures were first reported by Fortune magazine.

Microsoft also said Open Office, an open-source program supported in part by Sun Microsystems Inc., infringes on 45 patents. Sun declined to comment on the allegation.

Microsoft's Windows is the dominant software on servers and desktop PCs, but Microsoft views the free or low-cost Linux operating system alternatives "with a great deal of concern," said Al Gillen, an analyst at the technology research group IDC.

"It's one of the few operating systems that represents a viable threat that Microsoft has a great deal of difficulty containing," Gillen said. Because open-source developers share their code, the challenge to Microsoft's products isn't limited to one company.

Instead, Microsoft has struck a number of patent-licensing deals with companies that use open source code, most notably Novell Inc. last November. In one aspect of the deal, Microsoft agreed to sell Novell's flavor of Linux, called Suse. It also agreed not to sue the customers who bought it, even though it claims the open-source software infringes on its patents.

"Microsoft could have chosen to litigate many years ago, but we have decided not to do that," Gutierrez said. Instead, in the interest of making sure programs that include open-source technology work with Microsoft products and vice versa, the company will continue to pursue similar deals.

Much of the open-source community was unhappy with the Novell deal, which it saw as a workaround to a widely used open-source license called the GNU General Public License.

More broadly, the free software movement saw the deal as an attack on one of its core tenets. Under the public license, once open-source code is incorporated into another company's technology, the new product must also be freely available. But the deal also required Novell to pay millions in "royalties" - an indirect admission that Suse Linux contained Microsoft intellectual property and can't be given away for free.

"Now it becomes possible to divide and conquer our community," said Eben Moglen, an attorney for the Free Software Foundation, the entity behind the GNU license. By making a pact with Novell, Microsoft also implied that anyone who downloaded or bought Linux from another vendor was doing so illegally.

The next version of the GNU license, currently in draft form, aims to stop similar deals. Moglen said the draft states that if a company like Microsoft distributes open-source programs protected by the GNU license, it forfeits any related patent claims.

Open-source proponents are frustrated by Microsoft's repeated allusions to patent violations because "they never say what patents being violated, never make any assertions, never put the evidence out there," said Larry Augustin, a technology startup investor who launched SourceForge.net, a prominent open-source development site, in 1999.

But Augustin also acknowledged that it's not in Microsoft's interest to do so: Open-source programmers could rewrite their code to avoid infringing on specific patents, or the courts could find that Microsoft's patent isn't valid.

An ongoing open-source patent case could indicate that it isn't easy for a software maker to prove infringement. The SCO Group Inc., a Utah-based company, sued IBM Corp. in 2003 for donating its proprietary Unix code to open-source developers. Late last year, a federal judge upheld a decision to dismiss about half of the claims against IBM, agreeing that SCO had failed to identify exactly which lines of code in Linux infringed on its patents.

Legal action by Microsoft could also kick off a massive patent war. An organization called the Open Innovation Network, funded by IBM, Red Hat Inc. and others, has amassed a vast number of software patents. If there is a Microsoft lawsuit against open source companies or customers, the OIN would retaliate in kind.

"We believe it's highly likely that Microsoft would infringe some of our patents," said Jerry Rosenthal, OIN's chief executive.

EMI Press Release

London, 2 April 2007 -- EMI Music today announced that it is launching new premium downloads for retail on a global basis, making all of its digital repertoire available at a much higher sound quality than existing downloads and free of digital rights management (DRM) restrictions.

The new higher quality DRM-free music will complement EMI's existing range of standard DRM-protected downloads already available. From today, EMI's retailers will be offered downloads of tracks and albums in the DRM-free audio format of their choice in a variety of bit rates up to CD quality. EMI is releasing the premium downloads in response to consumer demand for high fidelity digital music for use on home music systems, mobile phones and digital music players. EMI's new DRM-free products will enable full interoperability of digital music across all devices and platforms.

Eric Nicoli, CEO of EMI Group, said, "Our goal is to give consumers the best possible digital music experience. By providing DRM-free downloads, we aim to address the lack of interoperability which is frustrating for many music fans. We believe that offering consumers the opportunity to buy higher quality tracks and listen to them on the device or platform of their choice will boost sales of digital music.

"Apple have been a true pioneer in digital music, and we are delighted that they share our vision of an interoperable market that provides consumers with greater choice, quality, convenience and value for money."

"Selling digital music DRM-free is the right step forward for the music industry," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "EMI has been a great partner for iTunes and is once again leading the industry as the first major music company to offer its entire digital catalogue DRM-free."

Apple's iTunes Store (www.itunes.com) is the first online music store to receive EMI's new premium downloads. Apple has announced that iTunes will make individual AAC format tracks available from EMI artists at twice the sound quality of existing downloads, with their DRM removed, at a price of $1.29/€1.29/£0.99. iTunes will continue to offer consumers the ability to pay $0.99/€0.99/£0.79 for standard sound quality tracks with DRM still applied. Complete albums from EMI Music artists purchased on the iTunes Store will automatically be sold at the higher sound quality and DRM-free, with no change in the price. Consumers who have already purchased standard tracks or albums with DRM will be able to upgrade their digital music for $0.30/€0.30/£0.20 per track. All EMI music videos will also be available on the iTunes Store DRM-free with no change in price.

EMI is introducing a new wholesale price for premium single track downloads, while maintaining the existing wholesale price for complete albums. EMI expects that consumers will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free downloads from a variety of digital music stores within the coming weeks, with each retailer choosing whether to sell downloads in AAC, WMA, MP3 or other unprotected formats of their choice. Music fans will be able to purchase higher quality DRM-free digital music for personal use, and listen to it on a wide range of digital music players and music-enabled phones.

EMI's move follows a series of experiments it conducted recently. Norah Jones's "Thinking About You", Relient K's "Must've Done Something Right", and Lily Allen's "Littlest Things" were all made available for sale in the MP3 format in trials held at the end of last year.

EMI Music will continue to employ DRM as appropriate to enable innovative digital models such as subscription services (where users pay a monthly fee for unlimited access to music), super-distribution (allowing fans to share music with their friends) and time-limited downloads (such as those offered by ad-supported services).

Nicoli added: "Protecting the intellectual property of EMI and our artists is as important as ever, and we will continue to work to fight piracy in all its forms and to educate consumers. We believe that fans will be excited by the flexibility that DRM-free formats provide, and will see this as an incentive to purchase more of our artists' music."

My Resonse to Steve Jobs

I read Steve Jobs' little diatribe about DRM that I posted the other day, and initially I was impressed by his openness about the subject and thought that he made some valid points. And then I thought about it a little bit more and found several holes in his tale of whoa about the corner that apple has been painted in with music-industry-required DRM. This all really came to light for me when I just recently bought a Creative Zen Vision M media player (pictured on the left).

You see, he makes claims that Apple's specific DRM and protecting it involves keeping secrets. He says that if they were to license out the DRM to other stores it would be harder to keep those secrets, the DRM encryption would be comprimised and the major record labels would pull out of the store. He cites their model of DRM as being comparable to Microsoft's Zune store, and Sony's store for their player. He says these companies need specific stores for their specific products because of this secrecy problem. The problem with this argument is that he completely fails to mention of the half dozen stores that support DOZENS of different players from a host of manufactures. One prime example being Napster. I signed up with Napster when I got my Zen, because first of all they gave me a free 30 day subscription, and secondly becuase of course the Zen was one of over 30 players supported by the stores' DRM.

Ok, so now I'll be completely honest about Napster, it's good, but's not great. I have the subscription service that advertised as being able to download anything from the store to an unlimted extent, the only catch is you have to maintain your subscription to have access to the songs transfered to your device. I thought-ok, I can live with that, I listen to enough music that this is a good deal. But I quickly found out that I don't have access to ALL the songs napster has in it's store, but about 90-95% of them. The remaining are "Buy Only". While with most albums this isn't a problem, I keep running into situation where I can download the entire albums except for 1 or 2 tracks and that drives me nuts. So i'm considering switching to yahoo or rhapsody, and I can do this, because I don't have an ipod (anymore). WMA DRM is used by several stores, so I have options. Apple's M4p DRM is used by one store, apple...so if you have an ipod and you want to buy tracks online, you gotta buy from apple, end of story. Steve also points out that music sales are still 90% driven by CDs, which are for the most part DRM free, so the argument that you don't have music buying choices is not valid. This is true, Steve, but if online music buying weren't such a hassle, that ratio would change in a heart-beat (also, illegal trading would drop even more I suspect). I personally don't want to buy cds anymore. To me, buying CDs would be like a personal who buys CDs all them time having to buy Cassettes because of frustrating music buying hurdles.

So the question becomes, why does the top online music download store, sell tracks that only work on one device? Steve wants you to believe it's because of the security reasons, but then why can Napster, Rhapsody, and Yahoo (amoung others) share a DRM model if it's soooo dangerous to do so? Why is it that apple itself only accepts 1 DRM model and mp3s? Apple's actions speak louder than Steve's words. It's all about driving IPOD sales with it's popular Itunes store, and driving Itunes song sales with their popular IPOD. They beleive they've got the consumer trapped in their vortex, and so far they have.

Sure, if everything was DRM-free life would be a lot simpler. But, things would also be a lot simpler if Ipods supported, WMA's or Itunes sold WMA's, or Apple licensed out their DRM model.