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DRM-Free, Google Chinese Connection and the Superjet 100

“It’s over. Restrictions on copying digital music are going to be history — and all hell could break loose in the music retail business.” - Kevin Kelleher - TheStreet.com - 9/26/2007

You know this was coming sooner then later. You know it. It’s all reflected in the “practical” ways that people use their music with this new freedom that the digital age - and specially the MP3 format - have created. “Practically”, my 60GB+ of digital music in WAV and MP3 formats is made up of 70% ripped, 22% purchased and the rest, traded tracks. I like to carry “this” certain quantity of “this” genre on my trusted IRiver digital player. A combination of albums, party tracks and videos go on my Archos. About 1GB is constantly being shuffled around in the 2GB Flash drive in the T-Mobile Dash. The playlists and combinations in each device changes based on the need of the occasion. And yes, I’m not the iPod fan at all as you can see.

What I am saying is that in my “practical” life, the way I consume “my” music, is as varied as the occasion for which I am compiling the playlist for as the number of devices that I have around me. Having one DRM-free format where all my concerns are returned squarely to the task at hand: creating the ultimate playlist for the moment. DRM dictates my choices or combinations and restricts my creativity.

In my “practical” experiences with every aspects of the music industry, I can also say that the pattern that I have observed has been one where the P2P networks are a great way to get free tracks to try. In my collection, plenty artists “live” because of easily found one-track that I thought was “good enough”. It kept those artists in my library. It would have been those $2CD’s I used to buy from the guy around my block, just to “try” new albums instead of dropping up to $20 for new releases at the store. Now, that CD you bought for $2 at the corner, you knew it was a scam, done cheaply, on cheap CD’s and they were bound to stop playing sooner or later (you learn that quickly). But the few weeks they lasted, I had the time to discover the whole album and decide if I would pay for it later at a store when it went on sale or at a reasonable price. Two bucks for a CD that was gonna last me 3 months top, of questionable audio quality, I didn’t mind that. It allowed me the time to taste and make a good later investment of my money. Same with the stuff that i get of the web; when I want to have it for “real”, I’ve never hesitated dropping the cash; for an MP3 or WAVE format so far, all the way. When I have it on my drive, it’s mine. And with my paranoia, I backup the backup of the backup of the backup. So, who is anybody to restrict how many times I decide to “protect”, backup or share my audio “treasures”?

I still pay for my music. I still share tunes, tracks, Youtube videos and the likes with my friends, we exchange, I complete my collection from theirs sometimes, but I continue to buy the music because ultimately, it’s mine to shape.

Jon C. Dvorak - the man is brilliant and twisted. I’ve enjoyed regularly his columns for years - he never runs out of angles to sniff things out. His latest is the case of how Google can be sabotaged right under their own nose by tainting the results returned by their search algorithms. After all, algorithms are exactly that by definition: repeatable results.

Dvorak makes an interesting case for the proliferation of those “inane Chinese sites that were not even parking sites, just an assortment of keywords that somehow got indexed and brought to the top of the results list.”

You’ve seen them more frequently in the last six months or more, right? I have. I mean, I dismissed them quickly because I instinctively know what they are for having landed on them way too many times. But there are there. And they usually have nothing to do with your search query in the first place. It’s good reading and will have you thinking. If nothing else, I like to know when my sauce is being messed with.

On First “Look“. This comes from a totally unscientific experiment. The new Sony PSP went on sale recently in Japan and sold more then 130 thousand copies the first day. It’s not yet available here in the US. On that day, every time I encountered a colleague, I would show them the picture of the PSP and just told them what it was. I have a lot of gamers around me. 8 out of 10 had some kind of negative or unflattering reaction to the new “rounded” look of the console. They all seemed to missed the square-ish old design better. These reactions all came from just seeing picture of the device, not the actual device itself.

Microsoft must abandon Vista to save itself. I second that opinion. Read the article and make your own mind if you haven’t already. I, as an “early adopter”, am not too taken by the migration to Vista. I know it’ll happen on one or two systems eventually in the small business that I run. Right now, the mix of XP, 2000, Ubuntu, OSX and the various mobile flavors suit us quite nicely. Investing “into” Vista, for us, seems too BIG, both in price, requirements, size,commitment and bloat. If anything, we are more excited with news of developments that free us and let us mix and match, be on and off the grid, plug and unplug, easily. See the DRM argument above.

In Africa, it seems that “beeping” is the rage. It’s a new form of “call back” where you call someone from your cell phone (yes, cell phone), let it ring once, just enough so that the caller ID box at the other end registers your number and hopefully your name, then quickly hang up before the person answers. These calls take a fraction of a second to complete. I’ve done it a few times. And it’s always been when I was concerned about charges; either my balance was getting low or the person on the other end is known for being the chhhhaaaaaattttyyyyyy kind. In those cases, passing on the fee for the call to the other party didn’t seem too bad. After all, they can chose when to return my call. However, I understand the mentality.

In countries in Africa where air time can be expensive, those short calls are overwhelming the cellular providers systems who are trying - of course - to figure out a way to make money out of the practice. I know I’ll keep beeping when the situation requires it. Those cellular charges are… beep…

Another commercial passenger airliner will make its maiden flight before the end of the year and add to my ginormous collection of digital aviation pictures. Sukhoi–the Russian company, is branching out into the civilian sector with the Superjet 100.

Sukhoi Civil Aircraft unveiled the medium-range on September 26th at its Komsomolsk-on-Amur plant.The plane will seat roughly 75 to 95 passengers and is touted for its greater fuel efficiency and a quieter ride.

This year (2007) marks the the centennial of the helicopter. “Designs by Maurice Leger, Jacques and Louis Breguet, and Paul Cornu all got off the ground in 1907–just barely, and for just a very few seconds.” Cnet has an interesting slide show of the evolution of this novel mode of mechanical locomotion.