Calling the bluff: why I won’t cry about iTunes 4.0.1

Heh. I’ll call your bluff, Craig.

I’m really bummed about the XML problem. I complained vocally when Radiohead and Sigur Ros disappeared from the store. But I won’t be crying about the shutting down of sharing beyond local subnets in iTunes 4.0.1. Why? Because the reality is that despite all the Brave New World stuff, Apple is piloting a brand new channel in the face of what I’ve repeatedly called out as one of the most consumer-hostile industries the US has ever seen. And I want them to succeed. And, as someone pointed out on Slashdot,

there are so many ways to legally share your music… heck, just setup a live365 station if you want to share your music. Why insist on doing it illegally, and ruining it for everybody?

Sorry, flame off. I am pissed off about the XML stuff—that’s one really good AppleScript that will never see the light of day.

Dave: Who will pay?

Over the weekend, Dave wrote an amazing pair of essays around the topic of who will pay for software:

I pay $1 to ride the subway downtown. It costs $300 to fly to NY and back (two hours in the air). A cab ride to the airport — $40. My monthly rent is in the thousands. Medical insurance about $10,000 per year. Everything costs money. So does software. Don’t fool yourself.

There’s an interesting strawman here: are people really not paying for software? I don’t know the statistics. I do think that a lot of what’s going on in the OS world is shifting the pay point to where the value happens. If you’re sitting on a commoditized operating system stack, in this model, the way to make money is to provide increasingly specialized and valuable services that ride the top of the stack.

That may be why I have yet to see anything that positions Windows Server 2003 as a file-and-print server, the most commoditized of any server implementation. Instead, the server sim-shipped with Visual Studio.NET 2003, the new edition of Microsoft’s development environment, and the scenarios tout the OS’s integrated application platform.

But back to Dave’s point: what happens when all the independents are squeezed out of the market because no one buys their stuff? Do we end up with a market with a bunch of journeymen developing shareware and freeware and then a few large software companies taking all the money? But if people aren’t buying the independents’ stuff, how long before they want to get the large companies’ stuff for free too? Scary thought if your skill set is software development…

Weekend draws reluctantly to an end

That’s me, in the headline, committing the pathetic fallacy. But it was such a good weekend. Friday: day officially shortened by four hours (thanks, David!), blissfully spent wandering around downtown, complete with both lunch and dinner with my lovely wife. —Note to restaurateurs: I don’t care how rare Copper River King Salmon is; spending north of three Hamiltons for a quarter of a salmon filet is too much in anyone’s book.

Saturday we weeded, mowed the lawn, cleared out underbrush, and purchased some more stone for a hastily planned and executed landscape addition. We were preparing for our first outdoor barbecue party on Sunday, which was preceded by a grueling four hour stone-laying session. We created a sparsely paved patio north of the grape arbor overlooking the garden beds. We will plant creeping thyme among the stones to fill things in, thus banishing another outpost of weed-harboring bark mulch (there’s that fallacy again) from the garden. The party was great. Burgers and fantastic grilled vegetables, lots of great conversation.

Today a late start, a leisurely trim and feeding for all the roses, and Chinese for a late lunch. Then naps in the living room. Now off to rehearsal. One of these days I’ll post some garden photos…

“No rock-and-roll fun”

Getting some traffic from a new site (as in it’s new to me), No Rock and Roll Fun, who pointed to my February bit about the Charlatans UK. (Permalink on their site broken, I don’t know why I even bother since Blogspot never gets archives right, but it’s still on their front page.) The rest of the articles appear to be a mix of music links and scandalous gossip—excellent late Friday afternoon reading if things at the office get a bit slow. Which they won’t for me, as I get the afternoon off to do an early start on Memorial Day weekend.

Greg: War on war

Greg points to a BBC report that a Canadian scientist has found “astonishing” levels of uranium in the urine of two samples of 17 and 25 Afghan civilians. The conclusion the scientist, Dr. Asaf Durakovic of the Canadian Uranium Medical Research Center, reaches is that a new kind of uranium weapon was used during the war in Afghanistan.

I’m not saying Dr. Durakovic is wrong. Levels of uranium 100-500 times higher than those found in veterans suffering Gulf War Syndrome, after all, are awfully suggestive (the mean concentration was 315.5 nanograms per liter, while the US allowable is a mere 12). But I would like some information about the general background levels of uranium found in the Afghan population. Two samples is a seriously alarming indicator, but it’s not a smoking gun yet.

And I want a smoking gun. This administration has built such a wall of secrecy around itself and its policies that it’s been impossible to make any of the charges about inhumane and unAmerican conduct during wartime, let alone infringements of civil, legal, and Constitutional rights at home, stick. If this is real evidence, it needs to be bulletproof.

OK, a more coherent Blog Meetup followup

I seem to be on track to make one blog meetup per season, and last night was spring’s. We started at Aurafice, a little internet café on Capitol Hill, which between the bloggers and the Goths (apparently Wednesday nights are Goth get-togethers at Aurafice) started to get a little crowded. After gathering a small crowd, which in addition to the folks in the previous post also included Jerry and Adam, and after extracting Michael from the Goths, we headed down the hill to Bauhaus.

Part way there, Jerry scared the crap out of all of us by severely injuring his ankle. We offered to get him ice or Advil, but after he could stand, he opted to try to get back up the hill to his car with Matt’s help. I hope he’s ok.

On the way down, I talked a bit with Adam, aka Flangy, with whom I had briefly corresponded when I was interning in Seattle two years ago, shortly before he struck out on his own. Obligatory Userland reference: Jeremy: “Adam has one of the longest URLs around.” Me: “Yeah, I’m surprised you haven’t moved off EditThisPage yet.” Adam: “Well, at this point there are only about two people left on the server…”

Anyway, lots of good conversation (and some scary questions, including the one reported by tyd on her blog, in the context of the Atkins diet). I’ll definitely have to do the meetups more often.

Update: forgot Manuel, didn’t meet Clark.

Seattle Blog Meetup pass the machine

We’re here at Bauhaus at the Seattle meetup. Passing the machine around:

  • Tara: I didn’t kill the people at Best Buy. They are still alive. That’s all you need to know.
  • Matt: Jerry’s okay, we think. As far as any other injuries that might happen, I can only claim ignorance or at least innocence. Have you ever noticed that in most movies, Apple computers are by far the most prevalent?
  • dayment: I’m just here for the espresso. Who are these people?!??
  • tyd: I hear that voice again. By day, a professional Bill Gates impersonator, by night, usually asleep.
  • Jeff: What’s espresso?
  • Michael: I’m clearly the last person on the planet without a laptop with a wireless connection. … Actually, all I have is two sticks and a rock.
  • Cat: Can’t believe I got out of work in time for this! Hmmm… anyone find me a roomie yet? Please?
  • Jeremy: Meetups are like a bunch of large wooden blocks tumbling off a cliff. They come to rest in a jumbled pile, with no form or order. Yet you mustn’t touch, because they can, and will collapse even further until they can collapse no more. Woah, what’s in the coffee here?

Okay, more fun than the regular meetup summary but a lot less coherent. Which is probably preferable.

Au revoir, Buffy, and thanks for the hits

On my way home from work, I received a phone call from my sister (who is three time zones to the east of me). She said, “Are you still getting a lot of referrals from Google for people looking for Trogdor?”

“A few,” I said, “but mostly it’s trailed off.”

“Well, you’re about to get a lot more,” she said. “They just mentioned him in the final Buffy episode.”

“Huh,” I replied.

Sure enough, a few hours later, in a D&D like game, one character tells the others they’re under attack … by Trogdor the Burninator. A few minutes later, the searchers start coming to my site, looking for trogdor buffy and buffy trogdor. Cool. Thanks, Joss. (Google finds this version of the final script for that search too.)

In addition to delivering some traffic to my site on its way out the door, I thought the last episode of the show made good on its series long message of female empowerment in a really big dramatic way. But then I’ve always liked the idea of teenage vampire slaying girls.

Warmth and Brightness

One of the best photoblogs around, for my money, is 101-365. In addition to some stunning photography, Chris Heilman has posted several investigations into the color of wine, and postulates that you can uniquely describe the shape of a wine sample’s transmission spectrum with two parameters, warmth and brightness. (He also looks at absorption spectra.) The next question is, does knowing the shape of the spectral curve help predict the flavor?

Best Lists of Bests lists

No, that’s not a typo. Bill Turner (of Brilliant Corners) unveiled the Lists of Bests site last week. Built on the Amazon Associates web services API, it presents interactive versions of various “best of” lists for movies, books, and music; allows you to use them as checklists and remembers which ones you’ve read, watched, or heard from list to list; and allows you to rate and build your own lists. There’s some natural synergy here with Blogcritics, and with anyone who ever felt like John Cusack’s character in High Fidelity (which is curiously not in either movie or book lists on the site that I can see; have to rectify that).

What Bill has done is to move something like Amazon’s ListMania out from under the Amazon umbrella and make it more discoverable.

Wish list for Lists of Bests:

  • Allow me to add new items to a list without them being already on the site, by Amazon number or ISBN
  • …hmm, that’s it, really.

I want to be able to add things like the KEXP Top 90.3 albums lists, books that have profoundly moved me, the best works of comic fiction of all time, and other stuff that’s not constrained by the works on the Best Of lists.

Your advice requested

My trusty Nokia 3360 is about to go the way of all cellphones. Lately the display screen has stopped working. I can usually get the display back if I press hard above the screen on the case, but it’s getting to be a real pain.

For various reasons (primarily cost and lack of availability through my current carrier) I’m not considering a PDA/phone hybrid right now. Given that constraint, what cell phone should I buy?

Currently in the running: the Sony/Ericsson T68i (though I wasn’t impressed with the flimsy case when I picked one up on Saturday) or one of the new Nokia 3650s with the built in camera. Or the Motorola T720—though if the battery on that is anything like the battery in my old Motorola it’s way way out of the running.

The definition of “good weekend”

  1. The Matrix Reloaded on Friday night. One thousand and one nights of late night college existential arguments summarized in 138 minutes of beautiful mindblowing kung-fu computer footage.
  2. The first Copper River King salmon of the season Saturday night at Anthony’s Pier 66. Along with a plate of fantastic northwest oysters.
  3. A gorgeous late spring day in the garden, finally getting ground cover started in the new bed under the cherry tree, three new roses planted along the driveway…
  4. …our new grill assembled and a batch of hamburgers (made with an onion from our garden and some rosemary from one of our plants…
  5. …and props from Doc Searls.

Nope, doesn’t get much better.

Doc: It’s not that we blog so much, it’s that you blog so little

Doc takes on some folks who argue (along with the impossible Andrew Orlowski) that blogs shouldn’t be indexed because they noise up Google too much:

Here’s a thought. What would happen if the archives of all the print publications out there were open to the Web, linkable by anybody, and crawlable by Google’s bots? Would the density of blogs “above the fold” (on page one) of Google searches go down while hard copy sources go up? I’ll betcha it would.

My point: Maybe this isn’t about “gaming” algorithms, but rather about a situation where one particular type of highly numerous journal has entirely exposed archives while less common (though perhaps on the whole more authoritative) others do not.

In other words, if you choose not to participate on the public, freely linkable, not for pay Web, don’t complain when others who do participate by the rules of the game are easier to find.