Reducing DRM
Posted: Wed 7 January, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky, Music 2 Comments »While I’m nowhere even close to being an Apple® fanboy, I do use iTunes for a significant portion of downloading. (particularly when I also use eMusic, which I believe is now owned by iTunes) As such, I’m pleased to see that they’ve announced that iTunes is going to be DRM-free, with 8 million of its 10 million tracks now available without any DRM, and the rest over the next few months.
DRM is (basically) copy protection – it’s the media industry’s way of saying “You can buy our stuff, but we’ll still tell you how you can – and can’t – use it”. It’s horrifically flawed, and something I’m fairly passionately anti at the best of times.
As a perfect example of this, we’ve both recently bought new Sony MP3 players and wanted to put music bought on iTunes onto them. Only because of DRM, you can’t. Well, you can if you burn an audio CD of the downloaded files, re-import them into [Music player of choice] as MP3s, and then put them on the player, but that’s circumvention of the DRM, and thus naughty. You’re using a file you’ve bought and paid for, but in a way that the music industry doesn’t like. They want you to buy it on iTunes and use it through that, but if you want it to go on another MP3 player, you should buy another copy of the same file that’s authorised for use on your MP3 player. Oh, and you shouldn’t be buying the album on CD and then ripping it to MP3 so you can listen to it on your player either.
It’s the same with other download services (and things like BBC iPlayer etc. too) which have historically been only available through Internet Explorer, so that they can use the Windows Media Player DRM – which is also why so many MP3 players etc. insist on using WMP 11, which has the latest/’greatest’ DRM modules on it.
So to me it’s a sign that perhaps the music studios and media producers are finally beginning to see some sense if they’ll allow iTunes to finally sell music without DRM on it.
Mobile Data Use
Posted: Wed 7 January, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Geeky Leave a comment »It being a month (give or take) since I got the new phone and unlimited mobile data, I got the bill today from O2.
Just in that first month, I’ve used something like 8Mb of online data all told, which would’ve cost me some £3 per Mb or so. (It’s hard to tell for sure, as they’ve changed the tariff to be ‘Up to £1 per day’ instead of ‘£x per Mb’, but I remember it being about £3 per Mb last time I looked)
Either way though, the ‘unlimited’ browsing bolt-on looks like it will be a good plan all round.
Missing the Point
Posted: Tue 6 January, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Cynicism, Stupidity 1 Comment »An email from Canon today :
We are sending you this email because we take our customers’ data seriously and only want to hold your data if you want us to.
You have joined CANON iMAGE GATEWAY and registered ownership of a EOS 20D, but decided not to receive communications from us. We are giving you the opportunity to opt in, which means you will receive regular communications, or to delete your details permanently from our database.
So :
- You’re contacting me even though I opted out of being contacted
- It now looks like the choice is
- Opt in
- Get completely deleted
As I’ve never used the Image (Sorry, iMage) Gateway, I think I know which option I’ll be going for…
Police “Hacking”
Posted: Mon 5 January, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts Leave a comment »There’s an interesting story in The Times today about police forces in the UK and “remote searches” of a suspect’s PC.
It doesn’t need a court warrant, just for a senior officer to say he “believes” that it is “proportionate” and necessary to prevent or detect serious crime  which is defined as any offence attracting a jail sentence of more than three years. So, no chance of any abuse of the system there, then. *cough*
This development isn’t new – it’s been in place since an amendment to the Computer Misuse Act 1990 in 1994 which made hacking legal if it was authorised and carried out by the state.
However, I wonder what happens if the suspect being “remote searched” has a firewall and/or secure wireless network (or no wireless network at all) which prevents that remote search. Can they then also be charged with refusing/blocking a ‘legitimate’ search, in the same way you can if you refuse to be stop-and-searched?
Demoralising Success
Posted: Sun 4 January, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, Thoughts Leave a comment »Watching Starter for Ten tonight, I was surprised by how young James McAvoy looked, for it only being made two (sorry, three) years ago, so I looked up some information on him.
And it’s incredibly depressing, seeing that someone who’s done as many programmes and films as he has is still only twenty-bloody-nine.
Yes, born in ’79. Eight years after me. It’s making me feel very old, I have to say.
Chargeable
Posted: Tue 30 December, 2008 Filed under: Charm School, Customer Services, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »How come people who call 999 for stupid reasons like these don’t get charged with wasting police time?
One would hope that having the threat of actually being charged and getting a criminal record for excessive fuckwittery might actually be some kind of incentive to these bell-ends to think before dialling.
Over recent times, I have actually called the police (or emergency services) three times
- One was for an accident that we’d just driven past, and that was obviously extremely recent. For that, I used 999
- One was to check whether I needed to report an accident involving a deer – I know some car accidents involving animals need reporting, I didn’t know whether deer were one of those. (They’re not). For that, I used the non-emergency number.
- The final one was to report the overnight theft of a neighbour’s stone horse-head wall statue things. Neighbour was away, we’d seen/heard nothing ’til the morning. Guess which number I used? Yep – non-emergency again.
I simply can’t imagine calling 999 because a pizza company has put the wrong toppings on my pizza, or to ask about shop opening times. I assume that some people are so self-centred that anything they need to do is “an emergency” so they use an emergency number. Bell-ends, the lot of ’em.
Green Fuels, New Problems
Posted: Mon 29 December, 2008 Filed under: Cynicism, Driving, Green, Thoughts 1 Comment »This story on BBC News raises an interesting issue – as more cars get converted to dual fuel, and use LPG (Liquid Petroleum Gas), crashes and vehicle fires are starting to carry significantly more risk.
After all, LPG is carried in cylinders under pressure, which make it very similar to the acetylene cylinders which always make the Fire Service pap themselves (and for good reason) due to the possibility of explosion if they get too hot in a fire. If you’ve ever put an aerosol can on a fire, think of the effects of that and multiply it by a thousand. Explosion, fireball, etc. etc. In short, Ka-boom.
The same is true (and even possibly exacerbated) with LPG canisters – after all, petrol escaping from pressure and turning back into gas is going to cause one heck of a bang.
So I suspect we’re going to see more road closures for relatively minor accidents and/or vehicle fires where LPG-powered vehicles are involved.
Think I’ll stick with diesel, myself…