More Holes in Sony’s Foot

Mark Russinovich has another post on the Sony BMG spyware debacle. The folks that make the spyware for Sony responded and challenged four points Mark has made about this unwanted software that installs itself on your computer when you play a copy-protected Sony CD.

Mark responds point for point and concludes:

By not coming clean they are making clear to any potential customers that they are a not only technically incompetent, but also dishonest.

I doubt that Sony is being dishonest. I think it is simply trying in vain to stuff the cat back into the bag and using a questionable approach to do it.

It’s time for someone important at Sony to step up and end this mess. Tell the truth. Say that the cat running around makes you nervous. Say you made a mistake by doing this. Say you’re sorry and fix it. Then, but only then, will everything be OK.

Technorati Tags:
drm, digital music

TIVO Deathwatch: Throwing Ropes

nailcoffin

When you’re sinking, if you’re still conscious you start throwing ropes and hope someone grabs the other end. TIVO seems to be throwing them all over.

PVRblog reports that TIVO and Yahoo may be about to announce a deal that will embed “record to TIVO” buttons in the Yahoo TV section and add some sort of Yahoo weather and traffic feature to TIVO.

Also, Real Tech News has an article quoting some guy at the Motley Fool (an investing site that I do not like) about how Google should buy TIVO.

A bidding war between Yahoo and Google- now that might just the what the doctor ordered to save TIVO.

Technorati Tags:
tivo

Project Flickr: Final Update

Back in the summer, I decided to try to drag my friends and family into the 21st century by sending them invitations to join Flickr and share photos. Here’s the first part of the story.

Since then two things have happened. One, Flickr has gotten even better by adding lots of new features, including the ability to print photo albums and posters and the ability to order prints. Two, not one of my test subjects is using Flickr in any meaningful way. Neither my sister nor any of my cousins signed up and those friends who initially signed up either never uploaded a single photo or lost interest shortly after uploading a photo or two.

This could mean a couple of things. My friends and family could think I’m a honking nerd and decide that they’d rather dig ditches than join me in some sort of nerdathon photo-style. This is certainly possible, but most of these folks have enough other reasons (read relatives) to share photos that they could put Flickr to good use completely apart from me and my little experiment.

I think the answer is simple. A lot of people, particularly those my age and older, simply aren’t sold on the computer/internet as a time saving device. Either they think it’s too hard, or too dangerous or too time consuming. It’s not very hard. Flickr is very safe (since you can select who can see and print your photos). And it takes much less time to upload a photo for grandma than it does to drive to Walgreen’s drop off your film, go back and pick it up and then mail off the prints. True, grandma may not have a computer, but aunt and uncle probably do. So while Flickr may not be a complete substitute for all traditional prints (though it is for me), it can certainly be a substitute for some of them.

But it’s unfamiliar. Everyone understands how to drop off film. Most people understand how to email a digital photo. The new and different isn’t going to be universally accepted until it becomes familiar, the way it will seem to our kids who are growing up in the digital age.

All of this leads me to a couple of conclusions. First, my little experiment was probably doomed from the start. Second, and more importantly, all of these web services like Flickr, the various blogging platforms, My Space, iTunes and others still have tremendous, almost immeasurable, growth potential as the digital generation grows up. I will keep this in mind as I review and adjust my stock and mutual fund portfolio over the coming months. I’m not going to buy Google at a jillion dollars a share, but I’m starting to understand why it went that high.

Technorati Tags:
flickr, digital photography

Book Review: New Cormac

I just finished No Country for Old Men, the new novel by Cormac McCarthy, one of my favorite authors. It’s set in 1980 Texas, where a working man stumbles across a drug deal gone bad and makes off with a bunch of drug money, only to be relentlessly chased by a bad man named Chigurh and a Sheriff named Bell. By anyone else’s standards it’s a mighty good book, but it’s not up to the standards of McCarthy’s prior work.

I thought it was interesting, but not compelling. Yes, I caught a little of the literary and biblical references and I have read that there are a lot more. But if I wanted to do a puzzle, I’d do a puzzle. Many of his prior books contained passages in Spanish. It was fun to try to read and understand those, because they added to the authenticity of the book. Here, the puzzles just weren’t worth solving. I just read over them. I embrace the idea that the drug war is a bloody war fought by dark and anonymous forces. I liked Sheriff Bell and appreciated that he is the one of the last of a dwindling breed. But books are about the story, and the story just didn’t grab me.

Blood Meridian and the Trilogy are among the best books I’ve ever read. This one is not. It’s OK, worth reading. But not a literary force like the others.

Technorati Tags:
book review, cormac mccarthy

He Write Good

Kevin Hales is a friend of mine and one of the best writers I know. I’ve read his posts on ACCBoards.Com for years. Now he has a blog. Kevin’s one of those rare folks who can write about anything and make it intensely interesting. Witness this excerpt from his hilarious post about the neighborhood Buddhist-in-training:

You know, the putz from some American suburb who has recently discovered Buddhism and has gotten all Zenny and over-serious? The guy who doesn’t own a TV and needs to tell everyone about it?

He will find you at parties, sometimes. His name might be, I don’t know, Benjamin. He might have a goatee, or maybe just some ridiculous spot of hair on his chin. He might say, “My name is Ben. I don’t say ‘Benjamin’ anymore because people can’t spell it.” (I never understood this.) At some point, really way too soon in the conversation, he’ll say something about Buddhism. Then he’ll say, “Not Boo-dism, mind you–Boo-thism. There’s an H in there. Not many people know that.” This will mark the first time you really really should get away from him.

But you can’t. He has identified you as the guy he’s going to mentor about Eastern philosophy tonight. He mildly, but firmly, says, “Let me ask you a question. Why do you work?” If you are smart, at this point you will stab him in the neck with the nearest moderately pointy object within reach. More of us are not smart when faced with this guy, though. We are naive. What you do is fumble a bit and then say, “Well, I guess to make money.”

Bookmark his blog. You’ll be glad you did.

Technorati Tags:
blogging, kevin hales

RanchoCast Beta 3

I’m starting to get the hang of this podcasting business. First a word for those of you who don’t know a podcast from a forecast…

Podcasts are audio files that can be downloaded and played on iPods or other portable music players. You can also listen to the podcast over the web (e.g., at your computer) by simply clicking the Listen icon on the podcast page (see the link below).

If you are new to podcasts and want to try to take one on the road, you need a software program to download the podcast and transfer it to your music player. I recommend iPodder, but there are lots of other programs that do the same thing. Remember, you only need this program if you want to listen to the podcast on your portable music player. To listen while working at your computer all you have to do is click on the Listen icon.

In that regard, I have done Beta 3 of our new RanchoCast podcasts. On this one, Cassidy and I play 7 songs, including a rocker by the Drive-By Truckers, some Richard Buckner, the song Cassidy is named after and a live John Prine song that will blow your socks off.

All in all, I’m pretty sure I can make some good podcasts, as I get more comfortable behind the mike. What I don’t know is whether there’s an audience for this sort of thing. Time will tell.

A word about the music files: I am a songwriter and musician, and I have no desire to take money out of anyone’s pocket. To the contrary, I am trying to promote some great music that you likely won’t hear on mainstream radio. These are low bitrate MP3s, and none of our podcasts are archived. In fact, the only RanchoCast that will ever be available is the current one. In other words, I am experimenting with this technology as a way to promote alt. county music. Stated simply, please don’t let your record labels sue me.

Rethinking Firefox

firefox I’ve said a few times that I wasn’t all that impressed with Firefox. That was true at the time and it’s mostly true now. But here’s a confession: I’ve been using Firefox as my primary browser for the past few months.

It comes down to two things: tabbed browsing and, more importantly, the many extensions (a nerd word for add-ons) that are available for Firefox.

I have done the following to my initial installation of Firefox:

1) Added the Google Toolbar. Some Firefox purists argue that Google is “bad like Microsoft” and you don’t need the Google Toolbar. That’s hogwash. The Google Toolbar is a great add-on to any browser.

2) Performed the speed tweaks outlined here. Some comment that some or all of them are unnecessary, but things seem to go faster after the tweak. It may be the placebo effect, but it feels good.

3) Added the Bugmenot extension. I hate having to register to read free sites, with this add-on I don’t have to.

4) Added the extension that makes Blogger (the front-end I use to create, but not host, this site) always use the current date. Otherwise it uses the date and time a post was initially created and I often save posts as drafts for days or even weeks before I post them. This add-on saves me a lot of headaches.

5) Added the Onfolio Firefox extension. This allows me to use my beloved Onfolio in Firefox.

There are hundreds of other extensions, but these are the ones that I use everyday. Once Internet Explorer adds tabbed browsing (scheduled to be included in the upcoming new version), I always figured I’d switch back to it. But with all of these extra features to choose from I may not.

Who’d of thunk it?

Two cautionary notes:

a) It takes a little work to get the hang of finding and installing these extensions, but once you do it once you can do it again and it’s very worth it.

b) I just installed the newest version of Firefox (RC 1.5) and that broke all of my extensions. Some of them are available for this new version. Others, like the Onfolio one, don’t yet work in this version. Google Toolbar says is does, but it doesn’t. I suspect this will all get fixed before too long.

Technorati Tags:
firefox

Will Microsoft Exterminate the Sony Bug?

Ed Bott has called for Microsoft to include the removal of Sony BMG’s spyware in the next update of its Malicious Software Removal Tool, which is updated every month. He admits it’s a longshot, but this is a rare chance for Microsoft to be viewed by all as the good guy.

Mark Russinovich, the guy who discovered Sony’s spyware, has analyzed Sony’s so called patch for this spyware and reports that the patch is more menace than medicine.

Whoever is the decision maker for Sony on this issue is a walking bad decision.

Technorati Tags:
digital music, drm

Blog Wars, Round 2

catboxing I posted the other day about Jason Calacanis’ allegations that Creative-Weblogging has duplicateed Weblogs look and feel. I suggested this would make for interesting reading in the days ahead.

Torsten Jacobi of Creative-Weblogging has responded with some allegations of his own, including that Weblogs has copied other sites in the past.

While this is fun to watch in and of itself, the more important issue is the effect this argument and others like it will have on internet customs and practices- meaning what’s OK and what’s not OK in the cyber-frontier. Not just what’s OK legally (the lawyers will sort all of that out), but what is considred acceptable and not acceptable by the blogging community as we try to police ourselves so Congress and the lawyers won’t have to do it for us.

I don’t know the answer, but it’s an important question.

Technorati Tags:
blogging

Jukebox, Annotated

You know the drill. Open up your jukebox of choice, point the shuffle feature to your entire library of songs and list, without exception, the first 10 or so songs that play. Each week, I add a little commentary about some of the artists, songs, albums, etc.

Secret Dan – The Name Droppers (Across the Great Divide) (1)
Hills of Tuscany – Bill Morrissey (You’ll Never Get to Heaven) (2)
Frank’s Theme – Tom Waits (Frank’s Wild Years) (3)
Howling at Trouble – Richard Shindell (Sparrows Point) (4)
One by One – Billy Bragg & Wilco (Mermaid Avenue) (5)
One Thing in Mind – Amy Allison (Sad Girl) (6)
Ballad of Easy Rider – The Byrds (Ballad of Easy Rider) (7)
Fallin’ Out – Robert Earl Keen (Gravitational Forces) (8)
Get Outta Here – Robert Cage (Can See What You’re Doing) (9)
For the Pleasure of You – Lloyd Cage (Bad Vibes) (10)

(1) A good song off of the Jo Carol Pierce tribute album. I don’t know anything about the band- it may be a one-off deal by some other people, but the song is pretty Good stuff. funny.

(2) I don’t like this record nearly as much as I do his first four, but this song sounds pretty good now. Maybe I should give that record another listen.

(3) Similarly, here is a song off of a transitional record from Tom Waits- the transition from his excellent work up to and including Heart Attack and Vine to his virtually unlistenable work beginning with Bone Machine. Not a bad record, but start with Nighthawks at the Diner.

(4) One of the many excellent songs off of the same record as the first song on the current RanchoCast podcast. Excellent song, excellent record. Buy it now.

(5) Great song off the Woody Guthrie songfest. This is a fine alt. country song.

(6) Mose Allison’s daughter’s voice is somewhat of an acquired taste, but she writes sad twangy songs, which are my favorite. I really like this song.

(7) As I’ve said before, no band (even my beloved Allman Brothers) influenced me as a songwriter and musician as much as The Byrds. This very mellow folk number is my favorite song on the record.

(8) Robert Earl Keen shows why he is the King of Americana. A fine song on a fine record. There are a lot of folks who try to sound like him, but very few who can write a song like him. The real deal.

(9) Robert Cage rocks, period. If you (like me) dig Junior Kimbrough, R.L. Burnside and authentic blues, this is a guy you should check out.

(10) So You’d Like to Save the World is the song to start with on this record, but this is a good, stripped down alternative pop song. Part of the album is sort of British rootsy and part of it rocks.

Technorati Tags:
music reviews