Category: observations

Friday Random Ten: Endless Summer Days edition

Pressure drop / The Clash / Black Market Clash
Waitin’ For A Superman / The Flaming Lips / The Soft Bulletin
Lady Day / Lou Reed / Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal
We Were Both Wrong / Dave Edmunds / Repeat When Necessary
D.J. / David Bowie / Lodger
High On Sunday 51 / Aimee Mann / Lost in Space
Hand In Hand / Dire Straits / Making Movies
I Pray, Ole / David Bowie / Lodger
Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin) / Sly & The Family Stone / The Essential Sly & The Family Stone (disc 1)
Motorcade / Magazine / Rays And Hail 1978-1981
Who Is It / Björk / Medulla

useful stuff

I just finished a pretty big collaborative project and made use of the free online storage at Box.net. 1 Gb doesn’t sound like all that much, but it worked quite well. Good throughput and fast access; it was pretty useful to have as a staging area for shared files.

Worth a look, especially at that price.

local music

Neighbor Dave Neiwert shares his experience listening in on a choral performance by orcas. He makes regular summer trips to the San Juans to look for them but this adventure was improved by the addition of a hydrophone.

Orca chorale:

Watching them from shore in the clear light of day, moving efficiently past us as they drove out to the southern end of the island, it struck me that how we experience wild, mysterious creatures like killer whales has a lot to do with our own expectations of them.

You know — we want to believe that the whales came by, for the first time in three days, to greet the singers on shore. We want to believe that they can somehow divine what we’re doing and interact with it. And people experienced with orcas will tell you that these kinds of small coincidences, in fact, just keep mounting up with them: appearing or behaving in a striking way at a striking time. As though they can read our minds, or sing a chorale in imitation of one onshore.

Scientists know this is illogical, and in the end it’s just another kind of anthropomorphism, projecting our own wishes onto a creature that in reality is perfectly neutral and oblivious to us. In our eagerness to embrace what we might share in common with these creatures, we too readily dispose of what makes them unique. We fail to respect the whales for their whaleness.

Still, none of that can change the reality of the actual experience and how it felt. It sounded like a chorus of angels, and I was blessed to hear them.

I wish he had recorded it somehow. I might have to look for some samples.

never get into a pissing contest with a skunk

One of my regular correspondents writes: :

I’m interested in seeing w’happens, here.

Apparently what happens is the aggrieved party gets to write his own retraction/correction and take a cheap shot at my ability to read tables. So my friends tell me: I’m not going to read it, based on their advice. I called the OpEd page editor to let her know exactly what kind of personality she is amplifying through her paper’s reach, ie a guy who calls up my house 5 times, in hopes of my going out and hand-correcting the day’s press run of papers, perhaps.

Talked to a couple of people who have had the misfortune of interacting with this fellow, and from their accounts he is one of those predicable pundits who can be relied upon to spout a given opinion, with a leavening of arrogance. One of my informants, after a moment’s reflection, summed him up as “a lonely man.” Tells me all I need to know, I think.

this just in: RIAA cartel discovers its cluelessness, tries to deflect blame to partner

So the RIAA, greedy as always, now realizes it could sell more licenses to listen to songs if Apple were more amenable with its use of DRM. Now, who do you suppose came up with the idea of an encryption scheme to prevent duplication of media files?

Daring Fireball: Interoperability and DRM Are Mutually Exclusive:

So what Apple could do to achieve ITMS interoperability is simply remove the DRM from the music it sells via ITMS and deliver the files in non-encrypted AAC format. Users would be happy, as they’d get files unencumbered by FairPlay restrictions. The manufacturers of other digital music players would be happy, because AAC is an open format; they would not have to pay a licensing fee to Apple or Microsoft or anyone else to enable their gadgets to play these hypothetical non-DRM-encrypted AAC files from ITMS.

But that’s not what the music industry wants. Yes, there exist legal download stores that sell music in MP3 format (e.g. eMusic.com) — but they don’t have content from the major record labels, because the major record labels refuse to allow their music to be sold for download without DRM. The music industry’s insistence upon DRM is what put the ITMS in the position that Apple now enjoys; the record industry is decrying a lock-in advantage that they themselves handed to Apple so they could deny their customers (i.e. us, the people who listen to music) the interoperability they now say they want.

I expect Apple would be happy to get out of the DRM arms race, as more people would buy from them (DRM being a sticking point for many music listeners). I wonder if this will come up in the next discussion of license renewals?

The Omnivore’s Dilemma: an appreciation

I just finished reading this and recommend it wholeheartedly. Books about food are always interesting to me: I’m curious about the basic stuff like prep and combinations or additions I hadn’t considered, as well as history. But this book is an examination of the cultural history of food, specifically in America, but with references to the human history of eating.

Continue reading “The Omnivore’s Dilemma: an appreciation”

so switch already

When someone like Mark Pilgrim broadcasts his reasons for switching after he switches, it’s to start an argument that he can only win. He has switched, so there’s no talking him out of it. And given his personality, it’s not great leap to think this is his agenda. (I haven’t read his piece and am not really interested. I don’t care what anyone uses, unless they are making work for me as a result. Can you tell I have been working on a project with Windows as a component?)

Then there’s Tim Bray. He wants to be talked out of it, specifically by Apple.

Time to Switch?:

Will I Switch?

Yes. For Mark’s reasons, and because I’m pretty darn sure that either Ubuntu or some other distro will eventually get the key things right.

Alternatively, Apple could open-source a few of their apps so we could all fix the pain points, and they could start having an actual conversation with the world. Nothing less is acceptable.

As John Gruber points out, neither Mark nor I are exactly typical. But you know what? I think that if the GNU/Linux/Solaris community can sustain its current level of energy and progress, and if Apple maintains its dysfunctional communications culture, there are going to be better choices just not for me, but for a lot of other people too.

He’s right: they are not typical. If he can make it work, he’s welcome to. Linux is still linux, I expect: a name shared by a bajillion slightly different collections of userland apps, packaging systems, and window managers, most of which are crummy, none of which are designed, but instead simply collected.

Good luck to both of them.