The Blog
28 Mar 2006 I'm getting a certain amount of push back from the Apple Fan Boys. Not surprising really.
I know I'm tilting at windmills. In my perfect world, Apple Fans wouldn't say "We love you Apple and everything you do". They'd say "We love the iPod. We love iTunes. We love iTMS. But Fairplay sucks, and as long as you use Fairplay we're not going to use iTMS. And by the way could you make it easier to listen to the tracks we buy from iTMS on all the other things we have that play digital music, like the car stereo, the home stereo, the DVD player, the Swiss army knife, etc etc" 27 Mar 2006 With a nod to Cory who suggested the byline.
 And to the Wikipedia entry. Please steal this image and use wherever and whenever you like. Rip it, Mix it, Burn it. 26 Mar 2006  DRM is artificial scarcity that steals fair use rights from customers and the public commons. That's Corporate Piracy. Please steal this image and do whatever you like with it. ps. This message still isn't right. "It's Piracy" isn't quite the right message and like Lessig's Right to Remix the underlying message is too esoteric. We need a soundbite as catchy and obvious as "It's Piracy". And people aren't going to get "It Steals Fair Use Rights" either. How about this one.  Publishers Public Domain Piano rolls Short Copyright Terms Photocopiers Home Taping (Lack of) Copyright Term Parity Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act VCRs CD Burning P2P File Sharing DVD rewriters Time Shifting Kazaa Sony VCR Ruling Video Cameras Camera Phones Internet Radio Sampling Mashups Counterfeit mass production Creative Commons Russian Download sites Countries with no respect for Copyright DRM DMCA The Broadcast Flag Fair Use / Fair Dealing First Sale Doctrine Corporate Lobbying Overly Restrictive EULAs Jack Valenti Organised Crime UK Performance Licenses Libraries Small Mammals Are Killing Film Entertainment The Entertainment Complex/Cartel Music Labels Dinosaur Business Models  And it's Illegal Making us all criminals Fun 16 Mar 2006 Configuring Apache for Maximum Performance | HowtoForge - Linux Howtos and Tutorials
[from: del.icio.us] 15 Mar 2006 08 Mar 2006 06 Mar 2006 05 Mar 2006 If you want to write Skype add ons with PHP, you need:-
- PHP5 - The Skype COM Control - Some sample code to get you started. 02 Mar 2006 iTunes' long march to market share | The Register :
"The iTunes Music Store [ITMS] buyer buys 25 songs in the first year, 15 in the second year, and in the third year, the battery has died, so you have to go out and buy a new iPod. And you paid $300 for that machine," Stupid, stupid, stupid. As a father of (still, just) teenage kids, It makes me really quite angry that a $300 device that should be a consumer durable is now a consumer disposable. It's one thing throwing away a $50 cassette player because it's broken, it's quite another throwing away a $300 device. "oh, well, never mind, I'll get another for my birthday" 01 Mar 2006 Australian IT - Napster plays blame game (Adam Pasick in New York, MARCH 01, 2006)
NAPSTER'S chief executive has blamed technical glitches from Microsoft and music player makers for hampering his company's ability to compete with Apple's iTunes music service. "There is no question that their execution has been less than brilliant over the last 12 months," Napster chairman and chief executive Chris Gorog said at a New York conference. "Our business does rely on Microsoft's digital rights management software and our business model also relies on Microsoft's ecosystem of device manufacturers," he said. Goven my experiences with Playsforsure after a Zen Xtra firmware upgrade, I'd agree. PlaysForSure doesn't. isbndb.com - free ISBN database
Wow! A library spider that has assembled a vast amount of information about books. [from: del.icio.us] 26 Feb 2006 25 Feb 2006 Official Google Base Blog: Buying on Google Base : For buyers, this feature will provide a convenient and secure way to purchase Google Base items by credit card. For sellers, this feature integrates transaction processing with Google Base item management.
Is this the beginning of Google's Paypal competitor and them muscling into eBay's space? 24 Feb 2006 With Songbird and rumours of a P2P extension for Firefox, is the Mozilla XUL environment destined to become a preferred route for cross platform desktop development?
How about a P2P IM+Voice+Video chat client built on top of LibJingle and using XUL? At least one person seems to be going in that direction. 23 Feb 2006 Yahoo! Developer Network - PHP Developer Center
A bunch of articles and scripts about using PHP with Web 2 APIs, mainly based on Yahoo!'s APIs [from: del.icio.us] 20 Feb 2006 On O'Reilly Radar > Tim O'Reilly says
From a consumer point of view, Apple's DRM is far worse, ultimately, since strong DRM just makes people give up on the product, or route around it, while Apple's is just comfortable enough for most people that they go along with it. Hence the effectiveness, to my mind, of Jeff's image. Which was "The key to protecting rights and getting paid is as simple as the difference in how dogs and cats are handled at the veterinarian. When trying to control a dog, you tighten your hold. When trying to control a cat, you loosen your hold. DRM, properly executed, is a cat. " Cory is unsurprisingly all over this. Here's my comment. DRM, properly executed, is a NoCat. There is no cat. As technical and business aware leaders we've really got to stop promoting the idea that there's an acceptable level of DRM. There really isn't. By praising Apple's DRM, we're promoting the idea that it's ok to sell customers a high priced, low quality, DRM-riddled product that only works on one vendor's platform. Is that what the customers were crying out for? The end result is that there isn't or won't be a single open music player that isn't tied to either FairPlay (sic) or PlaysForSure (even more sic). Is that really a good thing? Thinking further about this. There's a persistent meme in the blogs that there is something called "Acceptable DRM". I'm very strongly against this. My take is that DRM is never about preventing piracy and always about capturing and controlling market share while ensuring customer lock in. But I do wonder if there's a parallel here with the real reason for copyright. Just about everyone agrees that Copyright as a limited term monopoly for the creator is a good thing and should encourage creators by ensuring an ability to get a reasonable return for their efforts. This balances the immediate payback to the creator with the longer term payback for the commons. Even the most ardent copyfighters seem to agree with this. The problem is that copyright terms are out of control and there's a persistent belief among creators and their managers that they should have an indefinite monopoly on their creation. The parallel with DRM is to argue that DRM gives innovators (like Apple) the ability to innovate and maintain a limited monopoly on their innovation and so make a reasonable return on their investment. But the strength of DRM and it's indefinite nature again distorts the balance with the good of the commons as a whole and specifically the good of the customers. Enshrining this monopoly in law with things like the DMCA legitimises this im-balance. In theory market forces should resolve this into a balance between the DRM owner and society. In practice, DRM re-inforces the existing market shape rather than allowing market forces to change it. Thus we have a self perpetuating cycle where Apple can create and maintain a monopoly on both legal downloads and the player to use them to the long term detriment of the customer. But all this is moot. Apple couldn't have done this without agreement with the entertainment cartel. They wouldn't have given permission without DRM. The DRM gives Apple a weapon to build and maintain market share. Other vendors are then locked out of the market. The whole exercise is protected by the DMCA. So no matter how much I say that buying a high priced, low quality, DRM-riddled product that only works on one vendor's platform is just plain stupid, very large numbers of people will still go ahead and do it because it's the only game in town. 
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