“Far from protecting music from illicit copying, DRM practically demands illicit copying. With DRM, the only way to get music that plays on all your devices, past and present, is to rip it off.”
This is probably one of the best, most intellectually honest articles on DRM and what a nonsense it is that I have read in a long time.
Just read on Macworld about a spread in MacAddict from 1996 that someone has dug out that seems familiar following Apple’s recent campaign.
Please can someone destroy this? Erase it from existence? This horrific depiction of the Mac user, with his punchable face, oh so ‘wacky’ watch, Seinfeld mullet and worst of all, a f**king denim shirt, is so cringingly bad that even I’m tempted to pick up a Dell catalogue. Well, nearly.
At the very least I’m kind of relieved that there’s no nineties revival just yet.
Two rivals for this one actually. Could it be this hugely accurate headline?
Or perhaps this one that made me splutter tea all over my desk on first reading?
Cheers to Ward and The Mac for these.
“It’s like a song writer who’s eternally ripping off someone else’s song and just changing the odd line a little”
- Noel Gallagher on David Cameron
Ahem.
Fair point though.
(Cheers Mac)
Despite the fact that, as far as I am aware, the Internet barely exists in North Korea, I really really want this blog to be real, if for no other reason than finishing every blog post with “I hate Bush” seems to me to be a great blog etiquette to adopt.
Anyway, even if it’s not real, at the very least it showed me this video of Bush feeling up the German Chancellor. Ah, comedy gold…
I hate Bush.
For someone born and bred in the UK I spend far too much time reading about US politics, and yes, I blame “The West Wing” entirely, plus of course politics is much more enjoyable as a spectator sport.
It’s also fair to say that there’s a foggy depressing blur about the politics of Westminster; our lack of a presidential system and the fact we don’t directly elect a national government means that it’s sometimes hard to build up any steam about it without just feeling shamed, disgusted and let down by Labour, yet not evil enough to vote Tory and far too dignified to vote Lib Dem. I’m the first person to argue for more passion and less apathy about politics, but when Patricia Hewitt is your MP, it’s sometimes hard to be bothered.
Anyway, back to America. Let’s face it, we’re probably all guilty of focussing too much on the state of Washington these days. It’s far more entertaining than anywhere else and six years on, we’re still all dumbfounded here in the old world about how ludicrously incompetent, callous and plain shit Bush’s government is, how anything that would have held America in high regard has been smeared, polluted and removed in such a short space of time, that the country I grew up admiring is now the most hated country on Earth.
So then, I’ve been enthusiastically watching the first players for the 2008 election emerge and particularly the possibility, just the faint possibility that Barack Obama might find himself the front-runner. Today I bought The Audacity of Hope on iTunes and it should get me through a few bus rides home in the next few weeks. The pundits of course still point out that Hillary Clinton is the front-runner, a money-generating steam roller who is getting much more in the way of finance than Obama could ever get to. And I suppose that’s good news; Hillary was an instrumental part of Bill’s eight years, she’s a uniter for the Democrats and she has the presence to beat down the Republicans. Plus, and it really shouldn’t come down to this but it does, she’s a woman, and a woman in the White House is one big symbolic milestone for a progressive America that should have happened years ago.
Still, to me, Hillary just doesn’t excite. Perhaps it’s the playing to the crowd with cold soundbites like “young people today think work is a four-letter word” or getting caught up in (and spending public money on) tedious ‘moral outrages’ like the GTA: San Andreas ‘Hot Coffee’ scandal. But I suppose it’s mainly because her playing to the centre-ground made her vote for a disgusting criminal war in Iraq, a vote that even now she is too busy weaving, ducking and playing politics to simply admit that it was a mistake.
Perhaps there is a British angle on this after all. We’re stuck with a bunch of lying, deceitful war criminals in government right now, something that hurts all the more because they were for a time, the great new hope and now stand for nothing more than betrayal. Hillary stinks of New Labour, and the same disappointment a few years from now.
I could watch this video for ages I reckon. It all looks very cool (even if the eighties synthy music is a bit off). On the other hand, I’ve had work days where I can’t be bothered to move the mouse, so maybe all these big Minority Report gestures aren’t necessarily where it’s all going.
Just how incompetent a President do you have to be to end up re-igniting the cold war?
Any day now Germany will be talking about invading the Sudetenland and Mongol hordes will be tearing their way through Asia.
I’ll be the first to admit that when it comes to campaign finance in the US that the sum total of my expert knowledge comes from watching “The West Wing”, but I know a good idea when I see one.
Anyway, I’m trying to resist blogging about Charlie Brooker’s latest article in The Guardian, because I’m seething about it and wading in on the whole Mac vs PC argument based on an article like that is like wrestling with a pig; you both get dirty and the pig enjoys it.
I think there’s something to be said about the fact that the most terrifying part of this story isn’t sharks, crocodiles or swimming 5,000 miles. No, it’s little tiny fish that swim up your widger.
Great story though.
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