Boing Boing has linked a really intresting talk by MPAA to a group of high-tech suppliers, attempting to sell to them the concept of plugging the analoge hole in media hardware. This is seriously stupid and is summed up well by one of the questions addressed to the speaker.
One questioner asked who would be responsible for the extensive
consumer education needed. Hunt’s answer — that he hoped retailers
would do it — drew dubious groans.
The final question summed up the problem: “This is a room full of
people whose living depends on this working. You’re getting pushback to
the point of hostility. If you can’t sell this to us, how are you going
to sell it to the target 16-45 demographic?”
Hunt said the marketplace would ultimately sort it out.
I hope that this is the beginning of the end for the MPAA!
Also…
After several days of really unproductive work, and moping around, today my wife finally got me out of the house. We borrowed a really old GPS unit and went Geocaching! The original idea was to go kite flying, but since we broke our kite in high winds last time we took it out, would need to fix it before leaving, and it was blowing a gale and would probably break again; we decided to search the internet for the nearest cache to the White Horse at Uffington.
Geocaching is basically the modern equivalent of world wide treasure hunting. Except that the map is replaced by a GPS and the ’spot marked with an X’ is a longtude and latitude coordinate. More details can be found on the official website.
Since the GPS we borrowed is very old, and is a hand-me-down anyway, it took us a while to get it linked up to all the required satellites. Even after we did that, it was often quite confusing to tell if we were going in the right direction or not. Eventually though, we got the hang of it.
However, it seemed that getting to the location of the cache was the easy part, ignoring the interrogating looks of ramblers as we scrambled through the bushes was much harder. But eventually (encouraged by the freezing wind chill) we succumbed to decrypting the clue from the website, and found it quite easily.
Because geocaching is very well documented on the web, I was not surprised by some of the strange random stuff that we found in the cache. All the same it was very exciting, and well worth braving the cold!
We will definitely be looking out for other caches when we next go out for a walk.
I’ve been dreaming of snow for months, and it’s finally here. I really want to take a photo to show you, but it’s only been going for a few minutes and hasn’t even settled.
I’ve decided to leave it for a couple of hours, so more on this later.
Update: No more snow, just sleet. I despair!
As mentioned here I have been a little concerned with the nature of MP3 piracy and problems with my own music collections. Well I am delighted to announce my discovery of allofmp3.com, an extraordinarily cheap and legal mp3 download service from Russia. I was directed to this site by a Christian friend of mine, and after expressing my doubts to the legality of the site, he also pointed me to this article published by BBC News.
So I have been totally updating my MP3 collection with the latest albums! Whoo! The only album that I couldn’t find (out of about 30) was Ben Folds - Rockin’ the Suburbs. I have put a request into allofmp3.com for this, and they have already responded with the promise that they will see what they can do.
So Rock On!
c o f f e e . t i m e Originally uploaded by Chriseye.
I really can’t be arsed to do any work today. I was at my desk by 9am. Have checked all my RSS feeds, BBC News, items I’m bidding for on ebay, and browsing through the latest flickr posts - until I saw this…
So right as soon as I’ve finished typing these few sentances. I’m going to pluck out my very own percolator from the cupboard, fill it up with the best coffee I can find in the fridge, then get the hell on with my WORK :-)
