Movies Slow to Join iTunes

I'm a little jaded about not having school tomorrow. I feel like it's a waste of a day since I can't go anywhere and we'll probably have to make up the slack with a dead day. I'll probably find things to do, but I can't go to the gym! What a rip! Anyway, on to some more interesting stuff. Business Week is reporting on an issue few people have brought to the forefront, besides Disney and Paramount, no one has jumped at the chance at selling their movies on iTunes. I think Apple will definitely have a harder time swaying these movie studios because they have so much to lose from this business model failing, though I think their concern for DRM is stupid. I don't think they realize that people will crack it pretty much no matter what they do. There are always smarter people and there are always loopholes; you don't need a B.S. in Comp Sci to know that. Why not focus on providing your content more conveniently so that people don't have to resort to piracy? In fact, very few people pirate movies compared to the issue with TV shows and music. There are plenty of pirates, don't get me wrong, but being on a college campus, I don't see it all that much. The people to worry about are crazy Korean and Indian guys, who are always an issue, and bored high school teens, who will eventually stop doing it (I know I did). Once college and jobs start, people don't care to go through the trouble to look for movies online, and would much prefer the convenience and high quality of a legal purchase. That's my point of view, feel free to dispute it. I have a feeling that Jobs will prevail, but I don't think that there's any guarantee of it. He just has to be smart about all this, and he's not bad at that.

I've got some more good news/bad news for our favorite Redmond-based company! They've reached 100 million downloads for IE 7 making it the second most-used web browser (behind IE 6), and it's likely to grow as people start adopting Vista. I haven't used it much at all myself so I can't comment on it, but its standards compliance still sounds disparaging (Firefox may not be 100%, but it's much closer than IE 7). Bad news though: no matter how hard they try, they're not managing to catch up with Google. I kind of feel bad for them, because they put together the right ingredients, and they're failing. Here's a free tip guys: try shooting ahead of the curve. If you just follow Google's coattails, you'll never get anywhere. Back to Apple real quick: the Apple TV only has a 1 Ghz Intel Pentium M chip under the hood (though it has a health 2 MB L2 cache, to its credit), which is probably enough power, but just strange for them to go with such an old chip and then underclock it to work with the bus. What's really disappointing is that it won't act as its own router. They could've done so much more with this product; it's a pity. Lastly, Tech Zone put up some pictures of babes from CES, and I just had to share this one because I don't know why they'd need a baby pool at an electronics expo:



Just two things in movie news. AICN has a cool teaser art for Mutant Chronicles, a really interesting sounding movie which I hope to learn more about and share here. A sci-fi war movie could have a lot of different sides to it. The other thing is the Golden Globes. I felt it was rather shocking for Babel to have one Best Drama given the mixed reviews it received, but I was more shocked that Dreamgirls beat Little Miss Sunshine for Best Comedy/Musical.

Now for some Monday Madness:

1. I get about _______ telemarketer phone calls on a daily basis.
0 since I'm on a cell phone only (no land line) and that Do Not Call list.
2. I never call anyone after _______ at night.
10 PM. I do aim to not call after 9, but if it's really important then I'll stretch it.
3. I never call anyone before _______ in the morning.
10 AM, because I'd be pissed if someone called me any earlier unless they're calling me for an internship.
4. I (please choose one) DO or DON'T screen my phone calls via caller ID.
don't; I rarely ignore a call from the caller ID unless I'm in a meeting or class and just can't take the call.
5. I really should call _______ more often.
my cousins?