Pigs Fly: Apple is Selling DRM-Free Music

Lost a friend tonight...kind of disappointing and disheartening in a lot of ways. I'm glad that I have something else in my life that's great that I haven't screwed up, and I hope that I don't screw up. Anyway, back to the topic at hand: no, amazingly enough it is not an April Fool's Joke. I definitely thought it was and almost didn't even read the article, but it's true. Yeah, this is kind of an intense move, but so far it's kind of a pilot program with EMI. You can either buy the DRM-laden tracks with lower quality at $1 a pop, or pay an extra 30 cents to remove the DRM and get higher quality. What I'm curious about is why Apple is doing this. Of course to nerds, this is awesome. We've all been clamoring for an end to DRM and all that good stuff. I guess Apple is banking on the current dominance of the iPod and their perceived superiority of iTunes. I wonder if other labels will follow suit, and if this will actually work. Yeah, there are a couple of other services that sell DRM-free music, but mostly for small-time artists and indie labels, and this could be a huge deal. I think they're just testing the waters for now, but I hope that the response is positive, lest we all be shown as being liars when we've cried out that DRM is the devil. Should be interesting, nonetheless.

Staying on that musical track (no pun intended), looks like we'll be seeing legal guitar tabs back on the web very soon in the wake of the big OLGA takedown. Musicnotes is trying to launch a service that would provide the tablature with advertising, and that revenue would then go to the copyright holders. I think it's kind of funny since people are coming up with these tabs based on their ears, so it really doesn't warrant royalties for the artists unless they can prove that the transcriptions are perfect, but that's just my opinion.

I missed a lot of April Fool's Pranks because of how packed my Sunday was, but you can see some of the top ones here. I personally always love the ThinkGeek goodies, and this year I like the WiiHelm best.

It has now been announced that the iPhone will be released on June 11. Not much else to say about that, but I felt that it's noteworthy because I'm sure we'll be seeing a deluge of even more editorials revolving around this date.

Circuit City is laying off 3,400 employees and outsourcing some of their IT employees. Plus, they're closing 60 stores. Anyone else think that they're digging a hole for bankruptcy?

One more one-liner: if you're interesting in buying an HD set then you should totally read this article and learn more about the different kinds. Definitely very basic information that's not commonly known at all, but it's very concise.

Blades of Glory took center stage this weekend in the box office with $33 million, which I thought was a bit low for the comedy suited for most ages, but is still a strong opener with Meet the Robinsons only $8 million behind and 300 holding less than half that at #3. Most notable though was TMNT's enormous dip to under $10 million. Ouch, so much for turtle power.

I missed a couple of trailers. Yahoo Movies has an entertaining trailer for Ocean's Thirteen (if they make another and call it "Ocean's Fourteen", I will boycott it), though I didn't really laugh during it. Still, I think it's a better plot than the second movie, and they don't seem to be trying to hard to bring back Julia Roberts this time. If you can stand the MTV site for four minutes, they have a decent trailer for Hostel 2. It doesn't make it look much different from the first, but I'm sure that it'll be very disturbing all the same.

It looks like Quentin Tarantino has been working on the script for Inglorious Bastards and is using the time off he's taking to promote Grind House to also finish up on writing Inglorious Bastards. I think it's supposed to be a cool, WWII ensemble movie, and I'm really interested to see what Tarantino does with it. Can't wait for a script review!

Lastly, Dreamworks is doing a Shrek the Halls Holiday special for this winter, presumably to help promote Shrek the Third. Oh, and there are already plans for a fourth film. Can we say "milking a new animated franchise way too much"? I think that we're going to see a drastic reduction in quality if they just keep pumping out these movies.

Now for some Monday Madness:

1. Where did you go on your last vacation?
Vacation? I don't have time for vacations! =P More seriously: Canada with my parents like two years ago. Unless you count my extended trip to Seattle in January to do interviews with Microsoft a vacation? It was fun, exciting, and slightly relaxing.
2. Would you go there again? Why or why not?
Canada: probably, but more for the skiing than the sightseeing. I'm sure I'll do a trip to Vancouver this summer. As for Seattle: I'll be there this summer, so yeah ;)
3. How many vacations do you take in one year?
1 at the most. I plan on taking more when I graduate, but it's just a lot of money to spend while I'm still in school.
4. Where would you REALLY like to go on your next vacation, if money was no issue, and how long would you stay?
Probably London. I hear good things and I haven't been to Europe practically at all. My cousin is stationed in Germany, I'd be interested to check that out as well. Another place I'd love to visit is Tokyo, but that'd be a much more challenging trip, I'd imagine.
5. Do you put a little money aside each week (or month) to save up for your vacation?
Nope. I'm Indian, I save enough as it is! No need to make a special travel fund.

Being Geeky is Hot

I bet that grabbed your attention, didn't it?! Sorry to have missed last night's post, but I had to spend some quality time with someone very important to me, followed by doing NSC work until I started falling asleep while typing (some point around 4AM). So anyway, back to the attention grabber: it's not actually a concept that I came up with on my own, I'm pulling it from this list of reasons why being a geek makes you more attractive. I think one dimension of being a geek is definitely thinking less of yourself, even if you're really a lot cooler than people who you would consider "normal" or "cool" yourself. Being obsessed in more interesting things in life tends to give nerds less time to work on confidence and such than the A-list kids have, though they usually end up better off in the end anyway once they figure this out. It's like finding money in your couch: it's pretty cool. If I ever have to step away from that paradigm and give myself credit for something, it'd be #10 on that list. I'm a passionate person, and I just find that important in life. I surround myself with other passionate people because it makes me feel better about life and I usually have more respect for them. I definitely know somoone who fits #4, #5, and #10, and she's pretty hot.

The Pandora blog made a little post about that plan I mentioned recently to increase royalty fees for Internet radio that threatens it entirely. It's a good interview, but it's just really slow and so I don't blame people for not sitting down and watching it. The bottom line is that this thing is a huge deal for those of us who hope to grow their musical tastes via the Internet, and it makes music harder to find and enjoy without bleeding money.

Hacking is fun if you know what you're doing. I, of course, am stupid and never invested the time I should've when I was younger in those things. The best way to understand something, in my opinion, is to know how to break it. So, the best way to make your passwords secure, is to know the easiest ways in which one could figure yours out. That's definitely a worthwhile read, and will hopefully be an eye opener for some of you out there.

Microsoft came up with a clever little marketing thing asking if you would prefer a buttload of beer and an Xbox 360, or a PS3. I think they should've stacked it with Shiner Boch.

So this South African woman had quite the idea: an anti-rape device that is inserted into the vagina and does a lot of damage to anything that should find itself trying to, er, pass through. Yeah, so I agree with the concept, but that's really kind of scary, to be honest. It makes me keel over thinking about how this device works. As horrible as rape is, I don't think this is really going to a work, I think a tazer or mace is better.


I thought that this list of ways to pimp out your office was pretty awesome. While I don't think anyone who works anywhere but Google or a small startup could possibly execute most of these ideas, they're still awesome concepts.

So my browser crashed when I was writing the film part of this post, so I'm just going to talk about the box office again real quick. TMNT beat out 300 for top honors with just $25.5 million, only a few million more than its rated R rival. What's really notable is that Shooter tanked with a measly $14 million. Oh well, next weekend sees the addition of two movies that are sure to bring in wider audiences: Blades of Glory and Meet the Robinsons. Yahoo Movies actually has a new clip online for the former.

Ok, I'll share one more thing: AICN has a pretty good review of The Simpsons movie. It doesn't sound like exactly what we wanted, but it sounds better than what most of us expected out of it, so I may actually decide to see it in theaters now.

Now for some Monday Madness:

1. What kind of automobile do you drive?
2003 Hyundai XG 300
2. What kind of automobile do you WISH you drove?
I guess a Volvo S60 R. Of course I want to go back to the make that saved my life!
3. When is the last time you bought a vehicle (new or used)?
Last August (used)
4. What is your color of choice as far as vehicles go?
It really just depends on the car, to be honest. My car is maroon, which kind of sucks since that's the A&M school color, but it still looks good in it.
5. Do you regularly have your oil changed?
Yeah, my dad helps me with that.
6. How long do you generally keep a vehicle before thinking about buying a new one?
We'll find out =)
7. What kind of automobile will you buy next?
Not sure, but hopefully a lightly used Volvo.

We Need to Fix IT

I hope you all had a great weekend! Mine was overshadowed with the knowledge that I have to get back to studying, but I did get a puzzler done yesterday (woot!) and we did some grilling (though did not go shopping):


People make fun of me for taking pictures of food, but who doesn't like looking at food? Come on! The food was so good that even Fred was beached and she didn't even eat any of it:


Anyway, on to the topic at hand: IT. Oh, and when I said "we," I mean IT managers, not poor college students. I think a clear concern amongst my friends is ending up in a dead end job. No one wants to be at a company like IBM where you get assigned to some project that no one could care less about and you beg for time to pass quicker. Part of the pull to this career for me is that the work is so fun and exciting that days zoom by, and I even at TI I started to become tired of just putting the same feature on different tools. Having innovative spirit is important, and when tech guys become maintenance men you really keep new ideas from the field. I wonder how much universities can really do to excite their students. How do you explain to students what they can do one day with what they know? That kind of spirit just comes from being around other smart people and meeting CEOs of startups and such, both of which I'm thankful to have been exposed to at UT. All you can really do is come up with interesting projects for students to do and hope that it sparks further interest, which is another thing I think UT is good at, but I have no idea how things are done at other universities. Well anyway, this problem is a very hard one to fix, but it is very real. IT isn't as sexy as it once was, and I think we need to go back to that time like 6 years ago where everyone was trembling with excitement over technology and think about what we had outside of an invisible bubble.

Google, you rock. I say that mainly because I just found out about Google Transit for Austin. You just put in two locations and it'll use Google Maps to show you what bus(es) you need to take as well as the times for the next bus and how much money you save on gas. Very cool, and it's in 9 other cities as well.

Some researchers in Australia have apparently used a study to develop software that can rate a woman's looks on a scale from 1 to 10 based on a picture of them. While I appreciate the talent it must've taken to even attempt something like this, I think it's fairly flawed. First of all, using a panel of 50 "volunteers" to determine beauty is really biased and not random at all. On top of that though, even physical beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I see something like this causing immense emotional damage to lots of women, which fashion magazines already do quite well.

We have some new software versions out this weekend. The cooler one is FoxIt Reader version 1.3 with support for more stuff and more pro-version features minus the bloat you'd expect. The other new version is iTunes 7.1.1, which doesn't ostensibly change anything but I'm thinking will fix stability issues that I've noticed in recent months and I'm sure that some of you have had to deal with as well (like erasing the library metafile for no reason).

Here's a one-liner: one blogger put up a list of 10 great sites for web developers and I had to plug it because some of these sites really are awesome (a couple of them I've been checking out for a while). Not only that, but almost all of them are really easy on the eyes.

I don't think it's much of a surprise that 300 managed to keep top honors this week at the box office with $31.2 million, especially since everyone and their mom seems to have seen it now. 300 and Zodiac are probably the best movies out right now, anyway. Wild Hogs also continues to impress everyone with $18.8 million at #2, and the new releases (none of which got much critical acclaim) took the next three spots. Of course, TMNT (not "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles") comes out next week, and I estimate it having a good weekend given its appeal among not only today's youth but also among college students and young adults who grew up on the original TV show and movies.

The only other movie news comes from the Russian site filmz.ru. They have some character posters from the Fantastic Four sequel that look good, albeit a little too airbrushed. Hey, I can't complain when they give us a close-up of Ms. Alba on a poster like that. They also have some pictures from Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which aren't all that exciting but I'm sure that I have some diehard fans reading and there's really no other news out there this weekend.

Now for some Unconscious Mutterings:

I say ... and you think ... ?

1. San Francisco :: California


2. Sadness :: Morose


3. Spirits :: High


4. Harriet :: Tubman


5. State :: Secretary


6. John :: Q


7. Offense :: Defense


8. Timeless :: Classic


9. Account :: Bank


10. Refuse :: Reject

Idiot-Proofing PCs

You know I never thought I'd hope for Spring Break to pass by faster. I think seeing the people I'm dying to see is starting to outweigh the work I don't want to do. Oh well, at least I've learned some fun new songs on guitar that I know someone will love. Anyway, enough of indulging in myself: let's talk about idiot-proofing. Crunchgear wrote a bit about how to make your parents' computer more, well, parent-friendly! While the article has its heart in the right place, I think it's a little too naive. I think there's still more hand-holding involved than he implies. While Gmail is fairly intuitive, you're still going to have to endure calls at random hours of the day if you don't spend enough time walking them through the core features. Same with Skype and e-mail clients and such. I do like the tip about getting a new computer though, because it will cut a lot of your big problems down. It's a wonder that there's not more software to make remotely supporting a machine more doable. For example, I have a firewall on my parents' computer, but it often frustrates them. I wish I could remotely tell it which applications to allow and such. I mean yeah, there's that stupid remote desktop thing in Windows that's only used in offices, but there needs to be something that works more readily and the consumer-level. That would be truly idiot-proofing it: a help key on their keyboard that would let you easily remotely access their computer. Anyway, that's just my late night idea. By the way, I don't like the idea of that presto printer unless you can afford the ink it would take to print pictures like that!

How could I possibly pass up a blurb with a Microsoft executive claiming that piracy is actually good for Microsoft despite their public stand against it? In my opinion, you're always going to have to accept certain losses to piracy and make up for the rest of the losses by price targeting those segments more carefully (hence the deals that college students usually get on pricey software).

Yep, that's a pretty big iPhone ad alright. I'm almost a little surprised that they'd be doing this over two months in advance of the anticipated release, but I guess that marketing is everything with a product like this. In case you can't tell, that's at the new store in New York City.

I definitely think that this is a must-read, because it tells you how to surf the web without getting tracked. Maybe I've just become a privacy whistle-blower nowadays, but I think being able to surf the web without a trace is a pretty powerful thing. I decided to install Tor myself.

Everyone likes pictures! You get get a whole crapload of stock pictures over here that are largely available under the popular Creative Commons license. I've just blown some time totally browsing the tags randomly and it's a lot of fun.

Real quick: SanDisk is launching 32 GB solid-state drives, which fall under the flash category of memory. Does this mean we're going to see a new Sansa soon? I don't think this hard drive would be very inexpensive though.

So my cousin tonight said that Grind House looks stupid, and I'm sorry but I could not help but scoff at that. I usually am not a movie snob in real life, honest. But this movie is going to be so fun and I'll be so pissed if it does bad because people can't appreciate it. Anyway, the point is that Yahoo Movies has a nifty little interview with the directors to check out. Oh, and Robert Rodriguez is planning a spinoff based on one of the fake trailers (the machete one) that would be direct to video. Does he really think he can make enough money off of it? I guess he's doing it just for fun, which you can afford to do when you're freaking Robert Rodriguez.

There's some new pictures and posters from Lonely Hearts online that are actually worth checking out. Maybe I'm just a sucker for John Travolta and Salma Hayek, but I do want to see this movie.

Quint at AICN got to see the trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean 3 and enjoyed it, and then saw some footage from Ratatouille and loved that, so if you're bored you may want to read all his impressions. All that matters to me is that Brad Bird is trying to not disappoint us with his sophomore effort, and I did love the teaser we got a long while back for this one.

Lastly, IGN has some promising clips from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, which not only features beautiful CG but also some Jet! Yeah, I think I should definitely be looking forward to this flick.

I think I want to do the Ten on Tuesday this week, though it's very difficult and the order is even harder:

10 Favorite Albums
Honorable Mention: Be - Common (I couldn't decide whether I liked it more than the Kill Bill soundtracks or not)
10. Kill Bill Soundtracks
9. Revelations - Audioslave
8. Shine On - Jet
7. More Adventurous - Rilo Kiley
6. Morning View - Incubus
5. Things Fall Apart - The Roots
4. Black Star - Black Star
3. The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill - Lauryn Hill
2. By The Way - Red Hot Chili Peppers
1. X & Y - Coldplay

This list definitely doesn't cover all my favorite artists, and note that I did not count greatest hits CDs because those aren't albums!

College Students, Prepare to be Violated

So my friend Josh is a jerkface and I didn't see 300 last night, but I'll see it with my friend Robert on Wednesday instead. I got some good news last night that I think will end to my break ending well though, so the universe is back in balance. Anyway, it's no secret that the RIAA and MPAA have been pretty pissed with college campuses for being sloppy about copyright infringement. It's hard to blame them given that they're kind of, you know, more concerned with educating students. So this company Red Lambda decides to make a piece of software called cGrid that does what telcos have been struggling with for many many months: monitoring Internet activity to determine who's using P2P clients. While I appreciate the skill it must've taken to develop this, every single one of those programmers should feel like total freaking sellouts. You're helping rich, selfish bastards extort defenseless, poor college students. I know stealing is wrong and all that jazz, but there's a fucking limit to this nonsense! Why not just install cameras in people's dorm rooms to see what they're doing on their computer? Hell, why stop there, let's require keyloggers! Alright, I guess I'm getting really uppity on privacy, but I think rightfully so. While I understand that this is probably legal, I just think it's unfair. Why not push services like Ruckus (which I still adore, by the way) rather than persecute some of your most avid fans?

So I know that the whole tablet PC thing never took off, but I still think that a dual touch screen would be pretty sweet (though I'd worry about screen smudging because of the keyboard). That's just one of a few concept laptops you can see here. I highly recommend watching the Lenovo tapes, because they're ridiculously fun to watch.

As anyone with SBC Global knows, AT&T and Yahoo have had a partnership going on for quite a long time now. There's strong speculation that AT&T is trying to acquire Yahoo, which has seen another dip in its stock price because of the rumors. It's kind of sad to see Yahoo struggle so much, but what innovation have they really promulgated in recent years?

In rather big news: GoDaddy was slammed with a major Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) yesterday, which basically means that someone flooded their servers to kill service to many sites. I really want to know why someone would do this, because a lot of times an attack like this would be targeted at a certain site whereas these hackers made kind of a blanket statement.

Here's a one liner: check out some pretty art over here.

AICN has another review for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it sounds like he really liked it except for the little things (some of the characters a little off balance and a few plot holes). The CG sounds amazing, which you can see more of over here.

They also dug up some reviews of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which are much more positive than the other early review they had received. It sounds even darker than before, which I love, and I think the plot sounds like it could work really well (Harry leading a bunch of wizards to fight Voldemort). Whenever I think of this movie I see the eerie poster in my head that says "You will lose everything," and it gets me pumped about the movie.

What do you know, we have yet another good review today! This one is for that fun movie Meet the Robinsons you've probably seen commercials for (I think the dinosaur is pretty awesome). Supposedly, it's not on par with other Pixar favorites, but still worthwhile.

Lastly, the release date for Speed Racer has been moved up to May 9, 2008, so I wonder if they'll put out a teaser trailer by June? I'm really curious to see what kind of style the Wachowski Brothers will run with here. I used to love the TV show (I mostly watched it while I was in India for a summer when I was 12).

Now for some Monday Madness:

1. Do you believe in reincarnation?
I'm really not sure. While it's hard to believe that we die and that's it, it's also hard to believe that we can come back after death. I'd almost like to see the afterlife as it's painted in What Dreams May Come (hey, I thought it was a good movie, though I really don't want to see it again).
2. Do you own any anime figures?
Um, no =P I only have one anime movie: Rurouni Kenshin.
3. Are you one of the fanfic writers over at www.fanfiction.net?
Nope, I only write here :)
4. Do you review stories which are posted in www.fanfiction.net?
Again, nope.
5. Are you looking forward to seeing the third Spider-Man film?
I am, but I think I'll be disappointed. I really loved the second one, but the trailers for this one are just worrying me because I'm such a huge Spider-man fan that I really want them to stay true to the original intentions of the series. I don't mind the little things (like the webbing coming from his body, not from a mechanical arm thing), but why does it make sense for Sandman to have killed his father?
6. Are you looking forward to seeing the Fantastic Four sequel?
I didn't think I would be, but the whole Silver Surfer thing makes me want to see what they do with it.
7. Do you like "Deal or No Deal"?
Nope. It's so stupid! Why don't you just roll a dice for an hour? The whole game takes no skill whatsoever and is composed of stupid melodrama as well as the annoying antics of Howie Mandel (I never even liked him when I was a kid and watched Bobby's World).
8. Are you a television watcher?
Yeah, but only on my free time. I just watch shows when I'm eating meals, I don't set aside time just for television.
9. Do you write letters to people?
Only e-mails, which I write much more informally than one would a letter.

Bribes From Microsoft?

This story is so interesting that it'd be strange for me to not take some time to talk about it. Microsoft, in cooperation with AMD and Acer, has been sending brand new Ferrari laptops loaded with Vista to some of the most influential tech bloggers around. What is a Ferrari laptop? It started out as a gimmick from Acer to make their high-end laptops sexy, and it has become a rather credited line of laptops known for amazing power/performance as well as being adorned with the Ferrari laptop. These machines are far from cheap, and since Microsoft doesn't make hardware it has gotten everyone ancy to call it bribery. I personally don't see it as bribery any more than if a magazine were to receive a new machine for a review. They did partner with Acer and AMD for this whole thing after all, so it's not like they went out and bought the machines out of the blue. AMD and Acer stand to gain just as much as Microsoft, though the timing suggests that it's merely a ploy to get people to give Vista a good review. I'm actually on Microsoft's side this time though, especially since these bloggers can easily send back the gifts right now or when they're done trying them out. I'll cede that it may be a bit misleading to try out Vista on such ridiculously fast machines, but any good, serious, tech blogger knows to try it out on a variety of machines, and will not fall victim to such subjective reporting. I think everyone just likes to vilify Microsoft, and now that they're trying something new everyone is jumping on their backs. It's not like they haven't been doing this already, but with just the regular press. So people should just chill out.

Just as many reporters like to hate on Microsoft as like to laud Apple, so here's one of I'm sure many articles around highlighting Apple's strengths over the year. There's a pretty nice, concise, article over here spelling out the landscape for an iPod phone as well as what Apple's options are. Personally, I think that they'll be partnering with one or more carriers since we already heard that they were talking to Verizon, but you never know. Speaking of music, I just found this site called SeeqPod that will play songs for you for free from your browser as well as point you to related videos on YouTube and Google Video. Great for when you're on the go, or if you want to check out music videos online (since they never come on TV anymore). Lastly, here is a great rebuke of Blu-ray and why it's not such a great technology. Some of the comments are stupid and harsh, especially since he's talking about why he personally would never get Blu-ray. But anyway, it's a great read, and his points are very much valid.

We have word from Christophe Gans that there will be a sequel to the Silent Hill movie, he just doesn't know when. Apparently, in terms of box office grosses it was the third highest of the year, so they consider it a good enough to success to warrant another. I still haven't seen the first one, but I really do intend on renting it since I've heard mixed things. It looks like we may see also see a sequel to an 80s classic: Real Genius. Apparently, Val Kilmer would come back, I just don't know if a sequel really makes sense here, especially like 20 years later. Lastly, a random Russian site has picked up a plethora of high-res shots from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and they look absolutely gorgeous. I really am looking forward to seeing this movie, and I'm glad that the last trailer we saw gave us a better idea of the tone of the movie.



Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

All you have to do is tell us what you got for Christmas!
I already told you guys about half my gifts on Monday: the shoes and the slow cooker. I also got some cash from my Aunt and a really cool Old Navy pullover from my Uncle's family. I don't know what the fabric is (the label doesn't say), but it's really soft and kind of cream colored. Plus, it fits me! Half my winter wear is just slightly big.