Some good news, via wzzrd: Google Puts Weight Behind Theora on Mobile.
Between Apple’s crusade against Flash, or Android, or their own app-developers, and Google’s sponsorship of a patent-free codec, I see a bright future for HTML5-apps. Frankly, I don’t care what noble and/or misguided motives these companies may have; I’m looking forward to frustration-free web browsing, and rich-media websites that actually work for me for a change.
I just bought Beverley Craven’s new album (well, it was released last year, but I’m slow to pick up on such things, so it’s still new to me) from Amazon’s MP3 store (no, that’s not an affiliate link). I almost ordered the disc, being a recovering obsessive-compulsive donottrustanyripbutyourown lossless-audio nut, but in the end I really must start to accept that that is a waste of time and resources1. I have to keep telling myself this.
(“Listen man, it would be wasteful. Seriously. … Hey, stop entering your shipping address!”)
It’s been a while since I bought MP3s from Amazon. I got a few albums from them when they first opened the MP3 store in the UK, but then I had a relapse into buying CDs and ripping them myself2. Anyway, according to encspot3 Amazon still use Lame 3.97 like before, with a “vbr-old” pre-set, so they’re a little bit behind on the state-of-the-art, but it’s certainly not bad.
(“I know, I know. If you had a lossless backup you could re-encode with new super-duper settings. Yes, that would also future-proof things for when you’re finally getting that digital parametric equalizer. But really, aren’t you simply enjoying the music right now? You are. So? IT’S NOT BAD.”)
One minor downside to downloading the album is of course that now you can’t slip in a nifty new Firewire audio-interface with your shipping order.
(“Dude!! Does your laptop-output sound distorted? No. Does it drive your headphones well? Yes. How much are you saving by not getting that thing? Twenty, thirty albums-worth? Right. Also, it would just end up as e-waste. Now STOP entering your shipping address.”)
That’s right, today was a little triumph.
Oh, and Beverley Craven sounds wonderful, as on her earlier albums4.
I was going to insert a link to The Story Of Stuff here (uh, so now I did anyway), which I stumbled across the other day. It’s a very nicely produced presentation, compelling us to be less wasteful and to seek sustainability, but as so many of these stories, it’s laced with the typical “big, bad government serves big, bad corporations” rhetoric that only muddles the real message - hence my hesitation. ↩
It’s not helping that most CDs are about the same price as the download would be, and are offered with free shipping. (“Dude, listen. The disc just takes up shelf space. Extra value, maybe, an extra burden, definitely. You’ll get lots of packaging material, and a stack of flyers advertising rubbish, and it’s just a waste. AND you get to obsess over the rip being faulty.” Help!!!) ↩
I hadn’t used this in a while, and it took a moment to find a build for Ubuntu 9.10 - in the end I found it at getdeb.net. ↩
(“I’m proud of you. You didn’t even start about how the other albums are FLAC files with embedded cue-sheets, and how these MP3s mess up the ORDER OF THINGS. I’m so proud of you.”) ↩
I guess this just highlights that, by principle, SSL is especially vulnerable to attacks by people in power. Very useful link found in the HN discussion: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~perspectives/firefox.html
There, I’ve practised my share of politics for this year :)
(Yes, another car snippet - maybe I’m turning into a youth again :))
I used to dream of owning a BMW, and talked about them all the time. It got so bad that my school girlfriends got me model cars for my birthday. How’s that for working on your nerd image.
And then BMW ruined everything by bringing us nearly a decade of ugly, ugly cars.
But it seems they’re getting back their cool. The latest 3-series is bearable, the latest 7-series is infinitely better than the previous one and reminds me of the latest Lexus LS - which is a compliment! - and now this 5-series: I like it.
Apologies for torturing your browser with Flash cruft.
Got strangely impressive results when I tried this pointless query, so let’s give it a few days as my browser default (via HN).
From the leaflet boxed with my new phone:
Your device supports easy, network-assisted e-mail set-up. […] During the e-mail activation process, your e-mail address, user name, and password, along with technical information, such as your device ID, may be sent to Nokia. Nokia will not process or store any personal, identifiable information after the activation, without your consent.
I understand why they need the e-mail address - the domain name is probably used to figure out the server configuration options - but the password? The only reason they’d need the password that I can think of, is that the configuration server tests the settings by logging-in, before sending the settings to the phone. That’s an innocent, but not a good reason.
Somehow, between the legal and the usability department, it was decided that a friendly leaflet in the box would be better than a pop-up at configuration time. I would have preferred the pop-up notification, which might have offered the option to decline auto-configuration.
It’s a one-time only thing, and it’s done with the best of intentions, and I’m sure the little leaflet covers them legally. Nonetheless, it puts a man in the middle, and that’s not a best practice.
This is kind of interesting: the open-textbooks company Flat World Knowledge writes a guest-post about their business for opensource.com, a Red Hat sponsored community-site. Right after the post gets accepted and published, Red Hat people comment and take Flat World Knowledge to the doghouse over their “fauxpen” licensing (their CC licenses are the non-commercial flavour).
It’s almost as if they lured them into a trap.
Here’s what I think: the Red Hat guys have too much of a black-and-white view on licensing, but that doesn’t take away the fact that the Flat World Knowledge guys sadly have a very troublesome business model.
For a long time, I used to have this naive reaction when friends quipped the usual smarts about executive performance-bonuses: that we’re all just envious, and banning such practices would discourage achievement. But lately my views have shifted - a lot - and I’d dare say they’re getting a bit more sophisticated and a tiny bit more mature.
Thanks to Shawn for sharing this link!
