September 2007 – Page 2

F*** you, recording industry

Q & A with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails | Herald Sun Via Boing Boing

And I just said “That’s the most insulting thing I’ve heard. I’ve garnered a core audience that you feel it’s OK to rip off? F— you’. That’s also why you don’t see any label people here, ‘cos I said ‘F— you people. Stay out of my f—ing show. If you wanna come, pay the ticket like anyone else. F— you guys”. They’re thieves. I don’t blame people for stealing music if this is the kind of s— that they pull off.

Great interview with Trent Reznor, who has the fanbase and the morals to tell the record companies that he’d really just like to make his music available to his fans at a reasonable price. If I hadn’t already bought his latest cd, I’d go buy it right now.

Perhaps the coolest part is that he’s planning to ditch conventional recording as soon as his contract is up. The more people who follow him, the fewer people who are going to get turned into criminals for trying to use an iPod on a Linux box, or maybe copy a cd they’ve purchased for their own personal use.

I still remember the first time I saw the video for “Head Like a Hole” on MTV. I’ve bought every full release he’s put out since then, and most of the remix albums and whatnot. I’ll pre-order the next one whether or not I’ve heard anything off it.

Anyway, I’m really glad he’s trying to balance making money with trying to get his music to his fans.

As an aside, you may notice that I’ve linked to another post from Cory Doctorow at BoingBoing. Despite my post the other day, he does write some interesting stuff, and he’s generally on the right side of things.

Pepco still sucks, but Im not quite so mad

Pepco came out and read the meter after all. I just got off the phone with the first Pepco CSR who didn’t make me want to break things. He said the meter was read yesterday, and we’ve used 4344 kilowatt hours since we moved in. Our latest bill was for 7942 kilowatt hours, or 183% of our actual electricity usage. Based on what they charged us on our latest bill, I think that’s about $450 that we’ve paid them that we don’t owe them.

Actually, I haven’t technically paid the latest bill. I scheduled it, but it hasn’t gone through yet. But apparently they can’t cancel the payment once I have a confirmation number, which is crap, but whatever. We aren’t going to pay another bill for a few months.

I’m not sure why I had to be home yesterday. They read the meter after I left for work, despite their claims that someone had to be at the house.

Miro needs your help to not suck

Miro needs your donations to build the future of Internet video – Boing Boing

Miro needs your donations — the project is trying to raise $50,000 to pay programmers and designers to make its player even better

I’m all about a nice, free video player that tries to get us to the next step in how we consume television and movies and whatnot. I hate that I have to pay for hundreds of stupid channels just so I can get “The Office” and Redskins games in HD. It’s terrible. Why should I subsidize some niche channels that no one would pay for on their own?

But the Miro player is a piece of crap. I’ve tried it twice, and it broke a Windows XP laptop and an Ubuntu 6.04 desktop.

And Cory Doctorow begging for money for the project is just a little bit hypocritical. He seems to think that everything on the internet should be free, except the stuff he cares about, which should be fully financed by anyone with some spare cash. If this project really needs $50,000 to be viable, then maybe it’s not such a friggin’ good idea, Mr. “I am a board member for the Participatory Culture Foundation, the 501(c)3 charitable nonprofit that oversees production of Miro“.

I really do hope the Miro project succeeds and gives us another model for distributing quality video content. But I’m not giving them money when they beg. Provide me with a service that I want, that works the way it should, and I’ll pay for it. But try to get me to donate money to a bloated piece of software that I’m not entirely sure fulfills the needs of anyone, and I’m just not interested.

I wish I could fire Pepco

I just got off the phone with Pepco customer service. They told me they don’t guarantee they’ll actually arrive in the four hour window. They have lots of meters to read, and sometimes they don’t arrive on time. I finally hung up on the CSR I was talking to because I was so furious. I have no idea what I can do. I can’t take my business elsewhere.

Anyone have any suggestions?

The Nikon D300 is coming

Nikon D300 Hands-On Preview: 1. Introduction: Digital Photography Review

51-point autofocus? Are they kidding me? My D100 has 5. This thing even has the live preview that digital point-and-shoots have had all along, but DSLRs haven’t because of that pesky mirror thing. And 8 frames per second when you use the battery pack or A/C adapter.

Now, I have absolutely no need for a new camera. But this thing is pretty hot.

We knew Nikon couldn’t wait too long before implementing some kind of automatic sensor cleaning system, and so the D300 becomes the first Nikon with such a feature. It works in the same manner as other implementations, piezoelectric elements vibrate a cover filter which should in theory remove any light dust particles attached to it.

That may be the best part about it. My one and only complaint about the D100 is the difficulty in getting dust off the chip. I think it’s a manufacturing problem they had with the D100s that allows dust on there in the first place, but I’ve had mine cleaned a few times, and I keep getting dust.

Anyway, I want one. The wife wants to steal the D100, so maybe we can come to some sort of agreement. . .

Waiting for Pepco

I’m working from home this morning, waiting for Pepco to come and read our meter. I’m not sure why I have to be here, since the meter is outside, but I do. They promise to be here between 8am and noon.

Why am I waiting for Pepco, you might ask? Isn’t it their job to read my meter and charge me for electricity used?

Well, sort of. You see, apparently Pepco can estimate my meter readings. Based on what I don’t know, because this condo has only existed as a condo since some time last year, and has only been inhabited since February. I suppose they’re basing the estimates on similar places in the area.

Or maybe they’re pulling numbers out of the air. As of last week, when we got our latest bill, it looked to me like we’d used about 4200 kilowatt hours since moving in. Our bill claims we’ve used 7900. That means they’ve overcharged us by something in the neighborhood of $300.

I’m sure they’ll adjust the bill once they read the meter, and we won’t pay anything for a few months, but it’s absolutely infuriating that I have to make a special request and work from home for half a day (Okay, I’m not really complaining about that) just to get Pepco to charge us for the power we actually used.

Is it possible to have competition in power companies? I know that, at least to some extent, it’s probably not possible to share the infrastructure necessary to deliver power to my house. It might not be possible at all. I guess we’re just going to have to put windmills and solar panels on the roof and go off the grid.

Justifiable homicide

You know that sound they play in every Western ever made, when the bad guy is staring down the good guy? I can’t describe the noise, but you know what I’m talking about.

Anyway, some clown down the hall from me at work has that as his cell phone ringtone.

I’m not going to do it, but let’s just say, hypothetically, that the phone rang for a third time in the last half hour, and I hypothetically removed one or both of his arms and beat him with it/them. Hypothetically.

Do you think I would do any jail time?

Define knee-jerk

Browns trade Frye to Seahawks

Savage insisted that dealing Frye and shuffling the quarterback deck was not a knee-jerk reaction.”We really haven’t changed our plans. We’ve adjusted,” he said. “We had two tracks. One track had Charlie and Derek over here, and one track had Brady over here. We’ve still got one quarterback on that track.

“We’ve got a guy (Anderson) who has started some games, whose got a big arm and who has shown some potential. We’ve got a future franchise quarterback (Quinn). We’ve got the veteran mentor (Dorsey) and we’ve got a sixth-round pick for another guy. I think we’ve maximized what we had on board here at that position.”

He went on to say, “Trading him at halftime, now that would have been knee-jerk”.

Okay, I understand that the Browns have quarterback problems. That should come as news to no one. But in what universe is announcing a starter, letting him play for less than two quarters, and then trading him, NOT knee-jerk? The article mentions that this is the first time since the league merger in 1970 (And probably before that, but it doesn’t actually say) that a quarterback has started week 1 and been traded before week 2.

I would fire the guy who named Frye the starter. If he was so wrong about Frye as the starter, maybe football is not his game. Romeo Crennel, have you updated your resume?

Dear Lightning Car Company – please export.

Welcome to Lightning Car Company – The UK’s Premier Electric Sports Car via Inhabitat

A fully electric right-hand drive convertible that does 0-60 in four seconds? I’m drooling right now.

So they’re asking for a deposit that comes out to over $100,000 based on the horrific weakness of the dollar against the pound. It looks like an old Jaguar, from back when they knew how to make a pretty car.

They do plan to send them over to the US. Can someone loan me some cash?

My Discover card sucks

Here’s another thing to add to the list of reasons I won’t get another Discover card. At least, not until I exhaust all the credit card companies and have to start over. My problems with Chase are well-documented here, and I’m not too fond of Citicards these days, either.

Anyway, Discover. It’s not enough that they charge sellers such a high percentage, causing many places to not accept them. But recently, they changed my card number. They did it under the auspices of rolling out a new card, but what they’ve really done is change the card design, and probably renegotiated my terms of service.

It’s not a huge deal – I just have to tell a few places that I have a new card number for my monthly debits and whatnot. But what really bugs me is that they’ve revoked my access to my old billing statements. They’re treating this as a new card, and they’ve transferred the balance I had on my old card last month onto the new card. And I don’t mean a revolving balance – I don’t ever revolve a balance anymore. I mean just last month’s charges. Now I have a bill that just says, you owe $X. It doesn’t give me a breakdown of the charges. I’ve requested a paper bill, but I really shouldn’t have to. What if I want to go back and check a charge from two months ago? I have to call and get another paper bill shipped. I stopped getting paper bills a while ago because they’re dumb. I have enough paper in my life already.

Anyway, this is very annoying. As soon as I spend my accumulated miles, this card is getting canceled.

Edit to add – Comments have been disabled. Perhaps instead of complaining about your Discover card on a three year old blog post, you all should work towards getting yourselves out of debt.

Edit again to add – Comments are back on because I’ve moved blogging platforms and don’t currently have a way to disable them. If it becomes a problem, I’ll make a way to turn them off.