Tag: complaint

Big surprise – Microsoft Zune to suck after all

Medialoper » Zune’s Big Innovation: Viral DRM Link via Techdirt.

Everything I had heard so far about Microsoft’s supposed iPod killer was pretty good.  They were going to work out some way to reproduce your iTunes collection so you didn’t have to repurchase all those songs (Because Apple sure as hell wasn’t going to let you transfer those songs to a competitor’s product).  It really sounded like they were going to try and create a music player that didn’t assume everyone was a criminal.

Unfortunately, things are not what they seemed.  If you share a song via the Zune’s wireless sharing, it will apply DRM to the file so that you can only play the song for three days or three times.  I assume the intention here is to allow you to share a song with your friend so the friend will go buy his or her own copy.  I don’t necessarily have a problem with that – I understand that Microsoft and the record labels are just trying to make a buck, and I really do fully support capitalism.  But the article explains how this is a problem.  Let’s say I’m an amateur musician.  I create a new song on my computer by sampling my cat scratching in her litter box and set it to a beat of me kicking the wall as the Redskins got manhandled by the f’ing Cowboys.  I decide to apply a Creative Commons license to my work, because I think it would be cool if someone else sampled my work and used it in their own song, so long as they give me credit.  So, I have this song on my new Zune, and I’m playing it at a party.  Someone comes up to me and says, “Dude, I love that song!”.  He has a Zune, too, so I share the song with him.  Oops, Microsoft’s DRM just violated the Creative Commons license.  Creative Commons forbids any kind of DRM (Which is a large part of the reason I chose the license).

I haven’t bought a cd in close to a year.  The last cd I bought, in April of 2005, was Garbage’s Bleed Like Me.  I bought it without hearing it, because I really like Garbage.  I put it in my computer so I could rip the MP3’s FOR MY OWN PERSONAL USE (I wanted to make an MP3 cd to use in the car so I don’t scratch up the original, and so I can fit ten albums on one disc), and the cd told me to go jump in a lake.  My computer didn’t recognize the cd as an audio cd.  It would play it, but it didn’t see any rippable files.

What I really should have done was return the cd as defective.  I bought the cd assuming that I could listen to the music however I wanted.  Unfortunately, that was not the case.  I haven’t decided yet whether I’ll buy Garbage’s next cd.  Part of me wants to boycott it, but the other part of me knows that will hurt me (as I like the music) more than it hurts the company selling the cd.

The real problem here is that the music industry has made it so hard to buy a song once and use it in whatever legal way I want that I’ve just stopped buying music completely.  It sounded like Microsoft was going to help that problem, but apparently that’s not the case.  I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.

Email to the DMV

I have a question about right-of-way rules at the intersection of Leesburg Pike and Arlington Blvd (Seven Corners). If I am on Wilson Blvd and turn right onto Leesburg Pike West, there are two lanes going to a yield in order to go left onto Leesburg Pike East. There are four lanes on Leesburg Pike East. If I want to be in the second lane from the right after I turn onto Leesburg Pike East, should I be in the right or the left lane before the turn?If this is not the right place to come for laws such as this, could you possibly direct me to where I might find an answer?

Thanks very much

They say they’ll respond within two days. 8:22AM, the clock is running.

I will get to the bottom of this

I’m tired of this madness.  Every morning, I drop my wife off at the Metro and then drive to work.  Every morning, I think I’m in the correct lane to get where I want to go.  Every morning, someone in another lane thinks they have a right to be where I am.  I have to find out who’s correct.  Some woman flashed her high beams at me this morning in anger, and I’m almost positive I was right and she was wrong.

The intersection in question is Seven Corners, one of the most poorly designed sections of road I’ve ever seen.  The engineers responsible should never work in this field again.  If you leave the East Falls Church Metro down Sycamore/Roosevelt, then turn left onto Wilson, you arrive at a light.  Two lanes go right.  You turn onto what appears to be Leesburg Pike West, which has four or five lanes.  The two left lanes lead to a left turn yield.  This left turn takes you to Leesburg Pike East, which has four lanes.  Now, here is where the problem is.  If I see two lanes turning left into four, and I want to be in the lane second from the right, it makes sense that I get in the right lane before the turn, right?  There is no sign, and no line on the road to suggest anything.  And I seem to be the minority.  But if I get in the left lane, no doubt I will find myself again in the minority.  Because there are always fewer people who agree with you on matters like this, I’ve found.

In any event, if I was high-beamed in error, I’m very offended.  If I screw up and you flash your lights at me, I’ll take that.  I might even wave an apology.  I can admit when I’m wrong.  But I won’t stand for unwarranted high-beaming.  I just won’t stand for it.

I’m going to contact the DMV today and see if I can get to the bottom of this.

I seem to be numb

Nothing I read seems to inspire me to post since I got back.  I’m reading the same amount of junk online, but nothing catches my eye, saying, “Hey, jerk, blog about me”.  Nothing at all.  It can’t be that I’m tired of complaining, because that certainly isn’t true.  And it can’t be that nothing stupid is happening in the world, because that isn’t true, either.  I’m not still jet-lagged, since it’s been a week.

So I can’t explain my lack of posting.  I can just apologize to my legions of fans, and pledge to try and get inspired again soon.

What about Jamie Foxx?

NFL.com – Minnesota at Washington Game Recap Big things are expected of the Redskins this year, a confidence reflected in an attendance of 90,608 that set a new record for the largest stadium in the NFL. Even Hollywood made an appearance: Actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were guests of owner Dan Snyder, who has recently entered into a partnership with Cruise’s production company.

Okay, let’s focus on the total whack job who hasn’t made a good movie in years instead of the recent Academy Award winner who visited the booth to, sort of, hang out with the fans.  I didn’t like Ray, although I thought Jamie Foxx did a great job.  I liked Tom Cruise a lot in Top Gun and in Top Gun II (on the ground) – Days of Thunder.  But that was before he took the path of Michael Jackson and Mel Gibson and forgot that he lived on Planet Earth with the rest of us.

It is nice that 90,000 fans showed up for the game.  Not so nice that our brand new offensive genius decided that the screen pass to Santana Moss needed to be run three times.  I wish Moss would stop breaking those for 15-20 yard gains so they’d realize that it’s really a terrible, terrible play.  If it works, and he makes 6 guys miss, he gains 20 yards.  If it doesn’t work, best case scenario is he loses five yards.  Worst case is it’s picked off, which is an almost guaranteed touchdown for the other team because there’s no one back there to catch the guy.

We still can’t run the ball, and Portis seemed pretty healthy.  If he wasn’t, Ladell Betts is a perfectly adequate backup.  The game was close from beginning to end, so there’s absolutely no excuse for running the ball only 18 times.

Anyway, it was a pretty disappointing game.  And I lost my fantasy football game, as well.  And our flag football game.  Everything football-related for me this past weekend was bad.  At least Virginia Tech won, but that was pretty much a given.

Five years ago yesterday

On September 10th, 2001, I moved to Northern Virginia.  I was a few months out of college and unemployed, looking for a job in computers, and some friends were renting a place in Fairfax, so I went along with them.  I brought a bed and some odds and ends.  On the 11th, I was heading back to my parents’ to pick up more stuff.  I had arranged with a friend to help me load my truck.  I had just left the house when I heard from Howard Stern about the WTC towers.  At first I thought it was a joke until the WHFS morning show confirmed it.  My roommates were both off at work, and we didn’t have a landline, and of course my cell phone wasn’t working because of all the stress on the system.  My dad worked in DC at the time, and I had no idea how far he was from the Pentagon.  And I couldn’t get a hold of anyone.  I finally managed to get through at the pay phone at Wendy’s (Although the calling card I had and rarely used decided not to work.  Luckily by that time I had memorized my dad’s calling card number).

It was an interesting welcome to the DC Metro area.  And now, five years later, where are we?  We’ve destroyed the beauty of much of Washington DC with jersey walls and iron fences.  We’ve made flying in and out of the US completely ridiculous.  We’ve given our President an excuse to spy illegally on our citizens and to deny basic human rights to prisoners of war because we’re calling them “enemy combatants” instead.  The site of the WTC is still a big hole.  We haven’t found those responsible for the attack.

It’s been a great five years, huh?  I hope this will be the legacy of the Bush administration.  They were quick to put a nice bandage on the wound cause by 9/11, and tell everyone that things would be okay.  But then they embezzled insurance money for expensive plastic surgery, and accused those who complained of being unpatriotic.  Patriotism is not a flag sticker on your car and blindy supporting every action of the President, no matter how misguided or illegal.

I told you ethanol wasnt the answer

Appetite for destruction – August 21, 2006

The grain required to fill a 25-gallon SUV gas tank with ethanol, for instance, could feed one person for a year. If today’s entire U.S. grain harvest were converted into fuel for cars, it would still satisfy less than one-sixth of U.S. demand.

While it’s nice to see GM trying to save the world, they are heading in the WRONG DIRECTION with corn-based ethanol.  It is not sustainable.  It may mean that we’re less dependant on the Middle East, but it means were more dependant on somewhere else.  Not a solution to the problem, just pusing the problem off into the future.

Security? What security?

CNN.com – Boy, 12, evades security clampdown – Aug 16, 2006

LONDON, England — Despite a high level of alert at British airports, a 12-year-old boy managed to board a plane at Gatwick without a passport, ticket or boarding pass.

The important question, though is, “Was he carrying any liquids or an iPod?” Seriously, why do we have security at the airport if it’s not meaningful? Are they really just trying to collect nail clippers and screwdrivers to sell on eBay?

Edit: Again, I say something, and BoingBoing backs it up.  The letter they link to, from a chemisty grad student, is pretty funny.  And makes our security measures look pretty ridiculous.

Terror! Liberty! Freedom! Cookies!

Hezbollah the Loser In Battle, Bush Says

“Forces of terror see the changes that are taking place in their midst. They understand that the advance of liberty, the freedom to worship, the freedom to dissent, and the protection of human rights would be a defeat for their hateful ideology,” Bush said. “But they also know that young democracies are fragile and that this may be their last and best opportunity to stop freedom’s advance and steer newly free nations to the path of radical extremism.”

Every time I hear statements like this from Bush, I hear his imitator on Saturday Night Live talking about “strategery”.  Was that Will Ferrell, or someone else?  I can hear it in my head, but I can’t quite picture him.  Anyway, an equally effective image that this should conjure up is Cookie Monster.  “Terror bad.  Liberty and freedom good!  Me love cookies!”.

I don’t like making fun of the way Bush speaks, as I’ve said before, because I think it tends to be the thing that people notice and latch onto, and then they miss the fact that he’s doing terrible things to the country.  But I just can’t help myself here.  He just enjoys saying “terror” and “hateful” and “freedom” too much.

Oh, well.  What I should be focusing on here is how he has, again, delcared victory in a fight that’s long from over.  He seems to think that he gets to determine when a conflict is over, and who won.  I know that whole “Mission Accomplished” banner wasn’t his fault, but the administration has talked about how we “won” the war in Iraq for years, but last time I checked, people were still dying over there.  That’s not winning in my book.  And neither has Israel won.  There may be a temporary cease-fire, which is good, it will hopefully allow some diplomacy to happen.  But if people start thinking that this is over, they haven’t been paying attention to the entire history of the region.

Ask, and you shall receive

Newsvine – Chertoff: U.S. Should Review Terror Laws – via BoingBoing

“What helped the British in this case is the ability to be nimble, to be fast, to be flexible, to operate based on fast-moving information,” [Chertoff] said. “We have to make sure our legal system allows us to do that. It’s not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants.”

And there you go. A wonderful quote from the guy in charge of making us safe. Who do you suppose is going to protect us from Homeland Security?