BunkBlog

Two recent interviews are interesting. Watching former President Clinton being grilled by Chris Wallace was entertaining, especially when compared or contrasted with the interview that President Bush did with Matt Lauer recently (sorry for not finding a full transcript of that one).

What I took away from these, and I did watch them both in their entirety, not just excerpts or transcripts from different sources, is that our current President hates people questioning his actions and has no response other than, “trust me.” In contrast, the former President hates people spreading misinformation about him and responds with voluminous facts to back up his perspective.

Regardless of how much respect one has for the intellects of these two men, the fact that our current head employee seems incapable of defending himself with facts is distressing.

I do wonder why Matt Lauer had to interview President Bush while standing up and being poked at by the President, while President Clinton got a comfy chair and a smirking Wallace. Neither of the interviewers seemed to believe their subjects assertions much. Makes you wonder why the men agreed to the interviews.

I noticed that the “review” category has not had much activity, so I’ll remedy that.

In March of 2005, I bought a Rio Karma. This MP3 player was fantastic, with 20 gigs of storage space (enough for about 1/6th of my music collection), a fantastic interface, on-the-fly playlisting and all that jazz. It did not have an FM tuner or voice recorder, and it did depend on proprietary protocols to save music, but the ability to rearrange music and choose popular songs and all that were great. Sadly, the Karma is a delicate beast, with its hard drive not being the most durable they could find. Since it broke and Rio is gone, I was quite happy that I had paid for the 24 month warranty from Buy.

In June of this year, I replaced the Karma with the warranty money, getting a Sandisk Sansa e260 4 gig flash player. At the time, it was a 200 dollar player; it’s now routinely available for 150 or less.

With the most current firmware installed, the Sansa is a wonderful music player, although I do miss the Karma’s interface. The Sansa has two protocols: MTP and MSC (sometimes called UMS). In MTP mode, the player works only with Windows XP; in MSC mode it works with anything that recognizes USB removable media. Playlists are transferred only via MTP, although MSC mode is a faster system for simple transfers.

The Sansa also has a cool feature few players do these days: expansion. You can plug in a tiny little memory card, the microSD, to add up to 2 gigs of memory in theory (so far I can only find 1 gig cards at most). The expansion card can’t hold subscription content, and it’s not visible in MTP mode on the computer, but for music you want to keep on the player, or if you use MSC mode anyway, it’s another drive letter in Explorer.

That covers connections, but what about features? It has an FM tuner (and recorder), a voice recorder, and can manage videos (through a converter), photos, and either MP3 or WMA audio files. It supports the PlaysForSure stores, including subscription content, but I’m told does not support Audible files.

Playback is from a rather straight-forward interface, using a wheel and six buttons. Playlists from the computer are visible and usable, as well as one on-the-fly playlist on the player. I can’t tell you how well PlaysForSure works, as I refuse to participate in DRM. Thankfully, I can tell you that it works wonderfully with MediaMonkey in MTP mode. I don’t try to sync in MSC mode, so I’m not sure how well that works with MM; MSC mode is useful for clearing out old content you decide you don’t want to listen to, and it’s mandatory for firmware updates.

Photos are bright and sharp, although there is no zoom and a 1.5 inch screen is not exactly usable for a photo album.

You can play all your music, an artist, an album, a playlist, a genre, or a single track. In any of these, you can have shuffle engaged or not. There are several equalizer settings, and a custom equalizer (with latest firmware). Album art is displayed when you are playing a track, and you can cycle through a fairly useless spectrum analyzer, a larger view of the album art, and the next song in the queue. I rarely can tell what the next song will be before the player switches back to the default view, though. You have about three seconds to see it before it changes away, but it scrolls slowly through artist/album/track so if you have an artist and album with too many characters, you’re out of luck.

So, other things I dislike about the player? You can’t delete content on the player. The voice recorder button can’t be disabled without locking all controls; you will end up recording yourself without meaning to. You can’t edit playlists, except the “Go List” on the player. I really miss the “songs of the 80s” type playlists that the Karma had. Of course, with only 4 gigs of space, some of those modes are less useful than they were with 20. The videos are pretty pointless; not only is the screen only 1.5 inches, the videos are converted to an incredibly inefficient codec to play: the MJPEG format in Quicktime.

My son is able to navigate his playlist without any hassle, the radio works pretty well, and overall it’s a great and reliable player. Highly recommended for anyone who hasn’t already paid too much for DRM-infected files from iTunes Music Store.

The FX channel in the UK has decided to start displaying still images for 30 seconds during some of their ad slots. Apparently Sky+ PVRs don’t jump 30 seconds, they play at 12 times the normal speed when you want to skip commercials. ABC recently said they want to disable fast-forward on DVRs, as if that’s remotely possible from the non-hardware side of things.

In case you are unaware, there are PVRs that will let you jump forward, not just go faster. There are PVRs that will automatically mark commercials for skipping them without any interaction from the viewer at all. You just can’t buy these PVRs any longer. The one that was on the market was ReplayTV, which is gone. The good news is that you can still get the functionality, but you need to build it yourself. Look into MythTV – one of your geek friends can build it for ya for about 400 bucks; ABC and FX and everyone else will then have no control over what you can do with your own recorder, and you’ll at least have the same ability with your new machine that we had with VCRs in the 80s.

Ok, seriously, what the hell is wrong with these people? The Pope quoted an earlier pontiff, saying that Muhammed was a violent and inhumane person. Even more shockingly for a religious leader, he appealed to reason to build a dialog. So, obviously, the next step would be to call for his immediate death. There’s no better way to convince people your religion is not evil or inhuman than by butchering anyone who claims otherwise. Yep. Good plan there.

Update:Just to prove how wrong anyone is who calls them violent and unreasonable, Muslims have now firebombed two churches (neither of which was Roman Catholic) in the West Bank.

I find it amazing that MS has still not figured out how to avoid punking their customers and partners. The wonderful DRM embedded in earlier versions of Windows Media Player is bad enough. Then came PlaysForSure, which many people say is more like “PlaysForShit.” There are many instances of the PlaysForSure files not transferring, or requiring multiple updates of software on the PC and firmware on the player. Plays For Sure as a slogan implies that your music will Just Work, but that is obviously not the case, based on how many complaints you can find online with mere seconds of research.

So, MS decided that the whole integrated solution thing Apple has going is a good idea. They partnered up with iRiver and MTV to produce the Clix and Urge. The device and service were designed together, to ensure that things actually would Play For Sure.  So far so good, even if it did effectively snub all the previous MS partners who had signed on for the Janus DRM train (anyone think it’s interesting that Janus had two faces?), as well as the hardware partners whose machines hadn’t been tested and certified for the MTV Urge service. They’ll probably work, but if it’s not marketed together, many people will assume incompatibility.

And now the latest change to Microsoft’s music roadmap – Zune. Not only does this get Microsoft involved in the hardware market for media players, effectively telling all the manufacturers who thought they were partners to piss off, it also introduces a new Zune-only store. That’s right, the Janus DRM-encumbered music you thought you owned from Rhapsody or Napster or whereever won’t play on Zune. You’ll have to buy it all again, if you want to play it on that new slick MS-branded player.

Might I suggest never buying any DRM-encumbered media? The result of ever buying any music or video from a service that puts DRM on it is that you don’t control your own property. You may think you own the latest Beyonce album, but if you bought it from Napster or iTunes, you don’t own a damned thing. You have a right to listen to it only on the device you bought it for and any new technology is likely to render your music collection so much junk.

Just for an added stab in the back of their customers, the Zune’s vaunted wifi sharing system will add DRM to any file, including public domain and Creative Commons files. For the public domain files, that’s just evil. For the CC files, that’s actually a violation of the CC license, which states unequivocally that no encryption can be applied to the file by anyone.

To recap, DRM is evil, Microsoft hates their customers, Microsoft can be trusted only to betray their business partners, and DRM is evil.

Dwarf planet formerly known as Xena.

I’m sure this story will resonate with several people on my LJ friends list.  A town in Florida, in preparation for hurricane season, passed a law allowing them to seize any property from any resident for the duration of any emergency.  They acknowledge that this sort of law is ripe for abuse, but promise that they are benevolent dictators.

So, your incentive to be prepared for an emergency to protect your own property and family is what?

(Thanks, Diane)

I just saw an anti-net neutrality ad from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association.  They portray Google and its allies on the pro-neutrality side as “multi-billion dollar tech companies” who just want more money from you, the poor consumer.  Why, we all know that the cable and telecom companies have always done what is best for the consumer, right?

Lots of people have spilled lots of ink over net neutrality in the past few months, but if nothing else this one ad would make me side with Google.  If it comes down to who I trust more, Verizon or Google?  Easy.  Which one of those companies has ever charged me a dime?  Which one of those companies has a history of near-whimsical pricing and abuse of government-sponsored monopoly power?  Yeah, exactly.  Hell, just last month, Verizon wanted to punk their cellular customers with an invented new fee to recoup the losses from the FCC cancelling the Spanish-American War tax.

Who do you trust?

Why are most notorious killers of recent years referred to in the press (and thereafter by the public at large) by their full names?  This never happens with other criminals or subject of news stories. John Mark Karr, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wayne Gacy, John Wilkes Boothe, Mark David Chapman…It almost seems like the intent is to make the suspect sound sinister or peculiar, and thereby make them obviously guilty.  After all, if your average person told you to call him John Jacob Smith, you’d think he was pretty darned strange, no?

Japan has been using liquid explosive detectors in its Narita International Airport in Tokyo and demonstrated the technology to U.S. officials at a conference in January, the Japanese Embassy in Washington said.

The administration’s most recent budget request also mystified lawmakers. It asked to take $6 million from the Sciences & Technology Directorate’s 2006 budget that was supposed to be used to develop explosives detection technology and divert it to cover a budget shortfall in the Federal Protective Service, which provides security around government buildings.

Bureaucracy impedes bomb-detection work

I just cannot think of a comment that isn’t filled with cursing.

I can’t imagine what one could add to the headline to make this story any more clear. Can you imagine buying one of these drives to play Blu-Ray movies in your new home theater PC and finding out that you can’t? Are they just encouraging piracy now by their total incompetence at this Digital Restrictions Manglement crap?

Just to prove what lovely and thoughtful human beings they are, the RIAA has introduced a motion in one of their extortion filesharing cases. The defendent has died, so they’re allowing the family sixty days to grieve before they sue the children. Anyone still think the RIAA is a reasonable group of people?

It is a mistake to believe there is no threat to the United States of America. We’ve taken a lot of measures to protect the American people. But obviously we still aren’t completely safe.

Well, gee. Perfect safety hasn’t been achieved? Let’s give up a few more of our ideals and rip up the last few shreds of the Constitution. What’s amazing to me is that the President isn’t pointing out how the system worked. This is a success for the British security services, an event which shows that law enforcement and good investigation skills actually function as you would hope. The plot was thwarted, all is right with the world. The US and UK should be celebrating this accomplishment, and instead we’re taking people’s water bottles away and making flying just a little more irritating yet again.
Of course, the President is perhaps not crowing about this successful investigation and series of arrests because the British did it using the systems and methods that don’t actually violate their citizens’ rights. Yep, they actually used policemen doing their jobs, not random wiretaps of every phone call and email. They didn’t need to lock people up for years without charges, finding extraordinary means of avoiding domestic and international legal challenges. They did things in ways that violated no law of the land, completely without controversy. Maybe we don’t want to talk about that.

The fourth incumbent Senator to lose a primary since 1980.  Incumbency is a disease.

Back in 1987, when I first started driving, I had a 1967 Dodge Coronet. It got 17 miles per dollar (mpd). That car had horrible mileage, a cranky carburetor, and generally drove like the tank it resembled.

When I got back from my first tour in Korea in 1992, I got a cheap Toyota. With advances in technology, I was able to average 25 mpd. Of course, I had rare need for air conditioning in Monterey, but that 25 mpd was mostly city driving.

My next car, the Dodge Neon, was a victim of a slight rise in gas prices, so I only got 23 mpd when I first got the cute little thing in 1995. By the time I moved on to the next car, I was only able to squeeze 17 mpd from the Neon.

The Ford Contour (crappy car, don’t ever get one) I got saddled with in 2000 made a then-sad 15 mpd. Power locks, air conditioning, but otherwise a simple auto.

Now we’ve got these insane fuel prices, and I drove to and from Dallas this weekend. The previous week, with commuting the primary fuel usage, I only made 7 (seven!) mpd. The highway trip made things slightly better, with a massive 11 mpd.

Of course, even a Toyota Prius would only average around 15-17 mpd nowadays. I don’t even want to do the math on that old Coronet (OK, fine – it would be five mpd). I think my “Check Economy” light is flashing…

According to this site, Tom Green County has a median household income $8800 lower than the national median. And, the per capita income is $5400 lower than the national per capita income.

So why are we building so many new businesses here, exactly?

I love that in Nevada even the Republicans have a porn star running for governor. That state is freakin’ hilarious.

From the altfriday5:

1. How well do you understand your country*’s electoral system? Give us a quick summary of how it works. Diebold makes machines to count all the votes they can. The votes get counted in secret, via processes no citizen is allowed to know. Whichever corporation bought the most votes chooses the next President.
2. What, if anything, do you not like about your country’s electoral system? If you were in charge of reforming it, what would you change? The opacity.

3. What, if anything, do you like about your country’s electoral system?? Even small states get some vote. There is no legal way to keep anyone (non-felon, etc) from running for office.

4. Some countries use fixed dates for elections , and some allow them to be called as needed, within certain limits. Which do you think is the better system? Why? Fixed dates are what I’m used to, so the other system seems more chaotic to me.

5. Some countries use proportional representation and some use majoritarian (or some combination thereof). Which do you think is the better system? Why? I’d prefer a proportional system, as it requires more compromise and coalition-building, instead of just saying the 51% rule and the 49% shut up and color.

*Where “your country” = the one that you can vote in, or will be able to vote in when you are of age

The Questioner says: Don’t forget your links!

Here’s a fun game – run this Google search at random and see if you can spot the flaw in the music industry’s business plan. Today, they are suing Yahoo China. The BPI (UK version of RIAA) is suing AllofMP3, the only large online music service that is successful and can be used with any music player. A couple weeks ago, the RIAA sued YouTube users. They’ve sued dead people, little kids, people without computers…

Maybe suing your customers is not the best way to gain market share, eh? Do they honestly think they can strong-arm people into buying the latest shitty CD from Christina Milian or whichever interchangeable pop star they come up with next?

Read Little Heroes by Norman Spinrad – I’m pretty sure the recording industry of today is exactly like the recording industry he wrote about twenty years ago, just not as good at it as he portrayed.

This case illustrates much that is incredibly wrong with the current de facto permanent copyright nonsense. A.A. Milne’s granddaughter is trying to wrest control of her dear grandpa’s “intellectual property” from the House of Mouse.

Clare Milne, who was not born when her grandfather died, sought to use a 1976 copyright law to terminate the prior licensing agreement and recapture ownership of the copyright.

So, exactly how does Clare’s assumption of her grandfather’s copyright in any way create an incentive for dear dead Mr. Milne to create more Pooh stories? Those darned zombie authors sure are busy.