I'm not usually really big on social networking sites. This would include Friendster, MySpace, Tribe and so on. I subscribe to each so that I can post announcements about shows and get to more people doing so, but why use the site to talk with friends when I have their fucking email addresses? (Yes, I swear a lot)

Then I went over to Digg.com and fell in love. Digg is not really a social networking site, but I guess you could kind of lump it into that category. Rather than try to explain it, I'll just paste a blurb from the site itself.

What is digg? Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

The thing I like about the site though is that you can subscribe to the main page like any blog and you get the best and most interesting news out there. If you've never heard of Digg, go check it out. And hey, add me to your friends list - not that I'll ever communicate with you through it, but isn't it fun to have friends and fully document the fact?

Posted by ZeroLogik at 9:25 PM | Permalink

If you've read any of my posts in the past, then you know my strong and sometimes downright militant views towards the RIAA and their greed driven attitudes.

Here's the article from The Register that got me going this time ;)

Well, not that it will make any impression on them I'm sure, but let me just say now that if the iTunes store shuts down or starts charging more than $0.99 a song I will never buy another CD or any music in my life.

Strong remarks, but I'll stand by it. Recently Steve Jobs (CEO of Apple) was addressing the music industry's recent push to charge more than $0.99 a song on the iTunes music store. Why? Greed. At least that's what Jobs says and I tend to agree with him.

You don't believe me? Right now, the consumer pays a fair price for legal digital downloads of music. But that's not enough because in America a company is not successful unless it's making MORE profit than the year before. That means cutting costs (how much it takes to make a song) or raising prices or some combination of the two every year. This is over simplified of course, but essentially true.

And these executives are F-ing clueless when it comes to the "mysterious internet" and how to use it to make money. Here's one gem from a music exec:

"It's going to be difficult to get the consumer to stop thinking about owning music, and think about paying for participation instead," said one executive.

Uh, hi... remember me? I just BOUGHT a CD from the store. Are you saying I don't own it, but I merely rented it? I should own the copy of the song that I bought. Sure, sharing is illegal, but if you're going to severely overcharge for a single song or CD, then I'm going to steal.

Yes, I said steal. Oh, but Shane, you're a sinner and will go to hell. Yeah, I'm sure God has a huge Excel spreadsheet and just adding all of us who take a little back from the RIAA who is being blatantly greedy and ripping us off in the first place.

Here's something else that's laughable. Michael Nash, head of Warner Music was quoted as saying...

Very few people people buy music from digital downloads.

I guess when the iTunes music store hit 50 million songs purchased in March of 2004, that was mere pittance? I'd love to sit in on one of their meetings. Anyone at the RIAA want to invite me next time? I'm there.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 11:16 PM | Permalink

I found a story about Google setting up a free WiFi network in New York. I'm pretty sure I've heard of other such hotspots popping up, but I don't have any links to those stories.

So my take is a positive one. I think Google has a huge opportunity here to tap a market the way it should be tapped. Not to say there's a lack of WiFi hotspots in America, but there sure is a lack of freedom within the current network. You go to Coffee Bean, you get SBC WiFi - you go to Starbucks, you get T-mobile.

The bigger problem is that current major networks are not free. They operate on a subscription basis which runs $29.99 a month for unlimited access (for T-mobile). This is a bit much for me. I can't justify another $30 a month just to be able to go online IF I'm at Starbucks. Right now I share a friend's login for free :)

I like Google's approach much better. The connection and service is free and from what I hear they are going to fund it through advertising. However, I'm not sure what form that comes in. Do you get popups while connected? Do you have to install their connection software? Do you have to have a Gmail login?

It'll be interesting to see how it works. If you know or have used the service, I'd love to hear about it.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 7:26 AM | Permalink

I'm so happy with the outcome of a recent case where the RIAA had sued a mother because her 13 year old daughter had been illegally sharing music online. The mother proved that she was not very good with computers and therefore had no knowledge of her daughter's wrongdoing. The RIAA of course claimed that ignorance is no excuse and it's the mother's fault anyway. Absurdity!

Now read this excerpt from the article where I found the story...

The case was dismissed with prejudice, which prevents the case from being advanced against the defendant. Finally, the RIAA tried asking the Judge to amend the judgement in order to allow them to sue the child through a Guardian Ad Litem. However the court denied this RIAA's request.

Can you believe these fucking people? They are so greedy, ignorant, and outright insane that after trying to sue a mother who had no idea about computers for file sharing, they then went after a 13 year old. I cannot believe there is not more outrage about this. This is on par with Wal-Mart suing a 13 year old who stole some items from one of their stores.

Have some humanity! Write or wrong, the kid's 13 years old!

This is by far my favorite story on this subject, second only to the story about the RIAA suing a dead elderly woman for the same reasons.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 7:08 AM | Permalink

I just got my full copy of Macromedia Studio 8 in the mail. I'm going to be evaluating the hell out of it in the coming weeks - especially Flash 8 because I'm in the middle of writing a University course that teaches it. I'll make some observations and let you know what I find.

I haven't seen any reviews of the product outside of the typical CNet and so on. But they say everything from the big software makers is good.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 7:32 AM | Permalink

Opera is one of the non-IE browsers that people love to preach about. It's lightweight, easy to install/update, fast and has a slew of features that even Firefox doesn't. All in all, it's a good browser, but it's never been my style.

Just the way it operates, where buttons are etc... doesn't appeal to me. However, if you love Opera then you'll love the news... today it went FREE.

In the past you could download it, but if you wanted to run the browser without little ads in the UI you had to pay for a license. Silly! This always annoyed me anyway, so the fact that they removed it is not that big a deal to me.

Besides, you could get an activation code online easily. So all I have to say is "So what?" My only question now is "How do they plan to make money?" I guess they have pay-support - but if that's their only revenue then I have to question how stable and solid future versions will be.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 8:34 AM | Permalink

Someone tipped me off that if you search for "failure" on Google, the top result is George W. Bush's biography. I don't think the search legitimately returns this link using its algorithm for search. Instead, I'd say Google's playing politics and voicing their displeasure with the president.

However, I will admit that his biography is also among the top results at Yahoo! and MSN too. It just seems odd that these search engines would consider his bio the most relevant result when the word failure doesn't appear a single time on the bio page.

Maybe search engines have become so advanced that they can actually search the minds of American citizens.

UPDATE: Apparently there is an explanation after all. A practice called Googlebombing can force links to the top of certain searches. It seems someone has used this technique to produce the results mentioned. Continued at Google...

I included a photo of the search just in case Google corrects this or it changes.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 11:39 PM | Permalink

Windows Vista is the next major release of the Windows operating system coming from Microsoft. Development began in 2001 and we "should" see a release by late 2006 according to Microsoft. In the mean time information about the OS has started to surface and in my opinion, it's fucking insane. Here's some of it, and YES it's all true...

In the Home category, Microsoft will create four product editions: Vista Starter Edition, Vista Home Basic Edition, Vista Home Premium Edition, and Vista Ultimate Edition (previously known as the "Uber" Edition). The Business category will feature three editions: Vista Small Business Edition, Vista Professional Edition, and Vista Enterprise Edition.

For those of you not counting, that's 7 editions of Windows Vista. And I love the fact that one of the editions used to be the "Uber" edition. That's just comedy. Now for the real juice...

Nigel Page is a strategist with Microsoft Australia. He told APC today that Vista would work best on a video card with more than 256MB RAM, 2GB of DDR3 memory and a S-ATA 2 hard drive.

Dear lord! If it requires this much hardware to run the OS optimally, then what software will be able to run on top of it? I mean you'd need dual-core, 64-bit processors running side-by-side, and 8GB of RAM to run your 3D software like MAX and Maya and then come to terms with the fact that a huge chunk of that is being eaten up by the OS itself.

This better change in a big way before Vista is released or Microsoft might just lose big-time to other OSes on the market.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 7:22 AM | Permalink

Well it's about damn time! There are all these blog search sites out there and they've been out there for months, if not longer. I know Google itself grabs some blog info, but it always seemed to miss a lot.

Now we can all relax because Google officially launched their blog search. I have to say my first try at using it (I searched for "grass apple") was great. It turned up 100% of my blog entries at The Grass Apple. Pretty cool.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 8:20 AM | Permalink

Apple released a new version of iTunes the other day (iTunes5). One of the things Jobs touted during the announcement was the new "cleaned up" interface. The problem is that this new cleaned up interfaces is 100% unique from any other UI for any other Apple app out there.

Which brings me to my point. Apple has several iLife apps or built in apps that come with your Mac purchase, but few of them look the same. Why is that?

Safari uses the old brushed metal look, iTunes has a newer grey plastic look, the new Mail has a kind of white plastic glassy hybrid look, and don't even get me started on Garage Band. Then you have their pro apps like Final Cut, Motion and so on.

Just take a look at the screen shot on the left. Why not just pick a couple standardized interfaces for particular types of apps and use them. Do we really need 5 or 6 different UIs for such standard apps as Mail, Safari, and iTunes? By the way, my favorite is iTunes 5 - let's have more of that.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 7:22 AM | Permalink

I can't say this news surprises me, but developers hang on to your tits. FEMA has released a registration site for disaster victims to locate and communicate with loved ones who may be missing and (being the geniuses they are) they have released a site that is only compatible with IE on Windows. The compatibility issue is because of some Javascript only IE can run that's used on the site. They also claim the same functions could have been written to support all browsers, but were not.

FEMA says the site was originally an in-house tool and only released to the public to serve this purpose. Okay, that's a fair statement, but here's a question... "Why in the fuck are you just now creating a website for this purpose period?" Remember Andrew & 9-11? Guys... you're the agency for federal emergencies, you have to think ahead. We can't apply bandages to every wound and expect to stop getting cut so deep.

This bit of news infuriates me on two levels... first of all - in today's online environment you should NEVER have a site that is IE only. Sorry, it's just moronic. Argue the point all you want, but limiting your audience when there's no need is not smart. And second, this just goes to illuminate the issues FEMA is having in general on a more specific scale.

I'm not saying it's all FEMA's fault. I think the ultimate blame rests on George Bush's shoulders. He weakened the agency and their ability to respond when he wrapped it up with Homeland Security. Now we have the head of Homeland Security doing more of the coordination than the previous heads of FEMA. At least this is what news organizations have been reporting as a possible cause for the delays in response.

I just hope people don't merely pay the issue lip service as I'm doing. It's time we held people accountable!

Here's the original story from ArsTechnica.

Posted by ZeroLogik at 3:54 PM | Permalink