Please don’t be an April Fool’s joke
[edit] – It’s true!, hooray! This is a very good thing, and hopefully more labels will open-up their catalogues. Apparently un-DRM’ed albums will not have any price increase, but single tracks will.
A Fascinating Video of a Demo shown recently.
Finally – Military commanders can plan missions just like in the Movies…
BT is offering better access & prices to the local-loop in an attempt to head off Ofcom’s threat of using the Enterprise Act to split the telco.
That’s good news.
Meanwhile – in related news, Bulldog still can’t provision my DSL order — five weeks after the order — because they are waiting for BT to open slots in the Bayswater exchange….
Which reminds me – I’ve got a dilemma for my three readers: Easynet haven’t disconnected my DSL yet (as you can see by reading this post) – even though the three month cancellation period has elapsed (and they sent me a three month bill instead of my normal annual bill.)
Do I ask them about it now, and probably lose my DSL, or wait until I get a definite provisioning date from Bulldog?
Knowing my luck – they’ll try and charge me another three months for not telling them, or something…
There’s a lot of buzz at the moment about which company is going to “own” your sitting room. The tech watchers (in the financial industries) are predicting that either Sony, Microsoft or (less likely) Apple will release a machine that bids to become your Home Server.
MS already has two threads of attack – the XBox 2 and Windows Media Centre Edition (which is basically a normal PC with a TV tuner in). Sony is thought to want to position the PS3 (or a more expensive variant of the PS3) as your home media server.
I’m not sure that people want a closed/proprietary converged system (that it’s illegal to modify) lurking in their sitting room – I think that they want the consumer electronics equivalent of Unix.
Unix is all about components – it’s built in small parts that interact with each other in open standards. That means that if you want to swap a part out and replace it with a better part (that performs a similar function) then you can.
Compare this with MS Windows and Sony’s PS2 – They fear loss of control, so they have closed, secret systems – e.g. Sony’s ATRAC audio codec and Windows’ symbiosis with the IE rendering engine. Sony might be coming round to open standards with their acceptance of MP3 in their Digital Audio products – mind you they’d be suicidal to continue ignoring MP3.
Here’s an example of a good component-like device: The Zensonic Z500:
It’s a DVD player that plays all the acronyms you can throw at it (MPEGs, DivX, etc…) and also has wired and wireless networking.
The networking becomes interesting when you see that they have server software (win/linux/mac os x) that streams media from your PC to the device.
Nice. And at about £170 – in March 2005.
There’s a massive essay on DrunkenBlog on the topic of Microsoft and Security.
It’s a lot longer than your average blog post (13k words), and is probably way off your geek-scale – but if you are interested in Operating Systems security (especially Windows) then it’s well worth a read.
The Economist has several articles on Simplicity in Technology which are a good read.
I also noticed that Philips have simplicity as the theme of their entire advertising campaign at the moment.
K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) is one of the mantras of design – Simplicity is a good thing.
That’s why my blog posts are so short
I woke-up listening to XFM this morning. The DJ reads out request email from a guy in the queue at the Apple Store in Regent’s Street. She seems confused as to how he was able to email and queue at the same time.
I hopped over to Oxford Circus, took one look at the queue and thought “I’m not queuing that long to get in a shop!” , turned around and went to Maplins on Gt. Portland St. instead. Not as glamourous, but there was no queue, and it was far geekier. 
It’s common knowledge that we British love to queue, but it seems the Americans have a strong need to be No.1 in every field: The first three in the queue were all American. One of them goes to every opening – it appears.
I think I’ll have a proper look another day…
Great magazine-style PDF reviewing all the iPod accessories
Alas – I’ve got bored (strangely) of wading through tens of comment authorisations every day – each of which is a variation on poker, fake pharmaceuticals and pr0n.
So I’ve added a turing test to the comments – a CAPTCHA.
Here’s where it came from.
There are accessibility issues with the CAPTCHA – because it can exclude partially-sighted or blind readers – but I hope it’s not a permanent solution. (I hoping that Kitten’s captcha for the blind will become an official WordPress Plug-in soon.)
It’s sad – because it’s another barrier to posting (even though it’s not too difficult) – but I’m hoping it’ll work (at least in the short term.)
(from DayPop top 40 RSS feed)
A Home computer for the year 2004. Slightly different from the G5 iMac.
Ever wanted to know which English word contains 5 vowels in a row? or What a collection of Cats is called?
A Fascinating FAQ about English from the Oxford Dictionaries has the answers you seek.
One of the most scary thing I’ve seen on the Internet in a while…
A photo diary of a motorcycle tour of Chernobyl.
Belle de Jour uncovered. The literary detective strikes again.
You didn’t think she was real did you? far too much detail…
If you didn’t already know – Apple Corps. is suing Apple Computer.
It turns out the Judge has an iPod. Wow, British judges aren’t the most… um, how shall I put this?… cutting-edge types. So this really shows how successful the iPod has become. Especially in the UK last Christmas. You see the white headphones all over London – so much so that Theives are specifically targeting them. I personally find those in-ear headphones uncomfortable.
The $ exchange rate to Sterling is (at the time of writing) 0.551815
A Dual 2GHz G5 (with a few extras) on the US Apple Store is $3,273.00 = £1,806.09
On the UK store an identically spec’ed machine is £2,517.99
Grr…
I’m off for Chrimbo.
Have a good one.
Meanwhile here’s a Sinclair ZX-81 Emulator for UIQ phones!
Meanwhile look at these:
Remember how TimeSplitters 2 on PS2 can be jury-rigged using a PC to play over the internet rather than just a LAN?
Well – some other pixies are busy on an equivalent for GameCube – WarpPipe. Mario Kart OnLine! And they are planning an OS X port.
Halo for Mac’s release date has slipped about a week (no big deal after 4 years!)
God help me – but I am addicted to Strong Bad’s Emails.
Tom links to how to make a paper 007 / Mario
Jobs vs. Gates – Hmm – Alvin Hall usually discusses Personal Investment in a Bow Tie – What will we learn from him about PC moguls?
Also the Christmas edition of Edge is in shops:
