General

Today I went to MacCenter

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Today I went to MacCenter to see if I could find a wireless PCI card for my B&W G3, but unfortunately they didn’t have any in stock.

I ended up buying a Griffin PowerMate. This is a very cool device – besides working as a volume control, you can also program it to do different things in each application. As a bonus, it can also act as a power on button if it’s connected directly to the computer (which I haven’t done).

ABCNEWS.com : Is It Time

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ABCNEWS.com : Is It Time to End the War on Drugs? [Daypop Top 40]

There’s no question that drugs often wreck lives. But the drug war wrecks lives too, creates crime and costs billions of dollars.

Is there an alternative? Much of Europe now says there is.

In Amsterdam, using marijuana is legal. Holland now has hundreds of “coffee shops” where marijuana is officially tolerated. Clients pick up small amounts of marijuana the same way they would pick up a bottle of wine at the store.

The police regulate marijuana sales ÷ shops may sell no more than about five joints worth per person, they’re not allowed to sell to minors, and no hard drugs are allowed.

What has been the result of legalizing marijuana? Is everyone getting stoned? No. In America today 38 percent of adolescents have smoked pot ÷ in Holland, it’s only 20 percent.

I'm now using AT&T Broadband

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I’m now using AT&T Broadband cable modem. BellSouth’s DSL service has been unusable lately, so I decided to switch a few weeks ago. The contractor (he doesn’t actually work directly for AT&T) came exactly on time at 11:00 (they estimated 11-2) and had it working before noon.

The only minus – he wasn’t able to run a cable into my spare bedroom where I previously kept my server, so I now have my B&W G3 running headless in a corner of my living room, along with my Airport base station & my LinkSys BEFSR41 router.

It seems a lot faster than DSL. Where I used to live, BellSouth’s FastAccess service was great, but here it’s always been slow & unreliable.

Frank Field on control freaks:"Geoff

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Frank Field on control freaks:

“Geoff Edgers reports in today’s Boston Globe [PDF] that market economics even seem to effect the record industry.

The most remarkable part of this article is the response of the RIAA to the fact that record stores are reducing their CD prices to get customers into the store. A Globe chart (not given online) shows that the average suggested retail price of CDs was $21.50 in 1983 (the introduction of the CD), dropping rather steadily to $12.50 in 1990 and trending slowly back up to $14.02 in 2000 (sourced from the RIAA). The fact that local stores are discovering that they need to offer product at $9.99 to get people into stores, however, leads the RIAA to this position:

But Hilary Rosen, chief executive officer of the RIAA, said that it’s unfair to expect record companies to cut costs. She says people who steal music by downloading soundfiles or burning discs illegally are responsible for sales drops.

‘In the age of $150 sneakers, $12 movie prices and $40 video games, I’m just unsympathetic,’ Rosen says. ‘At any price in the $10 to $18 range, CDs are a great value.’

But, there’s another feature of her position that screams for consideration – ‘it’s unfair to expect record companies to cut costs.’ Really!?! Every other industry looks upon cost-cutting as the standard – a day to day practice. There are plenty of industries where cost saving – continuous improvement – is the centerpiece of operations. Yet the RIAA, confronted with technological challenges that have been commonplace since the invention of the player piano, refuses to acknowledge that cost might have something to do with their declining performance in the face of these challenges. Rather than exploring new business models, it’s all about modifying law and regulations within the industry, and calling for dramatic changes in industries outside of their traditional purview – computer technology.

And worse, they’ve managed to convince a large fraction of the population that their position is reasonable. For anyone who’s read Courtney Does the Math, and looks at  [PDF] the implications of her numbers has to ask about the costs of promotion – and wonder, for example, why killing webcasting seems to be the objective of the RIAA.

As far as I can see, it comes down to a simple fact – the record companies are control freaks, pure and simple. Somehow, they have managed (along with the movie industry) to convince us that their monopoly control should be perfect, unassailable by advancing technology and guaranteed by the state. And worse, our government representatives see that their role is to employ the instruments of public policy to maintain their control.

It’s time for a change. And it’s up to us to bring it about.” [FurdLog]

[The Shifted Librarian]

i love it when a

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i love it when a plan comes together. Stallman: “[Information on how to make a copy of a DVD] is being is being treated as even more dangerous than how to make an atomic bomb, and that is perfectly understandable, because an atomic bomb could only be used to kill people, whereas this might endanger the profits of the corporations which the US Government exists to serve.” [Copyright vs. Community in the Era of Computer Networks]

[Aaron Swartz: The Weblog]

bravo!

Platform CollapseThe pace of change

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Platform Collapse

The pace of change in IT creates its own business victims, often to the consumer’s benefit. One aspect of this rapid change is platform collapse, a process that brings unusual instability to IT. This kind of thing isn’t seen in more established industries such as banking or supermarkets. The instability of platform collapse is such that a new product carried to popular recognition can wipe out the commercial prospects of other products.

… a fascinating read.