Limiting your exposure to death causing radiation
Do you wonder if we all should have read this before starting to blog? One of the things this article tells you to do (so that you don’t start a blog) is read 5 random blogs for a month. I think this misses the point of the blog. You are supposed to read about stuff or people you are interested in! If I pick 5 random books to read I’d probably end up with some Romance, an Anne Rice book (boo…), and some crap targeted at toward young adults. Of course I’d be disappointed but that doesn’t mean the book medium is crap.
I need to comment on the DPL’s new book download program. The program is run by Overdrive and uses DRM handicapped WMA files. Now, I personally think that DRM is bad for business… and the Overdrive is a good example of why. Apple and Microsoft have competing DRM specification (both are proprietary) and neither is universially excepted. I doubt that Microsoft’s new portable media player will be able to play Apple DRMed media and I know that Apple iPod’s do not play DRM WMA files. Which basically means that we cannot use this new and potentially cool serve (unless we burn the audio files onto a CD then use those CD, or ripe the audio from those CDs and put them onto the iPod). It’s just annoying, especially when those things aren’t that cheap. (btw, the new iPod shuffle is very cool) On a funny aside, the DPL gave away a free iPod Nano this summer to some kid… I hope he doesn’t try to download any books! Maybe I get steal D14’s old non-apple MP3 player.
I’m tired.
I have to laugh at that disuade yourself article…. Particularly the point where the authors say that if you want to communicate with friends and family you ought to make your blog either A. private or B. make a message board instead. Apparently, the people who wrote this have very dedicated technologically saavy friends and family who would be willing to sign up for an account to read your thoughts and musings if they were not made absolutely public. Most bloggers don’t have such a luxary.
Case and point, Old Man. Old Man hates creating usernames and passwords for things. What would be likely to happen if one of us decided to make our blog only accessible by passworded account or converted to a members only message board format? He’d stop reading like you completely closed up shop forever.
I hate DRMed stuff as well. As a Linux user, you grow to hate it even more because often times, you either can’t play DRMed material at all on your computer (nevermind whatever device you own) or you have to do some extremely funky and almost not worth it work arounds to do it. Nevermind all the stuff you just said in regard to there not being one accepted DRMed format across the board.
Comment by nikkiana — Thursday, September 14, 2006 @ 1:43 pm
Apparently reading isn’t helping your grammer. Its accepted not excepted!
Comment by The Scientist — Thursday, September 14, 2006 @ 2:25 pm
I didn’t read through my post… I just sort of gave up and wrote ‘I’m tired’ instead.
I don’t understand the Old Man’s aversion to giving out his information when signing up for user accounts. I pretty sure all your information (SSN, credit card #, birth date, name, e&c) are floating around out there already. The people who you have to give that info to are careless with it (credit cards, banks, phone companies), so why sweat the small stuff? Me? Cynical? No, never.
Comment by Z.Monkey — Thursday, September 14, 2006 @ 3:54 pm
I was thinking of giving up blogging and just e-mailing everybody if something interesting ever happened, which would also eliminate the need to censor myself (like if I just wanted to send something out that said “I think getting married and moving into a house before the age of 40 or so is ridiculous,” I could only send it to my one or two still-unmarried friends and not offend anybody) but then I`d lose track of whom I`d said things to and whom I`d purposefully excluded. Better to put it where everyone can see it and either back my words up or not make any outlandish comments at all …
Comment by dan — Thursday, September 14, 2006 @ 5:11 pm
Who is this “nikkiana” person who uses Linux? I hate the DRM as well, fight it!.
Comment by xumbi — Friday, September 15, 2006 @ 12:10 pm
She is my sister-in-law. She makes socks.
To be honest I haven’t really been effected by DRM. I knew it was bad for consumers but it only just turned its ugly head toward us with this book download thing (as this would have been very cool to use).
Comment by Z.Monkey — Friday, September 15, 2006 @ 12:39 pm
I want an iPod, but Apple’s only offerings range in 8Gig or less and 30Gig or more. What about a happy medium around 15Gig in the nano form factor. That’s all I ask.
Comment by --ThatGuy — Saturday, September 16, 2006 @ 2:47 am
It is not the personal information. I have forgot dozens of usernames and passwords. I now just use the same one for everything that is not important. But why go through all that crap for no reason that is important to me. I have had to forget a lot of critical information, such as phone numbers, combinations, passwords, addresses, e-mail, etc. over the years or they bleed over into the current set and then I’m up a brown river without physical means of locomotion.
I’m disappointed with the tall guy with a brazillian hobby who now speaks with a foreign tongue. He said he could turn me on to some new music my jaded sensibilities would like. Instead he has decided to roam the planet instead, mocking us wage slaves, and extoling the virtues of not working.
I shot an 85 yesterday, that is golf, to you guys. My best round ever. That is about the best I can do. I could possibly with more practice shave off a few more strokes but I will be happy to shoot 85 everyday.
Comment by weird old guy — Saturday, September 16, 2006 @ 8:42 am
Nad: Outlandish comments are fine, and I don’t think you can really offend any of us that much. Also, I think the main reason you are against marriage is that most people how are married and own a house/condo also own cats. I think you are more averse to the cat thing than the marriage/home thing. Plus not all of us can be bums (have you started drinking bum wine?)
ThatGuy: Don’t be ‘That Guy’.
Old Man: Congrates on the golf score. It’s sad that I hit a 72 on a 9 hole course… Also, I had the login/password problem when I started school but that has, for the most part, be resolved (though I can’t for the life of me remember my bank login or my password).
Comment by Z.Monkey — Monday, September 18, 2006 @ 1:55 pm
Also check out LibriVox. Hurray for the public domain!
Comment by Z.Monkey — Wednesday, September 20, 2006 @ 11:07 am