Posting will be extremely light the coming weeks, I’ll be diving on curacao…

And for those of you staying behind, here’s a preview of coming monday:

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What would you say if we told you that there are people out there that want to make sharing your media between devices over a home network illegal?

You’re talking nonsense, you would say fanning off our claims with a wave of the hand and a shrug of the shoulders.

But according to Jim Burger, a Washington, D.C attorney who deals with piracy in the broadcasting industry, broadcasters want to do just that.

Speaking to Inside Digital Media’s Phil Leigh during the site’s latest Podcast, Burger spoke on how the broadcasting industry is keen to put controls on sharing media between devices even if those devices are on a home network and even if the sharing is strictly for personal use.

When pressed as to why broadcasters would want to do this, Burger replied simply ‘because they want you to pay for that right’.

When they finally manage to move the law to a “pay-per-play” structure, the number of plays anything will get on devices I own: zero. I wouldn’t piss on them if they were on fire…

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What I do care very much about, though, as someone who uses words for a living, is the language Microsoft chose to use in the press release they sent out announcing this delay. It is, truly, a delay: a difference of (depending on how you interpreted “second half of 2007″) anywhere from two weeks to six months and two weeks. And most of the news sites that reported on the delay described it as such. But Microsoft themselves did not use the word “delay.” They didn’t mention that they’d previously announced an earlier date. They didn’t say they were sorry. Instead, they used standard weaselly marketing language to make it sound like they were announcing a virtual non-event, and perhaps even to subtly suggest that anyone who wanted to think about it differently doesn’t care about quality.

Here is the exact text of the press release I received:

Office 2008 Coming January 2008

Microsoft’s Macintosh Business Unit (Mac BU) today announced that Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac will be available in the US in mid-January of 2008 (planning for Macworld), with global general availability in the first quarter of 2008. This was a business decision based on the Mac BU’s commitment to deliver a high-quality product.

“Our number one priority is to deliver quality software to our customers and partners, and in order to achieve this we are shifting availability of Office 2008 for Mac to mid-January of 2008,” said Mac BU General Manager Craig Eisler. “We’re successfully driving toward our internal goal to RTM in mid-December 2007, and believe our customers will be very pleased with the finished product.”

As the Mac BU moves closer to the product launch, Microsoft will share more details about features and exact timing.

More information at the Mac BU’s Mac Mojo blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/macmojo

Now then…what Microsoft could have said in their press release, instead, is this:

“Office 2008 for Mac, which we previously said would ship in the second half of 2007, has been delayed until January 2008. We ran into some unexpected problems, and we now realize we can’t get this out as soon as we said. We apologize for any inconvenience this delay may cause. We hope our customers will find the final product to be worth the wait.”

See how much better that is? It’s easy: just plain English. No weasel words, but no protracted pseudo-explanations either. Just: “Look, stuff happens. It happened. We’re sorry. Here’s the new plan.” And yet, with those few words, you acknowledge that there’s a difference between what you said and what you’re doing, that that is in fact a bad thing that you wish hadn’t happened, and that you understand why people might be a upset with you.

Why is that so hard? Why can’t a company bring itself to admit any fault, however minor, to say they feel badly about something? It’s OK, really. Your customers will forgive you. What customers should not forgive is marketing speak. I don’t cry over spilled milk. I cry over “The erstwhile contents of the glass have been redistributed in a more horizontal fashion. This was a business decision based on gravitational forces. Information on forthcoming moisture containment strategies and potential new sources of dairy products will be made available by mid-January 2008.”

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Shortly after I got my iPhone, the rubber ring around the screen started to come out. I tried pushing it back in, but it kept getting worse, so I brought it back to the store. Because it had been more than two weeks since I bought it, I had to send it in for repairs!

Yesterday, my replacement phone arrived. The box is way thinner than the normal iPhone box!

The best part of this whole thing was that after I spent 5 minutes scouring the apartment for a paperclip to open the sim card slot with, I realized Apple was way ahead of me -

Couldn’t they have at least unfolded if for me?