[Quote:]

It struck me yesterday reading Steve Jobs’ personal note about plans for third-party apps on the iPhone that the most telling thing about the announcement was the opening five-word phrase:

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February.

Let me just say it. What we’re starting to see here (and of course in the anti-DRM letter from earlier this year) is a pretty significant shift in Jobs’ public relations strategy, in that he seems to have recognized that there are limits to secrecy. Yes, some developments are best kept under wraps for as long as possible — like the iPhone or the Intel switch — contrary to all the principles of Web 2.0 openness and transparency. But with other decisions, you’re sometimes much better off going public early, and exposing some of your thought process when you do.

Let’s wait and see how “great” this SDK really is… as far as I know, it still requires a cryptographic signature by Apple before your custom app runs on an iPhone, which still means it really isn’t open at all…

An email alert:

Alert on DOMEX at 18-10-2007 14:32:45

The server failed to complete 42.000000. print jobs.

This error commonly occurs when the printer runs out of paper or becomes jammed. If this happens, clear the problem at the printer, and then restart the print job.

You can disable this alert or change its threshold by using the Change Alert Notifications task in the Server Management Monitoring and Reporting taskpad.

Given the resolution of the printer, this report is accurate to the exact pixel. If the printer had reported “success except for the topleft pixel” for one of the print jobs, the mail message would have read:

Alert on DOMEX at 18-10-2007 14:32:45

The server failed to complete 41.999999. print jobs.

This error commonly occurs when the printer runs out of paper or becomes jammed. If this happens, clear the problem at the printer, and then restart the print job.

You can disable this alert or change its threshold by using the Change Alert Notifications task in the Server Management Monitoring and Reporting taskpad.

And people pay money for this crap?

Bonus question: what resolution does this printer have if one pixel equals 0.000001 print jobs?

[Quote:]

US President George W. Bush said Wednesday that he had warned world leaders they must prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons “if you’re interested in avoiding World War III.”

“We’ve got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel,” Bush said at a White House press conference after Russia cautioned against military action against Tehran’s supect atomic program.

“So I’ve told people that, if you’re interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from having the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon,” said Bush.

If you’re interested in avoiding World War III, the best thing you can do is to remove George W. from office a.s.a.p.

From the you have to be fucking kidding me department…

[Quote:]

A bipartisan bill that would let victims of identity theft seek restitution for money and time they spent repairing their credit history was introduced on Tuesday in the Senate.

The legislation would also give federal prosecutors more tools to combat identity theft and cybercrime, according to sponsors Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania.

[..]

The bill would also eliminate a requirement that the loss resulting from damage to a victim’s computer must exceed $5,000 for prosecution; make it a felony to use spyware or keyloggers to damage 10 or more computers; and expand the definition of cybercrime to include extortion schemes that threaten to damage or access confidential information on a computer.

Unfortunately, this bill won’t change a thing. Victims can seek restitution from the criminals who don’t have any money anyway, and banks and credit card companies have no incentive to fix the vulnerabilities in their system that allows the fraud to occur in the first place. The only thing that will really solve identity theft is making credit card companies and credit agencies fully responsible for every penny of losses due to identity theft. This law is exactly backwards and should not be passed.

This bill sounds like the credit card companies and the senators met and decided they needed to do something that looks good but doesn’t cut into any profits.

[Quote:]

On the first day that Radiohead’s latest became available, around 240,000 users downloaded the album from copyright-infringing peer-to-peer BitTorrent sources, according to Big Champagne, a Los-Angeles-based company that tracks illegal downloading on the Internet. Over the following days, the file was downloaded about 100,000 more times each day—adding up to more than 500,000 total illegal downloads.

That’s less than the 1.2 million legitimate online sales of the album reported by the British Web site Gigwise.com. But Eric Garland, Big Champagne’s chief executive, says illegal file-sharing is likely to overtake legal downloads in the coming weeks, given that many of those 1.2 million legitimate sales were pre-orders taken during the 10 days between when the band announced the album and its actual release last Thursday.

With popular album releases, illegal download volumes normally outstrip sales, says Garland. But more surprising is that fans chose to steal music they could legally download for any price they choose.

Garland argues that this kind of digital theft is more a matter of habit than of economics. “People don’t know Radiohead’s site. They do know their favorite BitTorrent site and they use it every day,” he says. “It’s quite simply easier for folks to get the illegal version than the legal version.”

In Garland’s experience, the store price of a new album plays little role in determining how often it will be pirated. Similarly irrelevant are the protective locks that recording companies put on files to try to stop pirates from copying and sharing file, so called digital rights management systems.

[..]

Despite the hundreds of thousands of illegal downloads, Radiohead’s innovative online release could still be a smart fiscal strategy. By cutting out record companies, the band retains the full revenue stream of album sales, and monies from touring and merchandise sales.

The buzz generated by the band’s pay-what-you-want publicity stunt may also boost sales. Radiohead’s previous album sold only 300,000 copies in the first week—about one-sixth the number of copies of In Rainbows now in circulation.

[..]

Lichtman speculates that users may have interpreted Radiohead’s offer as a giveaway and so felt more comfortable downloading the album from other free sources. Fans may also have been turned off by the band’s requirement that users register by providing their name and e-mail and postal addresses.

The ultimate lesson may simply be that it’s hard to compete with free, Lichtman says. “Registration is a small barrier,” he says. “Sadly, even that little bit of cost might too much.”

[Quote:]

Anytime you have something that people want, and you do not give them a legitimate market to get it, a black market will develop.

Ten years ago, technology advanced to the point that you could distribute music digitally. By denying a legitimate means of digital distribution of music from the market for so long, the music labels essentially ENCOURAGED a black market in digital music to develop. That means that 10 years later, there are mature digital distribution methods and massive amounts of consumers who know how to use them. If, instead, the labels had just charged a reasonable rate 10 years ago, these illegitimate means of distribution would not have developed nearly as much.

So when consumers have the option of a free song from Radiohead’s site, and a free song from the same place they’re getting all of their other free music, why bother going to the Radiohead site?