I was linked to this post on the evils of DRM and geographical restrictions today and, yeah, I agree. On some levels I'm completely pro-piracy (can you imagine the wonders of a free-information society?); on more rational levels I know there needs to be a balance between the producer and the user.
DRM/geographical restrictions, however, are not the solution to anything perhaps world harmony. Like the comment writer quoted in the above post points out: there are occasions in which people choose (for whatever reason), to legally purchase media instead of illegally downloading it. Record companies and movie makers everywhere should be putting on dorky little party hats and throwing confetti. Yay, people are paying for our content! Yay, the pirates have stopped! Instead, they pull out a big stick marked and proceed to hit people like small donkeys.
DRM and location limiting procedures make me so angry as a potential purchaser and even angrier as a potential purchaser who has the apparent misfortune to live in Australia, not America. Location limiting procedures make me especially angry tonight because, despite the fact that I have the gall not to live in America, I would like to buy some DVDs.
Batman: The Animated Series Vol 1
Batman: The Animated Series Vol 2
Batman: The Animated Series Vol 3
Batman: The Animated Series Vol 4
I really liked watching these cartoons even when I was a small girl and my parents thought I should have been doing something doll-related. Anyway. That's all. I just want to buy 4 volumes of Batman cartoons, weird as it may sound.
However.
The first problem is that only the first volume appears to have ever been released in Australia. A quick search on the Amazon shows that all volumes are in stock there. Fine, and although the delivery charges are a bit expensive ($16.95 compared with free if you live in America), I can deal with that.
The second problem is that America DVDs are region 1, and Australian DVDs are region 4. My iMac apparently allows up to 5 DVD region changes. Should I just go on an extended Batman cartoon marathon, watch them repeatedly until I can no longer stomach them and then switch my iMac region back to 4, satisfied in the knowledge that I've gained the maximum use out of one of my five region changes?
All I want to do is watch the DVDs after paying for them. To do that conveniently (bearing in mind that I also own Australian DVDs that I'd also like to watch), I either need to find a way to make my Mac let me have unlimited region changes, or I need a region free DVD player.
In regards to the Mac, I found Region X, which seemed great until the message that most users reported that it didn't work with Leopard.
In regards to buying a region free DVD player: the cheapest is about $97 and a 19" TV (which is the closest in size to my 20" iMac) is $352. I don't want to buy a DVD player or a TV - I just want to watch it on my big, shiny iMac.
So, a summary:
1. DRM sucks.
2. Stuff like separate regions for DVDs and players which refuse to play them all suck.
3. America sucks.
4. Australia sucks.
5. The world sucks.
6. I want my Batman cartoons.
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Thursday, November 8, 2007
iPod cover for the broke and untalented
I bought a shiny red 3rd gen iPod Nano the day it was released. It's a little crazy how much I love the thing, but one thing I don't love is its amazing propensity to attract smudges, scratches and fingerprints. The newness of the 3rd gen Nano means that there's not yet the huge variety of cases and sleeves available as there are for other models, and what is available is ridiculously overpriced. (At the markets, they were asking $10 for a silicone sleeve and another $8 for a screen protector, which is basically a clear bit of sticky plastic.)
Since I have better things to spend my money on, I decided to make my own cover.
Cost: Less than 40 cents
Time: About 15 minutes
Skills required: the ability to thread a needle/tie a knot
Materials used:
1. polar fleece material - it's soft and fluffy and I figured it wouldn't scratch my iPod. I bought a 1m x 20cm piece from Lincraft for 40 cents and I used about 1/6 of it to make this case.
2. needle - you could use a sewing machine but I don't own one and besides, I failed sewing class in high school. (Really.)
3. thread - it doesn't matter what colour it is, since no-one will see the stitches. I used black.
4. button - we have a bunch of spare buttons lying around. I just grabbed one of those.
5. cord - any relatively thick bit of string will do. I used about 6cm of cord from a drawstring.
Method:
1. Cut a strip of polar fleece that's the height of your ipod and 4 times as wide. I made the height snug so it wouldn't fall out and overestimated on the width to account for space taken up by stitches.
2. Fold both ends to the centre and sew up the top and bottom sides, leaving the inner seam open. Now you have two pockets - one for your iPod and one for your iPod headphones.
3. Sew a button on one edge.
4. Sew a loop of cord on the other edge so that it will loop around the button and keep it shut.
Voila. An iPod cover that can be made by an 8 year old, costs practically nothing and can be finished in the time that it takes for dinner to cook.
Since I have better things to spend my money on, I decided to make my own cover.
Cost: Less than 40 cents
Time: About 15 minutes
Skills required: the ability to thread a needle/tie a knot
Materials used:
1. polar fleece material - it's soft and fluffy and I figured it wouldn't scratch my iPod. I bought a 1m x 20cm piece from Lincraft for 40 cents and I used about 1/6 of it to make this case.
2. needle - you could use a sewing machine but I don't own one and besides, I failed sewing class in high school. (Really.)
3. thread - it doesn't matter what colour it is, since no-one will see the stitches. I used black.
4. button - we have a bunch of spare buttons lying around. I just grabbed one of those.
5. cord - any relatively thick bit of string will do. I used about 6cm of cord from a drawstring.
Method:
1. Cut a strip of polar fleece that's the height of your ipod and 4 times as wide. I made the height snug so it wouldn't fall out and overestimated on the width to account for space taken up by stitches.
2. Fold both ends to the centre and sew up the top and bottom sides, leaving the inner seam open. Now you have two pockets - one for your iPod and one for your iPod headphones.
3. Sew a button on one edge.
4. Sew a loop of cord on the other edge so that it will loop around the button and keep it shut.
Voila. An iPod cover that can be made by an 8 year old, costs practically nothing and can be finished in the time that it takes for dinner to cook.
Wednesday, November 7, 2007
All roads lead to Ankh Morpork
A note about the title of this blog: "Sodomy Non Sapiens" is a quote from Discworld. It's in Latatian (very bad doggy Latin) and translated means "Buggered if I know".
I was looking at it today when I thought: you know, maybe it could be translated as "Buggery, not knowledge". While that's a perfectly valid motto, it's not quite in the spirit of what I intended.
So now you know. But buggered if I do.
I was looking at it today when I thought: you know, maybe it could be translated as "Buggery, not knowledge". While that's a perfectly valid motto, it's not quite in the spirit of what I intended.
So now you know. But buggered if I do.
Homemade bread
This is to remind myself that I want to make homemade bread over the weekend: http://www.thesimpledollar.com/2007/11/04/homemade-bread-cheap-delicious-healthy-and-easier-than-you-think/
Media vs China
In August this year, the headlines were all about the Mattel toy recall scandal - millions of Chinese-made toys were recalled for high lead levels in paints and tiny magnets that could be removed and swallowed by children.1 It led to near-hysteria reactions from the west about the low quality and safety levels in Chinese made products.
One Chinese toy company owner committed suicide out of shame.2
Then in September, Mattel admitted that the safety flaws in the toys were its fault - not the fault of the Chinese manufacturers - firstly by stating that "Mattel was "by no means perfect", and acknowledging its Chinese producers had not been monitored closely enough".3 While this admission still left the blame at the Chinese manufacturers (they needed to be "monitored" in order to produce safe toys - left alone, the Chinese would presumably have run wild with uranium and lead), a fuller admission came only days later, with Mattel admitting that the recalled toys had been made to Mattel's own designs.4
I was interested to note that while the toy recall scares received nearly daily attention by the media, of all the news channels that I come into contact with, BBC World News Online was the only place I heard of Mattel's admission.
Today, it's been announced that the Chinese province of Guangdong (where many of the recalled toys were produced) may be suing Mattel for libel.5 Good on them. I hope they're awarded sizable compensation, especially given that Mattel have admitted that 85% of the recalls were their own fault, and the whole thing has given rise to comments like "Made in China has now become a warning label" by US Senator Sam Brownback.6
Granted, some of China's safety standards need an overhaul. But obviously so do Mattel's, if 85% of 20 million (i.e. 16 million) of the recalled toys were recalled because of its own design fault. And there's no small bit of irony in that the west is happy to import massive amounts of cheaply made Chinese goods (and to commission their production) but is still liable to complain about the quality. If you're going to pay two cents to have something made, why be surprised when the quality is that of a two cent item?
I'd also be interested to know what percentage of household items are made in China (or Taiwan, or India, or Korea or another labour-cheap Asian country) and how well the average person could live without using cheap Asian-imported products.
1 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20254745/, http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/08/01/toy.recall.ap/index.html
2http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20240769/
3http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6991804.stm
4http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2174642,00.html
5http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7080573.stm
6http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6991804.stm
One Chinese toy company owner committed suicide out of shame.2
Then in September, Mattel admitted that the safety flaws in the toys were its fault - not the fault of the Chinese manufacturers - firstly by stating that "Mattel was "by no means perfect", and acknowledging its Chinese producers had not been monitored closely enough".3 While this admission still left the blame at the Chinese manufacturers (they needed to be "monitored" in order to produce safe toys - left alone, the Chinese would presumably have run wild with uranium and lead), a fuller admission came only days later, with Mattel admitting that the recalled toys had been made to Mattel's own designs.4
I was interested to note that while the toy recall scares received nearly daily attention by the media, of all the news channels that I come into contact with, BBC World News Online was the only place I heard of Mattel's admission.
Today, it's been announced that the Chinese province of Guangdong (where many of the recalled toys were produced) may be suing Mattel for libel.5 Good on them. I hope they're awarded sizable compensation, especially given that Mattel have admitted that 85% of the recalls were their own fault, and the whole thing has given rise to comments like "Made in China has now become a warning label" by US Senator Sam Brownback.6
Granted, some of China's safety standards need an overhaul. But obviously so do Mattel's, if 85% of 20 million (i.e. 16 million) of the recalled toys were recalled because of its own design fault. And there's no small bit of irony in that the west is happy to import massive amounts of cheaply made Chinese goods (and to commission their production) but is still liable to complain about the quality. If you're going to pay two cents to have something made, why be surprised when the quality is that of a two cent item?
I'd also be interested to know what percentage of household items are made in China (or Taiwan, or India, or Korea or another labour-cheap Asian country) and how well the average person could live without using cheap Asian-imported products.
1 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20254745/, http://edition.cnn.com/2007/US/08/01/toy.recall.ap/index.html
2http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20240769/
3http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6991804.stm
4http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2174642,00.html
5http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7080573.stm
6http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/6991804.stm
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
Things that would make the world better
I have been instructed to start a blog about work that I am interested in. I am not working on any projects but maybe that should change. Directing my thinking could be interesting.
Anyway, this is what I think would make the world a better place:
1. The ability to "right-click close" on windows in expose when you are looking at it the "all windows view". It takes too much time to select each window and close it, especially when there's about 15 failed ichat audiochat windows.
2. Packaging that could vanish on demand, thereby saving the last remnants of the food that inevitably gets stuck on the sides. Sometimes that last scraping of peanut butter really makes or breaks a sandwich.
3. Level 1.4 of Yoshi's Island (DS) should keep the winged cloud/! button there indefinitely so I don't have to exit and re-enter the level every time I fail to make the jump (which, incidentally, has been every single time). Perhaps the ! button vanishes because since it is a castle level, they want to test your skill, but I think it's silly because punishing me by making things inconvenient (especially in a way that takes me out of the game) is a waste of time.
4. A system of tags with GPS devices attached. The tags would be linked to a central computer/control. We could stick a tag on to every file in our office and instead of the inevitable "Who has the Smith file?!" drama that occurs every couple of hours, the outraged person could just log on to their computer, type in the file number and the location of the file would be revealed as a flashing red dot on the computer generated map. This system would eliminate a lot of drama, angst and panic in the office.
5. A system of instantaneous demand/supply. Not only for things with quantified market value (I'm selling my textbook; you want to purchase it) but smaller things like "Holy crap I just cooked enough spaghetti to feed 11 people; here are 10 other hungry people who can eat the rest".
Now I have to pass level 1.4. Bye.
Anyway, this is what I think would make the world a better place:
1. The ability to "right-click close" on windows in expose when you are looking at it the "all windows view". It takes too much time to select each window and close it, especially when there's about 15 failed ichat audiochat windows.
2. Packaging that could vanish on demand, thereby saving the last remnants of the food that inevitably gets stuck on the sides. Sometimes that last scraping of peanut butter really makes or breaks a sandwich.
3. Level 1.4 of Yoshi's Island (DS) should keep the winged cloud/! button there indefinitely so I don't have to exit and re-enter the level every time I fail to make the jump (which, incidentally, has been every single time). Perhaps the ! button vanishes because since it is a castle level, they want to test your skill, but I think it's silly because punishing me by making things inconvenient (especially in a way that takes me out of the game) is a waste of time.
4. A system of tags with GPS devices attached. The tags would be linked to a central computer/control. We could stick a tag on to every file in our office and instead of the inevitable "Who has the Smith file?!" drama that occurs every couple of hours, the outraged person could just log on to their computer, type in the file number and the location of the file would be revealed as a flashing red dot on the computer generated map. This system would eliminate a lot of drama, angst and panic in the office.
5. A system of instantaneous demand/supply. Not only for things with quantified market value (I'm selling my textbook; you want to purchase it) but smaller things like "Holy crap I just cooked enough spaghetti to feed 11 people; here are 10 other hungry people who can eat the rest".
Now I have to pass level 1.4. Bye.
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