Juha Haataja: Universal Digital IdeasDigital Media, Digital Rights, Copyrights, Freedom, and the Future of Ideas.Radiohead is doing great- October 17, 2007 Apparently Radiohead is successful with their customer-determined pricing model of the new album "In Rainbows". The Last.fm global tracks top 10 is all Radiohead - from this album. Quite a phenomenon. I have listened a few times through the album, and it is good. Especially considering that I have never been a Radiohead fan.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/drm/2007/10/17.html#a4865 Children and the iMac- October 13, 2007 Have been studying the parental controls on Mac OS X. I made an account for the daughters to use, making it possible to use various programs, such as painting, writing, games, astronomy etc. Although giving restricted rights to program and web works fine usually, there are some rough corners, for example with non-bundle applications. But I have managed to get almost everything working fine. And the daughters really enjoy using the iMac.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/drm/2007/10/14.html#a4863 West has failed to tackle Islam- October 11, 2007 I just read a thoughtful interview of Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Her deep analysis made me think differently about Islam. This is an example of what she had to say: I think that we are at war with Islam. And there's no middle ground in wars. Islam can be defeated in many ways. For starters, you stop the spread of the ideology itself; at present, there are native Westerners converting to Islam, and they're the most fanatical sometimes. There is infiltration of Islam in the schools and universities of...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/drm/2007/10/11.html#a4862 Listening to Radiohead- October 10, 2007 I'm now listening the new Radiohead album "In Rainbows" which I bought on the net. I'm not a great fan of the band, but I liked the concept of customer-specified price without DRM. When I downloaded the album and started listening, it sounds quite nice, better than expected. I paid three pounds for it, which perhaps was a bit low. However, the mp3 is only 160 kbps, and there was no cover art included. Also, the download process was implemented a bit sloppily, although it worked ok.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/drm/2007/10/10.html#a4860 Apple says new iMacs have a problem- October 5, 2007 Apple recently acknowledged that the new iMacs have a freezing problem. I wrote about my experiences about a month ago, when I had had 3-4 freezes in two weeks. But since installing iMac update 1.1, I have had only one freeze. Currently the iMac has been in use for over a week without any problems.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/drm/2007/10/05.html#a4858 Backing up to dvd's vs. hard disks- October 4, 2007 It seems that hard disk prices will drop dramatically this autumn. Perhaps by half. I'm planning to get a 500 GB or a 750 GB external hard disk for iMac backups, but not yet. A Firewire 800 version would be nice, and I think a 750 GB disk may cost less that 200 euros later this year. Meanwhile, I bought a couple DVD+RW disks for backing up my photos and music bought from iTMS. On the other hand, I believe the built-in backup software (Time Machine) in Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard will increase the...http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/drm/2007/10/04.html#a4857 Reading space opera- October 2, 2007 Some time ago I read "Old Man's War" by John Scalzi, now I'm reading "The Ghost Brigades". These book are space-opera type science fiction, but they also have a serious weakness: Scalzi's alien characters are not alien at all, but all too human. In fact, many of the human characters in the Vorkosigan books by Bujold are more alien that Scalzi's aliens. But on the other hand, Scalzi has built a nice technological universe with new twists on the usual sf ideas.http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/categories/drm/2007/10/02.html#a4856 |