Category Archives: tech

Apple's Beatles backslapping

By now you’ve probably heard that Apple made a big fucking deal over their “unveiling” of an authorized Beatles catalog available as digital downloads.

I try not to fawn in obsessively creepy ways when he attends a pho dinner, but I think the Washington Post’s Faster Forward columnist Rob Pegoraro is an excellent tech journalist. His post about this topic was especially good:

The Beatles, their surviving heirs and their misguided management finally turned in their Flat Earth Society membership cards today, allowing the sale of their music as digital downloads on Apple’s iTunes Store. La-dee-freakin’-da.

I’m sorry, were you expecting congratulations here?

Pegoraro then outlines all of the mis-steps that the Beatles management made along the way to this allegedly historic moment.

If you can’t be bothered to go read that post, I think this tweet sums the whole absurd announcement pretty well:

Net Neutrality (Mike Mills, Senator Al Franken, & FCC Chair Julius Genachowski on CSPAN)

If there’s a way to embed the CSPAN video player, I’m not smart enough to figure it out. The first video is the only one to feature Chaiman Genachowski being played onto the stage by a New Orleans brass funk band (at approximately 41:30:00)

THE FUTURE OF MUSIC POLICY SUMMIT 2009.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Georgetown University

Senator Al Franken and Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski delivered keynote addresses at the 2009 Music Policy Summit at Georgetown University. Among the topics they addressed were use of the Internet as a distribution mechanism for music, censorship and access issues, market competition, and the role of the FCC in regulating the Internet in a fair manner.

Washington, DC : 54 min.

Also available, from today:

FCC VOTES TO MOVE FORWARD WITH NET NEUTRALITY RULEMAKING PROCESS
Today

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) met and voted to move forward on Chairman Julius Genachowski’s open internet proposal. The net neutrality rules, if passed, would prohibit internet providers from favoring or discriminating against online applications. The FCC will have a period of hearings and comments on the proposal before a final vote is taken.
Washington, DC : 1 hr. 38 min.

No signal (and other cellular drama)

Thanks to the ubiquity of cellphones, horror and suspense writers have a new set of cliches to work with when stranding or isolating a character. Unless that character is like me and owns an iphone, then the act of getting a signal and making a successful call becomes a far-fetched plot-point. But my point isn’t to rant about how, as a phone, my iphone sucks. Although it does. It sucks, a lot. It sucks so much it should be investigated as a public safety issue. My phone rarely works in my house. I’ve had perfect service on my AT&T blackberry in my house for years, but I switched to an iphone and now, nothing. Which means I have to keep paying for a landline, which aggravates me.

My point is just to post this, because it’s funny: