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Decision taken: I don’t even want to try Vista, my laptop is dying quickly and Ubuntu doesn’t seem to work properly these days.
I’m getting a Mac.
Amnesty International Video
Amnesty International have created a series of videos for their “unsubscribe” campaign on torture techniques. The first one is entitled “Waiting for the Guards” and is incredibly effective. Some might find the video quite upsetting, but it is definitely worth a watch.
The film was made with a performance artist who stood in the stress position for 6 hours, so the pain is actually real. Even in a controlled, voluntary environment, it gets the message across.
Via Boing Boing
Many thanks to Dom for e-mailing me this.
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Man hurt using gun to change tyre
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Man hurt using gun to change tyre
A US man has injured himself in both legs after attempting to loosen a stiff wheel-nut by blasting it with his gun.
Remember kids: don’t shoot your car.
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Shut up, Spain’s king tells Chavez
BBC NEWS | World | Americas | Shut up, Spain’s king tells Chavez
We really need this sort of thing over here. It would make things much more interesting.
The Winter Revolution
Just a very quick post (I should be working) about a band called The Winter Revolution, who I just discovered on last.fm. It’s all very relaxed indie stuff, some of which is quite good and other perhaps slightly too weird.
Most importantly, on last.fm you can find two of their EPs as completely free legitimate downloads. Worth it if you like their sort of music.
AppleInsider | NBC chief says Apple ‘destroyed’ music pricing
Warning: Rambling tech post ahead.
AppleInsider | NBC chief says Apple ‘destroyed’ music pricing
“We wanted to take one show, it didn’t matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99,” he said. “We made that offer for months and they said no.”
NBC misses the point completely here.
To illustrate:
An iPod is the complete opposite of a printer. My printer for example, an Epson Photo R220, was bought for roughly £40. If you want to buy a complete set of ink cartridges for it, that will set you back around £30. The printer came with a set of cartridges, so that puts the value of my printer at roughly £10. Possibly the stupidest pricing model ever conceived, but one that makes Epson a fortune.
The iPod on the other hand, is quite an expensive bit of kit (iPod Classic Black 80Gb - £152 from Amazon), but the songs are incredibly cheap at 79p each.
You get the impression, even if it is just an illusion, that once you have an Apple product such as an iPod, Apple do actually care about you as a consumer. They want you to be able to say “I just heard this really cool song, I can go and buy it now for less than a quid”. NBC are clearly in it for the short term money.
Apple don’t rely on the necessity that something like a printer imposes. I need ink for my printer to work. I don’t need iTunes music to run my iPod (although it’s always a big plus).
Television episodes are the same, if not worse. You can watch an episode of Scrubs on television and think it was awesome (and you’d probably be right), and then go and pay to download a different episode which was terrible. You don’t want to risk wasting money on a bad episode. Whilst you might get potentially hooked on a series, it’s pretty unlikely your work depends on it.
NBC appear to be working on the basis that users will just pay for episodes which they’ve missed and jacking the cost up won’t affect the number of sales.
Yes it will, and more to the point, people won’t trust Apple and NBC. Apple have other products to sell, which is why they want to gain the trust of their customers with pricing that reflects what they’re selling. It’s partly because of trust that people like me will get an iPod and then consider getting a MacBook.
Deezer.com
Deezer.com is a handy site which lets you listen to full length tracks of pretty much any artist for free. Apparently it’s all legal, although I’ve no idea how. No downloads I’m afraid, but frankly with the sheer amount of music on there it’s not that much of a problem.
Well worth a look with a very extensive music collection. Any tracks I mention in future posts will probably be linked to Deezer.
[Update] Someone just tried to comment leaving a link to an mp3 search engine. I appreciate why it was left and that the link was left with good intentions, but I’m afraid please do not post links to illegal downloads, even if the site is indirect and doesn’t host any of the content. Cheers.
Norway: Probably One of the Best Royal Families in the World
Just came across two articles on the BBC News website about the Norwegian royal family.
Four years ago, the brother of the “controversial” princess was convicted of assault, and now today:
Norway’s Princess Martha Louise says she has psychic powers and can teach people to communicate with angels.
I ought to note that this is a different princess to the sister of the assault guy, but still. I can see the headlines of the papers in a similar scenario over here now:
“Queen declares psychic link with corgis. Prince Charles subsequently declares similar link with vegetables.”
Admit it. You’d love it too if the royal family said something like that.
MIT finds cure for fear
MIT finds cure for fear | Press Esc
No doubt a brilliant idea, but ironically slightly scary…