Although I’ve owned an iPod for quite some time now, and have bought at least 50 individual iTunes, today was the first time I actually bought an entire album from iTunes. It’s one I’ve been meaning to buy for a while but never got around to it, and decided I’d rather not wait for it to be shipped.
Rock out to Matisyahu, all y’all!
And now I need to remember to burn a copy to CD.
I started writing this yesterday but the power outage (now thankfully resolved) sidetracked me.
Recent IM conversation with Scott:
Me: Microsoft announced six different versions for Vista. What a support nightmare that’s going to be.
Scott: yep
Me: I’m going to stay the hell away from Vista for at least 12 months after it’s releases. You, OTOH, will upgrade to it as soon as you possibly can
Scott: You got it. Probably on my new $4000 dream computer.
Me: *shudders*
I’m the kind of Windows user Microsoft probably hates: I just want my OS to run the applications I choose to install on it, and to stay the hell out of my way the rest of the time. I don’t need a high-end desktop searching feature — I know where my personal data is and how to find what I’m looking for. I don’t want fancy 3-D versions of the alt-tab app switcher or funky integrated media capabilities. I have iTunes, an iPod, and a very nice TV and TiVo in my living room for that. I just might end up with the lowest-level version of Vista just so that I don’t have to deal with all the add-on crap the other versions will include.
Buying the low-end version of an OS kind of goes against my grain, since I more or less consider myself to be a power user. But in this case, I suspect I’ll be much happier without all the bells and whistles.
At any rate, I am quite serious about waiting at least a year post-release to upgrade (I waited a lot longer than that to go from Win2K -> XP). I have no intention of upgrading until the inevitable missed bugs, security issues, and driver problems all get resolved. Let some other schmuck do the sweating and swearing; I am not going to waste my time dealing with Microsoft’s mess for them.
I can understand abuse, harass, threaten, and so forth, but annoy? If it’s really illegal to annoy people on the Internet now, the avalanche of lawsuits is going to be frightening. I can’t wait for the test cases on this one:
A new federal law states that when you annoy someone on the Internet, you must disclose your identity. Here’s the relevant language.
“Whoever…utilizes any device or software that can be used to originate telecommunications or other types of communications that are transmitted, in whole or in part, by the Internet… without disclosing his identity and with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass any person…who receives the communications…shall be fined under title 18 or imprisoned not more than two years, or both.”
At least it’s criminal law, not civil. Individuals can’t go around suing everyone who leaves a snarky comment on their weblog, they’ll have to convince a DA to file charges. However, as News.com points out, “trusting prosecutorial discretion is hardly reassuring”. Especially these days.
Lately it feels like I’ve been inundated by spam. Every single e-mail account I have has seen an increase in spam, the blog’s been getting an upswing in trackback and comment spam … I can’t seem to get away from it. I don’t know it it’s just a seasonal thing or if the change is permanent. I’m hoping for the former, because if not then I’m going to have to take some steps to get things back to a manageable level again.
One particularly annoying event that happened in the last 48 hours is that some jerk sent me a virus. Although between Thunderbird and Norton, the virus didn’t infect my computer, the act of cleaning the virus out of my in-box blew away all the rest of the e-mail in my in-box, including a number of communications from friends that I needed to reply to.
In short, spammers suck.
Well, I broke my Tungsten C some three months ago and I still haven’t decided whether to get the damn thing fixed or not. With 2006 fast approaching, I need to finally make a decision, because if I do go back to paper, now is the time to go buy a planner.
Scott found a link to a highly-rated guy on eBay who apparently repairs Palm PDAs for less than what it would cost to send the Tungsten back to PalmOne for a repair. I’m thinking about it.
I’m also thinking that since I survived all semester without a PDA, I probably don’t really need one. I miss the games and being able to read e-books a bit, but the ability to do those things is not really worth $75-$125 to me right now. Especially when I can get a perfectly good 2006 Day-Timer for under $25.
Someone with psychology training might point out to me that not making a decision is also a decision, and that’s quite true. In essence, by going three months without my PDA, my decision has already been made. I just need to admit it and move on.
The maker of the popular BlackBerry e-mail device is facing a critical decision: Pony up a lot of money to settle a long-term patent dispute or inform most of its 3.65 million U.S. subscribers that it may have to shut off service.
I would expect that they’ll find some way to stay in business. After all,
The Department of Justice has asked for a 90-day grace period for federal workers if Research in Motion’s BlackBerry e-mail service is shut down.
Maybe it won’t be RIM, but somebody is going to keep running this business. With demand like that, it’s too attractive to just toss in the trashbin.