Sports, Tech Stuff , and Music

Sports Stuff

The sports part is that I'm tired of hearing about Kyle Orton already. I'm well aware that he drinks booze, doesn't like to shave, and won ten games two years ago. To all that hooey, I call bullshit. I hate shaving and I drink booze on occasion. He gets to wear a helmet to his job.

As for the ten games, that was nice, but all it did was solidify Thomas Jones as one of the top five running backs in Bears history. Orton was mediocre to bad. I remember being relieved when Grossman was available for the playoffs because Orton was so unpredictable (:: bad). And, Grossman delivered the points he needed to win that game - the defense fell apart. Orton wouldn't have done any better. The previous ten games proved it.

Techy Stuff

If you heard about how Sony BMG had added software to their audio CDs a while back that caused problems for peoples' PCs, here's an excellent recap of what happened (tip o' the hat to BoingBoing.com). It's the reason why I probably won't buy a PS3, even though I've been fairly loyal to the Playstation over the years. It's the reason why I'll avoid buying anything from Sony from now on.

I have issues with Sony BMG when they punish their paying customers for wanting to use a computer (much more common these days) to listen to a CD. The assumption is that you'll rip the CD and give it away for free.

Isn't the bigger issue that the long-standing album-based paradigm has been thwarted by iTunes, eMusic, and the like? Consumers no longer get stuck with half a CD of crap when they can preview and cherrypick the songs they like. The recording industry is getting leaned out against its will.

They claim plummeting record sales is the problem. No mention of new revenue streams for online advertising or contracts with iTunes or jacked up royalty rates (which seem to miss their intended owners - the artists - far too often) or other, surprisingly lucrative streams, like ringtones. They have admitted that the lawsuits against file sharers is a break-even venture at best. (Makes sense - people who have plenty of disposable $$ would be more likely to buy music. Good luck getting a settlement from these folks.) And, the first trial for file sharing was undoubtedly publicized to act as a deterrent. $220K+ for a 31-year-old mother of two in Duluth, MN seems quite excessive for trading songs. Leave it to our current executive branch to root out this type of terrorism. I'm curious - how much of that settlement will go to the artists she was trading?

As for Sony, in what's been a long history of proprietary formats (think Beta, MiniDisk, and Memory Stick) this DRM issue was icing on the cake. As important as music seems to be to people, you'd think that the RIAA would have started adapting to the computer and the MP3 format a lot sooner. It's actually old technology now but some of these giants (not to mention our government representatives) still seem mystified by it.

Worse yet, people who commit heinous acts of violence can be set free on a technicality. Meanwhile, otherwise law-abiding citizens can be fined a quarter of a million dollars for trading music or sent to jail for accidentally being re-routed to a porn site in a class. Don't even get me started on Guantanamo Bay.