DRM and the Consumer

This post got me to thinking that as Big Media conglomerates scramble to lock down "their" content with new formats and distribution methodologies / technologies, and they make it harder or more difficult for us to consume it, there's a huge opportunity for "not so hot", crappy or even God-awful consumer generated content to be "seen", "consumed" and enjoyed by "we the people"... this does not bode well for them.

From DigitalMediaThoughts:
"Having grown tired of one war, we're on the eve of another, complete with alliances, secret codes, and laser beams. No, not Iran -- it's the fight over the next generation of DVD devices. The real battle isn't between Sony (SNE) and Microsoft (MSFT) and their chosen formats, it's between the manufacturers and us -- the consumers, the ones who ultimately pay for it all. And the battle is over Digital Rights Management (DRM), because in addition to increased storage, these new disks are packed full of copy-protection functions, some of which impair our ability to use the content we pay for, the way we like and are legally entitled to."

Link to Business Week article via DigitalMediaThoughts blog... and this is kinda what I'm talkin' about.

"Howdy Pardner"

OK, this thing ranks right up there with Pizza in the morning, Maxxum Magazine and Sports... you know, stuff women love...

Link to Gizmodo.

"Solid Potato Salad"

Summertime is here and so are the Ross sisters.
You gotta watch this right to the end... amazing!


Solid Potato Salad - The Ross Sisters - video powered by Metacafe

Visualizing Stock Market Data

Here's a pretty cool site with an innovative way of compressing hard-to-read information of the morning papers stock section into a simple snapshot.

Link via Edward Tufte's blog.

What Celebrity Do I Look Like?

I'm not sure which is a bigger time waster... reading People magazine cover to cover or spending a bit of time at this site.

I expect my results would fall somewhere between George Clooney and Gollum.

Link via Gizmodo.

Skype is on a roll...

Skype has announced free Skypeout calls within North America to Canadian and U.S. landlines and cell phones. Amazing.

Link to Paul Kedrosky's Infectious Greed.

Karl Rove indicted?

Things are finally heating up for Karl.

For those of you that have the time (and the bandwidth) there's a great PBS Frontline episode on the man here.

Personal Submarines

One of these rigs would be nice to have for sneaking up on your friends... but with the kind of friends I have I'd definitely want it outfitted with both long and short range Polaris nuclear missles.

Link to Gizmodo.

"The Friendly Skies" indeed.

Here's an amazing animation of a day in the life of Air Traffic density over the United States of America (with a caveat on scale... the skies really aren't this "crowded" but visualization of the density patterns and temporal flow is way cool).

Link to animation file via Edward Tufte's blog (note: it may take a minute or two for the file to load in your browser).

Dark Side of the Moon turns "1500"

1500 weeks on the Billboard Charts that is... which makes "Dark Side of the Moon" the longest selling album of all time.

I'm eternally grateful to a young Becky Beggs for giving me a copy of the 12" vinyl when I as in Grade 10 :-)

Link to Billboard via digg.

Apple vs. Apple

Cupertino emerges victorious over McCartney, Starr, Ono and the estate of Harrison as a British judge rules in favor of Apple Computer.

Link to Reuter's via Engadget

Cool NASA video

Here's a great NASA video of the of the Cassini-Huygens Titan probe landing.
It's a synthesis of video and telemetry data and way cool too! (via BoingBoing).