Updated: August 31, 2004 12:20 PM EST
Sandy McMurray: "I spent several frustrating hours last week trying to get an MPIO FY200 digital music player to work. Although the package said it was Mac compatible, I eventually had to download and install new firmware and update the device to get it working. This was not a user-friendly experience.
If iTunes users are happy, part of the reason is Apple's control of "the whole widget" --- the iPod, the iTunes software and the iTunes Music Store. Does this really matter? I think so..." ›››
Carl Tyler, who is guest-blogging on Get Real and is critical of the RIAA, on the downward pricing pressure on music: "Software went through a similar phase about 10 years ago, business software was priced at around $495 and all kinds of steps were taken to protect the software from being copied. Did it stop copying? No. Did it deter college students from getting the latest 1-2-3 from a college buddy? No. But competitive prices and listening to customers who were constantly complaining about corrupt key disks did."
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Carl Zimmer: "Is Intelligent Design the same thing as creationism? The people who back Intelligent Design have spilled an awful lot of ink saying they're different. Even self-proclaimed creationists have tried to claim a difference. Somehow, both of these camps think that any confusion between the two is evidence of the lazy arrogance of evolutionists. In fact, the evidence points towards Intellgent Design being just a bit of clever repackaging to get creationist nonsense into the classroom."
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Dana Blankenhorn reports: "In what may be the most important chemical discovery since silicon itself, Toyota researchers have found a way to create uniform crystals with silicon and carbon, silicon carbide... The result will be chips that can run with more current, that can run hotter, that can run more efficiently, and thus can run in more applications."
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Carl Zimmer on bacteriophages: "It may seem strange that the world's most successful life form looks a bit like the ship-drilling robots that swarmed through The Matrix. But the fact is that the bacteriophage is nanotechnology of the most elegant, most deadly sort... The best human-designed nanotech pales in comparison to bacteriophages..."
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Ernest Miller on the photo-sharing site Flickr, yet another technology that he says could be crippled or deemed illegal should the Orrin Hatch-led INDUCE Act be passed: "The system is really quite something... Too bad both organizing (hmmm, derivative work?) and sharing (rights of reproduction and distribution) are infringement of copyrights. By creating such a wonderful tool, Flickr is all but begging people to infringe copyright. Oh, sure, they have 'terms of use' that tells people not to infringe copyright ... but what does that matter?..."
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Carl Zimmer on a "fascinating" new paper out of the University of Arizona on DNA variation: "with these new DNA results, the Arizona researchers have made a powerful case that polygyny has been common for tens of thousands of years across the Old World. It's possible that polygyny was an open institution for much of that time, or that secret trysts made it a reality that few would acknowledge. What's much less possible is that monogamy has been the status quo for 50,000 years."
Concludes Carl: "People are perfectly entitled to disagree over what sort of marriage is best for children or society. But if you want to bring nature or tradition into the argument, you'd better be sure you know what nature and tradition have to say on the subject."
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Sandy McMurray: "Ironically, the widespread idea that Macs are very different from Windows-based PCs may actually be a strategic advantage for Apple. As Dell and its imitators move towards commodity end game, Apple continues to talk up the Mac as "digital hub" and reinforces the idea that Macs (not just Mac users) Think Different."
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Ernest Miller on Real's strategic move to undercut Apple's pricing and sell songs for 49¢ apiece: "The problem is that Real is losing money to the copyright holders with each sale at that price... The real question is what incentive this gives the copyright holders to reduce their licensing fees. The answer, I'm afraid, is none..."
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Clay Shirky on Multiply, yet another social networking site that's recently launched, and its mechanism for getting new people to sign up: "[It] is social pollution, and the environment it’s polluting — my willingness to assume mail from friends and business contacts is likely to be of value — is exactly the environment that social services require. In the long term, they are fouling their own nest... But they don’t care about the long term, they only care about getting more members now now now."
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Dana Blankenhorn: "Despite everything -- despite the Playboy interview, despite the lowered valuation, despite the stupid allocations, despite the Yahoo deal -- despite everything, Google changed the world today. By going public through a Dutch auction, and stiffing the investment banking community out of much of its usual fees, Google has changed the face of the stock marketplace forever..."
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Britton Manasco: "[The big] problem facing Starbucks is its sheer ignorance of customers. While stand-up comics can joke about a new Starbucks opening up in the bathroom of a Starbucks, it's the fact that they don't know who we are that will ultimately catch up to them. No customer databases. No relationship building initiatives. Just ambience and expensive coffee..."
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Donna Wentworth follows up on a "simple" question posed by Rep. Rick Boucher on Larry Lessig's blog: "In thinking about the future of my information availability in our society, am I right to be concerned about the emergence of pay per use as the norm?"
Says Donna: "[It] brings to mind a central difficulty with explaining why the copyfight matters in the larger sense -- e.g., why society as a whole should care about whether the Internet becomes 'pay-per-use.' The major problem is that it's tough to quantify cultural damage. The recording industry has plenty of numbers to quantify its guestimated loss. But how do you explain what is lost from our culture when access to "information goods" is determined by whether you can pay the rental fee?..."
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