Gary Robinson's Rants

$2,500 in illegally traded files called criminal

I wasn't sure what it would take to be the subject of a criminal prosecution for file trading, but this Washington Post article, describing new government policy, has the answer:

Now, high-volume file-sharers with more than $2,500 in illegally traded files face the prospect of criminal prosecution.

This is kind of funny

This.

HP iPods

It appears to be the same thing as Apple's, except:

New HP Printable Tattoos allow consumers to personalize the look of their iPod with album cover art from top bands and recording artists, as well as to create their own personalized artwork and photos printed on Tattoo media via an HP color printer.
  The ultra-thin HP Printable Tattoos are easy to apply and remove from the player's exterior. They are durable and water-resistant, which helps protect the iPod from scratches and scuffs as music lovers carry it around. HP is working with industry recording studios to offer consumers access to the latest album art from the newest releases.

Here's the press release. Doesn't excite me personally, but does seem like a smart business move for HP -- "synergy" and all that.

Noticeably lacking from the announcement is the Windows Media capability that was rumored earlier.

Google browser

Last summer, Anil Dash suggested that it would be a good move for Google to develop a Google browser based on Mozilla. Give that kid a gold star because it looks more than plausible. Mozilla Developer Day 2004 was recently held at the Google Campus. Google is investing heavily in JavaScript-powered desktop-like web apps like Gmail and Blogger (the posting inferface is now WYSIWYG). Google could use their JavaScript expertise (in the form of Gmail ubercoder Chris Wetherell) to build Mozilla applications. Built-in blogging tools. Built-in Gmail tools. Built-in search tools. A search pane that watches what you're browsing and suggests related pages and search queries or watches what you're blogging and suggests related pages, news items, or emails you've written. Google Toolbar++. You get the idea. [Kottke]

Now there's a possibility I haven't thought much about. But now I'll give it some thought. It would answer some of the objections I have to Google's insanely high market cap. If Google produced such a browser, and did it soon, then they would perhaps have a chance of displacing significant share from IE. And the result is that they would have their own highly popular, cross-platform desktop app, possibly eventually being as convenient to use as other desktop apps such as Outlook, while using Google's facilities on the back end for searching and storage.

The existence of such a cross-platform app could even make Linux a better alternative as desktop OS than it is now.

Hmm...

Christopher Allbritton in Iraq

Christopher Allbritton is reporter and blogger who gathered contributions, through his blog, to enable him to go to Iraq and pay for food to eat and a place to sleep. After a while he got some major media gigs there too -- for instance he conducted an interview with Allawi for Time mag.

In the last couple of days, as well as other times, he's been seriously risking his life -- not only the risk of being yet another kidnapped "journo" but also of simply being shot out of the blue by a snipper or exploded by a morter shell.

His is the best writing I've seen coming out of Iraq, IMHO. Most valuable for me recently is the fact that he is interacting, and actually being protected by, members of al-Sadr's Mahdi army in the Shrine.

I don't know about you, but from the mainstream media I get the impression that the Mahdi people are religious fanatics backing a "leader" with little actual support in the Muslim community and obstructing the legitimate (or at least, in-power and internationally supported) Iraqi army and U.S. forces from their job in bringing Iraq under control. So, I found myself "rooting" for the "good guys" in waiting for the Mahdis to get out of the Shrine or get obliterated.

The impression one gets from Chris is that the Mahdi army consists of normal, friendly people, human beings like you and me, who I gain enough knowledge of that I end up caring about them. In contrast, one also gets the feeling that the New Iraqi Army is "like the old regime, only less disciplined" (quoting from Chris). While Chris has his own (anti-war) political slant, this different impression seems to be more because Chris is really there, telling us about his interactions with these individual people, and directly experiencing the way they act in the world, rather than providing sound-bites based on "analysis" conducted on another continent.

Anyway, his blog is well worth reading if you want to know what's really going on in Iraq.

I was one of the people who contributed financially to his being able to go there, and I've had a few interesting and enlightening email and blog discussions with him. I feel personally connected. Man, I hope he doesn't get killed.

Justice Dept. Raids Homes of File Swappers

"Reuters is reporting that the Justice Dept. has raided the homes of 5 people in several states for trading music on p2p networks. The traders were, however, not arrested. 'P2P does not stand for 'permission to pilfer,' Ashcroft said. The Reuters story says that the 5 'were people operating hubs in a file-sharing network based on Direct Connect software,' and who had provided between 'one and 100 gigabytes of material to trade, or up to 250,000 songs.' 'They are clearly directing and operating an enterprise which countenances illegal activity and makes as a condition of membership the willingness to make available material to be stolen,' said Ashcroft." [Slashdot]

That sounds like a criminal case. That would be the first case not to be a civil lawsuit, wouldn't it?

This Wonderful Life

This computer-generated video is a "true little masterpiece." Truth be told, it brought tears to my eyes. Check it out for a pointer to the future of video. One person and one computer can make an beautiful work of art, as moving as anything released by the major studios. And the necessary tools are only going to get easier and easier to use, so that in the future, you won't have to be both a technical wizard and an artist to make something like this. Being an artist will be enough.

I'm looking forward to seeing what the artists will do.

Google: I misunderstood

I had thought that the plan was for Google to have a $2.7B market cap after going public. I thought that seemed fairly sensible. But I should have noticed that was just the "offering": the total values of the shares in public hands.

But the reality is that the shares in public hands are a small portion of the total shares. And the real market cap is now $29.7 billion.

I have trouble believing that that is anything other than absurd. Sure, Google has a lot of "eyeballs" viewing it every day, just as most of the companies associated with high-flying stocks during the Internet bubble did. But as soon as Microsoft comes out with a comparably good search engine and builds it into Windows, many or most of those eyeballs will be looking there instead. And it will happen before too long.

Sure, gmail is a great Web-based email client, but it's never going to be as convenient as a great client-based app once better indexing is built into those apps (both Microsoft and Apple plan advanced indexing in their next major OS releases, available to application programs like email clients). Sure a gigabyte is a lot of email storage, but any other web mail service can match it by changing their policies.

I do believe that Google has great people working at it, who will do as well as anybody could with the assets they have. But those assets are not all they're cracked up to be, in my humble opinion.

$29.7 billion? On what basis would a rational person assume that Google is going to maintain such a value? I don't get it.

42% report 4G iPod audio problems

On July 26, 2004, iPodlounge first reported the audio defect, which causes several seconds of static and hard drive sounds to overlap music played back through the 4G iPod's headphone jack....

Two days later, after iPodlounge provided two defective iPods to Apple at its request for testing, an update to the original story was posted, noting additional findings and addressing reader concerns. At the time, iPodlounge noted that 36.5% of responding readers had discovered the same problem with their new 4G iPods, while 63.5% reported no problems.

iPodlounge asked users with 4G iPods to post comments to these earlier stories indicating their positive or negative test results. Of the hundreds of responses received from users around the world, approximately 42% reported the audio defect in one or more of the 4G iPods they purchased or received in exchange. [iPodLounge]

I think I'm going to hold off on buying a new iPod.

Real: Can you say, "desperate"?

Real Networks will be offering songs at $.49 a pop. Only problem is they'll be losing money on each song. But hey, they'll make it up in quantity. ;)

The fact is that they know that their market share is going to be going down, down, down, and this is the only way to temporarily flood the tide. But it's a strategy that can only last so long; so they have to be hoping to get to some kind of critical mass that forces Apple to work with them. It seems unlikely, but they have nothing to lose at this point -- except a few cents per song.