And now for something completely the same
Patents and standards do not mix.
They are also evil.
Move along now.
UK Top 20 Music Downloads
Radio 1 now does a legal music downloads UK Top 20, in the same vein as the CD sales Top 20.
My first thought: wow, what a load of crap.
My second thought: wow, still a load crap.
AAC and DRM problems
I like iTunes.
I like the iTunes Music Store, although I've only purchased one song from it.
However, what happens when I decide to move from my PowerBook to an x86 laptop for some work required to be done on Windows, and I want to listen to my legally purchased but DRM'd music on this second machine?
Stream it over my WLAN via iTunes' music library sharing feature?
Considering some network bandwidth intensive applications I sometimes use for various reasons (this is just local, doesn't include piping through to my 1MBit DSL), this hardly seems ideal.
DRM is evil.
This public message brought to you by QTFairUse, HYMN (akaa iOpener, formally PlayFair), , and even Apple's iMovie.
Feed Rob Miles, but don't Feed the pandas
In other news, that bastion of humorous programming lectures, Rob Miles, is slowly porting his home-rolled weblog posts to his new BlogSpot weblog, which in and of itself would not be that remarkable, for me however it's important in that I can finally subscribe to his personal weblog posts via a news feed; by the way the feeds generated by Blogger and BlogSpot are Atom, mainly because Evan Williams, the head-honcho of Blogger and the BlogSpot hosting service (now employed at Google) has an almost religious jihadesque hatred for RSS and David Winer (of course I myself have a thurough disliking for the latter, but not so for the former), which is good either way as I'm still a fan of Atom.
Back to the point at hand, I've kept abreast of Rob's programming weblog, via it's news feed, but not his 'robmiles.com` home-made weblog, as no feed was available, and thus I would be forever falling behind.
Not really of great importance either, but in a highly connected world, in which information passed between parties transparently is gaining importance by magnitude every day, such things can mean a great deal.
Cheap Clicker
For anyone who can't afford the price tag on Salling Clicker, you might want to take a look at Romeo, which does much the same thing, but for free; I believe I shall stick with Salling Clicker, as it's so nicely made.
theSpoke
theSpoke is a free worldwide student resource, where you can go and take part in polls, create and read weblogs, and generally muck about online.
It's also one of the biggest piles of shite dressed up as a pathetic excuse for a website or online application that springs to mind at any given time.
For those who hadn't guessed, this is a rant.
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Their frontpage often redirects you to an address implementing a backslash (), which is incorrect form for a URL, suggesting to me whoever designed their CMS has a very unhealthy grounding in the MS Windows platform, and has difficulty adapting to the wider 'net, or for that matter the outside world (where do they keep these people, fricking dungeons?)
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Their site design, while being rather cluttered and a little unstylish (but what can you expect for a non-profit student venture?), had worked rather well over multiple platforms and browsers, up until several months ago that is, when they switched to a newer "snazzy design", breaking in almost everything but surprise surprise, Internet Explorer; anyone see that one coming?
Take your heads out of the sand and test your product before use, and then afterwards how about listening to your users? Weird idea? Try running a business, and I'll consider giving you some change when I see you on the streets in town.
- They use Microsoft's cross-site Passport™ user management system for account login/logout; shame their redirection system is so unintelligent that it has trouble detecting an existing session and redirects to the registration page eons after the account has been created; my account is currently stuck in this bizarre limbo of being logged in through Passport, but unable to login, or maddeningly logout, of theSpoke, how's that for a paradox?
Nearly very single of these idiocies would be solved through testing, not even extremely comprehensive testing, just the type of testing every fucking professional web designer worth his salt would do; you know, nothing important or anything.
If anyone wants me to comment on your weblog by the way, ask me for an e-mail or IM, or stop using theSpoke; I'll keep an eye through RSS, but that's as far as I'm touching the site with a ye olde proverbial 10ft barge pole.