Saturday, July 22, 2006

Apple eBook?

Endgadet:

[I]s it possible the next iPod might catch the eBook bug? We’d say the possibility is very real, since according to a source at a major publishing house, they were just ordered to archive all their manuscripts—every single one—and send them over to Apple’s Cupertino HQ. A separate trusted source let us know that the next iPod will have a substantial amount of screen real estate (as we’d all suspected), as well as a book reading mode that pumps up the contrast and drops into monochrome for easy reading. It’s no e-ink, sure, but a widescreen iPod would be well suited for the purpose, and according to our source, the books you’d buy (presumably through iTunes) won’t have an expiration—kind of like Apple-bought music, as well, but contradictory to the movie rental scheme we’ve heard rumored. Could they please just rename it the iTunes Music, Movies, and Book Store and get it over with already?

Which reminds me, I recently upgraded from one Mac to another - the process is by far the easiest, quickest way to switch computers you can imagine. Hook the old Mac to the new and poof, you’re new Mac is set up just like your old. Software, settings, music, everything.

EVERYTHING EXCEPT: iTunes.

Every time I start up I’m told I can’t listen to the audio books I own bought and paid for but only license. I gather there’s some (simple?) way to authorize them on my new machine, but I have yet to go digging for it. And it pretty darned well defeats the simplicity I was just swooning about.

REMEMBER: iDon’t! The first time I had to authorize a book.

Latvian Pride organizers rescued from “hysterical” protesters

It’s worse than Moscow:

Organisers of Riga Gay Pride have been “rescued” after being trapped for hours in the in the Reval Latvia Hotel, with “hysterical” protesters surrounding the building. Sources say that the deputy Prime Minister had ordered that the organisers are to be “rescued”

A senior member of the Latvian cabinet arrived at the hotel this evening , spoke to the trapped organisers who, with police protection, left the building and were whisked away to safety in a special bus.

“We had not choice but to book a safe room,” said Juris Lavrikovs, one of the organisers and a staff member of ILGA-Europe. He was speaking before the Government “rescue”
“We are all safe, but the hysterical crowd are still outside - we do not know when we will be able to leave,” he added.

Many of those attending the Pride function managed to leave the hotel by various side entrances. But the protesters, who were staging an illegal demonstration, soon got wise and blocked all entrances, leaving about a dozen inside.

In May, Moscow Pride participants were set upon by 100 anti-gay protesters.

EARLIER: Latvian president and Amnesty International issue statements condemning restriction of LGBT rights.

A reason to be happy the 1st amendment is owned by big corporations?

I’ve complained for decades that the First Amendment was bought and paid for by big corporations. Who knew that one day I’d be grateful for it!!! Two articles today on the impact to the government’s crackdown on speech in the guise of FCC regulations illustrate why.

The Times on Ken Burns:

The PBS documentarian Ken Burns has been working for six years on “The War,” a soldier’s-eye view of World War II, and those who have seen parts of the 14-plus hours say they are replete with salty language appropriate to discussions of the horrors of war.

What viewers will see and hear when the series is broadcast in September 2007 is an open question.

A new Public Broadcasting Service policy that went into effect immediately when it was issued on May 31 requires producers whose shows are broadcast before 10 p.m. to adhere to tough editing requirements when it comes to coarse language, to comply with tightened rulings on broadcast indecency by the Federal Communications Commission.

Most notably, PBS’s deputy counsel, Paul Greco, wrote in a memo to stations, it is no longer enough simply to bleep out offensive words audibly when the camera shows a full view of the speaker’s mouth. From now on, the on-camera speaker’s mouth must also be obscured by a digital masking process, a solution that PBS producers have called cartoonish and clumsy.

In addition, profanities expressed in compound words must be audibly bleeped in their entirety so that viewers cannot decipher the words. In the past, PBS required producers to bleep only the offensive part of the compound word.

Maybe Ken should cut a deal with HBO and make 2 versions… The WaPo on Opie & Andy & XM & CBS:

[T]he “Opie & Anthony Show” isn’t just any two guys mouthing off on the air. This is a comedy duo with a past; these are radio bad boys whose every utterance is monitored by network attorneys and government regulators. And the rules on FM radio have become much stricter in the post-Janet Jackson era, especially now that Congress and the FCC have jacked up the fines that stations face for airing indecent material during hours when children are likely to be listening.

So midway through the chatter about the poor fellow and his malfunctioning implant, the radio jocks pulled the plug on their own banter. “You know,” Opie said, “let’s just save this for XM.”

Every weekday morning since April, for three hours, Opie and Anthony have performed an “FCC-compliant” show on 11 CBS stations, including WJFK (106.7 FM) in Washington. When the guys finish their stint on broadcast radio, they walk a couple of Manhattan blocks to the studios of XM Satellite Radio, where they continue their show for two hours of anything-goes comedy. Pay satellite radio is not subject to federal content regulations.

So now we must be grateful that we can still buy it!

Democracy Player

I was notified by email, but didn’t install it until after reading Cory’s post:

There’s a new version of Democracy Player, the free and open source Internet TV program that can play any video format and that’s as easy to use as a TV.

Democracy is produced by the Participatory Culture Foundation, the same activists behind Downhill Battle (remember the Christmas when they sent a lump of coal to the RIAA for every $100 donated to EFF?). They’re now registered as a charity, taking donations to pay programmers to improve the user-interface behind Democracy.

Democracy is made by combining the popular open source program VLC with a free RSS reader and a free BitTorrent client—so you can subscribe to any channel of video and it will be pulled down cooperatively with all the other subscribers, and played right there regardless of the video format.

The new version plays on Windows, MacOS and Linux, and, while still in beta, is far more stable and robust.