Parity Violation

HHS Toned Down Breast-Feeding Ads – washingtonpost.com Is there a single corporate special interest the Bush Administration has ever stood up and fought? I can’t think of one. I guess they did create the federal no-call list (telephone solicitors must have crappy lobbyists). Anyway, here they are again – appeasing the infant formula industry.

WGA failure highlights major flaw in Microsoft’s anti-piracy strategy – You may have heard that some Microsoft server went down leading to crippled copies of Windows and lots of problems. I wonder, if the iTunes store had some major glitch how many people would lose the ability to play all their iTunes purchases? Is Apple’s system any more redundant/robust? It clearly relies on a network connection as well.

Of course losing one’s music isn’t as bad as losing one’s operating system. I’m glad that OS X has no activation of any kind, and even iWork just has a one-time entered product key. (This is done, presumably, to let people buy it online and use immediately after using the trial version that comes on new Macs and can be downloaded.) iLife, which is free on new Macs, requires no such product key to activate. I’m not sure about Apple’s “Pro” products such as Final Cut or Aperture.

Part invention, part promotion: Houston turns 171 | Chron.com – Houston Chronicle. This is a weird article. 171 doesn’t seem like that significant a number… and I don’t remember anything happening in Houston when it turned 165 or 170. I somehow doubt the Astros retiring Bagwell’s number has anything to do with the anniversary of the city’s founding.

When the city turns 200 though, that’ll be kind of cool.

MTV, RealNetworks challenge Apple music – Yahoo! News. Doosey of an article. An excerpt:

RealNetworks also began testing the sale of songs from Universal Music Group’s catalog without copy-protection restrictions Tuesday, joining several other retailers, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc. That would allow such songs to play on the market-leading iPod. Rob Glaser, RealNetworks’ chief executive officer, said music free of such restrictions should go mainstream in 2008.

That fits with the companies’ un-Apple-like strategy of running a music store that can connect with any number of different devices. Apple’s copy-protection technology generally limits songs bought on iTunes to its own iPods and iPhones.

Apple sells music without DRM that’ll work on any device that can play AAC. It’s called iTunes Plus and it’s been around for a few months. Alas, at the moment it’s only music from EMI. However, selling music without DRM is actually Apple-like, not un-Apple-like.

As far as this new service, it’ll flounder, as have all the others. The notion that iTunes is successful because of lock-down to the iPod is silly. It’s successful because it’s … an easy-to-use music buying experience. As far as the DRM-free songs from Universal being sold elsewhere, Apple doesn’t care where you buy your music – so long as you buy an iPod. So, I seriously doubt they’re batting an eye. iTunes doesn’t make much money for Apple – it just makes the iPod look that much more attractive. And the money is in the iPod.

I don’t understand how someone can write an article about music stores and DRM and not mention the EMI/Apple iTunes Plus deal.

So, ESPN – either Sportscenter or Baseball Tonight, had some feature yesterday (I think) on the Astros Greatest Homeruns. Now, I saw this today – without audio – while eating lunch and I wasn’t really paying attention. I’d be very curious as to what they said the greatest Astro home run was. I humbly offer up my list, heavily biased towards events that occurred in my own lifetime, and even more biased towards games in which I was in attendance. It’s more of my favorite home runs than a list of “the greatest.”

This list is not in any particular order, except my own personal favorite home run which will appear at the end.

• Billy Hatcher vs. Mets – 1986 NCLS, Game 6 Yes, the Astros lost the game, but Hatcher’s game-tying 14th inning home run added more drama to what many believe is the greatest baseball game ever played.

• Chris Burke vs. Braves – 2005 NLDS, Game 4 The longest playoff game in baseball history (and I was there for all 18 innings of it) ended suddenly and unexpectedly with Burke’s walkoff homer. I, for one, never thought Burke would be the guy to hit one out. This game was exhausting – not just do to the length, but the emotional toll of each inning. What a great ending.

• Craig Biggio vs. Braves – 2004 NLDS, Game 4 We lost this game. However, Biggio’s home run gave us an early lead and was, as my friend Dave said at the time, “the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.” At that moment, it was as if Astros fans truly believed it might really happen – we might actually win a playoff series!

• Jeff Bagwell vs. Braves – 2004 NLDS, Game 5 This was it. Bagwell had blown it wide open. We were going to the NLCS again – for sure. I was jumping up and down “yes! yes! yes!” I knew the Astros had finally done it.

• Lance Berkman vs. Braves – 2005 NLDS, Game 5 Yeah, it only brought us within 1 run, and yes Ausmus’s homerun later really tied the game up, and it’s not even on the list, but Berkman’s grand slam was pretty amazing anyway.

• Jeff Kent vs. Cardinals – 2004 NLCS This home run, for some reason, was less exciting when I saw it then it should have been. And we did end up losing the NLCS that year. But, it made for a pretty exciting end to a well-pitched game by Backe.

• Lance Berkman vs. Cardinals – 2001 regular season Hmm, ok this really isn’t “great” it’s just one I remember because Tony LaRussa brought in some lame lefthander to face Lance and he launched a home run leading to an Astros win and the NL Central crown.

And now for my personal favorite

• Lance Berkman vs. Cardinals- 2005 NCLS, Game 5 The Astros lost this game, and had to wait until Game 6 to claim the NL pennant, but when Lance hit this shot it was simply pandemonium at Minute Maid Park. We had a lead, we were going to the World Series – it was all going to happen, it finally seemed real. I was jumping around like a lunatic, I think I clutched the arm of some stranger next to me when the ball first was aloft. No one sat down in Minute Maid for the next 1 1/2 innings. Damn, I wish they’d won that game. :-/

Anyway, I’m omitting several decades of Astros history so if any Astros fans are reading this, post your own favorite home run.

This post is kind of odd. It purports to be about the new iTunes Widgets – not unlike the Nike+ widget these are are little bits of code/flash that you can embed in your web site. You can show your recent purchases, reviews, etc. Personally, I’m not that interested in them, but you know, Apple’s not forcing a gun to anyone’s head. Maybe someone out there wants everyone to know what songs they bought. I agree that more interesting would be what I’m listening to now – which Adium and other IM clients let you share, for instance.

Anyway, this odd post has a lot more to say about iTunes than just the widgets because the author says:

Buying from Amazon or 7Digital are a completely different and entirely seemless experience for first time users, whilst Apple’s iTunes Music Store experience definitely leaves much to be desired.

Ok. Well, funny thing – iTunes has sold 3 billion songs. So, I’d argue that the “first time experience” is good enough that people keep using it.

So, while I agree the widgets aren’t all that great, this comment about iTunes vs. the other services is odd. Yes, the initial download of iTunes is a pain (if you’re on Windows) but come on – it’s time well spent considering the poor quality of all the web-based music stores.

Apple – Support – Downloads – iMovie HD 6 – Looks like Apple concedes that iMovie ‘08 has limitations and has made the old iMovie available to people who bought iLife ‘08 (or who have a new Mac presumably.) Begs the question why they didn’t just give the new iMovie a different name, make it a seperate application, and keep/enhance the old iMovie. Some things like the new share to iTunes and share to youtube features would be nice in iMovie 6.

My initial skepticism about iMovie ‘08 seems to be born out in the initial rections in the Apple Discussion forum on it, which shows a lot of complaints. While the new iMovie looks to be handy for quickly slapping videos together, a lot of the functionality of iMovie ‘06 is missing. Fortunately, it keeps the old version around, but – this seems like it should be a new Quick iMovie app or something, and not the new iMovie. While fortunately I have access to iMovie ‘06, buyers of new Macs will have no such recourse. What are they supposed to do if they want the timeline and multiple audio tracks and other such real video editing features? Buy Final Cut?

This iMovie thing makes me rather uninterested in paying for iLife ‘08.