Usher Blogs

Too Cynical?

Sales of the Da Vinci Code and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail (the latter in particular) have shot through the roof since the authors of 'Grail' launched a copyright infringement suit again publisher of 'Code' (and 'Grail') Random House. 

 

The way it looks to me, there are no losers here.  All of the parties to the suit plus filmmakers of 'Code', Dan Brown, etc. are getting a huge publicity boost and resulting sales and hype for the upcoming movie.  Even the eventual losers are making bank.

 

I'm not saying that it happened this way, just suggesting that hypothetically this whole suit could have been dreamed up and executed by some enterprising lawyers and communications pros for Random House. Moreover, it wouldn't necessarily have had to involve Brown (or wittingly anyway, Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent, two of the three authors of 'Grail' who are party to the suit.)

 

Hmm...if that were true would the people behind what would certainly rank as one of the most successful and at the same time deceitful publicity stunts of all time might well belong in both the PR hall of shame and fame. 

tags: Da Vinci Code Dan Brown The Holy Blood and Holy Grail Random House

Data Synch, or Another Reason Why Apple Bugs Me

I’ve covered this before, Apple annoys me.  Yeah, they design wonderful looking products, but – at least in my experience – they compromise on functionality.  Exhibit A on the problems several friends and I have had with our iPods.

If you’ll allow another rant, I have a real nit with the way iPod is set up to share music within the fair use guidelines of copyright protections. 

So I finally got around to setting up my wife’s iPod over the weekend…this was a somewhat complicated task because I needed to transfer all of my music to her computer.  Why couldn’t I simply attach my iPod to her computer, authorize her iTunes on my account and make it work that way?  No, I had to transfer the files over our WiFi network.  Fine. 

So now our iPods are synched.  But suppose she rips a new CD, or I buy a track or bigger collection from iTunes?  Why isn’t iTunes software pre-configured to auto-synch between our computers.  Seriously, when I get onto the home network why doesn’t my iTunes automatically seek other authorized iTunes accounts on the same network?  It seems so simple.  I’ve already set sharing permissions, our computers know each other and we work on the same, secured network….

Data synchronization is essential these days.  Making things user friendly is what Apple’s supposed to be all about, right?  Why can’t they make data synch a snap?

Sure I know how to do this manually, but my wife sure doesn’t want to learn how to do that.  What happens when my sons are old enough for their own iPods, why can’t we all share our music?  How does this violate fair use?  We’re already restricted in the number of computers that can be authorized on a single account, I’ve got no qualm with that.  I just want the sharing to be a no brainer, just done. 

Frankly, this gets in the way of me buying new music because it means I’ve got to then get it synched, I’ve got to add a step…where’s the ease in that?

Technorati Tags: apple ipod

Things that make you go hmmm...

Compare and Contrast , and again.

I'm not the first person to blog on this.  Tip of the hat to my cousin Charlie for emailing these images and to <a href="http://beerandrap.com/blog.htm">SergDun</a> who pointed the URL of the photos, I'm sure there are others.

Is there looting going on, yes.  Does it cross racial and ethnic lines, you bet. Is some of it related to the fact that aide is not getting there fast enough and people are doing what they have to to survive?  Probably.

Is there also looting that is occuring simply because there is an absence of law and order, sure seems that way. 

Were the captions on these images intended to be racist?  I doubt it, but it is certain to make a lot of people upset while reinforcing some nasty stereotypes.  This does not make for fair and balanced journalism, and again it is the citizen journalists who call attention to this at best oversight and at worst blatant case of ignorance.

Riddle Me This...

I may have to change travel plans this week and looked at buying a new one-way ticket.  Why is it that most of the airlines charge more for a one-way ticket than a roundtrip? 

I am sure this is not always the case, but it seems very counter-intuitive.  If I book the round trip (which I'll do) and don't use the return, this challenges the airlines' ability to accurately predict availability and they are charging less for this.  There is no penalty (that I know of) for not using the return portion. I am sure there is a complicated mathematical reason for this, but I don't get it.