thoughtcrumbs : january 2000

More than paper

Review of the wonderful People of Paper over in Reading.

More cooking pictures

I've been cooking a lot lately but haven't photographed much. Here are a couple of recent things (the sushi recipe and plating is all Josh). Recipes for these coming soon.

Laundry: A cautionary tale

When putting laundry in the dryer, be sure to check the underside of your bathmat. It might just have saturated cat litter crystals stuck to it. They would be yellow. And if you put the mat in the dryer, your entire load will end up smelling like cat pee.

Betting on the wisdom of the masses

Related to my review of The Wisdom of Crowds, there's now a Dublin-based gambling website that allows thousands of independent actors to make predictions on an event, like the midterm elections, and as Surowiecki's sociology shows, the masses make great predictions. Google and Eli Lily both have employee pools at the site to predict their future success.

Wish I were that witty in high school

Review of the delightful "Special Topics in Calamity Physics" over in Reading.

Steve Jobs calls for an end to DRM

Apple's CEO has called for an end to digital rights management. In this statement released on Apple's website yesterday, he discusses the state of DRM, setting the blame pretty much entirely on the big four record companies. He says that they insist on embedding copy protection on digital music, even when it doesn't stop piracy and makes many online music stores and players incompatible. (There's also a slightly more neutral NYTimes article.)

Jobs presents some interesting statistics, including that only 3% of the music on the typical iPod was purchased at iTunes (about 22 songs; the rest are open mp3s from CDs and other sources), yet consumers are locked in to purchasing iTunes music and iPod hardware simply to keep playing the music they've already invested in. He says this frustrating experience is simply because the music companies, whose music iTunes licenses only because it has agreed to embed DRM, refuse to face reality. Digital music sales account for about 10% of their total sales ($2 out of 20 billion); the majority of their music is sold as unprotected CDs.

One alternative he considers is licensing Apple's DRM, FairPlay, to other companies so that iTunes music can be played on other devices (like my Nomad MuVo). But spreading FairPlay also increases the risk of encryption leaks, so Apple would have to coordinate with dozens of other companies to perform rapid hardware and software updates every time there's a leak. Also, Apple's getting pressure from European countries to remove DRM. So, Jobs calls for an end to DRM entirely. Yippee.

Does this mean that iTunes would unlock all of my previously purchased music someday? That would be nifty. Otherwise, there's always JHymn.

Punxsutawney phake

Turns out Punxsutawney Phil, the "prognosticating marmot" isn't really 121 years old. (So says the Post-Gazette.) And this year, Phil's a girl. Though the Punxsutawney tourism board would like you to believe the animal sips an elixir of life, really, they just get a new groundhog as needed. Especially when that groundhog has an early morning interview with Regis Philbin. According to the article:

"When they needed a groundhog for Groundhog Day, they got a guy with a backhoe to dig one up," said Mr. Herring. "The one they dug up died and they needed another one." The Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium doesn't keep a groundhog, but one happily hibernating at the 35-acre walk-through zoo in Fayette County had an open schedule, at least until March. Mr. Herring says sometime before Groundhog Eve, he and a couple of helpers dug her up.

Not that we've had much of a winter so far (methinks those climate scientists are on to something with this whole global warming thing), but I'm perfectly happy Phil didn't see his/her shadow.

Four days in Mexico

My family and I went to Cozumel last weekend for a bit of scuba diving and beachfront lazing about. It was 80 degrees there; a total shock after the sub-freezing Pittsburgh. Switching from waterproof boots to sandals was delightful. We saw a nurse shark, rays, turtles, and the toadfish, which is signalled underwater with a Stooge-like waggling hand below your chin. Some pictures on Flickr.