The blog of Doug

I just had to get a copy of Windows Vista to test our software (company stuff honest). I don't really want Vista which is 5 years late and had loads of stuff dropped from it but needs must. Anyway on investigation a retail upgrade is £254, a bunch of cash for an operating system if you ask me. I had heard you could download it so I went to the Micro$oft site and yes you could for $254... Huh? Apparently $1 = £1 in Micro$oft land the rest of the world sees about $2 = £1, to add insult to injury you can't download it unless you have a US address and credit card so your stuck with getting the boxed thing in the UK for twice the US price... I can't tell you how made this makes me..... It better be good is all I can say, give me my iMac anyday.

Just read a story on the register about 8 complaints for a poster of Tony Blair by the NO2ID lot. Apparently it makes him look like hitler... I'll let you make your own minds up. Me I'm not into the idea of ID cards at all, just making ID more valuable to steal. Worth checking out the NO2ID site though.

Amazing what cal be done these days:

Seems to be a growing awareness of this digital rights stuff and trusted computing which has been annoying me recently.

Here is a great animation which I recomend you watch, it's very groovy with an interesting message.

Here is the guy that did a whole bunch of video stuff for Apple expressing his displeasure at the whole thing.

Something to look at with a hangover anyway (owwww) .....

A thing that has been bugging me for a while now with all this talk of 'digital' is the amount of control and information people seem to want to have. The super markets love the reward card so they can know more about their customer. The government loves ID cards so they can know more about their people and the recording and film industries love digital rights management so they can wring every last penny out of their customer.

I have always liked the simple model of the license fee, a bunch of good telly and radio for a flat rate. I don't expect to get it for free as a lot of effort goes into making this stuff. But like everything this is changing, rather than a one size fits all it's becomming a splintered mess of buying certain entertainment on certain technology (free view, sky, cable, internet etc.). So i'm now expected to know what I want to watch at any time fo the day or night on a certain technology with a certain price. Sounds a bit too much for me.

There are many reasons for this outburst but the trigger is the Rickey Gervais show. Now don't get me wrong it's a great show put out as a podcast paid for by the Guardian in this case. All good so far, the Guardian does well, the podcast is the most listened to on iTunes I believe so a success for a new medium. Because of this the new series is going to cost you directly, something like £5 a month.

Now this becomes interesting, this is the first podcast to try and make money. For me, I like the shows but not enough to put my hand in my pocket. But does this mean that at some stage I am going to pay for everything I want to watch or listen to individualy? How do I know what I want to watch, am I going to have 30 shows I like all costing me £5 a month?

Doesn't sound like a good thing to me, that coupled with being sued for converting my own CD's to mp3's or having to throw away DVD's I bought in the US because it is 'illegal' to watch them in a different region (oh and i'm not allowed to conevrt them either). Way to go to make it hard for everyone, back to mud huts I say. They can stuff their digital rights and money grabbing ways!

Update: Heres another link to the nasty moves of big busines, copyright and fairness. I'm going to stop looking at this stuff it depresses me too much :(