en-us http://www.keithwatanabe.net/index.php Keith Watanabe's Website http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/10/7e4d9516a11b0128b453841701d53699.html
That rant complete, I have to say that Yahoo's execs mentioned something that put a smile on my face. TechCrunch used the best quote when they stated how one Yahoo exec told the music industry "inconvenience doesn't scale."

That is what DRM truly is: inconvenience for the consumer.

Sadly, DRM isn't about the quality of music, the artists' real rights to full earnings, the true protection of intellectual property, nor the rights of the consumer. It's only about lawyers, executives and the middleman as well as a few leeches in between (that I missed in that statement). DRM helps no one, at least not the ones that truly deserve help. DRM is a fraud scheme to force consumers to pay extra to lower their inconvenience level. So what the music and movie industry have done is made people's lives more miserable with their insecurity.

It's a shame to see society take several steps back towards the age of monarchs and fiefdoms because that's exactly what this version of corporate America has done for social engineering. Or rather they have reversed years of democratic improvement as well as technological improvement just to secure a few more pennies in their burgeoning pockets.

Those extra pennies could've contributed to an investment in solar power for their production factories, technologies to aid deaf people improve their capabilities potentially to hear music, etc. It's truly pathetic to see the industry move in this direction.

Of course, the executives, lawyers, middlemen and other leeches don't care at all. As long as they can purchase another BMW or house in Malibu, that's all that matters to them.

Well, this year we saw SCO collapse and I'm certain that many of the executives are going to get nailed after the lawsuit payments start trickling in. While the music and movie industries' lawsuits may immediately impact the lives of the innocent being threatened, the truth is that I think their demise will be slow and a million times more painful and humiliating than SCO's.

I'll be thoroughly entertained seeing an obese, homeless Paris Hilton dining from a trash can outside of Del Taco alongside her one time executive friends who would see a horrid reverse in fortunes once social media really take over. Enjoy your French cuisine, Mercedes and other luxury, overpriced lifestyles while you can.]]> Wed, 10 Oct 2007 09:06:32 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2007/10/10/7e4d9516a11b0128b453841701d53699.html http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/21/6bcddd56bf500d4fda901bee65072def.html anti-Mac computer person since my days in college, i'm quite happy with my little iPod. What I'm not so happy about though is the piece of junk software that you have to use with it called iTunes. Last night I spent some time trying to sync up my iPod with several new playlist additions. You know, it takes my valuable time away. Looking at it this morning, the playlist and the songs I tried copying over didn't appear. What?!?!?!!? I was really looking forward to checking out some of my new playlist, especially if I hit the gym.

Then a while back, I was using my laptop at work to recharge my iPod. You see, the little wall charger's cable is too fucking small to connect to my iPod comfortably, so I just decided to go with the USB solution. Because of the stupid DRM, iTunes constantly would ask me whether or not I wanted to ERASE my data and sync up with the current version. If you leave the settings as is, this can be quite dangerous. And guess, what? Yup. I accidentally hit the "ok" button. There's no default setting that I can trust with this. And you risk harming your disk if you accidentally do this and unplug the sucker.

Then we get to the crappy localization aspect. Rather than smartly opening up the iTunes store globally, we have localized versions because we're geotagged. What the hell? I don't want a crappy localized version. I read English! That's why my settings on my desktop are set to English. Instead, iTunes, in its infinitely retardation, makes all these assumptions FOR YOU.

I virtually never use iTunes at home as my default media player. It's not good. I just have a simple XMMS playlist which works great. But I honestly just want to use iTunes to charge my iPod, create a few playlist and sync my songs. However, the piece of shit can't even get those basics things done right.

As much respect as I have for Steve Jobs and what Apple has done with the iPod (in the form of the iTouch and iPhone), I can't believe that Jobs can say with a straight face that iTunes (or a lot of Apple's garbage) is truly the best media player out there. It isn't.]]> Mon, 21 Apr 2008 08:37:22 -0600 http://www.keithwatanabe.net/blogs/2008/4/21/6bcddd56bf500d4fda901bee65072def.html