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Canadian Music Pigopolists Strike Back
Are The Record Companies About To Kill Legal Downloads?
Downloaders Aged 18-25 Are A 'Lost Cause' - Apple Spokesman
Back Up Your Data Before Sending iBook For Logic Board Replacement
PC Mag: Google Local in Beta Review
iPod Fans Report "Static" Problems
Apple Offers 15GB iPods As Mini Substitutes
The Structural Failures of Windows
Calif. Lawmaker Moves To Block Google's Gmail
'Universal' Hard Drive System To Ship This Month
Iomega Ships 35GB 'Son Of Jaz'
Vonage VoIP Pioneer Goes To Canada
*NIX - UNIX: What Does It Mean To Choose Open Source?
Apple FY 04 Second Quarter Results Conference Call Today
Tech Night Owl: Making Speakerphones Listenable
Mac Night Owl: The One Paragraph eMac Update Report
Taiwan's Quanta Reaps Revived PC demand, LCD boom
Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) Powers Up[/url]




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Canadian Music Pigopolists Strike Back

Canada's days as a haven of enlightened sensibility as regards Internet file sharing may be numbered.

The Canadian Press' Angela Pacienza reports:

"The Canadian music industry is fighting a decision that endorsed music swapping on popular sharing services such as Kazaa.

"In a five-page notice of appeal filed Tuesday in Federal Court, the Canadian Recording Industry Association argued current copyright legislation unequivocally prevents people from freely copying or downloading songs from the Internet.

"But in Justice Konrad von Finckenstein's March 31 ruling against CRIA, he said the group had no legal entitlement to the identities...

"'I cannot see a real difference between a library that places a photocopy machine in a room full of copyrighted material and a computer user that places a personal copy on a shared directory linked to a P2P service,' he wrote."

However, what happens in court under current legislation may be moot. The politicians are getting into the act, and Canada's new prime minister, Paul Martin, is both strongly pro big business and has an affinity for the music establishmenr. U2's Bono was the keynote speaker at Martin's "coronation" as Liberal Party leader last fall, and he made a stop this month at the Juno Awards (Canada's Grammys) to support the music industry calling it "an incredible part of our sovereignty . . . we're not going to let that be jeopardized."

Martin's Liberal government Heritage Minister Helene Scherrer is also promising to punish music file sharers, and has declared that her department, in tandem with Industry Canada, plans to draft legislation to amend a loophole in the Copyright Act that permits music downloading.

Scherrer also wants the federal government to ratify two international treaties that protect the ownership of copyright materials. If signed, CRIA would have new legal backups in Federal Court.

Something for Canadians to think about with an election looming. I'm not sure what the Conservative Party's policy is on file sharing, but they could make some points with younger voters especially by affirming to uphold the present laws.





Are The Record Companies About To Kill Legal Downloads?

MacNet's John Manzione says:

“The record companies are about to demand a higher price for legally downloaded music, or at least try to. Seem 99 cents isn’t enough to placate the money-hungry, sophomoric, Corporate Suits running these companies. If this move to raise prices to $1.99 or even $2.99 succeed Apple is about to lose their huge gamble in the iTunes Music Store adventure.”

"....Simply stated, record companies do not want to let go of the CD/DVD product just yet. And by raising prices they hope to not only marginalize the legal download business model; they wish to kill it completely. If the iTMS begins to offer songs for $1.99 or more it will wither and die within a matter of weeks.

"As it is, 99 cents is barely making the cut...

"If the record companies decide to raise prices (and I suspect they will) there is nothing Apple can do about it. The contract Apple had with the major 5 was a yearlong contract, and since we’ve heard nothing about the major 5 re-signing with Apple I believe no new contract has yet been signed...

"If the record companies succeed in raising prices it will drive many people back to the days of pirating (not that the pirating ever stopped)... If we are faced with spending $2.00 a song at the iTMS we’ll see it close up shop by the end of this year."

"....While it was nice to have, the iTMS wasn’t the only way we put music on our iPods. Ripping CD’s is a great way to ensure that the music on your iPod can be replaced, if needed. This might just be the right way to do it after all.

"Unless of course the bastards ever find a way to truly protect an audio CD from being ripped…"

You can check it out at:
http://www.macnet2.com/more.php?id=475_0_1_0





Downloaders Aged 18-25 Are A 'Lost Cause' - Apple Spokesman

The Financial Times' Tim Burt says:

"The latest generation of media consumers is like no other. What was once an industry in which large companies distributed their products in forms and at times they could control - music in albums, television programmes in channels - is becoming one in which more and more power lies in the hands of individuals......

"Although these trends are still relatively new, the implications are clear. In the age of personalised media, the traditional business models that have been the lifeblood of the media industry for decades - individual tracks and programmes packaged so the profitable hits subsidise the unprofitable misses - are under growing pressure.

"Leading media companies, alarmed by the 20 per cent decline in global music sales over the past four years, hope to defend their revenue models with legitimate online services and copy-protection systems......

"Some executives argue they are already too late. Eddie Cue, vice-president of applications at Apple, says: 'We thought the 18-25 age group was a lost cause because they've been downloading [music] for free for years. The under-10 crew and the over-25 crew is where we're aimed.."

For the full report, visit here.




Back Up Your Data Before Sending iBook For Logic Board Replacement

A Macintouch reader warns that Apple is returning iBooks serviced under the iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program. Data transfer is not an option with the logic board replacement program.
 
The iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program is a worldwide program covering repair or replacement of the logic board in specific iBook models manufactured between May 2002 and April 2003 that are experiencing specific component failures.

The iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program covers iBooks that have a particular component failure on the logic board, resulting in the computer starting up but the built-in and attached external displays exhibiting one or more of the following symptoms:

• Scrambled or distorted video
• Appearance of unexpected lines on the screen
• Intermittent video image
• Video freeze
• Computer starts up to blank screen

The program covers affected iBooks for three years after the first retail sale of the unit. Apple will continue to evaluate the repair data and will provide further repair extensions as needed.

The program is available for iBooks with serial numbers in the following range(s):

UV220XXXXXX to UV318XXXXXX

iBooks with the serial numbers listed above may be referred to as:
• iBook (16 VRAM)
• iBook (14.1 LCD 16 VRAM)
• iBook (Opaque 16 VRAM)
• iBook (32 VRAM)
• iBook (14.1 LCD 32 VRAM)

For more information, visit:
http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/faq/





PC Mag: Google Local in Beta Review

"With Google's new Google Local, which is now in beta, Web searching comes to your neighborhood. Just include a zip code or city name in your search terms and Google will locate nearby matches, showing address and telephone number. If you go directly to http://www.google.com/lochp, you can view the search results on a map, save your home location, and set the search radius from one mile to 45 miles."

Read more at:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,,1566611,00.asp





iPod Fans Report "Static" Problems

The BBC reports:

"Apple is looking into reports of sound problems with its popular iPod mini digital music player.

"According to online postings, some people have had trouble with the headphone jack, leading to screeching sounds and static.

"Apple said it was aware of 'a few isolated reports', saying the device was covered by a one-year warranty."

For the full report, visit here.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3621585.stm





Apple Offers 15GB iPods As Mini Substitutes

Last month, Apple delayed the global launch its wildly popular iPod Mini player by three months due to high demand in the US. The player had more than 100,000 orders before it even went on sale.

Now buyers on the waiting list are being offered an alternative:

Dear Apple Customer,

Thank you for ordering the new iPod mini!

The demand for the iPod mini has been incredible. We are shipping them as quickly as possible, but we cannot meet the ship date we previously estimated for you. We now expect to ship your iPod mini in three weeks. If we do not hear from you prior to shipment, we will assume the revised date is acceptable, and will ship your order. We apologize for any inconvenience.

Your business is very important. If you would like an iPod sooner, we are offering to replace your iPod mini with a 15GB iPod at no additional charge. This model usually ships within 24 hours.

If the revised ship date for the iPod mini is unacceptable, and if you are not interested in a discounted 15G iPod, please let us know and we will change or cancel your order as instructed, and if appropriate, issue a refund. If we do not hear from you, we will continue to process your iPod mini order.

The Structural Failures of Windows

"Not quite baling wire," says The Inquirer's Ryan Hunter, who has alleged that Windows' architecture is fundamentally flawed....

"Twenty-years ago, in 1984, arrived the lowly Mac. The Mac had a closed environment, and users weren't to fool with the innards. There was a SCSI bus port on the Mac, and networking (albeit a 'phone-wire' net at a whopping 75kbaud) was built-in..... everyone struggled with GUIs and what they should mean "except for Apple," who closed their design and became the GUI standard to beat. Apple didn't have many hardware makers to accommodate, just themselves....

"OS/2 Microsoft mug from 1987OS/2 was envisioned as the OS that could take advantage of multi-tasking and multi-threading to unite the worlds of Microsoft and IBM and Intel. This marriage didn't last very long, but it produced OS/2 -- which for all of its madness, was unbelievably reliable.

"...Microsoft and IBM would soon come to blows, and a divorce ensued. Microsoft then resurrected its Windows 2.0 for 'consumers' as a 'bridge' application for those that would wait for its version of OS/2 (that is to say Windows with the good OS/2 multi-tasking multi-threading bits) which was called Windows New Technology or Windows NT.....

"Windows 3.0 really didn't work, but it did something phenomenal that hadn't been needed in the closed-hardware world of Macs: it produced a methodology where hardware vendors could glue their bits to Windows in an enhanced way via code snippets called drivers.....

"Microsoft gained more support for Windows because of its accidentally egalitarian method of encompassing hardware devices. Users who'd longed for less headaches (but couldn't part with $$ for Macs -- that were also perceived as both application and hardware limited) and a GUI that might allow interapplication communication (via rudimentary cut-and-paste) took on Windows on the desktop in droves -- even though it really didn't work....

"Windows 95, purported prior to its release as a whole new Windows, was found to be just the same old Windows (a DOS application for compatibility reasons) with a whole new problem, and our second major architectural flaw -- the Registry.

"...the third major problem with Windows architecture: Microsoft tried to make itself the repository for driver files for peripherals and did a terrible job of it....

"....Microsoft's anarchistic platform allowed drivers to go out of date easily, and Microsoft managed driver and system operating files miserably....

"Microsoft was caught with its pants down when the Internet arrived. Lacking but a primitive set of drivers for Internet connectivity made from packet drivers....

"....Microsoft thought of networking as an afterthought. Provoked by competition, they invented their own way of thinking from grafted parts of what worked elsewhere.

"...in the XP machine are .ini files, a Registry that's a breeze to hack into...

"Microsoft would also try to seduce Unix developers onto Windows platforms by adding various components and analogs of Unix components onto and into Windows. Few Unix programmers would take the bait. Architecturally, Windows as a few roots from Unix, just as DOS did.

"Windows added in features that were Mac-like, too. Directories became folders, and the parlance of Windows became Mac-like over time, as well.

"But the deficiencies remain to this day...

"....we'll live with Windows legacy for a long time, perhaps, unless we change over to something else. My 'something else' is Darwin BSD running in disguise underneath the Macintosh's OS/X."

A fascinating article. You can read it at:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=15305






Calif. Lawmaker Moves To Block Google's Gmail

Reuters' Lisa Baertlein reports:

"A California state senator on Monday said she was drafting legislation to block Google Inc.'s free e-mail service "Gmail" because it would place advertising in personal messages after searching them for key words.

"'We think it's an absolute invasion of privacy. It's like having a massive billboard in the middle of your home,' Sen. Liz Figueroa, a Democrat from Fremont, California, told Reuters in a telephone interview. "

You can check it out at:
http://finance.lycos.com/qc/news/story.aspx?story=41058028





'Universal' Hard Drive System To Ship This Month

The Register's Tony Smith says:

"Japan's IO Data will this month ship the first removable hard drive based on the Information Versatile Disk for Removable (IVDR) specification.

"IVDR is a cartridge-based format that encapsulates a standard hard drive and interconnect electronics, designed as a way of making it easier to transfer very large files not only between computers but between in-car entertianment systems, hi-fis and TVs. The format was also intended to be capable of sustaining its own life as storage capacities and data transfer speeds increase, and disk sizes decrease.

"Data IVDR AdaptorThe cartridge slots into an adaptor that hooks up to the host via a USB 2.0 port, from which it draws its power. The device will work across a USB 1.1 bus, but you'll need to use the bundled AC power adaptor, IO Data said."

For the full report, visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/13/ivdr_iodata/





Iomega Ships 35GB 'Son Of Jaz'

Also from The Reg's Tony Smith:

"Iomega has begun selling its 'son of Jaz' removable hard drive, Rev. Pitched as an alternative to tape back-up rigs, Rev provides 35GB of uncompressed storage capacity per 2.5in removable disk. The disk is mounted inside a 10 x 8 x 8cm cartridge, and yields a 25MBps transfer rate - eight times faster than DDS-4 tape, Iomega claims.

"Each disk contains its own read/write head assembly and drive motor, allowing the unit to be sealed as tightly as a regular hard drive. That, reckons Iomega, will eliminate the data corruption problems past removable hard drive formats have suffered over time..."

You can check it out at:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/13/iomega_rev/






Vonage VoIP Pioneer Goes To Canada

The Register's John Oates reports:

"VoIP upstart Vonage is opening shop in Canada - its first foray outside the US. Canadian customers will be billed in Canadian dollars and can choose local telephone numbers.

"VoIP, or broadband phone service as Vonage styles it, uses DSL web connections to route phone calls at much cheaper prices than thos of the traditional telco. The service uses Motorola VT1005v handsets."

For the full report, visit here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/04/13/vonage_canada/





*NIX - UNIX: What Does It Mean To Choose Open Source?

OS Views' Monty Manley says:

"I know perhaps twenty-five or thirty programmers personally; I'd count eight of them as friends. They are all programmers like myself: corporate IT folks whose daily lives are spent producing in-house apps. All of us use Windows NT as a development platform; the lingua franca is either Visual Basic or some variant of C++ (although Java is becoming more popular).

"But of all of us, I am the only one actively developing under Linux ....

"My programmer friends are puzzled by my new fervor....

"My days are spent working with Windows, and challenges abound there. But often the challenges are not the ones I anticipated. Rather than concentrating on my own code, I often have to run down buggy SQL drivers, ActiveX components, or DLL's (or some nightmarish combination of all three). Windows is littered with badly-thought-out APIs. Trying to make Windows inter-operate with other systems is like teaching an elephant to tap-dance: you can do it, but the results aren't pretty.

"I contrast this with Unix -- not "Unix" in the sense of any particular implementation (even Linux), but rather Unix as an ideal. A robust, small, cleanly implemented operating system composed of well-defined and standard interfaces. An operating system designed from the get-go to be as portable and programmer-friendly as possible. There is something about Unix that calls to me as a programmer -- it is done The Right Way. Every implementation of Unix -- predominantly in the BSD's, but to a somewhat lesser extent in Linux -- is to implement interfaces correctly, i.e., in a sane and hopefully elegant way. A quick perusal of Kernel Traffic shows that Linus is very strict about doing things right; he'll make low-level changes to the kernel, even if it causes breakage, in order to get something working "correctly."

"As a programmer, I enjoy myself much more when I'm programming in Linux. There is no helpless sense of fatality as there is in Windows....

"Money is nice, but it's not our primary motivator. We are proud, passionate, nettlesome, partisan, opinionated, occasionally muleheaded and foul-mouthed. Linux is a belief system and a philosophy as much as a body of software.

"I choose to belong to this society because I want to stand for something. I want my code to stand for something besides profit and loss."

For more visit here:
http://www.osviews.com/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=1180





Apple FY 04 Second Quarter Results Conference Call Today

The dial-in number for press is: (913) 981-5560

WHEN: Wednesday, April 14, 2004, 2:00 p.m. PDT/5:00 p.m. EDT

REBROADCAST: The conference call will be available as a continuous rebroadcast beginning Wednesday April 14 at 5:00 p.m. PDT/8:00 p.m. EDT through Wednesday, April 21 at 5:00 p.m. PDT/8:00 p.m. EDT. The dial in number for the rebroadcast is (719) 457-0820. Please enter confirmation code: 496200

WEBCAST: Apple will provide live audio streaming of its FY 04 Second Quarter Results Conference Call utilizing Apple’s popular QuickTime® 6, the industry-leading multimedia software for live and on-demand audio and video streaming. The live audio webcast will be accessible through Apple’s web site at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/earningsq204/

Viewers simply need to download a copy of QuickTime 6 in advance from: http://www.apple.com/quicktime to listen to the conference call.





Tech Night Owl: Making Speakerphones Listenable

Is it worth $249 to make it better?

Here's the URL for today's commentary:

http://www.technightowl.com/newsletters/2004/04/228.htm#tolerable





Mac Night Owl: The One Paragraph eMac Update Report

Do you remember when a SuperDrive itself was a $1,000 option?

Here's the URL for today's commentary:

http://www.macnightowl.com/index.htm#report





Taiwan's Quanta Reaps Revived PC demand, LCD boom

Reuters' Baker Li reports

" Quanta Computer Inc , the world's top maker of laptops for leading brands [including Apple's PowerBooks], is expected to post a 20 percent rise in quarterly profits on growing demand, with cellphones and displays seen adding to sales this year....

"Quanta and Compal command a combined 40 percent of the global market for notebook manufacturing."

You can check it out at:
http://biz.yahoo.com/rc/040413/tech_taiwan_quanta_1.html





Applied Micro Circuits Corp. (AMCC) Powers Up

lightreading.com reports:

"AMCC is acquiring intellectual property and assets related to IBM's PowerPC 400 line of microprocessors for $227 million in cash, the companies announced. The deal includes an option for AMCC to buy $5 million more in IBM assets.

"AMCC expects to pick up 70 IBM employees as part of the deal, which is expected to close before June 30.

"This marks AMCC's second deal with IBM's chip organization. The first was the acquisition of IBM's switch fabric operations, including a design team based in France.

"It's worth noting that the parts acquired aren't actually chips: They're "cores," processor designs intended to fit inside ASICs. AMCC is not gaining control of the standalone PowerPC chips used in the Apple Computer Inc. Macintosh, for example. IBM retains the rights to the PowerPC 400 intellectual property, meaning the company will continue using the parts inside ASICs."

For the full report, visit here.
http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?site=lightreading&doc_id=50913


***



Charles W. Moore


Note: Letters to Moore's Mailbag may or may not be published at the editor's discretion. Correspondents' email addresses will NOT be published unless the correspondent specifically requests publication. Letters may be edited for length and/or context.

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If you would prefer that your message not appear in Moore's Mailbag, we would still like to hear from you. Just clearly mark your message "NOT FOR PUBLICATION," and it will not be published.

CM

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