e-Everything
posted by Hillie.
When the MP3 revolution came, I was skeptical about it at first. I was like, no I don’t really want to have all my music on a hard drive. What if the hard drive ceases to function? Then I lose all my music. This actually happened to me and I lost a lot of music I was not able to get back. Now this was before iTunes, before anything was available to be purchased on mp3. So what was done? You either bought the CD and then ripped the music to mp3s on your computer, or you just straight up pirated the music from Napster or anything else that was around at the time (Most of them obsolete now). I was somewhere between the two. I bought a lot of CD’s, but then I also downloaded a lot of music as well. Then a year later I lost all my MP3s in a hard disk crash. I was able to replace only the songs that I had on CD. From that point on, any music I really liked, I bought it on CD. Hard copy. Something that is permanent.
There is a lesson to be learned here. Now, if I lose all my music, I can just re-rip all of my CDs to AAC (the successor of MP3, fact, not Apple propaganda), and since I’ve bought a lot of music off of iTunes, I can redownload the songs I’ve lost, at no cost. Wait a minute. I have to download them, from who? From Apple. What if I no longer have an Internet connection? What if Apple goes out of business? What if the MafiAA forces Apple to shut iTunes down? That last one no where near as far-fetched as it sounds and actually has come REALLY close to happening. If any of those things happen, you cannot retrieve your music. Worse though, it is not music you downloaded for free, it is music you paid good money for.
So what’s the solution? You could burn the music you bought from iTunes to a CD-R, right? Well, CD-Rs aren’t like pressed CDs where the digital information is etched into metal. The data is imprinted on a film of dye on the back of the CD-R. This is significantly less permanent than a CD, and it has been proven that CD-Rs will not stand the test of time. It is even questionable if pressed CDs and DVDs will.
Because of my experience with digital music, when the concept of digital photography came around I was completely against it. I was very skeptical and moreso I despised it. Why? because the same things could happen with digital photos that happened with digital music, except if you lost your photos there is no original source to get them back from. You can burn them to a photo-CD, but then you have the same CD-R problem. You can have prints made but it is significantly more expensive to have prints made for every photo you take than it is to buy CDs of the music you like, and if you lose the digital version, you cannot get a digitally perfect (or near-perfect) copy like you can with music from a CD. You’d have to scan the image in, which depending on your scanner will come out crappy or decent, but the same 8+ megapixel quality of the original.
There was an article I saw on either Slashfot or Digg a while back. It pains me that I can’t find it now. It was a really good article. It was talking about how everyone is throwing away print photos in favor of digital photos on sites like Flickr, Photobucket, Myspace, etc. It has been proven that image formats change, go obsolete and the chances of you being able to view all your photos in 20+ years are slim to none, because it will be considered dinosaur technology and there will be no viewers around capable of viewing those files.
Think about it. Now this requires people old enough where their first computer did not have a version of Windows named after a year. (ie. Windows 95/98/2000) or XP, or even Windows at all. Those who remember coming from the Commodore Amiga, or Commodore 64. What image formats did you use back then? On the Amiga there was the IFF image format. I still have some artwork in IFF format, some of my first works of computer art, and to this day I have found nothing that can open them in Linux, Windows, or OS X. Nothing. So that art is lost. Now of course, someone could write a program to view those files but there has to be the call for it for it to be widespread. Say a Linux programmer writes one for Linux, or writes one for Windows. He may choose to charge for it, and even then, it will never be available for say, the iPhone, if he thinks AT&T charges too much money for their iPhone plans (which they do, because the service price should reflect the SERVICE not the PHONE. The phone is a separate product charged separately).
Now of course, you know I have my own Flickr account with tons of pictures and I take what I would call professional-quality photographs. I am an avid photographer, though not full time– More of a hobbyist. I have come to a point in my life where I have let go of all things material. If I lost all my photos it would not hurt me in the least, as long as I and others got to enjoy them for a reasonable amount of time. So if twenty years from now my photos aren’t visible anymore, I think I will be okay with that. I mean, the most important ones will be printed anyway, so I will have those, but even then, I believe we as a people cling too much to things. It is not the things that matter, it is the people, and you do not need things to have memories.
So I’ve discussed e-music, e-photos and now we come down another step to the next subject: e-Books. Each step we’ve taken so far we lost something. With digital music, if you buy the CD, at least you can get a digitally perfect copy from the original CD. You lose that with photos, but at least there are several workarounds. Now with e-Books, the marketers seem to want to do the same, to rush you into giving up your flesh and blood books in favor of virtual reincarnations. Virtual reincarnations that you must pay for, that come in a format that is more closed-off than any of the formats I’ve discussed before. Why? Digital Rights Management. You cannot open the e-Book in any text file reader, or any application like MS Word. Why? because then you could send it to other people and they could do the same. This would defeat the purpose of the companies selling you an intangible item.
So what’s the idea here? It’s the same as e-Music. You have the e-Book equivalent of an iPod (e-Reader, Kindle, even iPhone/iPod touch, take your pick) and then you can have all the books you “own” on that device. Wow, having a bookshelf or library in a small device, that sounds super convenient. Of course, that device blows up, or the company that makes it goes out of business or in ten years when they have a brand new version, are you still going to have those books? Most likely you will have to BUY THEM AGAIN. How many of you have bought the SAME SONG multiple times? Think about it. Ok, so I own the CD, now I bought the ringtone, now I bought the answer tone. You’ve now bought the same song three times in succession. Wait, you switch wireless companies. Suddenly your purchase is null and void. You buy the same ringtone again, the same answertone again (if your provider supports answer tones) and now you’ve purchased the same song five times! This is not imaginary people, this is REAL LIFE. Anyone who has switched wireless companies and had a device such as the Sidekick whose only method for ringtones is to buy them has gone through this at least once, or even if they chose not to, their purchase was still nullified. Notice, they did not get their money back, though. That is like someone coming to your house and forcefully taking what YOU PAID FOR.
When it comes to e-Books. I draw the line. I only buy books on paper. I hate PDF files. I absolutely DESPISE them, although not because of the electronic sense, but because HTML works so much better and faster. I mean, I get that PDF’s are great for printing, but when it comes to the web. I cringe and almost feel my kidney’s failing when I see a link and it’s only available in PDF format. Argh! but now I’m ranting….
Yes. I absolutely bow down to Google and praise their “View as HTML” option. It truly is the best thing since sliced bread, but ONLY because people created that problem by putting information online ONLY as PDF’s!! …. but yeah, so back to e-Books. When I buy a book, I buy the old fashioned paper format. I think I’m in the majority too, because stores like Barnes and Noble and Border’s are still open. People still read actual flesh and blood books.
You know, books are the core of Western knowledeg. Book learnin’, as they used to call it in the old days. If society falls apart completely, and you know one day it will, we will still have our books, even when e-music and e-photos are no longer available.
Plus, college bookstores make a killing off of textbooks. There’s no way they could justify $120 for a piece of data. Hell, they can barely justify $120 for a real book. It’s insane!
Tags: aac, books, e-books, iTunes, mafiaa, mp3, mpaa, music, photography, riaa
March 29th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I gotta admit: it’s pretty devastating to lose your entire music collection or even a big chunk of it. Yet, it definitely happens all the time to people and so many people still don’t back-up. It is kind of a pain to back-up though.
I agree with you on the iPhone service costing too much and think that phone service in general is overpriced. Why is it so expensive to hear someone’s voice? The Internet allows so many possibilities and monthly Internet charges are cheaper than monthly at&t iPhone charges!
April 4th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Yeah, so far the only really good backup system I have ever used is Tivoli Storage Manager from IBM. They have personal versions for Windows and Linux, but sadly not for Mac OS X.. It’s like $80 but well worth it.
it’s basically incremental backup done right (since it was developed for enterprise applications– we use it at work)
Time Machine on OS X at first sounded like the holy grail, but as usual with Apple stuff that sounds like the perfect gift from God it has potentially catastrophic flaws that could cause you to lose important data.
It’s not really the voice plan that is the brunt of the iPhone cost, and it’s overpriced-ness. The iPhone plan is as follows
One of the AT&T Standard Voice plan + iPhone 3G data plan in one lump plan.
The voice plans cost the same as non-iPhone ones for AT&T, now whether or not those are overpriced or not has nothing to do with the iPhone, but the data plan is where it comes into effect.
People who don’t have iPhones pay a $20 a month 3G data plan, and have since it has been Cingular. AT&T originally charged $20 for the non-3G iPhone data plan. It’s essentially a 3G data plan with a device that does not support 3G.
So then Apple comes out with the iPhone 3G. Wow, 3G. So AT&T says, let’s raise the price of the data plan $5 and tell consumers it’s because it’s 3G.
I’m sure 98% of consumers nodded in ignorance and accepted the increase. People without an iPhone still pay $20 for unlimited data as far as I know.
When I was on my flight to San Juan, Puerto Rico en route to St. Croix, I heard the guy announce: “We will be playing an in-flight movie. We have headsets available for $2. We also will be having optional food service. You can purchase a premium nuts package for $4, or a large chocolate chip cookie for $4. Beverages are complimentary, except for wine, mixed drinks, beer, etc. which are $6. As always, exact change is appreciated. We also take all major credit cards, for your convenience.”
they also charge $15 to check the first bag, $20 for each additional. If your bag is >50 pounds it jumps to $50. If it’s over another limit it jumps to $125.
They blamed this on the $4 gas prices a year ago. Last time I checked gas prices were at an all time low.
My response to this was “You trying to fuck us in the ass is NOT appreciated, so you can take your ‘exact change is appreciated’ and shove it”
well, my response at the time was a chuckle and then shake my head in shame.
it’s just the same idea in both places. How can we gouge the consumer for as much money as possible, and they need a scapegoat to keep the consumer from finding out their fraud.