September 2007 Archives

Ok, so [various pundits](http://daringfireball.net/2007/09/the_ringtones_racket) are ragging on Apple for the whole 99-cent ringtone thing.

Not me, even though I've made my own ringtones.

Because I've done the math.

Maximum ringtones I would ever want on my phone, realistically: 10

Cost via iTunes Music Store: $9.90

Cost via IToner: $15

Cost of a relatively cheap audio editing program: $29.95

So basically, you're paying 99-cents to be able to edit the audio. iTunes Music Store is cheaper, vastly cheaper if you only want a few ringtones.

So all these guys that are whining are geeks. They already own some sort of audio editing program, so paying $.99 is additional cost. But if you don't own an audio editing program already $.99/ringtone is actually pretty cheap.

Now I'm a geek too, so I already own an audio editing program. But like I said, I already worked around iTunes to install my own.

So Ringtones aren't a racket to my mind. If you're a geek, you can make them free. If you're not, you can use iTunes to make them for you. Seems like a reasonable breakdown to me, given the stupidity of the music industry.

Update: iTunes 7.4.2 is out, and now it seems that the tweak to make a file a ringtone is to do both:

1. Add a 'stik' metatag with 14.

2. Set the extension to .m4r

Which actually seems to mean that rather then “locking up ringtones”, it sounds to me more like they're doing them properly. That is, ringtones will show up correctly in the finder as a ringtone, and iTunes can recognize them from the filedata.

Seems good to me..

So as long as I've had DSL, calling my 2nd phone line has caused my Internet to die for about 30 seconds.

Turns out the stupid cheap-ass phone company filters are only on line 1, and my DSL is on line 2. Even worse, they don't even give the phone company techs 2 line filters, they have to re-wire your jack.

So I told the tech to leave the jack alone, and I ordered a 630LCCU-2F-50 via Amazon.

$7.50 shipping for a $3.99 part.

Stupid phone company. They're probably spending more money in technician calls then it would take to just ship out 2-line filters.

Qwest better not charge me for the service call...

One of the great things about America is that because anyone can grow up to become President, we all feel we have the right to jog the President’s elbow.

So here’s my list of 5 things I wish we were doing.

Short and sweet version of my opinion so far.

War is about the unexpected. You can beat Petraeus about not meeting all of the “benchmarks”, but what really happened is that a lot of positive things happened in Iraq that no one expected, and that no one has any way to measure.

That's a good thing. Petraeus is 'da man, he's done a tremendous job in Iraq.

Don't take my word for it, go read some of the articles over at the Brookings institute, publisher of the Iraq Index I used to read religiously. According to him:

...most categories of killings are down 20 to 50-percent since the surge began. This is true for overall civilian fatalities from all causes, including victims of extrajudicial killings (basically reprisal assassinations), murders, and for the most part, car- and truck-bombing victims.

Trip Report-PDF

Table showing the dramatic improvement in military momentum

Petraeus Doesn't Cook the Books

However it is true what the Democrats say; that the Iraqi legislature sucks. They're almost as incompetent as...drumroll...Congress.

Which isn't surprising. Our fatal flaw in Iraq was conducting a census instead of an election. What we really need to do is fire the existing crop of guys, and hold a whole bunch of elections focused not on what race/party you are (Sunni/Kurd/Shia) but whether you can get shit done.

Now if only we could do that in this country...

Of course, that's just a fantasy on my part. I think the senators are right though that we need a “diplomatic surge” to go along with the troop surge.

My wife wants an iPhone now.

Why?

She wants to be able to add phone numbers to her phone without waiting for her nephew to visit.

Literally. Despite having a computer geek for a husband, her solution to putting contact numbers in her phone is to hand her nephew her rolodex and her phone and make him do it.

The price cut didn't help either, she was willing to wait when it was $600, but now that its $400, it seems more feasible.

Then a friend of mine told her I was getting a $100 rebate. Which isn't quite true, work is getting a $100 rebate, since they were the ones that paid for my iPhone.

So if I can't have a dev kit for the iPhone because of “cellphone network security”, what's your excuse for the iPod Touch which doesn't have a cell phone?

Though I expect some sort of announcement in the Leopard timeframe.

Oh, and by the way, Palm better pull their head out of their ass. (Sorry, other Steve I know who works for Palm.)

An NBC Universal spokesman has been quoted by the New York Times as claiming that the iTunes Store's raison d'etre “ is designed to drive sales of Apple devices at the expense of those who create the content that make these devices worth buying.”

I just realized. Apple is operating on the reverse of the Gillette model.

The Gillette model is to sell you the razor cheap, but force you to buy expensive razor blades.

It's been copied by:

• Ink Jet Printers (often cheaper to buy a new printer then a cartridge)
• Nintendo, Sega, XBox, Playstation
• Cellular Providers

Apple's using the reverse model: Content is cheap, the player is expensive. I'm calling it the Rozar model.

Which makes sense to me, I use the iTunes store a lot. I've purchased 1618 items from the iTunes store.

But I have 14,000 items in my iTunes library so 90% of my content was purchased on CDs. For a Razor model to work, 90% of my content would have have to come from iTMS not 10%.

So selling the content online doesn't make any sense as a business model. Not only that, but since Apple doesn't try to make huge profits on the iTMS, that means you're competing with someone who doesn't care about profits. So your profits are going to be miniscule.

NBC is run by idiots. The only way to fight Apple's Rozar model would be with a Razor model: $99 player, $4.99 shows. I could see that working, but in that case, NBC wouldn't be making any extra money because the extra cost would have to go to subsidize the player. So NBC is actually better off with the Rozar model.

I just ordered one of the new .33“ thick Apple keyboards.

I'm hoping I catch ditch all those stupid wrist rests I have all over my desk!

While its true that Americans don't study other languages besides English, we are fascinated by other cultures.

I've been having to run Windows lately.

It just, well, sucks. I can run it on my Mac Pro via Parallels mixed in with everything else. But since I'm always booting Windows purely to fix bugs, it makes me hate it even more because I associate it with nasty things...

Just hearing the Windows boot sound now makes my back hurt.

So clearly, rebooting into Windows to play [Supreme Commander](http://www.supremecommander.com) should become a necessary part of my work day. Its the only way I can make sure that Windows users don't get short changed. Yeah, thats the ticket.