Last year, I got a ton of electric blankets to help out with the joint swelling and pain and I used them all year. (Yes, even in the summer.) So much so that the single-sized electric blanket I got (I got a whole variety of them) seems to have burned out from overuse. So that’s something, for those pondering choices.
In the non-electric variety, I’ve gotten more and more into lightweight “throws” that can be layered on. This is sort of an expensive one, but it’s the kind of thing I’m talking about.
I get 28 days of pills at a go. I cannot fill my prescription until I’m out. It takes 24-72 hours to refill my prescription, since my doctors have to be consulted every month about this.
In the meantime, I have a softball lodged under my left kneecap and my tongue is turning into a pot roast left too long in the oven.
Former Daily Press Editor in Chief Don Ray has a five-part series about homelessness in the High Desert online that are, I think, reprints from the Daily Press.
A more modern take on the same subject was offered earlier this month by the DP’s Tatiana Prophet.
If you’re thinking that I found these in Google while doing some research for a story for the Hesperia Star next week, you’d be right.
Well, Microsoft has done it: By caving into the music industry’s insistence that people only want MP3 players to listen to stolen music (and somehow ignoring that iTunes is a top 10 music retailer now) and paying a “pirate tax” to the music industry on all 10 or 11 Zune units they’re going to sell this holiday season, it’s apparently opened the door for Universal Music to go after Apple:
Universal, the world’s largest music company, owned by French media giant Vivendi, was the first major record label to strike an agreement with Microsoft Corp. to receive a fee for every Zune digital media player sold.
“It would be a nice idea. We have a negotiation coming up not too far. I don’t see why we wouldn’t do that… but maybe not in the same way,” he told the Reuters Media Summit, when asked if Universal would negotiate a royalty fee for the iPod that would be similar to Microsoft’s Zune.
This is the same level of thinking that brought us the motion picture agency shrieking that the VCR would be the end of the movie industry. Old guys who don’t use modern technology should not be in charge of information industry companies. (And yes, that includes newspapers. Incidentally, Stephan Wingert, the publisher at the Daily Press, once told me he owns one of every model of the iPod. Neither old nor technology-averse.)
VCRs ended up being a huge boon for the movie industry, as were DVDs, which were supposed to kill the movie industry due to their “perfect” image quality. Instead of fighting MP3s, the music industry needs to be figuring out their own counterpart to the movie rental industry that will give them a fat new revenue stream.
Well, Microsoft’s would-be iPod-killer (wait, now it’s no longer a killer, it’s an expand-the-marketer, or something), the Zune, is getting hammered:
Only the Zune software can sync music, video and pictures onto the device; Zune is incompatible with Windows Media Player, the familiar hub of the Windows desktop media experience.
The Zune app doesn’t even have as many features as WMP. And why (for the love of God) doesn’t it support podcasts? That’s pure insanity.
It’s incompatible with Microsoft’s own PlaysForSure standard, too.
You’ll have to buy all-new content from the new Zune Marketplace.
Oh, and the Zune Marketplace doesn’t even take real money, proving that on the Zune Planet there’s no operation so simple that it can’t be turned into a confusing ordeal. The Marketplace only accepts Zune Points, with an individual track typically costing the equivalent of the iTunes-standard 99 cents.
By forcing users to buy blocks of Zune Points (with a $5 minimum), the Marketplace only has to pay one credit-card processing fee.
Zune Points will also make it easier for the Zune Marketplace to institute variable pricing. The music industry wants it desperately. The industry has been pressuring Apple to abandon its flat 99 cent pricing and start charging more for “hot” tracks.
Apple has stood firm against this, insisting that low, uniform prices keep sales high and discourage the iTunes Store’s users from downloading music illegally.
I’m certain Microsoft will cave on this one. It has already given the music industry the other thing the industry has been demanding from Apple: a kickback on every player sold.
“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it,” said Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group. “So it’s time to get paid for it.”
Well, Morris is just a big, clueless idiot, of course. Do you honestly want morons like him to have power over your music player?
Who knew the Chicago Sun-Times could muster such venom in a tech article?
Wired went in with an upbeat attitude, but still ended up with little positive to say:
I fired up the unit, and its gorgeous interface blinked to life. So far, so good! The Zune can do things I only wish my iPod could. It wirelessly beams media files to other Zunes, sports an FM receiver, and plays video in a landscape mode. But when I tried loading some WMV files, it happened: error message! I tried loading a Grey’s Anatomy episode I got from iTunes. No love, because it’s a protected file. I couldn’t watch my personal files or anything bought from iTunes, and the Zune Marketplace doesn’t sell videos yet, so what exactly am I supposed to watch? No good WMVs? WTF!? This pretty baby has a lot going for it (like decent earphones not sold separately), but I’ll keep searching for The One — Zune and I just aren’t compatible.
Even the normally techno-lusting This Week in Tech podcast couldn’t find anything good to say about it, going so far as to say the Zune will herald the end of digital rights management, by showing just how ineffective and dumb a “solution” it is.
Meanwhile, two years on, me and my “stolen music repository” (a 20 GB iPod stuffed with songs purchased from the iTunes store) are chugging along just fine.
