So, there were the “equivalent of 421 CD burners,” right, meaning actually only 156 burners. Well, the AP obviously misunderstood the phrase “equivalent of.”
From an AP article, via CNN:
Last week, Secret Service agents in New York arrested three men and seized 35,000 illegally copied music discs, 10,000 movies on DVD and 421 compact disc burners that are used to make the counterfeit products.
Article: http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Music/12/17/music.piracy.ap/index.html
That statement there certainly looks like it’s supposed to be taken as fact. Apparently, it seems the RIAA spin was successful.
Quote from The Register:
Yesterday [the RIAA] issued a press release announcing a piracy bust in New York which unearthed 421 CD-R burners.
Only there weren’t 421 burners, but “the equivalent of 421 burners.”
In fact, there were just 156. How did the RIAA account for this discrepancy?
“There were only 156 actual burners, but some run at very high speeds: some as high as 40x. This is well above the average speed,” was the official line yesterday.
Article: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/28574.html
Press Release: http://www.riaa.org/News_Story.cfm?id=592
Given this, I don’t see how we can believe that they lose “$4.2 billion to piracy worldwide” every year (http://www.riaa.org/Protect-Campaign-3.cfm.)
Granted, what these people were doing was wrong and they should have been stopped, but there was no reason to exaggerate the numbers. I’m still not convinced P2P filesharing, even of copyrighted material, is wrong, and I certainly don’t think making a copy of a CD for a friend is in any way immoral.
I saw Star Trek: Nemesis Friday night, in a theater in Woodland Hills. The theater was very nice, beautiful screen, stadium seating, and a food court downstairs. It was pretty much empty, though. Granted, it was a late showing (10:30PM), but I was expecting at least a mostly full theater. Instead, it was about half empty. This doesn’t bode well for anyone hoping they make another ST:TNG film. I have no doubt there will be more Star Trek films, though. Also, the impression I got was that all of Wil’s scenes were cut, but it turns out it was just scenes he had lines in. He was still in a few scenes at the beginning of the movie, but didn’t say anything. As for the movie itself, anyone who said it was the worst of the series must not have seen Insurrection, or The Final Frontier, or the first movie, either. It just wasn’t as bad as those movies. I’m not recommending everyone go rush out and see it, but I enjoyed it, and feel my money was well spent.
Treo update: UPS tried to deliver it to me Friday afternoon, but of course, I was at work. So they tried to drop it off with the apartment manager, who was there but rejected it. She finally got sick of accepting packages for other people, and said “it’s not my job.” If that’s not part of an apartment manager’s job, what does she do, when there are no apartments available? It can’t just be collect the rent…
So I called the UPS 800 number and gave them my infonotice number to see if there was a possibilty I could still pick it up that day. This was already after 6, the closing time for the UPS location near me. I wasn’t hopeful. I was told by the operator that she would send an “urgent pickup request” to the location, and they would call me back within an hour.
About an hour and ten minutes later, I finally got the phone call. They checked to see if that truck was already back at the location, and it was. They pulled the package for me and let me drive out there to pick it up! As much as I complain about UPS not letting me sign a waiver so they’ll just leave stuff at my apartment, they have redeemed themselves. For now.
I thought I just wanted the color Treo for the backlit keyboard. I was wrong. Color is so cool! I love it. And the backlit keyboard kicks ass too. My old Treo (and some other stuff) is now on eBay.
Last night, I wrote another little app for the Treo: RingerFix.
That is all for now, it’s time for me to get to the company holiday party.
A few days ago my third Treo broke! It’s not just me, lots of people have them fall apart, but it’s just such a great device that I’m willing to deal with constantly getting replacements from Handspring. I don’t want to think about what I’ll do when the warranty runs out.
So I called customer support and told them what happened: the power/hotsync connector came lose and no longer charges/hotsyncs reliably, the same problem I had with my first one. The CSR tells me he can’t issue a replacement because I’ve already had two. He has to contact a different department, which is closed for the day (this is around 8pm PST.) I would get a call before 1pm the next day.
That call never came. Big shock there. I called back again that night and was told a replacement had been issued and shipped. They just forgot to tell me about it. Today, I get the replacement and as a wonderful surprise, it’s brand new, not refurbished! Pretty damn cool. The refurbished replacements I had gotten were just the Treo, none of the accessories. This one came with everything included.
No shipping label came with it, though, to send the old one back, so I get to call them again tomorrow. Maybe they don’t even want me to send it back. More likely, since it was a new one and not a refurb, the return box shipped from elsewhere. Either way, I’ve been very happy with Handspring’s customer support and replacement policy.
Topping all of this off, I decided I’m sick of not being able to see the Treo keyboard at night. The Treo 180, which is what I have, has a grayscale screen, and the keyboard isn’t backlit. The Treo 270 has a color screen and a backlit keyboard. The 270 I got on eBay should arrive tomorrow. Then I swap the SIM card out of my 180, and have a nice new one to sell on eBay. I haven’t really actually used the new one I got. I opened it up, and installed the GPRS patch on it, because that will possibly get a little more on eBay, but that’s all I’ve done. I’m just going to keep using my old one, even though it’s a pain in the ass to charge, until I get the 270. This is probably going to get me an extra hundred dollars back selling the new one instead of the used one, plus I get to keep one set of all the accessories. I’m very pleased.
Oh, and I bowled a 131 (ugh), 176, and 182 last night. Not a terrible start to the season.
Zodos is the name of the local bowling alley here in Santa Barbara. It’s actually in Goleta, and they seem to think they’re a separate city over there, but as far as I’m concerned it’s in Santa Barbara. They’ve been remodeling since the middle of August, and were supposed to reopen October 1st. Well, just over two months late, the bowling alley is finally open again, and I start in league again tomorrow night!
I can’t wait.
Apparently, in IE 5.5 all the text on this website is underlined. I’m working on it, but it’s hard since I don’t actually have that version of IE on any machine.
Just get Mozilla instead.
Update 10:11 PM PT: Fixed already. 🙂
I spent the weekend geeking out instead of getting out… but that’s fine with me because something good came out of it, at least for me. I wrote a hack for my Treo that makes typing a whole lot easier. KeyCapsHack makes typing on the Treo’s little keyboard a whole lot easier. I am such a dork.
The Mets somehow managed to sign Tom Glavine, beating out the Braves and the Phillies. Hopefully, next year will turn out a whole lot better than this year. Seriously, what are the chances of Alomar, Burnitz, Piazza and Vaughn all underperforming again. Unfortunately, Edgardo Alfonzo won’t be back next year as the Mets didn’t offer him arbitration, so he can’t sign with them until at least May 1st. Stupid rule, if you ask me.
Looks like I’m getting a little better at keeping this up to date. Hopefully that will continue.
Thanks to MovableType saving all my templates in a database not located in my public_html directory, the fact that I deleted my whole web directory without a backup only took about an hour to restore.
There are still some things not quite how they were, but it’s a relief more damage didn’t happen.
Update: I’d also like to thank my web browsers’ caches at work and at home, and the all powerful Google Cache.
My building in red, parking lot in blue. Our other building in green. Approximate location of my office in yellow.
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