Technology, Innovation & Telecomm

I’ve been watching the fight between Apple the and “music industry” for a while now. Apple claims that the .99 price-point is ideal and the industry folk want more flexibility. What “more flexibility” means is subject to much speculation. It appears that it means that they want to raise the prices for most of the individual songs and so I must admit that I’m astounded.

To me, .99 is at the very top end of what I think is reasonable for a song. I download from iTunes here and there and I think that overall, it’s an ok price to pay. Truthfully, I think the price should be closer to .75 - .80 but I’m guessing that ain’t happening any time soon.

The record industry continues to whine about piracy and the price of albums and the lackluster sales they’ve been experiencing. How about this:

1. The industry has been sued at least twice in the last 20 years or so for price-fixing. They’ve lost at least one of those cases. Have you seen the price of CD’s? I don’t see the costs to the consumer going down… What other industry has been able to hold the price of something as commodotized as CD’s so artifically high for so long?

2. Millions and millions of songs have been sold through iTunes. That’s simple proof that folks in general are NOT thieves as the RIAA would have you believe. At a minimum, it shows that people have a point where they feel something is a fair price. Exceeding that causes behavior like cessation of purchases, added piracy (not good), sharing, etc.

3. What a deal for the record companies. Post a song or two or a whole album to the iTMS site and watch the money roll in. No distribution. No printing costs. No CD pressing cost. No promotional costs. Yet with all that, they feel the need to demand more.

4. Throughout the music-watching world, the general agreement is that the quality of what’s being produced is dropping steadily. Why should we pay $15-$18 for what often turns out to be one or two songs that we actually like? Funny too, the record companies are actually complaining about the ala-cart ability to sell individual songs! The gripe follows the “we can’t sell the whole album that way and so we lose money” path. Ridiculous. Unless I *really* like an artist, I don’t risk $15 on a handful of possible crap. They should be happy to sell any of a lot of that stuff… You want to sell a whole album? Make a whole album of quality material.

So, you can see that I lean toward the iTMS model. I think it works. I think it shows the value of consumer choice. I think it beats the snot out of the “subscription” model that disables your ability to listen if you stop paying your dues.

Side point: I have heard rumors here and there about iTunes taking the subscription approach. If they take that path exclusively, I will no longer be a subscriber. If I pay for it once, I want access to it always.

So, I’ll continue to watch and to keep my eye on the indie market. There’s a lot of high-quality stuff out of the mainstream that can be had in a reasonable fashion. Keep your eyes on self-produced and other independently-created materials.

Is iTunes perfect? Probably not, but it has certainly shown what can be done in an age where highly-granularized choice for a fair outlay is highly desirable.

-Does this stuff burn you?
-Do you think the iTunes model works?
-Does the record industry have a point about rasing the price of songs?
-Do you like the subscription model for music download?

Do tell!

My friend Steve has started a blog. I’ve been bugging him to do it for months, so he has the basic site running on Blogger. No serious posts yet, as he’s recovering from a serious illness and surgery, so please stop by and encourage him to get well and get posting!! (in THAT order!)

http://minutemanpress.blogspot.com/

I was young. Not terribly experienced in the world. And pretty gullible, truth told.

When I was in my 20’s, I spent a few years as a field Engineer for Rockwell International. I traveled the country diagnosing and repairing, configuring and commissioning, and generally getting natural-gas chromatography gear working. I was preparing for my first trip to California to help get a site in the desert functioning, and was being advised on various aspects of life in the sand from some co-workers. Of the advice that I received from my well-meaning colleagues, the suggestion to watch out for scorpions most struck a nerve with me. For some reason, the idea of being stung by one of those little buggers just didn’t sit well. I obsessed a bit on it and finally resolved that the chances were small and I just wasn’t going to think about it.

I arrived at the hotel without incident and when I stepped out of the car, the first thing that I noticed was that my shoes sunk into the very-soft pavement of the parking lot. It was hot…really hot. I looked around at the site on which the hotel sat and was immediately impressed by the sight of a lot of sand and very little else surrounding it…with the possible exception of tumble-weeds. No kidding, real honest-to-gosh tumbleweeds. For some reason, I thought you only saw those on re-runs of spaghetti Westerns on TV. But I digress…

Anyhow, I suppose in the back of my mind I was still obsessing about Scorpions, though I didn’t know it at that moment.

I had a late dinner due to the fact that we arrived at the hotel late, and since that took up the bulk of the evening, I decided to turn in. I wear gym shorts to bed and due to the heat (even with air-conditioning), I wasn’t wearing a shirt. Sometime in the early morning, I felt a sharp pain in my thigh…quite enough to wake me. Immediately, I thought that I had been stung by one of those objects of my fears and I swatted at the site of the pain. I felt a hard-ish object and heard a click as whatever it was hit the wall next to the bed. By that time, my heart was doing a samba and I leapt off the side of the bed opposite where I had heard the thing hit. I turned on the bedside lamp and began crawling around the bottom of the bed on my hands and knees. I’m not sure what I figured I would do if I found a Scorpion, but there I was, “Joe Commando”, tracking the sand-devil. Silly. I couldn’t immediately see anything, but there was a small upholstered chair in the corner and I decided that I must have hit somewhere near there.

As I crawled slowly toward it and around the side of the chair, I sighted my enemy:

…my pocket comb…

It seems that before I went to bed, I had transferred my comb from my pants pocket to my gym shorts. I can’t say why but I distinctly remembered doing it, after the fact. Anyhow, I suspect that as I was sleeping and rolling about in bed, the comb came out of my pocket. Thereafter, when I rolled over, it must have dug into my leg. Thus, my “scorpion comb” was what “bit” me! I was able to laugh at myself for a while before I went back to bed. I slept great the rest of the night.

What a potent combination: Youth and imagination.

My company develops various testing products, particularly aimed at the telecom and cable industries. We have a number of DSL-related products as well and resultingly, we are members of the DSL forum. It always helps to have representation in the industries in which you play, wouldn’t you agree?

So, there’s a meeting of the DSL forum in Philly this week. Myself and about 3 other colleagues are attending. If there’s anything of resounding interest, I’ll post about it. Otherwise, I’ll produce some form of wrap-up post afterword.

Stay tuned.

Up front, I’ll state that I’m an amateur radio operator (”Ham” radio if you prefer). My grandfather was one, having gotten his first license in 1933. He and so many others have a long history of lending invaluable assistance in the most trying of disasters. For example, he was once stranded in a make-shift communications center during a blizzard in the 70’s, dispatching help to the far reaches of the county. That was one of many such situations where his license was put to effective community service over the nearly-seventy years that he held it. That kind of service continues with Ham Radio operators today in the aftermath of the Katrina disaster.

While Ham radio is very much the same as it has been since its beginning, with it’s low-tech Morse Code and Single-Sideband voice modes, one thing it is *not* is irrelevant. I’ve seen numerous articles that have declared it nearly-dead, virtually-useless and no longer needed in our “Internet Age”. Tell that to the woman who wasn’t sure that her elderly aunt was even alive, who then found out through the services of the Ham Radio community that she’s well and where she’s now sheltered. Or ask the 15 people trapped on the roof of a house if Amateur Radio was useless to them when they couldn’t get through to 911. They were able to call relatives in other counties who were in turn able to contact the Red Cross…who called an Amateur operator to make contact with someone in New Orleans — who got help to them. Hardly irrelevant, wouldn’t you say?

No, Ham Radio isn’t typically high speed. It’s often not bleeding-edge. But, just how much does that matter when you find that your loved ones are ok and safe? What’s the ability to get desparately-needed services where they belong worth? How many human lives would it take to make Ham Radio “relevant”?

During this most recent catastrophy, a Motorola representative stated that “Something is better than nothing, that’s right, but ham radios are pretty close to nothing.” I wonder if he’d feel differently if he and his family were trapped on a roof… Maybe someone should ask him how much of his gear was overwhelmed by the demands of Katrina.

So, kudos to all the Hams around the world who have assisted with this and other disasters through the years!

tdw - W8LEV

BTW: My grandfather’s call sign was W8LEV and he was the only person to ever have it. He held that call from the time he was 18 years old, until he died. I am honored and fortunate to have been able to take his call sign when he passed away. It’s my intention to hold it until I pass as well. With any luck, a loved one will take it too!

I was properly chastised by my sister for not posting for the last couple of weeks. Truth told, there have been a number of factors:

1. I’ve been quite busy working on the house to get it ready for a visit from said sister and for new carpeting and some new furniture.

2. I’ve been mulling over just what direction to take this blog.

3. I’ve been watching events surrounding the Katrina disaster. Each time I feel the urge to post due to some bone-headed report I’ve just seen, I pause to let the steam die down.

4. I wonder if *anyone* (besides my family) gives 2 hoots about this blog.

Since I was on a bit of a kick to tell some stories about my youth, I was given the suggestion that maybe I should break the blog into more than one…with one focusing on tech topics while the other being more oriented toward story-telling. I just don’t know what I’ll do and so I’ll ask you, dear reader, to post your suggestions as to the direction I should take.