Nik's Blog

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DRM: 0, Music Industry: 0, iTunes: 101

Apparently market forces are making DRM passé. By locking down iTunes store purchases, Apple’s managed to maintain a stranglehold on its customers and a dominant position to negotiate contracts with music providers. Nice job, Music Industry!

> “The record companies don’t like dealing with Apple, because Apple is in a position where it can dictate the economic terms and dictate the business models,” says [Bill Rosenblatt, DRM specialist]. “What’s going to draw people away from iTunes? One answer is to get rid of DRM.”

And, furthermore, Mr. Rosenblatt says DRM has no effect whatsoever on reducing piracy. As if that wasn’t obvious from the start.

You gotta love it when the free market works the way it’s supposed to.

From The Guardian

@inik

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Griping about OS X Lion? Here's two nifty tools that replace a variety of poorly supported third party tools: Command-line and Automator access to video and audio conversion. Super easy to use, and very flexible and supports any format that Quicktime can encode/decode. (So Perian is a must-install if you want to handle DivX/3viX, etc.)

Yes, ffmpeg, Handbrake and...
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Fix Google Reader's horrible new interface with this user script! Now it fits nicely on my MacBook's small screen. >
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What makes this ad awesome is not the true-to-life irony, because the idea is hardly innovative, but rather the excellent execution. Reminds me a bit of that excellent Nutri-Grain spec commercial. Quick delivery, good actors, hit all the high notes. Love it. >