Legal music downloads a reality for me now.

Today I purchased and legally downloaded a track from Apple's new iTunes Music Store service. I had a LOT of trouble getting to that point, due to the immense amount of traffic the poor service is seeing. And, after managing to make the purchase, I haven't been able to make a connection to buy more music. I'm gonna try again soon.

But, all in all, the purchase went very smoothly and the quality of the AAC-encoded tune (Missy Elliot's Get Ur Freak On) is awesome. I'm going to start encoding everything I buy in AAC as it is the superior codec.

The $0.99 price per track is great. Don't be fooled, though, not all albums are $10. It's up to the labels to set the pricing, as I found out with Audioslave's album - it's a per-track price only. So, you want all 14 tracks? Great, pony up $14. But, for a lot of the albums on the service, you'll pay $10.

Apple, so far, has done a fine job of creating this service. I'm sure it'll become more reliable as the initial hype dies down. I was sad to see that Metallica (har har) and Linkin Park were nowhere to be found on the service. And, doing a search for "Voices Carry" by 'Til Tuesday turned up no results. That's why they've got the request link :-)

Today's project, completed.

Ah, it always feels good to complete a project. Today's project - swapping out the old, noisy case fan and power supply from Nicole's "Wind Tunnel" PowerMac, and replacing it with a newer, quieter set from Apple. It went pretty well, with the exception of constantly dropping small screws in the case, and then having to fish them out of tight spaces. I need to magnetize my screwdriver.

It's much quieter now, and doesn't have the whine that it used to.

Killer App

Interesting roundup about Apple's rumored music service and hoaxified Vivendi purchase over on Washington Post today. I'm of the opinion that this whole music download service could be the killer app that Apple has needed for years to pull in more consumers to the Mac platform. If Apple can get all of the Big Five labels signed on, and offer downloads at a reasonable price, with excellent iTunes and iPod integration, then this is going to rock the PC using world quite hard.

It's going to be interesting to see where this goes on 28 April. I've got plenty of free space on my hard drive just waiting for some (finally) legal music downloads.

Intolerance

There are some times when I just want to pound intolerant little punks into the ground for making fun of my size/weight/girth/whatever.

But then I realize - tolerance isn't a value that's practiced by teenagers, and I really shouldn't think about beating them up.

I've never been in a fight, and I really don't plan on getting myself into one anytime soon. Sometimes it just feels good to vent.

15" PowerBook to not be updated?

So, I'm in the market for a new PowerBook, but not the current generation 15" PowerBook. I want to wait until Apple updates the 15" Titanium 'Book to Aluminum, like the newer 12" and 17" models. A buddy of mine in the UK heard from a friend of his who heard from the local Apple store that Apple was not going to be updating the 15" PowerBooks this year. I find that really hard to believe, and I'm going to defer to this information about forthcoming AlBooks. I hope it's coming soon. It's time to get rid of my iMac and 3-yr old PowerBook. Anybody wanna buy one of them? $1100 OBO for the iMac (800MHz G4/512MB/60GB/SuperDrive), $1000 OBO for the PowerBook (500MHz G4/384MB/20GB/DVD). BTW, the PowerBook's been upgraded with a G4/500 processor.

Who Knew?

Britney's really really smart! Like, wow!

Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy!

Interesting article over at The New York Times regarding Iraqis' exuberance at their liberation. I'm watching Real Time with Bill Maher right now, and he was the one who tipped me off to the Iraqi, that when asked about what the Americans would bring to Iraq, responded: "Democracy. Whiskey. And Sexy."



That, folks, is why we liberate people. Halle-freakin-lujah.