jcm's blog

Currently listening to: Team America – World Police (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture) – America, Fuck Yeah!

I like this track enough to have spent two hours the other evening in reconfiguring/building SharpMusique, DeDRMS and various other tools to allow me to actually play the track that I had bought on my Linux workstation, before figuring they had actually rebroken their DRM in iTunes 6.blah. No, it wasn’t my machines. Finally, after I’d played spot the latest Apple annoyance, I just got pissed off with iTunes broken skippy, poppy audio functionality under CrossOver and decided to buy the album mail order instead. Well done, Apple, you’ve made your DRM – Digital anal-probing Rights Munching – so absolutely crap I’d rather just buy CDs that I can encode and actually play back somewhere…

Remind me, aren’t we in the 21st century? We were supposed to have flying cars by now and world happiness, but instead we can’t even play music we’ve paid for. I guess it’s just a shame we’re not products of the Canadian schooling system or we’d have been brainwashed by the RIAA from an early age to just accept a world without music. Just think, we live in a world where Russia will have a tough time joining the WTO because it plays host nation to an mp3 filesharing website – let’s just remember who’s really running the show. Now go pay the RIAA for those unpure thoughts and the oxygen you’ve used while you’ve read this. Oh to have a few billion dollars and infinate time to bankrupt repressive arseholes everywhere.

Jon.

The Chinese President Hu Jintao is in the United States being entertained at the Whitehouse as he continues to contemplate ways to exploit Chinese economic growth. During the welcome parade, a lone protestor (who had gotten in on a one day press pass) began shouting and was removed by the Secret Service. They charged her with disorderly conduct, but obviously decided not to press similar charges against Hu Jintao.

I loved the US media reaction to this. CNN criticised the Chinese media for “blacking out” screens when the protestor began speaking and for removing all reference to her actions. Yet, this is the same media that routinely delivers non-news, wouldn’t discuss Iraq properly for the longest time, and generally are a huge bunch of hypocrites on a level approximating Faux News.

The most amusing gaff came from the Whitehouse announcer, who announced the “National anthem of the Republic of China”. That’s Taiwan to the Chinese (who don’t like the ROC much because they decided they didn’t want to be repressed by the PRC any more) whereas the “correct” name for China is a People’s Republic. Of course, what do you expect? They’ve got overgrown kids running the Whitehouse (the Bush Administration), so it’s not surprising.

I’ve been working on a list of countries that I’d have a problem visiting. The list includes China, Turkey, and a few others that generally repress the right to free speech that their peoples don’t have in the first place. Turkey needs to join the EU like I need to join the People’s Republic.

Jon.