Loud ramblings of a Software Artisan

Saturday 19 February 2005

Fighting DRM in court... Episode I

Apple and Sony are being sued in France by UFC-Que Choisir, the major French consumer association, for breaking the law against bundle sales. The lack of interroperability beetween their DRM system and requirment to use their device is the reason.

Looks like Microsoft DRM system could benefit as they sell it to anyone who wants it, but nobody use it :-)

Source: Boing Boing, DLFP (fr).

Saturday 12 February 2005

Napster fight iPod

Forbes has an article about Napster where Napster explain they want to beat up the iPod with a "rent-a-song" service, that is not compatible with iPod, because "It's exactly what consumers want to do.". Off course this DRM system is made by Microsoft who still do not appreciate the success of the iPod...

I myself still don't understand this. I have CDs that I bought in 1987 that I still listen to. Why would I want to buy some music that expire? That does not mean I would buy music for iTMS as well as it would expire differently, with the availability of the compatible players.

Source: Slashdot

Tuesday 8 February 2005

Google do understand

Look at Google Maps. They really understand what web software can be. I'm stunned. This is better than mappoint, obviously.

Google seems to have the best Javascript programmers.

Thursday 3 February 2005

The iPod phenomena when it is not corporate

Hide your iPod, here comes Bill or when Microsoft employees prefers iPod to players that support the company's DRM and audio format WMA, as wrote Wired, shows that iPod is a real phenomena that starts to annoy Microsoft. Even more when Microsoft employees seems to have benefit on WMA music, and that they don't use it because they have an iPod.

No matter what happen there, I see more and more people with iPod in the subway and in the streets.

Thanks to Luis Villa for the link.