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February 16, 2007
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The pricing inquiries arose in part because Mel Karmazin, CEO of Sirius Satellite Radio, whose proposed merger with XM Satellite Radio is being scrutinized by House members, seemed to indicate at a House hearing last week that prices would never increase, even on the combined service.
Before the CRB's new rules, which are subject to appeal, most Webcasters calculated their requisite royalty rates based on a percentage of their revenue. The CRB's decision has imperiled Webcasters by widening the gap between what Internet radio and satellite radio services must pay, RealNetworks general counsel Robert Kimball told politicians. If the decision is not overturned, "one can easily imagine Web radio looking more and more homogenized," Kimball said.
In other music news, a new version of Apple's iTunes software addresses a number of compatibility issues with Microsoft's Windows Vista, but a few problems remain. The updated version supports the upcoming Apple TV product and includes an improved album-sorting feature, but still does not fully support Windows Vista. The new download, iTunes 7.1, is available on Apple's Web site.
When Vista arrived at the end of January, Apple told Windows users that iTunes was not yet ready for Vista because of compatibility issues. In the most dire scenario outlined by Apple, users could corrupt their iPod simply by plugging it into a Vista PC running iTunes. Problems were also reported with playing back content purchased from the iTunes Store on Vista PCs, Apple said in early February.
On the tube
If you ask some TV retailers and name-brand manufacturers, smaller LCD manufacturers are driving down prices and profits for virtually all sellers and makers of flat-panel TVs.
The astonishing success of Vizio seemed to catch the industry by surprise last year, and was a boon for consumers who were in the market for flat-panel TVs but couldn't afford to spend a few thousand dollars on a premium LCD from Sony or plasma from Panasonic. But that discounting had a downside: frustration among electronics retailers and big-time grumbling from well-known TV makers like Sony.
The rapid drop in flat-panel TV prices was the topic du jour at the U.S. Flat Panel Display Conference. Most executives at the three-day conference agreed with Steven Colky, vice president of merchandising for retailer Ken Crane's, when he said, "There are absolutely too many brands on the shelf."
Consumers don't seem to mind. And they don't seem to mind some of the new options that are open to them.
AT&T Homezone subscribers are now able to program their digital video recorders from their cell phones. AT&T now allows customers of its Homezone product, a service that offers video-on-demand and other content from the Internet on TVs, to use their mobile handsets to remotely view listings and schedule or delete recordings from their DVR (digital video recorder) set-top boxes. All that is needed is a WAP 2.0-enabled handset that lets subscribers access the AT&T-Yahoo portal.
Meanwhile, TiVo subscribers now have direct access to Amazon.com's Unbox movie and TV download service on their digital video recorders. The partnership was originally unveiled last month, and a number of TiVo users have been beta testing the service since then. The Unbox's interface is now available on all of TiVo's broadband-equipped Series 2 and Series 3 boxes. Subscribers who want to use the service are instructed to log on to the Unbox-TiVo Web site from their computers in order to sync their Amazon and TiVo accounts. After that, they can purchase and download content directly from their TiVo boxes and watch it on their televisions.
Also of note
Internet phone provider Vonage has been ordered to pay $58 million to Verizon Communications for infringing on three of the company's patents...Federal antitrust officials have expressed growing concern that Microsoft is falling behind on deadlines to revise technical documentation to licensees...Microsoft is entering the IP telephony market with the public beta release of Office Communications Server 2007 and Office Communicator 2007.
For all we know, it may not be a bug, when Vista corrupts an iPod plugged into it.
Perhaps deep down in a kernel-level process, this is what's happening, translated into plain English:
"Piracy paraphernalia detected on USB port 0. Engage sanitization routines.. starting with the directory sectors... done."
Or perhaps alternatively, there's the "can't stand 1-bit of competition" angle:
"Music device detected on USB port 0, scanning manufacturer ID.. Apple. Player is not a Zune.. true. Player is from our arch-rival.. true. Engage sanitization routines.. starting with the directory sectors.. done."
</satire>
/ Yes, I woke up too early today - without coffee. =;o)
You see, you can say it the other way around and it makes as much sense as your ignorant vision of the problem, because software should be developed in order to work with an OS, and not the OS that should be developed to work specifically with a device called iPod - or even more sense. :P
Seven years ago, the Y2K issue was blown well out of proportion, no thanks to the news media's habit of sensationalizing everything--sometimes to the point of being utterly ridiculous. Nothing much happened at midnight December 31, 1999 as far as the world's computers were concerned; only a handful of systems were actually affected by the so-called "millennium bug", with most systems taking the change in stride. Now, in 2007, we are hearing about something that is being called "the next Y2K". I don't think the early DST change will cause nearly as much trouble as the news media told us Y2K would cause, if indeed the change wreaks much havoc at all. For PC clocks in home systems, a simple workaround for the new DST would be to simply disable the automatic DST update by removing the check mark from the box marked "automatically adjust clock for daylight savings time change" and changing the time manually. Schedulers for anti-virus and other automatically-triggered programs in PCs can be adjusted manually as well for the change. Businesses that depend on calendars may be affected somewhat by the change, but there is always the old technique of mentally adding one hour to the time on a a clock which still shows EST--or have we as a nation become so dependent on computers to do our bidding for us that we have become too lazy even to do that?
- For those who are running older PCs, a simple fix
- by davejyd March 11, 2007 9:34 AM PDT
- If you are running older PCs with older versions of Windows (yes, they are still out there!), here is the most simple fix ever - no patched, downloads, or updates needed! Just go to the "set date/time" screen (double-click on the clock) and turn off (uncheck) "Automatically Adjust Clock For Daylight Savings Time Changes"Then set your clock manually. Yes, you will have to do it again in the fall, but most of us are running around our houses resetting clocks anyway - what's one more? This will even work on XP or Vista machines - again, no downloads required. For those who were able to download and install Windows Daylight Savings Time patch - Great! it Worked!! But for those who didn't or couldnt, or the old-timers out there - here you go! And if the Govt. goes back to the old way after this "experiment", just turn the auto-change back on! Simple!
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- Wished it had worked
- by JEfromCanada March 11, 2007 11:42 AM PDT
- I advised all my clients running older copies of Windows operating systems about the TZEDIT.EXE patch that updated the TimeZone tables within the computers. The TZEDIT.EXE program worked perfectly. Just one hitch... despite the tables being updated, I've had several reports that the clock itself did not change over today (mine included).
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(5 Comments)I'm going to be dealing with lots of disgruntled customers, and will be spending significant time trying to figure out what went wrong.