Month: April 2003

The Apple Music Store opened today. You can buy and download songs or albums directly from Apple into iTunes. They’re marketing it as a good alternative to stealing them from (Napster-of-the-month): reliable, higher quality, legal. They’ve got a lot of music there, even though they’re missing The Dead Kennedys, Ani Difranco, Red Elvises, Weird Al Yankovic, and George Carlin (so far as I’ve discovered!).

Of course I’ve already got a suggestion – well, several, but this one I wanted to share with y’all.

 

When I insert or burn a physical CD, I’d like iTunes to register that I “own” that CD. I should be able to then buy the electronic version of the CD from the Music Store at a (significant) discount, say about $2.00. I own about 300 CDs, some of which are scratched. I’d like to avoid reburning them all or accidentally rebuying them (or losing them in a house fire, etc.).

I also think this would be a good way to define my rights to this music which are now somewhat unclear (if I buy a CD and it melts, do I have to buy it again, or can I get a new copy? etc.). And there are a lot of CDs I own, that I wouldn’t mind discarding/destroying if I knew I had rights to a digital copy. If you had this program, I would have purchased several dozen album e-licences today, and would probably eventually convert my entire library (or rather, the disks that the Music Store offers, of course!)

Issues: this would make it possible to pirate CDs by physically sharing the CD (or a burned exact copy). It would make “used” CDs (currently questionably legal) more valuable. I would solve this by encouraging users to either mark or destroy physical CDs that they’d e-purchased.

This would truly revolutionize my music listening – as iTunes already has!

(Another interesting thing for html junkies: when you put in a tag like this:

it takes you to the customer request screen of iTunes (requires iTunes 4.0. And a Mac, of course!). Hmph – wonder what else I can make it do? I’m just starting to learn about external program href tags – seems to me like an opportunity for trouble.)

Now, how do I filter the store for Explicit lyrics only?

Well, this is nice. Hidden back on page A17 of today’s LA Times (registration may be required to read the linked story – why the hell do they have to do that?) was this gem. Thanks to W, we’re back in the business of making (these particular) weapons of mass destruction.

After ‘Decline,’ U.S. Again Capable of Making Nuclear Arms

Energy Department is restarting production of plutonium parts for its stockpile of bombs.

The United States has regained the capability to make nuclear weapons for the first time in 14 years and has restarted production of plutonium parts for bombs, the Energy Department said Tuesday.

The announcement marks an important symbolic and operational milestone in rebuilding the nation’s nuclear weapons complex, which began a long retrenchment in the late 1980s as the Cold War ended and the toll of environmental damage from bomb production became known.

…

Under a Bush administration plan, the Energy Department is beginning limited production of plutonium parts for the stockpile of nuclear weapons and will begin laying plans for a new factory that could produce components for hundreds of weapons each year.

…

“To the average U.S. citizen, it would be accurate to say we have restarted the production of nuclear weapons.” – Jon Wolfsthal, deputy director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Energy Department weapons expert.

This year, in CA, “Tax Freedom Day”, the hypothetical day on which you’ve earned enough to pay next year’s tax burden, doesn’t happen until April 30 – on average, 30% of our income goes to pay taxes.

Apparently, this comes earlier for folks like Dick Cheney and his Haliburton buddies, who are rich enough to keep their income in offshore accounts and in some cases avoid paying taxes altogether.

I think it’s reasonable that we should all pay some taxes – helps you feel like you’ve got some investment in the society in which you’re living, and not that it owes you services and infrastructure for nothing. But I also, more and more, believe in weighted progressive taxation – but at higher levels, as well as higher incomes, than we have now.

People making $1-$50K could pay, say, 5% – even 5% each to US and State (seems like my money should be better spent closer to home, notwithstanding current mind-boggling idiocy in state government). $50K-$250K (the ones who end up with most of the tax burden currently, around 30%), more like 10%-15%. $250K-$1M – 30%. $1M-$10M – maybe 35%. $10M and up – up to 50%. Personally I’d say anything over $100M should be taxed at some excruciatingly high rate, like 75%. (When The Beatles wrote Taxman, the highest tax rate in the UK was 95% – “…that’s one for you, ninteen for me”. But I’m betting they were making somewhere below $10M/year even at their apex.) No individual needs that much income – if they’re making it, they’re probably stealing it from millions of lower-paid workers and/or customers anyway.

And the auditing efforts of the IRS should be directed proportinally to the high end of the scale.

Here’s an even wilder idea – people in the top 1% of incomes should be required to post their tax returns for public inspection. Let’s find out what they’re really paying. While we’re at it let’s find out what their political contributions were. You make over $100M? You deserve to have to account for it, to the rest of us poor slobs.

On the other hand, there are some ideas that I like the sound of – reducing taxes on dividends sounds reasonable to me, especially for middle and lower incomes (tho I don’t think I’ve ever made more than $100 or so on dividends). What I’d really like to see is adjustment of capital gains so that long-long term gains (stocks you’ve held for years) are adjusted for inflation. Eliminating the AMT because it’s too confusing and more likely to penalize upper-middle than upper. But again, I’d limit the benefits of this based on income level. I imagine that this would call for a restructuring of our entire tax system.

And of course this doesn’t count all the other taxes we have to pay – social security, sales tax, vehicle registration, property taxes, etc.

Maybe this makes me a socialist. Apparently in Euro high-end taxes are more onerous – and high-end salaries are less stratospheric.

Finally, I’d like to see a lot clearer reporting on who taxes are collected from, and how they’re spent. That’s certainly more than we can ever hope for.

Wow. I think I’ll actually wait till I get home to print and assemble the Indian Rhinoceros.

Clearing a PC of viruses and spyware is like bathing a long-haired Golden Retriever that’s been rolling in burrs. And tar. And cat poop.

Running a PC firewall is like trying to keep the same dog from doing it again.

Kinda makes you want to own a lizard. (Or at least, a penguin!)

Just found a bunch of old stories that I thought were somewhere on my web page; somehow they ended up in a “Morgue” folder (where I put stuff before or instead of deleting it). Enjoy at your own risk.

Got the expression “Morgue” from a guy I used to work for who had been in the newspaper business, and it just sorta stuck with me. So much more evocative than “Archive”.

Heard this morning that U.S. Marines (oh, and some Iraqis) had toppled a statue of Saddam in the public square in Bagdad.

Did you hear that they also found a massive cache of chemical and biological weapons, and missles? Yeah, I must have missed that one, too, in all this excitement. Well, at least they’re sure they “got” Saddam, right? Hmph. Well, there’s Osama (despite what the government/media want you to believe, they’re not the same person…) – at least he won’t be back to attack us again; wait, we didn’t ever find him either? No matter – we can sleep soundly knowing that people in that part of the world love us again. Not to mention the rest of the world.

It’s enough to make we wish we had statues in our public squares. Let’s ask Gray Davis to put up a statue of himself and see if it isn’t desecrated before the concrete sets. Reminds me of that time in Salt Lake City – I was “ridin’ the dog” (Greyhound) because my car died – and while waiting for the bus heard the story of the local bum who makes it a point to urinate on the statue of Brigham Young, every day. Unfortunately, my bus was leaving and I didn’t have time to join him.

Just to let y’all know I don’t spend ALL my time complaining. I’m posting this message from my iBook, connected via a wire I bought from eBay (the wire Sprint doesn’t want you to know about) to my Sprint PCS phone. So now I can be on the grid anywhere I can get phone service. Not that this will stop me from wardriving for available 802.11 connections!

The connection is supposed to be 115,200 and it seems to be fairly fast. The plan I’m on gives me “unlimited” internet usage – the quotes are because apparently if you abuse this they’ll take it away.

So I guess I’ll wait till I’m at work to surf p0rn.

Oh, and OSX 10.2 – needs no (extra, non-standard, plug-and-pray) software drivers. It just recognized the phone when I plugged it in. This is how it should work. We don’t need no stinkin’ drivers.

And another one. The guy sponsoring this bill, Senator Florez, drives a 12mpg GMC Denali. Even my Pinz does better than that.

Please vote NO on SB 708.

A few old cars owned by poor people and hobbyists are NOT the problem.

Over the years, I’ve owned and restored half a dozen old Land Rovers and other utility vehicles. Rather than paying $30,000 for a new SUV, I have chosen to save old vehicles from the scrapyard, clean up and maintain them and drive them occasionally, adhering to the community standards of “Tread Lightly” and “Leave No Trace”.

I currently own a 1972 Steyr-Puch Pinzgauer. It is insured, it is in great mechanical condition, and I drive it on weekend camping trips. I pick up trash and repair trails and leave natural areas in better condition than I find them. People who own old vehicles and take care of them are MORE likely to care for the environment than conspicuous consumers.

New smog equipment for old cars is unreasonably expensive and generally causes worse performance. If I could purchase smog equipment, catalytic converters, new engines, or even propane, biofuel, or electric conversion systems for these vehicles at a reasonable cost, this might be an acceptable compromise. Sending these few old vehicles to the scrapyards and forcing me to purchase a new vehicle is NOT going to protect the environment.

Not enough public transportation, and decentralized communities forcing massive commuting is the problem.

This bill blatantly supports new vehicle manufacturers and auto dealerships while penalizing hobbyists and the poor.

Please, consider sponsoring more bicycle commuting paths, more subsidized public transportation, more support of earth-friendly communities, instead of this legislation.