26 Sep 2007
I haven’t been this confused over a cool Internet service… probably ever. AmazonMP3 is simultaneously one of the most exciting things to happen in online music ever, and a source of great personal confusion.
I want to use it (and will) because it’s freaking awesome. The bitrate thing doesn’t massively concern me… generally speaking, I can’t tell the difference (though I will continue to rip my CDs as lossless, mostly in case I lose them). What concerns me is the potential undermining of my CD-store perusing ways as a result! I haven’t had to consider this until now because mainstream music simply hasn’t been available in a relatively open (don’t give me crap about MP3 patents, anyone can read them), DRM-free format.
It ships with artwork but that so doesn’t count.
Oh, so apparently this post was a waste of time. Of course, it’s only licensed for US sales. I don’t know why that didn’t occur to me, but it didn’t. Now I’m grumpy. And irrationally craving popcorn.
Well, if you’re in the US and using iTunes… stop. This is pretty cool for you guys, meanwhile I’ll keep buying my grey-market imported CDs (which is completely legal in Australia and morally fine). All that’s standing between me and Amazon’s MP3 music is a US shipping address for invoices, presumably, so I totally could just make one up. Not breaking any law that I’m under there. But whatever, it’s all too messy.
Yeah, that’s right, record companies screwed it up again.
We’ll get there, one day…
24 Sep 2007
Please do not do this.
Especially do not do this and say that ‘it works fine for us’ to visiting developers!
I’m currently installing a wonderful free XPSP2 image with IE6 from the lovely folks at Microsoft’s IEBlog that actually works when testing webpages for legacy browsers. Please do this instead!
20 Sep 2007
I’ve had a fairly painful day experimenting with the One True Layout Equal Height Column technique in conjunction with a design that requires lots of rounded corners in all the wrong places (no, design will not yield to CSS!) and put out a call for help on the WSG mailing list for the first time in a while.
That place is magic. Gunlaug Sørtun came back in under six hours with another technique I hadn’t even heard of that looks pretty good, the companion columns method. He also has a page dedicated to CSS table- styled columns, but it looks like it could involve a bit too much browser hacking (yes, IE) in order to be worthwhile.
More experimentation doubtless to come.
19 Sep 2007
Irony is winding up with the same brand you were whinging about. But it was the only one in stock and I wanted on that day, and it had Nero bundled. So there we go. $55 for a DVD burner isn’t all bad, especially when it’s relatively quiet (compared to my Pioneer 108, anyway), and crazily speedy (I confess I’ve only tested burning on CDs yet, no DVDs). It’s black and remarkably unshiny, but SATA and in need of smaller cables, which can only be a good thing!
A full review of a similar model is here.
16 Sep 2007
Nero is a fantastic piece of software. It is sorely missed. RIP, bundled CD burner. (Ironically, the only burner I have that was ever ‘new’ in my possession was also the first to give up the ghost on CD burning). Bizarrely, it still works for DVDs just fine. Not a driver/OS-level thing. It’ll boot off a DVD, but not a CD. I think it’s a Sony, but that surely doesn’t mean much in this twisted world of re-/OEM-branded hardware. The thing that killed it was probably another Sony product that didn’t follow the real CD spec :P