Category Archives: Grumbles

annoyances… to me, anyway

Copyfight, Grumbles

It’s about ‘fair use’, Mr. Minister

2 Comments

The other morning The Portable Consultant caught the second part of a two part interview (RealMedia ram) with Canada’s Industry Minister Jim Prentice on CBC’s (very) early morning business show, The Business Network.

(It’s sad that this business show is relegated to the ridiculously early time slot of 5:45 AM in Canada’s centre of business, Toronto. As well, it’s ridiculous that the content of this show is not available via RSS as a podcast/netcast that could be accessed at a reasonable hour given that there are now dozens of other shows available in that format! …but I digress.)

It was telling that the whole second half of the minister’s time was on the issue of copyright legislation. Secondly, it was somewhat odd that he chose the example of a software program rather than anything related to the real issue of digital rights management versus fair use in the area of consumer entertainment media such as music CDs or movie DVDs.

Did you catch that? He said Canada needs “cutting edge” copyright legislation and gave computer software as an example, not DRM. Now I could just assume he’s been burned by Michael Geist’s ongoing Facebook campaign against the Conservative government’s proposed legislation. Or I could sarcastically suggest he hasn’t been listening very well to the lobbyists who have been pounding at him to align Canada’s legislation with the United State’s Digital Copyright Millennium Act (DMCA) rather than taking a more reasoned approach such as jurisdictions such as the European Community…
…or… or… I could make the paranoid suggestion that someone has been talking to the Minister about how Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) is threatening software companies who follow the proprietary software model… and he’s become a bit confused about the two issues.

So, which is it?

  • Avoidance of the issues? – expected of politicians.
  • Confusion of digital media versus software programs? – expected of politicians renowned for their lack of technical understanding.
  • A whiff of anti-open source lobbying going on in the wings? – ok, so that’s a paranoid thought… but… but… entirely plausible.

Since the Minister gave fully half of his interview time to this issue it would be very interesting to know, but unfortunately none of them reflects very well on the Minister’s approach, his knowledge, or the drivers behind his legislative agenda.

The host of Business Network, David Gray, did not delve into the Minister’s position at all… in fact, he only served as a platform for the Minister’s bland statements. He let the Minister off far too lightly, even for a business reporter. Hopefully, other CBC reporters will take up the slack. In any case, Canadians can inform themselves at Michaels Geist’s excellent blog post: Ten Questions for Industry Minister Jim Prentice.

Happy New Year!
-pmh

Grumbles, Multimedia, podcasting

Lamy-Rousseau and Chris Pirillo

library science, past and present
Many, many, moons ago The Portable Consultant was involved in the classification of audio-visual materials for a university library. I recall that the classification scheme in favour at the time was a modified Lamy-Rousseau which attempted to bring uniformity to a library’s A/V collections.

One of the issues I had with the system that was implemented was that it attempted to separate audio cassettes from photographic slides – they were stored in different physical locations due to their different size & shape (cassettes did not fit well into Kodak Carrousel tray boxes).

Another issue seemed to be that there was no satisfactory way to classify a slide/tape presentation or a 16mm. film that had been transferred to video… and what of a copy of the same content in a different format? Should they have the same library code and be shelved together?

I don’t have the background in library science to know whether these issues were specific to that one library’s implementation or whether they have been addressed since then, but a little library science would help in the brave new world of audio & video podcasting.

an iPod is not an iPod…
I would suggest there are two broad classes of iPod (or other portable media device): those that play video and those that do not. I still enjoy my 4th Gen. iPod with it’s 20MB disk. When I do go to video it may be on another platform, but for now my use of an iPod is strictly for audio. (I watch video online in iTunes or on the source website).

More importantly, my choice of audio or video has to do with when and where I choose to listen or watch the show. I will never watch a video podcast while driving my car, but that’s where I have been enjoying most audio podcasts.

My point, and I know you’ve been wondering if I have one, is that podcasters – audio or video – need to realize the difference between these media at the consumption level as well as the similarities and differences at the technical level. For example, the renowned technical trend tracker Chris Pirillo has recently begun using his original audio podcast feed at the URL

“http://www.thechrispirilloshow.com/subscriptions/mp3.xml”

for his new video podcasts. Note that the URL itself implies audio by referring to the “mp3” format. Technically, an enclosure is an enclosure and RSS doesn’t care if it’s an audio or video file.

That’s a good thing, but it’s up to humans to bring order to the podosphere!

the proper “shelving” of different media…
In order to separate my mp3 podcast downloads from my video I choose to use the Juice “podcast receiver” for audio while subscribing to video podcasts (which I do not load onto my iPod) in iTunes.

Chris’ feed was one of the first I subscribed to in the early days. His shows became less frequent, at least on his original feed, and I rather missed his “Bickersons” like conversations with his lady, Ponzi. I’m glad to see him back in a new format, but I would have preferred to hear an audio announcement of a new URL for the video podcasts.

Should Chris decide to release the audio portion of his video podcasts as an mp3 I would be happy to download it to my iPod via Juice. Video, however – like those A/V slide trays of long ago – does not fit well well in the audio “container” on my virtual media “shelves.”

This is not the only issue that brave new media have to deal with: don’t get me started on podcasters’ erratic use of mp3 ID3 tag metadata! That is probably more of a long-term problem than the overloading of my audio iPod with Chris’ video files.

Cheers,
-pmh

Grumbles, Reviews

PowerToGo finally powers up!

My PowerToGo Update (Cont’d.)
By this morning The Portable Consultant had received a response to his complaint to Lexar with regards to the failed update crashing his Lexar Lightning PowerToGo apps on a stick (see previous post).

The tech support response was amusing.

It suggested that I backup my data and re-install. In technical circles this is known as the Microsoft Solution for Everything, or MSE.

It was particularly humorous in the light of the fact that the only way to backup and restore the Lightning is with the Lexar software which I never installed because I felt it should have been free with the device. (I have since changed my mind about this).
Ok, so having a technical bent I understand these things and chose to ignore the standard advice and try to re-install the update again. Nothing to lose, right? After all, perhaps someone -unbeknownst to technical support- had fixed the update.

Sure enough, the update ran fine (although it looked different this time) and Power-to-Go powered up at last.

Yes, I have now purchased the Backup utility.

InstallAnything disappears
That’s not all, however!

I had purchased the Lexar InstallAnything utility. When the new PowerToGo utility started up I noticed InstallAnything was gone. In fact, I can no longer find it on the Lexar software site.

In its place is something called Argo. No one bothers to tell the users, but it appears that Argo has replaced InstallAnything.
Before I found that out I sent Technical Support an email asking where InstallAnything went. I’ll be interested to hear their response to that one.

Hi Ho!
-pmh