Greed never gets you anywhere good (except rich, which I wouldn’t want for nothing). Sony put Copy-protection on a bunch of their albums a while back. Guess what happened? Someone found out it contained a security hole known as a rootkit. It was exploited, and after a huge series of blunders on the part of Sony, what did they end up with? Several class-action lawsuits, and a whole lot of angry customers (and bands). Tell me that isn’t justice.

The RIAA is so greedy, it makes me sick. With the huge success of online music stores, specifically iTunes, they keep wanting to make more money off of it. First, they just flat out asked for more money. Steve Jobs said ‘Go suck your toes, idiots’. And apparently, they did, because their latest scheme is even raunchier. They want variable rate pricing. If a song sells more, it costs more. If it doesn’t sell so much, it costs less. Not only is this greedy, it’s completely backwards. If you go to a music store to buy something that is rare, imported, or a niche artist, it will usually cost more money. The more popular bands usually have cheaper prices, due to discounts and such. Not that I would be a fan of reversing the scheme either. It’s just dumb, either way. There is no way to guage what will sell better, until it actually sells. So then prices go up, and if you buy it right away, you get it cheap, but if you wait a couple days, you get ripped off. Will the price drop again, in proportion to declining sales? The price would be going up and down constantly. It all just goes to show you that the music industry values money more than anything else (even good plain logic).

I was watching some late night show last night, and they had an actor from some show I can’t remember. He seemed like a pretty cool guy, went off about the whole T.O. situation. Then the topic of conversation turned to the television show LOST. He said that he hadn’t gotten into the show until some friend burned him a copy of season one, and now he loves the show. Now, there’s one way that could be ok. Maybe he bought the DVD later. But he never said that. Jimmy Kimmel never even questioned him about it. The show just continued on as if he had never admitted to illegal activity. I wouldn’t even care too much, except there have been multiple cases where parents and grandparents have been harrassed and brought to court for media piracy that their children and grandchildren have committed. CHILDREN! They go digging through confidential records, hunting for children to nail for piracy, but an actor admits to it on national television, and no one cares! I guess the ideals of Robin Hood no longer exist. The rich can steal from the rich, but if the poor do it, they better run for cover.

Don’t ever sign up for Real Rhapsody…ever. I just got off the phone with them, and I can honestly say I was never so glad to be rid of something in my entire life. First of all, they lure you in with a 14-day free trial. Which sounds cool, but what does it let you do? First you must download a separate player. It doesn’t integrate into realplayer (made by the same people), which is stupid. Then, all you’re ever allowed to do, is listen to music, on your computer. You can’t take it with you in the car, you can’t pop it into your stellar home theatre system. You can’t even put it in a discman. No, it stays on the computer…unless you pay them more money. Now this would seem normal, since it’s only a free trial. Nope, that’s the way it works, even when you’re paying $9.99 a month. So if you actually want to burn a CD of the music, you must pay them for each song you burn. So why would I switch from iTunes? I wouldn’t. End of story? No, I’ve only just begun. (more…)

Not sure if that’s actually a word. Well, it is, but the spelling might be off. Before I bore you with semantics, let me get to the point. Gaming consoles are too expensive. The new PlayStation3 will retail for $400 (it costs $500 to make, but that’s another story). At this rate, consoles will be five times the price of a desktop computer within five years. Whatever happened to the good old days when a console was $150 brand new? Has inflation really gone up that much?
Back when I first got my computer, my argument for not getting a console was that I could play games on the computer, and do everything else too, so the price evened out. With console prices going up, and computer prices dropping ever lower, my argument just keeps looking better and better. I’m sure someone has a good excuse for owning both a console and a computer, but for someone on a budget like me, it just doesn’t make a lot of sense.