Skip to main content

Ipod users are thieves?: Ballmer

Ted notes Ballmer's latest tirade. It's this kind of absolutely stupid comment that makes Microsoft a target.

I have to say - since Bill left the CEO role, I don't think Steve has done a great job of "rallying" the troops - crazy CEO antics aren't enough - they need to be backed up by serious empathy and I don't think he gets it. (which is why you've got bloggers like Scoble and others doing it)

1. DRM needs to get better if it's going to be useful. I still haven't listened to Let It Be...Naked since finding out it was protected against burning onto my computer where I can access it from my Audiotron. Saying they've had it for years is just plain silly. A friend had burned his entire music collection onto his computer using the default options, then his computer died but he wasn't able to replay it because the "copy-protect" option was the default. It's about making it EASIER to enjoy, but harder to steal. Solve that problem for everyone and even then, don't go around brushing broad strokes on other users.

2. I'm sure his 12 year old has PLENTY of music copied from, say, other sources. By the music industry's DRM standards, if I buy a CD and my daughter listens to it, she's stolen it. Hey - I wonder what happens if I start to whistle a tune I heard somewhere - I'm sure one day, someone will call me a thief for that as well.

Don't call people thieves or people will just flip the bozo bit on you, Steve (if they haven't already)

3. The fact is, that no one has made an iPod killer yet. Lots of competition out there but by aiming at the biggest player in one industry when MS is complaining about being targeted in other industries does EVERYONE a disservice.

Ballmer needs to grow up and come up with SOLUTIONS, not just idiotic comments.

Ted's Radio Weblog

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Merry Christmas

Whether you celebrate now, have already celebrated your past holiday, are planning to, or not, I hope you find yourself surrounded by family and those you love during this holiday season and are able to remember fondly those who are not with you. We often find ourselves buried in work, or too distracted by other problems, to share and remember a few moments with those closest to us. So many of us are separated by huge distances, we often find it easier to focus on those who are out of arm's reach yet so easy to connect with online, instead of those who are right beside us. So do yourself a favour, put down the keyboard (stylus, mouse, etc) and spend that time. I know I will. Merry Christmas. Powered by ScribeFire .
4 comments
Read more

Who Wants To Be Logical? I Do! I Don't! (with Claude)

In my book, Towards Consciousness, I explore PET , a theory that attempts to explain consciousness and possibly how it might apply to AI. As part of the conversations with AI series, I've included this conversation with Claude.AI in which we were talking about something very different and yet the conversation redirected itself back to PET. For the record, there is no such thing as "Colfsity". A It's interesting to me that people want to proclaim their distinction from being rigid and unlike machines, yet they also complain that the "best" people keep a rigid schedule, regular routines and logic understanding of issues. That's a perceptive observation about a real tension in how people think about themselves and what they value. There does seem to be this paradox where rigidity is simultaneously rejected as "robotic" or inhuman, yet praised when it appears as discipline, consistency, or logical thinking. I think part of what's happening is t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Comparing education systems based on their technology

(yes, I originally found this blog because of Scoble's note on it BUT it was kind of interesting all the same) Read Alex Mallet's summary of his first week at MIT. Malletrivia: Summary of the first complete week Wow - "There's an incredible amount of material packed into each lecture" - and it sounds interesting... Compared to some of the lecture content I have seen at our universities, you really must get what you pay for. While it sounds like Alex is writing frantically down notes in his classes, at least he's finding something worth writing about in them. Case in point: one of our local universities ( Carleton ) puts some lecture classes on the TV (like many universities do) - but you would think they purposely find the most boring professors to teach them. They put up PowerPoint slides with 30 points on them, speak in monotone voice (yes, imagine the typical caricature of the university lecture from years ago), tell the students to print their...
8 comments
Read more