Apropos of Microsoft’s WTF?! deal to pay a privately levied tax to Universal on every Zune sold here’s what UMG’s chairman/CEO/arsehole in chief Doug Morris had to say:

“These devices are just repositories for stolen music, and they all know it, so it’s time to get paid for it.”

That really makes me regret all the legally purchased Universal music on mine. Am I unusually perverse that now I do want to steal from them? After all it won’t make them think any worse of me than they already do. Surely it can’t be too much longer before there’s critical mass of people who are sick of lining the pockets of people who treat them like criminals?

Link via BoingBoing.

2006/11/15 Update: Josh Smith links to several lists of Universal artists so you know who to avoid in future.

This is superb. According to the Telegraph the Dutch town of Drachten have removed all but three sets of traffic lights forcing road users to negotiate priority for themselves. Hans Monderman, the traffic planner behind the project said:

“We want small accidents, in order to prevent serious ones in which people get hurt. It works well because it is dangerous, which is exactly what we want. But it shifts the emphasis away from the Government taking the risk, to the driver being responsible for his or her own risk. We only want traffic lights where they are useful and I haven’t found anywhere where they are useful yet.”

Isn’t that a fantastic idea? People taking responsibility for their own safety. It seems far too pragmatic and parsimonious a solution to catch on here.

But journalists should really equip themselves with at least a basic grasp of statistics:

The project is the brainchild of Mr Monderman, and the town has seen some remarkable results. There used to be a road death every three years but there have been none since the traffic light removal started seven years ago.

I wonder who was in charge of scheduling that regular-as-clockwork one road death every three years? Is it possible that the person who was due to be the most recent road death just forgot to turn up or something? Maybe they didn’t get the letter?

The thing that would really bring this story alive would be before and after time lapse videos of the town centre traffic. If we could see the results there’d be no need to use dodgy statistics to justify them.

Update: I’ve found before and after pictures (on this page). Unfortunately they seem to indicate that all they’ve done is put in a roundabout…

Update: Here’s the Shared Space Project site.

Robert Scoble says:

The Vista team, under Jim Allchin, suprised me. They shipped it on time. With a lot better quality than I was expecting.

On time? Not according to this MS blogger:

Vista. The term stirs the imagination to conceive of beautiful possibilities just around the corner. And “just around the corner” is what Windows Vista has been, and has remained, for the past two years. In this time, Vista has suffered a series of high-profile delays, including most recently the announcement that it would be delayed until 2007. The largest software project in mankind’s history now threatens to also be the longest.

And what about all the features that got lost along the way? C’mon Robert - you can’t possibly spin the timeliness of Vista. It may yet prove to be the best thing since Windows 1.0 but it’s never going to be famous for having been on time.

The Inquirer has news of a new Linux based phone, the OpenMoko. It looks pretty good and, apart from a couple of device drivers the software is completely open.

What’s really surprising about the story is that at the time of writing a Google search for OpenMoko returns no results. Nada. Have the INQ got the name right? If so how the hell have FIC kept it so quiet? And why?

Still, it looks interesting and the $350 price makes Trolltech’s tag of $695 for what appears to be a similar device look a bit sick. Evidently Linux phones have to be green. Who knew?

I really don’t understand this. Microsoft are saying that Zune will not be compatible with Plays for Sure encoded content bought through the MSN music store. The story’s been floating around for a week but I assumed that once MS realised how bad it made them look they’d claim it was all just a silly misunderstanding and fix it.

It’s hard to tell from the BBC story which media might work with which player or what the possible reason for the incompatibility might be. Not that the specifics really matter; the real problem is that proprietary DRM means you don’t really have a clue what you’re buying and how its capabilities might change after you’ve bought it. DRM turns devices that are technically capable of playing just about any digital audio content into little walled gardens of artificial rules and constraints - and those walls can be moved with every software update.

The rational alternative is to download the music illegally, send a few quid directly to the artist and ask them to distribute as much of that back to their record company as they see fit. No DRM, more money for the artist and record companies getting paid what they’re worth rather than what they can extort. Unfortunately that’s illegal - so I can’t possibly recommend it.

Today Microsoft has:

• suggested it might withdraw from China over human rights concerns
• improved Vista’s EULA from the user’s perspective and
• done a Linux friendly deal with Novell

I can’t wait to find out what they’re going to do tomorrow. I reckon there’s an ad in which Richard Stallman reveals himself as a Zune lover waiting in the wings.