I remember a couple months back when Apple first said it’d like to eliminate DRM in music; that they would be willing to take the first step and embrace DRM free music sales if the labels allowed it. Lots of people said they were bluffing, that it was only being said because the labels would never give in.
As of today iTunes is now selling DRM free music. All of the music managed by EMI is being sold DRM free, and at a higher bitrate. It isn’t all the music out there, but it’s a start, and we need to show that it’s a step in the right direction.
I know lots of people who have said they don’t want to pay for music because it’s laced with DRM or because it’s low quality. They’d be more than happy to pay for music if they didn’t have to worry about those. Guess what? They listened and what you want is here. Music with no DRM at basically CD quality (256 AAC format) is now available for purchase.
Time to put your money where your mouth is. Buying this DRM free music is the only way to show the RIAA that this is what we want and encourage the other labels to follow suit. I sure as hell intend to check and see if a track is DRM free on iTunes before I try to get it elsewhere from now on.
No, this isn’t a tribute to a Dave Matthews song I used to like in high school. As much as I wish this entry was driven by an overwhelming desire to be nostalgic and reminisce about my long-forgotten younger years it’s not.
Instead I’ll be ranting about how nothing good ever came out of Texas, and how one of said undesirable things thought it’d be a great idea to run a red light.
From what I can gather from his driving apparently red means go down there. Clearly we Yanks are backwards in our ways. He was in the left-hand turning lane which did not have the green seeing as opposing traffic (among this traffic was me) had the green. This didn’t faze him though — he was determined to get where he was going with the utmost efficiency, even if that meant disregarding our admittedly backwards and confusing traffic lights. Fortunately we both weren’t going too fast, maybe 10mph each, but we were going fast enough to damage my car pretty well — 4.4k in damage. It didn’t look it, but there was some structural damage to the unibody, things had shifted a bit to the left.
He was driving a rental car from Budget. Uncharacteristically Budget’s insurance (typically slow from what I’ve been told) has already accepted responsibility for everything, so I don’t have to pay the deductible and all out of pocket. Quite a refreshing change from the normal horror stories I hear about insurance claims. Progressive has made the whole process as painless as possible. I’m impressed, and much like Amy, can now say I actually like my insurance company.
It’s going to take two weeks total to fix my car — being ready on the 21st of May. Quick, I suppose, for the amount of work they have to do, but still far too long to have to spend in a Chrysler Sebring. Especially with gas prices so high. Ugh.
