saturn return to sender

Marj writes,

Bush’s encouragement for us to go shopping after 9/11 brought us to the mirror, but we can’t see ourselves. Rich or poor, we are all pawns to the global economy. As egocentric as we are, we will never be as important as money. We are disposable. The economy must keep growing at the expense of rich and poor. We elect politicians who will ensure our misery.

“We will never be as important as money. We are disposable.” That pretty much captures the brand of cynicism I subscribe to. In the short term, the greed and small-mindedness of the elite stupid dominate.

But then there are occasional spots of light and I do think that over the long term, the dominating trend of life is towards … not “bigger,” per se, but more-encompassing. The ever-growing economy is a flatland version, a shadow, of the larger trend.

Even the ever-higher pile of steaming matter accumulating on the hearth of this administration—and hence this country—is bound to be eventually called for what it is by the good judgement of competent (or at least morally non-blank) people, and the seeming prescience of the framers of the US Constitution. “Shocking,” “absurd,” and “moronic” are Cheney’s flailing attempts to avoid “adult supervision,” according to the George Washington University Law Professor consulted by Olbermann in the clip linked to above. Amen to that.

Okay, now I understand video podcasts. A few friends, a few video gadgets, your home Mac (or, okayfine: PC), a little talent, a shot of creativity, bottle of silliness, and behold: Tiki Bar TV. Five minutes of 80-proof pointlessness. For free, for the fun of it, for getting hammered. I love it.

They do occasionally flash a recipe on-screen, so it’s not entirely free of content. And one of the friends happens to be a gorgeous girl. I mean, if that counts as content in your book. (In this case, she does, for me. In my book. Yowza.)

Of course I don’t even know if these people are friends. Maybe it’s not filmed in someone’s apartment but in a TV studio with a “someone’s apartment” set. Maybe it’s cleverly designed to be charming and fun, and is not, in fact, charming and fun. I bet all those bottles have colored water in the them. I’m so cynical.

Anyway, so the infrastructure here is making it easier and easier to distribute our dumb little wonderful video shows (or even our important journalistic ones) without spending a dime, without knowing someone, without selling our souls. I think that’s pretty effing cool.

ThinkSecret speculates about Apple’s Oct. 12th “One more thing” media event. And Josh of Dreamhost, who like, I guess runs the company or something and therefore has the power to destroy every scrap of every website I’ve ever built, uh … well he thinks Apple will release 802.11g wireless video streaming alongside an iTunes video store.

Sounds plausible. If Apple has been able to secure deals with the big movie companies such that you can download movies for, say, $9.99, I’ll be impressed. If nothing else I bet you can get Pixar flicks!

But there’s still the basic issue that movies are big. I can fit my whole music collection onto my 20 gig iPod, but I could only fit a handful of movies onto my laptop’s meager 40 GB drive. (And probably precisely one with the amount of space I have to spare.) Storage is cheap and getting cheaper, but most people aren’t going to want to have to buy external drives, and I can’t see Apple endorsing or enabling people to rip downloaded movies to DVD.

Or heck, maybe they will. Maybe the license will let you rip it once, a la FairPlay’s DRM scheme. But the price will have to be $20.

Or maybe it won’t be an ownership model but a rental model. Get the DRM license to expire in 24 hours and charge $4.99 to download the video. That I could see being both do-able and very lucrative. I’d do that instead of going to the video store, no question. In which case, Apple will be in direct competition with Comcast’s On Demand service (and ironically using their cables to deliver it in some cases). On Demand’s service is obnoxiously sketchy and its interface is terrible. I would love to see Apple do it right.

Maybe it’ll be both ownership and rental. Of course someone will crack the DRM scheme … but it may be obscure enough that the majority of users won’t know about it or want to bother with it.

Next up: video podcasts. Maybe that will be the answer to Al Gore’s worries. Heh, yeah right.

If nothing else, sharing personal videos over your .Mac account would be that much easier with some sort of integrated wireless video-to-your-TV device, especially since Apple just upped users’ storage. (As an aside, I rather resent .Mac … I use it just for its email address, which I’ve handed out to online services for years and so I now feel anchored to it. But I have access to a bazillion other free email addresses. Grrr.)

I’m still waiting for my Apple iChat AV-enabled phone.

An iPod nano is destroyed. It’s harder than you think.

I remember when 20 meg hard drives had footprints the size of my laptop. And cost as much.

My little G4 laptop, by the way, is approaching its second and a half birthday. I’m afraid to jinx it, but it’s done a stellar job, through drops and corrosion and god knows how many busrides and nearly 24/7 uptime. (Sleeping roughly when I do, of course.) It’s compiled applications and made websites and building designs and edited audio and photos. Not to mention the ceaseless websurfing, music playing, and DVDs. It’s showing its age in speed and capacity, of course, but what a great little machine.

I seriously need to back it up again. Soon.