Charles on… anything that comes along

Ah! So Sony is going to support MP3s on its music players.

Which some people have taken to imply that it’s all of a sudden going to begin battling hand-to-hand with the iPod, and leave Steve Jobs with the image of a boot stamping on those damn white players forever.

Not so fast, people. First of all, the article notes that it’s only initially going to be for flash-based players, not things like the daft Network Walkman. Secondly, how soon is this going to happen?

“We’re discussing plans to bring flash players to the United States that support MP3 files, but we have nothing to announce at this time,” said Gretchen Griswold, a representative of Sony Electronics. Riiiight. Apparently Sony isn’t in the top five sellers of digital music players. At this rate, it never will be. A few thwacks with the cluestick still seem to be in order to mend the disconnect between the people making management decisions, and the would-be customers who see what’s on offer and quickly become not-customers.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Two data points on the iPod's continuing popularity in the UK (19 October 2004; score: 44.75%)
• A slightly different Apple tale: of Fiona, and her unreleased third album (11 April 2005; score: 37.44%)
• Gillian McKeith, white courtesy phone please (30 September 2004; score: 33.81%)

Interesting to note that on last night’s chart on XFM’s Music Response, Muse was top with ‘Hurricanes and Butterflies’, which has been gradually working its way up that chart for a few days. (The link shows last week’s result; but there’s a nightly vote leading up to Friday.)

I like Muse. (There, I’ve said it.) Because at a time when we seem to have loads of bands who do moany songs that have nothing at all to distinguish them - Maroon 5, Embrace, Keane, Snow Patrol, the absolutely terrible Air, Razorlight - Muse at least know the advantage of a good tune that sticks in the head. There’s no great lyrical fireworks going on in ‘H&B’, but it’s a tune you can’t help humming or singing along with. And their other songs, on all their albums, do the same.

As for how uninspiring all these other bands are - just compare any of their songs to Radiohead’s second single, Creep: (Real Player video of them on TOTP). Recall how the morose first verse is suddenly jerked to life by the sound of Jonny Greenwood’s guitar starting up like an outboard motor. There’s nothing like that in any of these new-morose bands’ songs. (Yes, Creep was the second single: the first was Pop Is Dead (link to Real Player video; it’s very surreal and will have Thom Yorke spinning in his.. never mind). Even that single had something special, a guitar riff coming out of the chorus which was in 9/8 - or something - in a 4/4 setting, giving a very strange, interesting, memorable effect.

All I can remember about Embrace’s single Gravity is that it makes me want to listen to something else, and that every time I listen to it is three minutes I’m not going to get back.

The old grey whistle test? Used on doormen in Tin Pan Alley. If the old codgers tending the doors whistled your tune, you knew you had a good ‘un.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Late results: two-year-old vs slot-loading Wii drive; adult vs three-headed screw (12 August 2007; score: 34.6%)
• Spelling - the new frontier for ITN (25 October 2006; score: 34.09%)
• Why A levels really are getting easier (21 August 2004; score: 32.64%)

(The following is the text of an email sent to MCI’s abuse department… more in hope than expectation.

Hi, abuse people at MCI.com.

My blog keeps details of people who try to post crap.
This is one of dozens of attempts - very annoying to me - using one of your customers whose computer is clearly compromised. (There are many similar attempted posts from other networks. Therefore this one is being used as part of a bot network.)

Please trace this machine (should be obvious from the IP and time of posting) and GET IT FIXED.

Your customer is contributing to online fraud, theft, possibly IP theft and for all we know the murder of kittens by not having a secure system. As I’ve now warned you, it’s your responsibility too. I would email the infected customer but there’s no way to work out their email from their IP. The email here is of course a spoof.

Your urgent response most appreciated. And this and your response will be blogged - we all live in the public eye, after all.

—begin forwarded text—

>X-VirusChecked: Checked
>Subject: [Charles on… anything that comes along] Please approve: “”A full house of dysfunctionality”: why we all hate automated answering systems”
>Date: Thu, 23 Sep 2004 08:32:42 +0100
>
>A new comment on the post #102 “”A full house of dysfunctionality”: why we all hate automated answering systems” is waiting for your approval
Author : カジノ米国オンラインカジノ (IP: 208.252.68.66 , 208.252.68.66)

[I hope this isn’t something very rude in Katakana; if it is, please tell me and I’ll remove it - Charles]

>E-mail : bartlett_john@bloginc.com [faked - Charles]
>URL : http://www. asdfhost. com/ members/ megafungames/ casino_us_online_casino.htm [Spaces put in to break the URL, but just so you can see where this junk points to - Charles]
>Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=208.252.68.66
>Comment:
>Hello, I just wanted to say you have a very informative site which really made me think, thanks very much! Have a nice Day!!
– end forwarded text –

One of 27 spam posts, all with roughly the same content, posted from a number of different machines in the US and Europe in the course of 3 minutes 6 seconds at 8.33am today.
Bot nets are depressing for a number of reasons. First, they’re so widespread, which means getting rid of them will be hard. Second, the ones I’m seeing are in Europe and the US; it’s not Far Eastern machines being compromised. Third, it’s so damn unnecessary, if only Bill Gates and the bunch at Microsoft had grown up with the same inbred suspicion of users as the people who wrote Unix.

Maybe it’s like convenience food; this is convenience computing. And now we get the SuperSizeMe result: a sort of computing obesity where we can’t lose the weight of the old rubbish, which stops us running after the people nicking our possessions. Something like that.

These posts might be related (the database thinks..):
• Is Plaxo on OSX any good? Or, indeed, any use? (6 April 2006; score: 52.69%)
• BT customers scammed by Trojan diallers still have to pay up.. while BT pays the scammers (7 October 2004; score: 47.89%)
• Apple's Address Book: its search was already broken. And now mine has *completely* broken (9 May 2006; score: 45.76%)