And while it’s nice…it’s also been a huge pain in the ass.

The movie  Babel came through our Netflix queue a few months ago. I thought it was an excellent, wonderfully moody movie. The next evening I had the urge to listen to more of the soundtrack. Well, as usual, eMusic didn’t have it. I don’t think Amazon had opened the flood gates yet to their MP3s, and iTunes only had the crappy DRMed version. But I had the itch and iTunes makes it so easy to purchase it, so against my better judgement, I paid for the DRM version.

And that was fine.

Until I wanted to also listen to the songs on my new iPod.

For some reason, every other track or so from this double album won’t play on my iPod. It just gets ‘stuck’. Crap.

Do a bit of googling, and find an Apple Tech Doc.

Step one: De-authorize and then re-authorize your machine. Ok, that was easy. Nope. Didn’t fix the problem.

Step two: Reset your  iPod to it’s original factory settings. Hmm…this is a bit of a pain. First, download the 60mb update file. Install it, wipe the iPod clean, then resynch it all. An hour later and…nope. Didn’t fix the problem.

Step three: Rebuild your iTunes library. Sigh. That’ll take an hour. And now I have to re-synch it to my iPod. There goes another half hour. And, yea, you guessed it…didn’t fix the problem.

“In Gen. 11:9, the name of Babel is etymologized by association with the Hebrew verb balal, ‘to confuse or confound’”. The myth is that Babel was the city that united humanity, with everyone speaking a single language. God didn’t like this for whatever reason and decided to scatter humanity across the globe and confused their languages so that we’d forever have difficulties communicating as one.

The movie plays off of this quite poetically, in my opinion. iTunes plays off of this with  stunning irony as well. I have to smile at clever irony. But must really restrain my urge to SMASH COMPUTER SMASH IPOD SMASH DRM!

“Vista continuously spends CPU time monitoring itself, trying to figure out if you’re doing something that it thinks you shouldn’t.” – Bruce Schneier

“…the content protection technology just uses more resources while providing no benefits at all to the user…” – Karel Donk

And I thought the Mac vs PC: Security ad was a joke….not reality.

Me – I’m not planning to upgrade. CrossOver is working pretty well for the infrequency that I need something on Windows.

The guys over at Joyeur have a pretty good explanation of why this enhanced security – is in fact a major security risk.

So, you can see why I’m not impressed by the pissing match between Target and Disney.

“Our space, signing, promotional programs and the hundreds of millions of consumers in our stores annually should not be undervalued.” – Target President Gregg Steinhafel

Mr. Steinhafel – I completely agree, Disney is selling movies on iTunes for less than they’re charging you because – the digital versions are in-fact less valuable; lower quality, not pre-backed-up, hyper-touchy DRM, can’t wrap it up and stuff it in a Christmas stocking.

The other article comes from China. Gino Yu, chairman of Hong Kong Digital Entertainment Association, talks about how he feels several technologies now feared by media companies should be seen not as enemies to the industry, but potential money making devices. And it’s nice to see a media giant spokesman take an opposing view to the RIAA:

Yu also doubted the feasibility of the catch-and-sue procedure currently used to bust online piracy, given the difficulty of identifying online pirates and the fast growth of technology innovation.

Granted, DRM isn’t dissappearing tomorrow. Apple just sold its billionth DRMed song on iTunes. But it’s nice to finally see some opposing viewpoints coming from high-up media execs.