Back into the fire

I liked that video I noted a few days ago so much I decided I wanted to buy it.  So I bravely went back into the nightmare that is iTunes.  I had a very difficult time getting it to work (it would abort after being invoked), but after Googling some solutions (the Apple site provides too many hits, and is not very useful), I got it up and running.  I downloaded the video, but it had no audio.  I checked other videos I had on disk, and some had audio and some didn't, so it seemed like it might be something peculiar to the format.

Throwing caution to the wind, I emailed the secret email address (mswin@apple.com) that is buried so deeply in the iTunes support site.  They responded quite quickly with a useful suggestion.  But when that didn't work and I emailed back, I once again got the electronic third finger, "The iTunes Store team answers questions via email about billing, customer accounts, downloading items, and the selections available on the iTunes Store," followed by the usual unhelpful links.

So tomorrow I will try the AppleCare 800 number again.  Last time the fellow was very sympathetic, if unable to help.  We shall what happens this time.

And I recognize that I'm creating a large part of this problem myself: there is competition out there for song/video downloads and I'm not taking the time to look at folks that may actually support their product.

Selling and stats

Tom Peters has kindly provided thoughts on selling in a downloadable PDF. Highly recommended. And here’s some fascinating stats on the music industry as it struggles to adapt to new distribution channels and methods.

Integrity

The government of British Columbia recently sold some old surplus computer tapes, unfortunately without erasing them first.  So a lot of private data on citizens was still on the tapes.  Read here one of the reports on this.  This is quite the screw-up, but I also was amazed that the press apparently chose to examine the tapes in detail, and publish confidential information, although they didn’t reveal names.  I responded to the media chain with the following letter:

It is disturbing that the Provincial Government does not have in place safeguards to ensure that personal information is kept confidential.  I hope this breach will be fixed immediately so it cannot occur again, and the individuals responsible are held accountable.

And there appears to be a further violation: a lack of respect and integrity shown by CanWest, and possibly the tape buyer.  Someone has gone through this private information in detail.  Worse, reporters are choosing to write about (and editors choosing to print) confidential information protected under the Personal Information and Privacy Act.  CanWest publications have said, “Due to the sensitive nature of the information, [this paper] will not identify any people named in the files on the tapes,” as if this is a statement of integrity.  I think not.

Some questions arise: Have copies been made of this information?  How many people are looking at it?  Did the buyer get paid by CanWest for data he didn’t own?  (He bought the media from the government, not the data.)

I understand that the buyer wanted to ensure the government was held accountable; hopefully that was the motivation for sending the information to a third party.  However this could have been done by contacting the police, a lawyer or the privacy commissioner, without examining the information in detail.

I believe the hidden story here is the potentially illegal use of private information shown by the press, and I hope Mr. Loukidelis’s office will be thoroughly investigating this as well.

Marketing fun

This creative video pokes fun at what would happen if Microsoft designed the iPod packaging. I’m an MS fan in many ways, but this is creative criticism at its best.

Mitak’Oyas’In

I was saddened to see a comedian on the Aboriginal People’s Television Network ridicule white people wanting to take part in First Nation ceremonies, labelling them as “wannabees” who wished they had a native heritage.

I was saddened for two reasons.

1. Racial slurs are seen as ok by some, when directed at white people.  To me this reflects an unfortunate discrimination.

2. I was saddened that it bothered me.  Perhaps it was the sincerity of the sarcasm that I sensed from the speaker, but I’d prefer that I could take it as humour and take or leave it on that merit.

I was blessed to be taught once upon a time by a First Nations elder that he believed the Creator intended that white and red and black and yellow and all cultures take the best from each other.  I believe that pride in ancestory, when it assumes or implies a superiority over others, is divisive and unconstructive.  DNA testing has shown we are all something like 99.95% identical, and perhaps all our ancestors are in common as little as 20-40,000 years ago. 

We are all related.

Media-free

There are times in my life when I’ve gone for years at a time without picking up a newspaper or watching TV news.  I’ve found it refreshing, and kind of fun to catch up a bit when I connect again.  The last few years I’ve been watching the news, reading the paper, etc., and can only conclude that it’s morbid fascination that brings me back.  This latest phase of news-watching started after 9/11 and I feel no wiser for most of what I’ve read or heard.  I do often feel angry at what I hear, which reflects my frustration at feeling challenged in my belief that as a society we are improving and progressing.  And subscribing to specific newsfeeds, be they technical or focused on other areas of interest, can bring me the info I really want.  Watching historical documentaries, given the passage of enough time, is cool.  That time seems to allow for perspective and something possibly closer to reality.

IMHO, what we see and read is heavily filtered, not by some great conspiracy, but by the natural biases and limited perspective that any reporter will have in real-time reporting.  When I’ve personally experienced politics or business or native community or whatever, the conclusions I reached were vastly different than those of the media, and what I’d read or seen on TV was of little relevance.  So I think media watching is of more value as entertainment, or as fodder for conversation than of true understanding.

It seems like I’m telling myself it’s time to turn it off again.  Time to chill.