Arranged Delirium

I’m continually infuriated with the large media companies and their efforts to control my consumption. If I’ve bought a DVD, I think I should be able to watch it - on any device. I also think I should be able to put it on my computer and watch it in my living room. My thanks to the studios that get this, is truncated by my furry at the more numerous conglomerates which want me to buy multiple copies of the same thing. This effort to protect content really only hurts the honest consumer - the folks stealing content will just continue to do that. It’‘s not an ease-of-use issue (or lack thereof) that inhibits piracy.

Anyway, I think it should be easy to take your DVD’s and put them on your mac. But it seems a bit complicated and if you do some reading through a Google search on this, you can be led down a number of paths that make the process more difficult than it needs to be. Here’s how you do it:

1) Download RipIt and go ahead and pay the Little App Factory for it. You’ll never regret it. If you are pressed for cash, RipIt will run you $25. But you can get all their software as a bundle for $60, and you might be surprised at how much you use it.

2) Download VLC - an open source, cross platform, media player. You can get it here.

3) Start RipIt and put a disc in your machine. Click Rip, and save the files somewhere you’ll remember to look. Then point VLC to the files, and save them to the appropriate format (I’ve been using AppleTV2, but depending on your needs you might want something else.

I see my DVD collection going the way of my CD collection…

Thank you Facebook, for removing the last useful feature (for me at least). Today, FB removed it’s feature for posting RSS feeds via Notes, which was a convenient way for me to post once to my blog and have it posted to FB:

I’m saddened in some sense, because it really does remove that last reason for sticking with Facebook for me. But at the same time, it makes it easier to leave FB forever now. With the absence of the functionality combined with the never-ending privacy concerns, it’s just not worth it. BTW, there’s a recent article at ReadWriteWeb that does a good job of articulating Why Facebook’s Seamless Sharing is Wrong. And, am I really the only one that finds the streaming update feature creepy? It seems excruciatingly easy for that content to be taken out of context (since, in essence, it has none).

Anyway, I’m done with Facebook. I hope you’ll consider joining me on Google+. It’s quiet over there, but perhaps it’ll pick up as others become more active. At least it provides a way to share limited information in ways that I want to. I’ll admit Google+ is still going through its growing pains, but I don’t feel that I need to be constantly on guard to protect the information. I’ll leave a pointer page up on Facebook over the break, but won’t be reading or posting anymore.

A couple of unrelated notes that I’m stuffing together into this one post:

1) I’ve been amazed this term by how few of my students know Jeff Bezos. Here’s a Wired article for the uninitiated. Of course, like most tech leaders, you’ll find both lovers and haters; but if you actually do a little research, you’ll be able to develop an informed opinion…

B) We’ll be talking about CMS software soon, and I was struck by a recent quote from Matt Mullenweg, referring to users of enterprise software: ‘How come the [content management system] that my company spent $4 million for is crappier than the thing I use for my blog, that I pay $12 a year for?’ Good question. You can read more here.

Education doesn’t need technology. It’s not a popular position, but not thinking about the topic leaves us open to a rather ignorant acceptance of the Modern ideology that progress is necessary and all technology is “good.” In any event, it’s interesting to see what’s going on in California where many tech leaders chose to send their children to decidedly non-tech schools. Why might that be? Here’s a recent article that describes the phenomenon, but it’s nothing new - tech leaders have been doing this for years. True, it’s anecdotal evidence, but isn’t it possible that they know something because of their experiences in the field?

My writing on Facebook and Google+ sparked some commentary regarding online privacy. Usually when the topic comes up, people tend to have either strong opinions or no opinion at all. My hope is that more people will come to think about it because it is an issue of some complexity that is getting decided for us, and I’m not sure that’s what we want. In fact, we all need to care a bit about the Internet if we want to see it continue to be a tool for democratization and not something controlled by specific interests.

There’s a particularly good article in the Chronicle that lays out the argument for why we should all care about privacy - even if you have nothing to hide. It deserves a thoughtful read.

Then, if you want to think more about the separate issue I mentioned of who controls the internet you may find this article from I, Cringely to be a good jumping off point for a number of ideas…