I must go see this!

Love the Elvis remix in the background too.

DRM

AppleInsider | Apples new MacBooks have built-in copy protection measures.

According to AppleInsider, my new MacBook has a sophisticated Digital Rights Management system built in. The system, I’ll save you the actual name or the acronym, is applied to the neato new video interface on the MacBook preventing DRM content from being played to non-compliant systems. So say if I purchased or rented a movie from the iTunes Store, I couldn’t play said content from my MacBook to a LCD projector.

Now, I have been buying music from the store, but I have avoided buying or renting movies from the store. I can’t imagine why I would be apprehensive about buying DRM media. Anyway, this doesn’t affect me and what I do on a regular basis. However, this got me thinking… What if Apple decided to do this to audio? I mean, what if we woke up one day, and we couldn’t play music through the audio port on our Macs? Wouldn’t that be something? It isn’t that big a stretch, Apple already restricts their DRM to their iPod devices. What if it gets restricted to Apple headphones? Alright, those examples are a little extreme, what if they turned off audio CD burning of iTMS purchases? The record industry might LOVE that!

DRM sucks and I know that I’m not telling most of you anything new. The fact is, the entertainment industry will continue to push for draconian measures such as this despite poor consumer experiences. If I had video content and couldn’t play it out to my big screen TV, I might be very disappointed in Apple right now.

Why do we need DRM? Well, piracy of course. Because people share music with others illegally, the industry reacted by protected it’s content. Do we really need Digital Rights Management? According to some EMI executives, taking DRM off of their product, didn’t change the amount of piracy at all. So, music free of DRM didn’t increase piracy? Huh, k. Do we really need DRM?

Apple as proven that people will pay for this content if you bring it to them. 99¢ is the new free, right? Let me pay for it, but let me put it where I want to put it for my enjoyment. K? `Nuff said!

Photo from the Livingston Press & Argus

Student singers earn spots on statewide choir | livingstondaily.com | Livingston Daily.

Hey, for the second year in a row… All of our singers that went out for the State Honors Choir made the it! Yeah!

This is my new MacBook fresh out of the box!

Well, after a few funding delays… I GOTS MA NEW MACBOOK! This, of course, was badly needed in our house hold because all four of us have a full on addiction to the Interwebtubes. The 12″ PowerBook does work well still after being maybe 4 years old, maybe older. Cait seems to have claimed it as her own, she does have the desk space.

The new MacBook rocks. These are tight little machines, I can’t believe the fit and finish of this laptop. It is beautiful and stylish and… yeah, I likes it. I was a little worried about the chiclet keyboard. I have used friends MacBooks with the same keyboard and I thought I would be able to adjust and I seem to be adapting so far… Although, this post is the most typing I have done on it so far.

The buttonless glass trackpad is interesting. This is a neat little innovation, take some time to train myself to remember to use all the gestures. The zoom in is especially nice as I do use the zoom during software demos for the kids. Clicking seems to be giving me some trouble though. I have had to click on stuff two or three times to get it to go. I don’t know if the click sensitivity is not what it should be or if the user interface is lagging a little… It has gotten me slightly frustrated a couple of times in the first 72 hours of ownership. Ask me in a week how I like the buttonless glass trackpad.

AppleInsider | Apple makes October 14th MacBook event official.

Apple has invited media to an event next Tuesday to unveil the new laptops. Apple isn’t even being coy about the topic this time around. Rumor has it that the new portables will start at $899! Which, you know, is nice in times like this.

Don’t know yet if we can run right out and pick one up just as soon as they are available or if we will need to place a little more priority on other things. However, we will get one soon. We need to get one soon…

Shyamalan Unveils Airbender Secrets. Knight sounds like he is hard at work on the live action version of Avatar: The Last Airbender. I can’t wait!

Avatar is a great cartoon that we just finished the last episodes on DVD (via Netflix) about a month ago. The story is great and there are themes and moral tales and eastern philoshphy. Did I mention the action and martial arts? Anyway, an all around cool show that I could watch with my children and everyone enjoys it.

There is often a spiritual aspect the Shyamalan’s films, so the content of the Airbender might be a good fit… Again, cann’t wait!