Here’s another piece on the potential slippery slope of buying music through the iTunes Music Store (via Boing Boing).

I was just wondering the other day whether we could add up the version numbers of Firebird 0.7 and Thunderbird 0.3 and refer to them as a 1.0 release? They seem up to it from a quality standpoint to me.

A few weeks ago the results of a Zogby poll taken in Iraq were much discussed in the media and in the weblog world. Yesterday, James Zogby (who runs the Zogby poll), wrote an op-ed aimed to disabuse people of the false conclusions that were reached based on intentional misrepresentation of the poll’s results. One wonders why you have to go to the Arab News to read this piece, which probably should have run in the major US papers. I had read a blog entry somewhere a few weeks ago providing more context for the poll results, but Zogby’s piece indicates that the actual poll results are exactly the opposite of what the administration portrayed them to be. Does that surprise you?

Update: someone tells me that James Zogby is the brother of the guy who runs the Zogby poll. Looking at the Zogby International about page, it seems John Zogby runs the poll, and no James is listed at all.

Another update: Simply typing James Zogby into a Google search reveals that he is president of the Arab American Institute. He and John Zogby (of the Zogby Poll) are, in fact, brothers.

Amazon has launched their much anticipated feature that will enable you to search the full text of books in their catalog. This is yet another way that Amazon.com is becoming ever more useful as a basic reference, on top of being a nice place to buy stuff. What I’d really like to see is public library sites with similar functionality, but the fact that the publishing industry has acquiesced to Amazon is a nice start.

A reader sent in this comment on the quality loss (or lack thereof) when you convert iTunes AAC files into AAC files without the DRM:

In regards to your entry on the iTunes Music Store — I’ve been wanting to use the store for a while, but didn’t really want to pay for DRMed files (for reasons similar to the ones you mentioned). Just yesterday, though, I bought 14 tracks off the store, transcoded them to unprotected AAC (128kbit regular AAC files), and did some listening tests to see how much of an effect transcoding had. While I was at it, I also compared several of the tracks to CD-quality AIFF files. I did blind tests using playlists shuffled in iTunes — it was quite easy to set up. I chose tracks from a variety of genres to see if transcoding affected certain types of music more than others.

I found that with nice studio headphones on in a quiet room with the music volume set fairly high, I was almost always able to distinguish the protected AAC file from the (transcoded) unprotected AAC file. It usually took a minute or two of carefully listening and re-listening to bits of the tracks I was comparing to figure out which was the original, though, and even then I didn’t notice any significant differences — just a subtle difference in quality which gave me a “gut feeling” as to which was the original track. The difference between the CD-quality AIFF files and the AAC files was similarly subtle. The difference wasn’t enough that I’d ever notice a problem listening to transcoded AAC files with headphones.

When I did some listening tests through a pair of reasonable-quality speakers (and turned the iTunes “sound enhancer” on and up to medium) I was no longer able to tell the difference between tracks. I did several tests with a good-quality VBR MP3, a CD-quality AIFF, a iTMS Protected AAC, and a transcoded unprotected AAC, and I really couldn’t tell the difference between any of them. Mind you, I don’t have highly trained ears, and I’m not a serious audiophile, but I really only cared whether I could tell the difference, and I do definitely notice poor-quality audio.

After all this I decided to go ahead and start using the iTMS, as I can transcode all my AAC files to unprotect them and not notice a difference. Of course, the other key catch is that I have a way to conveniently transcode my AAC files — I’m using AAChoo and transcoding to 128kbit AAC using “best” quality encoding (which may require a Quicktime Pro 6 license?). I don’t know if there’s a way to do this conveniently in Windows; AAChoo uses Quicktime to do the transcoding, so it should be possible to do the same with Windows, but it may be that noone’s written a similar Windows program yet. AAChoo also doesn’t currently copy the ID3 tags from AAC files, so I’ll have to do that by hand (or figure out the tag format and write a script to do it for me).

Update: earlier I had posted that the writer had transcoded the files from DRM-encumbered AAC files to MP3 files, but that’s not correct. He transcoded them to AAC files without DRM.

All eyes are on Donald Rumsfeld’s candid memo to his subordinates that was leaked to USA Today. One of the huge problems I’ve had with this administration is that it seems to start with conclusions and then looks for facts to support them. This memo stands in opposition to that, and I think that’s a good thing. I’m no fan of Donald Rumsfeld, but he is the Secretary of Defense right now, and I’m glad to see that he’s not fooling himself with the same load of crap that we get from the public faces of the administration. The “war on terror” is not an unmitigated success, and we do need to do better. The fact that Rumsfeld shares that assessment is good news, at least from where I sit. Hopefully this leak won’t prevent him from writing similar memos in the future. In my imagination, Colin Powell is writing similar memos about how we need to repair our relationships with our friends so that they help us achieve our goals.

I installed iTunes for Windows last week but didn’t really get a chance to play with it until last night. I’d love to have a Mac, but I’m stuck with a couple of PCs, so this was my first chance to use iTunes, which Mac users have been raving about (rightfully so, it seems) for years.

It did a great job of importing my existing library of MP3s, and seems to offer everything anyone would want in a music player, except the ability to help you clean up the ID3 tags on your tracks. Windows Media Player and some other product I tried out a couple of weeks ago are pretty helpful in looking up the tracks for you and getting the ID3 tags fixed. Of course, most of my MP3s are obtained these days by ripping CDs in my collection and iTunes does a fine job of looking them up at rip time.

Overall, I love iTunes. It has already taken over for Windows Media Player on my computer and I don’t expect it to relinquish its position. I also tried out the Apple Music Store, and for overall experience, I love it. It’s easy to look up songs, singers, and albums, and the ability to listen to a snippet of any song in the database is incredibly helpful.

As for selection, I was impressed. It doesn’t have everything, but it has a lot of things. I tested the breadth of the library by looking up singers from Jack Sparks’ weekly alt country top 20 list. The bar is set fairly high there because it’s a relatively obscure genre and he includes obscure singers from that genre. There were no songs from a fair number of the singers, and I don’t think the complete library of songs from any of the singers was available.

My other issue is the DRM. I posted about Apple’s DRM when the Apple Music Store was launched, but the concern there was abstract. Now that I can actually buy the songs, my concerns are more concrete. I’m very tempted to buy songs from the Apple Music Store. The idea that I can listen to a song that I want to hear right when I want to hear it, and pay only a buck for the privilege is great. The fact that you get to keep it is a bonus. To me, the immediacy is a large part of the allure involved.

In that regard, the DRM isn’t a big deal. However, I also have a music collection, and I’d expect to buy songs (and albums) to add to that collection. If they were MP3 files that were unencumbered by DRM, then I could feel pretty confident that I could keep the songs til I die and never have to worry about having a way to play them. With Apple’s DRM, I can’t be so confident. Furthermore, I’m sure that in a few years, there will be tiny cell phones with 20 gig hard drives that you can use just like you use an iPod today. Will having bought my music via the Apple Music Store keep me from taking advantage of those kinds of advances? It’s a concern.

The possible solution is to use the Apple Music Store only when immediate gratification is dictated and buying regular old CDs for everything else, but it would be great to be able to rely on the Apple Music Store for everything they have in their library. I’m just not sure I’m comfortable with that.

The Slacktivist is writing a long series of post on the Left Behind series of books. These books are a series of wildly popular novels that are written by and for millenialist whack jobs who adhere to a very bizarre set of beliefs that they would describe as Christian. The Slacktivist’s willingness to wade into this muck so that we don’t have to is truly a service to us all.

Sy Hersh describes how the US intelligence community has been misused by the current administration.

Anti-semitism seems to be much in the news this week. When I initially read Gregg Easterbrook’s strange item on the movie Kill Bill, I started checking his weblog every day for the inevitable apology. Sure enough, he posted one on October 16. Easterbrook’s statement was stupid, but struck me more as being ill-conceived than as being malicious. What blew me away last week was the Prime Minister of Malaysia’s lengthy anti-Semitic diatribe given at the Islamic Summit (also on October 16). I heard a snippet of it on the BBC, but you have to scan the speech for the full impact. (The best way is just to search for instances of the word Jew and read the surrounding text.) The fact that he gave this speech to great applause is incredibly chilling, not only because it shows how readily outright racism is embraced but because it also reveals a pathetic culture of victimization that doesn’t serve the interests of its adherents, and contributes greatly to global instability. (Slate has the meta-story.)