Breakfast Links: Transformers, Parakeets and DRM
Is it monday? Is it art?
These are shoes, but they’re also more than meets the eye. On the one hand, I’ll paraphrase that old saying from Big, “So it’s a sneaker that turns into a robot? Why is that fun?”, on the other hand, it is pretty cool. With the laces all fluttering around like that I could see it going all anime style. But really, it’s a shoe, I mean Megatron’s a gun - how much fun would it be if he was a smelly old sneaker? And then he’d need a partner, because what good is one shoe?
It’s not really new, in fact it’s old, but I just put it together. I was reminded that Brooklyn has a bunch of Monk Parakeets roaming free. Apparently they escaped some shipment a few decades ago and have thrived. But, then I remembered that Hyde Park in Chicago also played host to these little green birds, also having “escaped” into the wild. What’s up with that? Are they really escape artists? Or is it something more insidious?? Don’t let their cuteness fool you.
And the news everyone’s talking about is the WSJ article that suggests that at 8am this morning EMI and Apple are going to announce the end of DRM (for EMI’s catalogue) on iTunes. I’ll believe it when I see it, but hopefully I’ll see it soon! If this is true, in addition to wondering how it will work, if it is successful how quickly will the other majors follow, blah blah, I wonder if it will mean that Apple will also start allowing the indie labels to decide on the DRM’ness of their catalogues, something that Apple has long said it couldn’t do - DRM on itunes being an all or nothing proposition. I hate April 1 on the interwire, really, but since this was on the WSJ, I’ll hope it’s true.
