I will probably be working on the plane on Sunday afternoon… Looking forward to seeing the new Landing Lights that Richard has picked up for it. 100W per side they are apparently quite bright. He also has some 130W units but quick testing indicates that they are only working at 100W as well.

It looks like Apple is opening an iTunes store in the next few days. I love digital media, but I would prefer to buy a CD than a digital download. Sure I can save it to CD myself, but I do prefer it to come that way from a store. The other issue for iTunes is the price… $1.80 seems to be a bit high. And that is me being kind. Economically that means that this is being tagged to the price of a single, not an album. Given that many of the distribution costs have been significantly reduced, $1.80 does seem to be quite high.

Of this the iTunes store is probably getting no more than 30%, probably much less. The rest is going to the record company and the artists. My guess is that the record company is getting most of the money from the sale, and that their actual costs are fairly minor in terms of expendature to make the sale. I would be surprised if their actual costs are more than 10%, with most of this being the admin cost of getting the royalties paid, and the digital file created in the first place.

The other problem with digital is that it is hard to share the files since they have DRM (Digital Rights Management) reducing the ability to lend the music. I can legally lend a friend a CD I own… Provided we do not create copies of it. This is not possible with digital downloads. And I cannot sell the digital file since it has encryption. I can sell my CD collection to the local 2nd Hand store. I cannot do that with my digital collection since it is sold as non-transferable.

Lastly the quality of the files is good, but they are not as good as CD. It is hard to tell the difference but if I am spending good money on it I want it to be good quality.

There is an article on ZD Net about an anti WiFi ‘film’ to be placed over windows for secure environments. the film would not allow WiFi signals in or out. That is the plan anyway. From my experience things are not quite so easy. There are whole industries set up trying to stop signals getting in or out of an area….