CD Album Info

Today I dug up an old CD, I Don't Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith. The case it came in was previously stuck and wouldn't open, but today I managed to fix it. Having taken the CD out of the case I decided to give it a play on my laptop.

So I fired up Windows Media Player 11 and out of curiosity tried to retrieve the album info online. Usually I can't get the album info because I mostly own Chinese CDs. I thought this time would be successful because the CD is English and popular. Wrong.

WMP11 found the album alright, but its record showed only 3 tracks instead of 4 (track 2 was missing). Even WMP tells me my CD has 4 tracks, but it presents to me an album with just 3. How stupid is this?

After mucking around in WMP a little longer, I found the correct album in one of the last search results. It had 4 tracks! Except it had no album art. And the year was wrong (1989 instead of 1998, probably a typo).

So today I found out what crappy software/service MS was producing, especially since this tiny CD ripper will get the correct info first try, without any clicking or choosing the right album from a list.

Screen Capturing

Just read this from a newspaper column:

Taking screen shots from a Mac is dead easy: three, and sometimes four, taps on the keyboard and you have the image captured forever...[p]ressing cmd-shift-3 takes a snapshot of the screen.

- Page 43 of Livewire, The Age, 23-10-2008

Have they never heard of the print-screen key on a PC keyboard?

Reliable Technology

Half a week ago I was working on my final year project report, when my laptop suddenly began to behave strangely and randomly shutting down. A day later I found the problem: the CPU appeared to have died, causing the laptop to prevent overheating by shutting itself down. All my data, which resides in the harddisk, fortunately remained intact. It did gave me a good scare.

A few hours ago, I was applying final touches to the report. I was working on my laptop (with an improvised cooling system) while doing other tasks on my desktop, including writing a long todo list for the report. All of a sudden, my desktop rebooted, taking with it my unsaved todo list.

It is most frustrating when computers start shutting down or rebooting unpredictably. When you are working on an urgent piece of work, that becomes a frightening experience.

Feeling insecure about more data losses, I decided to search for a more reliable technology. The report must be word-processed, that I can do nothing about. The todo list, on the other hand...

I picked up a pen and some scrap paper and began rebuilding the list.

One Hand iPhone

I'm not going to discuss why I will not buy an iPhone even when it becomes available in Australia. Maybe I will talk about that -- and other Apple products -- in another post. What I want to talk about now is a strange idea.

Through heavy marketing, Apple has got everyone to associate touch screen phone with iPhone. It is not the first touch screen phone, but it may be the most usable (I don't know, just guessing). Clearly a touch screen allows for more creative ways to interact with the device, such as zooming into a picture with two fingers. However, I wonder if it can pass my "one hand" test.

One day on my way to uni, I reflected on how I use my current phone, the Nokia 5300. I would often whip out my phone with my left hand -- it is always in my left pocket -- and start working the navigation keys or keypad with my thumb. The only exception is when I am typing in a message or note to myself, in which case I use both thumbs.

Having discovered this habit, I wondered how well one can operate the iPhone with a left thumb only. I won't say it is impossible, but from what I saw in the commercials, it may not be the easiest thing. In the ads they always hold it with one hand and operate the screen with the other. The iPhone is also wider than the 5300 so my thumb may not reach the screen.

Not being able to "one hand" a phone would be inconvenient. Speaking of convenience, I would also like to find out the possibility of skipping a music track without taking the phone out of my pocket. I tend to do that a lot.

Away Means Away!

MSN Messenger (you will likely be using Windows Live Messenger, but I don't have XP and can't upgrade to it) lets you set your online status to inform friends whether you are at the computer or not. And I seem to be the only person who believe the status really reflects the person's online status.

I only set my status to "away" or "busy" if I cannot or do not want to reply to an incoming message. If other people set their statuses to something other than "online", I assume they are not available for chatting and refrain from messaging them.

Some people obviously disagree with my interpretation of the statuses, or they just choose to ignore them. I have had people IM'ing me even though I was "away" -- and I really was away. Sometimes the person who initiated the conversation was himself marked "away". I assume they were trying to avoid talking to certain people, though the "appear offline" setting would be much more effective. Alternatively, they can do what I do -- kill the damned memory-hogging program. Anyway, I digressed.

Maybe when my friends message the "away" me, they are just chancing on me not really being away and therefore will reply. They might be right, in that I might really be at the computer. However, that doesn't change the fact that I don't want to be disturbed. To discourage this behaviour, I have adopted the policy of not answering messages if I am "away" or "busy", even if I am at the computer and can answer it. Of course there will be exceptions but if I do break the rule I obviously don't mind the disruption.

The bottom line is this: if I am "away", you won't be getting an answer any time soon, one way or another.

Wii-view

My sister's boyfriend had recently acquired a Nintendo Wii, so I finally had a chance to try out the motion-sensing controller and sampling some of the games.

I'm quite impressed with the controllers. They are more accurate than I would have thought possible, and even knows the way you are holding the controller when you are not waving it around. The games are okay: the five WiiSports games that came with the console made well use of the new controller -- you control the movements as if you are playing the actual sport.

On the other hand, I can't help but feel that Nintendo games are not my cup of tea, at least the games that I have played so far. My first complaint is that all the games are way too cute. The characters in WiiSports don't even have arms and sometimes legs! Another game that I have played, Cooking Mama, suffers from the same problem. Check out their website and you will see what I mean.

The second problem is that the gameplay is so linear. Cooking Mama is about repeating the same cooking steps over and over again, albeit a different combination for each dish. The games in WiiSports are a little simple so there is not much strategy required. All that is needed is mastering the waving of the controller so you execute the precise movement at the right time. In other words, something a robot can do very well.

A third game that I have seen but not played is WarioWare: Smooth Moves. Until that game came along I thought Mario Brothers Party and its mini-games are the worst. Apparently my 3 minute attention span is too long to find 5 second mini-games interesting.

Maybe I am just mad that the Wii gave me sore arms for two days. After all, I did tell myself that I would prefer the Wii over the PS3 and Xbox 360. That statement probably still holds (I haven't played the other two), but my money is definitely going towards a new computer than any of the consoles.

Will It Blend?

http://www.willitblend.com/videos.aspx?type=unsafe&video=iphone

Now you have seen all the iPhone related video...

Security is a Tradeoff

Everyone is talking about security these days. Politicians want to protect their countries from terrorist attacks, while companies are worried about frauds of all kinds. These concerns led them to introduce various security measures such as more stringent checks in airports, identifying a person by their biometrics, and looking at the buying patterns of a credit card. Although there is no doubt each additional measure increases security, they also put extra burden on the process and that can add up to a large cost.

For example, it is very convenient to shop with a credit card. Just swipe the card and sign the bill and you're done. However, if your credit card details is leaked to a malicious third party, he or she can easily purchase goods from online stores under your credit. Hence this is not a very secure payment system.

Now let's consider the opposite end of the scale. Suppose every time you want to pay with your credit card the store needs to verify your identity by checking two official documents that identifies you (say your HKID card or drivers licence), as well as performing three separate biometric scans. Clearly it is now a lot harder for someone pretending to be you using your credit card, but at this point I suspect you wouldn't want to use your credit card either due to all the hassles.

The above is of course an exaggeration of what might actually happen in practice, but it illustrates an important principle, that although security measures reduces the risk of losses, it imposes its own costs. Thus it is not wise to blindly put in place any and all security measures you can think of into a system, because the cost of performing these extra steps becomes higher than what you lose by being less secure. The art of security, therefore, is to find the point where cost is minimised rather than engineering the most secure (and likely most tedious) system.

This is not to say one cannot improve security without causing extra trouble to the customers. For example, one of the biggest reason people don't (in the companies' view) adequately secure their PINs and passwords is because they want to share them with several others whom they can trust. We all do that at some point in time, and sometimes it makes sense to do that. Usually a more secure system means it's harder for people other than the account owner to gain access. But this contradicts with our needs to sometimes let people we trust to access our accounts!

In theory, if the system knows the owner gives (or would have given) another person consent to access than it should be safe to allow access for that person, but this is almost impossible to implement without increasing risk. If I want to access my mum's back account, should the bank let me? Let's say my mum give me permission today and I got in, but I try to get in again the next day. Does the bank let me in now? Can it safely assume the situation will not change in just one day? No! It needs permission from my mum again. But if my mum is always around to give permission she can just access the bank account herself!

If the bank has perfect information it will just let me in, but it doesn't. The best it can do is look at my track record and assume that I'm benign because I always have a good relationship with my mum. Again this is a tradeoff -- set the criteria too loose and anyone can access the account, too strict and we're back to where we started -- and the trick is to find the point that minimises hassles and risk of fraud. Realistically I can't imagine anyone building this kind of system just because it's so complicated and so hard to find that "middle point". That's unfortunate, because it means legitimate people like me have to "hack" into my mum's accounts just to change a credit card number.

Too many passwords

Depending on how active you are online you may have anywhere between 1 to 50 logins (username and password pairs). It's just that every web site you go to requires a separate login. Sometimes you can reuse the details but not always. Your favourite username might be taken, or the password rules are incompatible with each other. Thus it's practically impossible to use the exact same login for every site you run into. This is usually not a problem for sites you use on a daily basis such as emails, but for sites we seldom use the it's always a challenge to recall the username and password. "Which email address did I use for the username?" "When I changed my password last year did I remember to update for this site?...no, and apparently I didn't update for the password change two years ago either." The problem becomes more complicated as some sites change ownership or two sites merge. I once lost my netscape.com email because when AOL bought Netscape it got changed to netscape.net, and with that I was unable to recover the password for the old SETI@home project. In short, things can become quite messy, and this is the reason I do not create accounts on web sites unless I absolutely have to.

As if things are not bad enough, we also have some "hidden" accounts created for us automatically when we subscribe to real services such as phone and utilities. Most of the time we are not even aware of the existence of these accounts until we need to say change our credit card details or enter a competition. But if we didn't create the accounts ourselves, how the hell do we know our username and password? If you are lucky, you may be able to dig up the letter they sent you when you first subscribed and the login details would in that letter. More likely there was no letter or it was lost or they never told you the login details. Thus you can't login and have to call support to get the details. If you can confirm your identity to the support guy he might tell you how to login. If you are calling on behalf of someone else, good luck.

Here's a real life story and basically what motivated me to write this post. My mum's credit card was discontinued because they thought the spending pattern seemed suspicious (in fact nothing of the sort was going on). Rather than reinstating the card, they had to issue a new one to my mum. This means we have to update the credit card details for our phone services. Now, trying to log onto the phone website, I found the password on the phone bill would not work. A few trials later I was redirected to a password recovery page, where it would email me the password. Great, except at the bottom I have to enter the "4-digit service code". What?! What the hell is that? You can imagine how silly this is. If I don't know the password why would I know a 4-digit service code? So in order to retrieve one shared secret (the password), I have to have another shared secret (the service code)? Come to think of it, isn't the service code just another password?

It's not hard to see the problem here. We have too many passwords, so only the frequently used ones are remembered. I don't know how long it'll take phone or utility companies to realise their customers don't need to access their accounts every day. Or every week. Or every month. Or ever (just call support...). If they want the customers to actually be able to login, maybe they should make the logins easier. Maybe the username is the customer number and the password the driver license number or something they actually know. You might think this choice of password is insecure, but if I know your driver license number I can just call up support and ask them to tell me the password. And no, these companies will never understand passwords should not be revealed to anyone including the support staff.

Thunderbird

I have at least 7 email accounts and it's difficult and annoying to keep track of them all. The most obvious thing is I have to login 7 times to check everything, since I do not turn on "remember passwords". Anyway a while back I discovered Thunderbird (TB) can be made to handle many popular webmail accounts such Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, with the help of the Webmail extension. I have been using it for a few weeks and have to say it saved me a lot of time and trouble. I can now check 5 of the email accounts without logging in at all, and TB will regularly check for new mail so I won't miss anything. Granted this method is not perfect -- from time to time I still need to log on to manually delete the read messages as the Webmail extension will only grab them from the server but not remove them. However logging in once every week isn't so bad.

If you have been using any of these popular webmail services you will know they are all becoming more application-like, that is instead of having to refresh the whole page every time only a portion of the screen is updated, and you can use keyboard shortcuts and drag-and-drop to manage messages. They are essentially programs running inside your browser. While I quite enjoy using these new interfaces none of them can compare to an actual program running natively on my computer, in terms of response and functionality. Perhaps one day the internet will become so fast, and our computers so powerful that applications inside a browser is just as snappy as native programs, and none of these would matter. For now, I am sticking with TB.

The Best Social Networking Site

I must apologise for playing a word game in the title, but my choice of social networking "site" would be a good old party. I am not a terribly sociable person and at times even find facing people a little daunting. Still, given a choice of online communication, phone and face-to-face meeting, I will pick the latter. It is hard to explain this is so; my guess is that the physical proximity forces both parties to give their full attention to the conversation and that makes the interaction more substantial. Which explains why I get pissed if my friend would interrupt the conversation to answer a phone call.

It is not that I do not believe in online technologies. Instant messaging can be very effective if friends are separated by great distances, and emails are good if instant feedback is not required. For some strange reason, I never seem to understand the purpose of a social networking service such as MySpace. I have a Friendster account for years now (don't ask why I got it), but I have done little with it except going through my friends' photos. I have tried sending messages to a friend, but couldn't see the point in using Friendster as a middleman, when I can just email my friend directly. Come to think of it, my friend probably found out about my message when Friendster sent her an email. Clearly this is getting nowhere.

My sister has a Facebook account, but it seems that she only uses it to check out her friends' photos, and I assume her friends use the service in a similar fashion. When they want to communicate, they do it on MSN. While there is nothing wrong with using Facebook as a photo album, the same job can be done equally well with Flickr or Picasa. Again, I'm missing the point on social networking.

The newest kid on the block is Twitter, where users tell the world what they are doing right this moment. For the life of me, I don't understand why I want to know gcorrin aka greg is currently "reheating [his] spaghetti". Conversely, I cannot find a reason to post an update every few hours, an exercise that is needlessly annoying and time consuming.

In short, these online services have some very interesting ideas and innovations, but for me they fall short of delivering a good socialising experience. Ideally I want to see and touch my friends, not a static picture or blocky video. When I laugh at a joke I want to hear my friends laugh too. Most online services facilitates keeping in touch constantly, but I argue it is the quality rather than frequency of each meeting that matters.

OMG!! A New Phone!!1!111!

Yesterday I surrendered my 5-year-old phone and loaded the SIM card into a fairly modern phone. It's a Nokia 5300. It has a huge colour screen. It can play music and video files. It can take pictures. It made me seem like a big hypocrite.

Obviously I will not be writing this post if I don't already have an explanation. So here we go...

First of all I didn't buy this phone off the shelf. My sister's phone contract had ended meaning she could sign a new one and in the process earn a free phone (i.e., cost of phone is included in the plan). Normally she would dump her old phone and use this new one, but she already purchased a new one in HK. Thus the logical thing to do is to give me the new phone.

Now of course I can refuse to use the new phone. I almost did, had the phone not support Chinese. Alternatively I could pick a phone that doesn't have all these features. That was undoable for a number of reasons. After Chinese support, I looked for the form factor, or it's "pocketability". Some of my jeans pockets are pretty tight so thinness and small size is much sought after. Turns out all the Nokia phones that came for free were either too long or too thick. There were no winner in the "pocket test". Thus I fell back to features and the choice was obvious.

I believe I have not explain why I did not refuse using a new phone. All my previous posts must have impressed on my readers that I am an anti-technology person. This is simply not the case. I merely dislike embracing new technology for the sake of technology. If I can't do more of the things I want to do then the upgrade is worth next to nothing to me. However if the upgrade comes for free, then the benefit of upgrading (next to nothing) outweighs the cost (nothing). In laymans' term, it's just a case of me being a tight-ass at spending money. ;-)

For me, the major benefit of the new phone is the ability to manage my phonebook on a computer. Previously half the numbers were stored in the phone and half in the SIM card. Moving to a new phone meant losing half the numbers (I refused to manually add them back). Now everything is neatly stored on the phone...it's okay to call me a neat freak. On the other hand, I vow never to use a sliding phone in my life. It's too prone to accidental opening, especially when slipping it into my tight jeans pockets.

Hopefully, with the built-in camera I will take more photos and post them here. I already had a few ideas floating in my mind.

A Matter of Reputation

So Windows Vista had finally launched. There are news that indicates consumers are more interested about discounted gadgets (to promote Windows Vista) than the operating system itself. But that's okay, I am not writing tonight to bash Microsoft...well not directly. This evening I saw on TV this Apple ad making fun of Vista; I laughed my head off. While I searched for this ad online I also came across what appears to be a Vista ad. I'm not sure if this one aired on TV due to its length; in Melbourne we have a much shorter and to-the-point version. Comparing the two commercials is like pitching an iPod against a Zune. The Apple ad is short and humorous, and it sends a simple but strong message to the audience. This is just like the iPod -- its interface is clean and simple yet leaves a lasting impression. In contrast, the Vista ad tries to inform you of all its features while confusing you with the spinning people. It bores the life out of the viewer, who ends up not remembering, or caring about, any features. It is not unlike the Zune, which is overall a good media player that does everything it promise and does them well, but I would struggle to find a feature in the exceptional category.

It is therefore no surprise that nowadays nearly every new Apple product creates a hype, while the Microsoft equivalent turns considerably fewer heads and only out of necessity. Steve Jobs understands that marketing to the average consumer is more about the image than the product itself. It's not about making the best and coolest products but convincing the consumers your products are the best and coolest, although it certainly helps if you actually produce the best and coolest gadgets. To the modern teenager, appearance matters more than extra functions, and commercials are no different. An operating system should be marketed as delivering a unique experience or even lifestyle rather than the winner of a features race. Apple clearly gets this but I'm not sure about MS.

I also want to state that I'm not a fan of either company. I don't intent to upgrade to Vista until I absolutely have to (then again there is always Linux), and I have no plans to buy an iPod or Zune -- I just found my small-time-Korean-company-brand mp3 player with a whooping 128MB of flash storage. When in doubt, look under the bed.

Disturbing Windows Vista Facts

I have already established why I will not actively adopt the new OS and so wouldn't normally give any further reasons. However, what I have just found out can only be described as disturbing and thus deserves some mention. All of the following is based on Peter Guttman's A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. Guttman listed many problems created by Microsoft's efforts to protect "premium content", which are implemented in their upcoming OS. In particular, two of the problems seem to affect me the most, given I won't be playing back HD videos in the forseeable future.

The first is that Vista will apparently check the hardware up to 30 times a second to make sure no one suddenly tempers with it. Although one may argue that the polling will not cause noticeable performance degradation, the knowledge that a process is continually doing extraneous things in the background doesn't sit well with me. Although I routinely run a lot of background applications to heavily customise my Windows interface, at no point do I allow non-productive applications idling in memory. If a program is not doing something useful to me, it must go immediately, and that includes virus scanners and firewalls. The polling imposed by Vista clearly violates this principle.

The second problem is that Vista requires hardware vendors to implement the so-called "tilt bits" which detects "suspicious" fluctuation in say the voltage level of a connection pin. This is to prevent someone from intercepting the data by tapping into the wires between a component and the motherboard. The name "tilt bits" clearly comes from the tilt function in pinball machines. Unfortunately, most of the time such electrical fluctuations are perfectly innocent. My speaker "clicks" whenever the fridge turns on and I won't be surprised if that also affects the computer power supply. Now I have no idea how sensitive these tilt bits are. It may be that normal household related fluctuations are tolerated so I may never experience an unexpected shutdown due to this "feature". Still, I am not very happy that the new OS may, however remotely, render my upgraded system less stable.

So if before I was unwilling to upgrade to Vista because I don't like the activation "feature", now I am just plain scared, and I'm not even trying to play any video on it! As Guttman have noted, if MS could just direct their efforts at locking down the system from hackers rather than the users, Vista would've been much more secure. If they marketed these technologies as ones that protect me from viruses, I can at least find one reason to upgrade. Right now I have negative reasons.

Oh and one more thing. All those restrictions they place in every HD video disc and related devices will not prevent piracy at all. You see, the system works by encrypting everything on the disk and different players (models) will have different keys to decrypt it so that if one particular device is compromise they can in theory lock these affected players out of future contents (whether they will really do that is another question). Each manufacturer will need to apply for their own key so it's not like anyone can get their hands on a valid key.

What I think will happen is this. Some Chinese pirates will probably get a working key by either bribing a (Chinese?) company or pretending to be a legitimate vendor. Once they get the key they can just use it to decrypt every movie that comes their way and then crank out a million copies of the movie without any protection. No one will be able to figure out who did this because the discs only contains unprotected video. Even if they find out the offending vendor and revoke its key, the pirates will just bribe someone else. I don't believe there will be any shortage of vendors willing to leak their keys, because the MPAA just can't control every vendor and every worker in the industry, and we all know that everyone is susceptible to bribery.

Basically the whole scheme will not work. And all Microsoft managed to do here is scared me away from their already overpriced and featureless OS.

Interacting With Computers

I recently received an invitation to a concert in my email. The invitations were managed by the online service Evite. The system keeps track of who's going and who isn't. A closer look showed you can even elect to join a carpool. At that time I was undecided about my attendance so I held back from replying. And promptly forgot about the whole thing. When I checked my email again two days before the event, I discovered the system had sent additional reminders to my email. Going back to the invitation page showed about 50 people said they would show up, 3 wouldn't, and over 300 people yet to reply. Having made up my mind to not go, I decided to join the 300 people and left the website without replying. Better to say I missed the email than to explain why I don't want to fork out $15 for a concert I might not like and with no prospect of meeting someone familiar.

If instead my friend invited me over the phone I would have to make up an elaborate excuse, or would even decide to go. So you see there is a difference in response depending who is asking the question: a machine or a person.

I am not trying to dismiss systems such as Evite. These systems are very useful when managing a large event. Computers (or machines in general) are very good at keeping track of things, doing repetitive tasks and they also scale well. Imagine the difference between manually calling up 50 people and 5000 people. For the computer, however, it is still just one click. There is definitely a good reason to use a computer-based system to help manage social events.

Where machines fall short, however, is the responses they get from clients (e.g., the invitees). In the example I have given, I was a "not yet reply" even though I was definitely not going. Most of the people on the invitation list also failed to reply. I cannot say for sure, but people may have given the invitation less thought because it was sent out by a machine to their email account. Additionally, because the entire reply process is managed by a computer, some people may have ignored it.

We definitely treat a computer and a human being differently, even if they are performing the same interaction with us. Sometimes I would add an item to the "shopping cart" just to find out the shipping costs and other info not present in the product pages, even though I never intended to buy the item. Now how many people will deliberately bring a product they will definitely not buy to the checkout, and at the last possible moment tell the store assistant they don't want it? We also feel less guilty lying to a computer. When I applied for Pandora, I just used a random US zip code to "prove" I live in the US. Had the signing up process been conducted over the phone, I doubt I would lie so readily to the operator.

In conclusion, computer systems are very efficient at managing social events and/or collecting information from correspondents. However, it seems they can seldom evoke a sense of urgency and at times even honesty like a human can. In some cases it is in the interest of the correspondent to reply promptly and honestly (e.g. to prevent fines or committing fraud) and the above doesn't matter too much. In less formal occasions a person can probably command a more timely and accurate answer than his electronic counterpart.

Let's Not Buy Any More Music

This is not an attempt to advocate illegal music downloads. As a matter of fact, I am going to discuss why you might be able to satisfy most or all of your music needs via free and legal means.

Over the last two years or so, many music-related online services have cropped up, many of them free. It doesn't take a lot of imagination to infer such free services will have some kind of limitations in terms of access or functionality. Of the ones I am going to talk about next, the limitation is that you cannot choose the exact song to play. This means my solution is not going to work if you must decide the next 10 songs you will listen to, but if all you need is some music that suits your taste, it is not a bad way to do it, especially given its cost.

The first such service I ran into is the popular Pandora. This neat service will play songs that are musically similar to a song or artist you nominate. You cannot choose the song to play, or skip too many songs in a short period of time, but you can finetune your "station" by giving songs a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Another service I have recently discovered is the AOL Radio, which plays XM radio stations. I believe XM radio is a digital radio service in the United States but it really doesn't matter here -- you just get music for free! I was actually able to find an anime and Japanese pop station, so there should be a station for everyone. Here you only get to choose the genre and there is no opportunity for finetuning the station. Occasionally you will be subjected to audio ads, but that is tolerably infrequent.

The next one is not really an online service -- it is your plain old FM radio station. Of particular interest are the community stations. These are not-for-profit radio stations that relies on volunteer and donations (I would expect they get some Government support as well) for their operations. What sets them apart from commercial stations is the lack of ads and a more diversified selection of genres. Because they do not need to maximise profit they can move away from the mainstream stuff and have programmes say in foreign languages. The other point I want to make is online radio. For me this means I can listen to Hong Kong radio in real time, therefore getting the latest in the Canto-pop scene, which admittedly is on its way down.

I find that these three types of music services can satisfy my music needs most of the time. If I am after English songs, I can turn to Pandora and AOL radio. This works for me because I don't really have any favourite bands or artist so a genre is good enough for me. If instead I feel like some Chinese programming I tune in to HK radio streams. As with everything else in Hong Kong, when a new song arrives it creates much hype and is played hourly, but in a matter of weeks another batch of new songs will arrive and the "old" songs are soon forgotten. So at its height a new song gets played so often I can always listen to it without downloading the song, and by the time it is phased out, I am "done with the song" and will have no desire to own it.

I am not saying there are no exceptions to the above. I am a loyal fan of The Corrs and have bought all their recent CD albums. Occasionally a good Canto song will also warrant a CD purchase. However, 99% of the time I can live happily on free, radio-style music services. I don't have a lot of control over what I listen, but that might actually be a good thing. Try it and you'll see what I mean.

The Tech Path of No Return?

All too often I hear people describe a particular technology as "once you try this you can't go back!" or "I can't live without it." Sometimes they say it as though I too will get hooked had I decide to "take the plunge". I can't disagree more.

I believe that people can and should adapt to the situation, whether it is taking a turn for the better or worse. I remember one time in Melbourne a fire broke out in a natural gas facility causing it to shut down and leaving the region without gas for several weeks. For most homes this meant their cooking stove and water heater ceased working unless they operated with electricity. Did anyone starve to death because of this incident? Apparently not. Restaurants simply had gas delivered in large metal cans. We were even able to have hot water baths by boiling water with our electric kettles. Sure it was inconvenient as hell, but we survived.

Now most conversations don't involve such serious disasters as losing an entire utility service. They are usually about broadband vs. dial-up internet, flat panel high-def TV sets vs. standard ones or storage capacity of mp3 players. The second of these was brought up in a recent conversation. I didn't fight hard for my point (people who wants to convince you so badly usually don't like being proved wrong), but my take on this has always been the content coming before the picture quality. It's good to have better pictures, but even without that luxury the point of the program/movie still gets through. I doubt the high-def version makes us more emotionally affected by the scene.

I read about the mp3 player topic on a newspaper column, which explained why older players were not suitable for working out. It started out with CD players skipping which is a fair point, but then went on to assert that early mp3 players could only hold enough songs for maybe one or two workouts. The author effectively implies it's annoying having to frequently upload different songs onto the players. To me this is just frivolous whining. One could also find it annoying to have to plug the player into a computer before they can transfer songs, or that the songs have to be downloaded with a computer or acquired from a CD. Why can't songs just come to my mp3 player automatically, without so much as a voice command? Indeed, as technology progresses, these seemingly unreasonable demands will become the very reasons you will want the latest gadgets, according to the media promoting the products. In the middle of this is the implied notion that one should not go backwards in technology, mainly because older technologies are worth very little these days and companies need high margins for their goods (of course the official reason will be going back is sooo unbearably inconvenient).

As an argument, I lost my mp3 player a few months ago and fell back to the bulkier MD player. Instead of drag-and-dropping songs onto the player, I now need to record it from the computer speakers. It's a pain-in-the-you-know-where but I'm not complaining because I have adapted to it. I just need to allow more time for the process.

Note: having said that I am looking to buy a new mp3 player, but for a different reason: it's simply impractical to record hour long podcasts onto an MD, and repeat it four times every week.