DRM-Free Music comes to iTUNES

Apple has released a new version of iTunes (7.2), its popular online music store called iTunes Plus. The big news here is that the new version now sells DRM-Free music. DRM or Digital Rights Management (better known as copy protection) is the software that is embedded into downloaded music which restricts how and where the music can be played. For instance music previously purchased from the iTunes music store could only be played on an iPod or an authorized computer. It could not be played on any other music player and could not be transferred to your friend's computer or a file sharing service because it would have to be "authorized" by you each time to be played. Apple has now removed this copy protection from a limited number of songs, those sold by the EMI group, and has urged others to follow suit. See the Apple announcement for complete details.

The new DRM-Free music vs the old DRM music:

• Will cost more - $1.29 vs $0.99


• Will be higher quality - 256 kbps vs 126 kbps


• Will be upgradeable for $0.30 each or $3.00 per album from the old music

iTunes Plus is launching with EMI’s digital catalog of outstanding recordings, including singles and albums from Coldplay, The Rolling Stones, Norah Jones, Frank Sinatra, Joss Stone, Pink Floyd, John Coltrane and more than a dozen of Paul McCartney’s classic albums available on iTunes for the first time. London-based EMI, is the world's third-largest music company by sales. Barney Wragg, the global head of digital music at EMI, said the iTunes Plus launch capped six months of work to convert most all of the company's digital catalog into a DRM-free format.

"Our customers told us two things deterred them from buying digital," Wragg said. "They weren't 100 percent confident that the songs they'd purchase could play on their devices, and they wanted something closer to CD quality."

"We definitely think it's the right thing to do," Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes, said. "In this case, EMI's a leader and we think others will follow."

Before you get too happy about the possibilities this new DRM-Free music is not a license to spread unlimited copies of your music all over the place. Apple will embedded inside each music file your full name and e-mail account. This information will be included in any copies made, allowing for a trail back to the original owner.

Earlier this year, Apple CEO Steve Jobs called on the world's four major record companies to start selling songs online without copy-protection software. He expects that more than half of the 5 million tunes sold by Apple will be DRM-Free by the end of the year.

One minor drawback is that the music sold on iTunes is in the AAC format which some players don't recognize, this would mean that some users may have to convert their music to the MP3 format which is universally accepted.

Is Tinky Winky Gay?

In the latest round of "I have nothing better to do" Ewa Sowinska, ombudsman for children's rights, in Poland, said that the purse-carrying character on the British Broadcastinhg Corp.'s "Teletubbies" children's show could promote homosexuality. She was of course referring to Tinky Winky. In an interview with the weekly Polish magazine Wprost she commented:

"I noticed that he has a purse, but I didn't realize he's a boy. At first I thought that must be a bother for him," Sowinska told the magazine in an interview her office approved before publication. "Later I learned that there could be some hidden homosexual undertones."
"It would be good for a group of psychologists to talk to children about this. We need to examine this. If inappropriate attitudes have been promoted, we need to react," said Ewa Sowinska.

Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa-Laa and Po - the four chubby luminous-coloured furry figures with aerials on their heads and television sets in their bellies - appeared on BBC television for the first time in 1997. The Teletubbies have since been screened in 120 countries and translated into 45 languages.

The rightest Polish government has drawn criticism in recent years from the European Union and human rights groups for discrimination against gay people.The Education Minister, Roman Giertych, has proposed laws similar to Section 28, which would involve sacking teachers who promote "homosexual lifestyle" and banning "homo-agitation" in schools.

However it does not seem like the Polish government sees the BBC as leading a homosexual plot to subvert children and has distanced itself from Sowinska's remarks. Parliamentary Speaker Ludwig Dorn said he had warned her against making public comments "that may turn her department into a laughing stock."

Ewa Sowinska's comments are reminiscent of the late Jerry Falwell who, in 1999, said that Tink Winky was "modeling the gay lifestyle". She had also previously said she would ask her office's psychologists to look into the allegations "and judge whether it can be shown on public television and whether the suggested problem really exists."

It now appears that she has had a sudden bout of sanity and has backed away from her previous statements. Sowinska's spokeswoman Wieslawa Lipinska told The Associated Press that Sowinska "hasn't asked and won't ask" psychologists to investigate whether "Teletubbies" promote homosexuality.

"They are fictional characters, they have nothing to do with reality, and the bag and scissors and other props the fictional characters use are there to create a fictional world that speaks to children," Lipinska said. "We are not going to deal with this issue any more."

In a statement, the BBC denied the allegations against the program.

"Children love to play with bags of all kinds and this fascination is reflected in Tinky Winky's favorite thing," the BBC said. "To suggest the series has a political agenda is simply not true."

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Is Castro Back?

Fidel Castro has been very vocal lately and seems to be recovering from his operations related to diverticulitis, or inflamed bulge in the intestine. He has been ill since the summer of 2006 but now appears to be on the mend. Of his illness Castro admitted that his initial surgery had failed: ''It was not just one operation, but various,'' he wrote. ``Initially it was not successful, and that had a bearing on my prolonged recuperation.'' However he now says that he is recovering well: After ''many months'' of intravenous feeding, he was eating and his weight was back up to 176 pounds. ''Today I receive orally everything my recuperation requires,'' he wrote.

Castro may be on the mend but he is still not ready to assume the Presidency he handed over to his brother Raul. He has rarely been seen in public and many wonder if he will ever return to power. 'I think he's abdicated already,'' said Tony Zamora, a Cuban-American lawyer in Miami who visits Cuba regularly. ``He will continue to be consulted and listened to, of course, but I don't see him coming back at all.''

Castro himself apologized for his public absence by saying: ''I don't have time now for films and photos that require me to constantly cut my hair, beard and mustache, and get spruced up every day.'' To which Zamora had the following comment: ''He cannot shave and he can't take a haircut. That's really weird,'' Zamora said. 'He is clearly saying, `My role has changed. I was really sick and I need to take care of myself, so I'm not coming back.' ''

Castro, although in recovery, seems to have found a new role, that of commentator:

"For now, I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing, reflecting and writing about questions that I judge of certain importance and transcendence," Castro wrote in the statement carried on the front pages of Cuba's official newspapers and read on state radio and television. "I have a lot more material to go."

And he has certainly been busy commenting on everything from the $7 billion the British have spent on a new attack submarine which he says could have been used to train 75,000 doctors, care for 150 million people and build 3,000 clinics with new technologies, as Cuba does in other countries; to the expected rise in the price of grains due to the demand for bio-fuels especially corn. Also he has not forgotten to mention President Bush in his commentaries:

"Just yesterday, Bush bragged about having won the battle over his adversaries in Congress," he wrote in a four-page statement released to the media. "He has $100 billion, all the money he needs to duplicate, however he wishes, the sending of American troops to Iraq and continue the slaughter."

The statement was the 12th by Castro in recent weeks who seems to be enjoying his new role without the pressure of having to govern. But Castro is 80 yrs old and his brother Raul, who currently rules the island, is 75 yrs old. This leads many to wonder what the future holds for Cuba when its aging leaders are gone. Here are two video clips about Cuba. The first one takes a look at Cuba today. The second ponders on the future of the Communist island.

Cuba ---- A Country Frozen in Time

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhkLWRaxUJU]

El Plan Bush

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZQsMr01XU0]

The War will Continue

In a stinging, but not surprising, defeat the anti-war Democrats in Congress lost to President Bush in their bid to set a timetable for troop withdrawals from Iraq. In fact the vote was not even close (Senate 80-14, House 280-142) to give the President exactly what he wanted, funds for the troops with no strings attached. Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and Christopher Dodd all voted against the bill, as did Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid leaders of the House and Senate respectively.

President Bush, in an interview after the House version passed, says, "By voting for this bill, members of both parties can show our troops and the Iraqis and the enemy that our country will support our servicemen and women in harm's way." "As it provides vital funds for our troops, this bill also reflects a consensus that the Iraqi government needs to show real progress in return for America's continued support and sacrifice."

Americans now view the war in Iraq more negatively than at any time since the invasion more than four years ago, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll. Sixty-one percent of Americans say that the United States should have stayed out of Iraq, and 76 percent say that things are going badly there, including 47 percent who say things are going very badly, the poll found. Still, the majority of Americans support continuing to finance the war as long as the Iraqi government meets specific goals.

Congressional leaders were still sounding defiant after the vote and promised that this was not the end:

"This debate will go on," vowed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and if anything, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada was more emphatic. "Senate Democrats will not stop our efforts to change the course of this war until either enough Republicans join with us to reject President Bush's failed policy or we get a new president," he said.

In the meantime commentators such as Keith Olbermann were not pleased with the performance of the Democrats and in this commentary below blasts them for collaborating with President Bush.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H00zSRc7LJw]

".....The Democratic leadership has given Mr. Bush all that he wanted with the only caveat being not merely meaningless symbolism about benchmarks to the Iraqi government but OPTIONAL meaningless symbolism about benchmarks to the Iraqi government. The Democratic leadership has in sum claimed a compromise with the Administration in which the only things truly compromised are the trust of the voters, the ethics of the Democrats and the lives of our brave and doomed friends and family in Iraq......."

" .......The electorate figured this out six months ago........on the subject of Iraq, the people have been ahead of the media, ahead of the government, ahead of the politicians for the last year or two years or maybe three, our politics is about now about the answer to one briefly worded question; Mr. Bush has failed, Mr. Warner has failed, Mr. Reid has failed. So, who among us will stop this war, this war of lies........there is only blame for this shameful and bipartisan betrayal.

Bush wins Iraq Showdown

After months of telling the nation that Congress will present the President with an Iraqi war funding bill that will contain provisions for bringing the troops back home as soon as possible, and possibly within one year, the Democrats finally gave in. They have now promised to hand the President a bill that will contain no provisions for troop withdrawals. It took one presidential veto and the threat of more to come to convince Congress that the President was serious about getting the funding he required (almost $100 billion) for the war in Iraq with no strings attached.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that she was "not likely to vote for something that does not have a timetable" for withdrawing troops from the war that has killed at least 3,420 U.S. soldiers and wounded more than 34,000. However there are enough votes in the House to pass the spending bill without a timetable. The political reality is that there are not enough votes in Congress to overcome a presidential veto, therefore the Democrats cannot force the spending bill on the President.

"The president has made it very clear he's not going to sign timelines (for withdrawing troops). We can't pass timelines over his veto," House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters.

"Democrats have finally conceded defeat in their effort to include mandatory surrender dates in a funding bill for the troops," said House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio.

Presidential candidate John Edwards spoke out about the Democratic failure to convince the President to accept timetables.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nShihF9lfA]

News Hour with Jim Lehrer took a look at the real costs of the war in Iraq and came up with a figure of about $2 trillion.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nr14ir4vlAI]

Here are the pictures of 15 soldiers who lost their lives in the war.

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