But under any of these regimes, the music industry has very little control. But they don't have much of a choice either, since users aren't going to sign up for five or six different services to get the music they want. Since the iPod has more than 70% of the market share, there's almost no way around going that route.

Unless the labels start selling MP3s. Every digital music player will play MP3s. Once you go this route, you can sell the music yourself, and your customers don't have to worry about whether your service is compatible with their players. Buying direct from the label would ensure correct metadata, consistent quality, and universal availability that the pirate networks can't match.

Piracy is going to happen no matter what. That's a matter of enforcement; there's no way to DRM your way out of that. Simultaneously, I think YouTube has shown more clearly than ever that putting up with some level of "infringement" can actually be very very good for your product. In the end, DRM-less media can open up a whole new world of freedom for artists, labels, and consumers alike. Instead of wasting our time and energy on valueless roadblocks, we should be opening the doors to see what the future can do for us.

The information he receives is undoubtedly skewed by his small circle of [...] advisers, coloring his actions and interpretation of reality. His intentions seem good when he talks with Americans, [...] But the reality on the streets of Baghdad suggests [he] is either ignorant of what is going on, misrepresenting his intentions, or that his capabilities are not yet sufficient to turn his good intentions into action.

Jim tackles one of my personal long-time favorite hobbyhorses today in discussing the problem of bringing good, low cost grocery shopping to poor urban neighborhoods. Turns out that both government and major grocery chains are too inflexible and bureaucratic to deal effectively with the complexities of integrating into older, denser neighborhoods. Too often in situations like these, the government's power of eminent domain is abused to force landowners to sell against their will to a developer too lazy to do the hard work of assembling a large plot of land or creatively designing developments around problem properties. The existing smaller stores can't compete on price with the big chain so why would anyone argue that the neighborhood is better off without the use of the government's power to force the turnover of land at favorable prices to the chain? Well, as Jim points out better than I could, if you're going to subsidize someone, why not the people who are already serving the neighborhood?

I wondered how much story I had missed (not that continuity between games is important in any way), so I checked out the Wikipedia entries for Ocarina and Wind Waker and well, wow. It turns out I never really made it past the introductory quest-for-these-three Xs that you have to pass before the game sets you off on the real find-these-seven other-Xs. In other words, I doubt I played more than 15% of either game.

Thinking back, I never played much more of Metroid Prime 2 or Super Mario Sunshine, and I got further but never finished the original Metroid Prime. Is the last big Nintendo game I completed really Super Mario 64?

Anyway, I don't know if I expect to play through this latest Zelda or not, but score one for games that don't require such time commitment. The Wii's surfeit of minigame-loaded titles is looking awfully nice these days.