Greetings from rainy Southern California.  We're all wet out here...

According to LGF, and to Drudge, "CBS News was planning to use the missing explosives story as an election eve surprise attack on George Bush."  That's just flat out ridiculous.  Media bias?  What media bias?  

Ann Althouse agrees, posting on instapundit: "it is absolutely intolerable for a news organization to hold onto a story for the purpose of breaking it so close to an election as to prevent a fair investigation and response."  I think this is what is going unreported.

I got a look of positive feedback on the twistable turnable man.  Thank you!

Here's a great article on Digital Rights Management by Jerry Pournelle, in Dr. Dobb's.  Jerry's take is that the technology will be found to make DRM work, and it will be a good thing.  As an author, naturally he's concerned: "On the other hand, if no one buys books because they can get them free on the Internet, that's going to change the way I make a living."  (This article was password-protected, but since it wasn't DRMed I copied it :) 

paidcontent.org reports Akimbo launches; a DRMed video-on-demand over the 'net service.  They have a deal with Amazon for distribution.  As Marc Cantor notes, "The VOD and Interactive TV scene has been awash in confusion, flack BS, and failed dreams for over 10 years now.  Perhaps this VC funded play will work.  We'll see."  So I actually think it won't work, because of DRM.  We'll see. 

Tim Oren on DRM as a business diagnostic: "...these systems do absolutely nothing for end users...  It's a shortsighted plan, aimed at holding on to an obsolete business model."  He's talking about restrictive DRM, aka copy protection.  He does like permissive DRM, which is more of an auditing technology. 

Have you seen RadioShark?  A kind of Tivo for your radio.  According to idealog's review, it is pretty darn cool.  The downside vs. Tivo is that there isn't any schedule information available; you have to know what you want (or at least, what channel/station you want) ahead of time.  They seem to have nice integration with iTunes... 

I remember talking to my daughter Jordan about her desire for such a thing about two years ago.  She'd get home, and complain that "all the good songs were on while I was at school".  We thought about building such a thing as a PC software application - there are a lot of online radio stations - but it never left the idea stage...

Speaking of DRM and iTunes, Apple announced the iPod photo.  A color-screen iPod which can store images as well as music.  Naturally that leads you to wonder, when will they store video? 

According to this C|Net article, not soon.  "At Tuesday's unveiling of the iPod Photo, Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs once again repeated his contention that the iPod is the 'wrong place' for video."  Deception or truth? 

Meanwhile ESPN testing video for handhelds.  Apparently they don't think it is the wrong place for video, but then again it is a test. 

The electron luv tube amp.  Wow, just wow.  I'm sure they sound wonderful, too, but it doesn't really matter.  Electronics as sculpture!  [ via Cory Doctorow ] 

Joel Spoksky has a new post on software pricing, which means you have to read it.  Go on.