iTunes DRM... the long view

1. I have records that are 50 years old. Ideally I'd like to keep my itunes music... well forever. In 50 years does Apple really expect that the current format they are using will still be usable? Will they still be authorizing computers to check if songs were legally purchased? The whole thing is rather Rube Goldbergian.

2. Playlists are now limited to 7 burns. Sounds reasonable. But see #1. What about over the course of a lifetime. It would be much more fair if we were limited to say 7 burns a year. But that would also be rather Rube Goldbergian... How to check what year we are burning in...

3. Computers change. Formats change. Life moves on. Over the years I have copied my records to tape and then to CD and now to MP3. The important thing was that I had a good original to use for those copies. What happens when I can't play an album of AAC files on my computer because of some DRM issue and have to revert to a burned CD of those files to move the music to the next platform. AAC is already degraded... it is degraded further when it is burned... eventually the copy of the copy of the copy will sound like garbage. Not good.

What to do. Well for now I've stuck to buying CDs and records and I rip everything myself. It's old fashioned, but I think I'll be happier this way in the long run.

Note that these problems aren't Apple specific. Almost all DRMs have some version of these issues...

Earthlink SMTP from Abroad

Recently I've had problems recently sending Earthlink email via Entourage from abroad.

2 solutions

1. Use webmail. You can use Earthlink's webmail (lame service btw) or mail2web (http://www.mail2web.com) which I like because you can easily set up an account with multiple POP emails.

or

2. Set the Earthlink SMTP server to smtpauth.earthlink.net and then push the "click here for advanced sending options" and click "SMTP server requires authentication", and then Log on using Account ID = your full email address and your password = your password.

Pretty easy and awfully nice to check your email in a cafe in Florence or a beach in Belize. Surprisingly I am finding open airport networks everywhere I am going. Using a little keychain Wifi Finder helps: http://www.kensington.com/html/3720.html

Solving Airport 3.4 Issues

All around the Mac web there are reports of problems with airport after Apple's recent 3.4 update and after a recent security upgrade.

There main issues are:

-Weakened Airport Signal

-Loss of Internet Connection (but not airport signal) when connecting to multiple streams of data (like if you are downloading several things at once). The only ways to restore the internet connection are to reboot, 'sleep and wake up', or manually kill airport in the terminal and restart it there.

-SMTP issues.

I have seen the first 2 problems on a variety of machines and believe I have a fix.

1. Inside Library/Preferences in your home folder delete com.apple.systempreferences.plist and com.apple.airport.adminutility.plist.

2. Upgrade to Airport 3.4.1

3. Reboot

SMTP problems were solved by quitting Entourage, restarting with the option key held down, and rebuilding the Entourage database. On some machines the smtp settings had to be re-entered.

Sorry no fix for Mail yet.