Apple and EMI come out today with the official announcement that they are providing DRM free music via Apple’s iTunes Music Store. Not only are they going to be selling EMI’s entire catalogue of over five million songs without DRM but they are increasing the quality of the music available through the iTunes Music Store for these DRM free songs from 128kbs to 256kbs. A very significant increase. At 128kbs the quality is rather questionable but at 256kbs only the most discerning listeners can here the compression and only on better listening devices. The cost for the DRM free music will be a little higher but without DRM and with the higher quality I will be surprised if many people care to save 30¢ per song. A normal 128kbs DRM song is 99¢ and the DRM free high quality version is $1.29. For once I can give a big kudos to Apple for doing the right thing. This is an idea whose time long ago came and went and finally someone in the big commercial arena is catching on. Now if they would just licensed that music at $4.00 for podcasting and vlogging they would really have something cool on their hands.
We don’t know anything for sure yet but as of today we are fairly certain that the sale of our home in Geneseo has fallen through. We were supposed to know more long before the end of the day what the status was but no one got back to us. I think that no one involved with the actual decision making was able to speak with each other today which has caused a lot of turmoil as we begin to think that the buyers are backing out. We don’t really know anything for sure yet so it is too early to panic but it is definitely depressing being several days past the intended closing date and now have it look like all of the moving was for naught. If the house doesn’t sell this week them we will most likely not put the house onto the market again for quite some time and we will be stuck deciding what to do with the empty house.
There is still plenty of opportunity for things to still proceed with the sale and we are hopeful. But we are prepared for the “worst” and ready to accept our fate. We are praying for the Lord to watch over us as such a huge financial object swings in the breeze. We really hope that we will have an answer tomorrow so that, one way or another, we can move forward with our lives.
My day was pretty busy and I didn’t get to leave the office until after six thirty. I have a lot to do tonight so I am posting early and won’t be writing tonight. I am doing some security certification consulting and I need to spend some time dealing with that along with my usual laundry list of tasks.
I have started writing an essay series called “Do IT”. I have always wanted to write a book about the IT field as a career objective full of seasoned advice and information that I would have liked to have had when I was first entering the field. I have put a lot of time in my career into career counseling, teaching and mentoring and I think that I have a fair amount to offer. I have worked in so many varied arenas over the years in all different sized and types of companies that I think that I have a lot more perspective on the industry than a lot of people. I have seen more aspects of it than the average IT professional and I spend a lot of time thinking about the industry from an overarching perspective. So, we will see how it goes.