Life Is Rich

Nice little article on the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of Macs – with references to some really great analysis.

I’ve said it before (See Buy a Good Tinfoil Hat and Tinfoil Redux). Beware of cloud-based services, especially when owned by massive corporate behemoths devoid of any true liability. I’m sure I’ll say it many more times in the future…

Haven’t had much to blog about lately, so it was good to find this excellent article to provide fodder for discussion while also dovetailing deeply with my own life and some of my recent commentary. I no longer watch TV. I watch a few shows, which I would just as well download or watch over the Internet than through a broadcast medium at the time I desire rather than some predetermined schedule to force me to watch the news or some other tied in show. Most of my entertainment now is interactive – be it Facebook, Twitter, blogs, or online games. My favorite new “shows” are 5-10 minutes shorts on YouTube or one of the other social video sites – often made by a ragtag group of folks on a shoestring budget – and completely divorced from TV as we currently know it.

Once again, the people in-between the content and the consumers are facing extinction and are doing everything they can to stop it. They are no longer necessary – like the appendix – a vestigial artifact of a past age. The Internet has made them irrelevant. Like any cornered animal fighting for its life, its willing to do about anything to survive… be it nasty DRM or attempts to past protective and draconian legislation – usually at the expense of both the consumer and the content provider. Fortunately, these attempts generally only prolong the inevitable death and rarely disrupt it completely.