Long Way Round, Google Earth Style

If you haven’t heard of this excellent series, here’s the skinny (from the official website):

Setting off in London in April 2004, Ewan and Charley travelled through some of the most beautiful, and at times dangerous, terrain the world has to offer. Crossing over into mainland Europe, they rode through France, Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mongolia, Siberia, Alaska, Canada before arriving 115 days later at their final destination, New York City, USA.

Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman, taking the long way round the world from London to New York on motorcycles. The series (and the book) chronicle the journey from preparation through to completion, and is one of the most interesting shows I’ve seen recently, so much so that I bought it on DVD.

Now, being that Long Way Round was about travel, what better way to track it than with Google Earth? Finding some of the smaller stops isn’t easy though, but never fear – I’ve done it for you! Running off the DVD liner notes I’ve put together a KML file of all (barring one or two) the stops along the way, as precise as I could make them – numbering 75 in total.

Grab the latest version of Google Earth from their website, then grab the KML file and enjoy your tour!

Interoperability

Update: I can’t get this plugin to work. Typical, innit.

Handy little plugin, this. What it does is allow me to post an entry on my blog here, and it automagically reposts that entry on my Myspace account (yes, I’ve given in and joined the Myspace throng. Pity me). And here I was bitching a few hours ago about how I wished this were possible…

This got me thinking about interoperability. This, I think, is the Next Big Thing (TM) in the interweb gadget sphere. Sites that talk to each other, software that talks to sites, sites that talk to software, and the like is what I’m talking about, if the term “interoperability” is new to you. We all have a finite amount of time on this planet, and it stands to reason that we’d like to make the most of this time. Interoperability is a huge timesaving feature when implemented properly, allowing what you do in one place to be reflected elsewhere.

Savvy web developers are building APIs for their software to facilitate this interoperability. I can post here and have it appear on Myspace. I can post a link to del.icio.us and it appears on my blog (yeah, okay, this isn’t in yet, but it will be soon!). I can listen to a song in WinAMP, have its info sent off to Last.fm, and then have it appear on the recent tracks listing on my blog frontpage. I can take a photo, upload it to Flickr, and again have it appear on my blog frontpage.

While these may not sound terribly time-saving, they are, in a few different ways. It requires no interaction from me for these automated processes to take place. It also allows me to access that information from any internet-connected computer in the world, and others to access it also.

And while they may be rather trivial uses of the technology, they’re just the gateway to more sophisticated interoperability solutions. With the rise and rise of XML and other open standards, with open source growing in popularity every day, and with the internet becoming more and more ingrained in society and the workplace, it can only get better.

Actrix’s New DSL Plans

While most NZ ISPs are stuck with their 10gb/month caps, rate limiting to 64k when the cap’s exceeded, Actrix are doing something different which hopefully might push other ISPs to do the same.

It’s the same concept – once you hit the cap you’re rate limited, but instead of 10gb/month its 1gb/day on their 2mbit plan. This works out at 30gb a month or thereabouts, which is a much more realistic figure when your speed is that fast. Limiting users to 10gb a month while providing the speed to do that much transfer in a day is kinda dumb.

Ideally, we’d be in a world without data caps (or speed caps for that matter, but that’s a whole different issue), but realistically we’ll hafta deal with them due to the excessive cost of that bandwidth for the ISPs themselves. Until that comes down, I guess we’ll have to live with what we’ve got, or wait til replacement high speed data transmission systems are perfected.

10mbit to become UK DSL standard

…yet good old New Zealand is still stuck on 2mbit MAX!

ntl, the UK’s leading provider of consumer broadband services, today announced its strategy for the delivery of next generation cable broadband services. The aim is to make 10Mb its standard broadband access speed. Broadband customers will be able to choose a 10Mb service with a usage allowance to match their requirements.

What’s worse, is that they’ll upgrade their customers to 10mbit at no extra cost.

We’re really stuck in the dark ages here in New Zealand. The standard here is 256kbit really, and the fastest we can manage is 2mbit, and although the government’s digital strategy aims for most homes to be connected to the internet by 2007, their speed aim is 5Mbit. NTL in the UK however, claim their fibre network will be reaching speeds of 30mbit to 50mbit by that time.

Get with the programme, New Zealand!

CD Copy Protection and Music Lawsuits

Another effort to curb music piracy, Sony has released “over 10 titles” using a new copy protection scheme known as sterile burning. This scheme lets you make a certain amount of copies, but not copies of copies.

You’d think they’d learn, but nope. Unfortunately, companies like Sony haven’t quite grasped the concept that no matter how hard they try, they will never come up with a completely solid copy protection system. Hell, the last attempts at copy protection were broken by things as simple as a marker pen, or via software written years beforehand! Build a better mousetrap, and nature builds a better mouse, as the saying goes.

The music industry needs to change their focus if they’re gonna survive in this new age of the Internet, broadband, and instant availability of music online. Instead of trying to deal with people pirating their CDs, they should be embracing the new, highly efficient and cost-effective distribution medium that is the Internet. Yahoo! have launched their music subscription service for US$4.99 a month for unlimited legal downloads of music. This sort of direction is where it should be heading, not trying to hold onto legacy technology like the CD. All the money they’re spending developing copy protection systems for their CDs could instead be invested in creating a decent system online for providing their music to the masses. Think about it – no CD production costs, no shipping around the world costs, and instant worldwide delivery. The savings they’d make would mean extra income for them from the music, and, heaven forbid, maybe even extra money for the people that actually made the music! (Although, to be honest, I can’t see that happening unfortunately. But that’s a whole other rant).

The Yahoo! subscription service (ironically enough, “Brought to you by Sony”, as the main page claims) also changes things slightly for those lawsuits against music pirates. You could now argue that the maximum damages they could seek from someone downloading songs is US$4.99, because they couldve got all that music legally via Yahoo!’s service for that price. Whether that argument would stand up in court is beyond my legal expertise, but it is an interesting point.

But in the end, regardless of what steps the industry takes, whether it be pursuing more copy protection methods or of moving to online distribution (and copy protection via DRM and similar technologies) there will always be piracy. Because if you can listen to the music, you can record it. In the most basic sense, stick a microphone next to the speaker and pirate to your heart’s content. The only way to stop this would make the music un-listenable.

And that would be the death of music.