Day: September 24, 2000

Is Iomega Serious?

PCWorld reports that Iomega is now shipping an MP3 player that uses its Clik! disks which it’s apparently now renamed the PocketZip.

Whatever they call it, the darn thing is only 40 megabytes. At $300 for the player and $10 per disk, I can’t imagine there’s any market at all for this player. Sure the cost-per-megabyte is only 25 cents, but a) these disks have a horrible reputation as being flakey and prone to problem as it is, much less if you’re going to take them jogging and b) who wants to switch disks after every 40 megabytes of MP3s?

If it had two disk ports and the quality was much better, then it might be more interesting, but it’s this sort of 2-3 years behind the times thinking that has practically ruined Iomega.

Plus, this player also integrates some of the stupid new security measures, and the morons at PCWorld don’t even think about what they’re writing.

One of those measures allows PocketZip disks to be shared among different players but prevents you from copying music tracks from someone else’s PocketZip storage disk onto your computer’s hard drive.

Of course it also prevents me from copying my music onto my hard drive, if I happen to have more than one hard drive. Suppose you’ve got some songs on this player, and your HD gets fried, and you run to Best Buy and replace it. Don’t even think about copying that music onto the new hard drive — the player interprets that as a piracy attempt.

Carl Rowan Dead at 75

It was fascinating to watch the media coverage of Carl Rowan’s death. Right up to his death, Rowan was one of the nation’s most prominent journalists and a pioneer who broke racial barriers down in the new business.

On the other hand, many of the reports I saw were using footage of Rowan outside of a courthouse with lots of people, including fellow journalists, following him. None of the reports I saw, however, identified where this footage was from.

Given the courthouse and the reporters following him, this footage is almost certainly related to events following Rowan’s shooting several years ago of a man who was intent on breaking into Rowan’s home. The only problem being that Rowan was an ardent opponent of private gun ownership who repeatedly wrote columns maintaining that the Second Amendment does not give individuals the right to own guns (Rowan was one of a large number of celebrities who oppose guns but own them or hire body guards to own them — it’s only we uncouth rabble who don’t deserve to protect our homes and persons).

Ironically, although he worked with the Freedom Forum, Rowan was also more than willing to join in the anti-free speech forces who equate some speech with violence. After the horrible bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma, Rowan wrote that “I am absolutely certain that the harsh rhetoric of the Gingriches and Doles … creates a climate of violence in America.”

Although, of course, you’d never find Rowan or other liberal columnists wondering whether something like the U.S. bombing of television and radio stations in Yugoslavia might create an atmosphere where terrorists feel justified in indiscriminately bombing civilians.