Say for example, I have a page and on that page is a button that loads a modal window (you get a pop-up box and the rest of the screen greys out). The content of the modal window is new (ajax loaded from the server) and it has a button to (for example) save, exit, OK, etc. I would use .live() in that scenario so that the jQuery action associated with the newly formed button would run.

Well, I needed that bit of functionality yesterday and went to pull up the documentation to refresh my memory on it’s usage. And lo and behold it’s been deprecated! Not only is there a newer function (as of 1.4.3+) to use instead ( .delegate() ), but there’s a newer update (as of 1.7+) to *that* which is called .on(). Damn it. Sometimes this stuff moves just too fast.

Anyway, I read up on it a little (not much to read out there) and I tried to implement it. I got caught up on a snag and figured I’d mention to see if I am the only dunce, or if I found something moderately intriguing. I figure the former, but hope for the latter.

Here is a sample of the code I was trying to run:

<div class='linkholder'>
     <a href='somepage.php' class='jquerydosomething' id='12345'>click me</a>
</div>

My jquery code looked like this:

function dosomething (event) {
      alert('ID is '+event.data.id);
      alert('Action is '+event.data.action);
}
$('a.jquerydosomething').on("click", { id: $(this).id, action: makewidget }, dosomething);

Simple right? Wrong. The variable “action” which I had manually typed in got passed along to the dosomething function nicely and worked as expected. However the id, which I wanted to pass along dynamically, did not work as expected. I was assuming (incorrectly) that “this” would refer to the anchor tag. I tried:

• using $this.id and this.id instead
• placing the calls to $(this) or $this or this inside the dosomething function instead of passing it as a variable

all trying to get to the reference to the anchor. I don’t know exactly what was passed, but debugging through Firebug showed a lot of gibberish that looked like the entire DOM of the page.

So how did I fix it?

Well I changed the line with .on() to the following and moved the calls to “this” inside my dosomething function in the form of this.id:

$('.linkholder').on("click", ".jquerydosomething", { id: $(this).id, action: makewidget }, dosomething);

So if I were to make an educated guess about what’s going on here… and really I would say it’s more just a “guess” period. It seems as though the .on() function has a reference to all the objects on the left of the dot as “this” (in this case, it would be all references to anything with a class of “.linkholder”). UNLESS you have a selector specified in the set of parameters (.jquerydosomething in this case) which it will then return the the object(s?) with matching selectors that have the triggered event (“click” in this case).

I suppose my question would be aren’t those two rather redundant? I would imagine the way I wrote it the first time it would only return the object that matched the selector (“a.jquerydosomething”) that had the triggered event. I suppose I could just write $.on(“click”, “.jquerydosomething”, dosomething) but I wonder if having the initial selector (.linkholder in this case, but I could just as easily use the “a” tag… maybe) gives a performance boost since the internal selector doesn’t have to scour the entire DOM looking for a match.

If anyone has any insight on what I may be missing, or indeed, the proper terminology when referencing the selectors (inside function vs outside/left of the dot) I’d greatly appreciate it. While I’ve got it working the way I want, improvement is always welcome.

The demo (available HERE) doesn’t last too long, and there is no saving your progress. So you’ve pretty much got to run straight through it. It starts with Shepard on Earth and the council calls for him when they get wind of the Reapers coming to Earth… now.

Mass Effect 3 launches on March 6, 2012. Demo available for PC, Xbox, and PS3. Screenshot courtesy of Bioware @ masseffect.com

Youtube link for mobile, Download original MP4

Youtube link for mobile, Download original MP4

I haven’t even finished ME2 yet, so I don’t know the meaning of the awkward glances between Ashley and Shepard. If you play as the female Shepard, you still get the same looks.

Youtube link for mobile, Download original MP4

The “ish” has hit the proverbial fan. A little conversation leads up to the Reapers landing and demolishing everything in sight. Your job in the first part of the demo (and presumably the full game when it drops) is to reach the Normandy and get off planet to go get help.

Youtube link for mobile, Download original MP4

Youtube link for mobile, Download original MP4

A look at the melee attack, both in a charged version (blade comes out) and just thumping the husks on the head with you pistol. Then a little in-game cinematic.

Youtube link for mobile, Download original MP4

I believe the destruction of the dreadnaught is caused by your forward progress. I think the first time I ran through this I watched the two of them battle it out for a minute before moving on. I’m not sure how long they’d slug it out if you stood just before the trigger point indefinitely. Making a mental note to try that….

Youtube link for mobile, Download original MP4

The second part of the demo puts you further into the game on a mission to go get Wrex laid, er, find him a Krogan female so they can… talk? The Krogram female, for some reason, is in a force-fielded container that they have to escort up several levels to the roof so Wrex can pick her up.

Youtube link for mobile, Download original MP4

Youtube link for mobile, Download original MP4

There’s more to be seen, but this is all I captured. There are full walkthroughs available on Youtube, check those out if you want to see the whole demo without actually playing it. I would, however, highly recommend you take the time to download it.

A few notes. As usual for this franchise, most cut-scenes are done using the in-game graphics engine. So if you’ve never seen a Mass Effect game before, those scenes are not pre-rendered movies. Nope they are actually what the game looks like *all* the time. The demo understandably doesn’t have many options to tweak for the PC in terms of graphics performance. Basically you can set your resolution and turn on/off shadows and anti-aliasing. Having said that… the game looks gorgeous. The attached videos I captured using FRAPS at 60fps using my monitors native resolution of 1680×1050 (60fps seems to be locked for the game).

Gameplay seems very solid. I didn’t like the new semi-automatic assault rifle in the second part of the demo, I’d prefer a full auto. I did, however LOVE the shotgun. Absolutely brutal at close range and fairly effective at distance.

If you have a save game already on your machine the demo will pick it up and use that as your default player if you choose the “action” option when starting. This option doesn’t give you any dialog choices. The “role playing” mode is the normal ME mode, and there is a “story” mode which says it has even more dialog and less shooting up (why would you want that?). This is an interesting option if they choose to keep it for the final game.

A pre-final note. I wasn’t too happy about having to install Origin to get this demo. ME3 will be the only game I ever use Origin for, and it’s only because I want to see the series through till the end. I made an image of my machine that will get restored the instant I finish playing. I only wish that game developers and publishers would stop making it hard on honest folk who will shell out cash for their game and don’t want intrusive, borderline spyware on their machines in order to play.

Final Note: The video captures were made on my main desktop with the following specs:

• CPU: Core i7 2600k – stock speeds
• RAM: 16 GB DDR3
• Primary HDD: Corsair Performance 3 128GB SSD
• GPU: ATI 6850 1GB

The budget explained in simple English, compared to a household budget.

The budget explained in simple English

To start the year, we began prepping to sell our condo in Falls Church. The place was pretty old so we spent quite a lot of sweat, tears, and dollars patching it, cleaning it, and hiding stuff. The stress was from getting the fixes done right, cheaply, and timely. And the constant “cleaning” to get the place ready to show and then keeping it that way.

Then the realtor we hired, who up until that point had done a very good job for others we know, decided to forget how spell-check a listing and put in the wrong price for sale. So we dumped her and started all over.

Tigger aka "Grumpy" a fixture in the house for over 18 years will be sorely missed

Then our old cat got a tumor on his face. It was a fast growing inoperable type of cancer. He was only with us for another few months and passed away in the spring after 18 years of keeping my better half company. He was only about 8lbs, but left a huge hole in our hearts as his constant presence ruled the household over the other two cats (10lbs and 20lbs) and the dog (80lbs).

Then our young cat got a tumor on her foot. Coming on the heels of the death of our old cat, my old lady took this very hard. Fortunately, it was operable. The vet said it will probably come back in a few years (due to the type of cancer), as long as you can catch it early you can remove it.

Then came the second attempt to sell our house. The new realtor was a friend of mine. We took the risk that thinks might end up weird if it goes haywire (it did) on the hopes that this person would pay a little more attention than the previous realtor. We got an offer, it wasn’t what we wanted, but if we wanted to move this year at all and take advantage of the *lowlowlow* interest rates in buying we had to take it. During inspection, the inspector found a LOT of items that needed to be fixed. So onward with negotiations, haggling, arguing over what gets fixed and by whom for how much. At the end of it all, you couldn’t help but feel a little “abused”.

Then stress in buying a house. Every house we looked at that was in good condition, in a decent neighborhood, at a decent price was a bidding war. We lost several. We saw a ton of houses that needed just way too much work.

Then dealing with the mortgage lender. Everything was great up until right at closing. Then they needed more docs, I’d scramble to provide, they’d be on schedule, then OOPS I need more docs. Closing was delayed by several days, added stress/pressure as we had a definite date we needed to move out, and we wanted some renovations done at the new place in a now rapidly closing window. At the day of closing we were surprised with an “oops I forgot to move that decimal over” which resulted in about 5k more than we were expecting to pay at closing.

Then dealing with the title company. Misspellings everywhere. Signing the docs took forever as we had to initial changes all over the place. They cashed security checks they weren’t supposed to, they goofed up some titling fees that had to be refunded, they sent checks to the wrong places.

Just one example of fine craftsmanship performed by an idiot contractor

Then came THE JACKASS LYING FRAUD CONTRACTOR FROM HELL. I’ll keep this short since I will probably write a more detailed post later. This loser looked us in the face and said the renovations would be done in about 5-6 days with multiple different crews working on different aspects of the project. We were getting 2 bathrooms remodeled, deck painted, french door to the deck installed, some carpets, some painting. Along the way he took cheap shortcuts, botched some things, dragged in guys off the street, made a mess, and took FOREVER in doing so. Because of the renovations, we couldn’t use about half the house for most of the MONTH he was here. Then we spent about another month fixing all the stuff he broke, did poorly, or flat out didn’t do.

Teenager: "Did I do that?"

Then the teenager decided she would not follow any of the sound advice we’ve given her about driving and did some combination of a) not paying attention, b) followed another car too closely, c) braked late, d) drove too fast. She rear-ended another hapless teenager and crushed the front 1/4 of her car.

Then we decided to have the new house re-inspected since we’ve come to find several small things the original home inspector missed and needed to make sure there wasn’t anything truly grave waiting for us around the corner. Turns out indeed he missed more items so we have to shell out even more coin to fix these things since we can’t get the original seller to fix now that closing is long gone.

He's not acutally that happy to have the cone on

Then the dog completely tore his Cranial Cruciate Ligament (CCL) while chasing a ball in the backyard. He had to have a surgery called the “tightrope” to put a string of nylon through the bones in his leg to hold them together.

Then on the way to surgery for the dog we were rear-ended. We were the 3rd car in a 4 car pileup caused by an uninsured motorist with suspended and revoked MD license and a suspended VA license who took his mom’s car (Infiniti G35) without permission and decided to ram into the back of a Mercedes SUV at 50mph, pushing it into my 2010 Mazda, which in turn pushed into a 2011 Honda CRV.

And that, my friends, is how I closed out the hopefully forgettable 2011.

I find it ironic now that Facebook, who at every turn opts you into anything public without consulting you first, is trying to portray Google as improperly using and broadcasting your personal data.

As I understand it, Google is scraping publicly accessible data from social networks (Facebook, Twitter, etc). The key is in “publicly” accessible data. Data anyone can get anyway. They aren’t getting private content and then making it public (as Facebook likes to do). It’s already public.

Facebook decided they would try to do the underhanded thing by hiring a really shady PR firm to try and create an alarmist story about this without announcing their relationship. They assumed the media would jump on the sensationalist aspect of the story (instant headlines like Apple’s recent location bruhaha), but surprisingly… they didn’t. When the lie came to light, the shady PR firm then threw Facebook under the bus (karma). Shame on all of those involved with this. Zuckerburg, Facebook, the PR firm, and anybody else who knew. Kudos to the journalists who saw this for what it was and blew the whistle.

Further reading:

• Facebook admits hiring PR firm to smear Google – via Engadget
• Facebook, You’re Going To Need A Better Answer For Your Slimeball Stunt – TechCrunch (MG Seigler)
• Facebook Seeks to Downplay Campaign Against Google – NY Times

Transformers 3: Dark of the Moon

Destruction, Terror, and Mayhem. Transformers 3 Images via apple.com

New trailer out today. And boy does it look good. Before watching the trailer, get a little taste of the clips hitfix was shown a few days ago. Visit the photo gallery over at Apple.com.  3D? meh. But I will see this in IMAX, and if the IMAX happens to be in 3D then so be it.

Ahem. Some lines from the trailer…

“Our entire spacerace of the 1960s was in response to an event.”
“You’ve lied to us. You’ve made a grave mistake.”
“From here, the fight will be your own.”

While the second movie (appropriately, “number 2″) was a bit of a miss the one thing that was truly EPIC in that film was the robot vs robot battles. And it sure looks like there will be plenty of that in this movie.

See the X-Men and Harry Potter after the jump…

X-Men: First Class

Ain’t it Cool News has an interesting take on not just this trailer, but the entire upcoming Bryan Singer franchise, assuming they get made of course. Quote from AICN is below, emphasis mine…

Now – Singer has said he wants the next film to take place in the 70′s. Then the next to take place in the 80′s.

What if…  just what if…   they’re creating a full fledged mutant film history.   Re-writing the way things go.   It is with this opportunity that you can actually build the larger fantasy universe of the Mutant story.   Does Nixon unleash the Sentinels?   Or will it be Ford or Carter?   Or will they save that for Reagan, who I absolutely could imagine building giant mutant hunting robots…  he did found our real STAR WARS initiative after all.

This film opens up the possibility of reforging the world we live in and with a series of films – realizing what we’ve kind of always wanted to see – which is that alternate timeline of history where mutants are a part of the equation.

Keep that in mind as you watch the trailer and the movie seems just a *little* more interesting…

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2

I didn’t see part 1 yet (and all the previous ones seems to blur together for me anyway), but this looks like quite a doozy. Lots of ‘splosions and I guess some people kick the bucket in this?

Immortals

I have no idea where the premise of this movie comes from. I’ve heard comics/graphic novels, not sure if anyone can confirm. Regardless, it’s a 300-looking greek-ish piece with gods, former gods, battles, and one really kick-ass bow. It looks like it’s worth at least a Netflix when it comes out.

And some post-game comments:

I don’t hate NY Red Bull anymore [I think I just threw up a little].

The New York Red Bulls were not only a mediocre (and often awful) team for many years, but also arrogant and pompous and whiny and didn’t know how bad they really were. They cheated (Bob), they dove, they hacked, they complained about being hacked and that others dove, they tried (and failed) to buy good teams and good coaches. There fans we equally as delusional, obnoxious, and annoying. They were the type of team I could thoroughly enjoy their (frequent) misfortune and relish the (also frequent) victories of DC United over this moronic group of individuals.

But things seem different now…

I noticed almost immediately during the game last night that this was NOT the same team. I mean, it’s a different team every year, but this team is *really* different. It’s not just confidence or pride or anything tangible or quantifiable you could put your hands on. As a former player, you just know when your opponent is a p*&$y and you can just stomp them into the ground. NYRB has had that look tattooed on their forehead for many years now. But not last night. I knew we were in for a battle and I hoped the boys in Black were up to the task.

Well. Some of them were. Some of them weren’t. It wasn’t that they were mentally “not in it”, it was just that some of these guys just aren’t good enough to play at that level.

Marc Burch in particular had a really bad night. He’s not that great of a defender (pretty bad actually), but usually he can add at least a little something to the offense. Last night he wasn’t attacking and he certainly wasn’t defending. By my reckoning 3 out of the 4 goals had him at least partially responsible. I feel a little bad saying that as I think Burch is one of those guys who leaves it all on the field and even stepped up into a leadership role at times over the last few years when others were doing impersonations of lawn chairs.

I thought overall the match was fairly even, with an edge (although not 4 goals worth) to NYRB who was just a little quicker to the ball and a little smarter once they had it. But when United tripped up, they really tripped up. And all credit to NYRB [gag again] for finishing their chances when they got them. As opposed to United who could have scored maybe 3 goals in the final minutes but seemed to find new and creative ways to miss the net.

This one stings a little bit, but you have to move on to the next one. Next league match is against the Dynamo April 29th.

Here’s what others are saying:

• RECAP: DC 0, NY 4 - dcunited.com
• Post-match quotes: D.C. United 0 – New York Red Bulls 4 – dcunited.com
• United not ready for Prime Time as they get hammered 4-0 in loss to rival Red Bull – unitedmania.com
• United vs. Red Bulls: D.C. routed by talented New York side – washingtonpost.com
• SBI Stoppage Time: Red Bulls 4, United 0 – soccerbyives.net

Rise of the Planet of the Apes Concept Art via facebook.com/apeswillrise

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Did ya’ll catch the Facebook webcast about Rise of the Planet of the Apes? If not, you should. Go check it out here. Great interviews with Andy Serkis and others from WETA Digital (the folks behind the SFX in the Lord of the Rings trilogy among others) and a little bit of a peek behind the scenes. Make sure to also check out the concept art gallery which is always one of my favorite parts of these types of movies.

You can go view the trailer at Apple.com/trailers or download the 720p version. The trailer shows that we were the ones who started the rise of the apes. Just like in most other “oops, we caused our own demise” plots we were trying to create a cure for something and it went horribly and unexpectedly wrong. What I’m curious to see the explanation of is how the apes bred so quickly. In one scene it is just one ape (Ceasar?) who becomes intelligent, then there are a few dozen escaping the lab (how many could there be?), then all of a sudden they are rampaging down the streets. It seems to me that at least early on, we should have the edge in firepower and sheer numbers.

Cowboys and Aliens

Everything I’ve heard so far about this film, mainly from AICN, is that this film is primarily a western rather than a sci-fi flick. The analogy is that the aliens take the place of indians in old-school westerns when they come into town and kidnap folk. Then it’s up to the heroes to track and find their loved ones. I’ve always been a big fan of Harrison Ford, and Daniel Craig is getting up there are as well. I wasn’t really a big fan of Olivia Wilde on House, but I really liked her role in TRON: Legacy as a lighter, funner, smilier character so I’m curious to see which way she goes in this film.

Scope the trailer from Youtube (link for mobile):

Doctor Who

Via AICN, two trailers for the upcoming season of Doctor Who. I really like the combo of this Doctor and Amy. They are right up there with the David Tenant Doctor and Rose. The second trailer hints at some really dark stuff happening. One of the great things I like about this show is they aren’t afraid to explore both ends of the spectrum of hope.

Priest

This movie looks pretty intriguing as well (although I’m not likely to see it). In a far future where it looks like “vampires” have ruined the world and humanity is confined to fortress cities a conspiracy is afoot. The Priests are charged with defending humanity, but there have been no sightings of vampires in a long time so they are deemed unnecessary. But wait! It seems there *are* vampires about…. (WHY does this need to be in 3D????)

This is trailer 4 which is more action packed (link for mobile)

And the original trailer which gives more of the backstory (link for mobile)

Cover art by Michael Whelan glassonion.com for "The White Dragon" by Anne McCaffery

Growing up, this was one of my favorite series and I had (they are now lost) many pencil drawings based on Michael Whelan’s dragon depictions on McCaffery’s covers. McCaffery built a HUGE epic across over 20 books and covering thousands of years and generations.

If you’re not familiar with the series, the story revolves around a planet (Pern) that every few hundred years comes across the path of a comet tail that has some weird life-form in it that upon entering the atmosphere rains down like threads and devours anything it touches. The thread dies shortly after landfall of starvation (because it eats everything), or drowns in water, or is burned in midair (hence the dragons).

The origin of the story is a human colony ship arrives on this great planet, wondering why there is no large growth and no large land animals. But it does have these really neat little lizards that breathe fire and can teleport. Shortly after arrival and settlement the thread falls, causing much mayhem. They quickly burn through their non-replenishable hi-tech supplies (batteries, metals, plastics, etc) fighting the thread and turn to the little fire-lizards for help by genetically altering them to be “bigger”. Over time they lose all recollection of their origin from Earth until they discover some artifacts many thousands of years later.

You can see why this is a plot that would make a great movie story with lots of sequels (see Lord of the Rings), but also it is incredibly hard to do. For goodness sakes, there are DRAGONS everywhere.

From Deadline via Ain’t it Cool News

Store your files with us, what could possibly go wrong?

As most of you know, Amazon launched a music streaming service about two weeks ago. A combination of Cloud Drive to store your music and the Cloud Player to play those stored songs. Amazon lets you keep up to 5GB for free with paid options available all the way up to 1TB (not free). This stirred up a lot of tech commentary since they beat both Apple and Google who have been in “talks” with the music industry for what seems like forever over licensing agreements.

How did they manage to scoop both Apple AND Google?

Simple. They just didn’t ask. Kind of like it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. Yeah, kinda like that. Only it’s different in that Amazon’s position is that they don’t need permission anyway. And I agree with that.

CNet’s Greg Sandoval writes: (emphasis mine)

In an interview with The New York Times on Monday, Amazon took a more defiant tone, at least with regard to music. “We don’t need a license to store music,” Craig Pape, director of music at Amazon, was quoted in the Times as saying. “The functionality is the same as an external hard drive.”

I think it’s important to note at this point how this service is different from most other “streaming” services out there right now. You have a couple of broad categories they fall into: “Radio-like” streaming, “leased” streaming, and “owned” streaming. Note that I just made up these terms, feel free to use them or make up your own terms for this stuff.

First, radio-like streaming

A prime example is Pandora [and I'm also going to lump broadcast radio in here just because, to me anyway, radio is just streaming over a different medium]. These guys take “their” music and send it to you. You have no (or not much) control over what gets played and when and how often. It’s also essentially free for the listener since you don’t pay any money out of pocket although you are subject to plenty of advertising. These guys pay some fee every time they play one of “their” songs that somebody else (you) listens to. These guys make money via advertising, and the music industry makes their money via the fee.

Leased streaming

I don’t know what to call this… rented, leased, borrowed, temporarily owned… Let’s stick with leased for now. Examples include Napster & Rhapsody who have been around forever as well as newcomers like Rdio and Spotify. These guys take “their” music and send it to you. You have complete control over what you want to hear and when and how often. It’s kinda like you own the music…. only you lose access to it once you stop paying them. I rather like this system as I pay a flat fee and get all you can eat music. These guys also pay some fee every time they play one of “their” songs that somebody else (you) listens to. These guys make their money usually by a subscription fee (Spotify has a free ad-based as well as subscription model), and again the music industry makes their money via the fee.

Owned streaming

Again, I struggle with a name for this. It’s music that you own whether you bought the CD 10 years ago or just downloaded the MP3 from a store like iTunes, Amazon, eMusic, Napster, Rhapsody, etc. The point being that it is “your” music (definition of “yours” is hazy according to music industry…). There are several programs such as AudioGalaxy and Subsonic (which I use) which install some software on your computer that let’s you stream your music *from your computer* to wherever you happen to be. For free. The only catch is you need the computer that holds you music to be on all the time and it has to be accessible to the internet past any annoying firewalls that may (or may not) be in the way. The costs involved are for the actual music, your storage (buying ever bigger hard drives), and your bandwidth (your ISP may or may not have caps and charge you). You, as the provider of this service, don’t make any money from this endeavor and probably just end up spending more money on top of whatever you initially spent for the music itself. The music industry makes money on the original music they sold you.

A couple of companies have cropped up recently in Mougg and mSpot along with the (in)famous MP3Tunes (I’m sure there are others) to take some of the hassle (if any) in streaming your own music to yourself. All of these companies let you upload your music to their cloud storage, and then play them back from wherever you want. They all give you a certain amount of storage for free, and then charge you a monthly or yearly fee for anything beyond that. Sound familiar? You betcha. The perk for you is you don’t need to leave your computer all the time, nor deal with any (possible) firewall conflicts. You also gain some redundancy (i.e. backup) in case your hard drive dies you don’t lose all your music. Put simply… it just works. The company makes money by charging you a monthly fee and the music industry STILL makes money on the original music they sold you.

Now, as far as I know, with the exception of MP3Tunes (that’s a whole ‘nother story) none of the guys in the Owned Streaming category have ever been sued, nor do they pay any licensing fees. Why? (again I’m not a lawyer) Because it is music YOU own and are playing back to YOURSELF.

Where does the Music Industry stand?

The industry loves to use the word “license”. They like to never admit they’ve actually “sold” you something, only that they have granted you a license for you to use for a fee and under certain restrictions. Something along the lines of (paraphrasing here) “We grant you permission to use this music as long as you don’t make any money off of it without paying us and you don’t share it over the internet, mmkay?” You probably didn’t know that because you never read the Terms of Service (TOS) or Terms of Use (TOU) on a CD box or all that fine print when you download your music (MP3/AAC). What it means is that the music industry is OK with it if you buy an album and listen to it. If you buy it and give it to your buddies, it’s not OK. If you buy it and play it for your buddies that you charged money to hear you play it (think radio) that’s not OK.

As far as I know the TOS/TOU don’t say you can’t use storage that isn’t directly attached to your machine (besides, then you’d have to define “attached” because it’s really just a long-ass cable from you to Amazon’s storage). The only thing the industry has to say is “Well, we didn’t say you *could* store it there, let’s negotiate some licensing terms”.

MG Siegler of TechCrunch says:

But the fundamental issue here remains: should storage in the cloud that you pay for really be different from your local hard drive? Think about that for a second. It’s actually pretty ridiculous that people think it should be different.

Currently, if you buy a song on iTunes or Amazon or elsewhere, you’re free to play that song as often as you wish on your machine. You’re also free to burn it onto a CD or transfer it to an MP3 player. I’m just not sure how moving it to the cloud is any different.

I’m guessing (again I’m not a lawyer) they don’t want these types of cases to go to a trial that they would either not win or not win clearly enough and potentially have a judge set a clarification/limit to their TOS/TOU that wouldn’t benefit them in the long run. Right now the whole licensing issue from streaming music is a really big vague mess that the music industry exploits by just saying “Where is my fee?”. That’s why these so-called negotiations among groups like Spotify, Apple, Google, etc take YEARS to come to a conclusion. What they don’t want (again I’m not a lawyer) is a clarification on when/where/how/why they actually CAN charge these streaming licensing fees… because then a dozen startups will rush the gates to exploit those newfound loopholes. We’ve already seen several (see above) that have gone through un-sued.

I think Amazon knew exactly what they were doing when they put this service out. They have lawyers too, and they knew where they could draw the line in the sand that the music industry could not cross.

Iron Mike Tyson via brobible.com

What happens next is going to be really interesting

Get the popcorn. Pull up a chair. Sit back and watch the fireworks. Both Apple and Google are watching these two stand toe to toe and see who blinks first. If the music industry backs down, then JUST WATCH as Apple and Google do the same thing with their streaming service. Why should they pay if Amazon doesn’t have to? It’s only storage right?

That’s not to say that the music industry isn’t holding a doomsday device behind their back. They could go scorched-Earth style and tell Amazon they can’t sell their music anymore and only sell to those who would pay them fees for streaming (here is where Apple & Google are waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces). It’s possible Amazon doesn’t care because by that point they will have a boatload of people locked in streaming their own music (bought from Apple & Google) off of their servers. Maybe this is the sticking point for “negotiations”.

But I’ll tell you who the real winner is. For once, maybe – just maybe, it is the consumer (us).

Further reading (from people much smarter than me):

• Amazon’s Cloud Service Is A) Legal B) Illegal? C) Probably Here To Stay by Peter Kafka
• Amazon’s cloud risks war with labels, studios by Greg Sandoval
• Founders Of MP3.com, mSpot On Amazon’s Music Locker: All Eyes On The Labels by Robin Wauters
• The Cloud Will Be Your Hard Drive, Despite The Record Labels’ Greed by MG Siegler