Ammo in LA - Fantastic Fare and Great Service.

 I ate at AMMO today for lunch and enjoyed it quite a bit.  I'd recommend it for any of you in LA looking for a nice place with great fare.  My CitySearch review:

Simply put: fantastic fare and experience at AMMO. I found the staff quick and helpful at lunch, and the food was very tasty. The lemonade is a must, no doubt. My starter salad fit the climate: fresh and light. Even though my Ahi was slightly overcooked, it was still amazing. The flavors worked well together without excessive competition. I would highly recommend AMMO - at least for lunch - to those who want a fantastic meal in an otherwise bleak LA culinary lunch landscape.

• Pros: Great food and service, cool atmosphere, wide and deep menu
• Cons: Parking (meters only?), Right on major street (Highland)

Halo 3 and Xbox 360 Pro System: I want them now!

So tonight I was lucky enough to receive my Halo 3 Beta invite. Yes, that's right - you can all eat your heart out.

I played Halo 2 for almost an hour at E3 six months before it was released. Then in November 2004 (on release night) I proceeded to play Halo 2 for 3 days straight with a fellow group of asshats. We've amassed a collection of projectors, 8' portable screens, LCD monitors, and all the gear to connect it so that we can shove 12 guys in a room and play for hours (if not days) straight. We call ourselves 'Killtacular Whores'. Fortunately Bungie has allowed my fun nerdiness to continue.

But in tonight's invite I was furious to learn that it requires an "Xbox 360 Pro console or an Xbox 360 Core console with hard drive". I own neither, I own an Xbox 360 Premium console (and it'll be one that works as soon as Best Buy honors my PRP and takes back my 2005 manufacture date, red-light-ring goodness).

I was even lucky enough to attend Zero Hour out in the middle of the Mojave Desert last year (and have the face plate to prove it). Thanks Microsoft, I feel one degree closer to Major Nelson.

Technorati tags: Halo 3, Bungie, Xbox 360

The P2P effect on legal music sales "not statistically distinguishable from zero"

A new study in the Journal of Political Economy has found that illegal music downloads have had no noticeable effects on the sale of music, contrary to the claims of the recording industry.

Using detailed records of transfers of digital music files, we find that file sharing has had no statistically significant effect on purchases of the average album in our sample.  Even our most negative point estimate implies that a one-standard-deviation increase in file sharing reduces an album's weekly sales by a mere 368 copies, an effect that is too small to be statistically distinguishable from zero.

Between studies like this, Jobs' recent letter about the 1,200 lb pink gorillaphant, and Tower Records demise, I believe we'll see the rate of pure digital adoption increase dramatically over the coming months.

As always, thanks to Ars for bringing this to my attention.

Technorati tags: music, P2P, digital distribution

Amazon confirms it owns originality - all of it.

Since they already patented cookies, why not patent scanning?  Seems logical to me.  Let's play a game, it's called "Name Something That Apple or Amazon Didn't Invent..."  You go first.

Amazon was granted a patent on Tuesday by the USPTO that covers a technique for allowing users "to request access to one or more electronic images of pages in a physical text." If you think this sounds like Amazon Upgrade, you're right—and it could have ramifications for the Google Book Search project.

Patent 7,174,054 was submitted back in December 2003...

The Amazon system is "based on user ownership of the physical text," which in this case is verified by purchasing the book through Amazon. As Amazon notes in its filing, this is a new (but small) wrinkle in the Shirt of Obvious Ideas, and patent examiners apparently found it compelling enough to deserve protection.

:sigh:

Technorati tags: Amazon, patents

Apple puts hit on DRM

I enjoyed reading Jobs' open letter regarding music, DRM, and most importantly, the best thing since sliced bread, the iPod.  Of course what I enjoyed the most is hearing him say the same thing I (and a bunch of other folks) have been saying for years.  I (not important) have always referred to it as a cat-and-mouse game, and I'm glad to see that Jobs (someone important) has addressed the 1,200lb pink elephantrilla in the room.

The problem, of course, is that there are many smart people in the world, some with a lot of time on their hands, who love to discover such secrets and publish a way for everyone to get free (and stolen) music. They are often successful in doing just that, so any company trying to protect content using a DRM must frequently update it with new and harder to discover secrets. It is a cat-and-mouse game. Apple’s DRM system is called FairPlay. While we have had a few breaches in FairPlay, we have been able to successfully repair them through updating the iTunes store software, the iTunes jukebox software and software in the iPods themselves. So far we have met our commitments to the music companies to protect their music, and we have given users the most liberal usage rights available in the industry for legally downloaded music.

If you are into this, read TechCrunch's Apple Openly Supports Death of DRM, then read Jobs' letter.

Walmart shuns Firefox, Open-Source, and all things holy.

Ok, so it's not that bad - but still, TechCrunch is reporting that the big beta launch of Walmart's video download service looks like complete garbage on Firefox.  I'm not saying they should have made the site completely FF compatible at beta launch, but at least fix some of the basic stuff, or displayed a "Sorry FF user, you are SOL" page would have been decent.

Good times.  Enjoy Internet flame purgatory for a while longer Walmart. 

Source: Nice One, Walmart

 

Aside: I still have yet to spend a dollar at Walmart, and actually have spent their money at some of their parties. :-p  So technically, they are in the red on me as a consumer, while I'm in the karma black.