The Buma/Stemra fuckheads are at it again. (includes RammStein Zerstören!)

Dutch "copyright" organisation BUMA/Stemra has launched their Fair Play license. From January 1st, 2010 websites and blogs can be charged for embedding content like youtube videoclips. (see also the dutch article on 3voor12) Somehow they figured out that the user will have to pay €130,- per 6 embedded files. This is not just for commercial sites, but also for personal sites like this.

To me this sounds like scare tactics and I wonder how many labels will actually use the above license. And I bet of that money, nothing or a very very tiny part will go to the artist.
Oh and IT's FUCKING FREE PUBLICITY IF I EMBED A VIDEOCLIP OF A BAND I LIKE! 

You know what should happen with Buma/Stemra?:

Vodafone Netherlands going to offer the iPhone in 2010?

First a disclaimer: this is my own opinion and no official Vodafone statement:

According to this posterous post and this (dutch) newsbit

Jens Schult-Bockum (JSB), CEO of Vodafone Netherlands has said that "Vodafone made a huge mistake by not winning the iPhone deal" two years ago. At that time, JSB was Global Director of Terminals at Vodafone Group. Fast forward to 2009. JSB is now CEO of Vodafone Netherlands. In the UK the exclusive iPhone deal with O2 has ended and at the (very) last moment, Vodafone UK joined Orange in carrying the iPhone for 2010.

I'm assuming that the T-Mobile exclusivity deal in the Netherlands (and Germany) is going to end in 2010 as well. Add to that the JSB statement and it's not that difficult to figure out that it is very possible that Vodafone Netherlands (and Germany) will join the iPhone deal in the very near future.

That's positive. More choices for the user. With the better network, Vodafone might easily collect convert T-mobile users to switch. Vodafone360 will get its own iPhone app as well, albeit limited in functionality. However, if the iPhone comes to Vodafone, that won't be an issue anymore and Vodafone360 may be a full-fledged service. (Not sure how they will handle this technically, with the sandbox application model in the iPhone)

A lot of times you hear people (myself included) say the iPhone is great but the T-Mobile network sucks. Well, the above may make those users happier :-)

Exciting times ahead? You bet. Let's just say the silly season (sic) has begun.

Snow Leopard sales double that of Leopard, I think not just because of the price.

According to theAppleBlog, sales of SL are double that of Leopard.

Most will agree that the price is pushing sales high, but I also think Leopard was just not good enough. At least in my case, and talking to other Apple users, a lot of them aren't (weren't) really happy with Leopard.

Leopard was suffering from "Windows syndrome". Being bloated and slow. Some of it due to carrying legacy PowerPC support, some of it by feature creep and unoptimized code. In SL there are still some loops open, but that is mostly in the application area. (iTunes is still carbon for
instance). That will change in due time (I predict an "iMovie08" makeover for iTunes next year)

The OS is finally mature :-)