Couldn’t Help But Notice (060107)

This is creepy (HT Instapundit):

(Apple iTunes) songs sold without DRM still have a user’s full name and account e-mail embedded in them, which means that dropping that new DRM-free song on your favorite P2P network could come back to bite you.

My uneducated guess is that, eventually, Apple won’t let you play a DRM-free song on iTunes unless it’s on an iPod or you’re connected to the Internet — and if you are, they’ll know you played it. If someone else is playing “your” song bought DRM-free, they’ll know that too.

Like I said, creepy.

June 3: More here (HT Drudge) — info included apparently includes the purchaser’s e-mail account. And “The Electronic Freedom Foundation, the online consumer rights group, added that it had identified a large amount of additional unaccounted-for information in iTunes files. It said it was possible that the data could be used to ‘watermark’ tracks so that the original purchaser could be tracked down were a track to appear on a file-sharing network.”
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Yesterday was one of “unexpecteds” in the e-mail in-box from CNN (links to related stories found by me):

• “U.S. construction spending surprisingly edged up 0.1 percent in April. Analysts had expected no change.” (A 0.1% difference is a surprise? The bigger news was that March was revised up to 0.6% from its original 0.2%. — Ed.)
• “Oil price off its lows as crude supply surprisingly falls by 2 million barrels. Gasoline stocks up by 1.3 million barrels, in line.” (Oil supplies go up and down. Who knew? — Ed.)
• “Chicago manufacturing activity increases more than expected. Employment highest since April 2005.” (But this was NOT a “surprise”? It went from a decent 52.9 in April to a sizzling 61.7 in May. This bodes well for the ISM Manufacturing Index coming out later this morning.)

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This “medical miracle” is NOT a BizzyBlog Positivity Post.

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This unusually sunny CNN e-mail from Tuesday was a bit over the top:

April consumer confidence jumps despite higher gas prices and falling home values, coming in well above forecasts.

I’m all for optimism, but that was before the gas-price hikes really hit hard. If past form holds, confidence will drop a bunch in May. Update: Well, not so far. From a CNN e-mail today (link to late morning post added by me) — “Consumer sentiment rose in May as U.S. manufacturing activity increased; both readings beat forecasts..”
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When you read reports like Michelle Malkin’s on NWA Flight 327 in 2004, complete with bureaucratic bungling and fecklessness, you start thinking that it’s a miracle that there hasn’t been another “successful” mass terror attack in the US since 9/11.

Update, 9:15 a.m.: Read Patterico’s related post about one air marshal’s belief that Flight 327 was a terrorist dry run, and that feeling gets reinforced.

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You won’t get the following from a US paper or wire service about the phony globaloney discussions going on over whether to come up with some new version of the not just merely dead, but most sincerely dead Kyoto Treaty:

(HTs for all to CCnet’s Daily e-mails)

It emerged that it was not only the United States that was posting strong objections to the wording of the communique, but Russia as well, while India and China had also expressed their own reservations.

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(original apparently in German, as it couldn’t be found in a search)

There are growing signs that it is not the United States that is isolated on international climate politics, but the Europeans. Apparently, neither the Americans, nor China, nor India, and possibly not even Russia, are swinging in behind Europe’s position.
–Winand von Petersdorff, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 27 May 2007

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Poles, Czechs to appeal EU ruling cutting carbon emissions

(WARSAW) – Poland and the Czech Republic said Friday they would appeal an EU decision sharply cutting their carbon dioxide emission quotas for 2008-2012 for industries with high energy consumption.

The two former members of the Soviet bloc, now both in the EU, decided to follow their fellow EU member Slovakia, which announced in February it would appeal to the European Court of Justice against the ruling.

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Japan rebuffs EU on Kyoto pact

EU efforts to speed action on climate change took a blow on Tuesday when Japan refused to follow the EU line on how to establish a new international regime once the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012. Japan said it could not accept a 2009 target, saying big polluters such as the United States, China and India should be included before any such target was set.

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Pelosi non-committal on US climate stance for G8 summit

(AFP) US House of Representatives leader Nancy Pelosi refused here Monday to be drawn on whether the United States would back Germany’s strong position on climate change at next week’s G8 summit.

It would appear that being Poseur Pelosi is so much easier. Usurping Administration policy wasn’t quite as problematic when it came time to visit Syria, was it?

When you see what’s going with the real climate, you realize that there’s “snow” use taking these talks seriously.