Month: July 2006

Over a month and just one measly post. Where has Rahul been? This is the second time I’ve been offline for a month – the last time it was the IBM conference in New York. This time, my life’s been turned topsy-turvy good and proper! As most of you know by now, I have resigned from IBM to pursue my MBA at the Indian Institute of Management, Kozhikode. Yes, thank you for the kind words.

They aren’t kidding when they say the IIMs are some of the toughest B-schools in the world. I won’t even begin to describe life here – read “ Snapshots from Hell” by Peter Robinson for a peek. But consider this: I haven’t got any time to read beyond the preface of the wonderful Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy omnibus I’ve managed to lay my hands on, leave aside read my long Google Reader feed list, and definitely leave aside blogging. Now that some sanity has returned to my life, I shall make a valiant attempt to return to Technology and Strategy.

By the way, this is a breathtakingly beautiful place. Though I’m not sure if it’s quite the right place to study serious business!

Fred Wilson talks about taking DRM too far:

What I object to is purchasing content and then being restricted as to where I can play it. We have at least 20 devices that I can play music on in my home, between computers, iPods, music servers, phones, PDAs, etc. And that number is going up, not down.

Apparently ( according to this screenshot), you can only play music from the iTunes music store on five authorised compters. To play on any more, you have to first de-authorise an existing one.

The problem is that “Five” is an arbitrary number. To say that the iTunes guys arrived at this number only after doing a fair bit of statistical research (the typical number of computers a user has is 5), is very poor logic. Apple’s iTunes freed users from having to continue to purchase CDs and DVDs (which led to huge margins for recording companies), but it seems to have fallen victim to the same “control freak” mentality that was the RIAA’s undoing.a