Can someone from Toyota explain to me how they could put such a fugly rear end on the Camry Solara?



It's like they held a blowtorch to the old Infiniti J30 and the Lexus SC430. To me, it looks droopy which is exactly the wrong look you want to give to someone who's an aging baby boomer - which is who buys cars like this. They're drooping already. Give them something *PERKY* not droopy.

And what's up with the Tiburon-like side body panels?

I look at this car and think "Little Mermaid."

Moving sucks. Well, it mostly sucks.

There is the hassle of sorting through what seems like every article of clothing, every scrap of paper, every photo, every knicknack and curio, every book on your bookshelf... The agonizing decision of, "What if I should ever want or need to refer to my notes from my financial economics class 9 years ago? What if I should ever want to reread these papers on how certain normally anti-inflamatory apolipoproteins found in HDL actually become pro-inflammatory in the acute thrombotic conditions present in an atherosclerotic coronary artery?"

It's utterly irrational. Holding onto those notes, those papers, dutifully transporting them from apartment to apartment every 3-4 years, respectfully dusting the covers off, ceremoniously leafing through the contents, rediscovering the history of a long-lost world like an archaeologist, reveling in the depth and breadth of what I had managed to learn in just 10-weeks, and when the bittersweet ignorance of what I have long forgotten begins to become too much, I set them back in their tattered cardboard sarcophagus for shipping to the next "museum" where they will likely stay in a dark corner of the garage or closet for the next 3 years.

But this ritual is more and more often leading to a decision to destroy history rather than preserve it. Perhaps it is because I am, once again, back in school and flooded in papers, graded homeworks, lecture notes, books, and course readers. Supply of academic nostalgia has totally dominated demand, cheapening it - like a beach with billions of seashells, millions of which might be fossilized relics of species that have been extinct for millions of years.

I also credit the amazing ability of the Internet to immediately conjure forth incredible on-demand resources to provide at least a partial answer to virtually any question about virtually any subject.

Finally, as I have gotten more focused in my career and industry, the connection between certain stores of knowledge and my career trajectory seems more dubious than ever.

Still, my fondness for certain liberal arts courses, particularly those in history and public policy, compels me to stay them from the landfill. But financial economics?

Well, I'll be getting my MBA next May. Out it goes.

So I wanted to see what the hype was with iTunes. I downloaded it a few weeks ago and browsed through the music store, which was pretty slick. It's got a nicer interface than the web storefronts of Napster, BuyMusic, Wal-Mart, and others and the integrated player/music manager is nice. I found a few songs from one of my favorite soulful lounge/deep house artists, Miguel Migs, and decided to buy about a half a dozen tracks. On the downside, I found it crashed consistently and reproducibly on my WinXP PC every time it hit a particular part of one song. While I have a PC-bias, despite using Macs for about 8 years (though only up to OS 7 or so), I don't think the iTunes client is notably better than Windows Media Player 9. Furthermore, Apple automatically installs a bunch of unnecessary items in your startup folder that slow down startup like an Ipodmonitor (don't even own one) and Quicktime that chew up memory and take extra time to load every time you boot your machine. iTunes product managers (actually, I might know a few), please see about asking people if they want this junk in their startup folders in the next rev!

So after buying a few songs and listening to them on my PC, I decided they would be great to take with me to the gym. So I went to try to add them to my MP3 player. Unfortunately, it doesn't tell you anywhere that ITunes are protected with Apple's-specific DRM that prevents you from listening to them on any MP3 player. It only lets you listen to them on an IPod.

This is exactly the same experience I had with BuyMusic.com, where through the entire purchase process, it doesn't tell you that you cannot transfer the music to any MP3 player - only one that supports Windows Media format AND Windows DRM. Most consumers think if their MP3 player package says it supports .WMV format, it will support Windows DRM. They would be wrong. It doesn't. As I've learned, only a miniscule fraction of MP3 players out there support the Windows DRM format, and most of these are concentrated at the highe end of the market.

Needless to say, I experienced the same incredulity and cynicism after my dissatisfying ITunes experience as I had after my dissatisfying BuyMusic.com experience. Specifically, if I had bought these tunes from a music store (at the same price per track), I would have the ability to rip it to MP3, WMV, or any other format my heart desired and play it on my car stereo, MP3 player and PC. As it is, my PAID-FOR music is stranded on my PC because my player isn't compatible with the DRM format of these vendors. The thing that really pisses me off is that it doesn't say anywhere in the purchase process that your music will only work if you have a player that supports this DRM standard or that DRM standard. This kind of underhanded profiteering by the music stores ensures that I won't buy any other music until I decide to upgrade my MP3 player.

At the end of the day, I see no particular reason to go with an Apple-DRM over a Microsoft-DRM compatible player. They both lock you in.

Maybe HP will come up with a player that works with both formats. That would certainly be welcome.

In the meantime, I've stumbled across a freely-available tool called hymn that appears to be able to liberate my ITunes for my own personal consumption. You can get it here: hymn -- Hear Your iTunes aNywhere

To the iTunes and BuyMusic.com vendors, I would say this: I'm happy to pay for what I listen to, but I should also be able to listen to what I pay for when and where I want -- I'm not sharing the music with anyone else, I'm not selling it to anyone else, I just want to do the same thing with a song I download as I'd do with a CD I bought in a record store. I know you're at the mercy of the recording companies but please, somewhere along the way, notify me that my DRM-encrypted music is only compatible with specific players (and give me a list of those players). After that, it's caveat emptor. But without the warning, I feel like I've been had.

Others will feel the same way. And most will go back to downloading on LimeWire, Kazaa and others and not even feel bad about it -- they'll wonder why they ever bothered trying to actually pay for music they couldn't listen to.