This may seem like a strange post, but what the heck. My old “Transcend” clock radio finally decided to stop working after over ten years of use (probably paid a hefty 15 bucks for it when I bought it), so I went out to get a new one today. The only new requirement I had for the new clock radio was that it have a digital tuner.

Well, let me tell you that virtually none of the low end clock radios have a digital tuner. It seems totally contrary to me that this would be the case. No new cars have analog tuners. In fact, many of the AM radio announcers have changed the way they identify the radio station because of this. Most older AM radios start with two digit identifiers, as in 54, 60, and 70, becuase most of the older analog radios identified the frequency as x10 kHz. (FM stations never had this problem since the numbers on the dial are the actual frequencies in MHz.) So what used to be identified as “AM sixty three” is now identified as “AM six thirty” to match the digital tuners in most cars. Very few radio stations still use the old designations in their jingles, although WFAN in NY hasn’t changed and identifies themselves as “AM sixty-six”. Even the famed Washington Redskins football announcer Frank Herzog has stopped saying that the Redskins are moving the ball from “left to right across your radio dial” because most radios don’t have dials anymore.

Well, that is, except the low end clock radio. The device that we rely on the most to ensure that we get up in the morning still has no digital tuner for its radio component. Even many of the models with CD players in them have analog tuners. Considering the number of people that wake to music or news (I’m an NPR news junkie), you’d think that having a clock radio with a digital tuner would be essential. It’s the closest thing at hand to switch between news channels for weather or for music in the early hours of the morning. Yet less than 10% of the clock radios on Amazon.COM feature a digital AM/FM tuner.

Shopping locally, I found no clock radios with digital tuners (except one that had a CD player also). I found one at Circuit City, a Timex, which they didn’t have in stock. Target finally yielded one RCA model that had a digital tuner for a mere $29. That’s what I ended up with.

What I find inconceivable is that digital tuners aren’t on every radio in the world. Digital PLL technology has been around forever. No automobile gets an analog tuner any more. Why do they still make radios with them? Is there really a cost difference? It seems to me that developing a single board with the right componentry and avoiding virtually all of the mechanical parts would keep the costs way down. The rest becomes packaging.

I did a search for information on this, but found nothing of real significance. I’ll keep looking and keep you posted …

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists today moved the hands of the Doomsday Clock, a symbol of nuclear danger. The current time on the clock shows seven minutes until midnight, the time that the clock had when it first appeared. The hands have moved backwards and forwards, depending on the circumstances. Treaties like START and SALT have moved the hands backwards while global instability and proliferation has moved the hands forward. Read the overview page from the Bulletin for more information.

The unbelievable wealth of software available for computer today is amazing. But why is it that very few commercial software vendors sell software that runs directly on the desktop? The business has changed radically from the early days of $795 WordPerfect software for DOS to a commercial software business that doesn’t make any real money unless it’s selling servers.

As an entrepreneur who’s been in the software business for a long time, the fact that one can’t build a decent business selling desktop software is quite frustrating and will ultimately hurt the software development business. Right now there are thousands of unemployed and under-employed software developers who are working on their own pet projects while they look for other jobs. These products, in the early days of computing, might have turned into a real business. Today, however, that’s an unlikely proposition — there aren’t enough folks out there who will pay $99.95 for a piece of software to run on their desktop computers.

The Internet is often blamed for this problem, but I doubt that that is true. As I indicated in earlier posts, people have been breaking copy protection schemes ever since they existed and just swapped floppies. While the Internet has made sharing bits easier, it didn’t cause it.

Actually I believe that the real culprit was the fact that WordPerfect cost $795. Computing companies failed to believe that computers would be used at home and that the software that people would want at home would be the same software that they run at work. So they all figured that corporations would pay for the licenses to make sure they wouldn’t get in any legal trouble. Then they figured that home users would buy the licenses because it was the right thing to do. The trouble with that theory is that the value of the software changes when a home user gets it — it’s a nice to have not a need to have. But home users would settle for less functionality either — “lite” versions of the office software wasn’t going to cut it. So what happened? People started pirating software for their home use and so a habit was formed.

I remember in the 80’s being diligent about purchasing software licenses, being a software developer myself. But I remember those habits fading when I realized how ridiculous it was to pay thousands of dollars for software that everyone else was copying for free.

Don’t get me wrong — I do not condone copying software. But desktop software has become a commodity in the minds of home users and the prices must change to reflect that. Microsoft ought to sell XP and Office XP at the educational institute pricing (or less) for all home users and charge a premium for corporate customers.

But it may be too late now — the industry is probably already hosed for selling mass quantities of inexpensive software. Bad habits are really hard to break. I’m concerned that software developers throughout the world today are bearing the brunt of the effects of the greedy software publishers of yesterday.

Sorry for old bits, but I found this interview to be pretty interesting. Time Inc. did an exclusive interview of the founder of Movie88, which at this point is still shut down by the Taiwanese authorities. They plan on arresting the founders should they ever set foot in Taiwan (no overreaction there, of course), according to this story.