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I passed the test last week­end, but as of yes­ter­day I have a call­sign so I am offi­cially a licensed ama­teur radio oper­a­tor in the United States and any­where else where ama­teurs are gov­erned by the FCC or where the US has rec­i­p­ro­cal licens­ing agreements.

I don’t have any hard­ware yet, but I’m now look­ing for some starter gear and get­ting myself on Echolink.

Call­sign is KD8JQS

Since my par­ents are mov­ing away some time in the next few months, I went with them down to my aunt’s house for Thanks­giv­ing.  It has been a fun trip over­all, but since we drove the RV down that means in both direc­tions I have a ~9 hour span of count­ing the mile markers.

For the last few years I’ve had lap­tops so I can watch movies and play games on the go, but this time around I also have an internet-enabled cell phone, which has led to amaz­ing time killing.  Flash games, dis­cus­sion forums, and news sites are all read­ily avail­able.  If I’m near a major city the ser­vice is even fast enough that I can watch Youtube videos and the like.  As I type this mes­sage, we’re on I-70 head­ing East and clos­ing in on Indi­anapo­lis (I think).  The sign we just passed said 169 miles to Columbus.

If you travel often as a pas­sen­ger and have a lap­top, a mobile inter­net con­nec­tion is pos­si­bly one of the best things you can have in my opin­ion.  Depend­ing on the provider they can be had for as lit­tle as $10/mo for unlim­ited access, I pay a lit­tle over $50/mo for high-speed unlim­ited access from AT&T.  That’s prob­a­bly a bit too steep for the casual user, but for me it’s worth it since I also use that con­nec­tion to work from on a reg­u­lar basis.

This morn­ing, the EMI Group announced that they would begin offer­ing their music library for sale online with­out DRM. Not only that, but the DRM-free files would be encoded at a higher bitrate than their “pro­tected” coun­ter­parts. Of course, this comes with a cost. Rather than the now-standard $0.99 per song, these files (which cer­tainly do offer more to the con­sumer) would be priced at $1.29 per song.

As I was read­ing this, I began to think about what the real value of a dig­i­tal music pur­chase is and whether the cur­rent pric­ing model makes sense, so I looked up the num­bers. What fol­lows are my results. Read the rest of this entry »