Brandon Live!

PKEY_Identity (or “System.Identity”) is used to store the identity GUID associated with an Outlook Express or Windows Mail (Vista) account.

Tom Laird-McConnell, who used to be my boss until a few months ago, wrote one of his extremely rare blog posts last week on this subject.  To celebrate the occassion, I will link you there for the detailed answer to this question.

Definition of the PKEY_Identity / System.Identity property at Tom’s Handy Dandy Space

Today I saw this article pop up on TechMeme and at first thought it was my post from the other day.  But it was actually a new post on the same subject by Eric Bangerman from Ars Technica, who happened to use a similar title.

Shooting yourself in the foot: Time Warner’s usage caps

Read this. 

Better yet, watch the video.

That’s all I can say.  You owe it to yourself to read every word.

As you may have heard, Time Warner is experimenting with a new pricing scheme in which they limit the amount of data users are allowed to transfer each month over their cable internet service.

They claim that this is to manage costs.  But as Dave Burstein (of DSL Prime) said, that’s not really it at all.  That’s the same reason that Comcast gives for their throttling nonsense, which clearly hasn’t gone over well with heavy ‘net users.

But if that were the real reason, why would Verizon be so anxious to give me 20mbps in both directions and not throttle or limit a single thing?  Well let’s see… what other possible reason could Cable companies have to stop you from downloading large files like, oh I don’t know… TV shows and movies?

Fact is… cable companies have an opportunity here that they are wasting because they want to cling to a Cable TV and PayPerView-based business model that is quickly being eroded by iTunes, Xbox, Amazon, Netflix, etc.

But instead of capitalizing on this change, by offering users more of what they need in order to leverage it (ie. faster speeds) for a reasonable price increase, they’d rather discourage you from using these new IP-based offerings.

I guess they saw how well fighting the digital trend worked for those other media companies and decided that they can alienate their customers and lock them into outdated business models with the best of them.

Fortunately, some of us have viable alternatives.  And with moves like this, companies like Verizon with FIOS will have even more people lined up to pay them for service.

iTunes 7.6 is out, with x64 support at last!  Just as I predicted

http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/

It redirects you based on your OS.  Or download the 32-bit one here and the 64-bit one here.

Update: Sadly it isn’t actually a 64-bit binary.  Lame, but what do you expect from Apple, who seem to be pretty stuck in a 32-bit world.  At least it includes a 64-bit iPhone / iPod Touch driver, which is all that was really needed.

I’ve been supporting this guy for a while, and while both Edwards and Clinton have their appeal, I am incredibly pleased to see him win Iowa’s primary.

Watching him speak, as in that video, I can’t help but feel that he’s every bit as good a speaker as Bill Clinton.  That’s where Hillary often disappoints.  Hence my twitter tonight, “Anyone else think Obama is more like Clinton than Clinton?”