This time around, I figure that I will follow in the footsteps of some of my favorite tech commentators and offer up some random musings. Following up on my previous article on Apple's new download service for ABC shows through iTunes, it turns out that other networks did follow suit, although not entirely as expected. NBC and DirecTV have announced a partnership that will allow DirecTV customers who subscribe to their digital video recording service to purchase episodes for 99 cents a pop. Of course, one has to question why people will buy these episodes instead of recording them for free with DirecTV's TiVo-like digital video recorder. CBS has also formed a deal with Comcast to allow customers to purchase episodes for 99 cents from their on-demand content. The catch here is that the episode gets deleted automatically 24 hours after you watch it.

Both of these deals significantly limit your usability of the content, even when compared to Apple's already restrictive digital rights management. At least with ABC/iTunes, you can move your content around and rest assured that you own the content. NBC and CBS's approach is more like content renting, which isn't the progressive step forward that consumers need. Fox has yet to announce any such deal. Ideally, we should be able to take our content with us on portable devices, back it up however we want and generally be in control, instead of being tied down by vacuous restrictions.

On the game console front, the Xbox 360 is only a few weeks away from release, and gamers across the country are preparing to fight to the death to get one on launch day. They may have a hard time if Microsoft has their way. Apparently, they've purposely limited the supply of 360s so that pretty much every retailer will sell out on launch day. They intend to control the wave of consumer demand by taking complete control over the supply chain. Hopefully, this is just a rumor, but Microsoft has done crazier things in the past.

Then there is Nintendo, who recently announced that the Revolution will definitely be the cheapest next-generation console. This isn't surprising since it is exactly the same stance that Nintendo took with the Gamecube. I hold steadfast in my belief that the Revolution will carve out its own niche in the market, becoming a secondary accessory to a gamer's 360 or PS3. The 360 is going for $400 at launch (the pointless $300 version is scarcely worth a mention), and we know that the PS3 will be extremely cost-prohibitive. This leaves most gamers with the difficult decision of choosing one camp as their primary console. Right now, I'm leaning towards the 360, mainly because of Microsoft's increasingly strong first- and third-party support. My intuition tells me that the combined purchase of a 360 with a Revolution will still be cheaper than a PS3. If so, Sony may have made a huge mistake, not only by choosing to make their hardware and games more expensive, but also by releasing them an entire year after their only major competitor.

On a different note, Amazon has recently launched a new program that will pay visitors for completing simple tasks. Dubbed Amazon Mechanical Turk (www.mturk.com) after an 18th-century faux automaton, the program defines itself as "artificial artificial intelligence." The provided tasks are fairly simple for human folk, but incredibly difficult for even the most powerful computers since they tend to rely on human judgment. Some of the tasks (Human Intelligence Tasks, or HITs) are simple, like choosing the best photo to represent a retail store online, and others require more involvement, like whipping up a quick product description. Amazon pays participants anywhere from three to 60 cents a job, depending on the task's degree of difficulty. In the end, this will help them refine their product descriptions and perhaps serve as a more productive procrastination option for some. While no one is going to get rich off this, it will offer a bit of spending money for those who take the time to complete the tasks.