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In my recent quest for podcasts, I just today discovered Jerry Sadock’s Automodular Grammar lectures on iTunes U, brought to you by the University of Arizona. This is essentially the first few lectures from his Automodular course I took my last year in college, which was one of my favorite and most thought-provoking and challenging (“thought-challenging”?) courses while at Chicago. While I still feel that having visuals (slides, or his handsome face, above), you can download his talks and handouts separately from their website, linked here:

1. Automodular Grammar 1. Jerry Sadock, University of Chicago, January 18, 2008. Lecture (mp3), handout (PDF)
2. Automodular Grammar 2. Jerry Sadock, University of Chicago, January 25, 2008. Lecture (mp3), handout (PDF)
3. Automodular Grammar 3: The Passive. Jerry Sadock, University of Chicago, February 1, 2008. Lecture (mp3), handout (PDF)

Yesterday Steve Jobs introduced, among other things, iTunes movie rentals. Rent a movie and download it over broadband. You then have 30 days to start the film, and then 24 hours to finish it before it turns into a pumpkin. A lot of people are complaining about the 24 hours, including some with good reason and apparently many who have kids.

So why rental? Thus spoke Steve: “Your favorite movie… most of us watch movies once… maybe a few times.”¹ Currently number eight on the top rentals is one of Paul Sally’s favorites, The Usual Suspects . From the iTunes Store description:

There are a handful of movies that demand a second viewing—because they’re so good, or because a surprise ending gives every scene a new meaning when it’s watched a second time. The Usual Suspects is both.

Omniture’s disgusting 192.168.112.2o7 tracking url and Adobe CS3’s use of it has been picking up some dirt recently, starting with uneasysilence, and propagated through DF, ZDnet, and more.¹ And then it was discovered that the Apple iTunes MiniStore does the same. But ValleyWag gives you the good news:

Don’t want to be their guinea pig? Omniture lets you opt out.

Oh wait, really? You can? That’s great! This opt-out link gives you a cookie called omniture_optout on .2o7.net with a 1 value. But wait, it’s a cookie? That means…

Omniture opt-out explains (emphasis mine):

…it is necessary to install a cookie on your browser. This cookie identifies that you have opted-out. If you delete the opt-out cookie, or if you change computers or Web browsers, you will need to opt-out again.

That’s right. Cookies are stored in your browser. So if you opt-out in Safari or FF, will you be opted-out in a CS3 app? Um, no. Or in the iTunes MiniStore? No.

In the case of the MiniStore, you can just turn it off. But in the CS3 case (and for any other apps that build such communications in) things are trickier. As a commenter suggests on the ValleyWag, it looks like Little Snitch is the best way of clearly opting-out of communications like this. Unless, of course, you want to switch to Vista.