I brainstormed several titles for this post and nothing I come up with seems to be substantial enough. I have to admit that when I heard the news a couple of days ago that Steve Jobs was stepping down from being CEO, I got a little emotional. Part of it was the way he worded it:
"I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come."
Given his medical complications in recent years, there's something really haunting about those words. What really got to me though was the sudden thought that two of my childhood idols were no longer sitting in the seats of power they once held: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are now both down for the count. Even typing those words scares me a bit - aside from the fact that it makes me feel old, it's really the end of an era.
I think my posts make it pretty clear that I'm not a fan of Apple products - I believe that they're high quality, I just don't agree with their some of their key philosophies and I think most Apple products are overpriced. As a person, I don't care much for Steve Jobs either. There are plenty of good stories about him but I'm more familiar with the ones where he manages his employees with praise and fear (moreso than sounds healthy). However, as Elle Driver would say, that shouldn't suggest that I don't respect him. His impact on technology is incontrovertible - he really made making technology beautiful stick. When you look at the history of gadgetry, Apple was the first major player to successfully focus on external design just as much as internal design. Even Mac OS was known for being one of the first pieces of a software with a usable GUI. I even first learned how to type in grade school on Apple Macintosh IIs (and fondly remember playing the Oregon Trail - if I was lucky I got to play on the one computer with a CD-ROM drive). A world without the innovations and risks taken by Apple with Steve Jobs at its helm would be a scary place (much like the one depicted in their 1984 ad). A lot of moves that Jobs has made over the years have been really ballsy, and while I know a lot of people make that possible past just the CEO, I would not underestimate the importance of a CEO with strong vision.
With someone like Steve Jobs, you take the good with the bad. His biggest flaw, in my opinion, is his hubris. You don't have to watch Pirates of the Silicon Valley to observe this (fair warning: that movie is very much a caricature of all its characters). His 2005 Stanford commencement address is pretty famous and definitely an incredible speech, and yet it still reflects that he can really be a jerk sometimes. He lets loose a bit at a few points in his speech and leaves out pivotal details in his speech that paint him out to be a hero in situations that weren't so black and white. He's green lit ads that have held no punches in obviously attacking competitors, a practice that I remember not being so common once upon a time. He runs press events that extol the virtues of perfectly mundane evolutions to existing products. However, it's for all these things that people love Steve Jobs. All these things have made him a fascinating CEO and a generational icon.
The era I'm referring to as ending is not that of Apple - the Board is leaving the company in good hands with Tim Cook, now former COO, at the helm. Plus, Steve Jobs has set things in motion for at least a year or two, so we won't see Cook's direct impact for a while yet. The era I'm referring to also involves Bill Gates. I find it tremendously ironic that Gates is often marred for the antitrust issues with Microsoft and forgotten for his philanthropic efforts whereas Jobs is lauded for his sometimes questionable tactics with Apple and forgotten for his lack of philanthropy. At the end of the day, both men have done some incredible things and basically built personal computing. Gates had just as much vision as Jobs, but he handled it totally differently. He's not the pretty face of a company, he's the understated nerd that turns wheels in the background. Maybe the things he's led at Microsoft aren't as sexy as what Apple has done, but definitely equally important. I mean come on, the man invented bold text! Let's face it, the world would be a very strange place without Office and Windows. Apple would have you believe that Windows is a complete knock off of what they've produced over the years, but the truth is that Windows has made significant innovations, as well. If you need a more recent, obvious example: how about the Kinect?
I feel like with Gates and Jobs out of the picture, the model of technology that's worked for decades really is dead. Shrink wrap software has been gradually losing ground to digital distribution and web applications. The most talked about tech companies these days are now Google and Facebook. The world is a very different place. People don't care about the next Windows or the next OS X - they care about the next smartphone they can get. The era that Gates and Jobs eschewed is over, and I feel like we're now fully underway in a whole new phase in the history of technology. Needless to say, I'm excited to be at a company that's a big part of that timeline, as well, but we can never forget our roots. For all the above reasons and more, Mr. Jobs and Mr. Gates, I salute you. We'll do our best to take good care of what you started.
**UPDATE** The Daily Texan actually has a great article reviewing the concert as well that acts as a nice supplement to what I say below.
NOTE: below the embedded video, you'll see your dosage of tech news to cover the past 2 weeks.
I have to say that Austin has had a pretty fortunate Spring. The weather is still pretty nice outside, despite being April, Barack Obama has come to speak here at least 3 times, we hosted the latest Clinton-Obama debate, Bill Gates visited us, Bill and Hillary Clinton both spoke here, we're home to the current Turing Award winner, and The Roots blasted their incredible fusion of rock and hip hop from Main Mall throughout the lower half of campus.
They were the very definition of indie Austin rock, in my opinion: weird, intense, but always fun. I was disappointed that they didn't acknowledge The Roots at all, but I forgive them. If you looked close enough, you could spot Captain Kirk, Owen Biddle, and I think Tuba Gooding, Jr. Feel free to comment if you can spot more of them (it's like "Where's Waldo"):
I tried to keep track of the songs they played, so here's the best set list I could come up with, in roughly the order they were played:
Star Unknown song from Game Theory (I think) Quills Step Into the Realm Act Too (Love of My Life) 1-minute covers: In a Gadda Da Vida (Iron Butterfly), Jump On It (Sugarhill Gang), Roc Boys (Jay-Z), Get By (Talib Kweli), Just a Friend (Biz Markie), a Wu-Tang song I didn't know, Who Am I (Snoop Dogg), This is Why I'm Hot (Mims), Snap Yo Fingers (Lil Jon and Sean Paul), Sexy Back (Justin Timberlake), Push It (Salt N Peppa) Extended cover: Masters of War (Bob Dylan) I Will Not Apologize (off of Rising Down) You Got Me Here I Come cover of Jungle Boogie (Kool & The Gang) Don't Feel Right The Next Movement Web Encore: The Seed and some song I didn't know (it sounded like the hook was "Men at Work", it was not Thought @ Work)
And again, that doesn't even cover all the songs they actually played, it's just the ones I knew. It made for a great set that covered over 2 hours. They came on stage one-by-one starting off with a song I didn't know, but as always The Roots crew started building up the crowd's energy until the crowd got wild and excited after the Masters of War cover. Speaking of which, you can see a video of it on YouTube from another concert. So picture that but with an insane guitar solo and a longer drum solo. It was seriously worth waiting 2 hours just to see that cover: it was absolutely incredible. The buildup in the show's energy was definitely noticeable though as Black Thought periodically introduced each member of the band giving them a short solo, especially as they went through that long slew of covers that the crowd went crazy over. I don't even like Jungle Boogie and I thought it was amazing when they played it.
What was interesting is that even though The Roots and Common are both hip hop, and have both blazed the stage that is Main Mall, there's something fundamentally different in their music that really fascinates. Common is more reflective, soulful, bare bones hip hop whereas The Roots is this rock-driven hip hop experience that revitalizes ever song they play as well as any covers they play. I had seen them live before back after the release of Phrenology, and so some of the band members have changed since then, but the show stayed true to being really high quality. Hell, they even put up these poles where the flag poles are that did something crazy with the sound echoing at some points. I've never seen so many white people go so nuts over 6 black dudes (+ a white guy) taking a stage; I thought it was interesting. I had no idea how cross-cultural The Roots' pull was. It's not hard to see why though when they put together a live show that you'd think was choreographed to the second with perfect harmonies but remixes of songs that most people there had never heard before. Anyhow, the concert was so mind-blowing that I pre-ordered Rising Down so I can give you guys the full review when I get that at the end of the month. In the meantime, here's a video that I took at the concert of the guys dancing on stage, which was started by F Knuckles:
Ok, so it's time for some tech news! Amazingly, they flow pretty well into each other, so I'll start on the musical track since we started out talking about The Roots. PC World recently updated its list of top 10 Flash-based mp3 players, and I think the order is debatable but from my experience of shopping for one I'd agree that those are pretty much the top 10 out there right now except for the Cowon D2. My lesser known Clix2 (see yesterday's post) made the #5 spot just below the iPod Touch but above SanDisk or the Zune.
Where do you shop to load up these fine mp3 players though? USA Today had a refreshing article pointing out that Amazon's mp3 download service is now number 2 in digital music sales right behind iTunes. They're also tied for the number 4 spot in top U.S. music retailers with Target behind Best Buy, Wal-mart, and iTunes, which is number 1 now (on both charts). I'd say that given that Amazon MP3 was just a whisper a year ago, it's incredible that it has grown to be so popular and I'm excited to see if its greater selection of DRM-free music than iTunes will allow it to overtake Apple's FairPlay-controlled service. I personally have grown weary of iTunes and have switched to MediaMonkey for organizing my music and Amazon for digital downloads because it's just better overall.
(Note: I have no non-public knowledge of the AWS group,=; I did not work in that group.) Amazon also garnered a bit of negative press that I'm almost afraid to link to because I think it's kind of ridiculous. Basically, GigaOM put up a commentary on a thought from Dave Winer that gained popularity (probably more than the Winer original did). No doubt that both guys are smart and know what they're talking about in general, but I don't think there are enough companies that would want EC2 and S3 and such for free like this. Consumers are cheap and love free stuff, but enterprise-level software is all about support. So there's two ways Google could go about this: supporting it with ads or just hoping that one of the companies they back strike it big and Google can acquire them. For the former, I can't imagine that there are a lot of companies who would want to be forced to have big parts of their infrastructure supported by advertising. For the latter, I don't see how the fruits of this would be good enough to warrant providing these services. It's not like the AWS prices are insane anyway. I'm going to be bold enough to say that Google would be stupid to try to compete with AWS with a free model. AWS does pretty well as it is, and Google's style and past success are based in investing in growing markets without a clear leader.
Of course, a well-established leader is no obstacle to Microsoft who took on Sony in the console wars for the past couple of generations and is still trying to buy Yahoo in its war with Google. They've become so impatient that they're giving Yahoo 3 weeks to surrender before they take the fight directly to the stockholders. This could get real messy real fast. As I've mentioned before, Microsoft really does not want a proxy fight here because Yahoo's talent base is very important to them and a proxy fights typically result in casualties and lowered employee morale, but Ballmer has made it abundantly clear several times before that they will stop at nothing to takeover Yahoo, so I'm still appalled that Yahoo is still fighting this so irresponsibly. My opinion is that they told Microsoft they wanted more money because they wanted to stall for time from their shareholders because they knew that Microsoft wouldn't pay up. Either that, or they're delusional (which I also mentioned before).
I have a friend working on the Windows 7 team so I'm always excited to get news on that front because he's a smart guy and I think that he'll help guide Windows back on the right path. There's already rumors that Windows 7 will be modular, meaning that it'll come out in pieces so that it can be developed monolithically while providing the flexibility of a highly customizable OS (this is a similar idea to people who use Linux so that they can tinker with it). Also, Bill Gates let slip that Windows 7 will be out next year, but he didn't say much other than that. It's likely a beta that will be ready late next year since the release timeline for 2010 hasn't changed, but I hope that they are trying to pick up the pieces of Windows Vista and build something truer to what people really want.
Alas, I have one more piece of news from Redmond: the Microsoft Surface will be in AT&T stores in a few select cities to show off cell phone models by just placing them on the device to help sell the phones. It's an interesting application for the product, though I'm sure quite expensive. I wonder if AT&T bought them outright or if they're on loan? We have no idea whether it'll only work on the demo models or if your own phone could be placed on the Surface to be played around with, but it's launching April 17 so we'll know soon enough. Despite my initial skepticism, I think that the Surface could be really cool in retail stores and bars and restaurants.
The CEO of the Mozilla Foundation is leading the herds of people who are disgruntled that the Apple Software Update application, which PC users typically use to get updates to iTunes but Apple users use for other applications, automatically puts Safari on the list of updates it will provide to you and check the box by default so that if you just click "Install" whenever it bugs you about upgrading you'll have one more browser that you may not want (I certainly wouldn't want it). While I think it shouldn't be checked by default, I think that John Lilly is getting too worked about it. People shouldn't be clicking on things they haven't read or don't understand, anyway, because it could be a virus. That's why people should use ZoneAlarm and SpyBot. I personally think that anything that auto-updates is evil and should always ask you first, but nagging you can also be problematic. Still, it's the lesser of two evils, and so at least Safari doesn't actually install itself without asking you. Of course, what Lilly should keep in mind that if Safari is worse than Firefox (which it is) then he has nothing to worry about. The only helpful feature I ever found in it was the Activity window, which is like Down Them All but not as good. Oh, and Firefox 3 Beta 5 is out for all you hardcore nerds and developers out there.
Azureus, creators of the famed torrent application of the same name, have released a plug-in that will allow you to determine if your ISP is throttling your connection for using torrents. It may sound useless because you'd know if you were being throttled, but it will then send that information to Azureus to help compile a list of such terrible ISPs and I presume help your case in suing them.
Now, I have several high points I'd like to hit real quick because this post is taking way too long and I have other things to attend to. GigaOM put up something more enlightening than what I mentioned above: a guide to what makes a good mobile application great. Having dealt with horrible ones, I can attest to this list's validity. The New York Times had an excellent editorial about how Hillary Clinton is dragging along this battle because she feels like she politically deserves the nomination and will drag the party through the mud to get it. Clinton supporters: don't fight me here, there are field reporters attesting to shady tactics at conventions here in Texas alone. I'd vote for her if Obama loses, but I don't think it will come to that and she needs to start to realize that before we lose people to McCain and the arguably more decisive Republican Party. The SciFi channel put up a really neat recap of the first 3 seasons of Battlestar Galatica for those who want to get into the show but haven't been keeping up. It makes me want to go out and rent these first seasons, but unfortunately it's down momentarily. I'm sure it'll be back soon (it's called 'What the Frak is Going On?'). Lastly, in my hunt for Seattle apartment I came across HousingMaps, a Craigslist/Google Maps mashup that will map out housing ads in various big cities. I love it and am using it constantly so I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a new place.
Hopefully I'll have another post up early next week, but until then I have much work ahead of me this week so wish me luck!
Before, I get to the topic at hand, there are a couple of other exciting news items I need to briefly mention. There are rumblings that the Writers' Strike is over. I don't think official press releases, but it sounds like it is effectively over; the details are still unclear. Shows like Heroes, Desperate Housewives, and the Office will be back on within the next couple of months. If I see more details, I'll post them here. Also, Barack Obama has taken Hawaii and Wisconsin, which gives him a 10 state winning streak over Clinton. Early voting started in Texas yesterday, and apparently the caucus is on March 4. Anyway, the debate is tomorrow night and I hope I can make a post on that soon (though I'm going on a retreat Friday evening to Saturday afternoon).
I've been excited for a few weeks now because that's how long I knew that Bill Gates would be coming to UT; I just didn't have the details until last week. I may not like all of Microsoft's products or agree with their tactics, but I still idolize Bill Gates because he pioneered an industry, he is a phenomenal visionary, and he's really a fantastic philanthropist. Say what you will about Microsoft, but Bill Gates is a better man than Steve Jobs probably ever will be. So I felt honored that before my time was up here to have been able to see him in person. Even President Powers and Dean Rankin came (as well as Turing Award winner Dr. Allen Emerson). I believe this was the second stop on his 5 campus tour, and high-profile tech people always seem to overlook Austin so I was really glad that he recognized that some talented people definitely come out of UT Austin. This was semi-technical talk aimed at CS/CE majors so you're not likely to have gotten a whole lot out of it if you didn't care about technology. That having been said, it was also not a Steve Jobs keynote. It wasn't glamorous or flashy, it was pretty frank. He's not the best public speaker, but he's not too shabby at putting his thoughts into words either. He also doesn't say "uh" or "um" or anything like that. Anyway, if you want to see it in it's entirety, it'll be online this Friday.
He was introduced by the winner of his own scholarship, which I thought was kind of neat, and then went right into the popular video from CES of what he'll do when he retires. The CES version is a little different; the joke with Clooney in this one was that Gates wanted to be in Ocean's 14 and Jon Stewart had an additional joke that he had stolen the mic he had on him the last time he was on the Daily Show. There were a couple of other minor changes as well, plus a bloopers reel. The next 10-15 minutes was stuff I already knew about, but it was still nice to hear it from his mouth. He emphasized the trend of processors to multiple cores rather than faster clock speeds and the need for programmers to design with that in mind, as well as how he was gladdened by the research going on at UT in this area. The other topic he talked about that wasn't really anything new was ways for natural input. He had a term for it that had the word "natural" in it that I can't remember, but he mentioned Surface and the Wii and how the keyboard and mouse may never go away but advances still are being made and are important in more intuitive human-computer interaction.
Now the good stuff started (or what I thought was the more interesting stuff). He started talking about linking business with research, and how excited he was 15 years ago to start the Microsoft Research group. He really loves collaboration with universities, not just CS departments. And he actually went into a specific example with neurobiology. Apparently, it takes something like 1 million petabytes (1 PB = 1,000 TB) to model an entire human brain, and it's more manageable for a rat brain (1,000 PB), but they managed to fit a small cube of a rat brain in 1 petabyte. So Bill was just playing around with visualizations of it on the screen and it looked pretty cool. I always knew that computer science had applications in Biology, but I don't think it really set in until Bill Gates shoved it in my face how important and how incredible this sort of interdepartmental collaboration can be.
The next part of his talk was equally engaging: attending to the lowest 2 billion people of the world. As he rightfully claims, spreading technology to the world is regarded as only diffusion to those who can afford it. If you don't have money then your vote in what happens in the world simply doesn't count, and he recognizes this imbalance. This is the second time this semester that I've been inspired by people doing this kind of work. He talked about how they took DVD players and TVs to farmers, showed them better ways of doing things and how they're done in other places, and the farmers really took to it. In fact, they were rather competitive about it and wanted to improve further so that they could be on the DVD as well for making some new breakthrough in farming technique. He also talked about how ridiculous it is that there's more research done into baldness than into malaria. That kind of goes more with the not having a vote if you don't have money. If you're poor and dying of malaria, it's alright to the world, but if you're moderately wealthy and have money then it's a really big deal. He recognizes this disparity and his Foundation tries to help alleviate these issues wherever it can, is my understanding.
That was the end of his formal talk, but then there was the ever-painful Q&A. I knew that we'd have some people asking stupid questions, though I was definitely surprised that no one took a jab at Microsoft's antitrust litigation. When one guy said that he had a comment rather than a question I was a little worried, but he just proclaimed China's love for Bill Gates and gave him a present (security was surprisingly laxed, so I'm glad it wasn't a bomb or something equally bad). The guy who gets my award for worst question bragged about helping with the Obama campaign, how he interviewed with Microsoft last month (by the way, that means he got turned down because their interview turnaround time is real tight), and how he's applying for a job at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and was wanting interview advice and a recommendation (what a cute joke). His answer to this question was actually good though: the foundation apparently focuses on 3 areas - infectious diseases, propagating technology to those who can't afford it, and spreading knowledge. People that die every day because those who can make a difference don't care to or can't afford to is a big deal, and so that's a big deal. There's always this dispute that there's no point in spreading computers to villages who can barely feed themselves, but I disagree with that because technology can help these societies function better and lead to a better quality of life. That goes hand-in-hand with learning though. The overarching value of the Foundation is that every human life should be treated equally, and I like that. It's simple and to the point. The girl after him actually asked the best question (about the issue of women in CS) and started out by saying, "I felt really bad that I didn't bring a gift, but that last guy just made me feel a lot better." I wish I could've shook her hand. Anyway, his response to that was pretty standard: it's a huge issue, and the attrition rate among women for science (and, more significantly, for CS) grows with age. Maybe the problem is that men aren't encouraging women enough, or maybe the field just seems more intimidating because it's male-dominated. Whatever the case, he's definitely behind diversity.
There was actually another markedly ridiculous question: someone has the gall to ask how far Microsoft was willing to go to acquire Yahoo and how much money Bill thought that they were worth. That deserves a slap to the face, in my opinion. What an insult. Does this guy hold stock in the company or something? How's it any of his business. Bill took time out of his busy schedule to talk about what's going on in technology right now at our little corner of the US and what he feel really matters in the world right now, outside of just Microsoft's little microcosm, and this guy asks a question that Bill obviously can't answer. As I've said before, I believe that they'd be willing to go as far as a hostile takeover, but I hope Yahoo wouldn't be so naive and just take the generous buyout offer. Amazingly enough, Bill had an interesting answer: search engine ads are the one form of advertising where you have to pay without getting anything in return, really. Each one of us contributes $80 a year (on average) in revenues to Google and get nothing in return. Of course, he's kind of overlooking the fact that we get to use their search engine and other free Google services, but I think I see his point. With television the benefit is immediate to advertising: being entertained with engaging or funny or scary stories. Google holds kind of a monopoly and, as a result, doesn't really have to give us anything extra for staring at their ads. Competition is important in this field. I know it's a funny thing to hear from Bill Gates, but competition is important and I wholeheartedly agree that Google cannot stay the uncontested king of search for much longer or else we probably will see a degradation in quality from them. He wrapped up the answer by saying that Yahoo has smart people and Microsoft is giving them time to look at the offer and evaluate what they want to do. Very diplomatic, but he shouldn't have had to answer the question at all, in my opinion, so I'd say he did pretty well. I wonder if this is some precursor to how MSN plans to compete with Google search? Is there something big they have planned for consumers to reward them to searching with MSN? It's cool to think that maybe there is, but it'd be presumptuous of me to suggest that some master plan lies in a simple answer to a dumb question. I guess we'll see what happens though.
All in all, it was an interesting talk. Or maybe you found this post boring and are glad you didn't see it or catch the live webcast. I definitely drew on some inspiration from it and I honestly felt like Bill was pretty down-to-earth. My friend disagrees with me, but I just didn't see a facade about him. He's the same geek I read about when I was 11 years old and dreamed of monumental success like that. He'll probably always be that same guy in my mind though unless he does something really drastic. When you consider him in the context of Microsoft, you should realize that all corporations do bad things whether you want to believe them or not. Apple and Google do bad things whether or not the press tells you about them or you choose to read about them (e.g. litigation against fans and censorship), so don't hate Bill Gates for the actions of Microsoft. Instead, realize that he did something pretty amazing for this industry and continues to give back to this world and his vision never stops. As old as he is he spoke like he was much younger in terms of his use of modern technological jargon and concise understanding of what was going on in the world (when you see the CEO of Sony speak, you feel embarrassed for him). I think the one thing to take away from this talk is that we have to work together in this world to make progress, and we should never lose hope as long as we continue to do that.
As usual, the focus has been on Macworld this past week rather than CES. I think that the media and even a lot of geeks have just become disenchanted with CES and have begun to care more about the words of Steve Jobs. Barely anyone really seemed to care that it's Bill Gates last CES keynote ever. By this year's end, Ray Ozzie will be the new CEO of Microsoft. Of course, there is the fact that this video from the keynote of his supposed last day at work spread pretty fast and is pretty funny. I love that he can make fun of himself and that he managed so many great cameos. Oh, and I have a lot to talk about today to make up for not writing this post like two days ago when I should've.
Anyway, back to Macworld. There are a few things I thought were worth mentioning related to that keynote. Game Daily has a great article pointing out that this was another Macworld without any focus at all on video games for Macs. I agree with them in calling this a huge oversight. I have no idea why they don't believe the power of video games. That industry has really exploded in the past 5-10 years and PC games have seen a come back with titles like Half-Life 2, Portal, World of Warcraft, The Sims, and Civilization 3. They're losing the gamer market by forcing them to run these titles on a dual-booted machine or even a VM. They should be making it easier to run them on native hardware and they could be touting the consistency of Mac computers as ensuring that any game developed for Mac could work on potentially all Macs or say right from the get-go which ones work on which. For PCs, the hardware combinations are so diverse that you lose this slight advantage, which really only hurts you when you want to get someone a game as a gift, most likely, and don't know if they can use it. They're clearly not pushing iPod/iPhone games ostensibly, though Sonic has come on board, and I just imagine that there's a bigger market there than Game Daily believes because of how many people play phone games when they're bored. I just can't figure out why Apple has no interest in supporting this market.
Joy of Tech has a pretty great comic about the MacBook Air that kind of reflects my views also.
This isn't really related to the Apple TV even though you may see articles around with people billing this as a big blow to Apple TV, but Time Warner is trying out a new pricing scheme similar to your power bill. The more you download, the more you pay. This indirectly affects Apple TV because renting/buying those HD movies is not going to be all that attractive rather than buying/renting the hard copy from a store. In any case, the point is that they're trying to penalize you for piracy or using up the "unlimited" Internet access you pay for too much. This is like opening an all-you-can-eat buffet where you see a few fat people and decide that if you're fat then you have to pay more money. It's crazy. Unlike your power bill or your water bill, it doesn't cost them anything extra to serve up more of the Internet to you, in reality. They make so much money with their outdated networks and large base of users that they really just want more money. In some areas you may see a higher quality of service, but the quality of your Internet should be higher because they're re-investing your monthly payments into thicker pipes and not because less people are online. People are not going to like this idea in this society of rising gas prices and other things where you pay a variable cost. They claim it'll only affect 5% of users, but in this increasingly broadband world, it's going to hurt more people than that. It's frustrating, but I'm honestly not sure what can be done. Maybe it'll end up being a tiered plan, which would be slightly better but still irritating since your service won't get any better for paying more money. Somewhere at Time Warner corporate there's a guy in a tall, black leather chair laughing diabolically. Oh, and whether this is a conspiracy against Apple TV so that people buy digital cable rather than watch TV online is a little bit extreme. I honestly do not think that it has anything to do with that. I believe torrents and P2P are hurting them, and they'd rather pass the buck than adapt. They're not smart enough to think ahead to IP TV; put their execs in a room of Neanderthals and you wouldn't know the difference.
I love PicLens. I think it's the best add-on since IE Tab (or the best thing since sliced bread, if you prefer). It works in IE and Safari, too; just not the new feature I'm going to talk about. I casually updated recently only to later realize that they've upgraded the UI. You can see it in the screenshot to the left, but it doesn't do it justice. It's just so ridiculously intuitive. They've made the pictures into a wall of thumbnails rather than a filmstrip at the bottom so that you can use the fullness of your screen to navigate and use your scroll wheel to casually glance at whatever piques your interest. They've also really improved the Facebook functionality. I don't think I've ever browsed pictures so effortlessly before; not even in Picasa. I was so struck that I took the time to actually port several galleries from the NSC site to the PicLens format (really easy with PicLens Publisher tool; you just surround the code it gives you with your layout) and will be using it permanently for the NSC site. It's a great thing to try out if you're running a website where you value viewing images over comments and ratings and descriptions and all that junk, and it even has a Flash-based thing to view the images in a slideshow even if you don't have PicLens. Oh, but word to the wise: look at the CSS I have on my galleries. I had to hack it up for IE6, which doesn't support max-width.
I think I've all but declared the HD-battle over in Blu-ray's favor. Gizmodo feels the same and has shed a little more light on what has been happening in recent weeks. While it's likely true that Sony did pay some of the studios to help them decide to move exclusively to Blu-ray, the fact of the matter is that they money they paid was much less than what they stand to lose/gain in a new HD format. All the studios were pretty eager to end the format war though, and I think Fox caving to Blu-ray caused a domino effect that almost ceded the battle to Sony. I don't think we know yet what motivated Fox to do this, and the exact reasoning for Warner and Toshiba hasn't totally given up yet, but I think it's pretty clear that they're gripping at straws. Only a few loyal studios remain; I mistakenly reported Paramount's switch because they haven't jumped ship yet though they legally can. Universal is bound until 2009 or the bitter end, whichever comes first. New Line, Fox, and Warner aren't small potatoes though, and it may be enough to tempt more studios to take the leap. The battle isn't over, but I think a lot of us want it to be. After all, Blu-ray has done a poor job of future-proofing the format and, not-so-coincidentally, the PS3 is the only Blu-ray player capable of supporting the 2.0 spec because it has an Internet connection and 1GB of local storage. It looks like they're trying to use Blu-ray in 2.0 to help spread gaming to movie enthusiasts from the looks of CES demos with trivia games and the like, but these Blu-ray versions will surely cause confusion (there's a 1.1 that only a few players, including the PS3, support).
I thought it was interesting that MySpace is still dominating Facebook in traffic. If you have any insight into this, I'd love to hear it because I have to say that I'm more than a little surprised. 72% of social networking traffic goes to MySpace compared to 16% for Facebook. This is more than a small disparity. I guess I live in a bubble where only a minority of the people I know have MySpace accounts, including the adults I know who are on Facebook. To be fair, Facebook's grew 50% over last year whereas News Corp's bastard child lost 8% of its prior market share. The hype machine would make it seem like Facebook is taking over the world. Hell, I kid you not, my own mother called me last week to tell me about Facebook and this guy who started the site in college and made all this money. She thought that I should do something like that someday. I'm suddenly glad that I didn't take the Facebook interview. It's not that I believe they're failing, I just think they're in this huge bubble. I don't know if it'll pop or not, but I also don't know how stable it is. In any case, my theory is that a lot of minors are loving MySpace whereas adults and many college students who do social networking use Facbook. There's also an overlap of college students who still check their MySpace but don't actively use it. That's just my theory, and I guess that it would mean that the Facebook audience is more valuable than the MySpace audience. Anyhow, I think it's even more interesting given that MySpace has been getting bad press over privacy issues. I mean when people can see private photos of 14 year-old boys/girls, that's creepy.
I have a few quick things to lump together here. AOL (AIM/ICQ) has finally caved and moved its protocol to XMPP, more popularly known as Jabber, which is what Google Chat runs on. I can't say anything about this other than that it's ostensible very cool since XMPP is open source. If you're uninitiated into the dark art of MySQL, this is an awesome primer. Woot has put up their always funny Wootable Awards from CES of random things including Most Racist Display and Best Alien Detector. I liked the new trailer for Baby Mama and so I thought I'd share. Tina Fey wants a surrogate mother because she can't conceive and so she turns to a childlike character(Amy Poehler). I thought it was quirky and funny. And last, but not least, my first upload to YouTube from going to Copa on Friday night:
Before I get started here, I wanted to make one more comment on yesterday's main topic (the Jobs vs. Gates thing). I finished watching Pirates of Silicon Valley today and I realized that I neglected to point out the irony in how people perceive these two guys. Bill Gates is seen as evil and Steve Jobs as a hero, when in reality it's Gates who's the awesome philanthropist and Jobs who's often just a jerk (the illegitimate child, the anecdote of not hiring the virgin job applicant, etc). Just goes to show, being judgmental is often the wrong way to go. Anyway, the most interesting topic for today was honestly just that Apple is planning on releasing free software updates for the Apple TV and for the iPhone after its release. Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is the first time they've done something like this. These aren't just firmware updates or bug patches or something, they're actual feature add-ons. I'm curious as to why they decided to do this. Is it because of Internet chatter that both products were lacking? Is it just a new trend within the company? Or did they always know that they wouldn't have enough time to squeeze out the software they wanted? Anyway, I don't really have anything bad to say about it, I think it's a great idea. I'd rather have to get an update for a product then get a rushed, crappy version.
Another thing from Cuppertino: Apple is working on a deal with Gracenote (a byproduct of a huge "illegal" lyrical database from back in the day) to distribute lyrics with iTunes music. Yahoo Music actually recently brokered a similar deal, but I didn't comment on it because I figure that no one cares about Yahoo Music (sorry, Yahoo, the truth hurts). Could this mean that iPods would start showing lyrics, as well? Would iTunes retroactively fetch lyrics for you? This shall be interesting.
Samsung is projecting that Solid State Drives (SSD) won't overtake conventional hard disk drives anytime soon in pricing. Even its latest price drop makes it 5 times as expensive, but I think people will still be willing to pay a premium when they start to realize that iPods break so easily partially because they're backed by a dinky hard disk drive, which is subject to shock damage quite readily as opposed to the durability of Flash memory.
Google has offered code improvements to the popular open source database MySQL completely free of charge, and now the company is considering additions, which is impressive since they've been closed off about it in recent years. Still, when Google is giving you free code, I think you should probably take it.
I want to talk about a couple of fun products here. The first is a portable grill, which is largely useless but still cool. I guess if you live in an apartment and can't grill on your patio then this may actually make sense. Regardless, it looks damn cool. Also, at the risk of looking like a boozehound, I just think that this booze belt is too cool. So now you can take Jager, Tequila, and shot glasses with you to all your Saturday night party excursions and be the object of all the ladies' desires (for alcohol, that is; not for you).
Lastly, Nissan is working on a car that would cost under $3000, which I think is an awesome idea. What a great thing for low-income families and college students who really need a car (for cities like Houston and San Antonio and such) but can't afford even a decent used car. I think this race to build cheaper cars is a great idea, and will help take back some of the used car market for them.
Grindhouse appears to be on hold for the UK while the Weinsteins figure out how to best sell it to British audiences. The movie bombing stateside was a huge shock, and I'm sure that now they're just scrambling to make back at least their budget. I still have no idea what went wrong, unless it was just the length of the movie and its inside-joke campiness value.
We have strong rumors that Eric Roberts, of "Heroes" fame, was cast as the mob boss villain this time around in The Dark Knight. Not much else to say about that, but he really is a good actor who is just not appreciated much.
AICN got another 28 Weeks Later review, and it sounds like it's a worthwhile watch. It's no 28 Days Later, but sounds better than the average horror flick.
Lastly, we have a final one-sheet for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which I think is a bit early. The movie doesn't come out until mid-June, do we need the final poster right now? Anyway, it looks very much in the style of the previous movie posters, so it's pretty good, but nothing especially amazing (unlike the trailer, which was badass as I had remarked last night).
I got my address for my place this summer and looked into the place a little, and it looks awesome (it's in Downtown Seattle!). Amazon really takes care of its interns; we even get maid service! Anyway, sorry to have missed so many posts. Things have finally calmed down a bit for me. I wanted to talk a bit about a couple of videos I checked out on Vodpod and really liked. The first is an episode of the BBC show "World's Most Powerful," where a really annoying host compares the most powerful men/women in various fields. The information in the video is worth enduring the host for though, because it's a great synopsis of the rise of Apple and of Microsoft. An even more thorough look is Pirates of Silicon Valley, which is a mix between a documentary and a re-enactment of various events from the early years of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. The acting isn't especially good, but the accuracy of the information is hauntingly accurate, despite being exaggerated at times. The main point is that anyone who doesn't think that the world would be a totally different place without these men is a lunatic. Someone else may have come along and done what they did, but it wouldn't have been the same. These two men did amazing things, and they're definitely one of my idols. You can say what you want about the cult of Apple or the evils of Microsoft, but there's no doubt that these men embody the heart of the beginnings of modern-day computing, despite their many weakpoints. Yes, Steve Jobs really is quite temperamental, but Bill Gates isn't quite as weasly as they portray him (though he isn't very charismatic, either). It's really fascinating how different they are, and how totally polar their succeses were. Steve Jobs enjoyed huge success as this hero figure, especially given that he popularized the personal computer, while Bill Gates is really just known as this incredibly talented businessman more than a visionary. What you get out of these videos is this drive within them (I know, the second one really exaggerates this) that has become more common nowadays (at least among people I've known). What's important to understand is that they became passionate about something where there was literally nothing there to be excited about and created something out of it. It's easy to believe in Jesus if you shake his hand after you see him crucified, and it's easy to get excited about computers once you see what they can do. Anyway, the videos are fun to watch if you're bored or need a break from whatever you may be working on. By the way, they concluded the most powerful mogul to be Bill Gates, but I don't know if I'd be able to decide because Steve Jobs has a lot of power over telling people what they want whereas Bill Gates just has ridiculous market share.
What's the difference between all these majors related to computers? I love this rundown of the six major ones, and it's fairly accurate. I do think it almost makes it sound like you can get software engineering without computer science. On the contrary, I think that the former just grows out of the latter. The reason that the top recruits in software engineering come from the top 10 CS schools is because these companies want people who know their stuff really well and love to think, not people who can just code. I'd feel really weird to get paid to program without having taken a course like Automata Theory, even though I wouldn't use that knowledge on a day-to-day basis, necessarily.
Google has rolled out a very interesting new service called Web History that logs all your web surfing habits so that you never forget what you did online that day way back when. Obviously, they're not going to give this information away, but I still see a major privacy issue. If their system is compromised, or your information is subpoenaed (no idea if that would be possible, but with all this Patriot Act crap I wouldn't be surprised), would it be possible? I think that the Search History thing is intrusive enough. How many people really want this kind of history to be logged?
A couple of one-liners: a new site is letting you buy your friends drinks over the phone. So if you're going to have to miss your friend's big 21st bash, just send him a gift card in the amount of a free drink over the phone and let the good times roll. I think it's a pretty fun idea. The other one is this site that lets you fill out PDF forms online. Very cool and useful; I've been wanting something like this for a very long time.
I know it's not technical, but I just have to remark at how freaky and ridiculous this AIDS poster is. We already have flyers around campus that literally say "FACE AIDS", which I think is funny because I definitely don't want AIDS on my face, but this is bad in a more serious way. It's kind of graphic in the sex positions it shows, and I think the turn of events is rather drastic. Maybe I'm just crazy, I just don't like this poster. I think there are better ways to communicate the importance of safe sex, like the fact that you can't test for certain STDs, which is really scary.
I just feel like talking about trailers, so that's what I'm going to do. AICN is raving about the movie Once, and I like the trailer. It definitely sounds like a heartfelt romance, which is a nice change of pace from so many contrived romance movies. I'm definitely a softie, but I hate movies that try to force you into feeling something for the main characters as so many romance movies tend to do.
You'll probably have more fun watching the trailer for The Bourne Ultimatum, but I don't know that it'll necessarily be a good movie. Still, I did like the first two a lot as action flicks, so if they really are stopping the series here, which would make sense, then maybe they really did put effort into making it worthwhile rather than just making it a cash cow.
I don't think there are words in this language to explain the awesomeness that is the trailer for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. These Harry Potter trailers never cease to amaze me, and I love how it ends with the line from the first one-sheet. I'm not even a Harry Potter fan and I can't wait to see this movie! I love how this series gets darker and darker, I really do.
1. Mail-in rebates: A pain to deal with or worth the wait to get money back? Worth the wait =P You can't argue with an Indian person about saving money: they're always going try to do it. 2. Warranties: Take a chance without them or a must have when buying high-priced items? I usually just take a chance. Probably not smart, but I don't buy expensive stuff very often anyway, and I usually make well-educated choices. 3. Product knowledge: Research before you buy or rely on salesperson? As I hinted at in #2, I always do extensive research. I don't spend money unless something is worth it to me. 4. Word of mouth: Base purchases on what your friends say or disregard because you know what you are doing? I wouldn't say I base it off what they say, but I definitely take my friends' opinions highly because I respect most of my close friends highly. 5. New Versions: Must buy the latest version right away or wait for a while? I usually tend to wait a while, but free upgrades I do immediately (like for Firefox and Gaim and such).
I'd like to get to bed in the next 30 minutes so that maybe my mind can wrap itself around the 15-Puzzle tomorrow. Clearly, however IDA* is supposed to work here is lost on me (drop me a line if you have tips). I don't know if anyone will get my topic, but I meant it to plan on the old campaigns to get kids to say no to drugs. No? No takers? Hey, it's been a long Tuesday! Anyway, the MPAA and RIAA are fighting to amend a bill in California that strengthens federal regulations again pretexting, or lying to obtain information about someone, from phone records to all kinds of personal information, including stuff vital to your identity and your financial records. I know we're not in California, but this is still an important topic. What you have to wonder now is how many piracy cases have been won by these guys through information obtained by dishonesty. Even if it wasn't illegal at the time, I'd still call that pretty despicable. It's not like you're lying to catch a killer or a child molester or anything like that, but rather you're lying to appease your own greed. They should be forced to go through lawful channels to honestly get the information they need, otherwise they kind of get an unfair advantage. Not only that, but if their amendment is tacked on there it would give any copyright holder complete access to all your information since they could say they're Jesus Christ or something and that'd be ok, even if it's something like your Social Security number. Doesn't this scare anyone else? Maybe if they narrow their amendment a bit, it would be something we can reasonably debate because they could argue that there's certain information that they may have a right to get to much like an undercover cop would (not that I agree with that logic, but just playing devil's advocate), but they should not get a free pass to our identities. Again, it's California, not national, but that doesn't mean that this shouldn't be a concern because it just means that we're already vulnerable in the other 49 states. Kind of creepy, no?
Apple has now sold 100 million iPods in 5 and a half years, which is right up there with the PS2 and Walkman. It's a pretty big feat, and it makes you wonder when the iPod will lose steam. This streak can't possibly last forever, so what will be the nail in the coffin? I guess it'll stop being a hot item when their new generations become expensive and/or burdensome in features. It just seems like every iteration of any product has more junk you can do with it, and people eventually get tired of that. Or maybe people will get tired of having to replace the whole damn thing when the battery or hard drive fails. Maybe they should just quit while they're ahead and design an insulin pump instead. I must say, that's kind of an interesting concept. What if Apple stopped being selfish (no, product [Red] doesn't count as being altruistic, sorry) and tried putting its powers to good to help with a product that benefits the good of humanity, like a better insulin pump? Who knows, maybe Steve Jobs will eventually grow the heart Bill Gates has.
We have an actual insider rumor regarding the next Zune, or rather several small bits of information. There's to be a new Zune and a Flash Zune, both with the doubleshot design, video functionality, and WiFi capabilities. If the price is right, Microsoft could end up giving the Nano a run for its money. It's not that special, after all. It's just a cutesy, expensive iPod.
Back to Apple real quick: their first Apple TV television spot is out, and it's slightly less creative than what I would've expected. It's very literal, which is nice, but does it really make anyone want an Apple TV? It's like they're saying, "Yes, we now have a product that will let you watch movies on your television! Isn't that stellar?!"
Wired interviewed Eric Schmidt about Google and the whole "Internet operating system" gossip that has gone around for the past several months, and I like his thoughts on everything. He sounds very genuine. I like that referring to server-based computing has having information "stored in the clouds" has now become technical jargon; it sounds like something a tech blogger inadvertently invented.
One-liner: there's an awesome list of online converters here. Some of them are random and kind of useless, but there's a lot of awesome ones, like for PDFs and images.
If the visual effects in Grindhouse look cool to you, you'll enjoy this article on the pre-viz process. A lot goes into making the film so clean and yet so vintage grainy at the same time, so it's fun to see concept art become reality and how.
The UK trailer for Live Free or Die Hard (again, it's called Die Hard 4.0 there like is in every freaking country except here) is a lot better than ours in that it actually tells you what the premise is. Obviously, I have to criticize that premise as being totally far-fetched because it makes it sound way too easy to bring down the country's technological infrastructure. Granted, things like RSA encryption can technically be compromised, but that doesn't mean that all Hell breaks lose all at once. With action movies though, suspended disbelief is a necessity, so I'll forgive them.
Lastly, basically the same team that brought you Da Vinci Code (including Tom Hanks) is coming back together again for Angels and Demons, that other Dan Brown book that every other person has read. I can't say much because I haven't read it myself, but it sounds like they just want another cash cow, in my opinion. Let's hope the movie quality doesn't suffer (I personally enjoyed Da Vinci Code, actually).
10 Highschool Memories 10. The pep rallies that never got anyone pepped up, just happy get out of class. 9. Going to Bellaire Broiler Burger for awesome milkshakes. 8. Being in a ton of clubs, most of which did nothing. 7. Worrying about AP exams and college like constantly! 6. Stupid crushes. 5. Playing guitar nearly every night. 4. Being accused of cheating and burned at the stake for it. 3. Sleeping about 5 hours a night. 2. Prom sucking, like hardcore. 1. GRADUATING! Thank God it's over!
So every time I see a rant about DRM that gets popular, I have to join the choir. It's just in my nature with a topic as huge as this. Mark Shuttleworth, of Ubuntu fame, has a little editorial on his blog about how ridiculous DRM is and why it doesn't work. I think he makes his points quite eloquently. I don't know how these people don't understand that these DRM techniques that they've come up with are stupid. That's right, you people (the copyright mongers, I mean, not you, my readers ;) are idiots. Offline keys aren't tricky for someone who knows what they're doing (not me, unfortunately) to break, streaming content can easily be hacked to be saved (remember the glory days of ASF Recorder?), and once one person cracks your system it'll be on Digg and Slashdot and tons of other nerd sites and the technology is then compromised beyond saving. These cracks appear all the freaking time, by the way. You know your system is bad when people have to exploit loopholes to get what they want (like burning CDs in iTunes and then ripping them to extract the mp3s from the AAC encoding), because that means that your customers are not satisfied with your product. It's much like how we have all these IM alternatives to AIM/MSN etc, and how browser alternatives sprouted from discontent with IE. Rebellion is natural, and it's only a matter of time before backlash to DRM catches up with everyone. That's why Microsoft is so bent on telling everyone about how they're striking this deal with EMI and other labels as well to sell DRM-free music. They see the danger, and they're being smart. Will others follow suit?
I've got quite a bit of humor to share this Monday. I'm a sucker for these lists of ridiculous things we see technology do in movies and TV shows that make no sense, so here's one of 27 things that computers can do in movies. It's really freaking funny, because it's so true. I think my favorite is the "upload virus" one; it reminds me of Office Space. Almost as funny is a clever write-up this guy did comparing the Doom difficulty levels with his relationship with his SO. Anyone who was a loser as a child and played Doom a lot will likely roll over laughing, basking in the nostalgia; the rest of you, I think, will at least chuckle. This last one should just be called "What were they thinking?"
After a drawn-out, furtive legal battle with AOL, Gaim has managed to stay around by changing its name to Pidgin. I don't think they have a version out yet with this new name (I couldn't find one), but I'm sure it's soon to come. It sounds like AOL is being pretty childish with how they've been dealing with the situation. I think they're just jealous that a bunch of guys with a little too much free time can best their paid programmers.
One-liner: if you're browsing a video site and you want to download the content, you should try this web application. I'm sure the legality of it is very questionable, but it's a nifty little hack.
The box office this weekend was really, really shocking. First of all, the top two movies were two old family films: Blades of Glory ($23 million) and Meet the Robinsons ($17 million), but more importantly was the fact that Grindhouse came in 4th places (behind Are We Done Yet?, even) at a measly $12 million as compared with its over $67 million budget. Everyone is talking about this, but I personally believe that it was a combination of it being Easter weekend (can't really take the family out to see horror and destruction), it being such a niche film (you have to know something about it before going in the theater), and being really freaking long. I was always concerned about it being over 3 hours long. The Weinstein brothers are now considering splitting up the movies for a re-release in a few weeks, and will definitely be doing that internationally. I feel bad for them: it had great buzz, many good reviews, and two directors who usually don't fail to boot, but it totally flopped on them, and now they're a little shaken up. I hope they get somewhere near making back their budget (oh, and tack on another $30 million for advertising that apparently didn't work).
The only other movie news is a nifty Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer poster. I think it makes them look a little bit too touched up though.
What flavor of ice cream best describes your personality? That's tough. I guess I'll go with Moo-llennium Crunch, because I'm exciting and delicious and full of lots of random good stuff, I guess. *shrugs* Kind of a weird question to answer about one's self =P
If your life was a weather vane, which direction would it be pointing right now? Probably towards my bed, because I'm sure more sleep would be to my benefit. Oh well, some things (very few, mind you) are better than sleep! =)
What is one field or profession that you have never pursued, but that you think you would most likely have been quite good at? Besides computer science, probably musician. It'd be interesting to be a classical guitarist/guitar teacher.
Happy Ash Wednesday, everyone! I wonder if you're supposed to happy or mournful on Ash Wednesday. It's not a solemn day like Good Friday, but it's not like you have anything to really be excited about like with Easter. Oh well, I'll stick with my greeting. Anyway, you may recall that Microsoft unveiled a whole Live brand a long time ago to help them market their web OS of sorts. I mean it wasn't a fully functional OS per se, but it brought all of your most important applications online so that you could store your information online as part of a movement towards an informal online OS. Well, they're starting to cut that moniker from some of its services, including shopping and e-mail. Are they shifting company interests, or is this a simple marketing change? It has me curious, and I can't help but think that they didn't market it well enough. I never really felt compelled to use any of the services other than Live Image Search, and I'm a total tech geek! I think that if they had just appealed to the masses that they could've gotten wider acceptance. I know they're fighting hardships with the Microsoft name being associated with evil, but surely it can't be that hard with all the money they've got. Anyway, I wonder if they'll end up phasing out these services altogether or just the names? Very curious, and I'm sure we'll know more soon enough.
While I'm on the Microsoft topic, the guy that they had hired to take pictures for the backgrounds that come built-in to the OS posted the photos that didn't make the cut, and they're quite stellar. They'd all make amazing backgrounds, in my opinion. Oh, and in other Microsoft news, it turns out that Bill Gates actually restricts his children's computer usage as any good parent should. I think that parental control software is totally reasonable through maybe 12 years old, because then they'll get smart enough to crack it.
Cisco and Apple finally reached an agrement on the "iPhone" trademark and can both use the name now. The only catch that we know of is that they have to explore interoperability with each other (I don't think that's restricted to the iPhone or anything). There's probably other stuff they're not telling us, but so ends that feud finally.
Steve Jobs and Bill Gates spoke unrehearsed at the All Things Digital conference, and some pictures have sprouted up on line of them seemingly having a good time with each other. It's nice to see them getting along, if they weren't just faking it for the cameras, because they're so similar in a lot of ways. I guess it's where the differ that makes Apple and Microsoft so successful in different areas.
I know I'm not the only person who watches TV online because they don't get certain channels or their TV blows (or they're just too lazy to leave their bedroom). Anyway, for all you weirdos like me, here's an awesome list of good places to get your visual fix.
Not really a whole lot going on in movies. We have a clip from Zodiac that doesn't really tell us much, but it does help set the tone for what we should expect a little more. I found it slightly haunting though we don't know that anything bad will really happen (though, of course, it's about a serial killer so you naturally assume the worst).
AICN got its hands on a review for Reno 911: Miami and it sounds like a really funny movie. I wanted to see it when I first saw the teaser for it because the show was so damn funny (is it still on?). It comes out this weekend, though I don't know if I'll get a chance to see it before Spring Break.
Lastly, Robert Redford, Meryl Streep, and Tom Cruise may all be in a movie together called Lions for Lambs, which is only noteworthy because of how phenomenal those actors are (I know Cruise is crazy, but he's damn talented anyway).
Oh, and IMDB tweaked its layout a bit if anyone cares. I don't think its any better or worse than before.
1. What is your favorite place for delivered pizza? Definitely Papa John's. The sauce is really good, as is the crust. And the prices are also reasonable!
2. How often do you have pizza delivered at your house? Almost never, because I get so much pizza on campus for free as it is that I'd rather cook food at home.
3. What toppings do you want on that pizza? I love pepperoni, mushrooms, pineapple, and Candian bacon. Probably not all on the same pizza, but awesome individually.
4. Thick crust or thin? Definitely thick. Thin crust makes the pizza slightly less filling, and the crust doesn't taste as good either.
There are a lot of little things to talk about today, so I figured that I should start with the biggest little thing: Windows Vista is out! I know that you're all exhausted from waiting outside your local retailer at midnight. I can't imagine that any of you had forgotten about it over the past 5 years. Alright, enough sarcasm. Bill Gates appeared on The Daily Show to help promote it to younger demographics, and it's funny just how different he is from his most formidable opponent, Steve Jobs. He's really not very personable, but I think he understood Jon's jokes even though he didn't ostensibly think they were very funny. All in all, he was pretty sober about the release. This is a man who is ready to retire, you can see it in his face. Even as he was talking about the future, he wasn't really getting into it. This isn't the same young man who had dreams of Microsoft, this is an old man who has seen a lot come to fruition through his achievements in the field of technology and is ready to move on. In any case, Vista is out and I've yet to try it out. It's not out at our campus computer store (massive discount there), so I'm going to wait until it does. Everyone raves about how great it is, but what worries me the most is that it may demand ridiculous hardware specs or else be very slow. Though this computer still rocks (2.4 Ghz P4, 1GB RAM), it was built before I started college. Maybe I'll wait until I get my laptop in May. In any case, it's out for the rest of you already.
Finally some supporters of what I was claiming earlier: the profit margins on the iPhone are closer to 20%, if even that much, when some of the parts (namely, the LCD screen) are more realistically priced. And once again, R&D still isn't being taken into account. The iPod Shuffle is being re-released in more colors now: pink, blue, [burnt] orange, and green. You can't look at that picture and tell me that it's not Longhorn orange. Anyway, they also come with the updated earbuds (guess they ran out of the old crap ones). Oh, and they seem to have released an 802.11n enabler for newer MacBooks, iMacs, and Mac Pros, which is a bit controversial since it costs a couple of bucks extra. I kind of agree, it was promised with the device in its specs, so why should you have to buy a driver for it? It's been a long time coming, but it's finally upon us: the floppy disk is basically dead. Its biggest manufacturers have stopped making them, and PC World has decided to stop selling them. I don't even know what they're useful for anymore, but they were a good friend for me back in the mid 90s. Because searching Google has become so important in today's society, I felt it was worthwhile to post about some more tips for searching efficiently using keywords. Definitely worth checking out. If memorizing is as painful for you as it is for me, then you'll get a kick out of memorizable.org. It uses a wiki interface to quiz you on words and phrases, which makes it ideal for language classes or biology classes, I'd imagine. I don't have much use for it at this point in my college career, but I wish I had it two years ago. Lastly, if you need to share large files online easily, you should definitely check out senduit. I think it's a lot cooler than You Send It, and will definitely start using it myself.
I went through all the movie news, and it's pretty boring or just not noteworthy. So let's not cover it today.
1. How often do you update your blog/site and why? 6 days a week, because that's when the most news breaks.
2. How often do you comment on other people’s sites and why? Whenever I have something to say! Probably every other day or so.
3. How often do you change the layout of your site and why? Of this blog? Like maybe once a year. If you change it too often it becomes gawdy.
4. Do you ever feel guilty that you don’t reciprocate comments or you really don’t care? Sometimes, yeah. Usually though, I try to visit whoever commented, but I won't force a fake comment.
5. How many sites on average do you visit daily and of those, how many do you comment on? Maybe 15 sites? They're not all blogs though. I may comment on one blog a day.
Thankfully, I made it back to Austin in one piece today (errr...yesterday, but this is still the Sunday post)! I think I was happier to come back than to leave Houston. As much as I enjoyed my trips and relaxing, I felt lazy and really need to get back in my groove, though I'm confident that plenty of good times will still follow. Anyway, I think I give Apple too much credit here and I want to balance it out with some of their problems: they like bullying their employees and fans. I know, the bigger problem is FairPlay (what an ironic name for it), but that's a topic for another day. Apple's employees are monitored fairly closely and even reprimanded for visiting sites divulging Apple rumors. Plus, they're sometimes fed false information so that leaks can be traced. Of course, this is their right. They can treat their employees however they like in the name of turning a profit and paying these employees' salaries. However, they've started a fresh campaign now against bloggers reporting on Windows Mobile phone skins that simulate the iPhone interface, and they have been known to get uppity about YouTube videos that don't even give away their precious secret. I think this is a pretty crazy tactic, and I'm glad that bloggers are taking a stand. Talking about someone violating a patent shouldn't make you a criminal. What are they really getting out of alienating their fans? They keep doing it, and it's really starting to piss people off. How far should they really go to scare people from starting rumors?
Many many miles from Macworld, CES was going on where Bill Gates was doing the keynote. What's interesting is what a stark contrast his speech was from the one Jobs gave. In a word, it's boring. I think Gates just isn't the song-and-dance type of guy, he'd rather his products speak for themselves, and he's lost the zest that Jobs has for being so involved with his products. Still, I hope that the Microsoft-haters haven't lost sight of how important Gates was to personal computing as we know it today; he's just kind of old now (it happens). This is interesting: Napster bought AOL Music. Did that make anyone else do a double-read? Because it caught me off guard. Not only is Napster struggling, but it's considerably smaller than AOL. I guess they figure that they're not going down without a fight, which I guess is noble in theory; I just don't like the idea of borrowing music, I'd rather just buy the CD and be done with it. Lastly, Cingular is no longer "Cingular". It will now be AT&T. Why? Because AT&T successfully bought BellSouth, which frankly makes Cingular their bitch and no one else's. I guess we can say good-bye to those commercials with the orange man?
I'm pretty baffled by the box office this weekend: Stomp the Yardtook the lead with over $22 million. It got pretty horrible reviews, but so did the other new releases this weekend. I recommend everyone just find a theater near them that's showing Pan's Labyrinth, because I'm pretty sure it's better than the top 10 movies in the box office right now. The only other thing to talk about is that Latino Review put up their script review of Planet Terror, Robert Rodriguez's part of Grind House, and I was surprised to find that they loved it. I figured it'd be hollow and just meant to poke fun at campy zombie flicks, especially since Rodriguez has always had issues with solid dialog, but I guess Tarantino gave him some tips?
If found a PostSecret postcard very appropriate to my post from before I left for Seattle, so I felt that I should share:
to observe this (fair warning: that movie is very much a caricature of all its characters). His 2005 Stanford commencement address is pretty famous and definitely an incredible speech, and yet it still reflects that he can really be a jerk sometimes. He lets loose a bit at a few points in his speech and leaves out pivotal details in his speech that paint him out to be a hero in situations that weren't so black and white. He's green lit ads that have held no punches in obviously attacking competitors, a practice that I remember not being so common once upon a time. He runs press events that extol the virtues of perfectly mundane evolutions to existing products. However, it's for all these things that people love Steve Jobs. All these things have made him a fascinating CEO and a generational icon.
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