This Week in Digital Distribution

Note: I know about the big Facebook scandal from last week, but I'm not going to report about it since it's moot by now. Facebook changed their TOS to own your data for life due to technological issues, but reverted back. End of story :)

Netflix Dethroning Hulu?

Last week had some really juicy stories regarding online distribution that centered around Hulu and Netflix (but we'll throw YouTube in the mix just for fun).

Netflix has a base of over 10 million subscribers, and though only about 10% of their movies are available for streaming, they've admitted that they've seen a significant number of subscribers taking advantage of their streaming services. In fact, they've indicated that they may start rolling out subscriptions that are streaming only as soon as this year. I could even imagine them having tiers of streaming only plans for the amount of content available to stream while keeping the all-you-can-eat model. What's really giving Netflix a lot of power here is that aside from your computer you can get $100 Roku box to stream on your TV or use your Xbox 360, TiVo, or certain Blu-ray players to do the same. Once they get on mobile platforms, they're going to be practically unstoppable. While no one wants to necessarily play movies on their mobile phone, imagine a projector being built into your cell phone or even a large Internet tablet.

Enter Boxee. Nowadays, more and more households are getting DVRs (some being TiVos, of course) because people just don't have the time anymore to be home at pre-scheduled times to watch everything they want to watch, they like to watch multimedia on their own schedule. Boxee makes this a reality without having to get a cable or satellite subscription but rather by pooling together content from sites like YouTube, Netflix, CBS, and others, plus your own computer. It's essentially open source DVR software for your home media PC that doesn't really record TV but instead just takes advantage of what's available on the Internet. Unfortunately, they cannot bring in Hulu content. Why? They haven't really been told why, but they were told that they can't do it.

Of course, this is completely insane. We're entering an era where the idea of television as we know it is being completely transformed, and most of the big guys figured out that piracy was rampant a few years ago because of the lack of legal, online venues of distribution. Bringing in content via Hulu and iTunes and Amazon Video on Demand and such has helped alleviate the problem. While it hasn't overtaken traditional television viewing, we're in an economy where people are favoring getting their media on the Internet over getting cable or satellite, especially with HD channels coming in over antenna if they really want to watch traditional television.

They're starting to change their tune though of encouraging this with the Boxee situation and pulling content from Hulu. Hulu isn't the bad guy here, it's their vendors who are inept. So what's their endgame? It's probably just what you think: cable companies trying to preserve their bread and butter. Time Warner blamed billions of dollars in losses on the Internet, but what they don't get is that their prices are often outrageously unfair compared to just buying the episodes you want for $2 apiece or even renting/buying them on DVD. It's incredible how lazy some companies can be. It's absolutely inexcusable to not innovate in your industry and make your customers suffer for your incompetency. They need to look to the future and get their minds out of the past.

In effect, they're handing the reigns to Netflix. With TV shows on DVD and deals like the one they have with Starz, they're getting a heavy lead on Hulu, and it's not even Hulu's fault. It'll be interesting to see how much these cable companies suffer until they change their minds.

One last quick note: YouTube has been changing up their code a bit to kill off un-approved alternatives to the video download feature I mentioned last week that would enable viewers to download videos without having to buy them, once YouTube starts really rolling out paid downloads. What'll be interesting is if YouTube will work on integrating with TiVo and Roku and others to get themselves on people's TVs past just streaming but rather on the scheduled download model, which podcasts are often downloaded by through RSS readers or iTunes or other such software.

MWC 09 Randomness

I actually don't think I've heard of the Mobile World Congress and only found out about it a few weeks ago when my brother mentioned it to me one day. Apparently, it's somewhat of a big deal, especially now that smartphones are so popular. A few interesting stories came out of it last week.

Let's face it, Windows Mobile 6.5 has always been the weakest link in the Windows family. People who get Windows Mobile phones seem to not stay with them for long and reviewers have never been kind to the OS. Windows Mobile 6.5 is looking to change this trend with a much sleeker, iPhone-like, touch UI. What Gizmodo liked about it especially was that the lock screen had alerts and other useful information on it, but I just felt overall like they were trying to make usability more of a core value of the OS instead of an afterthought.

They also got their hands on the HTC Dream, aka the Android G2. The phone hardware is slimmer and it looks like the body makes more sense, but it is a touchscreen. So while it doesn't inherit the G1's terribly keyboard, it gives you an onscreen touch screen keyboard that you're likely to hate. I think Android is great, but I'm not impressed by this phone. I predict it'll be another flop and the torch for a good Android phone will probably never fall in the hands of HTC.

The last story I've got is for the Palm Pre: aside from copy and paste and tethering (using your phone as a modem for your laptop), it's now confirmed to have Flash. It has joined Adobe's Open Screen Project, which will help deliver Flash for the webOS. Given the wealth of Flash games and other rich content already out there, this would help the Pre take a huge stab at Apple's app store in having a wealth of application right out of the box.

Windows 7 RC Release Set

Neowin has learned from an insider at Microsoft (who I imagine would be in big trouble if they were discovered) that Windows 7 will have their first Release Candidate (RC) ready on April 10, 2009. It's unsure what has been adjusted aside from UAC (see my post last week), but it looks like it'll be a public release and I'm sure will keep buzz alive for the forthcoming OS. If you currently have the beta installed and start getting updates, don't get too excited: they're just test updates that do nothing.

There's only one problem with Microsoft's PR strategy though in hyping up Windows 7: they have to continue to deal with the fallout from Vista. While I like a lot about Vista, some of my stability issues make me miss XP. One woman misses it so much that she's suing Microsoft over a $60 charge to downgrade from Vista to XP on her new computer, which she downgraded to because of numerous issues she had using Vista. I don't see this lawsuit sticking, but it's just adding to Microsoft's woes.

The Yelp Scandal

I was tempted to pass up this story, but it's far too controversial to not quickly touch on. There are rumors that Yelp is threatening small businesses with negative user reviews to coerce them to buy advertising and that they allow businesses to convert negative reviews to positive reviews for $300 a month. Yelp denies these charges, but admits that they'll push positive reviews to the top for a fee. I love Yelp, so I hate to see this, but the fact they even allowing you to promote positive reviews is shady. Amazon puts reviews at the top based on a very interesting algorithm to help out customers make an educated decision. If Yelp continues to get bad press like this, I wonder if their street cred will fade away?

Final Notes

I'm running out of time here (it's past my bedtime), so I'm going to run through some final stories.

Vint Cerf let loose on some of his thoughts on the Internet and believes that downloaded content, rather than streaming media, is the real future of the Internet. As the father of the Internet, his opinions are definitely valued, and what I found most interesting was what he thought about how we'll interpret our current data and applications hundreds of years from now.

In the Pirate's Bay trial in Sweden, half the charges against them were dropped due to a misunderstanding of how torrents work. That still leaves all the charges related to them assisting in illegally making available copyrighted content.

I've talked about this before so I don't want to hammer in on it too much, but Gizmodo has a great article explaining why more megapixels are not always better. If the sensor is too small, you're actually probably shooting yourself in the foot. If you really need more than like 6 MP, then you need an SLR.

ReadWriteWeb has a fun pie chart on who's hiring in technology, with a lot going to the evasive "Other" field, but second place going to IT/Software.

Last, but not least, I'm a big fan of this short article about what programming language you should learn based on the job you're taking on. I've had the good fortune of interfacing with almost all of them over the past 6 months, so I definitely agree.

Alright, I'm going to watch a bit more of the Oscars before heading to bed. The production value in the show was really impressive and entertaining, but I was disappointed that Slumdog Millionaire won out in a couple of categories where I felt it didn't deserve it, even though I loved the film. Still: best award ceremony in years in presentation.

Since it started raining again in Seattle, I'll leave you with a glimpse of the beautiful weather we enjoyed last week.

X-Files and My Semi-Glorious Return

I'm back to blogging! I meant to write this post yesterday, but opted for Rock Band instead (sorry). I should be posting at least weekly, but I'll shoot for bi-weekly. I'm still getting adjusted to living in Seattle, and I am a bit homesick, but I am enjoying the scenery out here.

X-Files: I Want to Believe

Full disclosure: I can't remember the last episode of this show that I saw, but it was probably the only one I've seen. This show was on when I was pretty easily scared of stuff in general so I never got into it. I'm sure it was a good show, it just wasn't my cup of tea and now I'm on to bigger and better shows (Burn Notice is currently rocking my socks).

The movie revolves around one big missing persons mystery (an FBI agent) and a psychic, so given the psychic's involvement the FBI have called on Dana Scully to call in Fox Mulder, who requires her to help if he's going to help. They've basically been going on with their own lives (Mulder's being as a recluse) so this is kind of a major reunion for them. The more I think about the story though, the more I have problems with it. I walked out of the theater feeling no better or worse than when I walked in, and the movie seemed pretty good but not amazing.

Let me start out with my issues. They had a psychic helping them and they called in Mulder because they were stuck. Anyone see a problem with that? They have a psychic, which is hard for them to believe naturally, but why does this mean they need to call on Mulder? It seems like he's been estranged by the FBI, so I don't see why they require his help. Even if you're ok with that though, I just never believe the chemistry between Mulder and Scully. Their reunion in the movie seems to have been after a long time and yet they weren't very affected by it. Their love story progression seemed like an after thought they clumsily wove into the movie, which is strange because I had heard in an interview that the movie was supposed to center on them. I also hate that we never connect with the antagonists at all, and the motive involved isn't all that compelling.



I don't know if fans really loved this movie. It seemed to drag on a bit. There wasn't a whole lot of thrill moments or action, and I never really got pulled in. Granted, I had no investment in this series and only went to see this movie in the first place because a friend wanted to, but I figured that it would be good. It could be that I'm dealing with a hangover from The Dark Knight and any movie I see will pale in comparison, but I watched Ratatouille the other night and still managed to enjoy it.

I definitely wouldn't say that the movie is bad though. I think it could've explained things better and tightening itself up a bit on time, but it was still entertaining. I think you should rent it if you're at all intrigued by the series or murder mysteries. It's definitely nothing out of the ordinary though (if you really want a great murder mystery just go rent Mystic River), and there are certainly better movies out there right now (obviously The Dark Knight, but I loved Wall-E and I've seen good reviews for Mamma Mia and Step Brothers). I give this movie a C-, because I can tell that they were trying to reach out to fans rather than people's wallets, but I think that they've probably just run out of ideas. It probably would've benefited from not being released right in the middle of a competitive summer for films.

The Dark Knight's $300m Dash

I counted on Box Office Mojo that The Dark Knight had topped 23 of their charts including biggest opening weekend ever, biggest second weekend ever, and biggest opening day gross. The one everyone is focusing on now though is that it is the fastest movie to hit $300 million (it's already at $315 million domestically, but over $350 million worldwide) with a record of 10 days. The third Pirates of the Caribbean movie had the title before at 16 days, and now people are predicting that The Dark Knight may beat Titanic's $600 million record for biggest total gross. I think that it can probably pull it off since it is past halfway there in its 2nd weekend. By the way, how the Hell did that movie make so much money? It wasn't a bad movie, but I saw it once and never want to see it again because it was so heavy and depressing. Anyway, this movie deserves the massive amount of money they're making. It seriously is a good time to be a nerd when something this phenomenal comes out that literally must seem like to many people, including myself, that it's straight out of their childhood fantasies. (I wasn't that dark as a child, but darkness always intrigued me)

Up-marketing Vista

In case you haven't noticed, Windows Vista has been taking a beating as far as publicity goes ever since its released because it didn't deliver on several of the promises that was made of it early in its development (always a fatal mistake). It took Microsoft far too long, but they're finally gearing up some positive marketing for Vista. They tested the waters by showing a "new OS" to people called Mojave and seeing how they liked it. In the end, it turned out that Mojave was Vista with the "Vista" name stripped from it and people were pretty shocked because most (or all) of them had the impression that Vista sucked. I'm personally glad about this because I'm freaking tired of having to defend my computer: it's a great machine and Vista works very well on it. It is no worse than XP and I admit that it sucks that you need a good computer to run it but if you do then the extra features (including the massively re-vamped search functionality) are pretty cool. The only problem I've had is that my downloading can sometimes impact my computer's overall performance, but I don't think that's necessarily Vista.

That's just one component for their response to Apple's smarmy Mac vs. PC ads. They're not going to do the same thing in reverse to attack Apple, but they're going to stop being such a sleepy giant and try a pro-Vista message. Some have seen the ads and are already excited about it, but they have not yet been made public. For the record: I don't hate Apple or Microsoft, but I do hate Apple taking advantage of its underdog status to continually take low-blows at Microsoft. Their ads are often unfair and prey on stereotypes, which bothers me. I'll admit that they're clever, but they've gone on far too long.

Open Xbox

One more quick piece of Microsoft news: they've decided to open up the 360 platform! That means that you don't have to be a big studio to write your own Xbox 360 game and put it out on Live. Not everyone will be allowed to put their game on Live, but the fact that they're encouraging this is just a massive step in the right direction. I wish that Sony would do the same. It's just going to breed more competition and produce higher quality of games that rely more on just flashy graphics and big budgets to attract attentions.

Yahoo! Music Store Folds

In another giant stab to DRM, Yahoo has closed up shop in the digital music game. They are the second DRM music service to go down this year (MSN was first), but the difference is that in a couple of months their key servers are going offline! What does that mean? The what DRM music often works is that they're locked by a key (in the case of subscription based services, these keys usually need to be renewed monthly) and you need these keys to be able to open these tracks. If you transfer them to another computer, this computer asks the server for the appropriate keys using your login information and it obliges, but in Yahoo's case you can't move your songs to another computer so if your computer dies then so does your music. Lame, huh? That's why you should use Amazon MP3: I still personally thing that it's the best digital music around and something like this would never happen to its customers. I wonder if enough people used the service for this to impact Yahoo's image? I kind of hope so, because it's a pretty raw deal (MSN's key servers will only be up until 2011, so they're not much better).

Comments and CS Concepts

I just wanted to briefly mention a couple of articles that I liked. The first one is concise and talks about why comments in code are appropriate and why. It's a great read, even if you do use comments in your code.

The other one is a list of the top 10 concepts that all software engineers should know. With the exception maybe of layering, I think that your success in the IT industry is doomed without an understanding of these ideas and a willingness to flesh them out throughout your career.

Streaming Torrents

EZTV, a huge group for trafficking torrents, has started putting up content that can be streamed using Swarmplayer, which streams content using bittorrent technology to distribute it. This is an excellent idea and I think could seriously revolutionize how we stream multimedia online, if it's harnessed in legal uses. This would really cut a lot of overhead out of putting things like TV shows online because a media company would no longer need to keep them on a centralized server and pay for the bandwidth to deliver it but rather could just seed a show well (i.e. have a few powerful machines dedicated to serving up the shows) and let everyone watching the show upload the show to others as they watch it. Couldn't someone compete with Hulu if they harnessed this technology? I imagine that you could put out HD-quality content with this sort of infrastructure. Only time will tell (assuming that this technology does get picked up by someone big).

One-Liners

I have a couple more articles that I want to talk about but they're just one-liners:

Legendary hacker Kevin Mitnick was part of a panel recently at a hacking convention and told some great stories (including a live prank). He's probably the father of social engineering attacks (tricking you into giving up sensitive information or making yourself vulnerable).

CNN has a pretty good article on how to prepare yourself for the transition to digital TV. If you're on cable or satellite, then you're ok. Otherwise, read that article.

Rock Band

I just wanted to conclude by proclaiming that Rock Band is an incredible video game. As expensive as my 80 GB PS3 was, I'm really glad I got it. I'm excited to start buying Blu-ray movies (especially Iron Man and The Dark Knight), Metal Gear Solid 4 is beautiful, the Playstation Network store is just how things should've been on the PS2, and Rock Band is by far one of the coolest games I've played.

I never thought I'd like it that much because I never got into Guitar Hero, but it's definitely worth checking out. The closest any game has come to replicating the kind of co-operative play you get from this game is probably Wii Sports, but this game tops that. You really do feel like you're part of a band because when you play hard song it's rewarding and you start patting each other on the back and stuff. Also impressives are the nuances: the presentation is flawless. They had my band name (Elton and the Fun King Band) on a tour bus, on CD album covers, and in neon in the World Tour mode! Plus, the load screens are customized with your band! Any musicians will really be impressed with this game (or non-musicians), because I think that it handles guitar a lot better, as well.

*deep breath* Ok, enough of that. I'm going to go read Salem's Lot for a bit. Have a great week, everyone!

Many-to-Many

Sorry to be so tardy in writing this post, but this week has been absolutely ridiculous granting me no more than 4 hours of sleep a night for half the week. I think that things will be better now, and I'm real excited about my new iRiver Clix mp3 player. I'm planning on reviewing here, hopefully with video footage as well, as early as next week because I feel that it never got the attention it deserves. You'll find out why right here, so stay tuned.

What I want to talk about first of all today though is one of the best Joel essays I've read: Martian Headsets. He never disappoints me, and I someday aspire to be able to elicit the kind of nuggets of wisdom on my blog that he does, but until then I'm going to explain why this essay is so important. Developing the NSC site for me was fun and not really that bad until I started a part of the site where I allow members to review their professors and I turned to ext-js. I love ext-js, don't get me wrong, but Javascript is a complete pain to deal with for cross-browser compatibility. It wasn't long before Safari purists complained to me, and so I complained back asking why anyone would use Safari. In any case, I ended up just worrying about IE 6, IE 7, and Firefox, and even then one of the pages screws with the layout in IE 7. Getting it to work simultaneously on all 3 browsers was grueling, and people sometimes don't understand why I praise Firefox and tell them to use it. From my perspective, I've had so much more success writing code in CSS and Javascript and just working in Firefox as opposed to any IE browser. People also don't understand why certain sites don't work in IE or don't work in Firefox. These are both reasonable concerns, and that's why I feel that it's important to read this essay.

Something I really took from it that I really didn't quite grasp before is that these specifications for "web standards" and how browsers should be rendering pages aren't as glorious as people like to claim they are. I've probably been guilty of putting a little too much stock in them, and I apologize for that. With a concept as complicated as the Internet, I think that the current state of affairs with the browser wars was pretty much inevitable. There's this many-to-many mapping now between the browsers out there and the sites that they support because each version of IE, and some other browsers, add compatibility quirks with regard to how their interpret code. So we face a stalemate between browser compatibilities now. People have to write hacks to get their sites to work in certain browsers and walk on pins and needles. The only solution is a little far-fetched, but I like to think (when I'm in my happy place) that it's someday possible: all the browsers actually agree on the same set of standards in mind-numbing detail and focus instead on security and the user experience. In any case, IE8 now is facing the very real war of pragmatists versus idealists. The idealistic perspective is what I just mentioned: stick strong to standards and force everyone to conform to the them. The former is to focus on backwards-compatibility with the older version of IE. Currently, the idealists are winning, and it will definitely cost Microsoft dearly if they do win. If Vista has taught them anything, I hope that that it's to temper this idealism with pragmatism and try not to screw your market share. We'll see what prevails in the end.

The FCC's 700 MHz spectrum auction is almost complete with the Verizon and AT&T coming out on top. They took the C and D blocks for $9.4 and $6.6 billion, respectively. Apparently, Google only bid to reach the reserve and force open standards. Will this mean better cell phone coverage? I hope so, but only time will tell.

Yahoo has decided to release a very positive outlook for 2009 and 2010. It's so positive, in fact, that it surpasses the predictions made by pretty much any of the analysts forecasting their revenues. Whether or not Yahoo believes this prediction, which I'm sure they do, I believe that the real purpose is two-fold: to put confidence in the investors that they're in control and to try to raise Microsoft's bid in case they can't get out of being taken over. Relations between Microsoft and Yahoo seem to be a little calmer, but Microsoft still hasn't budged on its offer and investors don't sound like this new outlook gives them much more faith in Jerry Yang. Meanwhile, Microsoft has snatched up web analysis company Rapt, Inc. I imagine that they're trying to compete with Google Analytics here. I think that Microsoft strategy needs some work because they're falling into the Yahoo trap of competing with specific Google services rather than offering something out-of-the-ordinary that will bring them users. While I've said before that they do both have some great applications (Yahoo and Microsoft, I mean) they're lacking in user bases, and that's another thing for them to work on (hopefully together). You think they'll create an online university to compete with Google Code University (which, for the record, I think was a pretty neat idea)?

In the meantime, AOL has decided to buy social networking site Bebo for $850 million. I definitely got the feeling that this was under-covered, probably because AOL isn't as sexy as they once were. You may not have heard of Bebo because it's huge in Europe but not so much in the U.S., so maybe AOL is trying to expand Bebo's prowess to the U.S.? If it integrates well enough with AIM, it's not impossible. Now that you can do remote desktop in AIM, its professional user base is probably growing. Facebook had a response, that perhaps wasn't planned with this in mind: IM on Facebook. We're not sure yet if it will be built on Jabber or if they'll provide an API for it, so for now it'll be only for Facebook. I'm guessing that it will work similarly to GTalk as far as just pure functionality and I believe their goal is to keep people on Facebook longer so that it can continue to evolve into this web desktop that people often buzz about.

This is pretty neat news: Mininova is launching a closed beta to test out video streaming researched at Harvard with the Tribler team involved, as well. It sounds like it will work similar to how current torrents work: as you receive packets for the video stream you'll serve it to others trying to stream the video and use the "Give-to-Get" algorithm to ensure that the video becomes truly on-demand. I'm really excited to see what comes out from the other end of the beta and I have high hopes because I've always been fascinated by torrents and I'd love to see that technology applied in a more widespread legitimate way, even if it's directly through torrents. Video streaming, after all, has really exploded in the past few years.

Last, but not least: Miro has released a new update to Miro with plenty of performance improvements and bug fixes. Miro is a heavy application, but really awesome if you can afford the RAM.

I'll leave you with the new Wall-E trailer, which is really cute and very entertaining.

Looking Backwards and Forward

This may end up being my last post of 2007 because I'm going to the Texans game tomorrow and Monday night is my brother's New Year's Eve party so I'm going to be pretty busy. I've already fallen behind in my projects! User authentication without cryptography is killing me. Anyway, I wanted to piggyback on Ars Technica's summary of the past year and predictions for next year, in true end-of-year fashion. They argue that 2007 was the year of open source, online video (and user generated content), casual gaming, RIAA lawsuits, and climate. While I've encountered all those things (though I didn't get sued), I don't think they quite characterize the year, except for the online video one. In my opinion, there were few things to characterize this year. Besides online video there was mp3s gaining more ground (e.g. Amazon Digital Downloads emerged), that little thing called the iPhone, Apple cracking down more on rumor mills, the steep freefall of Vista's popularity, the renewal of World of Warcraft as digital crack, viral marketing (especially via blogs), and 300 (everyone freaking keeps saying that line and it's not funny anymore) among several summer hits (that were actually entertaining). Piracy was a hot button issue, yes, but it has been every year for the past few years. These are scattered things (except for the first two) that didn't really dominate the year but were pretty big deals and hopefully you remember them and can reminisce. If not, you can probably find news on all of those things in my archives.

What about 2008? I'm never that great at predicting the future, I just occasionally get lucky with Apple announcements. I know that for me it will be a huge year because I'm taking the frightening plunge in moving to an entirely new city and starting my first permanent full-time job. In technology as a whole though, Ars Technica bring up the good prediction of the war of the iPods. I definitely see that. I also see a war of iPhone clones upon the horizon though, which they mentioned also. I think OS tensions will rise as people stick to XP, which will remain a magnet for viruses and worms. I think people will finally be able to buy Wiis on-demand, though the Xbox 360 will still hang on and continue to beat the PS3. Of course, the Wii will get very few new games though because it's a Nintendo console. I see PC gaming gaining some increase in popularity. I see the writer's strike ending in some compromise that will ultimately hurt the writers years down the line. I see more television going online and on-demand entertainment gaining a lot of steam. Hell, surveys already show that people like watching shows online and it's helping measure ratings more accurately. And I see piracy getting stronger than ever as the MPAA and RIAA martyr more and more people. Oh, I also think we'll see more solid-state disks and Flash memory used in more places. That's all I've got though! What are your predictions, Nostradamus?

Going back to this year, DVice has a great look at why the iPhone dominated (despite all the pundits who claimed it would fail due to price): they didn't inundate people with choice. There are too many iPods, there are too many crappy phones, and in this modern-age (as I've mentioned before several times) people have to make too many decisions. They get stressed out! It should be easy to pick out and use your phone, and many people are willing to pay crazy amounts of money to reduce the complexity of their lives. That's an important concept, especially in software. Don't tell me about how the iPhone doesn't support Flash or 3G or blah blah blah, the people who are buying it clearly don't care that much. It works and they're happy. Some of them hack, and that's good and well for them. The point is, Apple's strategy worked.

I hate to talk about Apple so much, but I have more interesting news from Cuppertino: they're trying to patent a process where people can add themselves to queues for products when they're on the go. So you could order something from Best Buy when you're heading to the gym, and they'd text you when it's ready so that you could go pick it up right away. Or maybe it could skip long lines at Starbucks while you're on the way there? On the flip side, it could also track your orders: good for businesses, bad for your privacy. Apple doesn't always act on these patents, but this could be interesting, if not scary. The other big news is that the movie studios are realizing that iTunes is here to stay and are ready to talk movie rentals. No information yet, the point is that iTunes is really gaining clout with the studios for them to consider this.

One more tech tidbit: I liked this list of startup tips. It's concise, comprehensive, and interesting. It's worth a skim.

As for movies, just two things. There's a new trailer for Harold and Kumar 2. Maybe it's just because I love the first one, but I really enjoyed that trailer. I'm definitely looking forward to it coming to theaters. The other thing is to look out for these Indiana Jones 4 promotional crates at your local theater:

Shying Away from Vista

Sorry it's been a while, but I spent last week working on my hardest project ever: exploiting buffer overflow in 7 programs for Network Security. We worked at least 45 hours over 4 days to get 6 of the 7. I've gotta say, hacking is hard work. Now, over the break I have homework in three classes and a project to start on for OS, so I still can't post much. Exciting, no?

Not to throw unwarranted support for Macs (I think they're cool, but I'm not part of that cult), but I think that this is a pretty funny little ad:



I remember a time when people were just railing on Vista for being too flashy and having too many versions. Now, IT professionals are shying away from upgrading. When the integrity of your business relies on a piece of software that has more anecdotal evidence behind crashing than the alternatives and it has known issues with certain hardware (though this has been a receding problem, to Microsoft's credit) and potential problems with business applications it's a bit daunting. It's past irrational worries, these people don't want to deal with a mess. This is a pretty sizable issue for Microsoft. Windows is their bedrock, and a significant portion of their sales goes to enterprise customers. If they lose the trust of these people, and they turn to Linux and OS X, this will surely erode the good name of Microsoft. In my humble opinion, this could be the beginning of the end for Microsoft. I know, that's an extremely bold statement, but I don't think it is because I think that they're going to re-organize, smarten up with Windows 7, and put out a more worthwhile OS after getting feedback from Vista. If it's another flop though, you'll see more defections, and by then it'll be too late for Microsoft. They'll still be around, sure, but they won't be the powerhouse they are today because when it comes down to it, their fame and fortune is predicated upon Windows. They have a bevy of other products, and they'll continue to bring in money, but without their crown jewel they'll bleed for a while. I hope they see Vista as a stepping stone to a better OS, because I think that it's the shell of what could've been something amazing.

Across the water in Washington, Amazon put out a new product called Kindle. I have no private knowledge of this product other than totally ambiguous rumors back in the summer so what I'm about to say is just my own personal thoughts. It's a pretty cool little product, but what confuses me is the target audience. Basically, it's a e-Reader that runs on EVDO wireless (for free) so you can download books on demand pretty much where ever you can use your cell phone and you can also have news papers and blog posts delivered straight to your Kindle automatically. It uses a special screen that's easy on the eyes, which takes little power to hold the display of text so it lasts an extremely long time on one battery charge. The problem? It's $400! I don't understand who would buy this because any bibliophiles would find it cheaper to go to a library or just order the books, and it doesn't support pdfs so the business professionals who could use it for reading company documents and such are out of luck. I think at $200 that it would be a much more palatable product. Not to mention the fact that people just like to have a hard copy of their books. Still, I think that for this product category, this is as good as it gets. It's easy to use, it's small, it's lightweight, it actually has built-in wireless, and it's just a great niche product. If the price goes down, I think you'll see more interested persons.

This Friday is Black Friday, a day named such because business use it to go in the black (turn a profit) when the holiday season starts. I encourage you to be careful if you brave the crowds. There are a lot of nuts out there. If you're not sure what's out there, this site has a nice compilation of the deals in a spreadsheet. Supposedly, Amazon will have some good deals also, but you have to wait until Friday to see them.

Ok, I need to get back to Finance homework, so I'll do my best to post again before the end of the break. My special girl got me Cranium Wow, and I've played it a couple of times already. It's been a lot of fun, but let me play it a little more over the break before I give you guys the skinny on it. It's basically originally Cranium with a couple of new games, some fun figurines, and a couple of twists on the rules to speed up the game. Have a great Thanksgiving everyone!

The Great Debate Returns: Women in CS

I know I promised an early post tonight, but I ended up getting caught up in other stuff. I'm sure you'll learn to forgive me in time. Anyway, I talked about this way back when, but it's definitely worth bringing up again. One of the biggest things in CS right now, across the nation, is the concern that not enough women are entering Computer Science nowadays. I think people totally underestimate this problem as a natural imbalance. Without a diversity of perspectives in this field, it will suffer greatly. When everyone in a discipline is like-minded, there's no one to break the mold and do great things or change the way we see the world. The less women we have the less chances we have of finding a brilliant female perspective that instigates something really cool. That's why programs like Girlstart are so important; we risk losing innovation that could spur other advances. So what's with girls nowadays? I think the biggest thing, honestly, is the whole nerd stigma. The dot-com bust and outsourcing are still over-inflated, popular concerns, but that affects men just as much as women. In reality, I think that there's this fear of being a code monkey, and people don't realize that there's so much more to this field than that, and so many more possibilities. Not only that, but the stuff you can create with computers can become so revolutionary without requiring a lot of money; it's incredible. Anyway, it's a very male-dominated field, and that can be intimidated. The fear of being like the stereotypical programmer can be debilitating, but I think programs across the nation are working hard at that. Unfortunately, I do not buy UTCS's commitment to this. Yeah, they do eagerly support WICS's projects, but are they actively trying to correct these stigmas? The solution isn't to make it easier to get in, it's to make it easier to get passionate about computing, and then everything else will just fall in place. Without that desire, getting into the program is meaningless, because you won't stay.

I've missed a ridiculous amount of news. Let's start with the Google stuff: it's confirmed that Google is, in fact, developing a Powerpoint clone for their own online office suite (so far, just documents and spreadsheets). They acquired Tonic to expedite this process, but I have no idea what their existing product(s) look like, so we'll just have to wait for a good old-fashioned Google beta release to learn more. Oh, and rumors are back about Taiwanese manufacturers getting orders for Google Phones, but I don't take this as a reliable source. I should try to tap connections at TI to see if that part of the story has any validity.

Remember my link yesterday to Better Gmail, the sweet Firefox add-on? I've been using it since then and it's so freaking cool. Anyway, Lifehacker put up a video to show you a little more of how to be efficient with Gmail, as well as more add-ons. Better Gmail is still the best one though. And remember, always use https in your URL to access Gmail.

Here's something fun: a bunch of pictures of nerd tattoos. I'm surprised that there were so many video game references and so few references to Star Wars (none to Lord of the Rings). I would've preferred more coding ones (how about showing the Oracle machine from reduction proofs or something?). Anyway, for some reason, I liked this one best (no, not because it's a female butt, I know at least one person with a much better ass ;):



I think this is pretty funny, too: Microsoft only sold 244 legal copies of Vista in China in the first two weeks of its release. That doesn't near cover the millions they spent on advertising there, and it's all because of how ridiculous the infamous black market is there. I wonder what would happen if Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) totally disabled illegitimate copies of Vista? Would sales go up in China, or would they not upgrade, or would they all get Linux?

The IRS is applying pressure to have online auction sites disclose the identities of its users so that their incomes from such sales can be accounted for. Aside from the obvious privacy concerns, this really will hurt the little guys who won't get many users if they have to disclose that kind of information. This will create a monopoly for the big boys, namely, eBay. Is it really worth the extra tax money to do that? I'd like to see some hard facts on this before they move forward with such action.

No doubt in an effort to be hip and trendy, you'll soon be able to purchase episodes of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report through Xbox Live. No word on how much it will cost, but I wonder how much money this will yield. If it can only be watched via an Xbox, then that's still kind of flawed and won't help them much. Am I understanding it correctly? Please correct me if these downloads from Xbox Live can be transferred to your PC, I just never heard of such a think.

Last thing for techie news: Will Ferrel and Adam McKay have teamed up again, but this time to create a site called Funny or Die. I think the title is dumb, but the bare bones site is actually based on a good idea: only keep videos that people like. Only videos with a certain amount of votes stay on the site, and the rest go into a graveyard of videos that must be voted up intensely to return. That landlord video is really hilarious, by the way, so be sure to click through (NSFW warning though).

We have news of production beginning on a couple of films. The new Indiana Jones flick will apparently start filming on June 16, and it looks like The Dark Knight started a couple of days ago. We know this because we have photographic evidence of the bank that will apparently be robbed by the Joker. I never say this, but it really does sounds more and more like this movie will be a wet dream for lots of Batman fanatics.

Yahoo Movies has a trailer for Balls of Furym featuring Christopher Walken and Maggie Q, but I didn't laugh once during the whole thing. It looks like they're relying too much on low brow humor, and it just kind of runs in the wrong direction with an otherwise humorous premise. Too bad, I really love Christopher Walken usually, but he's made bad choices in films more recently.

They also have a clip from 28 Weeks Later, and it's genuinely a bit scary, so be forewarned. I really do hope that this movie follows the footsteps of its predecessor to be more than the standard surprise-scare horror movie.

Now, for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

1. What do you do when you need a time out from all of your daily worries and activities?
Besides checking e-mail and webcomics, I think of when I'll next see a certain someone who makes me feel happy no matter what.

2. What celebrity needs to take a time out in the corner for naughty behavior?
Probably Tom Cruise, but he already gets enough ridicule so I'm not really sure. Never gave much thought to this.

3. What do you wish you could spend more time doing?
Besides spending it with a certain someone? Probably practicing guitar. I feel like I've been losing the talent I once had. I still have that zeal, just not enough time to invest in it anymore.

Oh, and don't expect a post tomorrow night. I'll try, but it's not likely.

Goodbye, Live?

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.

Now for a Wednesday Mind Hump:

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.

Compiling Vista's Flaws

For the record, I do not have Vista yet. In fact, I'd rather not talk about it yet, but there's absolutely nothing else going on. As you'll see in the rest of my post, it's just some little things. Anyway, here's the article I'm referring to, straight from PC World. I know, PC World really isn't the best magazine, but this is still a good article. At first, I thought they were just nit-picking. The more I read though the more I realized that this OS really does have some issues. I really do want to say that it's a great OS, and I truly believe that they've made some important leaps in this iteration of Windows, but when there are so many apparent problems, it's hard to not overlook them. I think there are probably lots of problems in OS X as well, but Apple seems more responsive to the ones that can be fixed (i.e. not things inherent to the OS). I started reading that article though, and I wasn't halfway through after a few minutes. I guess I'm just disappointed that they didn't put the effort they should've into enriching the user experience. My life goals in computing center around enhancing the user experience, and it disappoints me when a big company can't handle this over a period of 5 years. Anyway, I'm sure it's still a great OS, just not refined.

So I'm sure that everyone is going to think I'm a perv now but I could not resist: how hilarious is that mouse pad? It comes from this list of fun products involving breasts or alcohol. It's worth a look, just not at work.

Engadget has shots of the new line of Cybershot cameras, and besides looking as slick as ever they post such features as "face detection" and WiFi. I have never been a fan of the quality of the Sony cameras, but I think new features can really go a long way if they're easy to use and relevant. I don't see how music playback makes sense on a digital camera though, but I think WiFi could be awesome if executed properly.

Coding Horror has the best concise rundown of BitTorrent's functionality, pros, and cons that I've ever seen. If you're a total newbie to this whole field, you need to read it. Even if you're no stranger to it, his cons are still good to know.

Adobe has come out with their competitor to Aperture, called Lighthouse, for professional digital photography editing and Ars Technica has the review. It sounds like a good product, I just like reading their reviews.

While I don't think that Resident Evil: Extinction will be a very good movie, I still like the teaser trailer. I think it makes me more interested in the movie than I would be otherwise (despite loving the games). Plus, it's available in HD.

This stuff is just too funny for me to make up: guess what the title of Rambo 4 is? If you guessed John Rambo, then you'd be right. Hey, it's better than Live Free or Die Hard.

The Latina cop everyone loved on the Batman animated series, Renee Montoya, may end up being in The Dark Knight. Supposedly, auditions are being held for the role, though I presume it'll be more of a cameo appearance or else we would've heard more about her. But hey, maybe they want to try to bring her in as a more important character to help Batman. Without Harvey Bullock though, I wonder how they'll introduce her to the story (unless he's there also).

This is pretty small, but I didn't know that they're doing a third Mummy movie or that it revolves around the son, Alex, as a young adult. It's a pretty fun series of movies, I don't doubt that this one could turn out to be a good B+ movie (especially with Millar and Gough on board).

Now for an interesting TMI Tuesday:

1. be famous now & forgotten after you die or forgotten now & famous after you die, forever? & Why?
Probably the latter, mainly because I'd like to someday do something that's really impacting in the long term, not just a quick fix.
2. give blood or read Hamlet? & Why?
Probably give blood, because reading Hamlet benefits no one.
3. be extravagantly rich, but hated by others or be well loved and admired, but dirt poor? & Why?
Definitely the latter. Money is worthless without people to share it with. I want to make good money someday so that I can have more fun with friends/family and go on nice dates and stuff, not to buy more crap (except for cool clothes).
4. be imprisoned for the rest of your life or kill someone? & Why?
Wow. Umm....wow. I guess imprisoned for the rest of my life; I think killing someone would drive me to insanity faster.
5. fight Mike Tyson or talk like him? & Why?
Talk like him, mainly because I don't have a death wish (I still have much to do).

Pop 5

I've talked about this board game in passing, but Cranium actually sent me the board game itself. I already have it, and have been playing with it for a while, so I'll be giving it to my friend Bethany, whose pop culture and board game prowess probably makes her more deserving of it than most of my other readers! Anyway, since they were so kind, I'll do them a favor and give my full review of it here: the good and the bad. The way it works is that there are two teams, and the opposing team picks a card and ranks the 5 games (drawing, humming, acting, sculpting, restricted word clues) so that harder games are worth more points (5 point max). Then, you pick a game and have to get your team to guess what's on the card before time runs out, and the first team to 21 points wins. Sound easy? Actually, it's been taking an average of about 2 hours to complete a game, so it's trickier than you think. There's a lot to love about it, to be honest. It seemed like there were a lot of 80s cards, but the more I think about it, the more I realize that it's a pretty even spread among the past 30 years or so and in several categories (fashion, fads, food/drinks, celebrities, tv shows, movies, music, etc). Plus, they have free booster packs available on their site, which is great in this day and age of nickel and dime-ing. I think they've provided a neat solution to the boredom that's typically in games like these with multiple teams for the opposing team since you have a vested interest in picking your rankings properly and it plays into a lot of strategy, and it makes watching them try the card more fun when your whole team knows what it is.

I do have some gripes though. It's not playable out of the box. Isn't that crazy? You need to pick up 3 AAA batteries. For what? To power the timer (the giant circle you see in the box), which is just a blinking light. You'd think they'd put a speaker in there if they need so much power (my Bluetooth headset needs 1 AAA battery for 30 hours of talk time). They give you little cups to hold your points in (neat little green chips), but the markings on them are confusing. We once miscalled a game thinking that a team only needed 1 point to win when they really needed 2, but I realized that there were only 41 chips totally and we had too many left, so the cup actually needed one more chip to be 21. My biggest gripe has to be the notepad that it comes with: it has like maybe 20 pages in it. Come on! That'll last maybe a month. Physically though, I like that the podium spins, and I like the letter-line up cubes, though it's strange that there's a slot in the front to hold the card and yet pulling out the card doesn't start the timer automatically (you still have to push the big green button). As you can tell, these things are nit-picky. I'm just trying to show how small the negatives to this game are. It costs $30 retail, which is more than the original Cranium (I guess the timer is expensive), but I think you'll probably enjoy it if you enjoy games like Cranium. I think it's awesome because you're hard-pressed to find people my age or older who are totally dumb in pop culture. Even when I played with people who weren't born here, they could still find creative ways to act out cards they had no idea on. I'll probably bring this to the ACM retreat on Saturday; I think the CS nerds will get a kick out of it. If I had a letter grade scale for board games, I'd give this one an A or A-. I don't think I'm ever with friends/family and not in a mood to play it.

Ok, so massive crazy news: Wal-mart has already brokered a deal with the six major movie studios to sell their movies online (for download) for $12-$20 a pop. They haven't even built the service itself yet, though. They're entered an already pretty loaded market, though being the giant they are, I don't think that puts them at much of a disadvantage. Nirav is a Microsoft fanboy and disagrees with me (I like the Xbox 360, but I'm sorry, I'm not going to praise its re-release), but I just don't think the market for movie downloads is there yet. It'll be established once home theater PCs really hit the mainstream, and I think that'll coincide with a boom for the IP TV industry.

Steve Jobs posted some thoughts on the Apple site about music and DRM, and I guess there's no guarantee that they're his own, but he's not the kind of man to delegate his own opinions to someone else to be written. If they're true, then I guess we've all underestimated him as simply greedy with the whole FairPlay schema. I guess I can see his rationale better now for keeping it in-house, but I don't think it makes FairPlay any better as a technology. The fact that it's DRM makes it inherently flawed, so I think he's protecting an idea that inherently cannot be protected.

This is pretty cool: Kodak has a new ink that lasts longer than regular inkjet ink (100 years rather than 15) and is half the price! No idea if the quality is better/worse, but it sounds like it's no worse than what we see already. If this takes off, it could make Kodak even richer because people really hate paying so much for ink cartridges and would probably buy a Kodak printer solely to curb that expense.

Crave is reporting on a new technology that uses face recognition as your password, and I'm going to reiterate what Jesper Johansson impressed upon me: biometric scanning and anything related to it is a bad idea. If your face gets scarred, what are you going to do? There's no admin to give you back your old face. And if he can give you a new one, then what makes it more secure than current keyboard-based passwords? If someone wants access to your system, they could gruesomely peel your face off.

TechRepublic has some good myths dispelled about Vista. If you've read a lot of bad press about Vista, it's definitely worth checking out.

I've talked about these before so I don't want to spend much time on them, but here's a great roundup of the social music sites out there. It's very concise, and the top three on that list are still my favorites.

Yahoo Movies has a cool video interview with Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez that kind of brings to focus their excitement about Grind House for everyone who just doesn't get it and why it'll be a fun movie to see. I'm definitely excited about it!

Another interesting video is this one about Spider-man 3. Not a whole lot new in it, it just kind of frames the movie a little better. Again, still concerned about what they're doing with the Sandman storyline. And I can no longer stand the line, "The power! It feels good."

Now just short things. The Fourth Installment of the Indiana Jones Adventures movie release date is tentatively May 22, 2008. It looks rather ambitious to me, but I'm sure they can pull it off if they really want to. AICN has another good review of Blades of Glory, I guess it really is better than the trailer shows. There's also a negative review of Fanboys, which is a shame because I love Kristen Bell so.

Now for the Tuesday Twosome:

1. List two items of clothing you would never wear again.
Denim jackets or shirts (yes, I have worn both in the past)
2. List two food items you would never eat again.
Plain spinach and chopped liver
3. List two types of music you would never intentionally listen to again.
Country and Tejano
4. List two TV shows you would never watch again.
My Boys and Mad TV (it's just so bad now)
5. List two beverages you would never drink again.
Plain soda and grapefruit juice

Don't count on a post from me tomorrow night, and possibly not Thursday either. I have two tests and an interview on Thursday.

Do You Hate Macs?

The Guardian Unlimited's "Comment is Free" column has a fun little editorial I couldn't help but talk about for a bit. The guy pretty much just rags on the Apple lifestyle. You know what I'm talking about. People don't buy one Apple product, they buy a whole bunch of them. They try to sell you a lifestyle, not some hardware. If you really wanted the hardware, you could buy it elsewhere. When you buy a Mac, you're buying style and a very dumbed down interface. Is this bad? Well if you're a Linux or Windows snob, you'd obviously tend to think so. However, I almost think it's unfair to hate on Mac users on this simplistic argument. I like to push the mantra of computers being our friends. It's disheartening to hear people say that they hate computers because that's my field and I wish that they would only serve people's needs and entertain them, not frustrate them. I know that's idealistic and will never happen, but I'd like to think that I strive toward that goal myself. Does Apple push this concept too far? People who despise the iPod would probably tend to think so. However, I kind of fall more into the Joel Spolsky camp: too many choices really do end up being detrimental. That's why IDEs like Eclipse and even Visual Studio are daunting. When a code junkie has to spent 20 minutes figuring out how to program in a language he's proficient in, that means your IDE has too much crap in it. When people want to smash your computer into a wall, that means they don't care to be given so much control. I don't think it means someone is stupid if they feel that way and switch to Macs. To many of us, Macs aren't easier: they're harder! We like our Windows (or at least we pretend to, because change is bad). To each his own though, I say. Just like no one likes Elvis or The Beatles the same (brownie points if you know what that reference is from), no one likes Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux the same. It fosters this fanboy mentality, and this shouldn't be. Can't everyone just get along?

Speaking of Apple, they finally negotiated a deal with Apple Corps to end the huge trademark dispute over the name "Apple". They're also still courting them to get Beatles music on iTunes, so we'll see where that goes.

Gizmodo thinks they know what a Zune phone would need to take on the iPhone, but I think it's sort of a weak list. I think what people honestly want is a phone with a nice interface that easily integrates with, well, the rest of their life! It's a simple concept, Microsoft just tends to complicate things (you know it's true).

The Superbowl ads are now pretty much all online, and YouTube even has a fun little ranking list. You can click on the screenshots to view the videos on the page itself, and then move them up and down the list to rank them before hitting "submit" to count your vote towards other online voters. Personally, I loved the Mencia one, the Kevin Federline one, the GM one, and "But He Has Bud Light."

Should you upgrade your XP install to Vista or do a clean install (or neither if you don't care, I suppose)? ExtremeTech conducted their standard rigorous tests to discover that the new Windows installation format really does work well and it's more effective than a clean install. So don't fret when you get your hands on a copy of Vista (again, should you actually get your hands on one).



Isn't that an abomination? I just bought the Spider-man DVDs to rewatch before the third comes out (I loved the second one, though many people can disagree in futility), and now they've come out with a 2.1 version of the DVD. It has 8 minutes of new footage and a "sneak peak" at Spider-man 3. Why they Hell did you wait this long to release 8 more minutes and then call it 2.1? Why not just say what it is: "Spider-man 2: The Triple Dip Edition". Jerks.

Latino Review has the script review for Wonder Woman, and ordinarily I wouldn't care to talk about this movie except that Joss Whedon recently left the project because no one liked his script and it turned out that this other script they had purchased turns out to be pretty cool. That's why the studio bought it from two no-name writers: it's just that good. It may even get people like me who don't care to watch the movie.

The only other news I have is more comic book movie news! The new director for The Flash is Shawn Levy, who really hasn't made a very good movie to date. I guess they just wanted a really light-hearted movie whereas David Goyer had a darker vision in mind? What a pitiful choice.

Now for some Monday Madness:

1. What is your favorite main course to prepare?
So far, my mom's sausage dish because it's easy and hard to screw up
2. What is your favorite side dish to prepare?
Given last night's adventure, mashed potatoes ;)
3. Do you like to bake? If so, what is your favorite?
Haven't done much, so I can't say.
4. What one dish would you like to learn to cook?
Fish curry. My mom's fish curry is so damn good it should be a crime for her to keep it a secret from me (she claims it's too hard for me to do).
5. What is your worst cooking disaster?
I was adding puttered seeds to some black eyed peas and I spilled them all over the counter and in the crack between the fridge and the countertop. It was ridiculous to cleanup.