The Bell Tolls for Microsoft

Sorry I missed the last couple of posts. I went to Orange and White on Friday, and that was fun. I'd share more pictures from it, except that I think my date would kill me for that, so I'll hold off on that. Then last night was her performance in the Texas Latin Dance spring show (which was stellar, by the way), so I couldn't post then either. I'm back in action now though, with chills running up my spine from reading Paul Graham's latest essay. His basic premise is that Microsoft dead, and what's funny is that he's right. I've been saying for a while when people asked me why I didn't want to work for Microsoft that they've been going downhill for a long time now and they lost that zest they started out with. Graham takes it much further arguing the harsh effects of Google's rise to glory, the movement of the desktop to the web, and Apple's resurrection have laid Microsoft to waste. I'm going to argue one more cause: letting their own weight pacify themselves. They've become so entranced with churning out upgrades for their software that they haven't innovated in an explosive way in a long time. If they don't do something drastic, it honestly is only a matter of time before Windows crashes and burns, which is obviously their bread and butter. Their best second bet is the Xbox 360, which is doing alright right now and I think has potential, but unless they start investing in fresh ideas without corrupting them, they're going to fall under their own weight very soon. I don't know how I feel about declaring them dead quite yet - I'd probably say fatally ill instead. Even worse, instead of competing with Apple products or trying to 1up them in another arena, they just scoff at their efforts. Yeah, the iPhone is no big deal; it's not like everyone pissed their pants when they saw it and forgot what the letters C, E, and S meant when used together (confused?) and didn't care what Microsoft had to say. Though all these pundits are lashing out against the iPhone, I can tell you right now that it won't flop despite the issues most techies sees. It will only succeed like the iPod has if Apple plays their cards right, which is very likely, and so it's definitely a threat to be taken seriously. Well, Microsoft, you had a good run. Maybe Ray Ozzie will turn the company around? Nah, doubt it.

Remember that big brew-ha-ha about Internet radio getting screwed by Congress? Well, a couple of Democrats are proposing a reversal of that, along with a slight compromise, to the applause of the Internet radio community and Clear Channel among others. Wow, I guess mass mobilization really works!

Apple has now told its iTunes providers that it will be offering DRM-free music and videos next month, and the authoring software was available to whoever wanted it. I didn't know about the video thing before, especially not that EMI wasn't planning a price increase for it. I wonder if they'd then allow you to retroactively remove the protection from your older music video purchases? It's unlikely, but it'd be neat.

eWeek has a really great slideshow of what you shouldn't do if you don't want your computer's and data's security to be compromised. It's simple, short, and covers a ridiculous amount of security violations, so it's a must-see if you're not already cautious about this sort of stuff.

Computerworld has a good editorial about why eBooks will fail, and I think I agree with them. I've been optimistic about this technology for a while now, but it hasn't taken off in the least, and the prices of eBooks really aren't nearly as cheap as I was expecting. I don't think trust technology enough yet to burn their paper-backed books for these things (especially since they're still not cheap).

Have you heard of Vudu? I actually hadn't either until today, when Gizmodo put up some pictures of it in action. It competes with products like the Apple TV that strive to stream your computer's media content into your living room except that it also allows you to buy movies for download directly onto it at an extraordinarily fast rate because of its torrent-like model of pre-seeding content and then sharing it across a distributed network (i.e. peer-to-peer distribution). If they put DVR in this box, as well, it may just take over the world. Let's wait and see what happens.

I wanted to make quick note of two more things. A bunch of Aussies came up with a site called Fatsecret to help people lose weight with a free, ASP empowered website drawing heavily on the commnity aspect. It needs an exercise area, but otherwise awesome (I personally used Nutrisystem to lose weight, so I always love these kinds of sites). Lifehacker has some neat USB thumbdrive tips, like how to sync your data or how to put together a PC repair kit.

Once again, the box office made little sense with Disturbia staying on top with under $10 million. The films that came out though were received poorly by critics. It doesn't matter though, Spider-man 3 will come out this weekend and easily pass the $50 million mark (though my personal estimate is beyond $100 million). I wonder if I'll have time to see it.

I salivate at any Dark Knight news, so I thought it was interesting that they had a fire on set delay things a bit. Also, if you're in the Chicago area, you may want to try their open casting call so you can be in the movie. I wish they'd film a scene in Austin!

AICN got their first review of Transformers, and it's obviously from a huge fan. Still though, fans are usually the harshest, and he loved this movie (he wrote a review that rivals most short stories), so now I'm more optimistic about Michael Bay doing a good film for once.

It looks like Quentin Tarantino is remaking a Hong Kong martial arts movie called Come Drink With Me before he starts work on Inglorious Bastards, which I think is kind of an odd project for him since he usually does homages, not remakes. Still, I obviously loved what he did in Kill Bill so I'm infinitely intrigued with this project.

All I have for you now are trailers, most of which are great. The first is the red-band trailer for a comedy called Superbad, and I can't recall the last time I laughed so much in a trailer. I think that the premise can give rise to a wildly hilarious movie, and I look forward to seeing if it ends up being that funny. Yahoo Movies has a strange trailer for the horror movie Captivity, featuring hottie Elisha Cuthbert, but it doesn't really explain much or why it's "controversial".

The trailer for Brad Bird's next movie, Ratatouille, is cute and clever. I think it could be a fun movie, but I don't see it comparing with how great The Incredibles was as an animated feature. The last trailer is for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, and it's much more amazing than I had imagined it would be. I didn't see the first one and now I really want to see this one. I did watch the cartoon when I was little, but this movie seems to stray from what I remember the series as being in a very interesting direction.

Now for some Monday Madness:

1. Currently, what television commercial is your least favorite?
I don't watch live television barely at all, so no idea.
2. And which commercial is your most favorite?
See #1.
3. Of the sitcoms that are on during "prime time" how many do you watch on a regular basis? Please share.
Just "The Office" if that counts as a sitcom?
4. Is there a television series that you enjoy watching that is ending this season?
Veronica Mars =( I don't think it's official yet, but the ratings aren't looking too good. Oh Kristen Bell, how I will miss your witty, smartass humor.
5. Is there any type of program you'd like to see more of on television?
Not really. I think that the great stuff on television right now is mixed pretty well between different genres.
6. Is there any type of program you'd like to see less of on television?
Yeah, reality shows.
7. Is there a series that is no longer aired that you wish would come back?
Freaks and Geeks!
8. Do you watch re-runs of anything on television?
When I'm in Houston: Seinfeld, Friends, Family Guy, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and Futurama.

Tsk Tsk, OU

No, this time it's not about the Sooners. It's the other OU. That's right, Ohio University: you're on notice. They decided to ban all P2P activity on their network. This may sound reasonable, but note that it also encompasses legal P2P, as in for buying stuff from BitTorrent. It's a freaking university, since when did it become the RIAA's stooge? What happened to the rights and freedoms of your students? The solution to helping stop piracy is not to hit it with a gigantic mallet, despite popular belief nowadays. I don't know what pisses me off, the fact that a place of education and supposed open-mindedness is doing this, or that the RIAA so readily exploits college students, who are already dirt poor and obviously can't usually afford the appropriate legal advice. I much prefer the idea of ads in P2P clients like Limewire that would gain you legal copies of the music you were trying to pirate. Now there's a positive solution, and I think we're screwed if we don't explore more of those. If more universities follow this policy, it could spell doom for further research into the legit uses of such technologies and for students to make use of it, and that would truly be the travesty. Still, I don't think that'll happen, because P2P is too big already to be squashed like that.

YouTube is looking to start making itself more worthwhile to Google: they're going to try ads after certain videos this summer. I imagine that they'll start this out with content professionally produced by companies (television networks, movie studios, etc) and then propagate to more premium contributors if that works. Should be interesting to see how the community reacts.

Once again, Steve Jobs is insisting that they will not turn to the subscription-based model despite rumors and pressure from the industry. I actually agree with him that people would prefer to own their music, but he often does stuff like this to throw us off the scent (like for the iPhone). If you look at their profit margins, they'd likely be able to afford a subscription-based model, but the problem is that I presume it would mean doing away with the current pay-to-own model, which would suck. Unless they could get them to work side-by-side, I'd prefer them to not allow subscriptions, either.

Do you hate calling tech support? Well, then you may sympathize with this phone call recorded by a firm researching people's opinions on tech support. This call was to HP, and I humorously (or sadly) enough had almost an exact scenario a couple of weeks ago when my Internet was acting up. I literally dealt with them for 30 minutes, largely because I was being redirected in loops to people who couldn't solve my problem and kept asking me for the same information. Do companies not realize that people are getting pissed off about this? People remember bad tech support, and tend to talk about it with friends. Outsourcing really doesn't work for this stuff either.

People are starting to see a recent Google facelift adding news hits to searches, as well. You can see shots of this here.



Doesn't that look cool? I think it should be the future of keys. It's dubbed Keyport and would hold several keys in that one rectangular box there. Plus, it may include RFID capabilities and alarm remote functionality, as well as a flashlight. How nify would all that be? I hate dealing with my keychain, especially since two of my keys look the damn same!

Jack Valenti, creator of the MPAA, has passed away at the ripe age of 85. Yeah, he was definitely pretty old, and a lot of people definitely don't like the MPAA, but he definitely did a huge thing to help the film industry in creating the MPAA. It may not be perfect, but I don't think it was a flawed idea. Anyway, I'm sure his name will live on forever for his political fame and status in entertainment.

Quentin Tarantino spoke to a British magazine about the financial failure of Grindhouse but that he's still proud of it. Apprently, he'll tack on 30 minutes to his movie, Death Proof, for its individual release in the UK, and that version will also be shown at Cannes. I feel ashamed that I've heard all these great things and still haven't seen it! I just don't want go alone for it. Anyone want to come with, this weekend?

Lastly, I just think it's funny that Lucy Liu has subjected herself to the lead role in a vampire movie, one named Rise: Blood Hunter no less. Honestly, what was she thinking?

Now for the 3x Thursday meme:

What are your 3 favorite types of music? Why?
Rock/Alternative, Hip Hop, and Salsa. I just love the energy in Hip Hop, Salsa is ridiculously fun to dance to, and Rock/Alternative is great when you're just chilling out.

College Students, Prepare to be Violated

So my friend Josh is a jerkface and I didn't see 300 last night, but I'll see it with my friend Robert on Wednesday instead. I got some good news last night that I think will end to my break ending well though, so the universe is back in balance. Anyway, it's no secret that the RIAA and MPAA have been pretty pissed with college campuses for being sloppy about copyright infringement. It's hard to blame them given that they're kind of, you know, more concerned with educating students. So this company Red Lambda decides to make a piece of software called cGrid that does what telcos have been struggling with for many many months: monitoring Internet activity to determine who's using P2P clients. While I appreciate the skill it must've taken to develop this, every single one of those programmers should feel like total freaking sellouts. You're helping rich, selfish bastards extort defenseless, poor college students. I know stealing is wrong and all that jazz, but there's a fucking limit to this nonsense! Why not just install cameras in people's dorm rooms to see what they're doing on their computer? Hell, why stop there, let's require keyloggers! Alright, I guess I'm getting really uppity on privacy, but I think rightfully so. While I understand that this is probably legal, I just think it's unfair. Why not push services like Ruckus (which I still adore, by the way) rather than persecute some of your most avid fans?

So I know that the whole tablet PC thing never took off, but I still think that a dual touch screen would be pretty sweet (though I'd worry about screen smudging because of the keyboard). That's just one of a few concept laptops you can see here. I highly recommend watching the Lenovo tapes, because they're ridiculously fun to watch.

As anyone with SBC Global knows, AT&T and Yahoo have had a partnership going on for quite a long time now. There's strong speculation that AT&T is trying to acquire Yahoo, which has seen another dip in its stock price because of the rumors. It's kind of sad to see Yahoo struggle so much, but what innovation have they really promulgated in recent years?

In rather big news: GoDaddy was slammed with a major Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) yesterday, which basically means that someone flooded their servers to kill service to many sites. I really want to know why someone would do this, because a lot of times an attack like this would be targeted at a certain site whereas these hackers made kind of a blanket statement.

Here's a one liner: check out some pretty art over here.

AICN has another review for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and it sounds like he really liked it except for the little things (some of the characters a little off balance and a few plot holes). The CG sounds amazing, which you can see more of over here.

They also dug up some reviews of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which are much more positive than the other early review they had received. It sounds even darker than before, which I love, and I think the plot sounds like it could work really well (Harry leading a bunch of wizards to fight Voldemort). Whenever I think of this movie I see the eerie poster in my head that says "You will lose everything," and it gets me pumped about the movie.

What do you know, we have yet another good review today! This one is for that fun movie Meet the Robinsons you've probably seen commercials for (I think the dinosaur is pretty awesome). Supposedly, it's not on par with other Pixar favorites, but still worthwhile.

Lastly, the release date for Speed Racer has been moved up to May 9, 2008, so I wonder if they'll put out a teaser trailer by June? I'm really curious to see what kind of style the Wachowski Brothers will run with here. I used to love the TV show (I mostly watched it while I was in India for a summer when I was 12).

Now for some Monday Madness:

1. Do you believe in reincarnation?
I'm really not sure. While it's hard to believe that we die and that's it, it's also hard to believe that we can come back after death. I'd almost like to see the afterlife as it's painted in What Dreams May Come (hey, I thought it was a good movie, though I really don't want to see it again).
2. Do you own any anime figures?
Um, no =P I only have one anime movie: Rurouni Kenshin.
3. Are you one of the fanfic writers over at www.fanfiction.net?
Nope, I only write here :)
4. Do you review stories which are posted in www.fanfiction.net?
Again, nope.
5. Are you looking forward to seeing the third Spider-Man film?
I am, but I think I'll be disappointed. I really loved the second one, but the trailers for this one are just worrying me because I'm such a huge Spider-man fan that I really want them to stay true to the original intentions of the series. I don't mind the little things (like the webbing coming from his body, not from a mechanical arm thing), but why does it make sense for Sandman to have killed his father?
6. Are you looking forward to seeing the Fantastic Four sequel?
I didn't think I would be, but the whole Silver Surfer thing makes me want to see what they do with it.
7. Do you like "Deal or No Deal"?
Nope. It's so stupid! Why don't you just roll a dice for an hour? The whole game takes no skill whatsoever and is composed of stupid melodrama as well as the annoying antics of Howie Mandel (I never even liked him when I was a kid and watched Bobby's World).
8. Are you a television watcher?
Yeah, but only on my free time. I just watch shows when I'm eating meals, I don't set aside time just for television.
9. Do you write letters to people?
Only e-mails, which I write much more informally than one would a letter.