Prisoner of Redmond
By Robert X. Cringely
What do you do when your wealth is immense but completely tied to people whom you inherently do not trust? If you are Paul Allen you watch your tongue and spend eight years getting out from under that burden.This should be of interest to anyone in the Pacific Northwest who are undoubtedly affected by Paul Allen's post-Microsoft ventures. And to anyone else who wants to know a little bit more about how Bill Gates got to be the richest man in the world.
Hijacking the Internet
PC Magazine opinion by John C. Dvorak
It seems to me that if you buy a 1.5-Mbps connection, you should be able to redline the connection, to use the full capacity without being charged more. And you should also be able to use it for whatever you want to use it for. Otherwise, it's like selling public-utility water to people and making them pay more to use it for washing dishes.Dvorak is loathed by many in the Mac community for his hyperbolic statements. But he has his moments and this is one of them. We've lived in California for a little more than three years and have seen the phone company change hands as many times. So I especially appreciate his noting that
In just six years, the name of the fabulous baseball stadium in San Francisco has gone from Pac Bell Park to SBC Park to AT&T Park. Just the expense of changing the signage and promotional collateral tells you that someone is making plenty of money.The ads promoting "the new at&t" tell me that "your world is suddenly changing for the better ... all because two companies — two great companies — have now joined forward to deliver the world that matters most: yours." That 'better' world I'm inhabiting has resulted in a DSL connection that drops unexpectedly and repeatedly, regular phone service that was out for a week due to their own downed equipment that they wanted to charge me to come look at, customer service via phone that uses those maddening voice recognition menus (which don't recognize much) and then I get to find out about this:
AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers' phone calls, and shunted its customers' internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker ...
Cox Newspapers tunes out AP Online video
Barnako.com
While 450 news outlets are distributing video newsfeeds from the Associated Press, using its Windows-only viewer, Cox Newspapers is opting out.Nice to know someone has some backbone.
According to the interactive-projects editor at the Palm Beach Post, Cox is dropping out because the MSN-supplied player does not work with the Firefox browser or Apple Computer's Macs.
How France Is Saving Civilization
Wired News Commentary by Leander Kahney
But French legislators aren't just looking at Apple. They're looking ahead to a time when most entertainment is online, a shift with profound consequences for consumers and culture in general. French lawmakers want to protect the consumer from one or two companies holding the keys to all of its culture, just as Microsoft holds the keys to today's desktop computers.Many Apple fans have been deriding the bill in France aimed at forcing digital music files to be played on any hardware device. But as Leander points out, if Microsoft held the position in digital music that Apple currently does, those same fans would be complaining to high heaven. They also seem to forget that it would force online stores selling protected Windows Media Audio files to be compatible with the iPod and Macs. Hmmm, that would give Apple competition, and they'd have to respond by making a stronger case to consumers: higher quality files? subscription option? more freebies?
The Torn-Up Credit Card Application
Could a determined and dexterous criminal gather all the bits, tape them together and apply for a card in my name? Would a credit card company balk when confronted with an obviously resurrected application?
Overhyped bands
Boston.com
Boston.com has compiled a list of bands from the past five years that we feel were over-hyped by the critics. While you may be angry at some of our choices, remember, we're just a bunch of bitter computer geeks.Bitter? Count me in! I don't agree with all their choices, of course, but it's a fun trip with a surprise at the end.
Inside Scientology
Rolling Stone
In June of last year, I set out to discover Scientology, an undertaking that would take nearly nine months.15 years after the Time magazine cover story, Rolling Stone magazine has published an up-to-date and well-researched look at the "religion" that may take you nine hours to read but is engaging nonetheless.
A few months ago I received 50 free downloads from eMusic.com as part of a promotion. I at first assumed that, like most non-iTunes digital music download stores, the music available at the store would be in Windows Media Format and would be completely unplayable on my Mac and similarly un-transferrable to my iPod. Boy, was I wrong in the best way.
eMusic sells regular MP3 files that are not protected with Digital Rights Management (DRM). Because of this the songs can be played with ANY digital music software and used on ANY digital music device without restriction.
As expected, the major music labels don't want to sell unprotected music. Subsequently, eMusic doesn't have most major label music. It does, however, have a large selection of independent artists. I was easily able to find 50 tracks to download, between Aimee Mann, Badly Drawn Boy, Grandaddy, The Presidents of the United States of America, and some nifty compilations.
The recording industry is bemoaning the fact that Apple's proprietary copy-protection is hurting the digital music market (See Apple May Be Holding Back The Music Biz) but the reality is that ANY copy-protection is bad for consumers and makes everything incompatible. The labels want Apple to open up their system to their competitors, but if they would simply allow the music to be sold without copy protection, it would be compatible with everything and they wouldn't have this problem.
At least one person is paying attention:
Yahoo exec: Labels should sell music without DRM
And, of course, the CEO of eMusic agrees
eMusic's Pakman: Does he think the iPod is holding back overall music sales?
Pakman does emphasize a factor that is very much in keeping with the dominant theme in your comments: that the music industry would be far better off if it dropped its demands for DRM entirely
I'll be playing Senator Fipp, a small but distinct role, with performances at 8 p.m. on May 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, and a 2 p.m. matinee on May 14.
Nominated for 10 Tony Awards in 2002, and winner for Best Book of a Musical, "Urinetown The Musical" is the satirical tale of greed, corruption, romance and revolution in a city where water is worth its weight in gold. The show celebrates and spoofs Broadway musical theatre traditions, "poking good-natured fun at everything from corporate greed and politics to boy-meets-girl romance to good-versus-evil."
It is not a happy musical, but it is a funny one.
Jessica Simpson snubs Bush
Yahoo! News
NRCC spokesman Carl Forti said he was surprised at Simpson's position.That's a completely inaccurate comparison. To my knowledge Bono has never appeared at a Republican fund-raiser.
"It's never been a problem for Bono," he said, referring to the U2 rock star who has met regularly with political leaders of all stripes to promote various causes, including Third World debt relief.
Simpson is currently featured wearing cowboy boots and hot pants in a TV pizza ad.Is this really who the Republicans want to invite to their gala? A divorced celebrity that is currently sexually tempting an underage boy in a pizza commercial? And you want to sit her next to Congressman Boehner?
Since we have a TV set and a cable subscription, purchasing TV shows from the iTunes Music Store has never appealed much. It didn't help that the episodes are sold in a small 320x240 pixel resolution. However, our neighborhood lost power for over an hour on Wednesday, Feb. 8 -- when a new episode of "Lost" aired. Even a TiVo can't record if it doesn't have power.
So the next day I purchased the episode (gift certificates are useful) from the iTunes Music Store (the name of which is increasingly inaccurate) and we watched it on our TV. The main point of this post is to note that the quality was shockingly not awful. Apple obviously has a good codec on their hands in H.264, as scaling the image up to full-screen showed little loss in quality. Neither of us could see a difference from the broadcast version.
The lack of commercials, teasers, and network watermark were actually quite refreshing. It also meant that we heard the closing credits 'music' for the first time.
The process wasn't entirely painless, however. For one, I used QuickTime Player instead of iTunes, as the latter is a very poor video player compared to the former. Second, I hooked up my iBook to our TV's RCA jacks. My original iBook required only one $19 adapter to do this. My new G4 iBook required three separate cables/adapters to accomplish the same feat. Finally, you aren't allowed to burn the episode to a DVD. Presumably this is to prevent piracy. If so, why not allow only one burn per episode in the same way iTunes only allows a limited amount of burns of purchased music (using a specific playlist).
Oh, and most importantly, the episode –– "The Long Con" –– was a good one.
The Vendetta Behind 'V for Vendetta'
Dave Itzkoff, New York Times
With ... a body of writing that spans nearly three decades, [Alan] Moore, a 52-year-old native of Northampton, England, distinguished himself as a darkly philosophical voice in the medium of comic books — a rare talent whose work can sell solely on the strength of his name
WonderCon moved from Oakland to San Francisco in 2002, was bought by Comic-Con International in 2004 (the first year I attended), changed its date from April to February in 2005, and moved to the new Moscone Center West location this year, marking its 20th anniversary. Unfortunately, I found this year to be pretty unimpressive. 
Michael Chabon was scheduled to sign autographs at noon at the Dark Horse Booth, so we did a bit of scouting around the show floor before returning for that. We managed to be probably 2nd or 3rd in line, and were even given free copies of the latest edition of Dark Horse's Eisner Award-winning anthology Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of The Escapist (try fitting that title on an order sheet!) for him to sign. Those issues cost $8.95 and I was missing that one, so it was especially fortuitous. 
The first programming session we attended was "Paramount Pictures Presents: J.J. Abrams/M:i:III." J.J. showed some lengthy scenes from the upcoming, unfortunately-titled film that were quite impressive. If the trailer doesn't excite you, it's because it stinks compared to the actual movie footage we saw. I was very impressed with his presentation, especially his admission that he didn't like the first two Mission: Impossible films as much because they didn't focus on the team aspect of the original TV series.
I figured he would get peppered with questions about "Lost," since he's a co-creator of the series, and maybe even "Alias." But, surprisingly, most of the Q&A session seemed to be about "Felicity." Surprising not only because the series ended years ago, but also because I don't think most people would equate comic book fans with Felicity fans.
We got a nice piece of swag from that session: a black cloth baseball cap with a red M:i:III logo. It's nice enough to wear and not geeky enough to get you beaten up. If anything, no one who sees it knows what it means. I've even had one person ask me if it was a Pacific University cap.
The next session we wanted to see was "Pixar's 20th Anniversary Tribute/Cars Preview," but because they were running horribly behind (45+ minutes), we had to wait through quite a bit of the Kevin Smith session. He was there to show some clips from "Clerks II," curse up a storm and tell stories I would generally describe as 'grosser than gross.' I will not recount them here. I wouldn't want the Internet to get inappropriate.
The Pixar session had its highs and its lows. It kicked off with a fun 20th anniversary video sequence edited together from all their films. Then some of the animators who worked on "Cars" talked, and talked, and talked, and it was surprisingly boring. They did show two lengthy scenes from the movie, however, which were very impressive. The first was the opening sequence of the film, featuring music by Sheryl Crow. The second was a scene showcasing the various supporting characters and was quite hilarious. Everytime there's a new Pixar movie I figure it will probably be the "bad one" simply due to the law of averages. But based on what we saw at WonderCon, this will be yet another great film. The final reward for sitting through the tedious commentary session was the presentation of the Oscar-nominated short film One Man Band, which I suspect will be shown before "Cars" in theatres.
The last session I was interested in attending was the "Warner Bros. Presents Superman Returns" featuring Director Bryan Singer "with a surprise to show." Of course, since the sessions were now 45-60 minutes behind schedule, I didn't return until 30 minutes after it was supposed to start (I was definitely not interested in waiting through the "Silent Hill" movie preview). And yet somehow when I returned Bryan Singer was already speaking with his "surprise" –– star Brandon Routh. And, unfortunately, they had already shown the footage. Oh, sure, every OTHER session makes you wait and then show the footage at the end. And after a couple of questions ("Why is the shield so small?") the duo left ... EARLY. To kill the remaining time, V masks were distributed.
Let me know which of these you like better and why:
Normal .Mac photo album
New iWeb 1.0.1 photo album
New Grant System Excludes Mac Users
What if the federal government were about to give away more than $400 billion in grants, but only people whose computers ran on Microsoft software could apply?
...
Critics note that in contrast to the domination of PCs in the business community, Macs constitute about one-third to one-half of the computers scientists and academicians use.
Wired News: 2005 Vaporware Awards
Several wags nominated our vaporware story itself for an award. Yeah, we know it's late. Apologies for that. But we never promised it in 2005, so it wasn't eligible anyway.Always a fun annual read, especially considering how many repeat offenders there are. And I'm satisfied that a product I nominated made the list.
U2 dominates 48th Annual Grammy Awards
In typical award-show fashion, producers, in their apparent zeal to introduce Recording Academy Chairman Neil Portnow, cut U2's Album of the Year acceptance speech short just as Mullen stepped to the microphone.Larry never talks! And the one time he's going to, he gets cut off! Now he may never speak publicly again! Way to go, producers!
Tartakovsky Directing Dark Crystal Sequel
Award-winning animation director Genndy Tartakovsky, who created the hit series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Samurai Jack and Dexter's Laboratory, will direct Power of the Dark Crystal, the much anticipated sequel to The Jim Henson Company's 1982 classic fantasy film. The announcement was made by Lisa Henson, co-CEO of The Jim Henson Company and a producer on the film.
liveDaily.com Review: Coldplay in Sacramento, CA
Grammy voters are wack. Coldplay is arguably today's most important rock band, currently touring in support of arguably the best mainstream rock record of last year, and the group deserves to go head-to-head with the likes of Kanye West and Mariah Carey in the major categories.I agree completely. Personally, I think "X&Y" is more deserving of an Album of the Year nomination than U2's "How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb."
Besides getting ... roughly 20 great Coldplay tunes, fans also got the chance to see Fiona Apple open the show. Most, however, could have done without her presence.I disagree. Most of the folks surrounding us were either quite enthusiastic in their response to Fiona's set, or they were simply tolerant. I've been to concerts where the crowd dislikes the opening act (P.J. Harvey opening for U2 in Portland) and they don't give resounding ovations.
...
When Apple finally left the stage, following a version of "Fast as You Can" (also from "Pawn"), she received a resounding ovation--but not for the reasons an artist would hope.
After a so-so stripped-down segment ... the band decided it was time to wind up "Clocks." Just like on "Parachutes," the song came across like a prime example of elegant songwriting delivered with extreme passion.Um, "Clocks" is not on the album "Parachutes." Messing up easily-checkable facts like that puts the whole review in question.
