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One of the underpinning tenants of the Internet is the concept of self-healing, world wide access. It doesn't matter where you are in the world, as long as you're connected to the 'Net, you're connected to everything else. The Internet knows no borders, political boundaries, or frontiers. Once you are plugged in, the world is at your fingertips. Unless you live in China. Or the United States--what?
One of the things I find goofy about content producers is the idea of U.S. only content. You can go to Hulu, MySpace Music, and Pandora to listen to free, ad supported movies, TV...
The real kicker in Apple's notebook announcements wasn't the release of their new manufacturing process, MacBook upgrades, or glass multi-touch trackpads, but Steve Jobs' response to a question on why the new additions didn't include options for a Blu-Ray player:
"Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It's great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we're waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace."
Phil Schiller chimed in immediately after Steve saying, "We have the best HD movie and TV options in iTunes." Ouch. In other words, Stevo isn't convinced that...
When I think of Apple, one of the first things that comes to mind is good, quality products. Expensive, but nice. The experience I get when I go to the Apple Store is top notch and I have a feeling that a lot of people feel the same way—until now.
I’m seeing a disturbing trend lately where Apple seems to be slipping quite a bit on the quality side—not necessarily with hardware—but with their software. It seems that with the latest iteration of the iPhone, it has been plagued by software bugs and defects that really detract from the whole Apple...
Microsoft revealed its new Zune music player this past week without the fanfare that Apple generated with its new iPod line. One really has to ask why Zune isn't nearly as successful as the iPod. The answer isn't really one thing.
First of all, the Zune's design isn't that appealing. Microsoft opted to give the Zune a more boxy appearance with sharp corners. The colors weren't that inspiring, either with plan black,white, and a drab brown model. Apple, on the other hand, went with more a eclectic selection of interesting neon colors with their Nano line, for instance.
Which leads...
C|Net News has an interesting blog post highlighting Spore from EA Games. This game has been in the works for a couple of years now and its unique gameplay and concept have stoked the fires of anticipation for some time. However, one of the biggest things to come out with its release has not been its intriguing gameplay, but the strategies used to curb piracy. Spore uses a anti-copy protection scheme called SecuROM, which is considered by some to be much more than just an anti-copy protection scheme, but system subversive malware.
The controversy seems to seems to revolve around EA's...
I had mentioned previously that had gotten a new PC. This one is an HP S3500T. I purchased it to take over the responsibilities that my server has had for not only housing the data of all my music, DVDs, and other videos, but being hooked up to the TV to watch and listen to them. This puts a strain on my server at times when there is a lot of things that it is trying to do during the day--one of which is to host this blog.
So, the first item of business was to wipe Vista off and...
I got a new PC earlier this week (more on that later) but I was copying a 3.5GB file from my server. This is how long it said it would take:
I knew the network stack wasn't that great, but Vista, you're killing me...
The irony was that I was trying to copy my XP backup to burn to disc and wipe Vista off. I think its 'Spidey Sense' was tingling and was trying to forgo its doom.
Ars Technica has a great article about how the consumer has shifted from album purchases to singles. Many artists including Kid Rock, AC/DC, and Jay-Z have boycotted iTunes' approach to only allowing tracks to be sold individually, versus forcing a consumer to buy the whole album. What Apple has done is change the whole landscape of how consumers approach music. No longer are we bound by the chains purchasing a $10-$20 album, if all we really want is a 99 cent track.
The economics for the artist are quite simple. They make a much greater amount of money on the sale...
It seems that the arena of search has been relatively quiet since the search wares of the late 90s, so it has been a welcome surprise to see someone else rise up to challenge the search status quo since Google rose to the top. What's interesting is that Cuil, the new 'contextual' search engine, hails from Stanford lineage, like its Google predecessor. Even still, it's gray and blue on black color motif tries to distance itself both as much as possible from the giant. This only serves as a distraction, since it displays results in 2 or...
Today I added another Apple product to the ranks of computer junk I have. After adding upgrading my wireless access point to WPA, I found it to be sluggish, and at times, outright unresponsive. Sometimes it would take up to two minutes for my iPod to connect! I attributed this to the access point itself. The previous firmware revision for it didn't support WPA, and the latest (and likely last) firmware update for it didn't seem very stable. It all came to a head yesterday when I accidentally got locked out of my house and I couldn't join my access...
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