If Russell Crowe is the Oscar's love child, then where's his nomination this year. Would have also had M&C match ROTK in number of nominations too had he got one.
One thing I found curious and concerning of the Golden Globe Awards was that ROTK wasn't even nominated for any screenplay award. That's one thing that I hope the Academy gets right and finally gives the screenwriting crew of this trilogy some credit for a job well done on adapting this great piece of literature the way they did to make a great trilogy of films, which was no simple job. It upset me when "A Beautiful Mind" won Adapted Screenplay over FOTR, when the real substantive complaint of that film was how the film distorted what was supposed to be a book that was derived from a true story with overly exaggerated creative license. For it to win over FOTR was an insult in my book, even though I liked the acting performances and other parts of "A Beautiful Mind" very much.
I wonder if ROTK had been nominated for screenplay award by the Globes if it would have had a shot at winning it too. A lot of people say that Mystic River should be the favorite in this category, but I think you have to give the LOTR folks credit at some point.
But the issue is that there is more than one function that Itunes does than synching with the iPod (and for that matter an application like MMJB). Itunes plays music files, burns CDs, etc. too much like MMJB does. They both also have the capacity to synch with the iPod, iTunes being more able to synch Apples' download files than MMJB is of course.
It would appear that most users when installing iTunes would prefer to use it to synch with the iPod than MMJB, given it will synch their download files. However, perhaps the user is just curious to try iTunes out as a player and doesn't want to damage any other players, software on their system, and is more concerned about that than synching Apple download files to their iPod, which they might not have any intention of buying.
Why should a person wanting to test how iTunes plays MP3 files, burns Cds, etc. have to have their other software installation "damaged" in the course of this installation. Perhaps the user doesn't like how iTunes plays stuff and then uninstalls it after they decide they don't want it. With what iTunes install does though, now they have to reinstall MMJB or perhaps other apps that would synch with the iPod to restore it back to what they originally had, and that reinstallation might have other side effects too. Apple should give the option to be as least intrusive as possible to the user when doing installations.
My previous point though was that Apple at some future date might decide that it also wants to control how Quicktime (it's own product) is accessed on a Windows system much like it is trying to now retroactively control an iPod (it's own product) on a Windows system previously controlled through external software means.
If the same draconian ways of installation are employed, you'd have some folks not to happy with how it might render some other browsers unable to play Quicktime movies, etc. in the same fashion.
Apple should warn before affecting other installations of software on the system and give the option to install its software in a way that doesn't destroy functionality of other software on other parts of the system. They could and should certainly warn people that allowing other software to synch instead of iTunes wouldn't be supported by them, etc., but they should still give the user a choice.
I have MMJB, and its iPod plugin. I've seen better software in a 1st semester Visual Basic course. MMJB is so horrid, I cannot imagine anyone ever wanting to use it to begin with (whether to play/orgaze MP3's on your computer, or just for syncing with the iPod. I originally used MM to sync with my iPod. It was a miserable experience to say the least. It froze more often than it worked.
Aside from it's interface with the iPod were there other problems that MMJB had? How do you know it wasn't a problem with an API that Apple provided MM and that it was Apple's driver software that was slow and not MMJB itself?
AAC, on the other hand, is an open format. Don't mistake this with a 'Free' format, as the Cult of Stallman is so happy to point out. But it is Open -- in the same way OpenGL is. AAC is well documented, and there are many encoders and decoders available from many different companies, as well as many different implementations of AAC by itself. There are patent fees-- but this doesn't change the fact that the codec is published. The unprotected AAC files generated by iTunes (when ripping from CD's) is of the exact same format. I'm sure the protected ones use the same audio encoding as the AAC standard, but has added DRM. It still uses AAC encoding.
The issue isn't about iTunes support of AAC, but of the Fairplay DRM that Itunes AAC files are encoded with, which makes them completely unopen. More unopen than WMA DRM, since at least other competitors are able to license this DRM and use it on other hardware and software players, unlike the FairPlay DRM that Apples' download files are using which is more closed and hasn't been licensed by others and appears to be used to drive sales to the iPod.
If you are chanting about AAC's openness and not looking at the DRM, other players on the market aren't limited to WMA files either. They also play other competitive formats to AAC such as Ogg Vorbis and MP3Pro that provide similar advantages and openness. Apple picked AAC. Other players picked other formats as well, depending on what their business and licensing arrangements were as well as what their market for those formats were. AAC doesn't have a monopoly on being a standard format just yet.
Be happy with your iPod and iTunes. Just don't expect others to bow to you if they have a different player and like the fact that they have more choices of switching to another player or other players/services and keep using their existing download files when you're stuck on the iPod to keep playing Apple's download files, if and when the iPod becomes second to a newer more innovative player that might come out later.
Maybe a better analogy would be if Apple were to start selling Safari on Windows (we know that won't happen of course), but if they did, and decided that they didn't want other browsers to use Quicktime and disabled Quicktime functionality in IE or Mozilla/Netscape that was already installed on the system. They would make the same argument that they want to provide better support for Apple's Quicktime on their system, and Safari provides more Quicktime functionality than could be provided through Netscape or IE (maybe playing protected video files down the road or something like that, which their download store will start selling then). Would that be acceptable?
It seems that they should arguably provide the user a choice to disable other software that they detect using resources that they want exclusive access to use or have some way that they can all share them, kind of like most apps warn you before overwriting the filename extension mappings they want to have set up for themselves.
Now for a *serious* LOTR geek marathon...
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The Trilogy as One
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How many out there will start at noon or 1:00 PM by watching the animated The Hobbit flick before heading to the theaters? Thinking we might want to see if we can get our folks at work let us watch it on the projection screen there for a day of "theater-quality" Tolkien back-to-back! Then instead of 11 straight hours you'd have around 13 straight hours!!
This post is on the mark. The H1-B Visa program needs to be changed so that it no longer "indentures" the employee to the company that benefits the company itself but is a detriment to other non H1-B employees there and elsewhere.
I worked as a contractor at Sun for a while and they brought in H1-B Visa'd contractors from another agency that "specialized" in providing H1-B Visad employees. Even though I and other non H1-B visad contractors did a majority of building of the infrastructure there and the high end maintenance for the tools we built there, our contracts were the ones that were ended, not these guys'. It was obvious that price was a big reason in that situation.
I don't hold this out just against Sun. I worked there earlier as a permanent employee and like a lot of things about the company. I think this was a problem that wasn't specific to Sun. These same "body shops" that were servicing Sun were also providing the same loopholes for other companies like HP, etc. in the valley too. It was their way of keeping costs down while the cost-of-living exploded around there and kept other citizens away from that equation which didn't make for a good cost-of-living/salary ratio for those people who had choices.
IMHO, the increased presence of H1-B visa'd employees actually increased the problems of cost-of-living in the Silicon Valley which basically has housing costs falling a lot now from the astronomical highs that it reached during the dotcom boom.
In addition to the overpaid CEO's overinflating the prices in the local housing market there with their "falsely overpriced" stock options created by laddering scams from the investment houses, there were many of these H1-B visad people who were "stacked" into the harder-to-get lower priced housing which contributed to that mid-range housing scarcity and helped contribute to its higher prices as well.
Most citizens wouldn't want to live like the three H1-B visad employees that were moved in with their families into a 900 sq foot apartment across the hall from me by their employer after my landlord kicked that family out as well as other tenants in the building to raise rents up to 40% on everyone there during the boom and corresponding housing shortage. If those workers weren't brought in as the "indentured servants" that they were, there would be less of these folks piling into those sorts of housing and more available to the rest of us at lower prices.
It was cost of living that eventually had me move away from there to San Diego as my handle here indicates.
In short, H1-B visa program allows companies to run their operations at artificially lower costs than they should in a given local market, which takes away jobs from those that aren't part of that program and inflates the costs to others trying to work in that market to compete against them.
If the H1-B visa program were revised to make have it provide only employees that compete on an equal footing with everyone else here in the states, those companies that depended on that artificial lower cost structure would be either forced to go out of business or move to other places where the operating costs are cheaper which would provide a more natural law of supply and demand every place then. If all the Bay area is left with is expensive CEO's able to live there and work in their companies, they might at some point realize that there is a real ceiling to how much they can be given over the rest of their employees in their company for them to have a real and profitable business for their investors. Perhaps then they'll lower their own salaries, provide better salaries for native U.S. citizens, and the local economy will be more adept at providing a competitive living environment for U.S. citizens who might seek to move there to work.
That being said, I have nothing against Indian or other foreign workers coming here to the U.S. In fact that diversity was one reason why I moved to the Bay Area to work to begin with. The system is what needs fixing!
This is exactly right! And add to that with the wages for technical careers being artificially low and by comparison the rewards/compensation for CEOs and execs being artificially higher here than in other parts of the world, where do you think kids going to school are going to invest themselves in terms of degrees. Not Computer Science or Engineering, but MBAs. This just perpetuates the "dime a dozen" MBA image and also the shortage of qualified candidates for tech jobs that leads to the perception that we need more H1B visa workers here to start with.
Corporate America needs to spend less money on its execs and more money in helping fund the educate the young people of tomorrow as an investment. H1B visa folks come, get lots of money and take their experience, etc. back out of the country where it doesn't do us any good. We need to invest in ourselves.
That's not to say that I don't appreciate the melting pot job market that happens in places like the Bay Area and other tech sectors. That's one reason why I really like this industry with its diversity of people and ideas. But let them come over and compete on an even keel, not as indentured servants that really helps noone in the long run.
Tricks are for kids... Animated movies don't *have* to be for kids! Sometimes many think that animation is just for kids and should be judged as to how well it works for them to measure how good it is. Anime doesn't always follow those rules, though some folks who only watching things like Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z might not see that. Spirited Away is at least a movie that appeals to many different age groups with different messages. That's what makes great movies (animated or no) like Disney did in the past with Fantasia, etc. too, even though at the time it came out wasn't as highly regarded or attended as the "kid's movies" at that time...
This award is for best "Animated feature", not best "Animated feature for kids". Spririted Away is a great achievement that should be the favorite here.
Though there's a definite bias in the Oscars against films like LOTR in favor of other themes than fantasy, etc., I don't think Spirited Away will have quite the same difficulty others face in getting the award. With Miramax behind it, it already will get some help. Also, I think many of the same Hollywood types that might reject other what they might regard as overly-commercial titles for their favorite niche films might be more attracted to the art house value of Spirited Away vs. the other more commercial movies in this category.
Spirited Away is one nomination I'm really pleased to see happen this year and is a breath of fresh air compared to most of the other categories. Last year, I was wondering why they only had three nominees and didn't get Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade a nomination as well, which also deserved to be up there. Was wondering if Anime movies were getting pushed aside then. As you note, hope they finally bring a worthy anime film the spotlight it deserves on the world stage.
I'm kind of disappointed that a movie like LOTR: TTT didn't get more than Best Picture in the major categories. I take that as a sign that it's nomination for best picture was a "token nomination" and that it doesn't have much chance at winning best picture. You know that some folks would revolt if it didn't get a nomination at least there. It would seem that the Academy would be saying we'll wait until you're "done" until we give you a serious consideration for the Best Picture and other big awards to go with it. At least I hope it's that way and not a complete snub next year. If Matrix sequels do well this year, I wonder if the Matrix trilogy and LOTR trilogy will split votes and have other films shut them both out then!!:(
I just had problems updating my comparison cart a short while ago with a fresh downloaded version on dvdpricesarch.com and have just filed a bug on this. It would appear that Safari is not currently letting you replace older persistent cookie values with newer ones which is probably messing your cart as well.
On the other hand Safari does not seem to handle the "path" value of a cookie per RFC2109. At least it does not handle it the same way as MS IE, Mozilla or iCab.
I was seeing problems with cookies myself. Just downloaded the patched version shortly ago. It appears at times when a persistent cookie is set and saved in a browser session and you revisit the site again and it attempts to update the cookie and resave it, that it cannot replace the value of the older cookie, and the original value of the cookie persists from that point further (I'm guessing until you clear your cookies, which I haven't tried yet). Just filed a bug on this.
Also saw problems with:
1) table cell rendering when no size hints are specified evenly dividing up the width of table cells in a row even when some rows have content that aren't wide, leaving a lot of white space around data and some rows in the same table being scrunched into multi-row data in the cell, looking crowded. IE or Mozilla would attempt to give those cells wider space and take away width from those cells not using it. Makes readability a little tough. 2) Also as far as readbility goes, I've noticed that on some sites that use stylesheets for fonts and specify them just being "Arial" without any size setting, that the default sizes of these fonts are *very* small (much moreso than IE or Mozilla) and they don't get affected by updating the default browser font size (that helps control size of fonts not controlled by styles).
There's a time and place for everything. Including fixed width fonts. Fixed width fonts are like the zoom lens that teachers in video classes warn you about overusing, which can be a real turnoff and distracting. However, it has its uses. The key isn't so much *not* using fixed width fonts, but using them judiciously and not making key text that you want people to be reading (and that they want to read frequently) too small.
Without using fixed width fonts, a user using "large" system fonts can also make a web page "unreadable", especially if the page is using things like frames, layers, text area input fields, or others where important text can get lost if it is sized too large. Fixed width fonts can keep the user experience more consistent. The key is making it so that it doesn't penalize those with presbyopia, etc. by designing your page formats, etc. so that they can handle reasonably sized fonts that most can read.
You can argue that one shouldn't be using frames, layers, etc., and one shouldn't overdo this either, but there are time and places for those things too.
Instead of hitting the web designers hard with this criticism, hit those designing browsers so that they can have a more consistent relative font size between platforms and browsers, so that there are less variants that web designers have to test their pages with, so that adjusting browser fonts is the only variable and the same adjustment is consistent everyplace. Then web designers would be more inclined to use relative fonts on their pages.
If I'm doing pages where I have side column text that is navigation oriented and the center is an article (which most have), I have the side text a fixed width font that is legible and the center text be something that is resizable (which is what most people will be reading on a page consistently anyway). That way artifacts from varied size text on the outside (which is more likely) will happen far less and won't distract the user as much.
Yes, it isn't a binary thing... I think though were McNealy to say he was switching votes from where he usually votes for (Republican) to another candidate (maybe not even the Democratic Party in some instances), to send a message that this issue is that important for many folks out there, it might send a message to other candidates out there of what the voters won't put up with. We've seen other examples of "equal opportunity corruption" like when the California State Legislature suspiciously and unanimously voted in Governor Pete Wilson's bill to deregulate California's energy which turned into a nightmare a year ago with rolling blackouts, etc. Both parties were guilty of corruption then.
Perhaps a better way of stating it is that this election one should pay close attention to the candidate's positions on campaign finance reform and also to what campaign contributions influenced different politicians voting patterns (especially where Microsoft is concerned) and actively vote against it.
I fully believe that the timing of this judgement verdict was planned in advance so that it was right before the election to allow some candidates to champion that they "cleared the decks for economic recovery by cleaning the slate for Microsoft" in last minute stump speeches without fully having to answer to more developed responses that haven't had time to be formed yet from those who fully understand how bad a decision this verdict was.
That to me is why this issue is fully about campaign finance reform. If candidates are standing in its way, vote 'em out tomorrow!
I wish all of the judgeships I had to vote on tomorrow would have to state a position they had on this ruling. That would be a binary criteria for me to vote "yes/no" on!
I wonder if Scott McNealy will finally realize where his bread's *not* being buttered and publicly announce his support for and vote for Democrats instead of Republicans in this election. Might be cool to at least challenge him to do so.
I find it very interesting on the timing of this court ruling being in effect the last business day before election day. What do they have to benefit by doing so now I wonder...
I wonder if Bush and his cronies think that by having the ruling today, it doesn't give time for the other side to prepare a verbal response or for Democrats to take advantage in doing more substantive arguing that the current administration is in effect a "do-nothing" one in weeding out corporate misbehavior in last minute campaigning. Republicans, on the other hand, can spew oversimplified rhetoric that they've helped "clear the obstacles towards economic recovery" by removing the "shackles" of the previous administrations litigations towards Microsoft in last minute stump speeches, that they think will be better received by an uninformed public on this matter.
Nah... Not VB... They will only release the verdict on.doc files written in the newest version of Word from M$ Office that only runs on XP with encryption that Star Office doesn't understand so that one basically has to get Windows XP and Office v.11 to read it!
Just got a note the other day from my MBNA Mastercard (the one I'd actually cancelled a month ago because they kept trying to rob me on high interest rates) stating that they had a new "privacy policy" and I needed to call up to "Opt out" of their transmission of my personal info to others.
Anyone know if there's a law against this? I would consider any time I cancel a credit card, that I'm automatically permanently "opting out" of any such activity they would want to do with my personal info from that point forward. Sounds like MBNA's learning from the spammers as well.
Then Microsoft potentially is commiting a crime on almost every transmission of browser to IE, since it has been using (Mozilla Compatible) as a platform in it's User-Agent header for years.
I also wonder if this law were to go in effect, if would be "committing a crime" if I had certain email addresses that I have on my system (that I want to use in more public settings and therefore suspect to "spam harvesting") do "fake bounces" and in effect "misrepresent" that the account doesn't exist on my system, in order to help get my email addresses removed from certain spam lists as "bad email addresses". That would not be cool.
Maybe AOL could make sure that it's companies like CNN.com work well with their own products (or offshoots of products). CNN.com has miserable problems running through Mozilla on my OS X-based Powerbook. I have a feeling it might be some way that stylesheets are loaded (or not loaded properly) on Mozilla vs. IE. Hope CNN.com is actually testing on Mozilla and Netscape browsers extensively. It's kind of ironic and annoying having to have only one IE window open just to browse AOL's CNN.com site!
I can't believe some of the crap I've read in this story. "Apple does DRM right." "Of course you can't copy MP3s off the iPod." "It encourages fair use."
Tell me, oh Jobsians, what exactly is is non-fair-use about me stuffing an iPod with MP3s, taking it to work and copying them off to my work PC? Fair use means to me playing in my car, my house, my work, or any other place that has a machine I can play music I bought.
Forcing a "no copy off the iPod" is such an annoying bunch of BS that has nothing to do with encouraging fair use, although its kind of funny/pathetic to watch all the kneejerk Mac apologists *rush* to defend something so idiotic.
This is not "Apple's idea" of "DRM done right". It's about RIAA's restrictions and Apple making an effort to comply with them so that they can sell a product. I'm sure without those restrictions, Apple would make it a device that one could synchronize as easily as one does one's Palm Pilot to any machine.
I just switched to Mail.app over the weekend from Netscape/Mozilla, which I'd been using for over a decade earlier. I'm beginning to like it more and more as I use it. The junk filter isn't quite good enough for me to have it throw messages into a separate file, but the coloring feature of "graying" out what it finds to be junk messages is really nice in having the others stand out more so you can find your legitimate messages in a cloud of spam a lot easier. The colorizing was also useful for me to verify that other messages hadn't "crept" in to other filtered email files that I had by seeing whether the subject line was colorized or not.
But the real reason I switched to Mail.app was that it is the *only* mainstream GUI app I've found so far that in it's OSX port *truely* understands that OSX's native line termination is LF and not CR like older Mac OS's are. OSX releases of Mozilla and Eudora both fail miserably at this and as a result you're screwed if you want to use them along with remotely accessing your mail via ssh or telnet to use pine or other text-based email tools like Mail that comes with OSX and expect LT termination.
In a way this is a general problem for many of Apple's bundled apps like Mail.app and Itunes. They're becoming *too* good and other apps that are out there that would normally be available as alternatives aren't given much development cycles given this higher quality and the relative less revenue that these others ISV's will get with the dev costs of doing a true native port vs. enhancing their Windows versions. Apple really needs to emphasize topics like line termination, etc. where apps need to be updated and provide suggestions of how to check and fix these problems in other products quickly. They might not have much incentive to do so given that they have competing products, but ultimately, that contributes to how well OSX does in general vs. other platforms.
1 Linux box (dual boots to Win98, but is botted to Linux 99% of the time) 1 Win98 box (and two other old boxes which stay off most of the time) 1 OS X Powerbook
on my net.
Which of these are my "desktops"? Up until I got my powerbook earlier this year, I used Win98 mostly as my "desktop" though I kept Linux up as a server all of the time and spend much time logged in to it. Now that I have a Powerbook, it's at least 50% of my "desktop time", whereas Win98 is dropping to under 50% and every once in a while my KVM switch box will be switched to my Linux box.
I *use* my Linux box all of the time, but it is not my desktop that I do most of my day-to-day work on. That is moving towards my Powerbook which I expect to be doing 80-90% of my desktop work by years' end. How is that measured by statistics? If they see me hit one or two sites from my Linux box when I'm KVM switched to it or hit my web server that I have showing behind my firewall, I'll look like a "linux desktop", but in practicality, it isn't my desktop system, but my server. I suspect many others out there have a similar configuration.
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If Russell Crowe is the Oscar's love child, then where's his nomination this year. Would have also had M&C match ROTK in number of nominations too had he got one.
One thing I found curious and concerning of the Golden Globe Awards was that ROTK wasn't even nominated for any screenplay award. That's one thing that I hope the Academy gets right and finally gives the screenwriting crew of this trilogy some credit for a job well done on adapting this great piece of literature the way they did to make a great trilogy of films, which was no simple job. It upset me when "A Beautiful Mind" won Adapted Screenplay over FOTR, when the real substantive complaint of that film was how the film distorted what was supposed to be a book that was derived from a true story with overly exaggerated creative license. For it to win over FOTR was an insult in my book, even though I liked the acting performances and other parts of "A Beautiful Mind" very much.
I wonder if ROTK had been nominated for screenplay award by the Globes if it would have had a shot at winning it too. A lot of people say that Mystic River should be the favorite in this category, but I think you have to give the LOTR folks credit at some point.
But the issue is that there is more than one function that Itunes does than synching with the iPod (and for that matter an application like MMJB). Itunes plays music files, burns CDs, etc. too much like MMJB does. They both also have the capacity to synch with the iPod, iTunes being more able to synch Apples' download files than MMJB is of course.
It would appear that most users when installing iTunes would prefer to use it to synch with the iPod than MMJB, given it will synch their download files. However, perhaps the user is just curious to try iTunes out as a player and doesn't want to damage any other players, software on their system, and is more concerned about that than synching Apple download files to their iPod, which they might not have any intention of buying.
Why should a person wanting to test how iTunes plays MP3 files, burns Cds, etc. have to have their other software installation "damaged" in the course of this installation. Perhaps the user doesn't like how iTunes plays stuff and then uninstalls it after they decide they don't want it. With what iTunes install does though, now they have to reinstall MMJB or perhaps other apps that would synch with the iPod to restore it back to what they originally had, and that reinstallation might have other side effects too. Apple should give the option to be as least intrusive as possible to the user when doing installations.
My previous point though was that Apple at some future date might decide that it also wants to control how Quicktime (it's own product) is accessed on a Windows system much like it is trying to now retroactively control an iPod (it's own product) on a Windows system previously controlled through external software means.
If the same draconian ways of installation are employed, you'd have some folks not to happy with how it might render some other browsers unable to play Quicktime movies, etc. in the same fashion.
Apple should warn before affecting other installations of software on the system and give the option to install its software in a way that doesn't destroy functionality of other software on other parts of the system. They could and should certainly warn people that allowing other software to synch instead of iTunes wouldn't be supported by them, etc., but they should still give the user a choice.
I have MMJB, and its iPod plugin. I've seen better software in a 1st semester Visual Basic course. MMJB is so horrid, I cannot imagine anyone ever wanting to use it to begin with (whether to play/orgaze MP3's on your computer, or just for syncing with the iPod. I originally used MM to sync with my iPod. It was a miserable experience to say the least. It froze more often than it worked.
Aside from it's interface with the iPod were there other problems that MMJB had? How do you know it wasn't a problem with an API that Apple provided MM and that it was Apple's driver software that was slow and not MMJB itself?
AAC, on the other hand, is an open format. Don't mistake this with a 'Free' format, as the Cult of Stallman is so happy to point out. But it is Open -- in the same way OpenGL is. AAC is well documented, and there are many encoders and decoders available from many different companies, as well as many different implementations of AAC by itself. There are patent fees-- but this doesn't change the fact that the codec is published. The unprotected AAC files generated by iTunes (when ripping from CD's) is of the exact same format. I'm sure the protected ones use the same audio encoding as the AAC standard, but has added DRM. It still uses AAC encoding.
The issue isn't about iTunes support of AAC, but of the Fairplay DRM that Itunes AAC files are encoded with, which makes them completely unopen. More unopen than WMA DRM, since at least other competitors are able to license this DRM and use it on other hardware and software players, unlike the FairPlay DRM that Apples' download files are using which is more closed and hasn't been licensed by others and appears to be used to drive sales to the iPod.
If you are chanting about AAC's openness and not looking at the DRM, other players on the market aren't limited to WMA files either. They also play other competitive formats to AAC such as Ogg Vorbis and MP3Pro that provide similar advantages and openness. Apple picked AAC. Other players picked other formats as well, depending on what their business and licensing arrangements were as well as what their market for those formats were. AAC doesn't have a monopoly on being a standard format just yet.
Be happy with your iPod and iTunes. Just don't expect others to bow to you if they have a different player and like the fact that they have more choices of switching to another player or other players/services and keep using their existing download files when you're stuck on the iPod to keep playing Apple's download files, if and when the iPod becomes second to a newer more innovative player that might come out later.
Maybe a better analogy would be if Apple were to start selling Safari on Windows (we know that won't happen of course), but if they did, and decided that they didn't want other browsers to use Quicktime and disabled Quicktime functionality in IE or Mozilla/Netscape that was already installed on the system. They would make the same argument that they want to provide better support for Apple's Quicktime on their system, and Safari provides more Quicktime functionality than could be provided through Netscape or IE (maybe playing protected video files down the road or something like that, which their download store will start selling then). Would that be acceptable?
It seems that they should arguably provide the user a choice to disable other software that they detect using resources that they want exclusive access to use or have some way that they can all share them, kind of like most apps warn you before overwriting the filename extension mappings they want to have set up for themselves.
How many out there will start at noon or 1:00 PM by watching the animated The Hobbit flick before heading to the theaters? Thinking we might want to see if we can get our folks at work let us watch it on the projection screen there for a day of "theater-quality" Tolkien back-to-back! Then instead of 11 straight hours you'd have around 13 straight hours!!
This post is on the mark. The H1-B Visa program needs to be changed so that it no longer "indentures" the employee to the company that benefits the company itself but is a detriment to other non H1-B employees there and elsewhere.
I worked as a contractor at Sun for a while and they brought in H1-B Visa'd contractors from another agency that "specialized" in providing H1-B Visad employees. Even though I and other non H1-B visad contractors did a majority of building of the infrastructure there and the high end maintenance for the tools we built there, our contracts were the ones that were ended, not these guys'. It was obvious that price was a big reason in that situation.
I don't hold this out just against Sun. I worked there earlier as a permanent employee and like a lot of things about the company. I think this was a problem that wasn't specific to Sun. These same "body shops" that were servicing Sun were also providing the same loopholes for other companies like HP, etc. in the valley too. It was their way of keeping costs down while the cost-of-living exploded around there and kept other citizens away from that equation which didn't make for a good cost-of-living/salary ratio for those people who had choices.
IMHO, the increased presence of H1-B visa'd employees actually increased the problems of cost-of-living in the Silicon Valley which basically has housing costs falling a lot now from the astronomical highs that it reached during the dotcom boom.
In addition to the overpaid CEO's overinflating the prices in the local housing market there with their "falsely overpriced" stock options created by laddering scams from the investment houses, there were many of these H1-B visad people who were "stacked" into the harder-to-get lower priced housing which contributed to that mid-range housing scarcity and helped contribute to its higher prices as well.
Most citizens wouldn't want to live like the three H1-B visad employees that were moved in with their families into a 900 sq foot apartment across the hall from me by their employer after my landlord kicked that family out as well as other tenants in the building to raise rents up to 40% on everyone there during the boom and corresponding housing shortage. If those workers weren't brought in as the "indentured servants" that they were, there would be less of these folks piling into those sorts of housing and more available to the rest of us at lower prices.
It was cost of living that eventually had me move away from there to San Diego as my handle here indicates.
In short, H1-B visa program allows companies to run their operations at artificially lower costs than they should in a given local market, which takes away jobs from those that aren't part of that program and inflates the costs to others trying to work in that market to compete against them.
If the H1-B visa program were revised to make have it provide only employees that compete on an equal footing with everyone else here in the states, those companies that depended on that artificial lower cost structure would be either forced to go out of business or move to other places where the operating costs are cheaper which would provide a more natural law of supply and demand every place then. If all the Bay area is left with is expensive CEO's able to live there and work in their companies, they might at some point realize that there is a real ceiling to how much they can be given over the rest of their employees in their company for them to have a real and profitable business for their investors. Perhaps then they'll lower their own salaries, provide better salaries for native U.S. citizens, and the local economy will be more adept at providing a competitive living environment for U.S. citizens who might seek to move there to work.
That being said, I have nothing against Indian or other foreign workers coming here to the U.S. In fact that diversity was one reason why I moved to the Bay Area to work to begin with. The system is what needs fixing!
This is exactly right! And add to that with the wages for technical careers being artificially low and by comparison the rewards/compensation for CEOs and execs being artificially higher here than in other parts of the world, where do you think kids going to school are going to invest themselves in terms of degrees. Not Computer Science or Engineering, but MBAs. This just perpetuates the "dime a dozen" MBA image and also the shortage of qualified candidates for tech jobs that leads to the perception that we need more H1B visa workers here to start with.
Corporate America needs to spend less money on its execs and more money in helping fund the educate the young people of tomorrow as an investment. H1B visa folks come, get lots of money and take their experience, etc. back out of the country where it doesn't do us any good. We need to invest in ourselves.
That's not to say that I don't appreciate the melting pot job market that happens in places like the Bay Area and other tech sectors. That's one reason why I really like this industry with its diversity of people and ideas. But let them come over and compete on an even keel, not as indentured servants that really helps noone in the long run.
Tricks are for kids... Animated movies don't *have* to be for kids! Sometimes many think that animation is just for kids and should be judged as to how well it works for them to measure how good it is. Anime doesn't always follow those rules, though some folks who only watching things like Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z might not see that. Spirited Away is at least a movie that appeals to many different age groups with different messages. That's what makes great movies (animated or no) like Disney did in the past with Fantasia, etc. too, even though at the time it came out wasn't as highly regarded or attended as the "kid's movies" at that time...
This award is for best "Animated feature", not best "Animated feature for kids". Spririted Away is a great achievement that should be the favorite here.
Though there's a definite bias in the Oscars against films like LOTR in favor of other themes than fantasy, etc., I don't think Spirited Away will have quite the same difficulty others face in getting the award. With Miramax behind it, it already will get some help. Also, I think many of the same Hollywood types that might reject other what they might regard as overly-commercial titles for their favorite niche films might be more attracted to the art house value of Spirited Away vs. the other more commercial movies in this category.
Spirited Away is one nomination I'm really pleased to see happen this year and is a breath of fresh air compared to most of the other categories. Last year, I was wondering why they only had three nominees and didn't get Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade a nomination as well, which also deserved to be up there. Was wondering if Anime movies were getting pushed aside then. As you note, hope they finally bring a worthy anime film the spotlight it deserves on the world stage.
:(
I'm kind of disappointed that a movie like LOTR: TTT didn't get more than Best Picture in the major categories. I take that as a sign that it's nomination for best picture was a "token nomination" and that it doesn't have much chance at winning best picture. You know that some folks would revolt if it didn't get a nomination at least there. It would seem that the Academy would be saying we'll wait until you're "done" until we give you a serious consideration for the Best Picture and other big awards to go with it. At least I hope it's that way and not a complete snub next year. If Matrix sequels do well this year, I wonder if the Matrix trilogy and LOTR trilogy will split votes and have other films shut them both out then!!
I just had problems updating my comparison cart a short while ago with a fresh downloaded version on dvdpricesarch.com and have just filed a bug on this. It would appear that Safari is not currently letting you replace older persistent cookie values with newer ones which is probably messing your cart as well.
On the other hand Safari does not seem to handle the "path" value of a cookie per RFC2109. At least it does not handle it the same way as MS IE, Mozilla or iCab.
I was seeing problems with cookies myself. Just downloaded the patched version shortly ago. It appears at times when a persistent cookie is set and saved in a browser session and you revisit the site again and it attempts to update the cookie and resave it, that it cannot replace the value of the older cookie, and the original value of the cookie persists from that point further (I'm guessing until you clear your cookies, which I haven't tried yet). Just filed a bug on this.
Also saw problems with:
1) table cell rendering when no size hints are specified evenly dividing up the width of table cells in a row even when some rows have content that aren't wide, leaving a lot of white space around data and some rows in the same table being scrunched into multi-row data in the cell, looking crowded. IE or Mozilla would attempt to give those cells wider space and take away width from those cells not using it. Makes readability a little tough.
2) Also as far as readbility goes, I've noticed that on some sites that use stylesheets for fonts and specify them just being "Arial" without any size setting, that the default sizes of these fonts are *very* small (much moreso than IE or Mozilla) and they don't get affected by updating the default browser font size (that helps control size of fonts not controlled by styles).
There's a time and place for everything. Including fixed width fonts. Fixed width fonts are like the zoom lens that teachers in video classes warn you about overusing, which can be a real turnoff and distracting. However, it has its uses. The key isn't so much *not* using fixed width fonts, but using them judiciously and not making key text that you want people to be reading (and that they want to read frequently) too small.
Without using fixed width fonts, a user using "large" system fonts can also make a web page "unreadable", especially if the page is using things like frames, layers, text area input fields, or others where important text can get lost if it is sized too large. Fixed width fonts can keep the user experience more consistent. The key is making it so that it doesn't penalize those with presbyopia, etc. by designing your page formats, etc. so that they can handle reasonably sized fonts that most can read.
You can argue that one shouldn't be using frames, layers, etc., and one shouldn't overdo this either, but there are time and places for those things too.
Instead of hitting the web designers hard with this criticism, hit those designing browsers so that they can have a more consistent relative font size between platforms and browsers, so that there are less variants that web designers have to test their pages with, so that adjusting browser fonts is the only variable and the same adjustment is consistent everyplace. Then web designers would be more inclined to use relative fonts on their pages.
If I'm doing pages where I have side column text that is navigation oriented and the center is an article (which most have), I have the side text a fixed width font that is legible and the center text be something that is resizable (which is what most people will be reading on a page consistently anyway). That way artifacts from varied size text on the outside (which is more likely) will happen far less and won't distract the user as much.
Yes, it isn't a binary thing... I think though were McNealy to say he was switching votes from where he usually votes for (Republican) to another candidate (maybe not even the Democratic Party in some instances), to send a message that this issue is that important for many folks out there, it might send a message to other candidates out there of what the voters won't put up with. We've seen other examples of "equal opportunity corruption" like when the California State Legislature suspiciously and unanimously voted in Governor Pete Wilson's bill to deregulate California's energy which turned into a nightmare a year ago with rolling blackouts, etc. Both parties were guilty of corruption then.
Perhaps a better way of stating it is that this election one should pay close attention to the candidate's positions on campaign finance reform and also to what campaign contributions influenced different politicians voting patterns (especially where Microsoft is concerned) and actively vote against it.
I fully believe that the timing of this judgement verdict was planned in advance so that it was right before the election to allow some candidates to champion that they "cleared the decks for economic recovery by cleaning the slate for Microsoft" in last minute stump speeches without fully having to answer to more developed responses that haven't had time to be formed yet from those who fully understand how bad a decision this verdict was.
That to me is why this issue is fully about campaign finance reform. If candidates are standing in its way, vote 'em out tomorrow!
I wish all of the judgeships I had to vote on tomorrow would have to state a position they had on this ruling. That would be a binary criteria for me to vote "yes/no" on!
I wonder if Scott McNealy will finally realize where his bread's *not* being buttered and publicly announce his support for and vote for Democrats instead of Republicans in this election. Might be cool to at least challenge him to do so.
I find it very interesting on the timing of this court ruling being in effect the last business day before election day. What do they have to benefit by doing so now I wonder...
I wonder if Bush and his cronies think that by having the ruling today, it doesn't give time for the other side to prepare a verbal response or for Democrats to take advantage in doing more substantive arguing that the current administration is in effect a "do-nothing" one in weeding out corporate misbehavior in last minute campaigning. Republicans, on the other hand, can spew oversimplified rhetoric that they've helped "clear the obstacles towards economic recovery" by removing the "shackles" of the previous administrations litigations towards Microsoft in last minute stump speeches, that they think will be better received by an uninformed public on this matter.
This whole thing SMELLS!
Nah... Not VB... They will only release the verdict on .doc files written in the newest version of Word from M$ Office that only runs on XP with encryption that Star Office doesn't understand so that one basically has to get Windows XP and Office v.11 to read it!
It looks like he's advocating people switch to an older Mac not a new one. Otherwise he'd say "convert to Macintoshes and run Jaguar." ;)
Just got a note the other day from my MBNA Mastercard (the one I'd actually cancelled a month ago because they kept trying to rob me on high interest rates) stating that they had a new "privacy policy" and I needed to call up to "Opt out" of their transmission of my personal info to others.
Anyone know if there's a law against this? I would consider any time I cancel a credit card, that I'm automatically permanently "opting out" of any such activity they would want to do with my personal info from that point forward. Sounds like MBNA's learning from the spammers as well.
Then Microsoft potentially is commiting a crime on almost every transmission of browser to IE, since it has been using (Mozilla Compatible) as a platform in it's User-Agent header for years.
I also wonder if this law were to go in effect, if would be "committing a crime" if I had certain email addresses that I have on my system (that I want to use in more public settings and therefore suspect to "spam harvesting") do "fake bounces" and in effect "misrepresent" that the account doesn't exist on my system, in order to help get my email addresses removed from certain spam lists as "bad email addresses". That would not be cool.
Maybe AOL could make sure that it's companies like CNN.com work well with their own products (or offshoots of products). CNN.com has miserable problems running through Mozilla on my OS X-based Powerbook. I have a feeling it might be some way that stylesheets are loaded (or not loaded properly) on Mozilla vs. IE. Hope CNN.com is actually testing on Mozilla and Netscape browsers extensively. It's kind of ironic and annoying having to have only one IE window open just to browse AOL's CNN.com site!
I can't believe some of the crap I've read in this story. "Apple does DRM right." "Of course you can't copy MP3s off the iPod." "It encourages fair use."
Tell me, oh Jobsians, what exactly is is non-fair-use about me stuffing an iPod with MP3s, taking it to work and copying them off to my work PC? Fair use means to me playing in my car, my house, my work, or any other place that has a machine I can play music I bought.
Forcing a "no copy off the iPod" is such an annoying bunch of BS that has nothing to do with encouraging fair use, although its kind of funny/pathetic to watch all the kneejerk Mac apologists *rush* to defend something so idiotic.
This is not "Apple's idea" of "DRM done right". It's about RIAA's restrictions and Apple making an effort to comply with them so that they can sell a product. I'm sure without those restrictions, Apple would make it a device that one could synchronize as easily as one does one's Palm Pilot to any machine.
Mail.app -- Junk filter is not terribly effective
I just switched to Mail.app over the weekend from Netscape/Mozilla, which I'd been using for over a decade earlier. I'm beginning to like it more and more as I use it. The junk filter isn't quite good enough for me to have it throw messages into a separate file, but the coloring feature of "graying" out what it finds to be junk messages is really nice in having the others stand out more so you can find your legitimate messages in a cloud of spam a lot easier. The colorizing was also useful for me to verify that other messages hadn't "crept" in to other filtered email files that I had by seeing whether the subject line was colorized or not.
But the real reason I switched to Mail.app was that it is the *only* mainstream GUI app I've found so far that in it's OSX port *truely* understands that OSX's native line termination is LF and not CR like older Mac OS's are. OSX releases of Mozilla and Eudora both fail miserably at this and as a result you're screwed if you want to use them along with remotely accessing your mail via ssh or telnet to use pine or other text-based email tools like Mail that comes with OSX and expect LT termination.
In a way this is a general problem for many of Apple's bundled apps like Mail.app and Itunes. They're becoming *too* good and other apps that are out there that would normally be available as alternatives aren't given much development cycles given this higher quality and the relative less revenue that these others ISV's will get with the dev costs of doing a true native port vs. enhancing their Windows versions. Apple really needs to emphasize topics like line termination, etc. where apps need to be updated and provide suggestions of how to check and fix these problems in other products quickly. They might not have much incentive to do so given that they have competing products, but ultimately, that contributes to how well OSX does in general vs. other platforms.
I have one for my PS2 (with Linux) also which works with my SMC Wifi hub fine!
I have:
1 Linux box (dual boots to Win98, but is botted to Linux 99% of the time)
1 Win98 box (and two other old boxes which stay off most of the time)
1 OS X Powerbook
on my net.
Which of these are my "desktops"? Up until I got my powerbook earlier this year, I used Win98 mostly as my "desktop" though I kept Linux up as a server all of the time and spend much time logged in to it. Now that I have a Powerbook, it's at least 50% of my "desktop time", whereas Win98 is dropping to under 50% and every once in a while my KVM switch box will be switched to my Linux box.
I *use* my Linux box all of the time, but it is not my desktop that I do most of my day-to-day work on. That is moving towards my Powerbook which I expect to be doing 80-90% of my desktop work by years' end. How is that measured by statistics? If they see me hit one or two sites from my Linux box when I'm KVM switched to it or hit my web server that I have showing behind my firewall, I'll look like a "linux desktop", but in practicality, it isn't my desktop system, but my server. I suspect many others out there have a similar configuration.