Ursus Pacificus

I bought a Sony Dash. I gave it a chance. I worked my way through the tedious process of setting it up, particularly getting it to pick up photos from my own web server… Tried out some widgets… cursed the clock, because, out of nowhere, it decided I lived in California, but not in any setting I had access to… I realized that I couldn’t listen to my in-home Icecast-based “Internet Radio Station”, and finally gave up. The Dash went back to Best Buy.

What was wrong with the Dash?

Touch screen… I can’t speak for anyone else… I mean.. Maybe I’m not “capacitive” enough to make the capacitive touch screen work with a light touch, but… I found I had to kind of mash the thing to get it to work… This is a problem, because the “easel-stand-angle-thing” doesn’t lend the Dash to being pushed around. Press on screen hard enough to get a reaction, and the thing falls over. Grr.

Touch screen again… this may, actually be a software issue, but when I press a button, I want to know, right now, that you know I pressed the button, even if it’ll take you a second or two to actually do what I want done. If I can’t have tactile feedback, I need something else… an audible click, or a simple animation or something… something that acknowledges the command.

The “Sony Layer”… The Sony Dash is basically a Chumby One, running in a “container” under the supervision of a layer of Sony software. The Sony layer has a look and feel somewhat similar to what one finds on the PSP, and the PS3… but there’s something lacking on the Dash… I don’t know if it’s that the hardware can’t live up to the dreams of the software people, or if the software was rushed out… Dunno… but this reminds me of when Sony first introduced the “VAIO” line of PCs… It was essentially an attempt to “lock in” customers, and it failed. The Dash seems to try to take something open and simple (the Chumby), slather on a gooey opaque coating of piano-black, and call it a Sony.

Oh, and no battery. Duh. Here’s a giant pallet of stupid. Sony, one of the pioneers of Lithium-ion battery technology… didn’t think to put a battery in this thing.

For $200, I’m not impressed. I’d just as soon get another iPod touch and a cheap speaker-dock. … or a real Chumby for half the price.

I was offered by YouTube an opportunity (as “newsundies”) to participate in a test program which would allow me to upload videos longer than 10 minutes.

For nearly a year, I’ve been doing NewsUndies shows oriented toward YouTube’s 10-minute limit, often throwing out perfectly good bits to get my shows to fit. I looked forward to the opportunity to participate, but it would take me a little while to get a show put together that fit. There’s something of a pipeline to NewsUndies production, and a substantial amount of planning and research goes into each show, so if a show is planned for 10 minutes, making it substantially longer is non-trivial.

I did, though, put a 13-minute show together (NU1005), and uploaded it. Uploading it took forever, and once it was uploaded, YouTube delayed its release to verify via email that I either owned the copyrights or had written permission from the copyright holders of everything in the video. As a result the show came out late.

This week’s show was made late, because I was planning on uploading a 13-minute show, but when I went to upload it, I was informed that the >10-minute program had ended, and I was thanked for my participation.

That’s poo.

So, now I have a longer-than-ten-minute show, all edited and rendered and everything… and I either need to cut three minutes out of it (no small feat) or cut it into two parts (which requires, essentially, re-editing the show). Either way there was re-editing and re-rendering involved, and by then it was midnight.

I opted for the 2-part route… It’s an inelegant solution, but I wanted to get all that material in there, and YouTube kinda left me twisting in the wind on this one.

So, bottom line is: This week’s show is late , and late shows don’t get watched, thanks, again, to YouTube.

This article discusses a Road Warrior-like post-apocalyptic landscape that would come to pass if Microsoft were to seriously tumble from its dominant position (or fail entirely).

I beg to differ.

Contrary to the total chaos Randall Kennedy predicts, I think there will likely be a brief period of uncertainty, while people try to figure out how they’re going to deal with End Of Life issues for software they’ve been relying on for decades… but that’s really not all that different from the “chaos” that came to pass over Y2K… Remember the years we spent using BOTH sides of the toilet paper and eating spoilt cans of Spaghetti-Os over THAT?!

The truth of the matter is that there are, at a minimum, three or four viable operating system choices just waiting for Microsoft’s stranglehold on the market to falter a little. Apple has 2 of them, there’s 3 or four flavors of Linux (which I’ll count as one, because they’re all Linux), there’s Be, which has been dormant for a long time, but could be revived, there’s the BSD varieties (again, all counted together), and there’s Google’s Chrome (which is immature, but on a fast track).

The REAL problem will be migrating Desktop and Server applications to another platform, because of reliance on Microsoft’s “embraced and extended” “standards”. Well-designed software should be, for the most part, relatively simple to port. Poorly designed software will have to be rewritten. Remember when Windows2000 came out? Remember when Windows Vista came out? Drivers didn’t work, and systems crashed, and there were hardware compatibility issues… oh, it was a nightmare… some software wouldn’t run at all.

I’ve been running Linux personally for twelve years, now… I recently bough a couple Macs for my crazy NewsUndies show… but apart from Video Editing (and connecting my iPod Touch), I’ve had no problems with Linux, as long as I bought hardware that was compatible (that is, hardware for which, either the manufacturer has provided drivers, of the OpenSource community has managed to reverse-engineer drivers).

My Macs are OK, but I find Linux to be a better choice for the vast majority of my computing needs.

OpenOffice covers the vast bulk of “office suite” needs, and, as other needs arise, I’m sure people will either demand, or write their own applications to meet them.

I’m not saying that there wouldn’t be a period of disturbance… but … I don’t think wrist-mounted cross-bows and shoulder-pads will be the norm.

Remember when American Motors went away?

Remember when GM shut down Oldsmobile, Pontiac and Saturn?

I don’t think it’ll be much worse than that.

While Microsoft was off reinventing the search wheel (in much the same fashion as it reinvented the portable music player wheel, by adding angles and unnecessary jangly bits), Google was off in Australia doing the foundational work for Google Wave.

The Rasmussen brothers, who brought us Google Maps, are heading up the dev team on Wave, and it looks spectacular.

There’s a demo video at wave.google.com. It’s about an hour and a half long… so… you kind of have to commit some time to it, but… it’s really spiffy. It’s a collaboration tool that seems to have almost boundless potential.

Take a little time and watch the video. It’s bitchin’!

So, Microsoft is at it again. MSN Search turned out to be a dud… so they rebranded it as “Microsoft Live Search”… and that also turned out to be a dud. Now, they’ve … done… something…?

MS’s latest entry into the search…ey… space is “bing”. They call it a “decision engine”. Oh, great. So… where Google was just going to look through billions of documents to see if certain words or phrases appear in them, Microsoft (oh, sorry… “bing”… the “Microsoft Corporation” is in tiny, tiny font at the bottom of the page) wants to “help” me to make “the best” decisions. Hmm…

If MS Windows Vista is any indication of Microsoft’s decision-making prowess, I’ll stick with Google, and make my own decisions, thanks.

Then, of course, there’s always the question of platform-neutrality. Microsoft has a long, storied history of giving preferential treatment to its own platform, if they even offer products for other platforms. Microsoft has been at the forefront of lock-in for decades. The thought process goes something like this:

They get you with something… like… email.

Well… I use Outlook at work, so I should probably use it at home too. Well, that rules out Linux, because Microsoft doesn’t make Outlook for Linux. And Mac… well… do they make Outlook for Mac? I’m too lazy to check. I’m already AT SuperlativePurchase, and they’ve got this Compaq… that already has Outlook on it… What? It’s a trial version? Well, I can use it as long as I want… no? I have to pay extra to check my email? Hmmm… well, OK… but… that’s it. Wait… I might have to read a document from work. Does this machine come with Word? What’s Works? Oh… something of a misnomer… Well, because it doesn’t work. OK, so I guess you’d better set me up with MS Office, too. Professional? Why would I need that? Access? Hmm, well I do have all those recipes ….Money? Yes, I have the money right here…. Oh, MICROSOFT Money… no I don’t need that, I… Alright, well, I guess you’d better set me up with that, too.

So, now they own you. The default choice for any web service that MS offers is the MS choice. The default web browser is IE. The default media player is Windows Media Player… the default everything is Microsoft.

The trouble is that once you get into using the MS product, virtually anything you produce is either only usable in a Microsoft environment, or, if it does work at all elsewhere, it doesn’t work well. This is how Microsoft protects their marketshare. They don’t do it my fostering loyalty and/or passion. They do it the same way the heroin pusher does.

Every time Microsoft walks up with something “new” to offer, they always seem to do so with one hand behind their backs… and my first instinct is to try to see what they’re hiding…

Well… Microsoft has done nothing to earn my trust over the course of the last 30 years. To trust them, now, with my vacation plans… seems … a little foolish.

Back before you kids had your compact discs and your multi-gigahertz handheld computers, we had 8-bit “home computers” with cassette tape drives that were painfully slow… I mean… you think dialup Internet access is slow… That’s 56,000 bits per second on a good day. We had 300. There were very few hard disk drives… no, we had giant floppy disks that hardly held any data by today’s standards. …and we made do.

Well…

Here’s a guy with too much talent, an overabundance of technology skillz and WAY too much free time (this coming from a guy who does a show called NewsUndies)…. Sheer brilliance:

Check out the other stuff on his YouTube Channel… It’s pretty crazy!

Sad news from the geeky trenches. Richard “rick752″ Petnel, maintainer of the most popular filter for AdBlockPlus has died at age 56, after a stroke.

I know, I know…. Mr. OpenSourceGuy… Mr. LinuxFiend… bought an ultra-closed Mac.

Well, given the choice… Mac or MS Windows… Mac.

I still have piles of Linux machines, and I dig them enormously. …but I have to say that I have found the Free and Open-Source Software available for Non-Linear Video Editing to be … sub-optimal. I was a booster for Cinelerra for a long time, and I’d jump back over in a second if I could get it to work reliably… but… I’ve wanted to do some significant video editing for a long time. I have hours of footage from my VisionQuest I need to edit. I have been unable to do it reliably under Linux.

So… FinalCut on a Mac or something else on MS Windows. FinalCut on a Mac.

The video NewsUndies have been recorded and edited on my Mac.

Do I love the Mac the way Mac lovers say I will? No. The UI is, in many respects, maddening. I’ve had a lot of trouble getting camcorders to work right with iMovie and FCE4.

I’m not convinced that “It just works” really works.

I find that generally, on generic hardware, Linux “just works” a lot better than Mac does.

But… for video… it’s working out OK for now.

OK, so I’m on Facebook now. Not something that I generally like to admit, but… there it is.

While I’m airing my dirty laundry, I also recently signed up for an account on The Huffington Post.

Anyway… A friend of mine on Facebook, who’s been involved in propagating the “25 things” meme, posted status update (including a link to a Time article), amazed that this meme was getting all this attention.

The article is basically poo, and I’ve kinda thought that Time has been going down hill for a while now… so I decided to comment on her Status Update, saying:

Momentarily disregarding the article’s vapidity, Time has sunk so low as to link to its own irrelevant articles to seem more tasty to search engines. The link to “Top 10 Sci-Fi movies of the 1950’s” is completely irrelevant to the item with which it associated (someone admitting having cried when Spock died in Star Trek II). Star Trek II was released in 1982, and is based on a 1960’s Sci-Fi TV series. Time’s really lost its edge… gotten lazy… next thing you know they’ll just slap a hunk of metalized mylar film on the cover of the magazine, and call the Person of the Year “You”!

Wait… what? They did that? In 2006? This is worse than I thought! Next thing you know, the Supreme Court will install a twelve-stepping Evangelical sock-puppet as President! … Wait.. what?

Me… Get it? ME, Time’s Person of the Year, 2006…

I (a blogger (2006 Person of the Year)) have commented on someone else’s comment on Time’s commentary of a meme circulating on Facebook, a site created by entrepreneurial nerds (also part of the PotY 2006 mob). Facebook, a site I use to keep in touch with friends and family, is also where I deposit links to my own websites, operated on Free and Open-Source software (including Linux, GNU, Apache, MySQL, php, Wordpress and so on), which is also part of the PotY2006 squad… and… just to make it a little more confusing, I’m now blogging (on my blog) about my comment (on Facebook) on a comment on an article (on time.com) which commented on a meme circulating on Facebook, which is an outcropping of the phenomenon encapsulated by Time’s 2006PotY

Next, I will post a comment on Facebook, pointing to this blog post, asking all my friends to comment on this post, no only here, but on Slashdot and Twitter and MySpace and Digg and anywhere else… Let’s crash the Internet in a circuitous web of pointless self-reference! Begin!

Mwooo-hoo-hoo-hahahahah! … ha…

According to this story, PBXVI (my endearing nickname for the con-artist formerly known as John Ratzinger (itself, a rather amusing name)) will be getting his own “channel” on Google. I’m not entirely sure what that means… A YouTube channel? Hell I have one of those.

So, here is another example of goddy, faith-based religions employing science (or the fruits of scientific labors) to deepen and broaden the suffocating stranglehold they have on the minds of the credulous. It’s disingenuous and highly irritating.

“But…” you might say, “Aren’t you using the Internet to promulgate your own religion?! Isn’t that more than a little disingenuous? Perhaps even hypocritical?”

Yes I am, and no, it’s not. The online meta-parody “ha-ha, only serious” religion I founded has no foundation in “faith”. As we all know, faith (the acceptance of a proposition without supporting evidence) is not compatible with the philosophical underpinnings of science (skepticism, inquiry, methodical investigation, and objective analysis). The Church of No, Thanks openly embraces scientific skepticism and curiosity, and can do so honestly, because The Church of No, Thanks makes no claims, which are inconsistent with the honest, active pursuit of knowledge (unlike some churches I could mention).

PBXVI, on the other hand, has been painted into a rather unpleasant corner. As science has advanced gods have been pushed further and further into the margins. To continue to appear relevant in a world which seems to require a “vicar of Christ on Earth” less and less, the Pope can either dismiss science and cut his group off from science and its teachings (while agonizingly impractical, it at least has the benefit of being self-consistent) or he can minimally and selectively embrace science and its teachings (which makes the church seem more “with it”, but less intellectually honest (or, put another way, more fraudulent)). The Catholic Church has, over the last century or so, cautiously, but clumsily, tiptoed down the latter path. Of course, the further down this path the Pope goes, the harder it is to answer critics who question the infallibility and rectitude of the Papacy through history, when the Church’s official position has slowly morphed to concede the “reality high ground” to scientifically grounded discoveries, leaving the Church less and less to be right about on their own say-so.

What makes this even more difficult to swallow is that PBXVI is the guy who basically is moving to undo Vatican II (although he claims he isn’t). He seeks to restore the “traditional Latin Mass” … so he’s trying to move in two directions at once… he’s bringing back the crusty, decayed, alienating side of Catholicism, while trying to engage the youth via the Internet. Presumably this Internet campaign will draw in the kids and 20-somethings , only to have them turned away by the priest’s back and droning Latin incantations. Good thinking!

Eh, the whole thing is becoming a sad, pathetic side show.