Bang My Head Upon The Fault Line

So, Apple had three announcements today, non of which were particularly impressive, at least in my opinion.

The Intel-based Mac mini: Disappointing, then more disappointing. Well, the Mac mini didn’t gain true DVR capabilities. You can hook it up to your TV, and Front Row gained the capability to stream video, but there’s no recording capabilities. Disappointing.

Then I saw the hardware specifications. There’s no more base $500 model, and the $600 model only has a single-core chip. And a 60-gig hard drive. And no DVD burner. The $700 model is better, with a dual-core chip, but it still only has an 80-gig drive. With no monitor, keyboard, or mouse.

Then I really looked at the specifications. And I saw the graphics system. It’s…I can hardly say it…it’s using integrated graphics. For the first time since, I dunno, the New World machines were introduced, there’s a Mac that doesn’t have a dedicated graphics subsystem with a separate bank of RAM. Instead, we have a lame-ass integrated graphics that share the main system RAM! Yes, the graphics eat into the main RAM, meaning the advertised 512 megs of RAM is really more like 460 megabytes, as at least 64 megabytes will be used for the graphics. Which will slow down the system like crazy, as Mac OS X needs all the memory you can throw at it, and the added latency will bog down the bus. Boo-urns.

Really, this is a bad deal compared to a base-level iMac. That iMac has a digital widescreen 17-inch TFT, 512 megs of RAM, a 160 gigabyte hard drive, a 1.83 GHz dual-core chip, a dedicated graphics card with 128 megabytes of RAM, and all the same ports. That costs $1300. The dual-core Mac mini, at 1.66 GHz, a 120 gigabytes hard drive (the highest you can add on via Apple), a $30 keyboard-mouse combo, and a digital normal-aspect ratio 17-inch Dell monitor, costs you $1200.

So, for a hundred bucks more, you get a faster processor, far far far better video, a more drive space with the iMac. Which looks to be a better deal? (FYI, for a friend of mine, with the iMac’s video card, you can drive a hella large external second monitor. Not mirrored, a full second screen.)

Like I said, disappointing.

The iPod Hi-Fi: What the hell? It’s just speakers. 350 dollar speakers. You could just plug your iPod and remote-control enabled dock into a normal stereo. Lame.

A Leather iPod Case: For $99? Really? With no controls? I bought the same thing for $30 at Best Buy.

So, a disappointing show. Hopefully, Apple will roll out the true hotness for their 30^th anniversary on April 1^st. I’m a little worried, though; if the iBook shares the same specs as the Mac mini, especially the video setup, it’s gonna upset Apple fans.

Current Music: Track 1 - “( )” - Sigur Rós

Technorati Tags: Apple, computers, iPod, Mac mini, iPod Hi-Fi

The combination of broadband/BitTorrent/HDTV recording/XviD encoding creates interesting ethical problems.

A theoretical situation:

Let’s say, last week, I missed an episode of a favorite show of mine, House. (It was on a different night than usual.) So, I went over to a popular torrent site and downloaded an HDTV rip. This raises a few ethical questions, such as:

1. Is downloading a TV show that I could have, save for a schedule change, fairly and legally recorded unethical?
2. Does the fact that it’s high-def and not standard definition complicate the issues, as the quality of the download is higher than what I’d record at home?
3. Does the fact the commercials have been stripped out of the file complicate matters? If I’d recorded it at home, I’d have zapped through the commercials anyway.

In short, is there an ethical difference between accessing content someone else recorded and using my own recordings?

(On a side note: this is illegal, of course, as copyright holders have rights as to how their work is distributed. And the content industry would certainly claim this as not fair use, as they’d rather have me buy the show through iTunes if it available.)

Current TV: House-Season 2-Episode 13

Technorati Tags: ethics

Looks like Blu-Ray players and movies are finally going to hit.

The launch titles?

“The first Blu-ray Disc titles from SPHE and MGM Home Entertainment will include: 50 First Dates, The Fifth Element, Hitch, House of Flying Daggers, A Knight’s Tale, The Last Waltz (MGM), Resident Evil Apocalypse and XXX.

BD titles streeting June 13 include: Kung Fu Hustle, Legends of the Fall, Robocop (MGM), Stealth, Species (MGM), SWAT and Terminator (MGM). Underworld Evolution will debut in early Summer day and date with the DVD.”

Oh, holy cow, I only have to spend $1000 on a Blu-Ray player to watch lame ten year old movies in hi-def!?!?!?!?!?! Sign me up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Current Music: Track 8 - “( )” - Sigur Rós

Technorati Tags: Blu-Ray, technology

So, I’ll give you a quick update of my slightly insane weekend.

But first, I’ll direct you to the information that came out about the next version of Windows today. It’s been known for a while now that Longhorn Vista will have a baffling number of permutations and mutations. And today, it’s finalized, there will be 6 versions. Bend over, baby.

Right, now for my weekend. This will be short, as I’ve got things to do still:

Friday: Friday night was…interesting. I can’t/won’t go into many details, but here’s two highlights: I gave a guy a handjob on a couch with other people in the room, and somebody pissed out the window of a 15^th floor apartment because they couldn’t get to the bathroom. Not to mention the exhibitionism and the pseudo-orgy and the…never mind, I’ve said too much. Let me just say: you’re all whores.

Saturday: Saturday, I basically worked and rested. Oh, and what am I working on, you say? Again, I cannot/will not say, yet. I can point you to the Conference website, which is almost ready for prime time. I had to rework some things, as my crude hack to get the alpha-channel transparency in 24-bit PNGs didn’t work. But it still looks O.K.

Sunday: Mommy and Daddy visited! Yay! They brought me food! And the multitude of magazines I never transferred to my apartment mail because Daddy reads them first! And we ate a good lunch for Mommy’s birthday! And Daddy joined the Sierra Club and was listening to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack in the car, because apparently he’s following in his father’s footsteps towards insane communistic thought as he gets older! And I bought the new Stephen King novel, which I already finished, and it rocked!

Ahem. Sorry, I was trying to mimic a typical Xanga post by a sorostitute. But, really, it was a very nice visit. And they had some interesting family-drama news: my cousin (second cousin, but in practical terms my cousin because of the bizarre age stratification in my family) has run away from her mother to live with my aunt. To that, I say: about fucking time. Her mother, well, that bitch-from-hell is crazy with a capital Cunt. Turns out, when my cousin wasn’t in school, the banshee would lock her in their apartment with no phone, computer, or TV. Yes, really, she kept her locked up alone in an apartment for about 16 hours a day. Finally, when she was on a weekend visit to my aunt’s, my cousin told the entire story and begged to stay. My aunt, who’d wanted to keep her for a long time now, readily agreed, and called in reinforcements.

So she called in my (actual, not second-) cousin, who’s not actually managed to divorce that stupid cunt out of fear of what would happen to his daughter, to come over and guard against any problems. Which was good, because, soon enough, the bitch goddess found out and came a flyin’ in on her broomstick. She used all of her masterful manipulation skills to try to get my little cousin back, but she couldn’t manage this time. (I think the fact she’d been calling her daughter a whore probably didn’t work in her favor. That, and my cousin could snap her neck before she would even realize what was going on.) So, the bitch went back to her apartment, took all of my little cousin’s stuff, and dumped it in my aunt’s front lawn.

Nice, huh? It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out. I imagine that mega-cunt will try to get my second cousin back somehow, but I’m not too worried. If worse comes to worse, well, my family is very heavily armed and could almost certainly kill someone and dispose of their body where no-one would ever find it.

So, that was my weekend. Again, sorry for the lack of posting. I’ve been super busy, but hopefully, I’ll have more free time this week. Oh, and remember, Apple has a special event tomorrow. I’m quivering with anticipation. I’m betting on a new Intel-based Mac mini. With DVR capabilities. And it will dispense softserve ice cream.

Current Music: Glosoli - “Takk” - Sigur Ros

I’ve just been busy as hell, and I’ve had no time to update. Although I may over the weekend. That is, when I’m not working on this. Or doing a mock-up of a new site for Firehaus. And studying for tests next week. And entertaining my parents. And partying tonight.

Anyway. four things:

• At least the gays don’t control the ports.

• There is actual an intelligent discussion on Slashdot for once. On nuclear power. Just browse at a comment rating threshold of 3.

• IBM is on track for ~30 nm transistors for their chips. They’re still using visible light lithography for this, which, frankly, is miraculous. That’ll make the process much cheaper and easier to integrate into existing fab designs than something exotic like UV or e-beam lithography.

• I would love it if SVG became a widely used technology online. But, since no native Internet Explorer implementation seems forthcoming, I can’t imagine it will ever be widely used. Today, unless it’s implemented in the browser or it’s included as a part of the OS, features just don’t catch on. Which is to bad, because Firefox, Camino, Safari, Opera, and pretty much every other browser will have or already does have native support. Oh well.

And now I head out to the big black cock. (Which is what I call Presidential Tower. Although I would wager there is a bar called that somewhere…)

Current Music: Blues Drive Monster - “FLCL Original Soundtrack No.3″ - the pillows

The flier for the PRIDE event next week is, after an annoying amount of revising, done. It’s here. [pdf link]

If you’d like to distribute it around campus, by all means, go. I hereby relinquish all rights. Go wild.

And now for a night of homework and GenDFA layout.

Shit.

Current Music: You Think I Ain’t Worth A Dollar But I Feel Like A Millionaire - “Songs For The Deaf” - Queens Of The Stone Age

Wow, I’ve been a little…busy.

See, this semester, as my class load is less onerous than usual, I’ve taken on a lot more outside projects. And, truth told, perhaps too many. I’ve spent the last 48 hours just working my as off on various projects. Tech support for the Dr. Gill campaign, for some damn reason. PRIDE stuff. And, well…

…this piece of work.

The other night, I was contacted to do a simple site for the approaching Illinois GLBTA College Conference. I…welllllll, I went a little past simple. I’ve had this design waiting around for the right project, and I just went nuts. It’s obviously not finished yet, but, whew, it seems to have worked out like I expected.

So, yes, I’ve gone a little off the deep end with work. Oh well.

And here’s some links that have been built up:

• I love Bar Louie quite a bit. The food, the design (besides the lame-ass CRT TVs), and the drinks. I didn’t enjoy having to talk to random-ass airheads, but that’s another story.
• I want a cat piano.
• I will sell my blood, semen, soul, whatever to get a new MacBook.
• Samuel Alito looks a lot like Steve Jobs. I never realized that.

Current Music: Project Runway (I know…..)

• The oceans are acidifying due to CO₂. The president’s suggestion: use human-animal hybrids to move giant hamster wheels to generate electricity.

• Here are two very interesting and in-depth articles on Intel’s changes to its chip architectures. The first page is about Yonah, or as it’s more properly known now, the Intel Core, which are in the first generation of Intel Macs. (I refuse to use the term MacTel, which seems to have shown up quite often online.) The second article is on the next generation Conroe architecture, which is replacing the awful dead-end NetBurst architecture the Pentium IV used. And, no, that isn’t biased anti-Intel bashing left over from when Apple was anti-Intel. Intel is completely abandoning the Pentium IV architecture, which lost them a whole hell of a lot of the high-end market to AMD. Heck, they’re even abandoning the entire ‘Pentium’ brand name.

• This is a very insightful article on the economics of microprocessors, and why superior technology doesn’t always results in superior marketshare. (Actually, that’s a to an Ars article that contains a link to the article; the actual page is down right now due to traffic.)

• The current Mac “virus” is not a virus, nor is it dangerous.

• Some people think PDFs are based proprietary format and can’t be produced without buying the expensive Adobe Acrobat. Not true. PDF Creator is a virtual printer drive for Windows. When you hit ‘Print’ and select ‘PDF Creator’ as your printer, your document will ‘print’ to a PDF on your desktop. Note that Mac OS X has this built in. Ha.

• MIT Tech Review rocks. The news on that page? That’s what materials science is all about.

• Richard Cohen of the Washington Post is a moron.

Current Mood: nerdy
Current Music: Cold Hard Bitch - “Get Born” - Jet

Technorati Tags: Apple, computers, environment, science, technology

Stupid banks…not open on President’s Day…wish I worked at a bank so I could get every fake holiday off…tomorrow I’m going to deposit my checks without filling out a deposit slip, that’ll show you…

Current Mood: annoyed
Current Music: P.L.U.C.K. - “System of a Down” - System of a Down

Upon further consideration…

…Foo Fighters’ latest album In Your Honor has moved from the rating It’s Pretty Good to Pure Rock Fury.

And for posterity’s sake, here’s my rating system, from worst to best, with examples:

Barbara Streisand - Well, uh, Barbara Streisand, and anybody on American Idol
Like A Nail To My Eardrums - Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, most country, all rap
Pretty Goddamn Bad - Emo music, “indie rock”
Meh - 80’s hair metal
It’s Pretty Good - Music that everybody seems to love, but I just think is O.K., i.e. The Beatles
Pure Rock Fury - Foo Fighters, System of a Down, Smashing Pumpkins, U2, The White Stripe, Jane’s Addiction, NIN
God Came In My Ear - Pink Floyd, Lee Zeppelin, A Perfect Circle, Tool, the pillows, Sleater-Kinney, DMB

Current Mood: musical
Current Music: Razor - “In Your Honor” - Foo Fighters