Recovering from Black Friday/Saturday Shopping. Ugh! Getting ready to leave for Philly to attend the World Congress on Disability. Looking forward to seeing some new AT, catching up on law and so forth. Not looking forward to Philly in winter, overpriced/underpar room service and paying for cabs.
I’ve been a miserable bastard since the ATT/Cingular buy out. Phone selection went to hell, ATT customers got the fickle finger and locked into a heavily modified contract. Well, there’s some good news, among the midst of rumours of a Cingular/ATT name switch.. Again.
Apparently, Nokia is finally getting the fabled n80 on Cingular. Plus I just saw the new Sony Walkman Phone which has typical sony sex appeal.
Speaking of which…I caved and got an 5g Ipod as a gift (after returning my last one). If you want a hard drive based player and accessories..there really is no other choice. Will post a better review after the trip to Philly.
I’m all about social liberalism, and Mass. is famous for it, but this is crazy.
And even crazier, the ‘religous right’ is linking it to efforts to legalize gay marriage?!?!? what is with these people? Their sexual imaginations are far more twisted than reality. And I’ve seen/financed/filmed and participated in some unusual things. All I can see are shades of Rick Santorum. Who, incidently, is probably into things we shouldn’t even imagine.
This only makes me more proud of the fine state of West Virginia, where my fiancee - a vet tech, assisted in performing a rape kit on a female rott that was raped at least TWICE! yeah, twice.
Amen.
I cut my teeth on the Atari platform using the 800 series. I learned Logo, Basic, Assembly and a mess of other languages on this box. In addition, it forced me to learn hacking, pirating and software modification. I simply couldn’t afford to buy all the software I thought I needed. There were other ways. Many other ways. I learned a whole different world was developing behind closed doors.
But enough rambling. If you’re wondering what started this, well check out this custom atari laptop. I don’t think it’s for sale, but if someone wants to get me a holiday present…look no further.
In a testement to the breed (and human stupidity), a couple of Rottweilers almost prevented their owner, trapped in a peat bog, from being saved. The woman, in Northern England, was trapped in a bog but unable to get help as her dogs prevented the rescuers from approaching. She spent an hour in waste deep frozen mud. Delightful.
Actually, this is exactly the response you want from the dog, particularly when their owner is acting frantic, they were bred to instinctively protect. However, this woman was still awake and able to attempt (unsuccessfully) to call off the dogs. This is the mark of a major problem. This is again why I advocate Schutzhund, it’s not about protection, it’s about a well balanced and CONTROLLED dog.
On a related note, I have a fear of passing out due to an allergic reaction and my dog not allowing someone to approach, as I wouldn’t be able to verbally call him off. That why I also recommend getting a TDI and keeping your dog well socialized. It won’t take the ’sport’ or working drive out of them, it does keep them manageable and much more pleasureable to share your life with.
Basically, I supopse this article just ticks me off as it further gives the breed a bad name, reinforces sterotypes and doesn’t mention that obviously these dogs were not properly trained (as evidenced by the fact they weren’t able to be verbally recalled)
Besides, the risk of you falling into a peat bog is probably higher than you think.
In the first of many piggy backs from slashot, several reviews are in on the Xbox. I’ve been awaiting this release, not only because I’m interested in seeing Microsoft further school Sony…and make no mistake, being second place as quickly as they have was a major blow to Sony…And almost destroyed nintendo. God bless the gameboy, great engineering works.
But more impotantly, the console has amazing architecture, although getting it utilized is going to be even more difficult than past consoles. The XBox and PS3 both use multicore-multichip configurations. Developers are only beginning to fully exploit the multithreads of the P4 and AMD64 line, learning a completely new set of machine instructions and thinking multicore are going to take awhile. And it might not even happen at launch. This console line, more than most, will see the best games at the end of the lifespan as developers become accustomed to the learning curve.
Enough complaining. Why I’m excited:
I’m a total media whore and store almost every form of entertainment media I have in digital format. There are over 700megs of video on my servers, 30 gigs of audio, several homebuilt media center DVR’s with TV feeds, and several more gigs of pictures. I travel with a reasonable frequency and have eagerly awaited the advent of personal media players (PMP’s)
I started with the creative media center running a portable version of Microsoft XP Media Center. I’ve always been happy with Media Center and really like the User Interface, it plays to the ‘grandma factor’ well. Other than the slight limitations of the digital rights management (DRM), it was a joy to use. The only major complaint was the size, certainly not in the ipod arena. We parted ways.
So, on to the5G Ipods. I can’t stand iTunes and the proprietary nature of apple, but the hardware and software are so damn sexy. Well, I buckled, twisted some arms and got my hands on one. The click wheel interface is wonderful as always, the screen above average, and the formfactor sleek and lightweight. Unfortunately, many of the accessories are useless due to the removal of the ‘feature’ port. The video only plays for two hours (30 gig version) and requires serious conversion (open mp4 or .mov only). Finally, mine died after two hours, bad harddrive. My brother is happy with his, but it also took him three days of working in spare time to get video transfered…not good. He’s in the coveted 18-24 demographic. Besides paying 2.99 for lame music videos and tv shows from apple doesn’t sound appetizing.
Next to the Archos 400/402. This was a great product with voice recording, mp3 player, harddrive, video player (xvid,divx,avi, etc…) and even video games. This was designed with the geek in mind, it even has on board file and folder editing features, no need for the PC. Unfortunately, all this functionality means that accessing anything is several clicks away, not good in the car.
Which takes me to the creative vision. I’m waiting for this little guy to come out. I’ve seen engineering demos and read numerous reviews. This could be the ipod killer I’ve been waiting for… ’bout time
Addendum: for strictly playing MP3’s, the RIO Carbon and Pearl are unmatched. My fiancee sports a carbon. It’s a great player, smaller than an ipod, more durable, is seen as a remote drive and supports native .wav files. She’s had it a year, it still has great battery life (16hrs+_, very few marks, and functions perfectly.
Well, despite having worked for five years for the relentless bastards, I have a special place in my heart for Sony. They have the design, innovative technology and ethics of an Apple with all the business bite of Microsoft.
This is probably the best thing I can say about Apple and the worst about Microsoft.
But enough of them, wait for my review of the VideoIpod and Microsoft Vista.
So a few weeks ago, Sony issued a bunch of audio CD’s with ROOTKIT’s on them. Basically a rootkit enables a hacker/company/whomever installed it, to take total control of your machine at a later date. This move, theoretically, was to stop piracy. Unfortunately, no one at Sony seemed to think about the business or legal ethics of breaking into their customers machine at will. The rootkit amounts to spyware and possibly a virus or other malware…it really depends on how Sony wanted to use it. In my opinion, this is the first major shot fired in an info-facist war over intellectual property, personal property rights, fair use and privacy. It’s not like the CD’s even carried a warning about the Trojan Horse.
Ironically, Sony is who first went to the Supreme Court with their famous time shifting arguement that enabled TV programs to be copied using the defunct BetaMax format…this eventually enabled recording on VHS players as well. And in a slightly funny twist, Microsoft’s spyware program is adding the Sony software to their list for removal .
This is one of the more blatant acts of anti-consumerism I’ve seen in awhile. And while I don’t really recommend or endorse boycotts, here we go.
Well, this would be something resembling my first official post. We’ll see what develops from here and if I can figure out what to do what I want, find the time to do it, and actually get motivated enough to do it. If you’re wondering if I am whom you think I might be, please check out the about page. Maybe I am, probably not.
