Open Source daemons

While I was listening to the latest MacBreak Weekly there was a particularly engrossing and thoughtful discussion about the merits of Open Source to the end-user. Merlin Mann took the position that the fruits of Open Source were ripe and ready for the picking in the form of a stable Linux operating system, namely the latest distribution of Ubuntu, many open source applications that have excellent functionality for the end-user, and frameworks for web development like Druple. The ever verbose and highly entertaining Andy Ihnatko took the opposite side, citing difficulties with configuring Linux on his laptop and pains with Drupal. Perhaps the most interesting comment came from the show’s host, Leo Laporte, which was in effect the comment that software developers do not want to be working for the “man” to create excellent products. And while I won’t argue that independent developers can make some great software while working in small teams or even alone; Gus Mueller of Flying Meat Software springs immediately to mind as well as the good folks over at Rouge Amoeba, I will say that the major problem with the whole open source movement is the mentality that everything must be free and open.

Of course that takes for granted the entire ethos of open source, but it also emphasizes the definition of open source. For application building frameworks and the underpinnings of an OS an open source seems to be an excellent idea as it allows the developer to spot errors or dealing with difficult to use interfaces, as well as the entire of the community to deal with these errors. However, while the adage may be that it takes a village to raise a child, it may not be the best way to build software. Building on open source framework might make sense in the overall, but trying to create something like advanced tools for graphic editing and user interface by consensus only dooms it to failure. Some will insist on adhering strictly to established user interface guidelines and Fitt’s Law even when there is a point where strict adherence impedes the usability. Others will stick to more holistic methods about atheistic and vague notions of user-friendliness. Either way one will end up with a product that is a kludge of both ends of the spectrum or one dominant with shades of the other rearing its’ ugly head to intrude.

Therein lies the major problem of trying to build an end-user app with the whole village. Consensus is difficult to build, but is ultimately feasible to get on a wide area of effect open source end-user application, the problem then rapidly becomes one of polish and overall usability. Take GIMP, for example, which is a completely open-source free-to-the-public photo editing app that could be considered an Adobe Photoshop replacement. It has most of the major features, but I would be terribly surprised if anyone who is serious about photo editing or effects creation who would use GIMP. The application is perfectly serviceable, once you learn how to act around it. One might say that most pro-grade tools also have steep learning curves and often esoteric commands. However the pro-application has been developed over years by many people with clear documentation and support systems. There is one caveat in this though, Photoshop is a professional application designed and used by graphics pros around the world; GIMP was hobbled together by a bunch of people who didn’t want to pay for Photoshop to edit some graphics for a website. So, you might ask, how could I compare the two when there is such disparity between the two? I have used the new CS3 it is simply fantastic, however I can’t afford to plunk down 300 beans to justify its use for what little I use it for. That is precisely the point, when you have all the resources that Adobe does you can create some fantastic software. Some would say that GIMP is not bad for what it is, I say phooey, there are literally dozens of competent image editors (at least for Mac OS X) that have most of the critical features that Photoshop does. No they don’t al have the same features, but they all offer something and definitely something more that GIMP ever did, but for a cost. Graphic Converter, Intaglio, Line Form to name a few, not to mention Pixelmator, which is still in a closed beta, but fulfilling the promise of a Photoshop light for most image tasks.

To move beyond the image editor there are dozens of comparisons even within the indie developers to projects in the open source which just cry out for attention. Transmission v. XTorrent, Microsoft Office (or iWork) v. OpenOffice/NeoOffice, iChat v. Adium; this list could just go on. In fact the only one in the list worth mentioning is Adium, but it still lacks some key features that make iChat so appealing like voice and now video chat. Open source is great for creating and applying standards for file formats and other things, open formats are always a good thing, but they have yet to create something that even comes close to Photoshop or Office despite protestations about “it will happen eventually”. And therein lies the problem, consumers do not want to wait for new features to be coded in to the applications as when the open source/free software developer gets around to it with many, many intrusions into his life be they personal or professional. The best thing about the open source movement is that is a great place for an upcoming software engineer to cut his teeth, with something that is a hobby and worked on in spare time. Many little freeware apps are essentially resume builders and that is good thing, because then these developers can get noticed by the big guys and actually start building real and useable applications. Or they can pursue the American dream an start their own company, because the oldest of adages “There is no such thing as a free lunch” rings truest in this age of bits and bytes.

Link of the Day
Many of you (OK so I know that no one reads this bloody thing, but I thought that I would make a comment) have commented about two things: 1. the lack of recent activity and 2. the lack of links of the day on some of the more recent posts. There are reasons for both of these. I have just finished a rather grueling move and a rather enjoyable few days where I did nothing but decompress. After leaving Hilterade un-attended for almost a month, I considered just pulling it and perhaps this time for good. Then I realized while no one may be reading this but a select few, writing is a skill, and it happens to be a skill that I rather enjoy and to not utilize it is to loose it. Practice, practice, practice!

Beyond that I have come to the realization that I don’t feel like pointing out particularly interesting things to you Faithful Reader. You can damn well find your own interesting shit. That said however if there is something pertinent that seems to fall within the purview of this writing then I will not only write about it but link it excessively. I feel that this is more than sufficient for interesting things to be found, and there are often too many weblogs that suffer from the “I have to throw up lots of interesting things so that people will read my blog” syndrome. While it is often the case with these that I find them interesting, I don’t know how useful it is to share these insights with others. Rest assured there will be some dedicated links for particularly interesting sights, but for the most part the meat of the blog will be the prose.

For those who still want there daily fixes, might I suggest Metafilter, Neatorama, and Boing Boing for a daily and sometimes hourly fix of informations.

iWork ‘08: The “Microsoft Go Fuck Yourselves” Edition

Apple just unveiled its new productivity suite iWork along with some more “professional” looking iMacs to run them on. I own a copy of the previous copy of the suite, iWork ‘06 and I have to say that I was impressed with the ableness of Pages, the word-processor portion of the bundle. It is a surprisingly powerful page layout tool that I have used for that specific purpose several times now with great effect. I hadn’t really used Keynote until a few weeks ago, and even then I can’t say that I used it all to its fullest potential. The presentation that I created was very simplistic and didn’t even use some tasteful transitions. Having also used the dreaded PowerPoint, I consider Keynote to be miles and miles ahead of PP on nearly every front.

Pages even preformed well as just a generic word-processor, but it didn’t feel very polished or refined, the fact that everything was moveable was big step down when editing a page with both text and images in it. Despite how surprisingly good Pages is, no one sane clearly thought that it could be a credible replacement for the 800lb elephant in the corner Microsoft Word. Nearly every time that I have used Word there has been something terribly annoying happening automatically, something that is very difficult to find, or just the general unresponsiveness of the application. Granted Word has some very cool features and necessary ones at that, but they are often buried in layers of menus and what not. What has been true about nearly every non-Microsoft word-processor that I have used is that they are always very intuitive to use and very easy to learn. Even NeoOffice, which is essentially a Mac port of the OpenOffice project, is easier to use than Word, although it’s just dog slow and very buggy. It has to do with the fact that all of these companies are trying to earn your business by making your workflow easier to handle. These software developers don’t assume that you must have their product to function in the wired world. They have to compete for your business.

This is were Pages makes its big splash. Apple has already tried its hand at creating text editing and creation programs. MacWrite, AppleWorks, and even the very capable TextEdit are all excellent word-processors, but they died a slow and painful death at the hands of Word. The original Word was one of the better applications for any platform, but Microsoft has been adding to the bloat and feature count in obtrusive ways and with questionable user-interface ideas. Ask a Mac greybeard about Word 6 and you will most certainly get a “you-walked-over-my-grave” shudder running down his spine. With the latest iteration, Pages and Apple got serious about making a challenge at the entrenchment of Word on the personal computer. I think that the most requested feature that is present in Word, but typically implemented in a kludgy way, is the Track Changes button. I have had to use track changes on Word before and it just highlights what has been changed and sticks lots of unnecessary text in the way of the prose. Pages has its own little sidebar that contains a sequence of what was added, deleted, or edited by other people. All color coded and easy to reject or approve. Pure. Genius.

Not that I’m likely to collaborate with someone on any kind of document, but for those who need it there is another reason to ditch Word. The contextual format bar is another stroke of genius and it fits perfectly within the dichotomy of the page layout tool and the word-processor. Being able to adjust the frame for a picture when a photo is selected and being able to decide the kern on text without a lot of pointless navigating is just damned handy.

This is the iteration where Pages shoots a shot across the bow of Word and makes a bid for desktop share on the Mac. Add to the fact that Mac Office 2008 has been pushed back to January 2008 and Mac customers have serious reasons to look at iWork as a viable option for replacing Word and Keynote. (The fact that Keynote is getting an update just puts it in the stratosphere as far as PowerPoint is concerned. Keynote won the battle for presentation software on the Mac long ago.) The sticky wicket appears to be Excel. Lots of people actually like Excel, as opposed to having to use it for one job or another, and it has quite a loyal following on both sides of the platform war. EvenI have certain affectations for Excel. I usually judge an application by how well it acts as I think it should the first time that I use it. And lo and behold Excel did what it should do as a spread sheet app the very first time.

And then the Lord begat Numbers. Numbers has, I think done away with the spreadsheet as we know it. You don’t start with cells, you start with a blank page and then add a table of cells. Things like realtime graph updating, normal language formulae and such are those that will differentiate it from Excel. It’s not as powerful or as feature rich, but I think for 90% of spreadsheet users will be very satisfied with Numbers.

And so it begins. I won’t say that Apple is blameless in the suite war and the battles between Microsoft and Apple, but the recent shots have been taken by Redmond. Internet Explorer for Mac was axed, Windows Media Player for Mac died, and of course the delay of the Office 2008. I say bring it on. Numbers has a few problems with it and Pages could use some polish, but by time the next iWork comes out, I think that it has the potential to be a giant slayer and totally evict Microsoft from the Macintosh.

Apparently I’m the only one who doesn’t like Harry Potter

So Harry’s back. Hay na, hay na, Harry’s back. JK Rowling is desperately trying to convince the press that Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows will be the last chapter of the Potter series. There is no way that Rowling wouldn’t see more Harry Potter as a license to print money. Authors and movie makers might say that they want to respect the integrity of the series and the characters, but then there are things like T3: Rise of the Machines and Rocky V. Perhaps Harry Potter will lie dormant for a few years but I sense the curse of Star Trek. When Paramount decided that they were going to cancel Enterprise at the end of the 2005 season it was widely believed in the fan community that the franchise needed a break, which is something that I echoed. I felt that Star Trek had run it’s course, yet two years later a film is in development. Of course it’s a prequel. To quote Patton Oswalt “I don’t care where the stuff I love comes from, I just love the stuff I love!”

To get to a greater point, I know that I am not the first to be mystified by the success of Harry Potter. I will say at the beginning of the post that I have only read up through Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, yet I still feel sufficiently qualified to discuss the success and the grip that it has on the populace. To say that Harry Potter is terrifically entertaining prose with intelligently written and well defined characters is a stretch. It’s not that the series is poorly written and whatnot, I just do not understand the appeal to the larger and older American reading public. As a kids series it is merely okay. The massive changes in characterization and plot twists are perhaps enough to keep a child interested, but the greater American reading public taking a vested interest in the life and or death of Prof. Dumbledore continues to goggle the mind.

To call JK Rowling a hack would be too strong a language, but honestly I think a friggin’ monkey chained to a Remington could do better. The absurd deus ex machina in Azkaban as Hermione has that ridiculous magic necklace that can turn back time immediately comes to mind. I guess the whole point of that bit was to point out to the reader that Rowling couldn’t find a way for her heroes to survive their particular quest without resorting to the hackery of time travel. It feels tacked on and inelegant because it is and the prose suffers for it. Rowling isn’t a particularly gifted write. She has other problems stringing together other absurd plots and trying to hold it all in one neat package at the end of the novel upon the thinnest thread. Lupin is a werewolf, the elder Potters were animagi, Ron’s rat is a spy, Harry is a twit. All of these contrivances add little to the main plot of Harry filling more into the role of being a sorcerer.

And that is what is so sad about Harry Potter, if there were just less of the extraneous padding and there were more characterization of Harry and his journey as a boy into the throes of manhood instead of these awkward phrases about Harry the idiotic side plots that end up becoming central to the plot. But the subtleness is lost when it feels as if the author is reaching through the page to point the reader in the right direction, not with clues or hints, but by saying “Look at this! This is important.” Smart readers, even child readers should be able to grasp that. Harry’s main story, and that of the rise of Voldemort is actually quite interesting, if not terribly original, but it feels as if Rowling knows that she has seven books to deal with the consequences of that storyline so readers are forced to deal with silly tripe including all of the scenes with the Durselys.

Another thing that always brought me out of the story in the Harry Potter series was the way that the universe was not at all interesting or immersive. Every single aspect is completely derivative and not convincing at all. Even Tolkien, who draws extensively from mythos from around the globe, added his own little spice and twist about the creatures, races, and phenomena that were in his universe. In Rowling’s Potterverse, Goblins are greedy, Giants are tall creatures of the forest, and Hippogrifs are deadly and dangerous. Most of the monsters in Potter books are used as sight gags, for example Fluffy the three-headed Cerberus look-alike that guards the Chamber of Secrets in the first book immediately loses its appeal when the gamekeeper is able to talk him down and tame him.

Even other children’s books still hold their appeal as one ages. I know that books I read as a child that were clearly in the children’s genre and reference things like cooties and homework still have some kind of an appeal as an adult. R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps, Bruce Coville’s My Teacher is an Alien and even Tolkien’s The Hobbit (which I found much more approachable as a child than the rest of the Lord of the Rings). These works still have value and immersive universes, distinctive prose and a certain believability. Not to say that some particular Goosebumps books aren’t cheesy now, but the fit into the genre of children’s literature better than Harry Potter ever would. And I haven’t even brought out the big guns Madeleine L’Engle and Ursula K. Le Guin.

As for adults there are so many good science-fiction and fantasy books out there to be sampled. I only read Potter as part of an assignment in school and then went back to catch up to the current book, which was at that point Phoenix. Potter was entertaining and easy to read. And sometimes one just needs a book that is easy to read, but now looking back I would much rather pick up the latest Stephen King than pick up the next Potter. Authors like Neil Gaiman, Neal Stephenson, William Gibson Douglas Adams, George R.R. Martin and Robert Jordan offer entertaining and much more invigorating reads for adults looking at fantasy. The three best fantasy series out there right now are Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, King’s The Dark Tower, and Jordan’s Wheel of Time. All offer immersive universes and distinct characters without the wincing prose and the vapid, useless plot twists of J.K. Rowling.

All I would say to those who read Potter is that, yeah it may be a decent and entertaining series, but it doesn’t hold a candle to even Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia (which I have always despised, but still respected). For both children and adults who hold Harry in the deepest esteem, I remind them that the world of fantasy does not end with Harry Potter.

Breaking the Metaphor

In my last post I alluded to the biggest problem with the iPhone interface making its way over to the next generation iPod; the temptation to include all of the nifty internet features that make the iPhone such a great piece of technology. Clearly, the internet technologies of the iPhone have the potential to become the standard for portable phones and other handheld devices. Integration is slick and stylish, and with the advent of wider availability of higher bandwidth broadband, the power for Safari and even the iPhone Mail to become the “killer apps” in the next generation of handheld devices.

So why, do you ask, would bringing the power of iPhone without the telephony to iPod be a bad idea? It’s about metaphors. iPod is a media playback device. At first it was about the idea that you could carry your music with you. Adhering to the KISS standard of design, Apple knew that you could carry photos and video with you and there were people around who would want such things, but there had yet to be a great way to do any of those things. iMovie and iPhoto were years away and it seemed better to just keep it simple. So there was slow evolution, first the iPod Photo, which was just a version of the 4th generation iPod with a color screen and the ability to view photos. Then the video iPod of the 5th generation. Incremental steps towards a total solution for portable media playback. But in the most fundamental way iPod was and remains to be a device for playing all of those songs, showing off those photos, and watch those videos while you’re on the road.

There have been numerous wish-lists for the iPod since it was first introduced. AM/FM radio receivers, voice recorders, and most of all some kind of wireless capability. The allure of synching contacts and such with minimal interaction of a computer would be more useful in a device like iPhone, but the ability to buy songs on the iTunes Store, for example, would be something that could have some merit to it. Wireless music transfer done correctly, unlike squirting, would be something that could have some meat to it as well. But there is a problem with this whole approach.

It breaks the metaphor of iPod as a holder for your media, and becomes it self a medium for interactive fare. Even if Apple were to put wireless on iPod with the only the capability to buy from the iTunes Store, I can guarantee that many would wonder “Why can’t you put Safari on my iPod so I can do this and so I can do that?” It becomes a slippery slope in the way that could be detrimental to the market. However, John Gruber makes an excellent point. In the fall of 2005 Apple had a killer product in the iPod Mini. It was selling phenomenally. Then Apple killed it. It is better to kill your own product and replace it with something that there is genuine demand for than to let a product stagnate. Now I’m not saying that killing iPhone is in the pipes, but if there was a way to have your cake and eat it to, that is test the market for an telephoneless iPhone (call it Newton II if you must) this would be the way to do it.

The market is there. It might not be as great as those who want a smartphone that does it all, including the wash. I know that I would be much more interested in a Newton II that would play my media than an iPhone. There is no desire for a cellular phone on my end, but I don’t know if I want all that internet gunk on my iPod. The rest of those gorgeous iPhone music features? Yes. Wireless sharing? Maybe. Full-featured internet resources, IMAP email? Not so much. Not that I don’t think that there is a market for this, but I don’t want that kinda shit gunking up a clean experience on iPod. It creates too much confusion within the market and as good as Apple has been at keeping their product lines differentiated and separate I would hate for the bad old days of 5 kinds of Macintosh Performas to come hurtling back.

The 6th Sense

Everyone likes the iPhone. Having a little personal experience with one, I can tell you that the pre-launch hype is more than justified even after a short time using one. The interface is the one thing that all of the above reviewers enjoy above all and, with some minor caveats, note as the paradigm shifting experience. Not that I thought that I would ever use the phrase “paradigm shift” in person but I feel it’s apropos here. Yeah, I have watched the promotions and instructional videos from Apple so I knew a little more than average going into the local Apple store, but I can tell you right now the pinch function is nearly worth the price of admission. When I got back from the mall, I had the overwhelming urge to “pinch” the screen of a photo I was working on in Aperture to zoom in. Just fantastic. I can see why Apple will sell millions of these devices.

Of course the next logical step in any speculation would be other applications for this touchscreen technology. It works so very well in the mobile space, but could it be translated over to say a tablet PC? I have never seen the appeal in a tablet computer, but the only way I would use one would be if the user interface were as well designed and thought out as the one that Apple put on their iPhone. Others have speculated that a MacBook with a touchscreen to supplement the more traditional, and more accurate, interface dichotomy of mouse/keyboard. There needs to be some way for the user to enter text into the computer and there needs to be someway to interact with the GUI. As much as I like the MultiTouch interface of the iPhone, I just can’t fathom its integration on the traditional OS GUI interface of today. Maybe somewhere in the deep archives and bowels of the UseNet there is a post like this talking about how the command-line will never be supplanted by this little piece of plastic that you wave around on your screen, but I think that although the touchscreen brings a user closer to their data (be it music, web pages, or phone calls) it’s still a while before something usable can be implemented. This is why people are applauding the interface of the iPhone; it just works on such a fundamental level and for most of the people it works just as they would expect it to. Right away, the first time through. While this is the main exemplar as to why I’m a Mac user, it demonstrates the power of correctly implemented technology as a game changer.

So, while there is probably some fantasitc stuff socked away in the R&D section of Apple, (and other tech companies for that matter) there isn’t a 10-inch MacBook with MultiTouch and a deep-fryer coming next Tuesday. There is nothing that is useable in the iPhone interface that translates well to the big screen, so to speak. However, Apple already has a small mobile device and a brand that is worth billions of dollars that an iPhone-type interface would be perfect for: iPod. Not that I’m the first to speculate this. Even John Gruber who doesn’t normally pull himself in with the rumor monger crowd, states that Jobs’ comments about “OS X-based iPods” are really a no-brainer. CoverFlow, which was recently introduced to iTunes, seems very awkward and the implementation is not the best on the computer, works fantastically on the iPhone. By being able to tap an album and have the tracks appear on the back, one is instantly impressed on this functionality. Couple that with the iPhone interface ideas of touching a letter to jump to the artists with that letter and the fantastically bright and well-defined screen for viewing movies and TV and we have a winner.

There are some caveats though. I agree with Dan Frakes of Playlist Mag, there needs to be some kind of physical control ála an iPod Shuffle. I typically do not use an iPod in such a manner where physical feedback is necessary, but when it does happen (when driving for example) the feedback is so very nice. I think that such a control would be very academic to implement and I know that Apple has thought this out. The next bit is the hard-drive. I have a 4th generation iPod, the one with the click-wheel, and it just recently started showing its age. Today I had some trouble with the internal hard-drive and heard the dreaded and much published clicking noise coming from it this afternoon. After trying several times to restore it and even reformatting it via Disk Utility, I was convinced that it had given up the ghost. Suddenly I was very interested in the future of iPods and seeing that the current design was several years old coupled with the phenomenal industrial design of the iPhone I got very excited at the prospect of a new iPod. However, I smacked the iPod a couple of times on the corner of my desk and then somehow managed to restore it. I have no idea how that worked, but I do realize that maybe good old iPod is on its way out.

Back when iPod was first introduced the small hard-drive storing all of your music was something that was a novelty. People were concerned about carrying around a small bit of moving technology that has been historically prone to failure under adverse conditions. As it turns out people have had troubles with their iPod hard-drives. This is indeed the first time that I had any trouble with mine, but with the creation of iPod nano and iPod Shuffle, the flash bashed music player that could still hold a large collection of music became more of a possibility. Flash has several advantages:

It’s solid state so accidentally hurling an iPod against a brick wall shouldn’t impact that ability of the storage medium to hold any of your data; it might fuck up the control scheme or the battery, but the memory should be fine.

Flash disks have a much less demanding power requirements than a tiny hard-drive that has to spin-up whenever a file is accessed leading to better battery life in devices the same size and smaller devices.

Flash drives have been plummeting in price since Apple began to sell flash-based iPods. Larger drives and lower prices mean happy consumers

There is one major set-back however. For those who like to carry their entire music catalog with them and for those who would like to use the gorgeous new screen in their iPod to watch video, there aren’t really flash drives large enough to make such a thing feasible in an ideal sense of the word. Video looks great on iPhone and assuming that a 6th generation iPod would have some kind of similar form-factor it would look great there as well. For all the draw-backs of having a hard-drive based media player, the biggest good point is the enormous amount of space that one can have to store all that tasty video. I too think that there is new iPod based on OS X in the works, but I can’t fathom Apple going back a step and only including a drive smaller than current video iPods. Unless the drive is north of 40 GB, I know that I won’t get one.

The next problem is one of a metaphor for an iPod as a media device and not a communications device. This is a long and drawn out essay about how I think that including the connectivity options of iPhone in an iPod is a bad idea, both commercially and on a sort of geek metaphysical level. As you can see it’s really fucking complicated. However it’s nearly nearly 2 AM here and I think I shall retire for the evening. Keep tuned in for the conclusion to this mythic post…

The State of Mac Gaming

I remember not just playing games on your Mac, but there was gaming to be done. It was the mid-90’s (incidentally, about the time that Apple went to shit)I remember Warcraft II, SimCity 2000, and most especially Escape Velocity. EV was the game for me. I would spend hours upon hours playing that game. I remember one summer in 1997 when staying up late and watching the sun rise after not realizing that I had wiled away the wee hours of the night playing that fantastic game. I really didn’t have that much to do with a computer other than play games with it at that point. The internet was not popular enough for people in the rural Midwest to think that they needed it, and school hadn’t gotten difficult or advanced enough to require the papers and essays that would come to dominate my later scholastic career.

There is a point buried ever so deeply in some of this nostalgic tripe. I was about to get to the great wait for Starcraft for the MacOS. I waited nearly a year for Blizzard North to port a version of the game that would run on my parents impoverished Performa 6200 CD and it’s MacOS 8. It was an excruciating wait, but when it came it was glorious. This of course was near the “death” of the Mac platform not only for games but for regular computer users as well. Those were grim times for Mac users. Sure the great Steveness had returned to Apple and lead them to the light with iMac, but there was much uncertainty in the future leading to some damning comments from certain industry wags.

Mac gaming was another one of those casualties of that era of seeming lack of interest in the platform. Even though HALO debuted for the first time ever at MacWorld 1999 and there was a Mac release for the next big thing Unreal, things seemed to have not gone all that well for the Mac gaming community. Things were happening though. EV Override had just been realased and I spent another $20 and another small portion of my life trying desperately to conquer the whole of the known galaxy, which was now considerably bigger.

There were excuses abroad about the lack of Mac software and most especially games. After all this was the platform that brought you Myst and SimCity, two of the most popular games of all time, not to mention franchises that are still being milked for all they are worth to this day. One writer compared the Mac and the PC software pool to two ponds. One was much large compared to the other, but this writer contended that it did not matter because although the Mac pool was smaller it was filled with champagne. Even though the Mac pool of both software and games has enlarged considerably during the transition from Classic MacOS to OSX, I think that it still holds true. Albeit my experience with Windows is limited, but it seems as if there is much less effort on the part of PC software makers to make the functions intuitive and understandable to a first time user. Granted that a gamer will not mind one bit as he likes to tinker with software and user-interface to find the right balance that will not let have his fingers moving more that a few keystrokes in any direction, while still allowing for the hair-trigger insta-frags. But the average user has no interest in things like dynamic AI, inverted Y-axis, and programmable hot-keys.

Clearly the average OS X user has more in common with the average user than the gamer, but I contend that the two should not have to be antithetical. Thus I was elated by the support the Mac community has been receiving of late from the higher ups in the gaming. Fickle bastards like EA who have abandoned earlier and now only return with TransGaming’s Cider. Not that I bemoan the return of a gaming giant to the venerable Mac platform, but this feels like a half-hearted gesture at best. But others like Blizzard have learned from their mistakes. Starcraft was their last game to ship as two separate platform disks. Everything since then has been shipped as hybrids and I welcome it. Blizzard has been one of the few game companies to fully support Mac games in the past few years. Other games even ones that I like, such as Civilization IV and Empire at War have had lackluster and slow patching of Mac issues; particularly of that big PPC-Intel switch that happened last year.

I hope that EA’s big announcement at WWDC 2007 has breathed a little fresh air into the sails of Mac gaming. And Carmack’s id announcement had some smacking of MacWorld 1999 with Bungie, here’s hopin’ that they don’t get swallowed by the Microsoft games remora that seems to be feeding off the success of other game makers.

Link of the Day:
Mac gaming was never dead. The good people at Inside Mac Games kept the flame alive and became a great resource for those of us who clung to our Macs during the dark times. Though sometimes the software that they review is a little on the light side, they are serious about their mission to report about all kinds of games from the light piece of puzzle fluff to the intense action-adventure RPG/FPS. Simply the best place on the web for Mac games news, reviews, and insights. Updated much more frequently now that the pendulum of popularity in the platform seems to be on the upswing. ‘Tis a good thing, I say.

Welcome to Macintosh.

I Yield the Floor to Speaker

Ah lawyers. Where would we be without them? About three years ago, the American Bar Association published a survey which stated (Note: Link is to a PDF file) that overall in the United States there are, get ready 1,084,504 resident and active attorneys in the United States. That works out to be around 4 lawyers per 1,000 people in the United States circa 2004. That’s a lot of lawyers. Compare that, as of 1998 there are 2.8 doctors per 1,000 people in 1998. To quote my favorite fictional bounty hunter, “Does that seem right to you?”

Now why the anti-lawyer rant? Well it seems that several weeks ago, a young personal injury attorney named Andrew Speaker was diagnosed with tuberculosis. That’s right TB. The scourge of the 19th century and before. Apparently some places, like sub-Saharan Africa, still have enormous problems with TB. Of course the doctors told him not to travel anywhere. At this point in the whole debacle there is conflicting coverage of the ass, by both sides, but it is known that Speaker did travel on several occasions, to complete both a wedding and honeymoon on the Greek island of Santorini. According to the CDC, to complete his great international travel, Speaker flew on seven flights. There is a rather long and convoluted story which is best outlined here.

Of course there was the maligned and oppressed-by-the-system Speaker, who may I remind you was a danger to public health, who called himself abused by the media and the press for flying around the world while being knowingly infected with TB. He claims that he was never told not to fly, but looking into the matter, it is much harder to force someone into quarantine than we would think it would be. Still it does happen. Take the case in Madison Wisconsin earlier this season. So concerned about the potential for a contagion to be exposed to the city that they wanted a man who refused TB test to be held in contempt of court. He then fled from Madison to Sacramento to avoid being tested, when city officials swore out an arrest warrant for the man.

The gaul of the man to travel with TB! I know that if I was diagnosed with TB, I would seek treatment immediately. Then again I work at a public health laboratory and one of the things we do there is testing for TB. The fact that the tuberculosis is isolated from the building air supply and is extremely secure, always left me with the impression that this is not a contagion to be trifled with. The most appalling thing about the whole ordeal is the callousness with which Mr. Speaker treated his fellow human beings. He was told that he was not contagious, but as we know doctors are infallible. Apparently Speaker was under the impression that the CDC was trying to cover itself from any liability if he went anywhere, by telling him not to go.

In an effort to explain himself Speaker talked to the Health News Network, of course painting himself in the best possible light. It sounds even from his perspective that no one really knew the extent of what was going on. This is the most telling piece:

Its 11 at night and were sitting in the hotel room. I can either get locked up or I can get home and get treated. I was clearly told I was not a threat to anyone. But now people are sending me hate mail like ‘I hope you die or I hope your treatment is painful and as long as possible. You’re a terrorist who needs to be eradicated.’ I’m a good person. I’ve tried to live a good life. I would never intentionally put people at risk.

Speaker is talking about his decision to “run for it” and get home to get treated on his own terms rather than on the terms of the health care professionals. It seems to me that the whole endeavor was rather rash and poorly planned. There was not really a good reason for a person with a highly dangerous disease that is also highly contagious, at least potentially so, to needlessly put other people at risk of being infected. Presumably, Speaker is a reasonably intelligent person, and should know when to listen to his doctor and when to obey. He made some mistakes and the recent news about him having a less severe form of TB, shouldn’t vindicate him, it should humble him to show just exactly how close he came to years of intensive treatment and even surgery.

Link of the Day:
Just like Google Earth, there is now a Google Moon. While not quite as cool as it’s predecessor, I still think it’s fun to play around with.

The Music Industry Rages Against the Dying of the Light

So I was going to write about Michael Moore and his latest film, but having never seen a Moore film (no not even Canadian Bacon), I didn’t really feel comfortable dissecting his movies without having witnessed the reported jackassery that goes on in them. From what I have heard though, I doubt that I would like them and since I have little desire to write about something that would be excruciating, I don’t think that this will ever hit the light of day. Worry not though, the first part of the first draft is hidden away in the crevices of my hard-drive and may eventually see the light of day as soon as hell freezes over and I see a Michael Moore film. Either that or it will transform itself into a review for Canadian Bacon.

That said there is something else that is kinda newsworthy and has pricked my attention recently. This came to my attention. On the surface it seems ridiculous. Giving away your music is something that could potentially bring new and great attention to the idea. Plus the whole idea of record stores threatening Prince with being banned from their stores for distributing free music, also is ludicrous. However this comes at the realization that the music industry is changing in such a fundamental way and that they have been slow and unwitting in their own demise. Clearly the record labels are stuck in a corner and the old adage that a “cornered animals can be the most dangerous” couldn’t be more apropos.

It seems that during the beginning of the file-sharing and digital music craze, there was an opportunity for the big record labels to jump right on board with the burgeoning method of the distribution of music that the labels balked. In July of 2000 the CEO’s of the Big Four sat down to deal with the only player in the game at that time, Napster. Napster was apparently willing to play the subscription game. It was as if they looked over the edge of a cliff and ran hard and away. So they sued Napster and began the war against the consumer that has left over 20,000 music fans in legal trouble via the record labels’ watchdog, the RIAA.

And here we are seven years later, with no discernible effect on the “casual piracy” that the RIAA and the their clients so vehemently protest. Physical album sales have plummeted; last year alone the Tower Records mega-stores closed their doors to falling sales and revenues. iTunes Music Store recently announced they consider themselves the third largest music retailer in the United States, occupying over 80% of the legally downloaded music out there. But here is and interesting observation, the failure of the record labels to adopt this new paradigm breaking model of sales and distribution has not only affect the public image of the record company, which is now often seen in some circles as a lumbering giant flinging lawyers at hemoraging money streams (which they seem to blame on the aforementioned “casual piracy”), it has also dealt the employees of failing labels harsh blows. How many people lost their jobs when Tower Records folded? And in typical corporate American style it is not the higher ups that pay for the mistakes the have made (Edgar Bronfman Jr., I’m lookin’ at you.), no it is the underlings who lose their livelihoods.

The most reprehensible thing about the whole endeavor is that the RIAA and the Big Four have often had the gaul to call those who don’t want to pay $19.99 for a twelve track CD of shitty pop music that they are the ones who are destroying the music industry and causing the heartbreak of joblessness. Labels who had recognized that people want electronic distribution, have not quite realized that people will pay for content even if it isn’t copy protected. It is the whole impulse buy idea that drives much of internet sales. But with subscription-based music and other more odious copy-protection schema have turned off people who would ordinarily purchase from online resellers.

I will admit that iTunes FairPlay system is far from ideal and that this, as well as a general lack of funds, kept me away from the iTS for the first few years. Prior to the move to DRM-free music as well as higher encoding rates, I had about a dozen iTunes Music Store tracks in my library. Even though it is apparently much easier for them to be shared than the other DRM schemes, I really enjoyed the ability to share music amongst computers. With the advent of a partial catalogue being on iTS at higher bit-rates and DRM free such reservations have evaporated. The convenience of the system is just great. My only major complaint is that some of my favorite artists are not on the iTunes Plus system yet.

Clearly the game has changed for music resellers, retailers, and record labels. I would go so far to say that the advent of the internet as a medium for distribution is about as significant a technological change as the one that happened in the mid-1920’s when phonograph records replaced sheet music sales as the major income earners for the music industry. Oddly enough they were able to hop on that bandwagon and realize that this new distribution medium for the music that they wanted to sell was bursting with potential. It would be schadenfreude in buckets if it weren’t for the actual people who were being negatively affected by the stubbornness of the music industry.

Link of the Day:
So we’ve already been over that fact that I’m a geek. One of my favorite science-fiction shows in the world just finished the third season of it’s revival after some rather unceremonious cancellation in the 1980’s. I have found that the best place for all things Doctor Who is Outpost Gallifrey. Filled with lots of useful information and plenty of reviews, the Outpost is the first place that I go for information and rumors about upcoming shows and to relive the great days of my childhood by reading synopses for Classic serials.

iPhone, iPhone, iPhone…

Ah yes Apple’s new thing. The media frenzy is starting to hit a fever pitch. Everyone and their grandmother is either zealously defending iPhone or relentlessly bashing it. Not that I mind all that much. Being what could be called the proto-typical Apple fanboy, I’m as eager as the next man to soak in the hype. I have watched all of Apple’s videos concerning the iPhone and how it should fit into my whole techno-gadget universe. I have to say I’m very impressed by the concept, the execution, and the meticulous attention that Apple typically pays to details. Details build empires.

I guess one could be a bit flabbergasted by all the press that iPhone has been receiving, but the power of suggestion and the careful marketing of those involved, has yielded a perfect storm of sorts for iPhone. Not that this is the case, but it doesn’t really matter if the iPhone sucks at single one of it’s duties that it was supposed to perform. People will still line up and buy them on June 29th. I, for one, find that incredible. The thing is reading the intial reviews for iPhone, they all say pretty much the same thing: it meets the hype.

According to such luminaries as Walt Mossberg, Steven Levy, and David Pouge. While they are all admidtely Apple fans they have the same praises and flaws about iPhone. Namely, as a convergent device, iPhone kicks ass. Web browsing, battery life, music playing, and durability are all better than expected. The above are concerned about the keyboard, being tied to AT&T, and the same old problem of it being a 1.0 Apple product.

While some would compare iPhone 1.0 to iPod 1.0, this is an invalid comparison. Both were products that clearly revolutionized or will revolutionize the way that each respective service/industry does business. iPod was had a large capacity, had a phenomenal way to navigate large amounts of digital music, and it was compact. I remember when iPod was announced. I went downstairs to talk with my mother about it and although we both thought the name was a little wonky, we agreed it was a cool idea. She then said to me, something to the effect of, “Must be pretty big to git a hard-drive in there.” I went over to the closet and pulled out a deck of poker cards and showed them to her. “No this is about it for size.”

iPhone has the same ideas going on. It’s pretty compact. The other day I was at work and saw someone take a call through one of those BlackBerry devices. The person looked ridiculous holding up a device that was essentially the size of a notepad to his ear. The user interface is also very impressive. It keeps the thing that I like about Apple’s products true. They work they way that I intuitively think they should work the first time around. Now this is not necessarily true all of the time, but for 90% of my personal experience with Apple software, things work that way the right way the first time.

There are several key differences in this arena of smartphones though. First of all, though there were many portable digital music players about before iPod hit the scene it was a burgeoning market and Apple was able to put in a hit right at the perfect spot in the curve to watch the market develop as a reaction to iPod. I can’t say how many times I read the phrase “iPod killer” in the last two years, but it is certainly more than I ever could have wanted to. The thing about the mobile phone industry, at least as I understand it, is that it is saturated with thousands of smartphones, camera phones, cheapies and expensivos. Mobile phones are an entrenched market and making a breakout product is something of a challenge. However the biggest difference between iPod and iPhone 1.0, the difference that will make iPhone a smash hit, is immediate availability with both Windows PC’s and Macs.

I remember feeling a little unhappy having to share my iPod champagne with the PC users, but in retrospect this is what made Apple’s little music player so damned ubiquitous. Having used several smartphones, I don’t understand how frequent users put up with them. They are annoying and convoluted to use. Not that I wasn’t able to figure them out, but after looking back on doing some of the simplest tasks, like making a phone call, I wondered why things had to be this way. I don’t really know anyone who doesn’t despise their mobile phone. Maybe iPhone will help with this, maybe not.

The bottom line is that Apple has an opportunity to change the way people use telephones, just like they changed the way that people listen to music and watch movies. Some would argue that this way can’t be any better than what we do now, but given the track record, I would put my bets on Apple

Link of the Day:
Big-Ass Table
Microsoft’s Surface looks pretty fucking cool, but most R&D tech products do. I’m sure that both people who buy Surface, in what form and whenever it comes out will be very pleased with it.

The Inevitable Post about Flag-Burning, Nazis, and the NRA…

After having a somewhat abbreviated conversation with a colleague about the most demure of subjects, flag-burning, I decided that I would take some time and flesh out my thoughts on the subject. I am one of those advocates of free-speech, expression, press, religion and assembly. On the whole I would say that the entire Bill of Rights is important; if it weren’t why then did the Founding Fathers see fit to include all of those enumerated and unenumerated rights right away after the signing of the Constitution? Oddly enough, I think that the most important rights in the Bill of Rights are the Ninth and Tenth Amdendments. Freedom of speech and religion are important to the American ideal, but the ability to freely move about the states without say travel papers, I think, trumps those rights in importance.

That said, the power of expression as a form of protest can’t be overstated. Limits on speech and expression are necessary as dictated by society, but there is something to be said of the quandary of the tyranny of the majority. There are clearly legitimate cases where the flag was burned as a piece of free expression and protest speech. If there is anything that is more sacred in American Constitutional Law it is the right to protest government actions. Apparently expressing displeasure in the American foreign policy doesn’t extend to the most visible symbol of American presence. Aside from McDonalds of course.

The Supreme court said it best in United States v. Eichman when Justice Blackmum talks about the intent of the flag burning message. He writes about how no one would find the burning of a worn-out and well-used disrespectful; in fact one might even find it honorable to dispose of an ensign that way. Yet when the content of the message is one that is disapproved of it is the means of expressing the protest that is forbidden. There is no Government interest in suspending free speech in this instance, save for the fact that the Government disapproves of both the message and the means of it’s expression.

Clearly that was paraphrase of Blackmum’s strait-forward, yet reasoned opinion. Sometimes I find that when reading opinions of anyone other than a select few justices, one can be easily lost in the citations and the tendency for preamble and prevarication. Despite the fact that Antonin Scalia and I seldom agree, I find that his opinions written for the court are concise, scathing, entertaining, and well-writen.

I find the illegitimate destruction of the flag as despicable as many Americans do. Thousands of Americans fought and died and continue to fight and die to protect the ideals that were enshrined within the Constitution two-hundred years ago. To show such contempt for such a meaningful symbol is reprehensible and sickening. Yet it would be folly to say that American governments have always had such a noble purpose in sending those brave warriors to fight and die for their country. Too many Americans have died for unworthy causes to completely wash away the tide of those who desecrate the flag. Yet, as much as they disgust me, I admire the conviction of someone who is so strongly opposed to something as to desire to burn an American flag.

If only it were that way though. There are few noble protesters, fewer still noble governments, and the righteous causes of days gone by are just that, memories. I truly believe that most of those protesters who have burned flags are not those who are so devastated by the actions of their government that they would seek to trample upon the freedom that was paid for by the blood of their comrades. It is mostly those who are caught up in the moment, those who hate for no reason other than there is as powerful entity telling them what they can and cannot do, and those who are delinquents with nothing better to do than to react to a dare.

Despite all of this, even those delinquents have the right to burn the US flag. And I have the right to call them delinquents for doing it.

Links of the Day:
There are two organizations that deal with Constitutional rights that are clearly philosophically opposed. I’m sure that each of them draws their base from different ends of the political spectrum and that each of them may view the other as some form of enemy. However, both the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association are both protecting key Constitutional rights. The ACLU is more oriented toward free-speech and expression and defending anyone who says anything from Neo-Nazis to NAMBLA. Clearly their willingness to defend the dregs of society has made them a magnet for criticism from many in mainstream America. Still the important rights that ACLU defends are vital to functioning American society.

Then there is the NRA. Sure current president Wayne LaPierre is a bit on the fringe and the defense of people to own things like fully automatic Thompson sub-machine guns is a bit of a stretch, but firearm ownership by private citizens is a fundamental part of liberty. Not only does the NRA advocate the rights of gun owners across the world, but they also provide safety lessons, training on proper care, use and handling of firearms, as well as several programs to keep gun-owning America safe and savvy.

I would argue that both the ACLU and the NRA play vital roles in keeping the government honest. Both are more polarizing organizations, but underneath it all they both have the same goal.