After hours of frustration and failure, I finally set up a USB bootable Linux distribution that worked on both a BIOS-based PC or EFI-based Apple system. Ten minutes later, I repeated the process with a second distribution.

I’ve been perusing this fine internet of hours all day, reviewing and attempting to complete step-by-step tutorials that were supposed to allow me to do this. Unfortunately, none of them would actually work on my MacBook Pro, as they promised they would. After finally acquiring a resolution, I decided to post my own step-by-step set of instructions that also claimed to work for a BIOS system or an EFI system. Hopefully it actually works for you as it did for me :).

My System, My Recommendation, and My Disclaimer

The systems I was trying to get this work was in conjunction with my out dated, 2008, 2 GHz Intel Core Duo MacBook Pro with a measly 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. I dual boot between OS X Leopard and Windows 7 using Boot Camp. I plug into a 24” Samsung display and use a Bluetooth Logitech MX 5500 keyboard and mouse set at my desk. Using Slax, all of this was compatible and immediately recognized!! I had absolutely no problems with hardware, so I highly recommend using Slax as your portable Linux distribution. I had success with DSL after initial frustrations (the track pad is not recognized, so I was forced to plug a USB mouse in), and it’s simply not as clean or power of a system as Slax is.

Doing all of this in no way effected positively or negatively the booting, reliability or functionality of OS X Leopard or Windows 7 on my system or Windows XP on any of the BIOS-based systems I ran this on. However, as always, proceed at your own risk.

Setting Up an EFI System

Boot into Mac OS and follow these steps:

1. Download and install rEFIt.
2. Restart your computer.

Complicated, huh? The initial restart after installing rEFIt will not show a boot loader, but all following restarts will display a boot loader if multiple bootable systems are attached to your Apple computer or other EFI-based system.

rEFIt will essentially overtake Boot Camp. Before installing rEFIt on my system, when I wanted to boot into Windows 7 I had to hold down the Alt-Option key when booting. Once rEFIt is installed, the boot menu is shown whenever the computer is booted. After a given number of seconds, it will boot into the default operating system, which is usually OS X.

Setting Up a BIOS System

Your BIOS must support the ability to boot from a USB drive. Follow these instructions on a BIOS-based (any standard Windows-based) computer:

1. Restart your computer.
2. At some point your computer will inform you that you can press some key to enter the BIOS setup (probably some key like F8, F12, or Del). Hold that key down. If you miss it, restart and try again.
3. Unfortunately, every computer is different in the BIOS menu setup. Do not change anything you are unfamiliar.
4. You may need to enable the ability to boot from a USB drive.
5. You will most likely need to change the boot sequence, moving your USB drive higher than your standard HDD.
6. Make sure that you save your changes to the BIOS before restarting.

Setting Up Your USB Drive

NOTE: Generally speaking, the instructions given on a portable Linux distribution’s website will tell you to run some bootinst.bat file that will configure your USB drive to boot properly. This will work for most BIOS-based systems, and may work with some distributions on some EFI systems, but it generally would not work for me. The solution given below, theoretically, works on all systems.

In a Windows environment (it’s just easiest that way, trust me), follow these steps:

1. Download and extract Syslinux. Since we’re in Windows, it’d be most beneficial to download the zip file. Extract it to a convenient location like C:\Syslinux.
2. Download your favorite portable Linux distribution. It has been verified that this works with DSL (I can’t spell it out ... My Mom reads this!), DSL-N, and Slax.
3. Plug your USB drive into your computer.
4. Backup any data on the USB drive you wish to keep! Right-click on the USB drive and select “Format.” Format the drive to either FAT-16 or FAT-32. I recommend FAT-32. A quick format will be fine.
5. Extract the contents of your favorite portable Linux distribution onto your USB drive using your favorite decompression program.
6. In Windows XP, click Start then Run, type “cmd,” then press Enter.
7. In Windows Vista or Windows 7, click Start and simply type “cmd.” Click on the Command Prompt icon to launch it.
8. From the Command Prompt, navigate to the win32 folder of where you extracted Syslinux. So, in my case, type “cd C:\Syslinux\win32\”.
9. From the win32 folder of Syslinux, type “syslinux.exe -ma :” where is replaced with the drive letter of your USB drive. Most commonly this will be E or F (it does need to be followed by a colon), but you can verify this by checking in My Computer.
10. Assuming you don’t receive any errors, your USB drive should now be set up for booting.

Conclusion

In theory, you should now be able restart your system and it will notice that you have a bootable USB drive in the computer (assuming, of course, that you do). If rEFIt opens, use the arrow keys to navigate to your USB drive and press Enter. If your on a BIOS system, you may need to press a key (if it tells you to press a key for the boot menu), but most likely it will pop up with a message telling you to press any key to boot Linux. If you don’t press any key, it may continue into your standard operating system, so you’ll want to strike that Enter key.

I hope this works as well for all of you as it did for me! It’s always handy to have a portable, friendly, and compatible version of Linux in your slacks that you can whip out and use anytime, on any computer.

Tags: Linux, Apple, BIOS, EFI

This is something I’ve been mulling over for the last couple of months, but it wasn’t until hearing the continued “Apple or Microsoft” arguments at camp this week that I was finally moved to write this. So, in a manner of speaking, this one’s for you, Jesse and Joe. Oh, and Erin, I’ll try to make this as witty as possible so, well, you know.

Ten years ago, after being introduced to someone and learning that they enjoyed using these things called “computers,” it would have been absurd to ask them such a silly question as, “Do you prefer Mac or PC?” What a silly question. Who used Macs?! Those things were lame! But in this modern age, where Apple actually holds claim to a portion of the market share worth nodding your head at, it’s a reasonable and quite common question. For me, a student in college studying computers and programming, this question is frequently asked in conjunction with, “What are you majoring in?”
“Computer Science.”
“And you have a Mac?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that a problem?”
“Why would that be a problem?”
“I don’t know. Can’t you, like, not program on Macs or something?”
“Pretty sure Macs still have applications, which means someone obviously must be programming them.”
“But isn’t it, like, easier to program on a PC or something?”
“When was the last time you wrote a program yourself?”
“Well, I haven’t.”
“Stop talking.”

And here lies the biggest error in our existence: we argue things we have no business arguing. You try to convince me that it’s harder to do sophisticated things like program on a Mac when you yourself have no knowledge of programming! This is a high level issue which I don’t really plan on spending much time on, but let me just make it clear that a large percentage of languages these days are interpreted, and nearly all internet languages are interpreted. This means that if an application is written in an interpreted language, it can be run on any platform that has an interpreter for it installed. Languages that aren’t interpreted, C++ for example, can almost always be compiled natively to any desired platform. So no, it’s not harder to program on a Mac, it’s just different, and you’re most frequently taught (in the classroom) to program in the Windows environment.

But let’s flee from such trivial issues as application development and return to the more prevalent flawed arguments that (apparently) plague the average computer user.

People want to compare Apple and Microsoft, but they fail to understand that Apple and Microsoft are two companies competing on two very different playing fields. Microsoft is, for the most part, a software development firm with a few ties in the hardware industry (namely the Zune and the Xbox, two things unrelated to its operating systems). Apple is, for the most part, a computer manufacturer that has developed a proprietary operating system that runs flawlessly on the hardware it manufactures (or at least uses and claims as its own). If we’re arguing the stupidity of Apple as a company, sure, let’s rag on the fact that the MacBook Air doesn’t have an optical drive; to me, that’s a crucial piece of hardware that Apple has left out of the design. However, if we’re ragging on Apple as a company in comparison to what you think is Microsoft’s superiority, you can’t use this argument. Microsoft doesn’t even make a computer, with or without an optical drive, to defend itself, so who cares if the MacBook Air has an optical drive or not ... At least it’s a computer!

People are quick to point out that Apple overcharges their customers. It’s true, an Apple computer costs more than a Windows-based Dell or Samsung, but you’re paying for an entirely different product. Again, Apple is a computer manufacturer. That means you’re paying more for an operating system and the hardware it runs on--the hardware that it’s ensured to run on--the hardware that the company has insured and will repair or replace, if needed. Conversely, a third-party company such as Sony is responsible for ensuring the computers they manufacture will run Microsoft’s operating system. Since this third-party company is not directly affiliated with the software you put on it, they can’t as easily get away with charging more.

Apple absolutely charges more for their products, much more than many would be willing to pay. If you’re unwilling to pay the additional luxury tax for their hardware/software combinations, you’re entitled to purchasing a Windows-based system and living with that. Of course, that’s yet another perk to an Apple computer: you can install Windows on them. This being the case, there is, in fact, absolutely nothing a Windows-based computer designed by Toshiba can do that an Apple manufactured computer cannot do. In fact, Windows-based computers are less compatible for this reason. Yet another reason you’ll pay more for Apple’s.

Additionally, Apple is known as an elite brand. Like Jordan’s, like Porsche. You may not think they’re elite--I think Jordan’s are silly--but your personal opinion doesn’t define the way things are. Because Apple manufactures its own hardware and writes its own software to run on this hardware, it has more of a proprietary right to charge more for its products. Since people like having a more ensured chance of reliability (hardware and software being designed by the same firm), they’re willing to pay more for this assurance. As long as people keep paying, Apple will keep overcharging. I firmly believe Apple charges more than they reasonably should for their computers. That doesn’t mean I won’t pay that price to own one of their products, which I do believe are superior.

Hardware-based comparisons aren’t really part of the Apple and Microsoft operating systems comparison discussions since Microsoft will always lose. It has no hardware that it has designed to defend itself with. If you honestly want to argue hardware, you have to compare Apple to a computer manufacturer such as Dell. Apple still charges more, but Apple also has more hardware/software compatibility and more support since it can run Windows, OS X, or any Linux distro. (This is, of course, assuming legality; obviously you can get an unlocked copy of OS X and install it on your Dell.)

Finally, there’s my favorite argument: the market share. First I would like to say, “Who cares?” Apple certainly doesn’t. Throw out the small, single-digit numbers that are Apple’s market share if you like, but that doesn’t change the fact that Apple’s first-quarter revenue in 2009 was something like $10 billion, which is a continually growing figure. They have $25 billion in the bank and no debt. The company is more than financially stable, and I’m sure if you tried to emotionally stab Steve Jobs or any of the execs at Apple with the market share argument, they would laugh in their face as they pulled away in their Porsche.

It’s interesting that computer manufacturing market share is such a hot topic. Has anyone ever cared to look at market shares in, say, the automobile industry? Some of the largest and most reliable companies, Honda for instance, have single-digit percenteges of the market share. The elite companies such as BMW and Porsche obviously have significantly less than that. But do you think Honda is hurting? Coincidently, the companies that are hurting are the ones with the significant holds on the market, such as GM (around 30%) and Ford (around 15%). Windows-based products hold the majority of the market share, but this statistics doesn’t take into account that many Apple users, myself included, raise this share because I run Windows on my MacBook Pro. Seems like that statistic may be a little misleading then, eh?

Since you’ve forced me to talk about market shares, let’s add one more key factor into the mix. Market share only promises accuracy on newly bought units, not units active. Apple computers are said to be more reliable and to last longer (though I don’t have a source that actually confirms a statistic like this, it’s just hearsay), thus they are more frequently passed down and not upgraded. If a $300 Dell only lasts you one year and you buy a new one, you increase Dells market share. My MacBook Pro is over three years old and still running perfectly fine, even on this “old” hardware, so though I would love to purchase a new laptop, I have no need to. Thus I’m not helping increase Apple’s market share. Yet I am helping to increase the Windows market share over market share, because I will soon be purchasing Windows 7 to install on my MacBook Pro.

Some says Apple’s just aren’t as intuitive as the company claims in their commercials. They really do get viruses, and their commercials give their users a false sense of security. They aren’t as reliable as the company promises. Well, it’s advertising; every company make exaggerated claims. Microsoft is guilty of misleading commercials. Their Laptop Hunter ads, for example, show a price tag for an Apple product of over $2,000, but they then zoom in on an old MacBook (which is around $1,000). Technically, Macs can get viruses. I’ve never even run in to so much as a security threat in my experience. Having never used anti-virus software and having owned an Apple computer for over three years, I feel pretty comfortable advising my friends that they don’t need virus protection on their Mac, at least for now. (Coincidently, you have Apple’s small share of the market to thank for this.)

“So why does Apple make such negative ads towards Microsoft, but Microsoft, for the most part, doesn’t defend itself? Does this make Microsoft a more mature company?” Not really. These ad campaigns from Apple and lack of ad campaigns from Microsoft are for two main reasons: firstly, Microsoft is huge. They don’t need to spend as much on their advertising because everybody already knows who they are and uses them. Secondly, if you purchase an Apple product, Microsoft most likely won’t lose anything. I still boot into Windows XP (and soon to be Windows 7), and I still run Microsoft Office (on both the Mac and PC side, so Microsoft has actually made two sales from me). However, if you purchase a Windows-based machine, you will not be unable to install OS X on it, therefore Apple will have lost a sale. This is why Apple is so much more aggressive in the advertising campaigns.

In conclusion, are Apple computers better products? Not necessarily. Are Macs virus free? Not necessarily. Does Windows crash more than OS X? Sort of. Windows XP crashed a whole lot more for me than my OS X has, but OS X crashed on me just yesterday. It was low on battery and should have gone into sleep mode--instead, the screen just turned grey and it froze and I was forced to do a hard shutdown. Are Macs easier to use and more intuitive? Well, that’s entirely a personal decision. I’ll tell you this though, if you don’t like the OS X operating system on your Apple computer, all you need do is install the Windows operating system (or any other operating system) that you’re familiar with on your Apple computer. So Macs are more reliable and will never break? Not necessarily. If you throw your laptop at the ground, it will most likely shatter. Just a few months ago, my optical drive quit working. Two days later, it started working again. I have yet to find reasons for either it’s random breaking and miraculous healing.

The fact of the matter is, a decision to buy a Windows-based machine or an Apple computer is an entirely personal decision. If you’re willing to pay more for a computer that’s proven to be more reliable and satisfactory to according to Consumer Reports, that is more compatible because it will run any operating system, and that is more secure (every top security analysts agrees that you don’t need virus protection, and the Unix kernel is proven to be more secure), I’d say go for a Mac. Otherwise, settle for a Toshiba that, in all likelihood, will last you half as long.

But when I hear such staggeringly ironic reports that the initial benchmarks for Windows Vista scored highest on Apple hardware than they did on any computer that was designed to optimally run it, well, you can be the judge of the companies you think are superior and inferior.

Tags: Operating Systems, Microsoft, Apple, Observations

Kylee reprimanded me for not blogging enough. While this is a very valid accusation, I’ve decided to oblige her in only the most annoying sort of way. So here you go, Kylee. A blog post just for you. Enjoy.

Visa Overcharges Customers

There’s no way this can work out in a positive manner for Visa’s reputation. I mean, they overcharged individual customers to the amount of $23 quadrillion (each), according to CNN. That’s right, some Visa cardholder’s received their monthly statement and had the heart attack of the century upon seeing certain “purchases of goods” to the dollar amount of $23,148,855,308,184,500.00.

To Visa’s credit, they quickly admitted that it was a “temporary programming error ... [which] caused some transactions to be inaccurately posted.” They say some transactions. Roughly 13,000 transactions, actually. Well, at least they caught it, right? But isn’t it scary to think that a programming error could cause such a huge mishap? And more importantly, what the heck did the programmer do to cause such an error.

Well, for those of you familiar with C++, it doesn’t take too long to figure it out. The error was in the amount of 2314885530818450000 (we multiplied by 100 to get rid of the nasty change). If we convert that number to hexadecimal, it comes out to be 20 20 20 20 20 20 12 00. 20 in hexadecimal is a whitespace character, so it’s likely that a conversion was never made and the customers really made purchases for $46.08.

An Online Operating System?

That’s what Google says, anyway. Better yet, they claim they can have it ready for delivery by the end of next year! Microsoft, of course, is in shock, but this isn’t all that surprising considering their OS turn around is something under five years ... If they work really fast.

The Google Chrome OS has led to talk of booting Google’s CEO off of Apple’s board. After all, that would just be a nasty conflict of interest, what with Apple being a major OS distributor as well.

Google claims that the new OS will be written from the ground up (like they did when the “reinvented” the browser with Chrome), will be a system built atop the Linux kernel, and will boot and “get users onto the web in seconds.”

Microsoft’s CEO, Steve Ballmer, has laughed at the new OS. I don’t know if he thinks it’s a joke or if he was scoffing at the reality of it, but I seem to recall him laughing at the iPhone a year before it’s release as well and, well, making some rather audacious (and now embarassing) statements about it in this video. Based upon that evidence, and how successful the iPhone has become today, I’d say the new Google Chrome OS is going to be revolutionary, to say the least.

Demetrius and Bruno Live

Near the end of our semester at Cedarville, there was an unfortunate accident involving cold-blooded animals and hot water coming out of the faucet. Now I’m not going to point any fingers, but Dave was the one changing the water in the tank ... Needless to say, there was a seizure and the fishes died. There was much mourning and sorrow.

At the beginning of the summer, I cleaned my room. This is a regular occurrence for me, but in this particular cleaning I came across my 2.5 gallon fish tank which was empty. I thought to myself, “The tank and filter are the expensive parts ... Fishes are cheap!” I quickly drove to PetSmart and purchased two little fish: a Platy and a Molly. One was red, the other black. The black one I named Bruno, and the red one was called Demetrius (names compliments of an afternoon of boredom for Evan and me).

After these three months of summer, Demetrius and Bruno are still kickin’! I’m now getting slightly worried about the eight hour trip back to school. I’m really hoping they can survive it so we can see how much longer these guys will keep on sticking with us. If you have any good ideas for safely transporting said fishes from Iowa to Ohio, drop me a line.

So, Michael Jackson is Dead

That’s the rumor, anyway, though there are still those that believe it’s all a marketing ploy. And, you know, that’d be a pretty good idea considering sales have never been better for him, especially on iTunes. After Jackson’s death, six of the top ten songs sold on iTunes were Michael Jackson’s hits. More significantly, nine out of the top ten albums also belonged to Jackson! Nineteen out of the top twenty-five music videos had Michael Jackson in them as well.

I can’t say that I blame the world. I mean, he was a legendary artist, and I don’t think there will ever be another musician that will be able to attain the caliber of Jackson. Despite his social record, he holds the spot as one of my all-time favorite performers, and within two days after his passing, I listened through his entire discography as a tribute. Yes, I do own his entire discography ...

Please Try to Compile Your Code ... Seriously

I’ve been running into this annoyance a lot lately, especially at work. Honestly, how hard is it to just make sure the code in your tutorial actually compiles before you submit it, huh? I’ll tell you: it’s not that hard. Dropping it into UltraEdit and running GCC on it is about the most complicated way to do it, but you could obviously just paste it in an IDE and check it that way as well. I don’t care if it runs, necessarily, just make sure it compiles. You’re trying to teach people with your code, for goodness sake. What kind of an example are you setting if the code you’re “teaching” them with sucks?

Frequently I stumble upon tutorials, and as I’m reading through them I think, “Wait, that can’t work. Will that really compile? I thought ‘Class’ was lowercase in C++ ... And why isn’t there a semicolon at the end of this line? Shouldn’t they have included this library?” Out of curiosity, I grab the code and try to compile it myself and, sure enough, it craps out on me. The common misconception is that, “Well, this code is never meant to be compiled, it’s just an example.” But that’s just the point! It’s supposed to be an example ... And it’s wrong!!

Nine times out of ten this is a trivial issue, but I’ve run into instances where the broken code is what I’m trying to interpret, and it’s really hard to interpret something when you’re first trying to figure out if it’s right in the first place. How do you expect me to know if it’s right or not if you’re supposed to be teaching it to me?

Sometimes the errors are just syntactical. Those are bad enough. The worst is when you try to compile a tutorial’s example code and it causes something catastrophic, like a segfault. Please, for the sake of those you’re trying to teach, make sure what you’re teaching is accurate!

Microsot Wants to Give You Anti-Virus Support for FREE

After Microsoft OneCare failed worse than Windows Vista and the Zune combined, Microsoft took some well deserved time off from the Security Protection field of computing. They needed to rethink things. In steps code name “Morro.” What is Morro? Well, it’s pretty much Microsoft OneCare ... But for free ... And apparently better. And it’s supposedly going to be bundled with Windows 7. OneCare failed because it was accused, numerous times, of being “unable to detect a significant number of threats.” I guess Morro plans to be better?

There are already two excellent and free alternatives to the Symantec and McAfee subscription services out there made by Avast and AVG. Microsoft’s Morro soon to be the third free alternative, both Symantec and McAfee are saying that they aren’t worried about their sales being effected by these free products, even with Morro bundled with the Microsoft OS. According to the CEOs of the Big Boy companies, a free alternative just can’t guarantee the security that users need while browsing today’s malicious internet; you need more than just anti-virus support, and that’s what the Premium services give you. While I agree that you need more than just anti-virus support, there are many other prevention companies out there that offer the same services for free that the Big Boys offer at a hefty price.

Whether you’re interested in paying for Symantec’s services or you’re willing to settle for the free Morro that will soon come with your Windows operating system, it’s good for the Big Boy’s to have some healthy competition to keep their products quality and their prices low. Though I can’t say that security competition from Microsoft is any incentive for Symantec and McAfee to keep their quality high ... But we can hope.


That’s all I’ve got for now. We’ll see how long it takes me to come up with more Information You Won’t Find Useful.

Tags: Information You Won't Find Useful, Google, Microsoft, Visa, Music, Programming, Fish

I feel bad for photographers that truly capture something beautiful and unique these days. I feel bad for stunt men who can really jump from a third story building and barrel roll themselves to safety. Those sidewalk chalk artists. That guy who got his truck stuck in a tree. The creators of the sweet architecture over in Europe. I feel bad for everyone involved in those happenings and creations.

Whenever something spectacular is captured on camera, or a particularly dangerous feat is done by a stuntman, the inclination of everyone in our culture is to shout out, “That’s Photoshop!” or “That’s CG!” Granted, when you’re watching Lord of the Rings and Gandalf is having his Battle of the Wits with the fiery creature, chances are that’s probably not real ... In fact, I believe he was talking to a tennis ball when they shot that. Regardless, for situations where the actor actually does his own stunts sans strings, harnesses, or special effects of any kind, I feel bad, like in any Tony Jaw movie. Nobody will believe that they are actually capable of something so amazing. And, come on, for some people that’s the talents that God has gifted them with, and we refuse to even recognize them!

Here’s another thing I’ve found interesting. Photoshop has become a verb, much like Google. Many people neglect to realize that Photoshop is an actual program made by Adobe, not a style of graphic design. I continually hear people saying, “That’s okay, we’ll just Photoshop it out later,” meaning they’ll trim the picture, or adjust the lighting, or maybe use some other photo editing application (i.e. Fireworks, Gimp) to edit something in or out of a picture. “Photoshopping” is just a catch-all term for editing a picture these days.

Here’s another thing people don’t quite realize. Almost every picture you’ve ever seen has been Photoshopped. Sorry to burst your bubble. They’re all airbrushed, manipulated, corrected in some way. Anything in a magazine, anything on a menu, anything on a website, anything on a billboard, any desktop background you have. The issue is, when you see something truly beautiful and you try to capture it digitally, you almost never can. The artist will then go back and manipulate the image using Photoshop or a program like Photoshop to make all the prettiest colors and shadows stand out just the way they wanted them to or remembered them doing when they saw the scene with their eyes.

So when somebody looks at the chalk art on the sidewalks and exclaims, “That’s Photoshopped!” they’re probably right. But not in the way they think. The content of the picture is 100%, but the vivacity had to be added in digitally.

It’s gotten a lot worse as of late now. It seems that even natural phenomenon, fractured light, and optical illusions that truly exist but are hard for your mind to concentrate on are all written off as Photoshopped. There’s no way anything like that could ever really exist in the world, right? It’s a shame, because situations like that where we’re skeptical even begin to diminish the genuine uniqueness of God’s creation and the masterpieces he’s designed for us that are supposed to baffle us.

Still not convinced? Just go to YouTube and watch any video of something spectacular. Scroll down and read the comments. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge. The guys that did pull ups off a crane without a harness. An fighter jet breaking the sound barrier (not to mention the dispute over what kind of fighter jet that is). This kid doing an awesome job of playing the Hotel California solo. Or this kid’s completely amazing guitar solo that I think he wrote! My generation is just so horribly skeptical, it’s ridiculous.

Now, when I’m watching a movie, I’ll analyze it to death and determine something must be CG just as much as the next guy. I’m not saying it isn’t, because especially in todays digital movies, it probably is. I just think it’s disappointing the extent at which we write off almost everything we see these days as fake. There are truly amazing sculptures and scenes in this world, and even things that don’t relate to art and the visuals, and it seems that Photoshop has ruined my generation by making us skeptical of almost everything we see. It disappoints me. I prefer to give everything the benefit of the doubt.

Tags: Photoshop, Observations

That’s the rumor. After all, it’s the thing to do, right? Look at other mammoth companies that used to provide a service for free but now charge for their services: MySpace, YouTube, Google, Xanga, Wikipedia, Hulu ... Oh, wait! All those services are still free. They’re add supported, so they will always remain free.

Even still, people continue to prove their gullibility by falling for such silly rumors, even when the people spreading the rumors don’t even attempt to give a reasoning or source for their claim. I was astounded to find that, as of today, over three million people are concerned that Facebook may become a Premium Service. Even more astounding, the groups have absolutely no solid evidence for this claim, not even evidence that suggest it, yet still people fall for it. They list links or sources of any kind. They don’t even provide reasoning for the suspicion. I’m actually quite convinced that the people who start these groups just didn’t want to title them, “LET’S SEE IF WE CAN GET 5,000,000 PEOPLE TO JOIN THIS GROUP!!!”

I’m here to firstly illustrate why your Facebook Premium cries are ridiculous and then to prove you wrong.

Firstly, you’re using the service you’re threatening to boycott in order to promote your boycott. This is almost as hypocritical and nonsensical as those “We Hate Facebook” groups that are on Facebook. People, do you think before you speak and/or act?

Secondly, your solution to let Facebook know how much you disapprove of this idea is to get as many people as you can to not use Facebook for a day. You know, this isn’t actually a bad idea if you extract it from the fact that you think Facebook is going Premium. It might really benefit all of you if you got out into the sun and participated in true, face-to-face social activity. But even if you did convince three million people to not use Facebook for an entire day, this would most likely accomplish exactly the opposite of what you wanted. Allow me to explain:

Three million people don’t log onto Facebook for a day. Facebook is currently a “free” service (to you) in the sense that all of it’s monetary gains are in the form of ad revenue. A lack of three million users will result in less people clicking on their ads, resulting in less ad revenue for them for that day. While one day of this won’t make a significant difference, a recurring trend of this would cause them to look at alternative business models. Facebook is an actual company, which means they do need to make money, believe it or not. That aside, users are on and off Facebook all the time, probably for days at a time. Even if a blip like that did occur in the site traffic for one day, Facebook would most likely disregard it.

Thirdly, you’re threatening to leave Facebook if they make their service Premium. Really, guys? You don’t think you need Facebook? You who think it would be significant if you didn’t log on to the service for one whole day? You who promote this idea on the very service you’re threatening to leave? You know, you waste countless hours on the site, why not give them a few of your dollars too? I mean, they’re giving you a very extensive and labor intensive service absolutely free.

But Facebook is looking for a business model. Translation: they need a consistent way to make money. Ad revenue is fairly consistent, and quite substantial considering there are 100 million of us that use the service on a regular basis, but even Google, who started their service creating income solely based on ad revenue, now sells products to generate consistent revenue.

Let’s imagine for a minute that Facebook does choose a Premium Service as their business model. Let’s imagine in that choice that Facebook limits the free service to ten status updates per day, photo albums of no more than fifty pictures, and a friend limit of 200 unless you pay them a monthly fee. If you pay them a monthly fee, the limits are lifted and, of course, all ads are taken away. This is called a Premium Service. Even if you were starkly against this, there’s no real way you could fight this, even with your three million strong groups. I believe many of you think the term “Premium Service” means “free version goes away,” but that’s simply not true.

Continuing to imagine, let’s say Facebook charges each user $5 per month for the Premium Service. That means they’ll be making $60 per person per year. Facebook currently delivers to 100 million users for free, so even if 95% of these users don’t value the service enough to pay a measly $6 a month for its full functionality, that still leaves five million Premium Service users. Five million Premium members paying $60 a year to Facebook generates them a revenue of $300 million. With this new income from the Premium members combined with the ad revenue propagated from what’s left of the other 95 million users, Facebook will still be generating far more income than they did before. And those of you who were too snobbish to accept a limited service and refused to actually pay for something you use? Facebook wouldn’t even miss you.

This won’t happen anytime soon, because Facebook currently makes proper figures from the ads on the right that you consistently click on. The people who think it will don’t truly understand the limitless possibilities of an innovative website idea (i.e. Google) and financing it with ads due to the heavy traffic. Facebook has been estimated to be worth upwards of $15 billion dollars. While some say this estimate is too high, it still illustrates that they don’t need to charge for their service.

All of this is completely irrelevant once you consider Principle #7 in The Facebook Principles: “Facebook is a fundamental service.” This being the case, and immediately following that statement, they further explain, “People should be able to use Facebook for free to establish a presence, connect with others, and share information with them. Every Person should be able to use the Facebook Service regardless of his or her level of participation or contribution.”

According to Facebook, The Facebook Principles are the rights and responsibilities of each user, and The Facebook Principles are not subject to change at the whim of the Facebook staff. They are the foundation of the service, and they are not subject to change now, or anywhere in the near future. If they do change, it will only be for the betterment of the users. Hard as it may be to believe, Facebook isn’t actually out to get you.

Tags: Facebook

Microsoft has been (officially) beta testing their newest operating system, Windows 7 (previously known under the codenames Blackcomb and Vienna), for about nearly a month now, and the results are looking extremely promising.
 
According to the "reliable" source of Wikipedia, it's due out in late 2009 with ... *groan* ... numerous editions yet again.  With all the notes Microsoft seems to be taking from Apple, why can't they understand one of the most significant notes?  And that is, users want simplicity.  We don't want seven editions, we want one.  One edition that does it all.  But really, as far as Windows 7 goes, that's the ugliest monster in the room.  No speculations as to the price of the new OS yet, but if it's reasonable, Windows 7 may be promising enough to get me to upgrade from XP on my laptop.
 
Originally, Microsoft planned for Windows 7 (at the time called 6.1) was supposed to be a minor upgrade from Windows Vista.  Sort of like a service pack.  Microsoft also decided they were going to pull out all the stops and get the operating system out in less than three years!  However, with the horrible publicity and reputation that came upon Microsoft with the release of Windows Vista, they decided to get as far away from the Vista name as possible to regain their name.  To do this, they decided to quit with the naming convention and just stick to numbers, and since Windows Vista was technically Windows 6.0, they jumped a whole number altogether to get away from it.
 
Windows 7 isn't built from the ground up.  To do so for a universal operating system like Windows would be grueling and only introduce a tremendous amount of bugs.  It is still, in fact, an upgrade to Windows Vista.  It's an upgrade to Windows Vista that shows real potential in getting Microsoft back into the game of practicallity and putting them back at the forefront operating systems, a lead they've lost with the growing popularity of user-friendly and eye-candy operating systems like Linux Ubuntu and Mac OS X.
 
Microsoft decided to take notes.  After their advertising campaigns to compete Apple's anti-Windows ads backfired humiliatingly (numerous campaigns, I might add, entailing hundreds of millions of dollars each) and only ended up to increase the popularity of Apple's products, they decided their money might be better suited in actually reparing their horribly broken operating system.
 
Initial benchmarks show that Windows 7 outperforms both Vista (obviously) and XP in almost every area, including start up time, shutdown time, application launch, the recovery from sleep.  It still requires a ridiculous 1GB of memory to run properly and leaves an enormous footprint of nearly 13GB (it requires 16GB to install, though).  Users often excuse this, saying it doesn't matter since our computers now come with terabyte hard drives and 4GB of memory straight out of the box.  This is not a legitimate excuse.  A dual-core 2.4GHz processor can compute some 48,000,000,000 periods per second; do you understand the raw power your computer could harness without an operating system (and perhaps the von Neumann Bottleneck) getting in the way?  If Microsoft spent less time bloating their operating system and more time allowing applications to speak directly to the hardware, the supercomputers of the future that we so frequently dream would already be here.  Anyway, OS X Leopard only requires 512MB of memory to run and 9GB of hard disk space, numbers that still aren't excusable but are good for comparison.
 
So how about the interface?  Like performance, it's significantly better too, right?  Definitely.  The new taskbar finally dares to do what Vista was too scared to; it abandons the bulky wordage that Microsoft has kept since Windows 95.  All applications are represented only by a larger icon of what they are, a design strikingly similar to that of the Mac operating system.  To access your entire list of programs, the start menu is still on the left; it looks nearly identical to the menu in Vista with a few added features for simplicty and an improved search speed.  Hovering over any icons on the taskbar will render a preview of the open application.
 
My Computer seems to have been revamped as well with a new way of organizing thing ... A way that, again, looks strikingly similar to the way Apple has chosen to organize Finder.  They now support Libraries (Smart Folders), HomeGroup (Bonjour, anyone?), and a nicely organized tree on the left to sort through all the files on your computer.  And thank goodness the device manager has finally been tweaked to be more organized.
 
Perhaps one of my favorites are the new gestures that Windows 7 employs.  Drag a program to the top of the screen to maximize it.  Throw it against the left or right side of the screen to maximize it to only that side of the screen for easy cascading.  Want to hide all the windows so you can see your desktop?  Click on the bottom-right hand corner of the screen.  And want to make all those other nasty windows disappear except the one you're working with?  Click on the menu bar and shake the window.  If you need them all to reappear, shake it again.  Shaking windows, Microsoft?  Now you have been taking notes from Ubuntu ...
 
Finally, users can decide what they want and don't want in the system tray.  This was allowed, to some extent, in Windows XP (and sort of in Vista), but only through the control of the application itself.  Microsoft promised it would be allowed for both XP and Vista, but they have yet to come through on their promise.  Until now.  In Windows 7, if you don't want that icon in your system tray, or if you want it in a different location, just move it!  You decide what and how things go in your taskbar!
 
After using Windows 7 myself and reading several reviews on the subject, the best quote I've heard yet comes straight from AppleInsider.
 
"But the company is also focusing attention on new performance and usability improvements over Vista, essentially marketing Windows 7's departures from Vista's originally touted features as a feature in itself. There's much less attention on gloss and a new effort in place to present fewer system interruptions due to warning messages like those associated with User Account Control."
 
"Actual new consumer-facing features in Windows 7 are slight enough for Microsoft to refer to "screen dimming" as significant new feature related to battery life. The Windows 7 website notes, "Bright idea: With a display that dims automatically, you get longer battery life" (below). This feature has been in Windows for at least fifteen years, so it appears the company is rather desperately scraping the barrel for features it can promote in its new operating system release."
 
I don't say all this to rag on Microsoft.  In fact, I'm quite impressed that they seem to be trying to roll out an operating system in less than six years this time.  But whether you like Vista or not, if you understand proper proramming and proper computing, you understand Vista was and is a failure.  Windows 7 has huge promise, and I'm not upset one bit that the "promise" it's showing (much like all the promise Windows Vista showed, though it was little) is coming straight out of Mac OS X and popular Linux distros such as Ubuntu.  Microsoft is the computing giant in the world, and we all know giants move slowly.  The little companies have taken off, and Microsoft is finally getting around to catching up.  If the final release even maintains the light shown in this beta release (but I'm hoping it still improves even more), I will gladly purchase a license and finally perform a full upgrade from Windows XP on my ... MacBook Pro.
 

Tags: Microsoft, Operating Systems

There are reasons software goes through rigorous testing (on multiple levels) before it is released to the public.

My parents have this fancy DVD player that skips over crap they don’t like. It’s called ClearPlay. You can select what type of stuff you want it to cut out, and you can connect to the internet once a month or so to update the library of movies it knows. For graphic or violent scenes, it knows the time codes for the scenes in each movie which the user wants to skip over.

It’s an interesting concept, but ClearPlay has a few glitches in their programming. After all, entertaining software that intentionally skips over scenes of a DVD that is meant to play through continuously (and skip such scenes in a seamless manner without the user’s knowledge) can present significant problems if. For instance, poor programming could result in one DVD being confused for another DVD which would require skipping during a certain sequence. Or poor programming could call a skip method for no apparent reason. Who knows how these things work ... Either way, the premise of this machine seems to break one of the cardinal rules of programming, and that is that if you’re going to do so something significant (i.e. skip an entire scene in a movie) you’d better tell the user.

We were watching Prince Caspian, a movie that probably doesn’t need any skipping. Naturally, we watched the movie with the ClearPlay Filter off. Apparently it didn’t get the memo ...

One moment we’re at the scene where Caspian first enters the woods (at night) and meets the dwarf, the next moment we’re seeing the completion of the bridge by the Tel Marines (a scene near the end of the movie). The time code on the DVD player was still showing that we were only nine minutes into the movie. We rewound and fast forwarded several times, skipped around the chapters, but it continued with this glitch. We decided to give the DVD player one more chance. It did it again a few minutes later. We then realized we had never even seen the scene where the children actually enter Narnia. Something was terribly wrong.

Even Ernie was confused, and he can’t even understand movie plots.

A normal DVD player could probably never have this issue. Sure, if the disc were scratched, it could jump to a later portion of the movie, but the time code would jump with it. Introducing such “functionality” as skipping scenes intentionally without alerting the user and without advancing the time code can present serious issues if you don’t test your code rigorously, while we just now experienced as we watched Prince Caspian.

After restarting the DVD player, ejecting the disc, and putting it back in, we skipped to the second chapter and were greeted with the scene in which the children enter Narnia. It worked!

Must be a Windows-based DVD player ...

Tags: Movies, Programming

Just over two years I wrote what essentially amounted to be a research paper on Apple. You can read the entire article here.

This week, I was officially cited in a paper written by Gabe Pyle as a reliable source on the subject! In fact, he portrays me as quite a scholarly fellow in his paper, if I do say so myself.

Also, I’m planning on writing a second article dealing with the recent rise in internet stupidity, especially relating to failed attempts to converse in a civilized conversation and the continuing debate of Mac vs. PC. I have an exam tomorrow, but once that is over I should start on it.

Tags: Friends, Operating Systems, Apple, Microsoft

That’s right, I know everything. But don’t worry, I won’t turn you in for it. I do it all the time.

Who was in chapel this morning, can I see a show of hands? Well, someone was texting in chapel this morning; someone who uses AT&T, and I can almost prove it.

AT&T has got a few things going for them these days, namely the iPhone and their amazing 3G network. While 3G is awesome, here’s the biggest problem with it. It has such high bandwidth data transfer that the signal frequently interferes with surrounding signals. I’ve also heard, though this is not confirmed, that AT&T text messaging uses some sort of an interface that interferes specifically with Bluetooth devices, which your laptop and most computers probably have.

My roommate has a phone that is powered by AT&T. I can predict, almost with perfect accuracy, when he’s going to get a text message before his phone even buzzes. We’ll be sitting in our room, he watching TV, me at my desk doing who-knows-what, and the speakers to our dorm computer will start to sputter, making a staccato style “daaaa-ta-ka-daaa-ta-ka-daaa-ta-ka-daaaaa” sound over and over. “Dave, you’re getting a text.” Seconds later, his phone buzzes.

So, remember that loud and obnoxious “daaaa-ta-ka-daaa-ta-ka-daaa-ta-ka-daaaaa” that we heard blasting over the sound system this morning, interrupting Dr. Brown as he was recognizing our Grandparents? There’s an extremely high chance (I’d say ... 90%) that the cause of that was someone in chapel receiving a text message on the AT&T network.

Tags: Cedarville, Apple

There’s a lot of commotion over Apple’s newest line of MacBooks, MacBook Pros, iMacs, Cinnema Displays, etc. But there’s something that seems severely lacking. Where are the Blu-Ray drives, Apple?

Sure, you gave us a Wireless n card. You gave us 39% more on our touchpad for the MacBook and the MacBook Pros, made of wear-resistant glass and added more advanced finger gestures. You gave us a Solid-State Hard Drive for over $1,000 less than it was in the initial MacBook Air (told you ...). You gave us a sleeker, even more aesthetically pleasing (and I thought that wasn’t possible ...) design for the casing. You gave us faster processors (we like that)! You gave us two graphics cards--one integrated for better battery life, one discrete for ultimate performance. You even somehow managed, among all these things, to squeeze in a bigger battery, boasting up to five hours of life!

But ... First let’s talk about ports. I’m pretty excited that you moved to a single standard for display ports. On the MacBook AND the MacBook Pro, you are given a Mini DisplayPort; no DV and Mini-DV depending on your laptop. Though, annoyingly, Mini DisplayPort, as you may notice, is Mini DP, not Mini DV, so it’s a standard we have to switch to before it’s universal. Why they ever thought that was a good idea, I’ll never know, since there’s no difference in performance. We now have a gigabit ethernet port ... Awesome! Quick question: Where did my FireWire port go on the regular MacBook? It’s ... gone.

Jobs has only responded with the statement, “Actually, all of the new HD camcorders of the past few years use USB 2.” I love Steve Jobs, but that doesn’t actually answer the question. And a significant number of camcorders still use FireWire, though he’s right when he says most new ones use USB, or at least allow for both. However, here’s the strangest part. Do you know who invented FireWire? FireWire is Apple’s IEEE 1394 connection, created in 1995 and implemented on the first Macs somewhere around 1997. Even more ironically, FireWire officially became part of the IEEE Std. in June, 2008. If you’ll notice, that wasn’t too long ago ... And all of a sudden, it’s parent has abandoned it and accepted the more universal standard of USB (which appropriately stands for Universal Serial Bus)? That doesn’t seem right.

Also, my external hard drive uses FireWire.

But, most significantly, what about Blu-Ray? That is, after all, why you’re reading this, right? Well, here’s what Jobs had to say about that. “Blu-Ray is just a bag of hurt. It’s great to watch the movies, but licensing of the tech is so complex, we’re waiting till things settle down and Blu-Ray takes off in the marketplace.” Read “licensing of the tech is so complex” as “it costs way too much money.” That’s really what he means.

For some reason I can’t understand, Apple went out on a limb and incorporated $1,700 SSD drives in the MacBook Air ... A drive that costs over five times as much for less than half the space of a normal Hard Drive. A price that would be ridiculous to pay, but Apple understood that if they didn’t incorporate it into the marketplace at an expensive price, it would never be able to come down in price. Strange that they aren’t willing to do the same for Blu-Ray. Also, Apple and Sony are chums. Incidentally, Sony owned HD-DVD ... Which was the competitor for Blu-Ray and lost because it was far inferior, though much priced much friendlier.

That’s really all the answer we have from the guys at Apple as to why Blu-Ray is lacking in this line. And, from the several people I’ve talked to on the subject, that was the only reason they were going to buy a new MacBook this year. Now they aren’t. Way to go, Apple.

As just a bit of encouragement, here’s a fun fact about Blu-Ray: It’s highly encrypted. Those of you who like to rip-’n-return, as we say, are going to be in for a surprise. Blu-Ray discs are encrypted, in fact, all the way to the monitor. (Can you say “paranoid”?) So, get this, in order for Apple to actually include Blu-Ray drives on their laptops, it’s not as simple as you ordering a Blu-Ray drive and doing surgery on your MacBook Pro; you would need a new display to decrypt the discs. Apple included the decrypting technology in the displays for their newest MacBooks, MacBook Pros, Cinnema Displays, and iMacs. Maybe in the next generation, then ...

Tags: High Definition, Apple

Sorry, I know, this is the second blog post about mostly the same thing. But I’ve found a better way to do it, and it didn’t seem beneficial to simply erase my old blog post. But this one won’t include pictures, it’s just a general overview of what I think is a far more simplistic way to combine your Cedarville email address with your personal email address. I’ll use Apple Mail as the third-party client of choice this time. (I know, it’s not cross-platform like Thunderbird ... Deal.) You’ll also need a Gmail account.

If you already have a Gmail account, skip this step.
You’ll need to register for a Gmail account here. Under the Accounts tab of Settings in your Gmail account, you’ll need to import your other email account via POP3. (Instructions for your POP3 settings should be provided by your email service.)

Now, after you’ve got a Gmail account (or if you already had a Gmail account), you’ll need to import your Cedarville email account as an additional POP3 account to your Gmail Inbox. You can do this the same way listed above, using the following POP3 information for Cedarville’s mail server:

Username: myusername@cedarville.edu
Password: mypassword
Server: pop.cedarville.edu
Port: 110

I shouldn’t have to say this, but obviously you should put your own username and password in ... Not the above. For convenience sake, you can check “Leave a copy of retrieved message on the server” and “Label incoming messages: myusername@cedarville.edu”.

You now have all your email accounts in one place. However, it’s in a browser-based environment; you can only get to it when an internet connection is present. If you would like to retrieve it all through Apple Mail, all you need do is open Apple Mail and add an account. The newest version of Apple Mail knows instinctively how to setup a Gmail account, so all you’ll need to do is provide your Gmail username and password. The rest is done automatically.

Back in Gmail, if you want to be able to send mail from you Cedarville account through Gmail (only in browser mode ... Not from Apple Mail ... Sorry), you’ll need to add yet another server through Settings-->Accounts in Gmail. All you need do in this case is add your Cedarville email address as a “Send Mail As” account, check your Cedarville account, follow the link provided in that email, and voila, you can send email from your Cedarville account through your Gmail account.

And all this is free :).

There’s one more treat. In Apple Mail, your email will always be sent from Gmail, not Cedarville. There is a way to send mail from your Cedarville account the Apple Mail, but it’s kind of pointless. But guess what, you can get the GroupWise address book via LDAP into your Apple Addressbook. Here’s how:

In Apple Mail, go to Preferences. Click on the Composing tab. Click “Configure LDAP ...” Add a new LDAP server with the following information:

Name: Cedarville
Server: imap.cedarville.edu
Port: 389
Search Base: o=cedarnet1
Scope: Subtree

Now, when composing a message, you can start typing any name (you’ll need to wait a bit) and it will search the GroupWise address book and return any matches. It works pretty well :).

Enjoy.

Tags: Apple, Cedarville, Mail

Cedarville has this thing ... Novell GroupWise. I don't mind Novell, but it's not my favorite. It slows computers and networks down. The problem is, when you have a campus with thousands of comptuers on it, Novell is really the best way to go as far as Networking Utilities go.

That doesn't mean you have to use their email client, GroupWise, though. But Cedarville says we do. Ick. So, a few nights ago, I set out to find the servers that Cedarville stores emails, the address book, and calendar. There's good news and bad news: The good news is, I successfully figured out the email and address book. The bad news is, the calendar may be internal ... Which means you're forced to use GroupWise to view it. But at least you can use something other than GroupWise for your email now! The following instructions are for setting up Mozilla Thunderbird, because it's the most popular (and probably best) client that I've had people ask for. I'll write instructions for other clients in the future (hopefully once I figure out a work-around for the calendar), and I may post a link to the Help Page created for this on Cedarville's website after I finish it. But for now, here you go.

The beauty of Mozilla Thunderbird is it works on most any OS you're using (Windows, Mac, or Linux), and it allows for multiple accounts (I use it to combine my school and Gmail accounts), so organization is much better ... It's all in one application :)!

1.) Download and install Mozilla Thunderbird from this website.
2.) The first time you run Thunderbird, you will see this screen:
Note: If you already have a Thunderbird account setup, open Thunderbird, select Tools->Account Settings... (Edit->Account Settings... for Linux). Select "Add Account ..."
Select "Email account" and click "Next >".


3.) Enter your Full Name and full Email Address (include @cedarville.edu) in the boxes provided.


4.) Select "IMAP" and specify imap.cedarville.edu as the Incoming Server.
5.) Enter mail.cedarville.edu for the outgoing server.


6.) Enter your full email address for both the Incoming and Outgoing User Names (include @cedarville.edu).


7.) Enter your full email address as the Account Name (include @cedarville.edu).


8.) Click "Finish >".
9.) Enter your GroupWise password and select "Use Password Manager to remember passwords" if you want Thunderbird to remember your password.


10.) Click "Get Mail" to retrieve your account information (folders and stuff) from the server.


Your email account is set up! Now to add the GroupWise address book ...

1.) In Thunderbird, click "Address Book".
2.) Select File->New->LDAP Directory ...
3.) Enter "GroupWise" for the Name.
4.) Enter "imap.cedarville.edu for the Hostname.
5.) Enter "o=cedarnet" for the Base DN.
6.) Make sure the Port Number is set to "389".


Now your address book is set to sync to the LDAP server! If you want your Cedarville account to automatically look in that address book, do the following ...

1.) Select Tools->Account Settings... (Edit->Account Settings... for Linux).
2.) Under username@cedarville.edu, select "Composition & Addressing".
3.) Under Addressing, select "Use a different LDAP server:
4.) From the drop-down, select "GroupWise".


I'll let you guys know when I get the calendar thing figured out. If you're a Mozilla fan, Thunderbird doesn't have a calendar feature. You either use Mozilla Sunbird (specifically for calendars) or Mozilla SeaMonkey (which is an all-in-one suite). Obviously, if you don't use Mozilla products, you can use the above configuration settings for any client ... If you have any questions, let me know.

Tags: Cedarville, Mail

Healthy competition is good. But if all the companies competing aren't on an equal playing field, one company will be dwarfed and squeezed out of the race fairly rapidly. That is what the three-year-old, California-based company was afraid of in 2001 when the concept of a building their own browser first emerged; they weren't big enough yet.

Now, in 2008, Google employs nearly 20,000 people, has a net income of over four billion dollars annually, and has the most widely used, well known search enginge in the world. Heck, they have their own verb! They're finally ready to compete in a battle that matters and is grossly overlooked. The battle of the browsers.

On September 2nd, 2008, Google released it's beta browser, Google Chrome.

So, why do we need another battle of the browsers? Didn't we finally settle down and decide Firefox was simply the best browser there ever was or ever will be? Simple answer: No. Firefox leaves a lot to be desired, and we certainly can’t be expected to rely on Internet Explorer or Safari for our browsing needs. Before reading what I love about Google Chrome and why it could be the solution to all our browser woes, first read my critique of old, failed browsers.

For the last too-many-years, Internet Explorer and Firefox have been battling it out, trying to keep their users. The problem is, both browsers lack something significant. They’re entering the browser race from the wrong perspective. Internet Explorer only recently allows extensions, and they’re very limited. Firefox allows extensions to run rampant, but even worse it relies on them for all of its functionality. What we need is a browser that relies on the website itself for the functionality. And how about some old-fashioned simplicity? Apple knows where that’s at ... So does Google.

When we need a map (Google Maps), have a question relating to anything in the world (Google Search), need to check our email (Gmail), write a blog (Blogger), watch a video (YouTube/Google Videos), or check the latest headlines (Google News), Google is our ultimate destination. So, if one company understands the internet, how to search it, and how to manage it so well, why don’t we allow them to design our browser, which will peruse the internet they allow us to search. They know what we need.

Google Chrome boasts privacy. Though many are up-in-arms about the agreement you’re forced to agree to before downloading the software, you must realize it’s in beta ... Of course they’re going to analyze your browsing for testing purposes. That doesn’t mean they’re selling it to Russia. Google Chrome allows you to search and edit your browsing history. Not only that, there’s a “silent mode” which allows you to browse privately without leaving a trace on the site or the computer.

Google Chrome will soon be multi-platform. The Mac and Linux versions are in currently being developed. After all, if Google Chrome is really going to try to compete with Firefox, they simply must be cross-platform. Additionally, Google Chrome is open source currently, as it is in beta, which leaves it open to innovation from nerds all over the world. Luckily, we have our friends at Google monitoring this to make sure nobody bloats it; only the useful stuff will be added into later releases.

Google Chrome provides a simple, elegant interface that just makes sense. “Intuitive” comes to mind ... makes me think of Mac, for some reason. Searching Google, typing an address, and searching your history are all combined into the one bar at the top of the browser. Of course, there is tabbed browsing, and new tabs can display a list (images included) of your most visited websites. Drag the tab away from the menu bar and make it a new window easily.

Google Chrome is reliable. Tabbed browsing is great, but, let’s face it, something’s going to make you crash someday ... Luckily, Google Chrome looks at each individual tab as its own instance of the browser, and if once freezes, it won’t crash the entire browser.

Google Chrome is fast. Really fast. Some folks bothered running these fancy things called “benchmarks” on the browser and, who knows how, determined that Internet Explorer is still faster. Yah, they’re wrong. There’s no way that’s true. Run your benchmarks all day long, people, but no matter what algorithms your benchmarks run to determine performance speeds, they can’t argue with the fact that I can sit here and visibly see a difference. If I can visibly see a difference, your benchmarks are wrong. Do them again. Not only do pages load faster and tabs open instantaneously, the browser launches without a hiccup as well, largely in part to it’s very small footprint.

Google Chrome comes JavaScript ready, enhancing sites that use Java and allowing them to load faster. Included in this functionality is the ability to create shortcuts to web-based applications straight on your desktop. For instance, Google Docs (or Zoho Docs, if you’re not a fan of Google Docs), Gmail, your blog ... Create direct links to them straight on your desktop, and have them open quickly in their own little Google Chrome window, just like an application. In fact, this was the main concept which Google Chrome is built around.

A lot of the flack I’ve heard about Google Chrome is, in fact, it’s simple design. People seem to think that because it’s so simplistic, it can’t do anything. Apparently that’s the culture we’ve been drowned in. Look, something doesn’t always have to be flashing in your face, offering you things to click on, for it to be good. You should control the your computer and it’s programs, the computer and it’s software should not control you.

What I’m most comfortable with is simply the fact that this browser was developed by Google, a company I’ve come to rely on and trust for my web browsing. As it develops and comes out of beta, I don’t think they’ll allow it to bloat. It will continually be developed around internet-based applications and support for them.

I only have one more pressing question that will need to be answered in the coming months: What will the next Firefox browser look like?

Tags: Browsers, Internet, Google

After Al Gore invented the internet for us, we realized we needed a way to walk around the thousands upon thousands (and now billions upon billions) of sites that were out there. Meet the browser. To the best of my knowledge, Al Gore has never claimed part in inventing the browser, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

Just for fun, and before we start to really rip apart the benchmarks of Google Chrome, let's look at some old, failed browsers so we can scoff at them (by order of appearance).

WorldWideWeb (1991-1994) - I actually can't call this pioneer a failure. After all, it was the world's first web browser. By the way, it was only released for NeXTSTEP OS. The operating system created by NeXT Computer, a company that was founded by none other than Steve Jobs. The NeXTSTEP OS was quite literally the parent of Mac OS X, and it was also the very first object-oriented and multi-task-ready operating system. (Boy, it's amazing what that Steve Jobs can do ...) However, in 1993 the developers released the source code, thus making the program freeware and allowing for the development of it's children, ViolaWWW, MidasWWW, MacWWW, and their big brother Mosaic.

Netscape Navigator (1994-2007) - Mosaic/Netscape rose to power and popularity much faster than Internet Explorer did, and since it was owned by Netscape Communications, a succesfull company that was pivotal in getting internet readily accessible in every home, the browser had plenty of funding. However, Microsoft was simply a bigger, more powerful company, and the beneficial wars between Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer were eventually won by Internet Explorer. While Netscape failed miserably by allowing their poorly coded browser to get disgustingly bloated with features, their ultimate failure was in 1999 when they allowed America Online to buy then. Who cares if they offered you ten billion dollars! Immedietly following Netscape's acquisition by AOL, they lost over 30% of their market share in less than one year.

HotJava (1994-1999) - A very customizable, extensible browser that was built around Java in order to easily execute Applets. The ingenuity of HotJava is that it's a browser coded entirely in Java, thus making it extremely portable. The downside to HotJava is that it's coded entirely in Java, thus limiting it to the JRE and leaving it a fairly slow memory hog, and with the presence of Java so readily incorporated into more recent browsers and the growing popularity of Macromedia's Flash, the project was terminated.

Internet Explorer (1995-Present) - It doesn't need much introduction or explanation. But Internet Explorer has always been interested in integrating (not outsourcing to extensions) functionality at the expense of ease-of-use, security, and speed. And, let's be honest, it's Microsoft ... Therefore, a failure.

OmniWeb (1995-Present) - Wouldn't you know it, it's another NeXTSTEP OS browser! That being the case, it graduated, along with it's OS, to Mac OS X, and that is where it resides today. Unfortunately, this is a limit for it. While it was a good browser in the area of speed, and very minimalistic, it lacked key functionality and compatibility with some of the most recent web innovations, so it falls short.

Internet Explorer for Mac (1996-2005) - Wow. It was simply horrible. Probably the worst maintained browser of all time. It went through three updates in one year, went silent for three years, released it's fourth update in 2000, then was untouched until it's termination in 2005. It was incompatible, buggy, crashed more than anything, and incredibly slow!

Opera (1996-Present) - I've always felt that Opera failed when it came to honesty in advertising. They used to claim to be the “fastest browser” ever made. Well, they’ve since revoked that claim ... It claims it’s “faster” on their website now. Faster than what? I’m not sure, because until the most recent release (9.5) I’ve never been pleased with the speed of the browser. Though, even with 9.5, I still think Firefox is faster, and you can’t argue with the speed I get from Safari. Around version 7, Opera bloated the browser beyond belief, thus slowing it to a crawl. They’ve since revamped the interface and it the newest release it’s actually quite efficient. However, compatibility has always been an issue with it.

Gzilla (1997-1999) - The developer was last heard from on August 16, 1999, pleading for help on his very own site. Apparently he could get his browser to compile on anything other than Linux/x86, so he was begging for outside help. It's rumored the browser emerged a few months later as as Dillo, but that's just probably not true. I'm guessing Mozilla felt threatened by the last five letters of his browser's name, so they took him out.

MyIE/Maxthon (2000-Present) - Maxthon’s clincher is that it’s extremely customizable. It advertises itself as an adaptable alternative to Internet Explorer. The negative clincher is it’s only for Windows. On top of that, it crashes too frequently. It’s not slow, but reliability is a big factor when writing a browser, and if your browser crashes on me too often, I’m not going to use it.

Firefox (2002-Present) - The most successful browser to incorporate extensions. Since Netscape completely fell of the face of the planet somewhere around 2003, Firefox has been the most used cross-platform web browser. It boasts speed, elegance, and integrated functionality. Even better, you can add basically any functionality you desire through extensions; this is what has made Firefox so well known. Unfortunately, Firefox loses a lot of security when they allow third-party extensions. More than that, extensions are impossible for the creators of Firefox to maintain, so when the browser is updated, there’s always the risk (and it very frequently happens) of losing compatibility with extensions. Not very convenient for the extension programmers or their users.

AOL Explorer (2005-Present?) - It’s AOL ... We already know why it fails: Overpriced, slow, inefficient, and unstable. Apparently the browser is still around, but it’s now a part of the AIM package.

Flock (2005-Present) - Flock’s biggest asset is that it’s multi-platform. On top of that, much like Maxthon, it boasts customizability! It integrates beautifully with many popular websites, including Facebook, iGoogle, Flickr, Digg, Twitter, etc. On top of that, it does allow extensions. It has a main page that keeps all of your favorites and information organized and easily accessible. Unfortunately, it still is rather buggy, and speed is also a bit of an issue with it. It enjoys freezing on it’s users.

Now, read my review of Google Chrome!

Tags: Apple, Operating Systems, Browsers, Google

1. "Why did The Happening suck so bad?"
2. "At around 5:20 pm in Iowa City, IA, over Coral Ridge Mall, was there a funnel cloud or any reports of a tornado?"
3. "Can males wear earrings in the '08-'09 semesters at Cedarville University?"
4. "Who is Alex Laird of Iowa?"
5. "How does ChaCha make money?"

Ever used Google's free SMS service? You can text it questions that are understood by it's simply search application database: Questions like "Showtimes, 52328" or "Weather, 45314" to receive the showtimes for movie theaters near Robins, IA or the weather around Cedarville, OH. The answering service is simple and usually replies within a few seconds. You can text Google SMS at GOOGL (46645). It's very convenient for simple questions, but far too often you ask it more complicated questions and it replies with a "I do not understand" message. Alas, there is only so much a computer can do ...

ChaCha takes Google SMS to the next level. Everything Google's smart app can't answer, ChaCha can! Simply text ChaCha (242242) or call 1-800-2CHACHA and ask it any question (including the ones above) to receive an in depth, personally researched answer! That's right. ChaCha has an army of "Guide's" (as they call them) waiting to personally investigate your question and send you a text message answer in reply. Usually there answer will be around 160 characters, but if the answer is too long they'll send you multiple texts. This is nice because it means the Guide won't ramble on, but it also gives them enough room to sufficiently answer the question. In general, the guides to a good job of being concise and even keeping the messages lighthearted and humorous.

Here are the answers to my aforementioned questions, in the same order:

1. "I haven't seen it yet, but if the director is calling it a B movie, then it probably sucks b/c he didn't put enough into it."
2. "Could have been, no info on the web yet about it, sources say Iowa City flooding could be worse than 1993!"
3. "All forms of facial jewelry, other than earrings for females, are prohibited both on and off campus. No males are not allowed."
4. "Alex Laird is a college student at Cedarville University in Iowa. He enjoys writing and computer programming as hobbies."
5. "The company charges consumers nothing, but it says it his hoping to make money by striking deals with cellphone carries to incorporate the ChaCha service into their current 411 phone-number-look-up service. Also, it hopes to eventually include ads in the text message answers it provides."

Pretty good answers. Too bad Cedarville is in Ohio, but at least they called it a University and not just a college!

Guides get paid 20 cents every time they answer question. Additionally, ChaCha has a search engine (ChaCha Classic) online similar to that of Google. Additionally, you can call the 800 number, record your brief question, and they will text you an answer back. Anyone can sign up to be a Guide; you must take a brief questionnaire/quiz to make sure you are qualified to quickly and efficiently answer people's questions. Interestingly, all of the ChaCha services are 100% free, including ChaCha Classic. ChaCha Classic doesn't even contain targeted ads like Google's search does, so there is obviously no income for ChaCha that way. Even if ChaCha does plan on incorporating ads into the texts at a later date or making a deal for 411 incorporation with cell phone providers, that doesn't explain how they pay for their services here and now, especially considering what their Guides get paid and how many Guides they have! The only way I currently see them making money is off of their store.

Not that I'm complaining. Free always has been and shall always remain the best way to go. In the future, if you have a quick and easy question you need answered (like the definition of "inundated," movie showtimes for Columbus, OH, or the Spanish word for "cat"), Google SMS is the way to go since it frequently replies within seconds. However, it's reassuring to know you can have ANY question answered ANYtime simply with a question 160 characters or less.

Tags: Internet, Google

Remember back when NBC got a little too full of itself a while back and decided to yank its shows from iTunes? They pressured Apple to increase the prices of songs and shows that were more popular in order to make more profit; thankfully, Apple refused to cave. NBC threatened to not resign their contract renewal with Apple for their Digital Media. Apple one-upped them; they pulled all NBC shows and music immediately, proving they didn't need NBC to survive (though NBC does hold a large portion of the television side of the iTunes Store.

I've been waiting for NBC to come crawling back like a baby. Of course, NBC had to think of a way to do this without looking like a complete idiot. Coincidently, NBC didn't even try to bring up the pricing problem again. This time they said they would be OK with Apple's pricing policy, but before they would return their programming to iTunes they wanted Apple to incorporate some form of anti-piracy measures.

This could be both good and bad, as I see it. NBC wants to take advantage of the DRM Apple already incorporates, except they wish to expand it. They would like everything in your iTunes library to have the DRM written to it, which could get really frustrating and, to me, is a huge invasion of your own music rights. However, I don't deny that I think Apple will probably agree to this.

After all, I think it's only a matter of time before the FCC and RIAA crack down like mad on the internet. It will be the day when all internet freedom disintegrates and Big Brother constantly watches over your shoulder; a day I shudder to see come. Since the internet is most frequently viewed in the comforts, and privacy, of your own home, I believe their shouldn't be any type of ISP or government restrictions on it. Sure, if a corporation or parent wants to add filters for various things, that's completely legitimate. But we want the internet, our music, movies, and all types of media (yes, I'm talking to you, Adobe) DRM FREE!

Tags: Television, Apple, Internet, Music, Movies

The Constitution doesn't explicitly give Americans a "Right to Privacy." However, The Courts have upheld the fact that the right is implied by the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 9th amendments in the Bill of Rights.

The beautiful thing about privacy being an implicit right, not an explicit right, is that it essentially means you have the right so long as the Judge ruling your case likes you. Let's face it, if he doesn't like you, or disagrees with your case, he's going to say your situation isn't covered by your Right to Privacy Insurance. So the question at hand is, "How much does our Right to Privacy cover?"

Ever seen Minority Report? That movie isn't too far off in some aspects. Let's look at targeted advertising, for example. Engineers have found a way to broadcast hypersonic sound, meaning the audio is broadcast in a focused beam; it can only be heard by the individual standing directly in its path.

A&E has started using hypersonic sound in some places to advertise one of their shows about the paranormal. Interesting, eh? The A&E audio is on a repeat with a female voice whispering, "Who's there?"

While this is a fascinating concept, you have to wonder if the fifth amendment protect you from self-incrimination by your own mind?

We'll be having some interesting Civil Liberties cases in the near future; Paul Root Wolpe of the nonprofit Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics proposes an interesting question with his statement, "If the skull is not an absolute domain of privacy, there are not privacy domains left."

Tags: Politics

We all can easily agree on the fact that the MacBook Air, released at Macworld this Tuesday, is an incredible feat of engineering. Let's just look at the specifications for it quickly:

Dimensions:
0.16-0.76 inches thin
12.8 inches wide
8.94 inches deep
3.0 pounds

Hardware:
1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor (upgrade to 1.8GHz)
80GB 4200 RPM ATA Hard-Disk drive (upgrade to 64GB Solid-State Drive
2GB of 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Multi-touch trackpad
Micro-DVI port
One USB 2.0 port
Audio out
Up to five hours of battery life

To fit these things into 0.16 inches at the smallest point, Apple has really outdone itself. Here's my complaint, and the disappointment of many at the Macworld conference at all. While this Notebook is, indeed, extremely small, how practical is it really? I'm pleased that Apple didn't sacrifice the overall processing speed when shrinking all the peripherals (it still has a faster processor than the original PowerBook), but the biggest flaw with this MacBook is that it has no Optical Drive! Where do you put your CDs and DVDs?

Apple has a solution for you. For an extra $100, you can add a USB Optical Drive to your MacBook Air package. That's all well and good, but you only have one USB port. Ethernet port? You can add USB Ethernet port as well, if you want one. You can also add a USB modem port (um, who uses those anymore?). I also have a USB mouse, iPod (which plugs in through USB), USB GamePad, and an External Hard Drive, which plugs in through FireWire. The ironic thing is, even though Apple only gave us one USB port on this, when going through the ordering process, they don't offer the option of a USB splitter!

That's all well and good that it has built-in wireless and Bluetooth technology, but I've thus far found wireless and Bluetooth mice, keyboards, and GamePads to be unreliable. And who's to say FireWire isn't a necessity?

Another cool feature is Remote Disc. You can put a CD or DVD into another computer on your wireless network, select Remote Disc from your MacBook Air, and view the CD over your network. This is how Apple says the software of the future will be installed. It's a great idea, I really do think it is. I just don't think it's really going to catch on. Apple is assuming you have a desktop or another Notebook somewhere in the house which has an Optical Drive, and why would you, instead of offering it pre-installed, assume the customer already has one? That just doesn't seem very practical or professional.

In my final two paragraph, my overall opinion on the MacBook Air? Overrated and overpriced. There's a point where you must draw the line and say, "Wait, how small do we need this to be? 0.16-0.76 inches? I feel like it would snap in half! Sure, you can carry it around in a manila envelope ... but who's going to do that? I'll still put it in my full-sized briefcase or laptop carrying case.

Congratulations, Apple. You've created the worlds thinnest Notebook! It really is astounding. And I'm loving the 64GB Solid-State drive. But there's no way I would ever buy a MacBook Air. However, I am extremely excited about it. Why? Because of the technology it's paving the way for! (It is worth mentioning the 64GB Solid-State Drive is an additional $1200 to the price of the laptop.) The large Solid-State Drive is starting to make my dreams of a 30GB (or larger) iTouch to become available! That's what I'm really waiting for ...

UPDATE 1/22/2008:

Compared to other Ultra Thin Notebooks, the MacBook Air is much more practical, efficient, and competitively priced, instead of comparing it to other starter MacBooks or MacBook Pros. For a fancy comparison chart, check out THIS website.

Tags: Apple

Since I want to be able to claim credit for this before it happens, I decided to blog about where I think the future of Digital Media lies.

The current fight is between whether to produce solely HD DVDs or Blu-Ray Discs, though that fight is almost over seeing as how the HD DVD format has swept the market leaving Blu-Ray lagging behind and being used mostly by Sony on videos and games.

For years we've been trying to find the an unscratchable disk. We have yet to find one that is practical and cheap enough to mass produce. So the nagging question remains: What will the next Digital Media format be?

In large part, the Adult Film Industry (AFI) has always lead the way in choosing the next format which the public will use. Why? Because the AFI has enough billions per year to throw around on such things (yes, more than Hollywood). The AFI was one of the first to catch on to the VHS, it was the one of the first to realize the possibilities of the internet, it was the first to test out the DVD technology, it's paving the way for High Definition Technology, and it will pave the way for the next medium. The AFI has announced that it will accept the HD DVD as it's format of choice; first of all, the HD DVD is significantly cheaper to produce. Second of all, Blu-Ray discs are almost entirely produced by Sony, who has long refused to produce Pornographic films (go Sony!), so the AFI is almost forced to use the HD DVD. Blu-Ray players have been much more expensive than HD DVD players in the past, but they are coming down to a more competitive price.

With the release of the AppleTV, my guess is the next medium for our Digital Media is going to be small Flash Media, similar to the SDRAM chips for your Digital Camera. Currently those sell for about $10 a gig, so I'm guessing once they come down to around $5 for four gigs, the AFI will start looking at them (and so will the rest of the market.) Think how simple it will be! You'll have two ways to purchase a movie. You'll have a massive External Hard Drive which will be attached to your Entertainment System; You'll purchase the movie from somewhere in a small case, something like a GameCube video game comes in, I suppose, and bring it home. You'll open it to find the small Flash chip inside. No discs, so no worries of scratching! Plug the chip into the front of your AppleTV (or whatever the competition is by then). You'll need leave it plugged in for only a few minutes while it automatically copies the movie onto your External Hard Drive (in a High Definition format, of course). Once the video file is on your External Hard Drive, you can pull out the Flash chip, put it back in the case, and place it on a shelf to forget about. The movie is now on your External Hard Drive, easy for you to access by simply scrolling through all the movies on the drive, much like you would scroll through things you saved on DirectTV.

What if we don't want to go to the store to purchase that crazy Flash chip? Easy! It just so happens your TV will be hooked up to your wireless internet (does that make sense ... hooked up to wireless?) You'll be able to easily peruse the iTunes Music/Movie Store (or any digital media store that's available at that time) directly from your TV, select the movie you want to buy, iTunes will automatically charge your credit card and begin downloading the movie to your External Hard Drive immediately. And look, you didn't even have to go anywhere! Yet another excuse for American obesity.

The technology is almost there with Apple's AppleTV. It just needs to be pushed a little bit more, and the price of Flash media needs to come down. My guess is by the time my generation graduates from college and is beginning to purchase our own Home Entertainment Systems, we'll be making a choice for this medium! And, of course, by that time, there will be many more options for something like this; Microsoft will have their own soon enough.

UPDATE 1/7/2008:

Warner Bros. has announced that it will be adopting the Blu-Ray Disc format over HD DVD. Sony and Warner Bros. are two huge producers, and Hollywood has declared that it wishes to also complete the transition early into 2008. This makes the HD DVD essentially worthless. While it is good to have finally made a decision (so retailers can finally stock only one format), I'm not very pleased with the decision, though it seems final as 70% of the production market is now producing solely Blu-Ray (Disney, Fox, Sony, Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema), leaving Toshiba as just about the only company in support of HD DVD.

On that note, this is good news for Apple, since they have been planning to include full support for Blu-Ray (and only marginal support for HD DVD) in the upcoming MacBook Pros and Final Cut HD. Microsoft has been in support of the HD DVD format, however they will most likely change soon enough.

UPDATE 1/9/2008:

Paramount Pictures has abandon the HD DVD and has said it will be returning to producing the Blu-Ray Disc, leaving Universal as the only large company still in support of the HD DVD and over 75% of the market turning to Blu-Ray.

For a fancy graph, check out this article here.

UPDATE 2/15/2008:

After Best Buy and Netflix declared on the 12th that they would be carrying Blu-Ray exclusively, rental Wal-Mart announced today that it also will be stocking only Blu-Ray discs! Following these announcements, it is rumored that Toshiba will withdraw support of the HD-DVD and move solely to Blu-Ray, joining the rest of the pack.

The fight is almost over!

UPDATE 2/19/2008:

Game over! Toshiba has said it will discontinue use of the HD-DVD disc format, switching to Blu-Ray. The battle is over ...

Tags: High Definition, Movies

Well, the 2007 benchmark tests are in. They have been for a while, I've just been slow in posting this article. Ironically, the fastest laptop tested as of 10/25/07 was a $2,419 (plus the cost of Windows Vista) Apple MacBook Pro. The tests were run using WorldBench 6 Beta 2. Granted, the MacBook Pro came in only one point (at 88 points) above Gateway's E-265M (at 87 points). It's even more laughable that Apple doesn't even specifically design their computers to run Windows, they just allow it, and Apple couldn't care less if you run Windows or not.

Read the PC World article for yourself here.

Tags: Microsoft, Apple

I always chuckle a bit when I browse my way over to some YouTube video by Korn, Mudvayne, or some equally controversial band. It's not so much the videos that amuse me, it's the comments left if you scroll down below the videos. We all know these are mainstream bands, and we all know metal bands can be known for their colorful language and often lyrics relating to the occult, so let's not hold them to any moral standards, OK? But then we have the Christian users who enjoy searching for these videos and then leaving comments pointing out how wrong all the artists fans are for liking it. First of all, why are you searching for the video if it offends you? You don't have to be listening to it or watching it. Second of all, leaving a comment saying, "You guys are idiots. This music is not edifying to God in any way. He wouldn't be happy that you're watching this. You're all going to Hell." Well, those aren't the exact words, but there are oh-so-many comments that say almost exactly that, or at least allude to that.

Listen, telling someone they're an "idiot" for what they believe is not going to get them excited about switching to your religion. And since when has your personal relationship with Christ been about how guilty someone made you feel, so you just HAD to become a Christian. Isn't it way more beneficial to slowly but surely show someone God's love through the way you act? I'm pretty sure insulting someone's entire way of life through harsh words isn't a good way to show God's love.

Personally, I don't think you can even begin to "witness" to someone on a YouTube discussion board for a Slipknot music video, so please stop! Do you realize it makes all the fans hate Christian even more than Slipknot (and most of America) already does? Just look at some of the posts following when someone attempts to "witness" in response to a video like that. They're not pretty.

The comments on YouTube are to comment on the video ... what you liked about it, what you disliked about it. If you absolutely hated it, generally nobody cares, and you would have been better off spending the five minutes of your life doing something more productive. And why take another five minutes to write a demeaning comment to everyone else who did like the video or song? That just doesn't make sense to me ...

On that note, and probably going in the complete opposite direction of what I just said, may I please have permission to point out the terribly quality of our music videos today? What happened to the days of Thriller, when Michael Jackson was still black and music videos held a story line and a point and weren't so vague they left you feeling numb and wondering, "Wow ... I can't decide if that was really deep or completely pointless." The vast majority of music videos today are spent simply showing the band playing their instruments, usually off time with the music. The videos then pan to some girl or boy, but usually a girl, who is probably struggling with something, running from something, or arguing with her boyfriend or parents. Oh, and don't even get me STARTED on rap videos. The only budget cost you have in a rap video is the cost of the scantly clad strippers you hire to dance around the rapper while he sits on a cruise ship floating through the Caribbean.

It's all too predictable! What happened to the five minute dance scenes and a gripping plot line, almost making the music video a short film! Thriller the song was nearly six minutes long, but the video was extended to nearly fifteen, with a budget of 800,000 1983 dollars (that's about 1.4 million 2007 dollars.) That's the way it should be.

Another problem is the artists lip movement synced with the audio. It's not. Ever. It's ridiculous that with all our modern technology, and the amount of money we pay the digital guru's who mix these videos, that we can't manage to get the artists lip movement to actually look like they're singing the song. I would suggest that perhaps it's a more difficult task than we give them credit for, but that's simply not the case. Perhaps I should allude again to any Michael Jackson video ... the audio is synced almost perfectly with his mouth. Basically in all old music videos that told a story, the audio was synced so much better than it is in todays MTV hits. What is the deal?!

Music is getting less and less good and more and more repetitively stupid, if you ask me, the videos are showing for it. Too bad the good artists who could dance, sing, and direct/produce good music and music videos have unfortunately undergone too much plastic surgery to even be able to bust a dance move, let alone sing a proper note.

Tags: Internet, Music, Observations

Western Digital, how I've always trusted you with my files. I'm not a fan of Seagate. I can't stand Maxtor. Hitachi ... they're alright. But Western Digital I've always heard wonderful things about, and I've always been completely comfortable putting all of my sensitive data on their Hard Drives.

Until now ...

You would think when you fork out over $300 for a Hard Drive, you would have reliability. Not only reliability, but proper support. So when my Hard Drive stops turning on regularly, and when I finally do coax it into turning on my computer won't recognize it, I tried calling technical support.

Apparently I can't get support for my Hard Drive. Apparently the only thing $300 gets you is a Hard Drive and the ability to call for an RMA number to exchange your Hard Drive for a working Hard Drive. Hey, WD, I've got news for you! I have over 100 GB on this Hard Drive. Data that I don't want to lose! Between 60-80 GB of that data is music and movies. All but about 400 songs can be accounted for on my iPod, but the movies and videos I have no way of recovering.

Lucky for you, WD, I have all of my uber-important data (school documents, etc.) on my interal Hard Drive, which has never failed me.

More recently, when I get the Hard Drive to power up, I can put my ear against it an hear a repetitive *Tick**Tick*Tick*. Please don't be the drive head ...

I don't want an RMA. I want support to get my files back! Duh! Is it too much to ask you to pick up the phone?

Tags: Data Storage

Honestly, it may not actually be my first complaint. But it's definitely my first significant, "What were the designers thinking when they implemented THIS?" complaint.

Last week, I lost all audio in my Lappy speakers. Maccy the Lappy was completely silent. I plugged in headphones, and the sound came through clearly. I unplugged them; silence. I plugged in my stereo speakers; sound! I unplugged them; silence. Needless to say, I was puzzled. I plugged in and unplugged my headphones over and over in a fury, but nothing would make the sound come out! I double and triple checked the volume, but for some reason it said the volume was set to full, but at the same time, nothing was coming out of the internal speakers.

I was very confused.

I consulted my loyal friend, Dr. Brian Jones. The Doctor informed me that Apple's come, surprisingly enough, with Optical (Digital) Out! Usually you have to buy a separate card for something like this, but it's fancy that it comes standard with Apple computers, I guess. Unfortunately, Dr. Jones didn't know how to enable or disable Optical Out, he just knew it was in the computer somewhere.

I leaned over and glanced at the side of my computer, looking at the Audio Out port. Sure enough, a red LED was glowing out of the hole; that was strange. Apparently when the headphones were NOT plugged in, my Lappy was confused, thinking the audio was being sent to a set of Optical speakers, so it was muting my laptop speakers. This was a problem ...

I looked online and found out that sometimes if you jiggle a headphones plug around in the port, it might switch it off. So I tried that. Nothing.

It was time to bring in the big guns. I IMed David and asked him to come over and help me out. I explained the situation to him. "Do you have a paper clip or something small?" I didn't. We were in the SSC right by the Admissions office, so I popped in there.

"Can I help you?"
"Um hey. Yah, I have a small request of you."
"Yes?"
"I need ... a paper clip. And just so you know, I probably won't bring it back."
"Oh, I can handle that!!"

(Thanks, Admissions!) The lady behind the desk was really nice. I thanked her and ran back to David, handing him the paper clip. He shoved it into the port and wiggled it back and forth for what seemed like eternity. Finally, as I was watching, the red glow stopped coming out of the port.

I pressed the volume button my Lappy.

*POP*

SOUND!!

You've got to be kidding me, Apple. You mean to tell me you put the switch for Optical Out INSIDE the port? That's potentially the worst design I've ever heard of. Granted, if I had a pair of Optical speakers, they would probably flip the switch on and off for me when I plugged them in. But if that's the case, why is it so easy for the switch to accidentally get switched on with a pair of regular headphones?

That's just lousy. Lousy, I tell you. Give the average human a simple switch to turn it off if it accidentally gets turned on. I asked around, and apparently I'm not the only person with a Mac that has had this problem.

Tags: Apple

The retail release date of Microsoft Windows Vista was January 30, 2007. Over the first week, Vista sold less than 200,000 copies.

Apple OS X Leopard was released on Friday, October 26, 2007. Over the weekend, Leopard sold over 2 million copies.

'Nuff said.

Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Operating Systems

I was perusing my favorite News Feeds this afternoon on the wonderful iGoogle, when I came across a topic I hadn't heard about for a while. How many of you know about about NBCs little money tantrum? (Show of hands, please.) Allow me to summarize ...

In late August of 2007, NBC declared it was going to break up with Apple (a.k.a., not renew their video contract with them for their TV Shows, etc.) because they couldn't manage to come to an agreement about pricing policies. The contract was due to end in December of 2007, if I remember correctly, but it may have been the first half of 2008. Instead of waiting out the rest of the contract and selling NBCs TV Shows until the contract ran out, Apple pulled the plug early, yanking all NBC shows from the iTunes store the same week NBC made their harsh statement. This was Apple's way of saying, "We don't need you anyway, NBC. We're going to define the next generation of audio/video, whether you side with us or not."

Apple is already paving the way for the next wave of audio/video communication, especially with the iTunes Music Store and the newly released Apple TV.

So, what was the problem exactly? NBC wanted to try out some "experimental pricing" strategies with Apple. Instead of charing $1.99 for each episode, NBC wanted their shows to cost $4.99. They also wanted users to pay more for "more popular programming." Apple's answer? Nope! Why make our customers pay more for something than they absolutely have to?

This brings us to today, when Zucker states that, "We know that Apple has destroyed the music business -- in terms of pricing -- and if we don’t take control, they’ll do the same thing on the video side." Right. Apple has destroyed the music business. He doesn't actually explain how Apple has done this, which seems pretty crucial to me. The way I see it is, unlike Napster, SpiralFrog, Connect, or Rhapsody, Apple offered a user-friendly alternative to these music stores, while taking down the hyper-aggressive DRM all of those other music stores force you to live with. Apple is currently in the process of transitioning into the same thing with video.

According to Zucker, “We wanted to take one show, it didn’t matter which one it was, and experiment and sell it for $2.99,” he said. “We made that offer for months and they said no.” He makes it sound like he's trying to us (the consumer) a favor! The show to which he was referring was "Heros," the very popular NBC equivalent to Lost ;).

Zucker stated that it wasn't a tough decision to remove their content from the Apple Music Store because they only had made about $15 million from the deal. I'm sorry you escaped with such little profits, greedy NBC.

Another thing I found very interesting was that NBC claimed it should get a portion of the hardware sales Apple was making off of the iPod and iPhone. Um, hello? Your content is strictly software. If someone watches your show on a Sony TV and DVD player, does Sony then owe you a portion of their earnings? Just ... please, stop talking, Zucker!

If you ask me, Zucker is being ridiculous ... I don't think Apple ruined the music business OR the video business, I think Apple actually gave the consumer what they wanted; cheaper, more reasonably priced products!

Well, I have only one thing to say in conclusion. NBC, as a member of the demographic to which you are selling, I would rather purchase your content off of the iTunes Music Store for a lesser price than from any other location from which you jack the prices like nobody's business. So Apple didn't ruin the music (and video) business. I would say they correct music (and video) pricing schemes.

Tags: Apple, Internet, Music, Television

Remember before the iPhone was released, how Cisco sued Apple for using the name iPhone? Cisco said they already had a phone called the iPhone, and the name was copyright. True enough, they did. But Apple won the lawsuit and was still allowed to use the name iPhone.

Apple and Cisco meet again, this time after the release of the iPhone. Cisco makes more than just phones. They make pretty much anything electronic and wireless.

The weekend after the iPhone was released, Duke University started having trouble with their network. Duke, being the prestigious college that it is, of course has the entire campus blanketed in wireless Internet access. Apparently, the weekend after the iPhone was released, the Duke network kept jamming. Many reports were published saying that the iPhone was to blame. A likely guess was that the iPhone was requesting to log onto the wireless network, and when the request was denied, the iPhone kept trying anyway. Over and over again, hundreds of times, thus jamming the network and making it stall for 10-15 minutes.

Duke said they were going to do a full investigation of the network to find out why exactly this was happening. And who should help them with this investigation? Cisco! It turns out Duke's network is maintained by Cisco, and all of the wireless routers are Cisco routers.

After an investigation into the situation, it was revealed that the iPhone was actually not to blame. Oops. The problem was finally traced to a deployment of a Cisco-based network.

It looks like the iPhone is off the hook.

Tags: Apple

Hitachi Ltd., based in Japan, is a diverse company that produces anything from batteries, lamps, kitchen appliances, power tools, remote controls, industrial construction machinery... they'll even remodel your home if you want them too! They're also the parent company of Hitachi Automotive Products, which manufactures the parts for a car I'm sure all of you have heard of: The Ferrari.

For being a company that produces such a wide variety of products, the first thought that comes to my mind is that they aren't good at any one thing, thus they have to cover all the bases to keep revenue coming in. Just the opposite with Hitachi. All Hitachi products that I know of are top of the line.

It's no surprise, then, that since Hitachi has it's hand in every other production market, it might as well be in the electronics/computer business as well. Let's talk about Hitachi Hard Drives.

Seagate, Maxtor, Western Digital, and Hitachi are, in my opinion, the "king's" of Hard Drives, external and internal. Since Seagate recently bought out Maxtor, I guess that leaves the race down to three.

I think Seagate has always been the, "Get the biggest drive we can out there as quick as possible!" type. Granted, they're out there selling 400GB and 500GB Hard Drives while the rest are stuck back at 120GB, but the physical mass of a Seagate drive is usually quite a big larger than the other companies... which is logical.

Western Digital is all about a beautiful, sleek external appearance, and "whisper quiet." In general, Western Digital drives have a smaller capacity, smaller physical mass, and smaller price tag. Western Digital is also thought to be the most reliable and most trusted Hard Drive company on the market.

Hitachi Hard Drives aren't quite so common at a store like Best Buy, but that doesn't mean they're not up to par. In fact, most of the time you won't know you have a Hitachi Hard Drive, if you get one. Hitachi, like Western Digital has been known to do occasionally, releases it's drives under another case name. Simply put, it sells the drives to a drive case company and that company basically takes the credit (or heat) for the drive. Hitachi uses a company called SimpleTech most of the time.

Now, for the first time ever, you can buy a Hard Drive with a storage capacity of 1.0TB (Terabyte)! That's 1,000GB, 1,000,000MB, 1,000,000,000KB, or, in case you're curious, 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. There's potential for a lot of binary there...

For $399, you can own a 1.0TB Hard Drive from Hitachi. The first of it's kind, and the first of many to follow, I assure you. The prices should drop fairly quickly as Seagate and Western Digital strive to catch up. The release of the first Terabyte Hard Drive is a BIG DEAL! With everything moving to digital these days, Hard Drives have been the biggest issue. Always too small. Never enough space to fit ALL your programs, ALL your music, and ALL your movies on there. And with applications (and Operating Systems... *gag*) getting larger and becoming more and more of space (and MEMORY *cough*) hogs, bigger Hard Drives are definitely a necessity.


Hitachi Deskstar 7K1000 1TB SATA Specification:

Capacity: 1TB (1,000GB)
Interface: Serial ATA 3.0GB/s
Rotation Speed: 7200 RPMs
Buffer Size: 32MB
Media Transfer Rate: 1070MB/s
Interface Transfer Rate: 300MB/s
Latency: 4.17ms
Seek Time: 8.5ms

Tags: Data Storage

Just the other day I went out to eat at the Olive Garden. It happened that the wait to get in an eat was about 45 minutes, so we decided to go over to Office Max to buy a few things. I walked in the store and realized, "Hey, Windows Vista just came out!" (This was several weeks ago.) I made my way over to the software isle and found the section of Microsoft goods. I was quite taken back. Seriously. I think I fell backwards. I shoved my hand in pocket and brought out my phone to call Joey. "Joey, you're not going to believe this! Have you seen the prices for the 2007 line from Microsoft?"
"No. What are they?" I relayed the following information to him.

Windows Vista Home Basic: $199.99
Windows Vista Home Premium: $239.99
Windows Vista Business: $299.99
Windows Vista Ultimate: $399.99

Microsoft Office 2007 Home and Student: $149.99
Microsoft Office 2007 Standard: $399.99
Microsoft Office 2007 Small Business: $449.99
Microsoft Office 2007 Professional: $499.99
Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate: $679.99

Microsoft Visio Standard 2007: $259.99

Ironically, Ultimate, which is supposed to be the complete package, doesn't actually include Microsoft Visio. I don't know why.

Now that we have the prices laid out, I would like to point out that I actually used Windows Vista the other day, so I can finally speak from experience! Here's my first impressions of Microsoft's new Operating System.

I sat down at a Vista laptop and was impressed with the new visuals. Pretty icons, shiny new taskbar; everything had a water-like reflective appearance, making it look very appealing. I opened the Recycle Bin and the Help Center, just to see what the windows looked like. I like the new shape of the minimize, maximize, and exit buttons in the upper-right corner of the windows. I liked the animation that was shown when opening, closing, and minimizing programs. It did seem a bit jerky when maximizing a program, but I could live with that.

As you roll over icons, they start to glow, which looks very nice.

The PC I was using had 2GB of RAM, and with that amount everything seemed to open and close fairly quickly.

Microsoft has really improved on the behind-the-scenes matters of their OS. Security is greatly improved, and integration with networks and other devices in your house, such as your cell phone, PDA, Xbox, and TV is nearly seamless. Microsoft still has the hold-your-hand notifications that it's known for to alert you of every little change you make, just in case you didn't mean to make it. I think it would make me feel better if my OS didn't assume I was an idiot. I want it to protect me from things like viruses, spam, worms, and such. But I don't want it to alert me every time I open a pop up, or change a simple setting.

All of your most imoprtant information is immedietly delivered to you with the new Sidebar that is implemented into Windows Vista. It's not annoying. It doesn't jump out at you too much and distract you from the important things you're working on. It's just there if you want to look at it for the weather, news, or whatever you have it configured to show you.

Visually, I was very impressed with my Vista experience. But the interface just still isn't intuitive! Not only that, but why is that someone who has been using a Microsoft Operating System for over, including DOS, for all 18 years of his life is confused and lost in the new Windows Vista? Continuity is your friend, Microsoft.

Why is it that there is no longer the "Start" button? It's now just a circle with the new Windows logo on it. You can figure that out pretty quickly by knowing that the "Start" button has always been in the lower-left corner of Microsoft's Operating Systems, but an OS shouldn't assume things about it's users.

I right-clicked on the desktop and a menu dropped down. I looked to the bottom of the menu, and yet another change had been made to the simple desktop options menu. Where Microsoft used to call the bottom button "Properties," they changed the name to "Preferences." Again, why do we need to change something if it already works and people are already used to it? We can assume it does the same thing as the "Properties" button did in Windows XP, ME, 98, and 95, but our eyes are trained to look for "Properties" not "Preferences."

When I clicked on the Start Menu, I was lost... where were all of my programs? The "All Programs" button did a terrible job of jumping out at me, and it did a fabulous job of blending in all too well with the Start Menu. And since this was a fresh install of Windows Vista, I didn't have any favorite programs yet. When I did click on "All Programs", I glanced right, waiting for the Start Menu to expand and show me a list of all my programs. It didn't. Microsoft condensed the Start Menu, and now when you click "All Programs" it displays all your programs over where your "Favorite Programs" used to be. That was a bit annoying, I thought, because it was just one more step then to get back to my favorite programs. It also was a hassle because instead of spreading everything out for me to see all at once, I had to scroll through everything.

Microsoft has been bragging about Instant Search since they announced that they were making a new OS, oh... six years ago. I wasn't impressed. Instant Search isn't actually "instant." I mean, once you press Enter, it searches. But to me, an "Instant search" should search AS I type for the letters I have typed thus far. When I did press enter, it didn't work! I typed in "Control Panel." I pressed Enter, a blank dialog popped up for less than a second, then disappeared. That was the end of it. I tried again. I typed "Adobe" and pressed enter. Again, blank dialog opened and closed, but no Adobe. I don't know if this was a glitch or if I was doing something wrong, but if I was doing something wrong then I must state my main pointa gain: An OS should be intuitive, user friendly, and painfully obvious.

Easily my FAVORITE part about Windows Vista: I apologize, but the only thing I know to refer to them as is "Smart Folders." I don't know their official name in Vista, but they're amazing! Finally, Microsoft has done away with "My Pictures", "My Videos", etc. We now simply have "Pictures", "Videos", "Music", etc. Here's where it becomes truly genius. You never have to add any files to these folders! That's why they're smart. The sole purpose of these folders is to keep a list of every type of file that would be associated with that folder. Of course, this is customizable. Pictures scans your hard drive and will present to you every file type found that could be a picture of some kind. Music looks for any audio format. You get the idea. If you think about this for a second, these amazing Smart Folders eliminate third party organization software like Picasa, iPhoto, and Adobe Photoshop Album. Granted, Picasa is still a wonderful tool for enhancing your photos. But now, even with Picasa, you can just point Picasa to your Pictures folder and Windows Vista already has everything organized! You can now enhance your photos all you want in Picasa without worrying about losing them or anything tragic like that.

On that note, this is great for people like my Grandpa. It's perfect for helping avoid the, "Junk, where did I put that file?" feeling. Yes, there is a "Documents" folder as well. It's like having a default search built in to the OS, except every time you want to see every single picture you have on your hard drive, you don't have to run the search again, because it's already run itself. All you have to do is click on the folder where it compiled the list of all these files. It's brilliant, I tell you!

But how much is brilliance worth? Granted, I love a lot of things about Windows Vista. And there are several things that frustrate me about Windows Vista. But, of course, if you know me, I'd have to get the Ultimate edition. I'm not willing to fork out $399.99 for the next OS. And I haven't even begun to talk about the hardware upgrades that are almost always required, and are going to cost you even more money.

I'll let you decide for yourself whether Vista is worth it or not. Microsoft was kind enough to compile a list of 100 reasons to switch to Vista. I'll be sticking with Windows XP, personally.

Click here.

(Grandpa, you CAN'T upgrade!)

Tags: Microsoft, Operating Systems, Apple

It's no surprise that when PC World Magazine did an article on who the top 50 most important people on the web were, the three executives over at Google ranked in at #1. They deserve that spot.

Before I go on, please realize this is PC World magazine. Not MacWorld. PC World IS Microsoft biased.

Ranking in at #2 was none other than Steve Jobs.

Sadly, Bill Gates didn't even make the list.

And neither did Al Gore, for that matter.

PC World Magazine Article

Tags: Internet, Apple, Microsoft

Wednesday, February 28th, 2007, marks the first day my MacBook Pro has completely crashed on me. It didn't choose a convenient time to crash either. No, it couldn't have chosen a time when I was at home listening to music or something. It chose the time when it was in the middle of a sideshow in front of almost 100 people... TWICE!

The first crash was before Church had started. I was getting the slides ready for the night. All of a sudden, my screen turned dark grey and a message popped up saying, "A fatal error has occurred and Mac OS X needs to restart. At this point, your Mac becomes completely disfunctional. You cannot do ANYTHING, click anything, type anything, or communicate with your computer in any way except to hold down the power button and restart it. Hopefully your documents are saved...

Someone, who will remain anonnymous to save his humility, came over to poke fun at me and my computer. "Ha, did your computer just crash?" He asked. "Yah, it happens." "It's because it's an Apple." He stated blunty. I covered my computers ears. I turned to him and said, "Oh, really? Is that a fact? Do you know why it crashed?" "No." He said. Brian finished my thought for me and said, "He was opening a Microsoft product... PowerPoint to be exact."

Later in the night, in the middle of singing, I pushed the down arrow to switch to the next slide and all of a sudden... BAM! PowerPoint disappears. My computer didn't freeze this time, and it didn't make me restart. PowerPoint just closed for absolutely no reason!!

The fact that "Microsoft products aren't meant to run on a Mac," which he claimed, is absolutely no excuse. So if I take my P.O.D. CD and put it in your car, it should still play the music I love, right? It's the same concept. You can't just take a Microsoft Office CD and put it into your Mac and install it. No, Microsoft had to specially design the suite to run on Mac OS X which, you guessed it, it WAS meant to run on a Mac. If it crashes, that is asbolutely, without a doubt, a sign of poor programming. Sure, you can claim that it wasn't supposed to run on a Mac anyway, but that doesn't excuse your bad programming. So, Microsoft can't make a product that runs well on a Mac. How about Apple? QuickTime runs on Windows and, for the record, Microsoft used QuickTime as the default player of .mov and .mpg files for a while... I think until XP came out. Also, iTunes is made for Windows. I've never had either one of those programs crash on me using Windows, and QuickTime has been around on Windows since Windows 95. iTunes hasn't been around nearly that long, but still, at least Apple can make a product that will work wherever their users want it. (Disregard the latest issues with iTunes and Windows Vista... they're working on that one.)

But don't you try to blame a programming crashing on my Operating System when I've never had that happen until Wednesday. It was due to the fact that I'm running a Mac. But it was Microsoft's error.

Funny how that works, huh? Nice try though, Tyler.

Tags: Apple, Operating Systems, Microsoft

// Yes, this will run if you compile it

import javax.swing.JOptionPane;

class LanguageOfTheFuture
{
public static void main(String[] args)
{
JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "If Java is truly the " +
“\"Language of the future\" like it's worshippers claim, we'll” +
all be speaking in code soon enough.”, "Java", JOptionPane.INFORMATION_MESSAGE);

System.exit(0);
}
}

Of course, I still prefer civilized conversation with my friends.

For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, Java has nothing to do with coffee. It's a programming language created in 1991 by James Gosling (yes, he is Canadian) of Sun Microsystems. The original project name was Oak, but the release name was Java.

So what's so beautiful about this language that leads programmers to believe it's the "Language to end all languages"? Let's start with a crash course on the fundamentals of the Java language.

Sun Microsystems implemented the first public release of Java in 1995. The Java language is derived (to an extent) from the C/C++ language. The common goal of the Java language was to provide a more simplified language than C++ that was object-orientied, would allow one file to be viewed on multiple operating systems, and would have easy-to-use built-in server-side functionality. One of Java's biggest advantages is the ability for cross-platform support. That is to say, I could create a file in the Eclipse Software Development Kit (SDK), compile the program to an executable Java Archive (JAR) file, send that JAR file to another computer with another Operating System (OS) on it, and run the program without any errors. This cannot be done with a .exe from Windows, .app from Mac, or a Linux executable (which doesn't have an extension). These executable formats are native to their OS. A JAR file can be run on any OS (Windows, Mac, Linux, or Solaris) that the Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is present on. Unlike an executable JAR file, the JRE is native to the OS you're running. You must download and install the JRE for your OS before you can execute a JAR file.

Java has three different "types." Java Standard Edition (SE), Java Enterprise Edition (EE), and Java Mobile Edition (ME).

Another huge advantage to Java is server-side functionality and simplicity. Java SE supports server functionality, but Java EE enhances this functionality a great deal. I could take that same application I just compiled and, instead of making it an executable JAR file, I could compile it to an Applet and upload it to a web server. You could then create a web page that would implement that Java Applet and, there you have it, you've just put your application on the internet for viewing anywhere in the world using any browser that supports Java.

Java was also designed to be highly portable. What you may not realize is how often you use Java applications. Your cell phone, your PDA, your MP3 player, your cars MP3/CD player, and yes, the new iPhone. Most of the applications running on your mobile devices are probably programmed with Java ME.

Another big advantage to the Java language is... it's FREE! Everybody loves free, right? The JRE is free, the Java SDK is free, and you can always find a free compiler. The Java language was designed to be Open Source; the code shared freely for learning purposes and better development.

Let's walk through the creation of a simple Java stand-alone application. I go to www.Eclipse.org and download the editor/compiler for my system: Mac OS X. After installing, I run Eclipse and create a new project. Let's just use the simple program I wrote above. I plop that into a .java file that I've created in my project and save it. I compile my program and run it. It seems to work fine, so now I want to send the program to one of my buddies for them to check out. Can I send the file I just created when I compiled the program? No! In Java, when you compile you do not make an executable. You make a .class file, which can only be viewed by people with the Java SDK. The SDK is a fairly large download, and unless you're developing Java applications, there's no use for it, so the average person won't have it. When I compiled the application, all I created was some byte code. Byte code is interpretted by JRE and converted into machine code to run the application on the OS you're currently running on... that's why they have platform specific JREs. But still, my .class is byte code, but the JRE can't run it without the SDK to help it. If I want to make an executable I have do one more step. I must "Export" my project from Eclipse. Using Eclipse, this process is far more difficult than it should be, but it works out in the end. Eclipse will then build a JAR file which can be executed on any computer, any operating system, that is running the JRE.

Still... the end user must have the JRE.

Sure, Java makes pretty GUIs. And the language, in most cases, is a heck of a lot more clean and pretty than C++ (minus formatting). But that's a hassle... it takes me longer to compile, and I can't guarantee you will be able to view the file immedietly after you recieve it. And the JRE is no small file! It's not a "quick download."

C++ may be an older language, but it is NOT a dead language, so quit saying that! C++ has features that Java decided to drop because they were too confusing, or Java just didn't want to handle them. (Pointers CAN be useful, people. They're not always a headache once you figure them out.) C++ still communicates with hardware better than Java. C++ does formatting of output WAY better than Java. I don't know why Java made formatting such a headache when they were stealing the language from C++. They simplified so many things, but formatting they unsimplified! It was simple in C++...

I like the idea of passing one file around to four different OSs. I also like the idea of sending an executable JAR file through email so Gmail doesn't gripe about me sending an "executable file" (refering to a .exe). C may be dead, but C++ is still alive and well. Java has a lot of nice things, don't get me wrong. In general, I like Java better than C++. But C++ is still a more powerful language. The code and final application of Java are far prettier than C++.

Still... in the words of Joel Whitehouse, "Yah, Java has a better syntactical design. But gosh darn it. I like that I can compile a 3k executable in C++!"

Still... as my Java teacher says frequently, "No, it's not magic... it's just Java."

Tags: Operating Systems, Programming

When I first saw the iPhone, my jaw was almost on the floor. Then I heard the price. At $499, I'll never get one, but it's still an amazing technology breakthrough. But I read an article on CNet News the other day that reported the price of the iPhone should be dropping significantly pretty quick after it's release.

The 4gb model is currently listed at $499. However, estimated assembly costs are only $245. The 8gb model is listed at $599. The estimated assembly costs for that model are only $280.

Once Apple realizes it's competition, currently LG, it should drop the price significantly to compete with the other companies. Although the current LG KE850 is priced at a hefty $899, so LG needs to shrink it's big head before it really becomes a competition for Apple.

One advantage to the LG KE850--it's unlocked. Apple's iPhone is restricted to Cingular. That will make a lot of people buy the LG KE850. But what sounds better?

"Hey, what kind of phone do you have?"
"I have an iPhone."
"Sweet. I have an LG KE850. It's basically the same thing..."

Yah, except it just makes you sound like a nerd, while Apple's iPhone allows for you to keep some of your dignity.

$250 or even $299 is a very reasonable price to pay for an iPhone. The phone I carry in my pocket costs $149 without a 2-year contract, but I got it for $49. It's just a phone. The iPhone is much, much more. And at $299, it's competing at the same price as an iPod. That's a good deal considering all of it's functionality.

Tags: Apple

I've found a solution to the HD DVD or Blu-ray debate: Apple TV.

I don't know if you've kept up with the argument, but regular DVDs are almost out of the picture. Everyone is switching to HD DVD, or the new (and debatably better) Blu-Ray Disc. So the question everyone (in the nerd circles at least) is asking is, "Which disc will win?" My personal opinion: HD DVD is going ot win the battle. But let's think of an even better idea. One that will be a little more permanent. After all, it wasn't too long ago that we were all on the VHS. The VHS became the DVD, the DVD is now becoming the HD DVD (or Blu-Ray Disc), and the never-ending search for the unscratchable disc will probably be the next thing to throw itself on the scene. My point is, the media scene is constantly a changing one. New technology is always presenting itself. As soon as you get the latest player, a new technology will come out to out date the player you have. Of course, the new HD DVD players will also support older, non-HD DVDs... but they won't support VHS unless you add an entirely separate interface to it. But will the next latest-and-greatest technology support the circular DVD format? Or will it be something even better and smaller, like a plug-in device such as a Flash Drive? That would make your DVD players obsolete then.

Let's get back to the current argument though. HD DVD or Blu-Ray? I say neither. What if you didn't even need a disc? What if you didn't even need a physical entity of the movie you wanted to watch? Imagine this:

You sit down with a group of your friends to watch a movie. You argue for a while trying to decide what movie is the greatest movie of all time and thus should be watched. Finally, someone chimes in, "Hey, what about that new movie that came out yesterday with Will Ferrell and Ben Stiller in it?" The arguing stops and someone says the name of the movie. Finally, you all agree that it sounds like a fabulous movie... of course it does, it has Ben Stiller and Will Ferrell in it! You can't get much better than that!! You reach for your Universal Remote and click the "Search For Movie" button. A search menu appears and you enter the title of the movie. You wait a few seconds as the online database is searched. A screen then pops up with the name of the movie, a brief description, a picture of the cover, and an option to watch the trailer. Over on the right there's a "Similar Movies" box with movies that are of the same genre. Near the bottom of the screen you navigate to the "Purchase" button for $9.99. The screen fades and you see the spinning circle informing you that the next screen is loading. After about 15 seconds, the movie starts playing.

So let's break this down. You just used the technology of the future. The fool-proof technology of the future. The Apple TV. You also just purchased a new movie that you can watch anytime you want, as many times as you want, without fear or scratching or damaging a disc that the movie might be contained on.

The Apple TV is a very small device, about the same size as the new Nintendo Wii, that has two cables. One plugs into your TV. The other plugs into the outlet to provide the box power. The rest is done wirelessly. The Apple TV wirelessly communicates with you PC or Mac anywhere in the house via Wi-fi 802.11 b, g, and/or the soon-to-be-standard n. It currently comes stands with a 40gb hard drive built in. Using the Apple TV, you can view almost any media file on your computer, whether it be music, photos, or a video. Basically, if it can be viewed using iTunes, and it transfers to your iPod, you can view it using Apple TV. Using a remote about half the size of your palm (which is probably a downside because it'll be super easy to lose), you can navigate all of the media you have on your computer. After browsing through your movies, or whatever, you select the one you wish to watch. As soon as you click on it, a file transfer is initiated, transferring the entire movie file to the Apple TV's hard drive. After a good portion of the movie is transferred to the Apple TV, the movie should start playing--probably after just a few seconds. The rest of the movie file will continue to transfer over as you watch the movie. This is going to be the same with any file you choose to look at, but it would be most significant with a movie file because they are the largest.

The optimal connection to use will be the 802.11n, because it's about ten times faster than the g. And the b... well, that's not even really worth discussing anymore.

Now check this out. You didn't even have to worry about finding the disc. You don't have to worry about ever scratching it. You didn't have to worry about leaving the comfort of your couch (lazy Americans) and going out and buying or renting it. And you just paid $9.99 for a new release, which is a pretty good price!

This isn't limited to just movies. This could be applied to anything, like TV shows. Anything that's currently on the iTunes Music Store can be viewed on the Apple TV via the wireless connection to your computer via the internet connection your computer gets from whatever ISP you have. From your TV remote, the entire iTunes Music Store is at your fingertips. (Just a side note, this is also true with the iPhone, minus the remote part.) In the near future, anything available on a DVD now (and then) could very easily be made available online to download as well. Apple currently only has the rights to Disney movies and some of Paramount's older releases, but nothing new from Paramount. Apple also has a lot of TV shows, both popular and unpopular, available. I think as soon as this technology catches on the online database of movies is going to grow tremendously... right now all the movie producers are freaked out about the DRM. But as soon as they calm down about that, they should release their movies for download as well.

This of the possibilities for ease of use and the ability to make America even fatter... yet another convenience for us! Now we don't even have to leave our house to purchase a movie!

Quit arguing about HD DVD or Blu-Ray for the new standard. I choose Apple TV for my entertainment system when I get my own house and a few million.

For more specs on the Apple TV, check this link to Apple. Apple TV

Tags: Apple, High Definition

History was made on Tuesday, January 9th, 2007, by Apple, Inc. It was:

115 x 61 wide x 11.6mm
3.5 inch multi-touch display screen
320 by 480 at 160 ppi
4gb or 8gb storage
Wi-fi (802.11 b/g), EDGE, or Bluetooth 2.0
2 megapixel camera
4.8 ounces
Up to 5 hours of battery for talk/video/browse
Up to 16 hours of battery for audio
And yes, it does run Mac OS X.

Introducing the new iPhone from Apple.

When Steve Jobs stood on the stage at Macworld on Tuesday and presented the iPhone in all of its glory to the masses, he wasn't just selling us a new phone--he was selling us the future! A future where the iPod, phone, internet, and essentially a PDA all come together on one OS X platform in a handheld device!!

Also released on Tuesday was the Apple TV, though it's significance was severely dwarfed with it being released next to something as spectacular as the iPhone. But I'll cover the Apple TV in all of it's glory in another post.

Apple is known for the effort they put into the design and simplicity of their products. The iPhone is no exception. But the iPhone is more than a pretty phone. Much more.

You navigate the iPhone using multi-touch technology. That is to say, you simply apply pressure to the screen to make the device perform various functions. Tap to click, slide to scroll, two fingers down and pinch to zoom in and out, etc. I would love to get my hands on one of these just to experience it, but the day where that might happen seems very far away at this point.

There was a lot of speculation as to what Apple was going to release at Tuesday's Keynote. Some people said a widescreen iPod. Others said an iPhone. Others said other things, like a wireless internet device, or a newer model of the laptops or desktops. Apple took three of those rumors and made them reality, but instead of three separate devices, they have put them perfectly into one handheld device.

The iPod is, of course, a widescreen, touch screen iPod that piggy-backs off of the phones 4gb or 8gb memory. The iPod feature now supports CoverFlow, which is really neat to see. The videos are such high quality as well, they look fabulous on the little screen.

The phone has many more features than even the smartest of smart phones. Of biggest note (I think), the iPhone syncs with your computer in the exact same way your iPod does... even the same cable, I believe. It also syncs through iTunes. Every time you plug your iPhone into the dock, it will charge and update all of your music, contacts, calendar events, movies, photos, favorites, mail, and more... And you don't even have to click anything!

To make a call, simply click contacts, scroll through your list with the flip of your finger, and click on the name you wish to dial. It's that easy! Now calling... place the phone next to your ear and a sensor automatically senses a close object (your face) and turns off the display to save battery. Bring the phone back down in front of you and the display with turn back on automatically.

As I said, the phone runs OS X, so all of the main features from your Mac will also be on the iPhone. For instance iCal, Mail, and Safari. iPhone is the first portable device to support a fully featured web browser. The entire browser runs natively on your iPhone, which is truly amazing. If you can't read the text on the page after it loads, simple place down to fingers and push them apart to zoom in... or just double tap on the area and it will automatically zoom in where you tapped. The phone will automatically detect a Wi-fi or Bluetooth internet connection, if present. If not present, it will automatically (if it's in your plan) log you on to the network's (Cingular) wireless internet via the cell phone towers. As soon as you move back into an area with Wi-fi, it will take you off of the network's wireless internet and place you on the free Wi-fi without even bothering you with a notice dialog.

There are three main sensors in the iPhone. One senses if objects are close, to turn off the display when the phone is held up to your face. The other senses ambient light, to dim the screen when lights are turned off to conserve energy. And the third is a motion sensor. In any application on the iPhone, simply turn it on it's side and the phone goes into widescreen. Turn it back upright and the image is readjusted properly.

Mail. A fully functional mail client is also provided with the iPhone, and it will read from any POP or SMTP server. Popular email clients which support POP and SMTP are Yahoo!, Gmail, AOL, and I believe Earthlink. No, not Hotmail or MSN. Not without a charge, of course... what do you expect? It's Microsoft!

The phone supports Google Maps, so if you're lost, or just want to know where the nearest Starbucks is relevant to your current position on the globe, never fear... your iPhone is near!

Of course the phone supports SMS text messaging. I'm not 100%, but I also believe SMS can be a chat client, so if you're on a wireless network it won't charge you for a text, it will simply IM for free.

All typing is done with an onscreen QWERTY keyboard that you simply touch with your fingers. I've heard that it takes a bit of getting used to, but what phone doesn't? I've also heard that's the only thing on the phone that takes some getting used too--everything else is so simple it's astounding.

Basically, the iPhone is way, way, way, WAY more than just a phone. It's an iPod, a phone, an internet communicator, and Jobs doesn't refer to it as this, but I do: A PDA. Because it essentially does every function OF a PDA... and then some! All for a reasonable price of $499 ($599 for the 8gb). It seems a bit steep at first glance, but if you think about all the functions it has, it really is a reasonable price.

Of course, the biggest downside to the entire phone is the exclusive service provider, Cingular. I don't have a problem with Cingular except that I don't use them. My Grandpa does, but I won't be able to talk him into getting an iPhone. I think it would have been a smarter choice on Apple's part to make the phone universal, but they didn't ask me. And I'm sure they had their reason. Another problem with the phone is Apple's insistence, once again, to make the battery as difficult as possible to get to. Apple strives for simplicity in every way... their are three, and only three actual buttons you can click on the iPhone. The rest is touch screen. But their batteries for all iPods and most of their devices are always obscure and hard to get to. You basically have to take it in to a shop to get it replaced. But the phone is still impressing me, even with those two bummers.

Imagine the possibilities of a device this powerful... and portable! The sheer thought of it blows my mind, and I haven't even got to hold one yet, I've just seen one in use and read many articles on them. Infinite information at your fingertips. The possibilities are endless. What is Apple going to amaze us with next in the near future? Apple has reinvented the phone and completely changed the way we look at communication and the limits we had placed on it.

(For the record, and just to clear this up for all of you out there, if Microsoft had come out with a phone of this magnitude, yes, I would be writing an article on it. The fact is, Microsoft doesn't have anything like this. Apple does, so I'm covering it. End of discussion.)

Tags: Apple

2009 UPDATE: Some of you insist on believing (or so it seems) that this post was written yesterday. It wasn’t. It was written three years ago, though it still gets more hits than most other pages on my site. Understand that some of my opinions have changed, some of the facts have changed, and my writing style has improved immensely since I wrote this. There’s no need to post harsh comments or email me to inform me of how I wrong I am. I am well aware of the recent changes and improvements in technology.

2007 UPDATE: Some have express that they feel all of my so called "facts" are Mac biased. First of all, facts are facts; if they have a bias, whatever they're biased towards is superior because they're facts, and therefore indisputable. Yes, a few of my facts are Mac biased, and a few of my facts are Microsoft biased, but you wouldn’t go to an Apple news sites to get information on when the new Microsoft Zune is coming out, you'd go to a site that covers Microsoft technology information for that. Finally, what source of information doesn't have a bias? Give me one. Even the supposedly unbiased National Public Radio, paid for with your tax dollars, has a severely liberal bias.

DISCLAIMER: Before reading this post, please lighten up and relax. This is meant to be satirical and light, as any opinionated discussion on technology should be. A member of the Facebook group “I don’t hate Macs - I hate arrogant mac users” decided to post a rebuttal to Apple’s fourteen promotional points in order to show them all false. Since a lot of his "facts" were merely opinions stated as facts, I felt compelled to shed some more light on the situation from the point of view of someone who has used and owned numerous operating systems and computers and is open to all options. I use a Mac and PC at home and a PC at work, and the rest of my family also uses PC. I understand there are pros and cons to both platforms, but my personal preference depends on the job I’m performing. I boot Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux through Boot Camp for programming purposes. Before you fall out of your chair and shake your fist in furry at anything I’ve said below, remember that most of this is my opinion. You don't need to scream and swear at me back in a comment. There's no need for harsh words or name calling ...

Now sit back, open your mind, and smile, because this is meant for fun, not to start a nuclear (or verbal) war.

Alright, that's all for the disclaimer. Below I have listed the fourteen taglines Mac gives for its computers. Below those are Creston’s responses to those taglines. Below that is my opinion from my experience using both a Mac and a PC. Below that are links to some sites that will provide facts to prove my opinions (if possible). Enjoy!

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#1—It just works
Hmm … Just about every PC in the world works fine out of the box too. This may have been a point back 26 years ago when PCs were kits, but now, it’s standard. As it turns out, the Windows kernel is very reliable, all Windows crashes are caused by people installing bad software. The same thing will happen to a Mac, for the record.

Opinions:
Well, that actually depends on what you plan on doing with your system. Personally, when I used Windows previous, as soon as I ever bought a brand new machine, straight out of the box I always did a fresh format. Especially if you ordered your PC from Dell or some such company. It's just sick how much extra crap comes loaded on the machine. A few extra programs come with a Mac too, however, unlike a Windows PC, all of the programs that come pre-installed on any Mac OS are made by Apple. On top of that, the software that comes on a Mac is actually the full version of the program, not an annoying 30 day trial. You know that if you don't do a fresh format of you're PC as soon as you get it, you probably never will. That 30 day trial will run out and the program will just stay on your PC. Obviously, you can't use it without pay the $150 to get a license, but taking the 5 minutes out of your day to uninstall it is just too much work! Thanks to Apple's integrated apps, however, if you don't want that program on there (GarageBand for instance), all you have to do is drag and drop it into the recycling bin. It's gone in less than 5 seconds. If you think there's still fragments of that program left somewhere on your hard drive, you can install AppZapper and confidently uninstall all yours apps... but you really don't need to.

You're way out in left field in stating that "all Windows crashes are caused by people installing bad software." If there was one thing I learned in Economics class, it's that if event A precedes even B and C, even A may or may not have caused events B and C. Not enough information is provided. You can't drop a statement like that and blame every single crash on the Windows OS from this point forward on the user. Granted, I think a great deal of crashes and errors and lock-ups on a computer are user related, but I'm not taking all of the blame off of the OS. You have no idea how many times my Windows programs would crash in the middle of my work, for no apparent reason. All I was doing was typing! Or maybe you do have an idea... I'm sure it's happened to you too! A friend said to me the other day after hearing I had switched to Mac, "Is it true that Safari is really unreliable and crashes all the time? I've heard that about Macs." I said, "Safari has crashed on me once since I got my Mac. It was mostly my fault too. Mac apps crash on occasion, true enough, but I wouldn't say that they crash 'all the time,' or that they crash anymore than Windows programs. How many times do you see 'The program has closed unexpectedly. Would you like to send Microsoft and error report?' in a day? Too many for me, that's why I switched to Mac." So, to state it properly, you should probably say "most Windows crashes are caused by people installing bad software." But what would a world be like if that bad software didn't exist in the first place for us to accidently (or intentionally) download? Welcome to Mac OS! False advertising is against the law; Apple speaks the truth!

Facts:
InfoWorld.com - It Just Works
MacNN.com - Consumer Reports for Mac
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#2—You can make amazing stuff
This advertises iLife ’06, Apple’s suite of software. Most venders will include similar software, if not more powerful applications. Many new PCs include Nero, Pinnacle, photo editing apps, and various other applications that do much of the same tasks as iLife ’06. Windows Vista has all of the functionality of iLife ’06 included in the Premium versions.

Opinions:
You can do amazing stuff! iLife '06 is a beautiful package that comes standard with any current version of Mac OS. Most vendors will include similar software, if not more powerful. Unfortunately, they only include a 30 day trial. It's also 3rd party software. iLife is made by Apple, so you know it's good. It's all a full version for FREE! I can't speak for Windows Vista, I haven't seen it yet because... oh, right, it's not out yet. So it's really not fair to compare an unreleased OSs features to the features of an OS from last year, is it?

Facts:
I don't need facts on this one. Go onto your Windows machine and open any of the software that came with your OS. It will say "you have 0 out of 30 days remaining on this trial period." Point and fact.
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#3—Design that turns heads
Apple computers have interesting designs. However, these designs have major shortcomings. Apple notebooks use soldered processors, preventing upgrades. Socket based CPUs have been the norm since the P4 came out in late 2000. Also, Apple hardware like the iMac have limited space for upgrades and integrated components are more likely to fail compared to independent subsystems. Apple’s design can be compared to some car designs—such as the DeLorean DMC-1 (the famous car from the Back to the Future Trilogy). This car had an amazing exterior design, but the car was an ultimate failure due to it’s lackluster performance and high performance to price ratio. Anyone without unlimited funds would chose something more utilitarian than a Mac.

Opinions:
Are we even talking about the internals right now? I was aware this statement was talking about the beauty of the externals on the machines. Even someone who hates the Mac OS and hardware that comes inside the machine will admit that they look beautiful. Anyone who appreciates computers can appreciate the beauty of the sleek, rounded design of the apple laptops and desktops. The perfect white, black, or even silver now.

If you wish to talk about internals, OK, I can do that too. It's true, Mac's aren't as customizable as PCs. Choose your arguments though. Some people claim they just want a computer that will do simple school-related tasks for them and get on the internet. Then they say they don't want a Mac because it's not possible to upgrade the hardware. Well, that's simply not true in the first place. It is more difficult to upgrade a Mac, but it is hardly impossible--especially on the Mac Pro's. I like to put it this way: "A PC is like a Yugo you can soup-up with lots of extra add-on parts. A Mac is like a Porsche that comes loaded from the factory." Who doesn't want a Porsche? If you want to know more about the design of any Apple machine, the bullet proof material they're made out of, the genius thought put into the exterior and interior design of them, click on the link to the Apple site below. I would like to point out that a downfall to all laptops, Apple or not, is that they are highly integrated. The Mac Pro is quite a different story. As luck would have it, PCs have limited space as well--5 PCI slots...

Integrated components aren't actually more likely to fail, they're just harder to replace if they do fail. So I guess that's where Murphy's Law's could come in, right? "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." I haven't had anything go wrong with my Mac yet though...

Facts:
MacOSXHints.com - Quote
Apple.com - Design that Turns Heads
Murphys-Laws.com
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#4—114,000 viruses? Not on a Mac
This argument is flawed. The reason there are few viruses on Macs has to do with issues of user share. Less than 2% of people use mac compared to over 90% for Windows. This is a matter of logistics rather than security. Systematic, a leading computer security provider, states that OS X is less secure than Windows XP. Apple gives its users a false sense of security. Apple users often neglect basic security practices, such as running a firewall, using caution when opening emails, and running antivirus software. Apple computers ship with the built-in firewall disabled, while Windows XP ships with it on by default. Windows also advises users to run security software. As the Apple user share grows, there will be more and more threats and Mac users will not be prepared.

Opinions:
The statistic has actually risen to 5% of the world using the Mac OS, and predicted to rise more in the near future due to the release of the Mac Pro. In fact, according to Steve Jobs in his Keynote Address at WWDC in 2006, Apple laptop sales have had a 50% increase this year! I did a search but couldn't find that statement by Systematic anywhere. To be perfectly honest, there are viruses for Mac just as there are for PC. They're different viruses, but they still exist. I've never actually run into any, and most people using a Mac probably never will, but they're out there! So to say "there aren't viruses for a Mac" would be a lie. But the ad clearly states "Mac's don't get viruses." So, obviously, while they are there, you just don't get them unless you do something completely ridiculous... which I can't think of anything right now. As the Apple user share grows, there will be more and more threats to Mac users. Thank goodness they do make Norton for Mac. I don't use it, but maybe someday I'll actually need to! Right now I'm free to run my OS without an antivirus programming hogging all my memory running in the background!

Facts:
TheRegister.co.uk - 90% Windows, 5% Mac, 5% Other
MacNewsWorld.com - Allure of Mac Pro May Move Windows Fans to Convert
Apple.com - Apple WWDC 2006
TheAppleBlog.com - Hardly Any Viruses on a Mac
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#5—Next year’s OS today
I cannot help but laugh at Apple’s argument here. First off, their widgets are stolen from an application known as Konfabulator, which is available for both Windows and Mac. An RSS reader? IE7 has this as does Mozilla Firefox. Apple did not invent RSS either. Tabbed browsing? IE7. Video conferencing? AIM or Windows Messenger. Parental Controls? I don’t support that kind of software but there are plenty of applications around and Windows Vista will have it included. Easy DIY scripting with Automator? Windows Scripting Host is much more powerful and has been included since Windows ’98. Mail with built-in spam blocking? Outlook Express has this as well. So all of Apple’s “innovations” are just rip-offs of other applications.

Opinions:
Konfabulator (now called Yahoo! Widgets) was a program invented in 2000 by Arlo Rose. Ironically, it was originally invented for Macintosh (hmm... ). Later, a Windows version was created. First off, I don't even know why you brought this up. Mac did not claim to be the original creator of this idea. As a fact, Mac simply popularized it. More importantly, Mac actually integrated it into the OS, that way it wouldn't be a memory hog running in the background constantly. (It does run in the background constantly, but it's not a memory hog. So I guess that's a contradiction... ) If you want to play that game though, what are these Gadgets I hear about that are apparently coming with Windows Vista?

You're correct in stating IE7 supports RSS, just like Apple's Safari. But let's go back to the original statement. "Next year's OS today." Right. Well, IE7 was released on... oh wait, it actually hasn't been released yet. Just a Release Candidate. That was released on January 31st, 2006. Safari 2.0, the first version to include the RSS feature, was released on April 29th, 2005. Well, not quite a year, but close. The final release of IE7 is expected by the end of 2007. Mozilla Firefox? Well, Mozilla isn't owned by Windows or Apple, so it's really not fair to compare 3rd party software when we're talking about the OS right now. Firefox is made for both Apple and Windows. Nice try though. So if Apple had it first... who's ripping who off?

(Fun fact: People can argue about whether it was Mozilla or Opera who had the first tabbed browsing system, but it was neither. It was a no-name browser (Netscaptor) who first put the idea onto the web in 1997. Mozilla supported the capabilities in 2000, I believe, and Opera didn't get around to it until 2001. Safari released their tabbed browser in early 2003, and IE7, finally released in late 2006, has tabbing capabilities. Interesting that, once again, Apple released theirs 3 years prior to Microsoft. So, yes, even though Apple and Microsoft have the same features NOW, Apple released it first (but they in no way claim to be the original creators). That's another reason Reason #5 makes sense.)

Funny that you should bring up NetMeeting. That program is so frustrating! It's hideous and lacking in features. Not only that, it's a video client... that's all! It isn't meant to be a chat client, so don't compare it to one. iChat includes the features of an audio/video/chat client. It's very reliable and user friendly. You're right, Windows Messenger also includes these features. I can run both Windows Messenger and Microsoft Messenger on my Mac though, so I'm at no disadvantage there. AIM is made for Mac too, but I despise AIM, and it's even crappier on Mac than it is on PC.

If you do a little bit of research you'll learn that Apple Mail evolved from a program called NeXTMail. This program ran on the NEXTSTEP OS. NeXT Computers, Inc. was owned by Steve Jobs at the time. Sound familiar? In 1992, Steve Jobs announced the release of NeXTMail. Microsoft release Outlook Express with the release of Windows 95. You do the math, that's 3 years after NeXTMail. NeXTMail became Apple Mail in 1997 when Apple purchased NeXT Computers, Inc. and also won Steve Jobs as their CEO in the deal.

As you may have noticed, Windows is trying to imitate Apple's slick design of Tiger OS with Windows Vista. They're doing a pretty decent job too. It only took them 5 years to release it.

Facts:
Yahoo.com - Yahoo! Widgets
Apple.com - Dashboard (Widgets)
Wikipedia.org - IE7
Wikipedia.org - Safari
WordPress.com - Steve Jobs Shows off NeXTMail
Wikipedia.org - NEXTSTEP
Wikipedia.org - Outlook Express
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#6—The latest Intel chips
WHAT? Core Duo is hardly Apple only. Every major vender carries it. Nice try, Apple.

Opinions:
True, but Apple didn't claim to be the only company with Intel chips, did it? No, it claimed to be the company with the latest Intel chips. You must recall back to 2005 when Apple was the first company in history to release a Intel Core Duo processor. Apple had a deal with Intel. Windows machines didn't come out with the Intel Core Duo chipset until after Apple had released theirs. Of course, now Core Duo's come standard with almost any machine. The point is, Apple started the trend. That's where that little word latest comes in. But I see where you were coming from.

Facts:
Wikipedia.org - Intel Core
Wikipedia.org - Processor Architecture
Wikipedia.org - Apple Intel Transition
Intel.com - Intel Duo Core Processors
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#7—Instant Video Chats
iChat AV isn’t the only application that allows video conferencing. It’s not the first either. Windows has had NetMeeting, a
video conferencing app since Windows 98SE (1999) and Windows Messenger has this functionality as well. Many notebooks have built in webcams. Apple forces people to buy a webcam though, even if one is not desired. Users should have the choice if they would like to have one.

Opinions:
I already said this, but I'll just say it again.

Funny that you should bring up NetMeeting. That program is so frustrating! It's hideous and lacking in features. Not only that, it's a video client... that's all! It isn't meant to be a chat client, so don't compare it to one. iChat includes the features of an audio/video/chat client. It's very reliable and user friendly. You're right, Windows Messenger also includes these features. I can run both Windows Messenger and Microsoft Messenger on my Mac though, so I'm at no disadvantage there. AIM is made for Mac too, but I despise AIM, and it's even crappier on Mac than it is on PC.

Many notebooks do have webcams... ALL Mac laptops have webcams built it! I do agree about the choice, however. It'd be nice to have that customizable. You might save $50 or something. But I wanted one, so I don't mind.

Facts:
None needed for this one.
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#8—More fun with Photos
iPhoto is the application being advertised in this point. Again, many venders chose to include this type of software, so Apple is hardly alone in this. One can also download Adobe Photoshop Album for free. Also, a cross platform program is available called the GIMP, which is many times more powerful than iPhoto or Adobe Photoshop. Again, much of the functionality of iPhoto is included in Windows Vista.

Opinions:
iPhoto is far superior to Adobe Photoshop Album, but it is far inferior to Picasa (unfortunately only made for Windows currently). I don't use iPhoto, I just open up my Pictures folder when I want to browse my pictures, but it is a decent program. Considering it's free and if you don't want it you just drag it to the recycling bin, it's not that big of a deal. It's worth nothing that Adobe Photoshop Album retails at $89.99.

Again, many vendors include this type of free software as a 30 day trial version. After those 30 days all the software does is hog your disk space--not that big of a deal with today's hard drives, but it clutters the start menu.

Facts:
Adobe.com - Adobe Photoshop Album
Apple.com - iPhoto
Google.com - Picasa
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#9—One Click Websites
Computers running Microsoft Office, which nearly every Windows user owns a copy of, include both Microsoft Word and Microsoft Frontpage. These powerful WYSIWYG applications are vastly superior to the included Apple apps. Popular blogging sites such as blog.com and livejournal.com have web-based tools to accomplish the same tasks. All webcams come with easy to use software that records the video to a standard file which can be uploaded. Sorry, Apple. If you need additional functionality over the online blogging tools, then you are an advanced user and likely do your own coding and wouldn’t desire an HTML generator.

Opinions:
Actually, this is talking about iWeb, but you wouldn't know that if you didn't use a Mac, and I presume you don't and haven't. Microsoft Frontpage is evil and hardly powerful. Go with Macromedia Dreamweaver, a cross-platform WYSIWYG editor. iWeb is alright, but you have to have a .Mac account to use it and I didn't want to pay for that. I did a drag and drop and uninstalled it from my machine... that was easy! iWeb's source code is rather hideous, much like Microsoft Frontpage, so I don't recommend it.

I'm not sure why you decided to compare a blog to a website, but there is a difference. This is a blog. A website is like Microsoft.com... content, not opinions and journals. If you're using Microsoft Frontpage to create a blog you might want to ask for you money back :). It was also a bad choice to compare iWeb to Microsoft Fontpage, but that's ok, you didn't know. Check your facts before you report :).

Facts:
Apple.com - iWeb
Microsoft.com - Microsoft Frontpage
BusinessLogs.com - iWeb Generated Source Code is Awful
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#10—Amazing Podcasts
Apple is flaunting their GarageBand program, which is cool, but utterly pointless to the average user. This is a classic case of “Bloatware”—pre-installed software which only slows down your computer. Windows comes with a much smaller application, Sound Recorder, which allows for simple recording. A free alternative is Audacity, again available to many platforms.

Opinions:
I don't use GarageBand ... I went into my apps and moved it to the Recycle Bin. It took me a grand total of 5 seconds to erase it from my hard drive. If you forget to erase it, it's only 100mb, it's not that big of a deal with today's hard drives. All that crappy trial software that comes with Windows should be something to worry you if you're worried about GarageBand. At least GarageBand is a full version of the software that comes with the OS. You want to talk about "bloatware"? Go turn on an eMachine or a Dell and open up the start menu. There's your bloatware. How much of that pre-installed software are you actually going to use? How much of it do you uninstall as soon as you get the PC in the mail? Most of it.

Audacity is a beautiful program. It's open source and cross-platform. I use it on my Mac. Sound Recorder is one of the crappiest programs of all time. It has no functionality what-so-ever! You should get on that, Microsoft. If we're categorizing, GarageBand and Sound Recorder are not even close to being in the same category ... No comparison, buddy. But here's something Windows has one-upped Mac on: Mac doesn't even come with a sound editor built in to the OS! As terrible as Sound Recorder is, Microsoft would have saved a little face if they didn’t include it at all.

Facts:
Apple.com - GarageBand
SourceForget.net - Audacity
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#11—Rock star tunemaking
Is tunemaking a word? Again, this is about the GarageBand program, which also allows mixing of various loops. A much more powerful (and easier) application is Cakewalk Kinetic, which retails for approx $20. Again, this application would not be used by most people, so including it serves very few.

Opinions:
Apparently you couldn't find much wrong with this one since you had to go after the grammatical aspect. Sometimes we as Americans do that. As you may have noticed, Toys R Us does not use the word "are," but instead puts the letter R on the sign, backwards! It makes things a little bit more fun :).

Again, I don't really use GarageBand too often, so I don't relate to this reason for wanting a Mac. Once again though, GarageBand comes with the OS and is a full functional version. Cakewalk's Kinetic 2 retails at $79.00. I can tell you which one I'd rather have.

Facts:
Cakewalk.com - Cakewalk Kinetic
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#12—Hollywood style movies
iMovie is the application being discussed in this area. A very similar application, Windows Movie Maker, has been included in Windows XP since 2001. Free upgrades have been released over the years, making WMM into a very useful application for the novice. With the Apple solution, as one moves up in skill and desires more features, they are forced to buy Final Cut Express, a powerful, but difficult to use application for the hefty sum of $299. Software venders developed many video editing applications for Windows ranging in price from $20 to upwards of $10^5! Many applications in the $50-$100 range are very powerful and much more intuitive than FCE.

Opinions:
Actually, they're probably referring to Final Cut Studio, which costs $1,299 for the fully functional, fully licensed version. iMovie is great for home movies, but it doesn't even start to compare to Final Cut Studio. iMovie is far superior to Windows MovieMaker! As one moves in skill and desires more features, I promise you, Windows MovieMaker won't provide! There are no programs that compare to Final Cut Studio for Windows. It is the supreme software for video editing. There are several programs for Windows that compare to iMovie, and they range from $30-$150. (Final Cut Express HD can be purchased for $299.)

Facts:
Apple.com - Final Cut Studio
Apple.com - Final Cut Express
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#13—No hunting for drivers
Both Windows and Mac come with a large driver database, but there are far more drivers available for Windows. Both platforms use PnP technology, allowing for automatic installation and configuration of the drivers. What Apple fails to state is that many devices simply do not work with Mac. A large number of printers, scanners, and modems will not be recognized by Mac, and Mac needs to have Apple firmware on a disc burner in order for it to function. Only the Airport Extreme card works with Macs, other PCI cards will not, so if one needs 802.11a, they would need to buy a (very) costly Ethernet adapter. The process of manually installing drivers can be rather tedious for the average user, but most manufactures will include an installer program to simplify the process. Yes, there is no hunting for drivers on a Mac, simply because there are no drivers for a Mac! Which is the bigger trade off?

Opinions:
What you fail to state is that most devices do work with a Mac. What devices don't? Most things these days are Plug 'N' Play! Most things that you plug into a Mac will be recognized, just as they are on a PC. The "No hunting for drivers" comes in as soon as you plug it in! When you plug anything into a PC, a little dialogue pops up and tells you a new device has been found, it tells you it's looking for the device, looking for a driver, installing the driver, then finally the device is ready for use. This usually takes 30 to 60 seconds. When you plug anything into a Mac, you never even realize it searches. A new device appears on your desktop and is all ready for use! The process of manually installing drivers is rarely tedious because I have yet to confront it. I've never had to install a driver on my Mac. If a driver somehow cannot be found it will use a generic drive for the device so the device is still at least functional. These are the facts of life. It's no more difficult on a Mac than on a PC. In fact, it's easier.

Sadly, you are correct about the Airport Extreme card. However, 802.11a, b, and g cards are expensive for Windows AND Mac--they just come with (most) Windows machines. Furthermore, I've never needed an 802.11 card... I'm happy with my Airport Extreme.

Facts:
None needed for this one.
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#14—Awesome out of the box
Read the previous 13 points. Any newly purchased system works perfectly out of the box.

Opinions:
I agree. Check out my previous 13 rebuttals and I'm pretty sure you'll be sold on Mac! I am!! After using a PC for 17 years of my life, I haven't regretted adding Mac to the OS list one bit!

Facts:
None needed for this one.
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In closing, I hope there are no hard feelings. This was all just fun and games anyways, right? I had a lot of fun compiling this list.

I did find it interesting to note that even Microsoft uses a few Mac's. Check it out!

I'll leave you with a few more sources of interesting information about Mac vs PC, or just general information on Apple.

An article from back in 2000 by Eric DeStefano comparing Mac machines to Windows based PCs. Written with a bias towards Mac, but from the viewpoint of a previous PC user, much like myself. (LowEndMac.com)
A very interesting site chuck-full of comparison charts and tables. No bias, just raw facts. (SystemShoutOuts.org)
An interview-type article that takes several key areas of computer use and compares Windows efficiency with Mac efficiency. The interview seems to switch back and forth between favoring Mac or PC. (TechBuilder.org)
A very useful article that disproves the myth that Macs are more expensive. Overall, yes, they are. But when you consider the efficiency of software and hardware products you're getting with your money, you'll very easily realize you're getting a better deal. (TechNewsWorld.com)
An article written in 2006 to persuade that everyone should use a Mac. (KenRockwell.com)
A site filled with information on the Intel chipset in all Mac computers now. (MacOnIntel.com)

Finally, a quote I liked a lot from a forum on MacOSXHints.com.
"People usually work on PCs because they have to. People work on Macs because they want to."
I’d tend to agree with that. In all honesty, anyone willing to limit themselves to one operating system is clearly just a fanboy and guilty of the same arrogant fanaticism they berate Mac users for. Prefer what you will, but be versatile and don’t be ignorant.

Tags: Apple, Microsoft, Internet, Operating Systems

It appears as though it is. Recently, there has been talk of a September release. Unfortunately, this release is yet another test version for developers--still no final for the general public. So what has Microsoft been doing in the six years it's been developing Windows Vista? I decided to take a little look at the progression of Windows Vista, starting at the 2004 WWDC in San Francisco.

"Two years ago at WWDC we thought we'd poke a little bit of fun at the folks in Redmond. So, we hung in the hallways of the conference some big banners that said 'Redmond, start your photocopiers.' It was only a joke, but they actually took it seriously." - Bertrand Serlet, Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Apple

After watching Steve Jobs' Keynote speech just a few weeks ago, I picked up on a lot of the similarities between Mac OS X and Windows Vista. Microsoft apparently was feeling a little left out after Apple's release of Spotlight, an extremely powerful and useful tool implemented in the Tiger OS. It's basically a search of all documents, folder, emails, IMs, applications, and even servers and other computers. Not only does spotlight search your computer for a file named what you type in, it also searched within the file for results. Vista took a little different approach...instead of Spotlight, they call it Instant Search. And instead of it being in the upper right corner, it has moved to the lower left. It seems to replace the Programs Menu as far as I can tell. That's an improvement, because the Programs Menu was extremely unorganized and very unappealing in all of Windows Operating Systems. Search is much more efficient.

Vista is kicking some serious butt in the eye-candy field. Honestly, Windows has never looked better. Microsoft is finally taking advantage of your video card, and this is good! Unfortunately, base requirements for Vista are at least 512mb of RAM. That's ridiculous. Tiger, on the other hand, requires only 256mb of RAM, and it runs just perfectly. That's a whole lot more reasonable.

A very impressive feature of Vista is the thumbnail view of your open programs. All programs open in your task-bar can be viewed in a thumbnail without actually opening them. All you have to do is roll over them! Tiger has a similar, although admittedly not quite as good, version of this, where your open programs, when minused down, are shown in the lower right hand corner, live. So if your iTunes is minused down and the song changes, you can see it change in the dock. It's too small to make anything clearly out, however.

Vista is kicking some tail in the 3-dimensional realm. Changing apps has never been more beautiful. A viewing window of a nearly full sized preview of all of your open applications appears, laying them out one in front of another. You can then select which one you wish to go to.

Vista is really trying to impress with their glassy effect, and they're succeeding. Windows and menus look beautiful with their reflective and see through appearance. The task-bar and Start Menu have these looks as well.

Good work on the Gadgets. It seems like a serious take off of Apple's Widgets, but at least Microsoft is catching up.

In the visual department, Windows Vista is coming along beautifully. I'm very impressed with that. The biggest draw backs are the RAM issue as I mentioned, and with that the registry and DLL files. Windows will not be able to advance further in the efficiency and overall speed of their operating system until it rids itself of the registry. DLL files are just terrible to keep track of and mess with! The beauty of Mac is the self-contained applications it runs. Few, if any, external files. Most applications are entirely self contained in a .app file. I believe it's probably also understood by most of you that 90-95% of all viruses write themselves TO the registry in Windows. Funny...Mac doesn't have any viruses, does it?

A recent news release has stated that Vista is the "last of its kind." Microsoft has admitted that Vista, after being in development for the past 6 years, has become too complicated. The OS is so confusing (programming) and complicated that 3rd party developers are having a difficult time writing software for it. Microsoft has also stated that it's having a hard time finding a way to create updates to release for the OS because the programming is so closed. That's a big issue.

Good work on the visuals, Microsoft. Next OS, ditch the registry and DLL files--go for simple! Next OS, get your nose out of the air; their are other Operating Systems out there besides Windows. Recognize them. Be compatible. They are.

Tags: Operating Systems, Microsoft, Apple