GMAIL invites...

I was checking my gmail accounts (I have 4) and I realized that I have 50 invites on each account. So if for some reason you don't have one and you want one and I know you (even remotely) I'll hook you up with one...

OSX rocks my nerdy lil world...

So I got a shiny new 12" powerbook a couple of months ago and I loved it immediately. Using OSX once I got used to the lil differences in how things work compared to WinXP was a dream. Maybe it's just because it's different. Maybe it's because it really is easier, or maybe it's just because I drank the "special kool-aid" that came with it, but I'm left really wanting to demote my PC to gameplaying status and move my online life to the MAC platform.
So to the real point of this post. I got a copy of OSX tiger right around when it came out, but I didn't install it right away because I wanted to wait and see what the bug fallout was like. I heard that there were a few problems so I decided to wait for the first patch in hopes that would fix all the problems. Add to that I was hesitant to do a reinstall on my powerbook since I'd never done a OSX install before and I was nervous about hosing my lovely, shiny laptop. Being the procrastinator that I am I kept putting it off for when I had more time to concentrate on it and then word of the 10.4.2 patch started circulating I decided that was when I would do it. Well it was released and on Saturday I made the jump. I wiped the powerbook clean and did a fresh, clean install. I have to say in all honesty that it was the easiest most pain free OS install I've EVER done. And I'm no wuss about such things since I'm the person my friends and family call for tech support, I've built or rebuilt around a dozen machines and done reinstalls countless times. I bet it didn't take more than 30 minutes and that including doing all the updates. I usually have to set a side around 4 hours to do a thorough reinstall of Windows since there's so much tweaking involved to get it running right. Two features of Tiger immediately jumped out at me and they're Spotlight and Dashboard. Spotlight is like Google for your computer. You type in what you're looking for and it finds it... and VERY fast too. Dashboard is.. well I would describe it as a secondary desktop that remains hidden until you need it. On this desktop is whatever assortment of small programs (which Apple calls Widgets) you put there. They do everything from a simple calculator, a clock, the local weather, conversions, a dictionary/thesaurus and there are others built in not to mention hundreds more that you can download. A couple I've added are a weather radar widget and a wireless network meter. The nice thing with Dashboard is that you can just leave all these up and when you're done hit a key and they're gone and you're back to what you were doing before.
If you're sick of all the viruses, adware, spyware and just the frustrating nature of using windows at times then I can suggest strongly enough to go check out your local Apple store and if you don't have nearby find someplace that sells them and play with one a little. I don't think you'll regret making the switch. I sure don't.... Now I just need to get hold of a G5 tower and my conversion will be complete!

In Honor of Independence Day

A little late but here are some quotes on the subject of Freedom and Independence...

"What country before ever existed a century & half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve it's liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is it's natural manure."
Thomas Jefferson

"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
Benjamin Franklin

"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
Thomas Paine

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."
Theodore Roosevelt

"It's the End of the World"

Anyone else worried about the prospect of the President being in a position to appoint a new Supreme Court Justice after the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O'Connor? She was a centrist and was a swing vote. Most people thought that Justice Renquist would be the one to retire and since he is already a conservative Justice then it would be a Conservative for a Conservative switch no lose, but this is SCARY...

The Delusional Nature of Big Business

It seems like every other day there's some article or report about online piracy. The MPAA and the RIAA are constantly bemoaning all their lost sales due to downloaders. I personally think it's a metric megaton of bullshit. I think it has more to do with the Record Industry's and the Movie Industry's lawyers trying to justifiy their existence and their retainers than anything relating to reality. They want to to pretend that every download is a lost sale and therefore money out of their pocket. I don't know about you, but for me I'm going to buy what I'm going to buy and what I'm not, I'm not. So if I download some song that's on my brain in order to listen to it enough to get it out or some song that's the one good song out of an artist's entire catalog the music industry hasn't lost anything because if I couldn't download it to listen it those 5 or 6 times then I simply wouldn't have it. NO SALE LOST there. And on more than a few occasions bands that I have checked out after someone told me to download them and give them a listen I've gone out and bought their actual CDs. So if anything it serves a very useful purpose of promotion. It gives people the ability to sample some music before they buy it. I think the biggest problem for the music industry is that the paradigm has shifted and like any BIG business the change has blown by the industry. With the availability of cheap blank media and the almost ubiquity of CD burners people have found the pleasure of having cds with just the songs they like without the filler that the labels like to shovel out the door with the few singles on each album. But the Labels a still stuck in the mindset of "they'll take what we give them and like it", but the problem is that their customers no longer are willing to settle for that. I find it interesting how CD prices had gotten down to around $9.99 an album not that many years ago and they've creeped up to around $18.99 for a lot of CDs. I also find it interesting that the FTC a few years ago found the Labels GUILTY of PRICE FIXING, but you don't hear that much about how they were stealing from their consumers, but you hear weekly about how some 15 yr old is going to ruin the business for downloading the newest b@#$ney sp%$#s single. Something else I find HIGHLY amusing is how the labels want to fly the flag of protecting the ARTISTS!!! I Mean COME ON... as a collective group and singly the labels have done more to screw over artists longer and harder and deeper than anyone. How many horror stories are there of artist getting screwed out of their royalites by the labels.
Now in the case of the Movie Industry I think they saw what went down with the music labels and are worried about it. I don't think the movie studios are learning from the music labels mistakes. Some things the Studios have going for them is that of Quality. I've gotten curious and downloaded a movie or 2 to see what it's like and frankly the quality sucks. Say it's a DVD rip so that's a file that probably started out around 8-9 gigs most downloadable files have been shrunk down to CD size around 700MB. That's a HUGE amount of compression. You also lose all the extra features, menus and subtitles, etc. Or you download a straight DVD rip and have to wait a day or so for the file to download even with a fast connection. So you either have a crappy quality file that more than likely you'd only be able to watch on your computer or a really long download wait. That doesn't even count the fact that you don't just burner the file off and there you go. It can take 3-4 programs involved in order to get one of these compressed files ready for playing on the home DVD player. So personally I think DVDs give good value for the money at $15-$19 for a new release versus the $18.99 for CDs. It's far easier to run to a store and buy a copy than go to the trouble of downloading it, encoding it and burning it.

I don't know maybe I'm wrong this is just my opinion...

HOLY #$%T!!! Apple went and did it...

Well the rumors were correct Apple is switching over to Intel cpus. I don't know what to think is my 3 month old powerbook suddenly deadended? On one hand it could be really good and the idea of dual booting OSX and windows for games on one machine is kinda nice. I just hope OSX will run as nice on x86 as it does on the PowerPC chips. WOW big changes are afoot. And if OSX runs on intel processors then if they wanted they could just release it for any generic PC and then Microsoft would have to look out...

Apple switching from IBM to Intel...

So the rumor mills are churning about the possibilty that Apple is going to switch CPUs from IBM to Intel chips. As someone that just recently FINALLY got hold of my very own G4 powerbook and I'm working on a G5 powermac I find the idea of having to deal with intel again kinda sad. Maybe just maybe Intel is going to be making a PPC type chip and not an x86. Hopefully it's all just BS rumors. Well the WWDC Keynote is Monday morning so if they're going to do it then would be the time to tell the developers.