DISQUS

I've been putting a lot of serious thought lately into just getting a Mac Mini for my main entertainment unit and avoiding all the drama. The Mac already works with just about any downloaded video format, plus streaming from Hulu, Netflix, Youtube and other video sites (like CBS and MTV's video site). At first it seems like an expensive (it would cost about 2.5X what I paid for my current TV) option, but it could replace a DVR, Apple TV, Ruko box, and DVD player (off the top of my head, and those are the bulk of the cost of a Mini right there). Plus it would work with any future service that supports Macs in general. It would even make a pretty decent media server to the other Macs on my network.

I'd love to get my hands on one of those "revolutionary internet communications devices" but if I get one, my wife gets one. Even with family plans, that would more than double our current monthly cell phone bill. And I'm just not thrilled about paying that much money to AT&T.

I can't help but think that that wacky Adsense scheme isn't all the practical. The income from Adsense would have to be great that the cost of running the Adwords campaign to bring traffic to the site. Not every visitor who comes to the site is going to click an ad (a 25% CTR would be phenomenal). Presumes such a generous CTR, the Adsense ads would have to bring in at least 4X the Adwords cost per click just to break even.

Besides (not that it seems to stop anyone inclined to do it), the Adsense TOS strictly prohibit developing sites for the sole purpose of gaining Adsense income.

So... if Yahoo becomes property of Microsoft, so quickly do you think Delicious and Flickr will become ghost towns?

I'd think that either of those schemes would somehow run afoul of Netflix's terms of service.

I know it's not a common opinion, but I *love* ST:TMP. Mostly as a extended music video for Jerry Goldsmith's magnificent score but also for its intellectualism. It's the deepest thinking of all the Trek films and rivals First Contact as the most epic.

And honestly, I think the effects hold up rather well, better than the original Star Wars', these 30 years later. The voyage into V'Ger, besides being a highlight of the score, is still visually impressive.

I spent the first couple years of my marriage acquainting my wife with DS9 (which she didn't care for) and Voyager (which she liked). I was actually surprise by how much I like Voyager the second time around. There really is some good storytelling there.

I haven't seen all of Enterprise, though the 4th season really picked up with the "mini-arc" format and much better story concepts. Too bad they didn't get the chance to experiment with that for another season or two. The final episode, though, is complete and utter not-even-a-pretense-at-effort garbage. Worse even than The Outrageous Okona.

More evidence of bubbleocity: songs about bubbles.

I feel ya and can relate. I've got a lot of extra-internet stuff going on right now and despite the desire to keep it up, I've definitely been lacking the time and fortitude to write much recently. I've got multiple half-finished story ideas that I just can't seem to bring myself to wrap up. Here's hoping it picks up soon.

Also, I enjoy your common sense approach to tech happenings. It's very down-to-earth and that's hard to come by in a very RDF-influenced field.

Behold! i-glasses PC/SVGA Head Mounted Display $Only 771!

Though I'm not sure how I feel about the complete removal of Classic from the OS. I still have one or two apps that I get into from time to time.

I guess it's off to the Pismo for those.

Beyond eye candy, I've not found much use for CoverFlow, either in iTunes or the new Finder. I'm a search bar kind of of guy when tracking down tunes and I use LaunchBar to open most of my apps, so I'm hardly actually ever in my Applications folder. I do appreciate CS3's icons though; the colored boxes are a lot easier to identify in the Dock than the feather/conch shell/butterfly nonsense from CS2.

I did discover a bug in CoverFlow view though. In some cases, if you double-click the big icon, the program will launch, but you'll immediately be returned to the Applications window.

Overall though, I'm liking the Leopard. Seems very responsive, even on my ~4 year old G4 Powerbook. I have to figure out how I'm going to backup 120 gigs of data before I can install it on my iMac though.

I noticed yesterday that apple.com/dotmac/ is PR10, while regular apple.com is PR9.

Had to raise my eyebrow at that.

Yeah, what Steven said. (also, "mement." that's clever)

1) Eff digg. No one should take anything they read there as a sign of any widespread opinion. If the world ran on the whims of digg, it would quickly collapse into a pit of nihilism. If blogging is so anathema to digg, why are half the top stories links to a self-publisher (aka blogger)?

2) Blogging ain't going anywhere. Those negative comments seem to come from people who seem to think that all bloggers are navel-gazing tech pundits and that "the blogosphere" stops where the last comment about linux/apple/seo/google/gadgetX is written. The subject matter of the online self publisher is far more diverse in topic, interesting in thought and plentiful in knowledge than the haters seem to be capable of grasping.

My NetNewsWire routinely has an unread count in the thousands there's so much good stuff out there, most of which i'll never actually get to read.

There are plenty of excellent "news style" blogs as well as personality blogs, this one included. If you enjoy what you're doing and have readers who appreciate your knowledge and perspective, then pay no attention to the negativists, they're not the ones reading you anyway.

Their opinions certainly won't keep me from writing.

Web 2.0 or Star Wars Character? Take the quiz.

Seriously, is this the result of a generation raised on Star Wars?

I went to Microcenter over the weekend and they had the new Nano in stock. I gotta agree that it does look a lot more appealing in person than it does in photos.

Though, for my aesthetics, I prefer the taller versions. I may just have to pick one up on clearance.

I know off-site file storage is all the rage if you've got the bandwidth to do it, but there is always the option of removable media. Writable media quality has gotten much better over the past decade. I have some TDK Archival dvds that are still readable when scratched and estimated to have a life span of 70 years.

If all my hard drives were to fail simultaneously, i'd still have those discs.

I bought the original 5G iPod ($400) about two months before an updated model was introduced. At the time, I was a little upset, but now a view that old brick as a badge of honor.

As for the iPhone, it really looks like a great product, but having read about it since it was mere rumor and speculation, I can't help but notice that a lot of people are way to wrapped up emotionally, way beyond reason, with what essentially amounts to a hunk of metal and plastic. $600 for a phone was ridiculous to begin with.

I'm sure that has something to do with the negative reaction.

From an intellectual property standpoint, I would be uncomfortable with the idea of Google modifying my content by overlaying ads on my published product, were I a video publisher. Certainly without my consent and, of course, a revenue cut.

I've not read the terms of use, so maybe content providers agree to it when they decide to upload to YouTube. If that's the case, some content providers might think twice about using YouTube to host their videos. And that might undermine YouTube's entire business plan.

[nerdhat]
I guess that makes sense. Animal husbandry requires many more resources than basic agriculture. A single cow requires 13.6 Mbtu of energy to raise and feedlot cows consume roughly 22 lbs of corn each day.

Vulcan is an arid planet and the logical course to maximize agricultural output would be to grow fruit and vegetable crops for Vulcans to eat, not animals.
[/nerdhat]

Two things that I would enjoy about an iPhone-like iPod though, should it come to pass:

1) Built-in Speaker for easy listening.
2) On-the-Go tag editing. If the iPod were to go the PDA route and include a touch-screen keyboard, I think it would be very cool to edit ID3 tags on the iPod itself and have those changes updated in my iTunes library when I sync.

My my, Punch Up at A Wedding is silky smooth! It's one of my faves from the disc.

Other than that though, our scores are in near agreement. My album rating formula returns a 3.69.

Apple said the DRM-free songs would be available in May and they waited until the last possible moment to deliver. Still, the iTunes Store might be able to ply some dollars from me now.

"a bunch of party animals who say whatever they want with no consequences, in the name of free beer and hot babes."

If that's not bubble mentality, I don't know what is.

But now that digg has "dugg" (ahhh, puns) in its heels, the legal eagle in me is fascinated to see how this turns out.

As an aside, I did a Google search for "the number" and it returned 44,000 pages.

AACS kinda dug this hole for themselves when it published the hd-dvd key in a court document (a public record).

But the behavior of the "digg community" (to whatever extant that exists) is just appalling. I don't want to get into the ethics, "rightness" or legality of either side on this debate, but the immature mob actions of digg's users is pure anarchy, which is quite off-putting.

I think it's telling that all this passion has sprung up because of the code that will enable copying of hd-dvd movies. Freedom of information is a noble cause, but it seems to take the potential for "free" movies to spring all the warriors into action.