Too late. You've lost your customer!

If you treat your customers poorly, they'll go to your competitor.

This is not exactly a new concept but Wal-Mart learned it the hard way.

Yet another proof that consumers are sheep

According to a survey about HDTV (high definition TV) done by set-top box maker Scientific-Atlanta, a lot of buyers of HDTV don't have a clue about what high definition is and how to get such content. Check this out (everybody could use some good laugh for Friday afternoon):

"23% of HDTV owners did not invest in special equipment to watch HDTV channels because a message at the beginning of the programs they watch tells them that those programs are being broadcast in HD.

Nearly one in five (18%) reported that they believed the HD television would give them high-definition channels without additional equipment. "

There you go. The business model of making up some acronyms and put them on the products actually paid off!

With customers like these, why do businesses need to improve their products/services?

Tech writers' job made easy by Jobs

How? Whenever Apple release something, just sing your praises and your job is done!

For example, check out Apple's Amazing New iPod with Video

This writer actually went one step further by providing statistics! Read "I could count on one hand how many people I see on the train in a given month watching movies on their laptops. " That's supposed to support his argument that there is no portable video player market (of course before Apple launched the latest iPod!)

Another quote: "The other issue is, of course, content. IDC's Martin admitted that he bought an early portable media center, but has had little use for it. There are no short clips to download, so he leaves the device behind." Well, maybe poor Martin hasn't heard of something called cable or satellite TV. The portable media center could sync with a Windows Media Center PC which is capable of recording TV programming.

The notion of no content being available for portable video player is just wrong! Content is readily available, the issue has to do with the ease of use, including recording and transfering, which I have pointed out before, is not implemented well by Microsoft's Media Center solution.

If Apple is truly the maverick, it should have released a Mac based DVR (digital video recorder, think Tivo) solution that integrates with the new video iPod seamlessly.

What happened to separation of church and state?

"Bush: Miers' Religion Key Part of Her Life"

I suppose the constitution is not a key part of USA anymore.

Update: Miers has just withdrawn her nomination. The irony is: no matter how much our President wanted to sell her being a conservative, the ultra-conservatives just won't buy! Even hints of anti-abortion is not enough for them.

I have responsibility but no right

... sounds like slavery, huh?

"Software developers should be held personally accountable for the security of the code they write, said Howard Schmidt, former White House cybersecurity advisor, on Tuesday."

Mr. Schmidt: I dunno what medication you've taken but last time I check at most company developers have no right to code they have written (i.e., code are properties of those company and developers are not allow to "take" it with them when they change job, in most cases)

Let's see who he used to work for... President Bush!

Enuff' said.

American's tolerance level has reached a new low

A lady boarding a Southwest airline flight got booted off the plane.

The reason? She wore a shirt that says "Meet the Fuckers" with pictures of
President Bush, VP Cheney and Secretary of State Rice.

Here is a link to a Nevada TV station with a video clip. The lady, Lorrie Heasley, wore that shirt in the video. Check it out if you wanna see what it looks like.

Southwest said some other passengers complained about that. I think that's a lame lame excuse. It's not like she's bugging people by telling them her political views. It's a shirt for god sake! If you don't like what it says, turn away! No one force you to look at it. In fact, it's never polite staring at women's front side.

I can't boycott Southwest though 'coz I seldom fly it. Its service is below par to me anyway.

No publicity is bad publicity

Some like to diss bloggers as "attention grabbers" that have nothing better to say. As a blogger myself, I usually dispute that claim but I gotta admit some bloggers went over the board.

For example, one blogger claimed that he has "been using Macs for a while ... wondering if they're all that special" and he might switch back from Mac to PC. Well, everyone is entitled to their opinions. In fact, I wrote my fair share of criticism of Mac. However, this guy kept bashing the apps because he doesn't use them! Check out his nonsense:
"I really dislike iPhoto. I much prefer the Windows thumbnails."
What's he smoking? iPhoto is a photo management software (it's not perfect but I must say it does a pretty good job.) Windows thumbnails? That's a file preview mode! He's comparing apples to oranges.
"You know, .Mac is interesting, but way too expensive."
Apple's .Mac is a service not unlike the paid version of Yahoo's e-mail and photo storage service. I don't see how .Mac being expensive a reason why Mac is inferior to Windows.
"I'm not a musician, GarageBand to me isn't particularly compelling."
OK. That's as ignorant as saying "I'm not a painter, Mona Lisa to me isn't particularly compelling" as the reason for Louvre not being special.

Anyway, I gotta give him some credits for having the guts to diss Mac. I'm pretty sure he'll be expecting "hate mails" from some unhappy Apple fanboys. To be honest, some of his points are valid: low-end Macs are slow. Text Anti-aliasing do seem fuzzy on my Mac and better on Windows.

Another blogger wrote that phones should be replacing general purpose PC as the main device for computing needs. Well, that's pretty much stating the obvious. I mean, that's the ideal but not gonna happen in the near future! And the biggest disadvantage is giving too much control to your phone company, which has the tendency to charge you for anything you like to do with your phone.

I left out links to their blogs on purpose since I don't wanna give them extra traffic. In the meantime, I'll try my best to come up with more articles with high shock value.

RIP Montana Mazurkiewicz

Most think sport is about machoism most of the time, but it has a touching side too:

Notre Dame Fighting Irish's head football coach Charlie Weis visited big Irish fan, 10-yr old Montana, before he died of brain tumor last Friday. Weis granted him a wish: calling the first play for Irish's next game (vs. Washington last Sat)

Irish's first play was at their 1 yard line. What did Montana call? "Pass right!" That's a dangerous play at that situation but Irish went with it and got good 13 yards out of it.

Good karma working at its best? I think so.

And it's good publicity for Notre Dame, which hasn't had a lot for the past few years when it hasn't won as much as it used to.

You gotta earn your right before you trash talk

Terrell Owens, all-star wide receiver of Philadelphia Eagles, might indeed be a "bad apple" to his team at times (e.g. his feud against his coach, the management and his QB) but it's not something Derek Smith, a linebacker of 49er, who a lot of football fans have never heard of, has the right to say.

That's his comment before the Eagle-49er game, in which his defensive team has given up 143 yards and 2 touchdowns to Owens.

What did Derek Smith say after the game? Well, he still didn't want Owens on his team. Yeah right, like he wanna be on your team!

Man, some people might enjoy publicity like this, but it just sounded stupid to me.

Money can't always buy victory

I'm not talking about sports (where money could buy victory) This is about how a student fought against the almighty Microsoft's army of lawyers who sued him for selling 2 unopened boxes of M$'s software on eBay.

The result? He counter-sued and M$ settled.

Sometimes our legal system doesn't seem that broken.

Update your resume

Have you been wondering why the diaster in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina was handled so poorly? Maybe this explains: Discrepancies reported in Brown [chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency] resume.

Assistant to Manager, assistant manager, what's the difference anyway? (That reminds me of an episode of "The Office")

And at the highest level of academics, teachers always learn from their students. So you might say a student is also a professor!

Let me see: I have been working as assistants to CEO, directors, architects...... I should sign up for a Harvard distant learning class ASAP so that I could put Harvard Professor on my resume!

Wait a second! I wasn't on President Bush's campaign team before. (New resume now in trashcan)

Do you Yahoo? No thanks.

Yahoo is accused by a media watchdog of becoming a "police informant" for the Chinese government that led to the jailing of a journalist for "divulging state secrets."

Yahoo's practice is widely criticized by members of the media. While they acknowledge the need to comply with local law, most question whether such action is ethical. After all, the "state secret" here is an internal Communist Party message that warned journalists of the dangers of social unrest resulting from the return of dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in June 2004. Isn't that kinda obvious?
See "Yahoo business ethics sorely lacking" (Infoworld)
and "Web of complicity" (Telegraph UK) Don't forget this is a company that was willing to buy the notorious spyware writer 3721 in order to "compete in the China market." I still remember how bad I felt when my computer was hijacked by 3721.

Surprisingly, there are quite a few netters (on popular website slashdot.org) defending Yahoo, saying it's nothing wrong with taking care of shareholder's interests.

I don't know about them. To be honest, I'm a heavy user of Yahoo's services: My Yahoo, email, fantasy sports...... Now I'll think twice before using any of them. I've already switched my homepage to My Netscape, even though it's inferior in terms of features. And this will be my last season playing fantasy sports on Yahoo. ESPN: here I come!

It takes less time than a commercial break (almost)

... To assemble a Dell! That's what I've just learned from this article: "...PC assembly time down to less than four minutes..."

Incredible!

Even more amazing is that 30 seconds were wasted every time they put those annoying Intel and Microsoft stickers on the computer!

Maybe we could save $100 off the price if they don't have to do that :P

The market of MP3 player is just as bad as the NL West

... where every team commits one blunder after another!

First, Rio is gone due to lack of QC and marketing. (They made it official last week.)

Second, Apple settled the lawsuit over its poor battery.

Now Creative is shipping worm with its player!

Is it that hard to make a decent player? I wonder.

Good bye UGL

UGL = Undergraduate Library, at University of Texas, my alma mater. This is one of the places in Austin where lots of my fond memories are associated with. (Yes, I met pretty gals there >:)

The university is moving the books out and converting it to a student center this Fall. It will be a place for students to hang out and study.

Well, actually that's what we used to do over there anyway (minus the study part :P) The books were useful to kill time when waiting for the "target" to leave.

I've never knew why it's called undergraduate library 'coz most libraries let undergrad in but I just found out that's not the case in the 50s. Interesting!

Microsoft makes baseball exciting

Aren't they? Here is their patent.

Well, kidding aside, it's not that bad. I guess MLB.com is actually using it now. I'm a subscriber of MLB.TV which streams video of complete or highlights of baseball games. Before I learned of this patent, I thought they must have hired a bunch of low-paid kids to cut (i.e. edit) these video. And I have been wondering how boring that job must be :P Looks like it's more automated than I thought.

Good bye Rio (the MP3 player pioneer)

See "Death bells ring for Rio as they are cut up and sold to SigmaTel"

It's sad 'coz I still believe among all competitors of Apple iPod, Rio Karma has the best features, design and UI, in fact, even better than iPod. This is based on my experience of owning one for 2 weeks (returned for battery life issue)

So, once again it proves that it takes more a good feature set to win in the consumer electronics business. You'd need marketing, marketing, marketing (yes, it's so important that I have to repeat it again and again), quality control and customer service as well. This is reinforced by my recent good (surprise!) experience with getting my iPod fixed (the headphone jack has bad connectivity) at an Apple store (BTW, there was no service dept at Apple store. Apple named it "Genius Bar." The name is a bit too arrogant and exaggerated but that's Steve's call, not mine. The service rep was actually a very helpful gentleman. He looked at my iPod and found that the remote control was the culprit. He simply swapped it with a new one.)

If fixing my Rio was this easy, I would have kept it and won't even consider iPod! Apple opening all these retail stores over the country turned out wasn't such a bad move.

RIP Jean Charles de Menezes

Mr. de Menezes was shot and killed by London police as a bombing suspect last week but London police later on admitted he was innocent.

You probably recall his killing made front page news. However, the fact that he was innocent didn't. It wasn't even appear as headline on http://news.yahoo.com/ !

This is very sad 'coz not only his life was lost for nothing but also his innocence was complete ignored.

Forget about justice but where is the conscience of the media now?

Hawk attacked Dove

So you think this is an analogy of what happens in politics today.

Well, symbolism turned reality. it actually happened in Hong Kong yesterday!

The result? Both dead. (Cause of death: bone fracture. Suspected both collided into a building during the chase.)

Politicians out there should learn something from this.

Good advice? Bad advice?

Dunno how accurate this is but according to Apple Daily (a Chinese newspaper from Hong Kong, no link) Professor Paul Chu, president of Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, appeared in a young student IT challenge award ceremony as guest of honor. He said he's happy to see that today's kids are so fluent in computer skills and they will have a bright future working in the IT industry.

Well, I'm not sure if he really meant what he said. Following the current offshoring trend, when these kids are old enough to work, IT jobs would have been offshored from China to other countries with even cheaper labors! This reminds me of Bill Gates encouraging young people in US to study computer science. (See my take in a previous comment) They either need a reality check or stop BS-ing!

(BTW, the winner is a 6th grader. She made her own e-card using Flash and built website that educate people about giant panda as an endangered specie. Good for her!)

Finally, American government is playing catch up

... on totalitarian policies.

If you've listened to any communist propaganda, you probably are familiar with their claim of a superior society. Eventually all other countries will follow their practice. Well, it looks like they're not all wrong:
U.S. House of representatives has approved constitutional amendment to outlaw American flag burning.

This immediately reminds me of two pro-democracy activists, Ng Kwok-hung and Lau San-ching, being fined for burning the Chinese national flag 2 years ago in China-ruled Hong Kong.

Maybe someday our first amendment will be amended to a point that criticism of the government like this will be deemed unpatriotic and thus criminal. So I'd better say it before it's too late.

MLB.TV Full Screen on Mac

...... previously not possible but I've found this solution (Credit to poster ess@Macforumz)

"You can trick Safari into playing the game in full screen using Windows Media Player.

To to this, you need to remove the Windows Media Player Plug-In from the internet plugins folder (it's located in HD-Library-Internet PlugIns-Windows Media Plugin).

After you do this, Safari will ask you if you want to us the WMP application (rather than the web based plugin for WMP) when watching a MLB.TV stream."

Then you could tell Windows Media Player to play it full screen. Problem solved!

OK. I should remove one strike against Mac.

Fight Censorship

Here is a follow-up to the article below: Adopt a Chinese Blog is a program to help Chinese bloggers by hosting their blog oversea to avoid being banned.

Well, those bloggers may still run into trouble back home as all traffic is being monitored over there.

I hope someday such program will become unnecessary.

Madeline's first swimming lesson

 

Video here

You should give credit to M$

... for criticizing themselves! See Microsoft bans 'democracy' for China web users on MSN Money. The company claimed that law required them to do so but the article pointed out no such law exists!

Well, in a country where journalist long time loyal to the ruling party could be detained for "spying", it doesn't matter what law exists.

Why should this be on the news anyway? It's capitalism at work, my friend! Apparently companies couldn't be wrong when they do things in the interest of their shareholders, no matter how immoral those are.

To Chinese bloggers: let's learn something smart from spammers: d3mocracy would do the trick.

Go SBUX Go!

What could be a better place to have the presense of this great company than the great palace?


Yes, it's the (not-so) Forbidden city in Beijing.

#1 Clueless Web hosting company

1&1 internet Inc call themselves "World's No.1 Web Host." I dunno what that means, but judging by the fact that they ban their customer's traffic for serving BitTorrent of their customer's own work, I think it probably means they're No.1 in the computer illiterate department.

PDA Nostalgia

This was a topic on my mind while I wasn't able to fall asleep during my vacation last week (as you could see I haven't blogged for a while since I was without internet access)

The chains of thought begun with my wondering about what the new Palm LifeDrive PDA would be like when it releases on 5/18. Then I trace back all PDA I've ever owned: Zire 72, Handspring Visor Prism (the first palm with color screen), Casio Cassiopeia E-110 (the 2nd gen i.e. first usable gen of PDA from Microsoft running Win CE. Also my first PDA, broken after a jam packed elevator ride)

Then I trace back to the 1st PDA in my family: my dad was a true pioneer gadgeteer himself. He bought a Casio Databank more than 15 years ago. He was still using it even though one of the key has stopped responding! Of course I got him a replacement: a brand new Sharp Organizer (with builtin English-Spanish dictionary!)

Then I trace back to the era (early 80s) when handhelds are closer cousins to calculators than organizers. They were called pocket computers and have a small but loyal followings. I could still remember computer magazine in HK having a few columns dedicated to pocket computers and published source code (mostly BASIC, some assembly) for all those primitive games that used character symbols to denote the border of a race track, obstacles in outer space, and monsters... etc. You really need a lot of imagination to enjoy those games! I'd say the graphics on GameBoy and PSP are taking away the capacity of imagination from this generation of kids! I always fancied something like Casio PB-700(which I consider the best from Casio. Casio's FX series also have a few gems) or Sharp PC-1500(Casio's major rival) but I ended up only able to convince my dad to get me a Casio FX-5200P, which has the rare combination of a look of conventional calculator and yet programmable in BASIC!

Then I still couldn't fall asleep so I switched to other more boring topics...

And what a coincidence as I come across this great history of PDA article thru Engadget today! Ernst Mulder's Calculator Collection is another great resource.

Legal invalidity? (or illegal validity)

A bunch of lawyers are going to debate the validity of the theory of evolution.

This is just totally ridiculous and could only happen in the ultraconservative Jesusland. How could you let lawyer decide whether a science theory is right or wrong? Next thing you know, Newton's laws are outlawed too: your car does not move because of force exerted on it. It moves because you love god and god loves you and made it move!

Well, they are the people who voted for President Bush. Enuff said.

King for a day

 

Maybe just for one day, but I'm on top of my fantasy baseball league, finally!

 

[Update: it's 2 days in a row already! But I suspect my bro is going to break my streak soon!]

Is Adsense going to make me rich?

Well, it depends on whether enough people are clicking the ads on my music blog.

Hey my friend, you know what to do :D

I wish this book sells

The book in question is "iCon Steve Jobs: The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business," written by Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon, and published by John Wiley & Sons, publisher of many technology books.

Why? According to various news sources, John Wiley & Sons said Apple Computer has removed all its books from Apple stores in retaliation for this upcoming biography.

If you still think Apple is the angelic company (as opposed to the evil M$), think again. I'm surprised so few gadget/tech blogs cover this story.

I have a conspiracy theory though: Mr. Jobs is actually more forgiving than you think. He just wants more buzz around this book so that it will sell!

What do you think? >:)

Blessing in disguise?

My buddy started working for this company this Monday and was let go on Friday. According to the company, it is due to mismatch between his technical skill and what the position required.

This is something you find out DURING THE INTERVIEWING process! What a smart hiring manager!

I'd rather see my friend not working for a company like this anyway. Job seekers please learn from his experience.

So sue me, Gator (oops, I should say Claria)

Biased too

Check out this title from AP: China Accuses Japan of Distorting History

Anyone would logically think that the article itself must give more details on the accusations, i.e., how and why Chinese think those Japanese history books are distorted.

Wrong!

The article is about how Chinese government have distorted their own history book. While that could be true, I don't see the connection with the title.

Talk about bias, history books probably don't come close to news media.

Lies My Teacher Told Me

That's actually the title of a book I have been spending my late-night hours reading. The secondary title is "Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong" Fortunately I haven't read that much American History textbook (only 2 during the sophomore year!)

I guess the criticism about history books being biased is nothing new. Otherwise we won't have this old saying: "victors wrote the history. Losers don't" The irony is that I picked up this book right when the Japanese government's selection of distorted history textbook is causing a lot of controversy.

You may say the critics are biased too. In any case, this is something we all should know and is always true: there are many sides to every story. Don't make up your mind just because you've heard one side of it.

My new computer

... actually, just new case and CPU heatsink/fan 
I know you could check out what it looks like on Antec's website but this one is put together by myself!!!

More pic at the gallery!

Both the case (Antec SLK3700-BQE) and the CPU Heatsink/fan (Zalman CNPS6000-cu) work as advertised! Not only the noise level dropped dramatically (I hear not as much as half of the noise) but also the CPU temperature dropped from >100C to consistently <60C, with the fan running at 1500rpm only. What a big difference! Special thanks to Buildsilentpc.com and Silent PC Review for the info and recommendations.

Since this heatsink is so easy to remove (thanks to Zalman's great design and the tool they provide), I should probably try some Arctic Silver thermal compound and overclock this thing like crazy!

Jobs was right about the great music vs. video debate

You might wonder if you came to the wrong blog. Nope, this is still run by Bigland, aka. self-proclaimed part-time Apple basher.

And I only agree with one point Mr. Jobs made, i.e., music is preferable to video during commute.

I watch a lot of soccer on my notebook during my train ride but I "converted" because of my recent experience: I was disturbed approached by fellow commuters about what I was watching on my notebook, on 2 consecutive days! Man, isn't my big black headphone equivalent to a "Do not disturb!" sign? I thought that's an unwritten urban custom. I will try putting on an Oakley tmw and see if it helps.

Hey, Oakley is already making MP3 glasses, why not video glasses, aka. porn glasses?

Band banned from concert at church-owned venue

The band in question is 'Lamb of God', who was previously known as 'Burn the Priest.' More details here.

The irony is: they are replaced by Obituary, a death metal band who is probably no more God (or Christian) pleasing than Lamb of God. May be they can't figure out what John Tardy (Obituary's vocalist) sings. Even Tardy himself admitted some of the stuff he sang weren't real words.

BTW, both are awesome bands. (Personally I even prefer Obituary more.) So metal fans attending the concert shouldn't be disappointed one way or the other.

This article probably belongs to my music blog but since it's also about over-religious hypocrites, I might as well leave it here.

Advanced marketing?

I didn't go to business school and know 0 about marketing. Did they teach you simply mention the opposite of all features that your competitor has?

Maybe that's M$'s school of marketing. Check out their tips on buying MP3 players. Might as well titled "Do not buy iPod"

Family pictures

 
What do the bottles have to do with family pictures? Well, it's a family of bottles. Just kidding. :D It actually shows all bottle water we drank during our Feb Las Vegas trip. Just when we thought we bought the cheapest bottle water on the strip at the ABC store in Fashion Show mall, my dad found something even cheaper at CVS! And he proved once again nobody beats him at this :P

Napa

Las Vegas

Madeline B-day dinner

Pier 39

Misc(incl. Filoli)

Look what M$ does to their loyal MVP

Check out this petition by Visual Basic MVP (most valuable professionals) asking M$ to continue VB6 support.

Do you think these guys will regret being loyal to the "dark force"?

Once bitten, twice shy. Welcome to the Open Source camp.

What is Wal-Mart?

As you all know that's become a famous quote from Paris Hilton.

"It's, like, they sell wall stuff?"

Nope. It's a huge playground.

If you haven't live in a rural town before, you won't realize how bored life could be. I still recall during my college days dating means visiting supermarket together.

Bloatware Marketing 101

Let's say company X invented a new format for video called FOO and ask you to download a FOO player from them to play these videos. When you download FOO player, you have to download BAR player, which has nothing to do with video but it sells other stuff for company X.

By this time you'll probably cry foul and start condemning M$.

Although it sounds like typical "evil" M$ tactics, it actually comes from the "angel" company: Apple.

This is what I found when I helped my dad to view QuickTime movies taken by his digital camera: if you download the free QuickTime player from Apple, it comes with iTunes as well. Both pieces of software are known to hog system resources on Windows. I certainly don't want any unnecessary software on my dad's computer. So, we have to go with something like QuickTime Alternative or VLC Media player from VideoLAN

What surprise me the most is not Apple's tactic but the few number of critics that condemn this. If this is from M$, you'll probably have heard of it a million times.

All these led me to thinking: the power of a cult is really scary. Although it has very few members, the members are exceptionally loyal and defend real hard for their faith. The masses cannot drown out their voice.

So, if your company doesn't have a cult, you won't get away with bloatware.

Side Note: I am also shopping for solution to protect/clean marking from keyboards on the screen of my iBook. I do not know of any manufacturer other than Apple that makes notebook that have keyboard marks on the screen yet I've never seen this criticized in reviews of Apple's notebooks. Talk about unfairness!

The bottom line is: when you're the darling of the media, you get a lot of breaks.

Why U2 sucks?

Here is why.

The part about those 2 DJs got fired certainly doesn't bode well for me as it showed they are just hypocrites. Not that I like U2 much to begin with. I guess artistic freedom other than theirs is not so important after all.

One port USB hub for $29

Last time I searched PriceGrabber, 4-port USB hubs are sold for $9-$20.

If I sell you a 1-port USB hub for $29, you're gonna scream "Ripoff!!!" right?

Well, I guess iPod Shuffle fans who bought their "dock" from Apple probably would think otherwise.

Side note: This is from a review of iPod Shuffle:
"the real story of the Shuffle is that it is designed to encourage you to approach your music differently than you would with other music players."

Man, is he for real? I think next time he visits a restaurant, they should sell him a piece of white bread for $10, that's designed to encourage him to approach food differently than he would with other restaurants.

Online Music Service (and when to ditch my iPod)

As a music lover and music maker, I constantly look for ways to listen to as much new music as possible (and legally so that the artists get paid!) Satellite radio certainly sounded exciting to me but my initial impression was so-so. While there are lots of free or paid radio available online, this article is about "music on demand," i.e., services that allow me to pick songs to listen to.

The most successful digital music store is, no question, Apple's iTunes Music store, but the fact that it restricts the purchased music only playable on iTunes and iPod does not bode well with me, not to mention $0.99 a song seems too expensive to me (see the side note at the end of this article) Even though I own an iPod, I don't want my purchased music to be tied to it.

Although its nature is very different to iTunes Music store, Real's Rhapsody is an indirect competitor IMO. All-you-can-listen-online costs $10 a month. Ideal for people glued to a PC 75% of the time when they are awake, like myself. Although "downloading" the songs (burn to CD then re-rip) is troublesome and costs you extra, technically speaking, you could digitally "record" the stream and thus get the songs free. That's a lot of work to "build a library" though. Their audio quality are praised over others like Napster and of course, XM satellite radio.

The new Napster-to-Go has make a splash in tech news because of its unique "renting music monthly" model. For $15 a month you could download as much as you want and listen to them as long as you continue paying the monthly fee. At a first glance it sounds totally counterintuitive to normal spending habit on music, i.e., paying a couple dozen $ to buy a few CDs per month and you own them for life and pay no more. However, if you think of it as a radio-like service (think Rhapsody), $15/month for unlimited rotations in your playlist chosen by yourself that you could bring with you anywhere you go is actually a pretty decent deal, especially for music addict like me. Their ad is kinda exaggerated but they do have a point. The downsides are: 1) Napster's selection is not that great compared to others according to some 2) their software works with Win XP only so my Win2K and Mac OS X machines are out of luck. 3) if you are taking your portable device out on a trip that lasted more than a month without sync-ing to your PC, your playlist is nothing more than a lengthy dead silence. Nevertheless, this model is in the right direction for digital music IMO. I'll check it out once I ditched my iPod.

On a side note: I found it interesting that Apple removed the claim that iTunes is "fair to the artists" from their website after people like those from Downhill Battle has pointed out artists were treated just as unfairly as CD sales "despite huge new efficiencies created by internet distribution --no CDs to make, no distributors to store and ship them, no CD stores to build and run"

The other side of the Tsunami slur story

After reading a couple of articles from US media about a New York radio station (WQHT) being condemned for a show that made fun of the tsunami victims with lyrics like "You can hear God laughing, 'Swim you bitches swim," I was thinking that was mean and poor taste but wasn't supposed to be such a big deal, was it?

Well, I've changed my mind completely after reading more from "alternative media" like Hong Kong newspaper. Here is the full text (mind you it's full of racial slur)

What puzzled me the most now is why the mainstream media didn't mention the rest of the lyric. That would fully justify the outrage against that show. The only reason I could think of is this is an act of mainstream media covering each other up. After all they are in the same business. Who cares about what Chinese wants to know in US?

(More ironically, "We're the World" is the song Hong Kong showbiz group chosen to cover as its theme song for the tsunami fund raising concert. I criticized them for not writing their own song way back. )

Update: here is a comment about mainstream media's initial refusal to even air the story at all.

Now they have sided with the devil

Looks like the conservatives are getting a bit lost. Christian groups have called for the Supreme Court to crack down on file sharing, basically taking the same side as their archenemy -- Hollywood.

Well, let me be generous by helping them here: Christian groups should have supported the file sharers instead. Simply let file sharers bring down Hollywood, the ultimate source of evil content! When you fight organized crimes, you always need to shut down the source. Then you won't have any porn, any violent video available.

Wait a minute, shutting down Hollywood is probably not enough. They need to ask their beloved president to bring back US troops so there won't be violent footages from the news on war anymore. And finally, ban Ms. Hilton from filming herself.

The conservatives lost, again?

They wanna outlaw all interesting TV programs like those episodes from Friends and Simpsons but failed! Can you believe conservative groups lost another fight (see this for details of the previous round) in the States?

CP/M: Nostalgia strikes!

Writing about the early days of Apple computer in the previous article certainly brought back a lot of good old memory: playing with Z80 card, 80 Col card, and CP/M!

So I did a search on CP/M and found this really interesting article: Windows-NT vs. CP/M

Back to 1976: Bring your own display and keyboard

That's a familiar slogan, right?

Yes, that's the "punch line" for the new 2005 Mac Mini.

Oh wait a minute! Doesn't that also applicable to the Apple's very first computer: Apple I?

I always believe the brightest people keep reinventing themselves. Well, maybe sometimes they simply need to copy themselves.

Round 1: Evil (a.k.a. Liberals) 1 - Jesusland 0

Bad news for the religious folks in Atlanta: they can't re-emphasize that evolution is a theory, not a fact.

I thought we all knew that already, don't we?

BTW, I don't recall we evil liberals ever requesting a "Christian is a religion, not a fact" sticker on all Bibles.

They could tell so much from a name

Please check out this notice sent by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) alleging a company of copyright infringement because of having a file called X-Files1.21b, which is open-source TCL code! (Not X-Files Season 1-7 as those morons were thinking!)

This is so ridiculous to a point that it's actually kinda funny. Beware of how you name your files otherwise MPAA will come knocking on your doors.

(Basically this is similar to what RIAA did to Professor Usher's now famous mp3 file)

Too sensitive?

Just watched "The Da Vinci Code Deception" on PBS. This program is backed by Christian organization aiming at separating facts from fiction in this vastly popular book. They claimed this book is no challenge to the religion since it's a fiction and people are not suppose to learn religious fact out of a fiction.

My question is: if that's the case, why bother making a program to dispute it?

iDiot or simply having too much money?

This article is not about what I don't like about the new iPod shuffle, namely, it's nothing innovative but a "re-colored" design of screen-less MP3 players from a couple of years ago. (I bought one such player for $60 in 2002. And yes, I did wish it had a display when I want to know the name of the song I was listening to. Anyway, I'll leave criticism to their competitors.)

This article is about the comments I read about this player: several people mentioned US$99 (or $149 for the 1Gb version) as "impulse buy." I used to think only $2 candy bar or bag of chips near supermarket cashiers qualify as impulse buy. Man, people in the States are rich! Or too brainwashed by consumerism?

(Can't believe I am writing 2 Apple related articles in a row!
Disclosure statement: I'm neither an Apple lover or basher. I own an iBook and an iPod, bought at heavily discounted price. It does pretty much what I expected for the price I paid, but that's pretty much the only good thing I'd say about them.)

From ass kicking to ass kissing

U2 claimed Apple has "single-handedly saved the music industry."

Considered they have partnered with Apple for the U2 edition of iPod, I don't see how I could view the above endorsement as unbiased.

I'd give some credits to Apple's effort in coming up with a simple method/interface to sell music online. (Well, they were not the first company that sell music online. And the way they restrict how the music sold could be played, i.e., DRM-ed and support iPod only, do deserve some blame) In any case, if they have indeed "saved" the music industry, the major record companies won't be crying and whining everyday about sales going downhill.

(Disclosure statement: I'm neither a U2 lover or hater. I do agree "New Years Day" and "With or Without You" are great songs but that's pretty much all I care about them.)

For those who think a name is just a name

The baseball team formerly known as Anaheim Angels have offically been renamed to Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

Doesn't it sound too desperate for them to lure fans from LA?

Well, I have been wondering why the football teams who play in New Jersey name themselves New York Giants and New York Jets for a long time.

However, the most ridiculous name of all gotta be Golden State Warriors. Where the heck is Golden State anyway?