Over the last couple years, I've grown to appreciate coffee, mostly from having jobs where it was more freely available. The reality is that I'm more or less a coffee snob. So, when it came to light that I was making coffee only on occasion in my home using a 5 year old, $5 coffee maker, my family decided this wasn't acceptable. So, I received an upgrade! Happy birthday to me!
It's good, I'll tell you what! I've been drinking some excellent Ghirardelli double chocolate organic whole bean... mmmmmmm... Thank God for Costco...
Steve Jobs is against DRM?
DRM. Digital Rights Management.
The devil? Perhaps.
Steve Jobs has just released an editorial entitled 'thoughts on music'. In it, he basically lays down some thoughts on the current state and the future of digital music.
The truth of the matter is that digital music IS the future of music. There's no denying this. The problem is that there's so many people with their hands in the pot, trying desperately to get their share.
Steve Jobs editorial basically talks about how things are, how things might go, and how he wants things to be. In essence, however, he's urging record companies to stop forcing digital rights management, and, in turn, open up the market.
It's a pretty interesting read. I'm not entirely sure about his math... at least how he comes up with the figure that 3% of music on all iPods is actually DRM'd music purchased via iTunes. How does he come up with this? Simple: He takes 90 Million (the number of iPods sold), 2 billion (the number of songs sold on iTunes), 1000 (the number of songs 'todays most popular iPods' can hold), and the fact that the majority of iPods are filled to capacity or near capacity, and then gets creative. Are you ready?
90M iPods divided by 2B songs = 22 songs per iPod.
alright, that seems reasonable. now for some magic, you still with me.
22 purchased songs into the 1000 songs (remember, the most popular iPods hold this many songs, and they know they are filled to capacity...) = 3%.
Yep, that's some solid mathematics right there. I know that it's meant to be an illustration, but you'd think a genius of his caliber might be a little more realistic.
Anyway, all that aside, there's an article on the BBC World News about it, which has some interesting replies. It's interesting all around, but, I can't say that even Steve Jobs has enough clout to really get anyone up the ladder in the recording industry to really pay much attention, but, it's something.
Mac Users Whining Like Little Bitches...
This.... is unbelievable. This "article" ,entitled 'Microsoft Slugs Mac Users with Vista Tax', basically says that Microsoft is punishing Mac users by forcing them to by a more expensive version of Vista if they want to run the operating system on their Macs.
Apparently someone actually took the time to read the EULA (End User License Agreement) for Windows Vista. It seems that Home Basic, Home Premium, and Business include the following verbiage:
“You may not use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system"
What this means, basically, is that you cannot use these versions of windows under a a virtual system, such as VMWare, or, via parallels on MacOS X based systems.
However, you can install the Enterprise version, or Ultimate, as the EULA states:
“You may use the software installed on the licensed device within a virtual (or otherwise emulated) hardware system on the licensed device. If you do so, you may not play or access content or use applications protected by any Microsoft digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other Microsoft rights management services or use BitLocker. We advise against playing or accessing content or using applications protected by other digital, information or enterprise rights management technology or other rights management services or using full volume disk drive encryption.”
So, what they are saying is that, if you want to use their OS on anything but a native x86 or x64 based computer, you have to use the more expensive versions. Of course, all of this is based on interpretation, it could easily be read that you can't use the same license on the same machine for virtualization. This is why I'm not a lawyer, and, the guy who wrote said article probably isn't either... but, let's assume this interpretation is accurate.
For reference, the full versions of Windows are as follows:
Vista Home Basic, $199.99
Vista Home Premium, $239.99
Vista Business, $299.99
Vista Enterprise, $299.99
Vista Ultimate, $399.99
Here's why I'm laughing so hard at this moron. First, we're talking about using an OS in an unnatural setting, it stands to reason that Microsoft, apart from money reasons, may believe it to be in the end user's best interest to use a more advanced version of Vista. Second, pay for windows? Third, we're talking about a situation where you're using Vista for reasons other than standard day to day use. Honestly, no one runs an OS under a virtual machine because they need it for productivity reasons. They do it because there are applications they want access to, or they want to be able to test various software (programs, code, web pages, graphics, whatever...) under an environment outside of their own.
The last reason, and this is truly hilarious. Mac users gladly fork over $129 or so EVERY YEAR for another big-cat themed version of Max OS X... and for reference, we're up to about $650 worth of Mac OS X software since it's original release (that is, after leopard drops in a couple months here...). Are you following? Mac users blindly give out money by nature. It's part of what defines them. And why wouldn't they, every time a new version of OS X comes out most of their software stops working, and they have to re-buy that too, because if they don't it won't be supported anymore anyway. Does anyone really think that Mac users are really going to scoff over an extra $100? They already spent several hundred dollars more just to get a Mac.
Now, on top of that, you CAN in fact run any version of Vista under 'bootcamp', macs new dual booting system, so, the only victims here are 'developers', who would likely be purchasing the more powerful versions of windows anyway.
AND! (Yes, I'm not done). Mac OS X cannot be installed on a standard PC, or run through a Virtual Machine without some severe patching and editing, which means that you aren't paying for it at all, but pirating it instead. So, it's ok for Apple to prevent the use of ALL of their software on a PC, but Microsoft can't slightly limit how their software is used under 'virtual environments'?
I hereby call shenanigans!
More Adventures in Vista-land!
So, I finally got around to installing Half-Life 2 again. It had been lying dormant, hidden away for a while, but every time I make significant hardware / system changes, I like to pull it out and see what it can do.
Since I'm running a more powerful video card and 3GB of ram, as well as dual booting the retail Vista Ultimate and XP Pro SP2, I thought it was time to dust it off and see what's up. Besides, I've been doing so much comparison lately, it seems only fitting that my favorite game gets a side by side too.
For reference, from here on out, understand how I have my system set up... under both operating systems I am running Anti-Virus / Anti-Spyware, however, as I've mentioned before, my XP system is a more 'tweaked' because I'm more used to what is needed to make the system run. For drivers I am running Forceware 93.71 under XP (the latest WHQL release) and Forceware 100.54 (latest BETA!!! release). In both scenarios, I am running at 1680 x 1050 resolution, all settings are highest (including FULL HDR, Reflect All, 4x / 16x).
So, I will say that I had read some horror stories about getting HL2 to run under Vista, however, when I finally got the system up and running, it launched fine. It even activates in 64-bit mode automatically, no command line settings needed.
Now, let me say, just as an aside, that I hate Steam. I also love Steam, but, I think there's a lot of things they could be doing better. Here's the deal, I run a very high speed connection, Comcast gives me a 12MB/s download speed, yet, for some reason, while trying to download the game files, I was hardly getting better than 100KB/s, and for a while, barely getting more than 12-20KB/s. It's really sad that they don't seem to be able to handle high speed downloading, because, for free I can download stuff all over the 'net much faster, but for this, that I've paid money, I can't get more than a crawl. On the flipside, I have to admit that I really love the idea of not needing CD's or DVD's to install all of the games on Steam that I 'digitally own'. As long as their in business, I will alwasy have access. That's pretty cool. And, from now on, I'll be doing regular disc back-ups so that I don't have to endure such slow downloads. Now back to our regularly scheduled program....
Once I got HL2 launched, I began at the beginning, which is a good place to start in this game. It was smooth as glass, and the only issue that I ran into was that there was a slight hitch in the Audio when the system was accessing the speech files (for example, when Dr. Breen is addressing the new arrivals on their way to Nova Prospekt). However, my frame rate was good, and even the 'slight' hitching every so often, it felt smoother now than it ever had. I'll be honest, I didn't feel a difference under Vista than I did under XP. I tried both a few times just to be sure, also, that audio hitch was present under XP, but it was much more subtle, I had to really listen to hear when it was happening.
On to Half Life 2: Lost Coast, which is an AWESOME FREE BENCHMARK! I fired up the stress test, using the above settings. Under Vista, I scored a 53.8 fps. A solid score for sure, however, under XP, I scored a more respectable 68.9 fps. Now, this is a far cry from the 1-2 frame per second disparity many gaming sites are reporting on their benchmarks, but, it's not a big enough difference to make me reboot just to play HL2.
Now, for the sake of 'showing off' a little, I thought I would post some screen shots of Episode 1, because, this card supports full HDR, High Dynamic Range, and it's SOOOOO pretty! Be warned, these are fairly large images, and if you're not using a screen with higher resolution than mine, they'll require some scrolling...
Check 'em:
Apart from the gaming, I did want to mention something that I find absolutely maddening. I looked at Windows Live! OneCare, which is Microsoft's Anti-Virus software, and discovered that, while it supports Windows Vista, it does not support the 64-bit version. How ridiculous is that? It's not like I was really likely to pay for Anti-Virus software, but, I'm still amazed that there's not x64 support. It seems like they would have come up with that by now, especially when the free version of Avast! that I'm using has native 64-bit support.... and it's FREE!!!
Not Safe for... Well, Anyone...
Ah, The Onion. The world's greatest recyclers of the same 15-20 jokes, and regurgitation pop culture references. This is an article from 1998 that was re-posted on a forum, I'd actually forgotten how funny it is. I will post the title, and hopefully you can decide if it's appropriate for YOU to read...
Why Do All These Homosexuals Keep Sucking My Cock?
Final Thoughts?
The title of this section indications that I've had thoughts prior to this, which, you might guess is not the case, but either way, it is what it is....
You may notice that I am using CaPitAl LetTerS, which is a bit of a depature from my usual lowercase methodology. I've decided to, at least temporarily, lift my long time boycott of capital letters. Why? No idea, but, it's happened, so, you'll need to get over it.
Tomorrow (Thursday, February 8th, 2007) will be my older daughter's parent/teacher conference. I'm eager to hear what she has to say about my daughter, and her incredible brilliance! :)
Also, in other child related news, Tristan (said daughter) turns 7 on March 2nd! March 3rd will be her birthday party, which we are doing at a skating rink! It should be a lot of fun, because it will also be her first REAL birthday part y (where she'll be inviting all of her little friends from school, something we haven't done before). I've talked it over with my ex-wife, and she will be allowing the party to take place on Saturday, when Tristan would normally be at her Mother's. It's not much of a change, but, still, it's nice that she's not nixing the whole thing in favor of 'Mommy / Daughter' time. We'll still both be doing separate 'family parties', her family when she has her on the weekend, my family when I have her during the week. I'm pretty excited though, I haven't been roller skating since I was in Middle School, so, it should be.... interesting. :)
I'll be making some invitations tomorrow or Friday, because the 'downloadable' ones that I can use from the Skate Place are pretty lame. When I get them done, I will post an example for you to see. When I said that I was making invitations, it was pointed out that these were going to 6 and 7 year olds, so, I don't need to go over the top... so, I will have to try and hold back on the crazy eye-candy... ;)
Oh, the cold snap is coming to an end... hooray... my car will be happy starting again! :)
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