The last few days I’ve been really appreciating some of the stuff that’s come in over my Twitter. I have to offer a huge thank you to Merlin Mann, who’s ‘Popetiquette’ remarks today had me laughing my ass off in my office at work, twice. Merlin and Nick Douglas between them have given me multiple fits of the ‘Twiggles’ this week.
Finally, it’s arrived. It’s available from the Apple Store now in the UK and US (and presumably elsewhere too).
There’s another huge bonus too. They’ve sliced a BIG lump off the price too.
The UK item has dropped from GBP 220 (which the original Gen 2 card was on release day) to GBP 170, a 50 GBP drop.
That takes a whole 100 GBP off the price of a new graphics card for my Mac Pro compared to the old X1950XT, plus I don’t get ATi grief in Windows when I’m playing games.
I discovered this evening that, as part of their Windows Live! Services, Microsoft provide a Blogging tool called ‘Writer’. Now it would have been easy for them to only make it work with Live! Spaces and nothing else, but what I actually found was something much cooler. It supports Wordpress, and as such I am writing this post from the app in question. Minds are slowly opening up at Microsoft I think. Slowly but surely they are learning that there is a big world out there that is outside and has some super cool stuff going on. While a nice blogging tool is only a tiny thing to most people, it’s just another sign. More of this please Microsoft, and less threats of legal wrangling with Open Source authors.
UPDATE: slightly disappointingly, the Tags system in writer doesn’t interact correctly with the tag cloud database in Wordpress. Not a biggy but still a bit of a bummer.
This is a regurgitation of something I wrote on the 68kMLA forum in response to comparisons of GNU/Linux, Windows and OS X.
Okay, in order to make a fair comparison to OS X you have to compare it to installing OSX86 on an.other PC hardware combination. Try that and see how well it runs and how nicely it behaves. It’s hell on two legs, that’s what. OS X is, in my opinion the best consumer OS available. While not perfect it is about as good as it gets. It is *not* however available outside the Mac hardware platform without significant screwing around, and following undocumented techniques that frankly make Linux installs look like a walk in the park with mother. There are, now, install DVDs where a lot of the screwing is done for you but you still have to jump through hoop X and y to get tit working, and there’s no guarantee at the end that it will anyway.
Therefore, and what this all boils down to is, when faced with *generic non-Apple hardware*, which is the easiest and least obstructive OS with the best support and most straightforward install? The answer in some people’s mind is Linux (insert favourite distro here). In my mind it’s Windows, and I don’t care what ANYONE says, I still think that. It doesn’t stop me using Linux, but that’s because I know it inside out and understand what goes wrong with it and where. To a novice or a Windows-only user it’s all alien flim-flam, and when it goes wrong they are up the creek and desperately lacking propulsion devices.
Linux is free, as in beer/speech, but with any free OS the penalty is the need for support. You either need an IT tech, or a pet nerd (one and the same in some cases). I’m sure plenty of people will quote chapter and verse about how they’ve never had a problem with x distro etc. In my experience I’ve never had a serious problem with *some* distros on *some* hardware. I’ve had gripes though, and they are the sort of things Joe Soap User can’t fix themselves.
Another issue is hardware compatibility. You throw your favourite distro at a machine not knowing if it’s going to work okay or not, simply. Most of the time it does. Sometimes, especially on older hardware (which is a more common target for experimentation with Linux), it doesn’t and you have to use something different. Because of differences between distros it then puts you slightly on the back foot as you can potentially be stuck in a system you don’t know, making life hard when stuff goes wrong (which it does).
All this is to say nothing of the fact that GNOME based distros either have a hellish and jumbled mess of config utilities which may or may not work correctly and lack the options required for some setup. I generally compare them directly with OS X or Windows, both of which lacks some in places themselves, so lacking on something that’s lacking is generally really not good.
KDE goes some way to helping I have found as it seems more homologous with config and util apps having much more consistency, however it’s still not quite all there.
Then there’s XFCE which is different again.
Then every distro uses a different setup for configs and utils to manage them. Although common threads exist, they are only that. Rough similarity is not either consistency or standardization. Most of the similarities are factors more of the basic nature of a configuration being the same and/or the text config file being the same. The upshot is it’s difficult to guide a novice user through a standard procedure to reconfigure/setup/install anything. Using ‘Linux’ isn’t enough anymore. Divergence means you now have to ask ‘what Linux?’ and ‘what version?’ to get anywhere. The latter and often even former are something, again, Joe Soap User doesn’t know and can’t find out all that easily (and to compound the issue, finding out is different between distros! ARGHHHHHH!!!).
Linux will never succeed as a desktop OS unless it is standardized, and then rigorously crafted into a product on a par with OS X and Windows quality and consistency wise. That won’t happen because it’s ‘Free’, which means you can do what you like. That’s ultimately going to leads to it’s remaining a mediocrity, in my opinion.
This is some sort of insane Joke, right? Selling to the general public a computer with a copy of OS X with a pre-violated User License? That’s not good guys…
I especially like the part about ‘non-safe’ Software updates. Really nice. The average user is REALLY gonna understand that one 
Hmmm… we’ve seen this attempt to create non-Apple Macs before from people selling Apple hardware in their own cases:
http://web.archive.org/web/20031120002821/http://2khappyware.com/
Anyone remember that?
They got their asses sued so damn hard they almost spontaneously caught fire in the process.
I don’t expect this Psystar bunch to last long before Apple Legal catches up.
Hark! Is that the sound of the world’s largest proverbial ton of bricks I hear hurtling towards them?
UPDATE: Yes, it appears it’s now called the ‘Open Computer‘ instead… Interesting.
http://www.geekculture.com/joyoftech/joyarchives/1093.html
I could use at east half a dozen of those 
I have been listening to the debate between the BBC and British ISPs of late. Last year the BBC introduced an internet TV service called ‘iPlayer’, which serves up popular BBC TV and Radio. This has prompted a firestorm from UK ISPs, whose already groaning broadband network is now under more strain than ever from people streaming content from the BBC, and other Video services.
The recent revelation that UK ISPs are now calling for BBC funds to be provided to offset the estimated 830 million GBP (Source: Ofcom, via BBC) of spending needed to upgrade the UK broadband network has me really pissed off…
I imagine what kind of reaction consumers would get if they asked the BBC for funding to upgrade their TVs to digital. Or the BBC provides HD TV for some channels, but I don’t see anyone asking for BBC funds to upgrade everyone’s TVs to HD. UK ISPs are ripping consumers off left right and centre. If they can’t find the money to upgrade what is a chronically dated system, that pre-BBC iPlayer was *already suffering under excessive load*, then they are not fit to provide internet services. They make stack of money by selling fake unlimited contracts to people, so why haven’t they got he money to invest in upgrading the infrastructure, or is it just the case that they needed a scape goat?
My theory is that *all* media services are putting a heavy load on UK ISP networks. YouTube cannot be ignored for example, it’s become hugely popular in the last 2 years and must put a huge strain on the network, iTunes and their music store selling TV and music over the internet to UK customers can’t help either. That’s just 2 examples, given a few minutes I could think of a lot more I’m sure. The problem afoot here is not that the BBC in particular, although they are undeniably putting a lot of traffic across uK networks, are not the sole source of this problem. The internet is changing, and UK ISPs are lagging behind *yet again*. Video on demand services are more numerously available, and more people are using them than ever. The network needs upgrading and rather than get their heads down and upgrade it like they should be doing, UK ISPs are, yet again (we’ve already seen them try and blame file sharing an piracy), trying to find a scapegoat to prevent them having to get off their fat-cat arses and sort the bloody problem out properly.
Ofcom should simply turn round and tell them to sort it out IMHO. It’s not the BBC’s problem, it’s not the consumer’s problem.
I have officially added ‘Until the Day is Done’ from R.E.M.’s Accelerate to my list of all time great songs. It’s pulsing, unashamed sociopolitical rhetoric, wandering ballad-like tune and Stipe’s affirmation in executing such sharp lyrics so perfectly hark back to the glory days of R.E.M. This song wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a classic like Document or Fables. It’s a real peach. Of course, despite having it’s feet in good old fashioned wholesome R.E.M. this song also echos the sentiments of modern America. It’s very prominent that 2 quotes are printed above the lyrics on the sleeve notes:
“When fascism comes to America it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
- Sinclair Lewis
and
“…thanks for the last and greatest betrayal of the last and greatest of human dreams… thanks for the AMERICAN DREAM to vulgarize and falsify until the bare lie shines through”
- William S Burroughs
I have to confess I wasn’t franticly excited when I found out R.E.M. had a new album out. It’s not that I’ve gone off R.E.M., it’s just that they have seemed to go off themselves. I couldn’t gel with their albums as I had done with the old material back in the 90s. It seemed like listening to a different band. Their previous album ‘Around the Sun’ didn’t do a damn thing for me in fact. I found it all very worrying, and when I saw the news of Accelerate I got that awful ‘oh no not, again’ feeling.
As many aficionados of this Athens, GA band will attest, the rot started back in 1994 when, following a serious brain aneurysm on the stage on the Monster Tour, drummer Bill Buck was forced to leave the band. This was one of 3 major blows the band took that year. Lead singer Michael Stipe also lost 2 good friends in River Phoenix and Kurt Cobain. It was at this point they decided to try something different, which ultimately, at least IMHO, was a mistake. They set off down a road that time and again lead to doubt of their own ability to carry on, and a decidedly mixed repertoire of albums like New Adventures in Hi-Fi, Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun. The latter was an unadulterated flop, it sold only 240,000 copies in the US, and I’ll bet most of those were to hardcore R.E.M. fans. Of the rest I only ever really could say I actually really liked Reveal a lot, the rest really don’t do a lot for me, save for odd songs here and there where the R.E.M. genius shines through the mist.
It was the abject failure, even by the band’s own admission, of Around the Sun that prompted a rethink. And so late on last year they started work on something new. Stipe admits he works best under pressure, and as such the album was conceived in just a few months and recorded in London in just 10 days in studio. I often say to people that when you trying to do something the worst thing you can do it think about it too much. Follow your nose and go with the flow. I guesss it’s not aas daft as it sounds. Accelerate, produced by Jacknife Lee (who apparently was recommended by U2 Guitarist The Edge) was born.
The results? Pure gold R.E.M. Gone are the new age keyboard riffs and weird percussion-less oddity. Out has gone the departure from what made the band so big in the first instance. What has been given back is what we all went nuts for in the late 80s and early 90s. Real R.E.M. Guitar-filled, drum smashing edgy rock music, soulful and profound social political rhetoric, and madcap trips into semi-surrealism. The album’s halls echo to the sounds of great albums of R.E.M.’s distant past, like Life’s Rich Pageant, Murmur and Fables of the Reconstruction. The guitar and bass work is genial, the lyrics are hard edged and catchy. R.E.M. had a point to make with Accelerate. The point was that they found what they had lost, and wanted to put out the good word to fans and the music world that R.E.M. were back on the map.
If all the R.E.M. you ever heard was released after 1992 then you either won’t get it or you might like it. I dunno, who am I to say. If that’s the case and you do like it then you will like R.E.M.’s old stuff.
If, like me, you have been a hardcore fan for decades, and have every album and know every song then you’ll love this album, if not from the point of view of absolute quality and depth, but from the view that it at least proves R.E.M. as we knew and adored them are back, baby.
Lets hope the positive vibe from this album makes it sell big and they get the message and make more of this pure magic.
Great tool, developed by Matt King:
http://www.twitterlocal.net
|
