JerryKnight.com » Rant

Surprisingly Unsurprising.

Jerry — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:56:11 +0000

I have to say, I’m quite unimpressed with the announcements made at MacWorld by Apple. Perhaps Apple set the bar too high last year with the unexpected release of the iPhone, but I would have expected more from Apple in 2008.

iPhone Updates – New features include: location on maps, movable icons, and multi-recipient SMS. All of these features have been available using 3rd party software (requiring a relatively simple hack to unlock everything). They continue to (seemingly) ignore 802.1x authentication and Exchange syncing. I guess the only potential upside is that Apple acknowledged the upcoming iPhone SDK that will hopefully allow legitimate 3rd party applications. I don’t expect them to have simple, straightforward licensing, and they’re certainly not going to remove all their encryption and hardware protection and grant full access to the iPhone, so I don’t know how useful the SDK will ultimately be.

iTunes Movie Rentals – Yawn. There are much cheaper, although less snazzy, ways to rent movies.

AppleTV Updates – Don’t have AppleTV, but the updates seem to only allow movie rentals, so the yawn continues here.

Time Capsule – (a network-attached storage device for Time Machine backups) This adds the ability that should have been available at the release of Leopard. It looks proprietary (meaning I doubt other types of NAS will work), so current Airport Extreme owners are probably up a creek. For those lucky enough to not have an Airport Extreme station, this will double as both a NAS hard drive and a wireless base station (and print server) so it’s not all bad.

MacBook Air – It’s thin. It’s light. It has an LED-backlit screen. The battery will last a while (5 hours of wireless usage), and the trackpad is a little better. Everything beyond these features is a significant step backwards from even a MacBook. Slower processors, non-upgradeable 2GB memory, one (1!) USB port, no ethernet (optional USB attachment), no optical drive (optional USB attachment), no Firewire (optional USB.. wait, no). It costs more than a fully loaded MacBook, which is only 2 lbs. heavier and has a much faster processor, faster and bigger hard drive, marginally less battery life, etc. At the end of the day, the MacBook Air is still just an expensive, underpowered laptop. How much is it really worth to have a lighter laptop? (Although the added accessories to make it as usable will more than make up for the lower weight.) The only bright side to this thing is that it will prompt lots of technophiles to throw vast amounts of their money at Apple, which I hope will fund a real computing revolution.

Oh, and what about multi-touch? A multi-touch trackpad has actually been in the PowerBook/MacBook for a while, and the new one only allows a couple extra features that may or may not see much use. This is the smallest possible upgrade that Apple could have done while still being able to mention “multi-touch.” Wake me up when they release a multi-touch screen or a multi-touch keyboard interface. Given Apple’s yearly release cycle, it may be a while.

Now it’s up to Canon to release something impressive. Otherwise, I’ll have to suspect that for me, 2008 will be a technological lull.

Heard on a commercial…

Jerry — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 05:08:58 +0000

“It’s not bragging if it’s true..”

What? Yes it is! Bragging is only bragging if it’s true. If it’s not true, it’s called something else: lying, deception, exaggeration – take your pick. Who writes this stuff?

I think they’re trying to play off the old adage, “It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.” Too bad they failed.. miserably. I guess what bothers me the most is not that someone came up with this horrible line, but that so many other presumably intelligent people saw nothing wrong with it.

(I normally avoid all commercials by recording the few shows I watch on MythTV.)

Imitation is no longer any form of flattery.

Jerry — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 19:23:00 +0000

The Gustav Holst Foundation is suing Hans Zimmer, the movie soundtrack composer, for copying parts of Holst’s Mars movement of The Planets in the soundtrack for Gladiator. There are so many things wrong with this, but here’s my take. Composers have been mimicking, adapting, and even wholesale copying parts of each others’ compositions for centuries. There’s no question that the Gladiator soundtrack stands on its own as a composition, rather than being a plagiarized copy of Holst’s work. It took the Holst Foundation 6 years to notice the similarities and do something about it. They should be happy that Holst’s music inspired Zimmer to create another great work. Copyright infringement should mean that parts of the copyrighted work have been taken and used verbatim. If Zimmer had simply used the Mars movement without permission (of the composer, having been dead 65 years, but that’s a separate issue), that would be copyright infringement. And not simply themes or chord progressions – it would have to be nearly 100% identical. Anything less would be mimicry, variation, etc. The line between mimicry and plagiarism and the line between derivative work and copyright infringement are usually the same line. It’s hard to figure out exactly where that line is, but Gustav Holst certainly did not compose the soundtrack for Gladiator, and the resemblence could not have harmed the copyright holders in any way. Rant finished.

National Treasure 2: Revenge of the Knights Templar

Jerry — Mon, 22 May 2006 19:53:10 +0000

I’m speaking, of course, of the Da Vinci Code movie. I saw it over the weekend and I thought it was along the same lines as National Treasure. It’s a good story, if that’s all you take it to be: a fictional story. Having not read the book, I assume that the movie stays very close to the book in terms of message and intent. Regardless of Dan Brown’s sincerity in his defense of the book as “historical fact,” the fundamental proofs of the story are either hoaxes or errors, as others have already shown. The rest is either entirely subjective or unprovable supposition. In the end, it’s just Chaucer beating everyone up (including himself) and Magneto/Gandalf raving that Christianity is a scam.

Phone Nazis

Jerry — Thu, 04 May 2006 21:20:50 +0000

“No phone for you!” Cingular’s upgrade dates are now chiseled in stone, apparently. They seem to think it’s too risky to sell me another phone and extend my contract, even though my current contract isn’t up yet. It makes no sense. I’m not sure if I want to fight the battle or just give up til September.

Picking grammatical nits

Jerry — Tue, 04 Apr 2006 13:34:14 +0000

I’ve recently noticed a particularly annoying and common misuse of the English language. Take for example this excerpt from Slashdot: “As always, the Freenet team are asking that people support…” (emphasis mine). According to most English grammar references, collective nouns (such as team) are referred to singularly unless the sentence subject includes all the individuals in the group. This means that the Slashdot story is implying that every single person on the Freenet team is, on their own, asking for support. I highly doubt that, so “…the Freenet team is asking that people support…” I personally don’t think that any collective noun should ever be treated as plural, simply because it’s just as easy to refer to the group members explicitly. E.g. “…the developers on the Freenet team are asking that people support…” Although, this could also imply that everyone on the Freenet team is individually asking for support. As you can tell, I’m picky about bad grammar – especially when people try to overuse it without knowing how to properly wield it. Some may ask why it really matters, since probably everyone who read the Slashdot story understood that the Freenet team collectively wants support. It does matter. Although many believe that proper language is whatever is understandable to everyone it’s directed at, I believe that “proper” English exists to some degree beyond its everyday use. Sure, English is one of the most fluid languages ever, and there are more irregularities than rules, but in most cases there is a right and wrong way to word things. I guess I should give up and accept that if enough lazy or misguided people misuse a particular word or phrase, it will eventually be considered proper.