Baby Otaku assists me with a software upgrade on the Nintendo Wii.
Author: fledgling otaku
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masterpieces exposed
This story about a man throwing red ink into the Trevi Fountain – one of the great majestic masterpieces of Rome – caught my attention not for the (frankly) jejeune claims of artistic significance, but rather because how it highlights just how fragile and vulnerable these and other great treasures remain. From the article:
Initial reactions were of outrage and concern, and underlined how exposed Italy’s precious monuments are. Over the years, vandals have damaged dozens of statues, including the Pietà by Michelangelo in the Vatican. A 1993 bombing aimed at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence that killed five was attributed to the Mafia.
The treasures of Greece are likewise vulnerable, though the authorities seem to be more proactive. The sculptures at the Acropolis are being moved by gigantic cranes to a dedicated museum, for example. The Greek authorities are also demanding that London return some of the sculptures from Greece now residing in the British Museum, but they probably are safer there. Same goes for the treasures of Egypt.
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not that there’s anything wrong with that
But turns out that Dumbledore played for the other team.
He certainly isn’t the first all-powerful wizard to have ambiguous sexual identity. Voldemort doesn’t have much interest in Bellatrix, after all. Gandalf was overly obsessed with his pipe. Raistlin may have had a daughter, but he faked affection for his own twin, so who knows? For that matter, look at Slartibartfast… I mean, fjords? come on.
Also, The Onion has its own take. incloseto putbacko!
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the Redwood in their eyes
Brian approvingly quotes Evariste’s sneering disdain for Microsoft’s Zune campaign:
This is sooo pathetic. Can you bear it? It’s unbearable. The contempt oozing from every pore of Microsoft for their customers, that not only would the marketing team think of this, but that Gates would approve the idea. “Sure, go ahead and put a fake profile of me on Zune Social, and have me pretend I like whatever…horrible bands you think the kids are into these days.” Authenticity? Not in Microsoft’s DNA, I guess. How can anyone participate in such dishonest fakery and feel good about themselves? For crying out loud.
The supreme irony of Apple/Jobs diehards lambasting Microsoft/Gates for contempt of their userbase aside, what is the obsession with the Zune that I’m seeing here and elsewhere among the iPod faithful? The truth is, the first iteration of the Zune sucked, but the new ones don’t look all that bad. And the changes are driven by user feature requests. Let’s not weep for the early adopters; they are few and have willingly chosen their path, and the software upgrades aren’t bad either.
It’s not like the Zune is going to displace the iPod anytime soon. However, there does seem to be a sense of desperation in the air. With the opening of the DRM gates, especially Amazon’s new MP3 store and some of the big labels and networks openly renouncing iTunes (NBC, Universal), the ground game is shifting. This is a good thing; the shift is towards more user choice and less content restrictions, rather than the vertical silo of the iTunes-iPod ecosystem. And that’s probably what has Apple, and the more fervent devotees who have bought into the One True Path, so freaked out about.
No one is going to pry anyone’s iPod from anyone else’s fingers, ok? calm down about the Zune.
It’s worth mentioning that in the NYT article about Microsoft’s music ambitions, Gates again emphasizes the idea of music subscription rather than per-track pricing. The truth is that $15/month is a pretty good pricepoint, especially if that means unlimited DRM-free downloads. Such a scheme would indeed make it very affordable for someone to try out new music on whim rather than be locked into the labels’ preferred paradigm of songs as items you purchase. Given that Netflix costs about the same, and cable TV costs four times as much, $15/month is a bargain. Couple that with the emphasis on social sharing of favorites and there’s potential for true viral marketing of music. Think of the way Facebook applications spread; you are tapped into the sphere of what your friends like and want to share with you rather than what the executives on Madison Avenue want to foist upon you this month. I can see where the Zune is trying to go and there really is the potential for a “revolution” here.
The idea that users freely access and share music is of course anathema to the music industry. But Apple deserves credit for building a system that assuaged the industry’s concerns while simultaneously legitimizing the idea that digital music was a viable business. That was step one; now it’s time to break free. Pay attention to Zune. There’s something there worth looking at.
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Order of the Stick
drat. I got sucked in despite my best attempts over the past couple of years to stay out. Ah well, thank heaven for RSS feeds. (I blame Shamus for his Snarl reference the other day).
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no snarl
Shamus has a familiar lament, the tangled nest of power cables, USB, and other assorted cables lurking beneath the average GeekDesk. He names it the Snarl, an apt name indeed. However, I recently managed to defeat the Snarl. I am now Snarl-free – behold:
I haven’t solved the miracle of wireless electricity. The secret to beating the Snarl is simple: cable management. Here’s a peek beneath the “hood”:
That’s the SIGNUM cable guide from Ikea that was designed to work with my JERKER model desk. Even if you don’t have that specific combo, you can achieve much the same thing with generic cable guides available from Radio Shack or Fry’s, or roll your own solution. I got the idea from Lifehacker, though I dispensed with the zip ties. It’s worked like a charm.
Of course there are people who take this sort of thing to another level entirely. But my ambition is far less; for my next act I’ll settle for adding a 4ft power strip
to simplify things a bit more (inspiration from Gina). I’ve also got two more Snarls lurking behind the file cabinet on the left to tackle, but for now, out of sight, out of mind…
It’s worth noting that the Snarl is bad enough with a desktop environment, but it can only get worse with flex computing (ie, using a laptop as your main PC and externalizing everything). As the number of peripherals multiplies, the Snarl will become more powerful. However, in addition to physical cable management there are also technological solutions, like Bluetooth and Wireless USB that you can leverage.
A closeup and my gadget inventory below the fold: (more…)
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telling art from a hole in the ground
this tale is better told in reverse.
what the following bodes for the survival of Western Civilization, I cannot say, well or ill. But understand that we have entered an era in which holes in the ground are understood to be artistic installations rather than holes in the ground, as a matter of first assumption:
“We saw the first poor victim, a young woman who went into it with both feet up to just below her knees. She had to be dragged out by her friends,” said one onlooker.
“Unbelievably, as we watched to see whether she was OK, an older woman deliberately stepped on it (she later told us, amazingly, that she thought the crack was painted on the floor) lurched forward and landed on the ground. She had a sore wrist to show for it.”
Except, of course, that the hole in the ground WAS an artistic installation:
Doris Salcedo, the artist responsible for the latest Tate Modern Turbine hall commission, has said she wants visitors to look down when they encounter her work and engage in quiet contemplation – rather than be sidetracked by the space’s spectacular architecture.
Some, however, have failed to look down carefully enough.
The work – a long, sometimes foot-wide fissure that runs the entire length of the hall – was unveiled at a private view on Monday night, when someone fell into what is becoming known as “Doris’s crack” (its official title is Shibboleth).
The Guardian and Art News blog have more to say about the shibboleth of artists cracking holes in the ground and calling it art. I find the title, Shibboleth, to be oddly appropriate.
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conceptual terrorism
a shocking evolution in terrorists’ strategy:
Conceptual Terrorists Encase Sears Tower In Jell-O
Authorities called to the scene of the senseless attack said they could do little to control the large crowds of dangerously bewildered citizens, many of whom searched desperately for some semblance of meaning in what had just taken place.
[…]
“Your outdated ideas of what terrorism is have been challenged,” an unidentified, disembodied voice announces following the video’s first 45 minutes of random imagery set to minimalist techno music. “It is not your simple bourgeois notion of destructive explosions and weaponized biochemical agents. True terror lies in the futility of human existence.”
[…]
While officials have yet to determine the purpose of the attack, a number of potential theories have emerged, including the sudden deregulation of the U.S. economy, the destruction of culturally significant landmarks, and maybe the fact that man, in his essence, is no more than a collection of irrational fragments, incapable of finding reason where no reason exists.
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flex computing
I’ve been sounding on a theme for a while about how I believe laptop computers are displacing desktops for the majority of personal (and business) applications. My view is that desktops will eventually be relegated solely to the workstation, server, and the high-end gamer markets, with some variation of laptops or “thin” desktops based on a laptop platform accounting for everything else. The key to this is using USB hubs and bluetooth to externalize the major computing components, including external graphics cards, storage, DVD. audio hubs, etc. When wireless USB goes mainstream this process will be even more accelerated. When going mobile however, you leave all that behind and run off the integrated graphics, sound, etc in a minimalist, lightweight configuration. Hence one box gives you the best of both worlds.
Along these lines there are some new technology developments worth mentioning. First, new external audio cards by ASUS, the Xonar U1, which
uses high-quality digital to analog convertors for crisp and clear music, games and movies. Gamers will like the fact that it supports EAX and DirectSound HW acceleration for gaming in Windows Vista and XP.
A headphone amplifier is built-in and other system specs include 96dB SNR and a frequency response of 20~20KHz at 32 ohms. ASUS claims the device can convert stereo audio to 5.1 virtual surround sound to give gamers positional audio cues. This sort of thing has been claimed before, but is rarely pulled off well.
An array microphone is bundled with the Xonar U1 and those wanting real surround sound will appreciate the SPDIF output with Dolby Digital Encoding.
Meanwhile, ATI has launched a new external TV card, the TV Wonder 650, which:
acts as a DVR tuner in order to record high-definition, digital, and analog content. Users can then use ATI’s Catalyst Media Center software to record television shows “for viewing on portable media devices such as the Apple iPhone, iPod, Microsoft Zune, Palm Treo, and Sony PSP,” an AMD spokesperson told Ars.
Features include support for Windows XP and Vista, as well as inputs for analog TV, FM radio, S-video, ATSC or ClearQAM F-type Coax for HDTV, stereo, and composite video.
So, now video editing and media center functionality can be added to the home station. Of course, that requires more storage, so it’s also worth mentioning that recent advances in hard drive technology – for which a Nobel Prize was recently awarded – mean we will be looking at 1TB hard drives for laptops in the very near future.
The intriguing thing is that the trend is already in full swing; notebooks are already outselling desktops and have been for some time. I think that the change ahead is in how people use their computers, not what type they buy. It’s still very hard to predict what the typical consumer’s computing model will look like in 5 years’ time, especially with WiMax on the horizon. The ability to reconfigure your computing space, coupled with immediate and universal broadband access, is going to lead to a flexibility that we’ve simply never had before.
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The Force is Wii us
the Wiisabre is at last a reality. This isn’t some hack flash-based game, but the real thing:
LucasArts to Unleash the Force on the Wii in Spring 2008
Star Warsâ„¢: The Force Unleashedâ„¢ Coming to Nintendo’s Platform with Exclusive Duel Mode
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – Sept. 18, 2007 – LucasArts today revealed that Star Warsâ„¢: The Force Unleashedâ„¢ will come to the Wiiâ„¢ home videogame system from Nintendo next spring, offering owners the unique chance to live out their Jedi fantasies by wielding the Wii Remoteâ„¢ as a lightsaber while using the Nunchukâ„¢ controller to torment foes with their Forceâ„¢ powers.
The Force Unleashed casts players as Darth Vader’s “Secret Apprentice” and promises to unveil new revelations about the Star Wars galaxy. The game’s expansive story is set during the largely unexplored era between Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith and Star Wars: Episode IV A New Hope. In it, players will assist the iconic villain in his quest to rid the universe of Jedi – and face decisions that could change the course of their destiny.
The Wii version, in development by Krome Studios, will also add an exclusive duel mode in which players can compete head-to-head with their friends to determine the ultimate Jedi Master.
“The Wii is a great platform for The Force Unleashed, because the console’s motion-oriented controllers really bring the game to life,” said Jim Ward, President of LucasArts. “We’ve worked hard to make the Wii version of the game unique in order to truly let you unleash the Force.”
Oh man. Oh man. Oh man.