Stuff in Between Monopoly and Competition

It has been a while since I've ranted about an economics article, but there was one by Peter Thiel (cofounder of PayPal and Palantir) in the Wall Street Journal that caught my eye, so it is the subject of this post. In it, he argues that monopolies are not always the bad entities that people make them out to be. In particular, he argues that Google's dominance in the search market has allowed it to expand to other markets such as advertising, robotics, and phones, and in all of those it is far from a dominant market player. He also argues that firms in perfectly competitive markets are too caught up with staying afloat to be able to innovate in any meaningful way, so real innovation can only come from firms with dominant market positions (such that they have money to gamble on such an innovation). Follow the jump to see my reaction to this.

Samsung versus Apple

I wasn't planning on posting anything this week, but I've read a few news posts that Samsung has lost against Apple and must now pay $1 billion in damages for patent infringement. If this is indeed true (and I sincerely hope it isn't, because while I am not necessarily a Samsung fanboy, what Apple has done is beyond outrageous), this really gets my goat.
I hope Samsung appeals this. All of the arguments for why the case is ridiculous have been done to death, so I won't repeat them here. If this ruling stands even upon appeal after appeal, that'll basically mean that only Apple will control the smartphone market. But now Steve Jobs is gone, and I've noticed as a result that some of their new product releases haven't exactly been groundbreaking; plus, their new advertisements on TV (which I've been able to see since coming home for a short break) are pretty awful in their cheesiness and are nothing like what Steve Jobs would have put out there. So this means that the Apple-dominated smartphone market will stagnate. I'm going to guess that while the cult of Apple will keep drooling over every new product release, eventually regular people will wise up to the lack of innovation at Apple and stop buying said products. But while that would make it amusing for me to watch Apple fall in such a way, it won't change the fact that Apple's monopoly of the smartphone market is essentially codified in law. They have essentially set a nuclear strike on the smartphone market, so that if they should fail, so should everyone else.
Oh, who am I kidding? I'll stop prognosticating ridiculous scenarios and be satisfied with the fact that I have a perfectly functional LG dumbphone that can talk, text, and take pictures.

Comparison Test: Pear OS 3.0 "Panther" vs. Zorin OS 5.2 Core

Pear OS: Main Screen

There's been a new distribution making small waves lately called Pear OS. It aims to replicate the experience of Apple's Mac OS X, and upon first appearances, it seems to do so pretty well. I'm comparing it to Zorin OS, which similarly tries to replicate the experience of Microsoft Windows, to see which one does its job better.

Pear OS takes no shame in aping absolutely every part of Apple's Mac OS X. Its slogan is "Think Totally Different", which is an obvious rip off of Apple's slogan, "Think Different". Its logo is a pear into which someone has taken a small bite. It shows box art that clearly apes that of Apple's Mac OS X. Even the version name is "Panther", which is actually a past release of Apple's Mac OS X ( The list goes on, but it's clear what the developers are aiming at.
By contrast, Zorin OS is quite a bit more subtle about its goals. It explicitly states that it aims to bring Linux to Microsoft Windows users, but its website is a bit more generic in that it simply states the advantages and features of Zorin OS without directly referencing Microsoft Windows too many times.

Zorin OS: Main Screen + GnoMenu
(Microsoft Windows 7 look)

I tested both using a multiboot live USB made with MultiSystem. Please bear in mind that as both distributions are based on Ubuntu, and as I have found time and again that my laptop's hardware works just fine on Ubuntu and so do applications like Skype and Google Talk, this comparison is going to seem pretty shallow. I'm basically just going to discuss appearances, deeper aspects of the interface, and included applications, without doing my usual other testing. Follow the jump to see what each is like.

Resignation of the Jobs

If you look at the headlines of myriad technology news sources, you'll see that Steve Jobs has resigned as CEO of Apple. But he's not leaving Apple; he's going to become Chairman of the Board, with Tim Cook replacing him as CEO. It's basically the same thing that Bill Gates did at Microsoft many years ago, with Steve Ballmer replacing him as CEO, though this time, Steve Jobs did it because of his failing health making him unable to keep up with all the duties of being CEO.
Given that Tim Cook has had large responsibilities in the past in the affairs of Apple, I don't think this will significantly change anything. I don't know exactly what Jobs's new responsibilities will be, but I feel like he will still be able to exert a whole lot of influence over the company's direction even in his new position. And even though I strongly dislike many of the things Apple has done and moves it has made, especially with regard to the ridiculously proprietary and litigious business models it has made for itself of late, I really have to congratulate Jobs for turning the company around with his vision a few years after his return to Apple after his first ouster. Thanks to him, the Apple iPod (and its descendants) became more than ubiquitous, and the desktop OS landscape changed from essentially "Microsoft Windows versus nothing" to "Microsoft Windows versus Apple's Mac OS X"; plus, while the official counts show Linux's market share has essentially stagnated around 2%, the market share of Apple's Mac OS X has only grown and grown. So bravo Mr. Jobs on all the success Apple has had so far, and good luck and good health in your new position.
(Note: half of me felt the need to write this, while the other half of me still feels like Apple doesn't deserve quite as much media attention as it gets, and feels like I'm only feeding that frenzy. Oh well.)

Featured Comments: Week of 2011 March 27

There were a couple posts this past week that got quite a few comments, so I'll try to repost most of those.

Apple's Stupid Trademark Cases: Now Including Emacs

Before I get to the comments themselves, I would like to say that I wanted to write this article last year, but I decided not to in order to better build up a particular writing style and reputation. With readers coming from LXer, Linux Today, and Tuxmachines to read the articles in this space, and having written this blog for over one and a half years, I think both are now pretty much set.
Reader Innocent Bystander said, "OMG, this is the 3rd time today I felt for these April's fool stories. Blog authors are getting creative these days."
Commenter surja said, "whew!"

Review: Elementary OS 0.1 "Jupiter"

An anonymous reader said, "Unfortunately Midori will NEVER be replaced by the Elementary team. They have extremely tight ties to the Midori devs. google would drop gmail before elementary drops midori, lol."
Another anonymous commenter had this suggestion, of sorts: "Midori is an awesome browser if people actually take the time to configure it to their likings and investigate its features, which include being able to identify as another browser so some pages work better. You can always add another browser and keep Midori for backup."
The original Elementary developer DanRabbit said, "Hey There, Just wanted to thank you for writing the review :D But also to point out that nobody ever said Pantheon would be finished for Jupiter (in fact we weren't going to even tell anyone we were working on it yet). I'm sorry you were disappointed it wasn't included, but it wouldn't have been a good reflection of what Pantheon will be all about :) As far as the next version of elementary OS, there have been no promises to ship Gnome 3 or GTK3. We'll have to see what the future holds!"
Fuduntu creator FEWT asked, "I have a question (because I'm curious :), why the name 'Jupiter' when there is already an established FOSS product with the same name? It is a fantastic name though, I'm rather fond of it for some strange reason." For those who don't know, the other Jupiter application is the laptop hardware and power management tool included by default in Fuduntu.
Bodhi Linux creator Jeff91 had this to say: "Just wanted to say Midori is a great browser (posting this from it). The Elementary OS team just need to give it some sane default settings. You can easily resolve a few of Midori larger quirks with the right configuration. Personally I think if Elementary OS sticks with Gnome 2 it could be that drop in Ubuntu deriv for Gnome with the main distro jumping to that silly unity thing."
Reader G said, "My Major issue is not with Midori which worked quite well. I found the Major issue is the mail client they shipped with, which has no support for smtp authentication or any other custom options. So for me if was unusable referring to the email client. Other than that the OS itself worked as expected and allowed me to pull in firefox and evolution. Overall nice clean product. Another recommendation is on the software store you change the heading to say Elementary instead of Ubuntu and that will give it a more polished look."
Commenter Dillon had this to say: " @PV: Just wanted to say, great review. Very thorough. Agree with you on just about everything. @DanRabbit: if you're reading this, keep up the good work! Also, where can I send bug reports? Do you have an official forum where followers like myself could discuss the next release? Looking forward to seeing your secret projects in action come next release! Thanks."
Reader Ankleface Wroughtlandmire asked, "Hi, can Elementary be used without 3D effects? I have no need for another layer of bugs and complexity on top of the mess of bugs and complexity that is Xorg. And there are many machines that at least initially do not support 3D compositing out of the box. Apart from its 3D dependencies, Elementary OS is looking very promising."

Thanks to all those who commented on this past week's posts. This coming week, I hope to be less busy, but I only have two posts planned. We'll see what happens. Remember, if you like what I write, please keep subscribing and commenting!

Apple's Stupid Trademark Cases: Now Including Emacs

Apple has become progressively more aggressive about its products' trademarks lately. The more talked-about example has been its aggression regarding the term "App Store" The problem is that Apple itself would refer to "app store" generically and even talked about other companies' possible "app stores", yet now, when Microsoft wants to make an "app store" for the Windows Phone operating system, Apple is claiming that "App" is short for "Apple". This is truly disingenuous because practically every app developer on the face of this planet and many users out there too know that "app" has always stood for "application", not "Apple". Well, this sort of behavior has gone on even further. Many thanks to the good folks at Tuxmachines and LXer for providing the links; you can go to those sites to follow the original links. Follow the jump to read more.

Featured Comments: Week of 2010 October 24

Before I get to the comments themselves, I want to ask, what do you all think of the new blog look and feel? I had to redesign it to get all the gadgets to look right. Let me know in the comments of this article. Anyway, let's get back to the comments.

Open Question: Install Linux without Live Media?

This post was about installing Linux on a friend's laptop which can't boot from a USB stick and whose DVD drive is broken.
Reader Azmo suggested, "I have had really good experiences with gPXE and Fedora (boot.fedoraproject.org) lately. Just a thought if that laptop chokes on 'big' USB iso things, but might be able to work with the small bfo image."
Commenter T Beermonster had quite a few suggestions, but one which I may try out is this one: "You could use a virtual machine to get things set up as you like and then dd the virtual HDD to the laptop HDD. It's easier if you don't use a dynamic virtual disk just a fixed size one that is the same size as or smaller than the eventual target HDD (remember dd will copy everything, even empty space, so the smaller the VHD the quicker the copy - you can always grow to fill unused space on the real HDD later)."

General Disillusionment with Ubuntu

Reader Arup is perfectly fine with the current state of affairs, and I respect that: "No heavy handedness here, they are just establishing a universal and global brand name for a linux based distro which was the need for a long time."
Commenter adamwill had this to say about the review process: " It kind of depends what's meant by 'review'. Most distros have some kind of 'review' process for software being added to the distribution, but it's the details that are important: what exactly is the review process meant to achieve, how is it implemented, who is in charge of it, how open is it, and so on."

Apple's Restricted APT

Reader Van' sums up the general consensus online with this: "NEWSFLASH: Bears [excrete] in woods."

Thanks to everyone who posted comments on this week's posts, and as always, please keep them coming. Also, as always, if you like the content, please subscribe!

Apple's Restricted APT

There's been a lot of talk in tech news about Apple's new Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" and the new Mac App Store with one-click installation, updating, and removal.
When I saw this, I was going to post this right away, but a lot of other writers beat me to it. This article (Ryan Tate, Gawker) sums it up nicely. Basically, Debian, Red Hat, and SUSE have had these features all along. I think one way to make Linux more appealing then is to brand them in ways similar to Apple's or Android's branding; it just seems more hip now, even if it made sense the whole time.
Then again, the Mac App Store will be restricted in much the same way that the iOS App Store is. To this, I say that this is what I suspected all along. I figured Apple would go down this road thanks to its extremely loyal fanbase. In short, I told you so! (I've said this to people in person, though I haven't written anything about this on this blog.)

The Future of Apple and Closed Development

I just saw an New York Times article by Miguel Helft about whether Apple's model of tightly-controlled development can work any longer now that Android devices are selling in larger numbers in the US than Apple's iOS-based products. The article talks about how while Apple releases a new or refreshed product every few months, there are a couple new Android products released every week. Furthermore, the iPad is also facing competition from Android-based tablet computers. Finally, the article discusses how the last time Apple's products (Mac OS) were challenged by competitors (Microsoft Windows), it was almost driven out of business. The article also discusses how Apple isn't likely to even be put in a bad business situation because the iPod Touch, iPhone, and iPad all compete in the market for touchscreen mobile devices, so they aren't just banking on one product to succeed. Plus, to call Apple cash-strapped is to say that unicorns exist: it isn't (and they don't).
While I sort of agree with the article's overall assessment of Apple's situation, there are a few points with which I beg to differ.
First, the comparison to the previous episode of Mac OS X vs. Microsoft Windows isn't especially apt. Unlike Android, Microsoft Windows cannot be modified by manufacturers for use on their devices. That was true even then (for Microsoft Windows; Android obviously did not exist). Furthermore, Apple's development process was far more open then than it is now. The Apple ][ was known for being the computer of choice for computer hobbyists everywhere due to its simple design and huge flexibility in hardware and software. As far as I know, this was true for early releases of Mac OS, though to a lesser extent. Hence, Apple's troubles weren't because of closed development (although I guess this could be a reason if this is the reason why they refused to adapt to a changing market in the 1990s); they were because Microsoft bought enough companies in the 1990s to form essentially a monopoly and grind sales of Mac OS (though not directly) to a relative halt.
While I don't disagree with the assessment that Apple will soon bring the iPhone to Verizon to bolster sales, I actually think it's good that it has so far been only available on AT&T; if the iPhone was available to all networks, it would have probably killed Android before Android could even try to compete. Verizon, not having the iPhone, looked to alternatives, and that alternative was Android; since then, Android has flourished and spread to other networks because it started with the largest wireless network in the US (I think).
While I don't disagree that apps in the Apple App Store are generally of better quality than in the Android Market place, I think it's a little surprising that the author doesn't link this to Apple's tightly-controlled development process.
Well, that's all I have to say about that. Stay tuned for my next post about my respins!

Apple to Third-Party iOS Developers: You Can Return Now

I got this from an OSNews submission on this. In a previous post on the subject, I lamented how Apple exercises near-total control over third-party developers' abilities to write applications, such as what programming language and tools they use.
Well folks, this just in from Apple itself: the requirements have been relaxed! Now, developers can use any tools and languages they want (as long as no other code is downloaded); in addition to this, Apple is being more transparent (or so it says, but we'll see about that) about its review process.
These are both huge pieces of good news for iOS developers who have been shut out of the process for reasons never fully made clear (until now). Hooray, and bravo Apple!

Sometimes, Apple Doesn't "Just Work"

I was at a presentation this morning where the presenters were discussing research opportunities at MIT (called "UROPs" (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programs)). The presenters showed a video about UROP that was put together last year to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the inception of UROP.
Before I continue, I would like to mention that at MIT, almost all of the school run computers (in the "Athena clusters") run Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS, which is really cool. In fact, the Athena software is optimized to run on Ubuntu 10.04. Weirdly enough, I can't run the Athena software on my computer even though I run Linux Mint 9, which is basically Ubuntu 10.04 with some theme and included software changes. That said, I have exclusively seen Apple MacBooks used at presentations like these at MIT. This presentation was no exception.
The lady who started the presentation said a couple of things in general about UROP before showing the video. The video was on a separate DVD, and I saw her insert the DVD into the laptop. What happened next surprised me. There was no dialog upon insertion of the DVD asking what to do. She had to manually open the DVD's contents folder and search for the correct video. Even when that was done, she wasn't entirely sure which program to use (I suspect this is her first time using a Mac, considering that she struggled a little even to open the contents of the DVD); despite there being VLC Media Player on the laptop, she wasn't sure whether to open the video with iMovie, iDVD, DVD Player, or VLC. (She eventually picked DVD Player, and it worked.)
Macs are supposed to be easy to use and they are supposed to "just work". Then there's this. Your move, Apple.

I wanted to end this article by expressing by deepest thanks to the huge flood of visitors and commenters on this site. I never thought my article on KDE distributions would make it to Linux Today's front page; I feel extraordinarily lucky that it did. I also want to add that if you like any of the other content on this site, please sign up for updates through RSS or email; both options are pretty high up on the sidebar. I may even have an article exclusively for subscribers (at least initially) coming up, so that should be an incentive to sign up. If you haven't done so, please do it now! Finally, the next article (which, incidentally, is not that exclusive article I just talked about) should address the concerns of many of the commenters on the KDE comparison article. That should be a big hint as to what it is.

FOLLOW-UP: Apple Knows Your Heart Rate

This isn't a follow-up in that there's more news on this issue specifically; it's just that another article (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic) regarding prisoners wearing tracking devices as opposed to being stuck in prisons reminded me of what I had written about earlier with regard to Apple monitoring people's voices, faces, distances from devices, and heartbeats. I feel like Apple and its iPhones and iPods (of course, with a lot of the other cool features disabled but with the scary monitoring features enabled) would be the prime candidate for this kind of thing; if they detect that the person has moved too far away from the device, they could immediately alert the police (also, this would work if they detect a different face, voice, or heartbeat than the criminal in question). Heh, heh.

Apple Knows Your Heart Rate

You're probably thinking, "No it doesn't! That's ridiculous!"
It is ridiculous, but it might come true soon.
I was going through some news articles when I came across an article in the EFF linking to this gem of a patent filing. Apple, in a move to counter the government's new rules permitting the jailbreaking of phones for non-copyright infringing purposes (among other things), still wants essentially total control over the products they sell to consumers. This patent basically details all of the ways that they plan to catch unauthorized users from using the product and unauthorized software (e.g. copied music) from getting onto the product. It includes ways of identifying unauthorized users or usage such as proximity sensors, voice recognition, facial recognition, and heartbeat recognition. WHAT?
I can use other people as cover for the proximity sensors. I can change my voice/tone to fool the voice recognition. I can even wear masks to avoid facial recognition. But how am I supposed to mess with my heartbeat? The worst part in that is that Apple isn't using the heartbeat sensor to detect changes in a person's heartbeat (that could quickly turn for the worse); it's using those sensors solely to prevent people from using Apple products in ways that Apple doesn't like.
People, please vote with your wallets and stay away from Apple products! Apple seems to have no reservations about turning such data over to the US government, and with the US government (initiated by the MPAA, RIAA, and other such organizations and companies) looking to implement even more draconian restrictions on users' technology and files, the consumer is being demonized here. If people continue to buy Apple products, Apple will then have enough money to make new iPhones and iPods that are able to detect users' heartbeats (among other things); if you also think that this is ridiculous and somewhat creepy, stay away from Apple!

FOLLOW-UP: Truly Competitive Cell Phone Markets

The US government has had an unprecedented bout of sensibility (Joelle Tessler, Associated Press via Yahoo! News) of late. It covers quite a few areas, so I'll try to go through each point one-by-one. In general, the new statement says that breaking technological locks on devices is not in itself illegal unless provable copyright infringement is committed.
The biggest news is that anyone can unlock their cell phone to work with any service provider or to use any application developed for that phone. The phone most affected by this news is, of course, the iPhone (which has thus far been locked to AT&T and can only run apps approved by Apple).
Now, anyone can run any app they want and use it on any network (supported by the hardware) that they want. Prior to this, Apple claimed that under the provisions of the DMCA, jailbreaking iPhones and iPod Touches is illegal (and they threatened to sue jailbreakers). Now, this can't happen (unless, of course, the third-party apps are guilty of copyright infringement).
The reason why I made this a follow-up post to this post is because although phones are not likely to be sold unlocked from the start, users now have the choice of moving their phone to any carrier (provided the phone's hardware supports calls on that carrier). Now, cell phone markets can be more competitive (though the situation isn't quite ideal yet).
Along with the new rules regarding cell phones, people can now break controls on video games to patch security issues. This is almost an open-sourcing of video games, which is great (though this circumvention of technical restrictions is pretty specific).
People can break locks on DVDs and use clips from these DVDs "for educational purposes, criticism or commentary." This is a huge victory for fair use; that really is what fair use is about. This could also mean that the arrest of a European cryptography professor for breaking, analyzing, and publicizing some encryption scheme at a conference will never happen again. Also, people can now make their own videos with clips from movies without fear of being sued for copyright infringement (or so I hope).
Finally, blind people can break locks on e-books to use them with any text-to-speech software. This is a huge step forward, as I have reported in the past cases of publishing houses refusing to release books in formats friendly to blind people for fear of "potential copyright infringement".
Could this be true? Could we actually have a government that cares more about the rights of ordinary citizens than about the "rights" of vested interests? WOW!

Adobe vs. Apple in the Fight for Flash

Recently in the computing world, there has been a back-and-forth argument between Steve Jobs and the developers at Adobe. The dispute, of course, comes as a result of Apple's decision not to support Flash for the iPod Touch, iPhone, or iPad.
A lot of other people have made remarks about the argument, so what I have to add is very little.
Steve Jobs constantly talks about the need for the web to be open. He mentions that Apple does make proprietary products, but continues with the idea that Flash is too proprietary for the web and that a more open standard is necessary.
The Adobe developers respond by saying that further innovation can't happen without openness. That is very true. They continue by saying that they have made most of the Flash platform open-source and open to modification by anyone. That is commendable.
However, neither side has the moral high ground when it comes to openness. It is still quite difficult to get the proprietary features of Flash to work on truly open systems like Linux and BSD (though that has basically been resolved), and Adobe isn't exactly willing to help out in this regard.
That said, Steve, your company has the most closed computing culture I have seen (in recent years). More so than Microsoft, and that is saying something.
Apple is paranoid about 3rd-party developers of apps for the iPod Touch and iPhone, so it is restricting developers on which programming languages they can use (despite the iPod Touch and iPhone being clearly capable of running apps written in other programming languages).
Apple has on more than one occasion hinted at essentially disallowing any unapproved 3rd-party apps from being installed on the iPad.
All of the hardware for Apple's computers are made by Apple/its manufacturing subsidiaries.
One can't even install Mac OS on a non-Apple-made computer.
How can either company seriously make a claim to hold the moral high ground regarding openness?
That doesn't mean that there is no winner here at all. A common fallacy in these arguments is to regard the 2 sides as the only possibilities.
There are alternatives to Flash, like H.264 (which is proprietary) and Ogg (which is open-source).
So people, start using Ogg (and other open-source multimedia standards) and push for more stability and better features; then only can we have a truly open web.

Why Open-Source is not Socialism

I was thinking of writing something on this for a few days, but I got lazy. Then, I saw this (Glyn Moody, The H Open) article, and it gave me the perfect motivation to actually write this.
I'll first sum up what he says, as he covers most of the important stuff. Follow the jump to read more about Linux, Microsoft, capitalism, socialism, cars, and the music industry.

2010 January 28: iPads, Legos, McDonalds, and Toyotas

There are a few things I wanted to touch on today, so I will do so.
Many of you have doubtless heard of Apple's new tablet PC (Mac?), the iPad. As far as I've read, reaction has been lukewarm; the OS is the iPhone OS (not a full Mac OS X), and the thing can't even render certain (many) sites (i.e. those with Adobe Flash) properly; Apple thinks it can get away with it by offering a stand as an accessory. Hah!
More disturbingly (Linux Today), though, it seems like the iPad is chock-full of DRM. I am an opponent of DRM; if DRM existed in the 1980s, when desktop computers were in their infancy, we would be far behind where we are today in terms of computers. Apple is not allowing anyone to install "unauthorized" (i.e. not from the Apple Store) software, calling it a criminal offense even when no copyright laws are broken. This just goes to show that as a computing culture, Apple is even more closed than Microsoft; variety and quality are no doubt hurt by this. Not only is this applied to consumers - even producers can't opt out of this lock-in, especially free software producers who want to maintain their works' licenses like the GPL. Basically, the only person who benefits from this lock-in is Apple, as now, no outside developers can profit at all from this new machine. The Slashdot article on this also mentions that this may portend bad things for Mac OS X's future in terms of openness; surely, it will, given how much more tightly Apple has been clenching its brushed aluminum fist recently.
I want to switch gears now (no pun intended) to talk about Legos. I'm a huge fan of Legos; I happen to be the president of my school's Robotics Club, which uses Lego Mindstorm kits to build and program robots for in-house competitions (and hopefully BotBall in the future) (I talked about this club's raffle fundraiser in a post from 2009 October). The beauty of these things is that they can be put together in virtually any combination; to be sure, 6 bricks of size 2x4 can be put together in over 100 million ways. Here we are, building robots! The possibilities are endless. But I digress...
I watch Tom and Jerry. It comes on Cartoon Network. It is awesome (and I am not ashamed at all to say that). But I digress yet again...
More to the point, on Cartoon Network I see (between Tom and Jerry shorts) a lot of ads, mainly for kids. Many of these ads are for Lego kits, in the forms of Toy Story, Star Wars, etc.
I am saddened to see the proliferation of these assembly-by-instruction-manual kits. For some of the newer kits, there seem to be only a few large pieces that fit together easily, making the thing worse. I am saddened to see this because the whole point of Lego toys was to be able to create anything from one's imagination using the starter parts (and in the case of robots, an RCX and maybe a few motors and wheels (and maybe not even wheels), but nothing else). That is the point of the Lego set; it allows the imagination to proliferate through reality. Here, with these kits, manufacturers have done the imagination; it's just up to the kids to assemble the pieces as they are. This has also been a gradual process; the early kits had only a few more special pieces to make the action figures or whatever, while the current kits seem to have only specialized pieces that can only fit together to make the figure in question. If I need to get gifts for kids (who are old enough to not swallow small parts), I will be getting them Legos - real Legos.
Also on Cartoon Network, I have been seeing a lot of McDonald's ads. I'm not sure why they still need to advertise, but whatever, it's all good. Except, it's not.
The first questionable ad I saw aired around a year ago (maybe it was a little more recent). The ad shows an elementary-school-age soccer match; the winning team is made of trim, athletic kids, while the losing team is slightly more pudgy on the whole. The winning team gets a trophy and rubs it in the losing team's faces, until one of the losing team member's parents get that team McDonald's food to cheer them up. Then, the pudgy kids start rubbing the fact that they have McDonald's (and the winners don't) into the winners' faces, and the winners actually seem to care more about not having McDonald's (than winning).
What?
It's obvious that according to McDonald's, eating McDonald's food and not staying in too good shape is more important than actually winning sports tournaments (or doing more useful things of a similar vein). That is not a good message to send to growing kids. Then again, maybe it's kind of obvious why the team that lost did so. Maybe?
The second ad is still on the air. It shows a bunch of kids looking through a telescope with Ronald McDonald, saying that they can't see anything. Ronald throws a giant handful of magic through the telescope into the sky, displaying a sparkly sky full of stars, nebulae, and fireworks; in the middle of it all is the McDonald's logo.
I initially nitpicked by saying that the kids were able to see the stars before, so they didn't need Ronald, and I was going to extend this into a rant about how poor basic education is these days, but I'm not. The more worrisome thing is the logo in the center of the sky. The message? McDonald's is the center of the universe.
Maybe I should be like Morgan Spurlock: smack a kid every time we drive by McDonald's to make them hate going (or even going by) there.
The last thing I wanted to talk about is the ongoing Toyota recall. Toyota, since the time of my last writing [about this subject], has recalled a few more million vehicles. Yes, you read that right: a few more million. Also, I did not know this before, but Lexus and Scion models are supposed to not be affected as the cars are all built with the Denso accelerators (good), not the CTS (no relation to Cadillac CTS) accelerators (bad) (Denso and CTS are suppliers of accelerator pedals, with, I believe, Denso being Japanese and CTS being American). In any case, do not buy a Toyota, and when buying a Lexus or Scion, consider all of the other alternatives (yes, there are a lot out there, but it's worth researching), and if that becomes the decided vehicle to purchase, exercise extreme caution before purchasing (i.e. take a test drive (or two), thoroughly inspect the vehicle (especially that driver's footwell) for issues, etc.).
There, I'm done.

The Psystar Saga

A lot of buzz has been going around on tech websites about Apple v. Psystar, so I wanted to shed a little light on it too.
The issue is that Apple is accusing the independent company Psystar for putting Mac OS X on non-Apple hardware. Basically, Psystar is officially selling Hackintoshes. Apple is claiming that by doing so, Psystar is committing copyright infringement and violating Apple's EULA for Mac OS X.
There are basically 2 conflicting reports.
If Psystar, as some have been saying, was copying Mac OS X and installing these copies on multiple machines, then (as much as it pains me to say it, in this case, given current copyright law) that's wrong as it infringes on Apple's copyright.
If, on the other hand, as other people are saying, Psystar was purchasing legitimate copies of Mac OS X and installing a single purchased copy on a single machine, why is this wrong? For one thing, this doesn't even infringe on copyright. In fact, recent copyright laws have specifically said that this sort of legitimate installation on other hardware is not infringing on copyright.
That leaves the EULA. The court should then be asking, is such a provision (preventing installation on "unauthorized hardware") even legal? Heck, even Microsoft (traditionally no paragon of open computing) lets people install a copy of Windows on any hardware they want, as long as that is only done once per copy.
Let's see how this whole thing plays out.

Apple Likes Windows 2000?

There's a new ad from Apple on TV. It's another one in the "Get a Mac"/"I'm a Mac\and I'm a PC" ad series.
This one has PC excitedly telling Mac about the upcoming (then) release of Windows 7, saying it won't have any of the problems of Vista. Mac says he's heard this before, and the ad cycles backwards in time with PC giving the same reassurance for the release of Vista vs. XP, XP vs. Me, Me vs. 98, 98 vs. 95, and 95 vs. 2. Then, the ad finally goes back to the present with PC reassuring Mac that this time he means it.
Yes, they also skipped Windows 3.X, but I'm not so concerned about that.
What does strike me as odd is their omission of Windows 2000.
Most likely the omission was due to time constraints on the ad. However, one could argue that Apple genuinely thought of Windows 2000 as a good OS and not a joke (vs. Mac OS/OS X).
Windows 2000, in my opinion, is one of the most stable, secure, and fast versions of Windows I've ever used. XP pales with respect to stability and security, Vista with respect to security and speed, and 7 with respect to speed.
Despite Windows 2000 not being open-source, I think it is still one of the best OSs Microsoft has ever released, and it is quite good on its own as well. Apple recognizes this, so maybe their omission of this OS in the ad was a conscientious decision with respect to this.

Q: What do Bing and George W. Bush have in common?

A: They are both their own self-proclaimed "deciders".
(Ex-)President George W. Bush became infamous for this as he essentially said that he would let his inner circle work out the details and he would simply say "yes" or "no". This is probably the most explicit admission I have heard from him or anyone else in his Administration that he deferred to (now Ex-)Vice President Dick Cheney, rather than the other way around.
Bing, Microsoft's rebranded (it's technically not new except for the name and the idea of a changing background), proclaims itself to be a "decision engine" rather than a search engine. It's implying that it will decide for you what is best for what you want rather than letting you decide. It seems to be taking on the search engine Google and the computational engine Wolfram|Alpha (both of which I happen to like A LOT) at the same time, and failing miserably at both.
My dad and I both complain that Bing is utter crap compared to Google. For most of what we search (in common) every day, Bing returns fewer AND less relevant results than Google consistently. That means it didn't happen after 1-2 searches. That means it happened after more than 20 different searches. This is bad.
What's worse is that Bing's algorithm seems to have been altered by Microsoft to promote itself. For example, any search on Google on "why Microsoft sucks" or "why Windows sucks" will return a litany of correct results going on for many pages. This is understandable because there are a LOT of internet users who are active in communities that oppose Windows and Microsoft's business model as well as many more users who are simply frustrated by crappy Microsoft software.
The same search terms in Bing will return results as if you had typed "why Apple sucks" for the same number of pages; if you're lucky, you'll get the desired results at the very end, and if you're not, there will be no relevant results. This is also understandable as there are many frustrated Mac/other Apple product users (though Apple and its fanbois would like you to not think so!), but that's only if the search terms included "Apple" in terms of "Microsoft". The bias is pretty blatant here.
Similarly, Google searches for "Windows fixes" and such return relevant information generated by regular users on how to fix something on Windows and why it's a problem with Windows. Similar Bing searches will magically replace "Windows" with "Mac" or "Linux", and if you're really lucky, you'll get a few results that are official fixes from Microsoft (which generally don't solve the entire problem anyway).
I had written off Bing earlier, but after a bit of thought and self-reflection I figured that might not be fair. After reading this, I can conclude it is certainly fair. I use Linux Mint almost all the time on my computer (I still have Windows XP for the occasional use) and my aim is to avoid learning about the command line and use the OS like a non-computer-knowing Windows user, only using the terminal by copying and pasting commands from Internet results. Thus, I would need to search for my problem online and use the (absolutely marvelous) forums for help. Google comes in very handy for this; Bing would mysteriously hide these results in favor of "why Windows is better" or something similar. Thus, my dislike has a very practical side to it too, so you can't accuse me of one-sidedly hating on Microsoft.
The most rational reason I have seen for this behavior is that Microsoft (somewhat correctly) assumes that most of Bing's users use Windows, so official Microsoft fixes and the like are all they ever expect to see and all they want; this makes sense but it still doesn't explain the magical replacement of Microsoft-related terms with competitors' names.
I thus mourn the loss of Yahoo! Search (which was really a decent search engine on its own and a great competitor to Google), as it now redirects all searches to Bing search; furthermore, as far as I know, Microsoft has no plan to incorporate the superior Yahoo! search technology into Bing, so all it wants to do is bring in that greater traffic from Yahoo! and keep a crappy search engine.
Of course, it's a "decision engine", so it'll decide for you what's best and what's crap; rather than have that happen, you decide.

For those of you who know me pretty well, you know I hate Microsoft in general. I don't think they have ever come up with an original piece of software; they always derive their work from other sources (which is laudable and promoted among the free software community...) but always take the credit for themselves and charge exorbitant prices for their products. Furthermore, their recent support of free software standards has been nominal at best; the whole OOXML thing was proven to have many proprietary parts and sections that essentially gave Microsoft full control of development in open violation of open standards. Then, Bill Gates decided to purchase and release all of the Feynman lecture videos to the public online; this is great as my passion is physics and I really like (in a totally straight way) Richard Feynman, but Gates decided to do it in Microsoft's proprietary Silverlight format instead of the free Ogg-Theora standard or even the proprietary but much more widely used Shockwave/Flash format. This means that essentially only Windows users can see it, and while Mac and Linux users have Moonlight, an adaptation of Silverlight for non-Windows OSs, Moonlight is crippled because Silverlight makes it so, meaning that Mac and Linux users really can't see these videos anyway. Then, very recently, Microsoft supported a particular software/architecture-thingy (I'm not exactly sure what it was) and GPL'ed it. Releasing code under the GPL means that they have to respect the openness of the code and allow people to modify and rerelease (under the GPL) the code too. This was laudable at first until a third party found out that Microsoft had included their own licenses that allowed the use of proprietary code and almost entirely disallowed modifying or even viewing the underlying code; all of these things constituted huge violations of the GPL. Thus, Microsoft completely undermines its commitment to openness through its continuing backhanded tactics; openness to them means openness only to them.
That said, Microsoft does actually make some decent products. I use OpenOffice.Org because it suits all my needs and is free software, but for more extensive documents and spreadsheets and more content-filled presentations, Microsoft Office 2007 is the way to go. Though I don't like the de facto non-support for ODF (yes, it was originally a separate extension and then was made into a software update, but both forms of support worked horribly if at all), the Ribbon UI is really nice and makes a lot of sense (I didn't like it at first but that was probably just because I was wary of Microsoft, so now I like it a lot), and all the new features are really useful. I hear OO.O is coming out with a Ribbon competitor for the next release, but I've seen a screenshot and it looks terrible compared to Microsoft's version. Also, the XBOX 360 is a great system (though still buggy today compared to the PS3 and the Wii) with amazing graphics, games, and the legendary XBOX Live. Furthermore, Microsoft's hardware, like its mice, keyboards, and webcams, are of very high quality and last for a very long time.

Moral of the story: don't Bing and decide, just decide not to use Bing!