Yet Another Miss For the Media

As I have stated many time before, I really despise how the line between entertainment and news has blurred. In the past couple years I have even felt that tabloid trash and actual news have basically become the same thing. It simply amazes me the trash that makes it “above the fold” when other much more important stories are floating around.

Today I jump on my news feed and I have to scroll for sometime to get past all this Miley Cyrus crap to find anything worth reading. Even funnier is the shear number of posts analyzing a damn picture of a 15 year old as if they are surprised. Am I surprised that a teen girl is being sexualized? No, not one bit its been going on forever. America is like a teenage boy whos ashamed of his porn stash. This country is so pent up on pretending we are a non-sexual wholesome country it pathetic. If bloggers and parents really were concerned about this picture they would boycott or publicly burn the magazine…not give it millions of dollars worth of free exposure.

When I see something I think is wrong I do my part to minimize it, it may have no affect but thats not the point. Case and point, my sudden laps in election coverage. Its not by accident, it is very intentional. In the couple of months leading up to the Pennsylvania primary where content went out of the campaign completely and was replaced by total b/s posturing and negative ads I stopped paying attention to the whole process. Heck I most likely won’t come back to it now until the general election.

For me the same goes with entertainment news, I ignore it nearly completely except what I see in passing. I also almost never write about it. Generally its all trash, the lowest form of news. Yet people continue to watch TMZ,Extra, ET, and buy into all these stories about the “stars” shit-show lives. I don’t care about the actors, all I care about is their products. By products I mean movies, and TV shows..not babies, sex tapes, pictorials, or what they had for dinner. I don’t care if George Cloony is smoking crack with Kim-Jong il while fucking a baby cow, all I care is that his movie Michael Clayton was awesome. If they break a law let the cops take care of them and keep it off my TV unless they do something important like shoot George Bush. Now theres a headline I would care about “Hannah Montana Shoots the President of the Free World!”

While everyone was paying attention to yet another crap Hollywood story the Supreme Court backed the administrations attempts to role back Civil liberties in the name of “security”. Ya, clearly we have to worry about Osama coming out of Pakistan and voting, As if Real ID wasn’t bad enough.

Was that last part cryptic? Ya, thats because your not paying attention to what really matters.

I call them as i see them, and the bottom line is you are what you read. Information is the brains fuel and if all your reading is trash; that makes you trash too.

The people that consume entertainment “news” are more of a problem then the stories themselves especially in our tech-savvy society where things can so easily be perpetuated.

I’m tired of this low-brow crap snowballing because Americans would rather watch and talk about a train wreck than enrich themselves and their country.

end rant

A Lesson For Microsoft

History really does move in circles, and I really can’t wait for the current one to be over. Vista has been out for about a year now and I’ve already repaired more Vista systems than XP systems in that short time, which is nuts if you take into consideration that XP has been around since 2002.

Vista runs terribly on really good hardware, its patches are full of holes, and in general it is a giant pain to use. Consumers are pissed, IT is pissed, hardware makers are pissed, and as a former computer repair guy that likes to still help people out I refuse to fix these systems pro-bono just because of the effort that goes into it. But this isnt the first time I’ve been in this place with a Microsoft product, no sir!

Windows Vista is Widows ME redux! The driver problems, hardware incompatibility, the forced upgrade of perfectly good apps, and terrible support/patches were the same issues that I faced with ME. Interestingly Microsoft lost me as a customer with Windows 98se and I haven’t owned a new computer with Windows on it since then; though i have had some legacy systems for short stints from time to time. Really the only thing that has kept me in the Windows loop over the years are the lines of people that bring their systems to me to fix.

What i’m getting at here is that Microsoft better get off its ass right quick to retool Vista, strip it down and make it more reliable or they are going to loose lots of customers like they did in the horrible year that ME was on the shelves.

Another idea I have played with in my head is the idea of “Windows XP Service Pack 4″ where they take all the niceties  they were trying to push in Vista, build them into a upgrade on top of XP, and then just shit can Vista all together.

Of course my ideas are based on logic so I’m guessing that Microsoft will create a whole new generation of computer users like me that would rather fire up a Tandy then own a modern Windows system because logic is one of those things not in the Microsoft philosophy.

end rant

My Take on Pc v. Mac v. Linux

I love reading the boards where people argue endlessly about which OS is the best and then bash the other OS’s. I never respond to these threads because I’m some what of an oddity…I am proficient in all three and have used them all for about the same amount of time over my life time. Whats even odder is that I equally liked and disliked all three. Here is my experience:

1. As a tiny school kid, it was Mac all the way. My days of Oregon Trail bring back fond memories. What makes Mac’s great for kids is that they are simple, totally based on the mouse/graphic interface, and are very strait forward. Oh ya! and that one button mouse is great for little hands. Really if your having a problem using a mac take a breath and think about the simplest dumbest solutions and it will probably work.

2. As an early teen, it was Windows. Its a good family computer because it shoves everyone into the same interface, with lots of people using it going generic is the way to go; great driver support is a must as well. Most parents rightfully think computers are the way forward and want to get their kids in front of one, but because money is tight and parents like to be safe they go with Windows. Its not a dig, its just the way it is.

3. Late Teen, Early Twenty something: Its time to rediscover Mac (unless your a hopeless gamer locked in your dorm room). Face it, 85% of what a college computer is used for is entertainment such as movies, tunes, internet, and of course porn. Macs were great at this point in my life because they just worked. There were no annoying update/malware pop-ups, no viruses, no compiling, and no searching through hundreds of files on the hard drive because you clicked the wrong file to save a word document.

4. Mid to Late Twenty Something: A Legacy Mac, and a Basic Linux box. So I still have my G3 Ibook from school. Its great to maintain my music collection which connects to my ipod and to hang on to old files as well as my check ledger. But sadly its getting slow and my college loans keep me from buying a new Mac so I was faced with the choice of Windows v. Linux and chose Linux…and why you might ask? Well it goes like this:

1. I have spent my life using computers and I want something i can customize. I’m not scared of script, or compiling. I don’t just want my machine to work, I want it to work the way I want it to work.

2. I know that just with regular use/updates a Microsoft computer only really functions at an acceptable level for about three years…but I will be poor for 30 so an OS that doesn’t eat resources with great legacy support is paramount.

3. I need good basic software that will accept industry standards that is cheap because so am I, I was sold on the word “free” lol.

4. I’m really busy now that I’m out of school and there fore I don’t have time to log into the half billion social networks I have. Id love to self host a website and after a bit of research clearly Linux is the most strait forward and cost affective way to do that.

Final thoughts:

Mac: simple, elegant, great for kids and people that don’t want to think about maintaining their computer. Clearly the leader in entertainment. The only hold back is that if you don’t have a grand to plunk down a new computer look elsewhere, you just got priced out of the Mac market.

Windows: inexpensive way to indoctrinate families, and gives good blanket coverage for several people with different needs. If your a gamer, this is what you want as well. If you don’t mind replacing your pc every three years or so, are willing to take the time to protect your pc from internet scum, and have the liver to be able to hold all the booze your going to drink to fight the crazed tendencies caused by the million pop-ups asking “are you sure you want to do this” Windows is the way to go.

Linux: You’ve been around the block, actually know how a computer works, and want more control. Your tired of the wall-garden safety nets of Mac and PC. You are interested in programing, hosting, or web editing. If your poor and you have an older pc you want to squeeze a few more years out of. If you don’t mind popping Tylenol for a month trying to figure out what distro is right for you, if you don’t mind taking the extra time to get it to play even the most common media file types or hunting for drivers, and if you dont mind dealing with fanboys that spend so much time messing with their OS just because they can instead of actually using the computer Linux is the way to go.

What the Heck WP! My Belated Complaint

I love it when companies (like WordPress) come out with a new upgrade…NOT. Upgrades are supposed to be great. They add features, fix holes, and make things more intuitive. There is a down side though: Companies want to keep things “shiny” so they change the lay-out and interface too.

With this down side in mind I ask, what good is an upgrade if i have to relearn how to use everything from the ground up? This is why WordPress and alike could learn a thing or a two from Apple.

Apple does/doesn’t do  the following when they upgrade:

1. They don’t wait forever, they do small incremental upgrades over the course of the life a their software slightly tweaking things as they head to the next major release. This creates a better learning curve for new features, and less shell-shock when the next full release comes out.

2. They pick a theme/layout and STICK WITH IT. Go back and look at Mac OS 10.1 and compare it to 10.5, its basically the same thing. The theme/layout is just window dressing anyway so just stick with what works. Refinement is fine, but not much more.

My general complaints about the new WP:

1. We are still pigeon holed into one user interface. Why is something that is so easy (choice) for self-hosters so hard for wordpress.com? I’m not asking for the world just maybe two choices or more widget control.

2. The new theme is brighter than your average bug zapper, I literally have to turn down the brightness on my monitor to work with it for more than a half hour. The darker lay-out was one of the reasons I picked wordpress in the first place, photo sensitivity sucks.

3. Everything is crammed into one screen! Tabs are great, stick with the tabs and just give me more features in them. The way it is now if anything new is added it is going to involve a whole new UI “upgrade” to accommodate it.

4. How is it that we still don’t have adsense? i mean really! This idea has been floating around forever.

What the new UI translates in my mind is to that of a little kid with peas on his plate…if you move everything around it gives the illusion that you’ve accomplished more then you really have.

next time WP give me less peas and more functionality…and don’t make me rent a Sherpa to try to find it.

Would The App thats Actually Useful Please Stand Up?!

For the past year Web 2.0 has really taken center stag, and there are sooo many apps out there, but I ask you…is that a good thing?

I’m actually wishing we could go back to the days where the only ways people could communicate online was email and chat. With all the social networking utilities, and apps offered by Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and others it makes what used to be easy terribly hard.

Now instead of one email account I have 3, instead of one chat client I have 2 (and thats only because I tell friends on other networks to bite me), Instead of having just a basic webpage or blog (think Anglefire, Geocities, and Liverjournal) I have a Facebook, Myspace, Blogger, Wordress, Flickr, and then like 5 others I never check unless I get an email notification. Id also like to note that I have the least number of total accounts than anyone in my social circle of 20-somethings.

With all those accounts youd think my web-life would be a breeze, it’s not. My friends are divided into three camps on any one social networking subdivision. For pictures there is the Flckr group, the Photobucket group, and then everyone else. For networking my friends are spread out like this: 40% on Myspace, 40% on Facebook, and 10% spread out on networking like Livejournal and others. Then with newer stuff like news sharing, bookmark sharing, document/webpage collaboration everyone is all over the map….which makes it hard to share and collaborate… which is kind of the point of the applications in the first place.

For me its all very daunting and hard to manage…never mind keep up with, and regularly contribute to. I put the blame for this squarely in the lap of the ISO and non-web 2.0 software makers.

Plain and simple we need standards and applications to go with those standards, or as I lovingly call it the “Pidgin Effect”. Like with office documents there needs to be one or two stardards that most major applications can use simultaneously. The future is in aggregation.

Instead of logging into both Yahoo and Aim I use Pidgin and do both in one screen, it can do more but thats the last thing I need. Why can’t that be done for Social Networking? Why can’t I log into one screen and manage the same content over multiple pages? I can do it to read information with my news aggregator, why not the other way around?

There are a couple promising pieces of software out there but I’ve found that due to lack of standards I find myself saying “they do everything but…”. I look at computer based apps like Flock, and web based apps like Plaxo and have hope for the future…but no cure for the headache I have right now.

Letters From The Right to The Right

Pat Buchanan is one of those guys that people avoid talking about, not because hes totally out of control and makes no sense (cough..Ann Coulter)…but because many people from both sides of the isle actually understand, agree, and even secretly respect parts of what he argues, if not most of it. The problem with him is that he has spent a lot of time in his 45 year public life in front of a camera which has given the media ample opportunity to put together a collection of sound bites that makes him venom to anyone that agrees with him publicly.

This is truly unfortunate because he has many very useful opinions, assuming they are not taken out of context. Hes been called a “protectionist”,”nativist”, and an “isolationist” because he argues in favor of American jobs, American products, against out sourcing, and is a major critic of our very flawed boarder controls. He’s been called a racist and sexist because hes against affirmative action. But it is interesting what he hasn’t been called.

Most people would be surprised to learn that he is a huge critic of Bush, “The American Empire”, Neo-cons, The Iraq War, NAFTA, and the out of control “conservative” led spending that has been happening on the hill since Bush took office. Heck he even defended Ron Paul, and many of his views (not all though) are very Libertarian-esq.

He writes a pretty regular column for Human Events, which unfortunately puts way too many ads in their emails. I think I’ll be running regular piece right here though as he releases new columns so people can avoid all the spam I get .

So enjoy he latest article in which he breaks down Bush’s latest unresearched double speak.

Never Fear, I am still here

So I’ve been on a writing break, but I am back. Right now I’m updating the blog itself; streamlining the categories and reworking some older posts to get rid of errors and such. Stay tuned.

Gaza needs a Wal-Mart

The latest aggression by Israel toward Gaza is simply deplorable. The more I read about Israel and write about it, the more I dislike the countries policies. It makes me further question the need to support them, because clearly they are pretty good at keeping people down without our vast knowledge on the topic.

As long as people in Gaza are desperate they will look to people (like Hamas) for swift action. Any road map to peace needs to give Palestinians a reason to have hope. Simply put: they need a Wal-Mart, and no I’m not joking.

One of the best ways to improve the situation is to give the people steady regular access to supplies, as recent events prove. Further an injection of jobs certainly wouldn’t hurt either. This can’t happen at the local level because at one point or another Israel will close the boarders preventing supplies coming though killing any business upstarts. But, if a western company (like Wal-Mart) came in with its corporate lobbying power I’m sure some deal could be worked out.

If people had jobs, necessary supplies, and some consumer goods confidence would go up which would hurt support for extremists. Bottom line: if you cage people like dogs without food and other supplies, they will act just like a hungry cornered dog. You get more with a bag of groceries, then you do a tighter cage.

GOP Delegate Count Tools

I started this post many moons ago to track the delegate count for the GOP. Obviously as time went on the chart got bigger and more unmanageable. So rather then posting the actual detailed delegate count here I am giving you my fair readers the tools to get the most up to date and accurate information possible.

For a good basic overview of the state of the delegates and who they are going to I recommend RealClearPolitics.com, for the GOP scroll down the page past the DNC results. It shows total numbers and State by State results, it even gives a very basic view of un-pledged delegates.

Due to the fact that the notion of un-pledged delegates has been largely ignored when it come to the GOP I am also offering a more detailed source for you hard hitters out there. If you want a very detailed delegate source for both the pledged and un-pledged I recommend thegreenpapers.com, they have some great coverage over there!

As always if you have any question just leave a comment and I’ll gladly help if I can.

Democratic Delegate Count Tools for Voters

I started this post many moons ago to track the delegate count for the DNC. Obviously as time went on the chart got bigger and more unmanageable. So rather then posting the actual detailed delegate count here I am giving you my fair readers the tools to get the most up to date and accurate information possible.

For a good basic overview of the state of the delegates and who they are going to I recommend RealClearPolitics.com, The Democratic results are at the top of the page. It shows total numbers and State by State results, it even gives good coverage of Super Delegates.

If you would like to know more about what Super Delegates are check out this great, well written article from MSNBC.

There is also a good all encompassing article on Wikipedia that I have found useful.

Lastly if you want to know WHO the Super Delegates are, there is a complete list provided by the Washington Post. It’s organized by State and if your thinking about writing a letter to affect the convention these are the people you want to contact. Note that most of these people are public servants and should care what their constituents are saying.

As always if you need any help or insight just drop me a comment and I will respond.