Linkstew

I just read this article (from MacSlash) comparing Windows XP to Mac OS X 10.1. On the points that the article examined, it was a very fair discussion. And though there were a lot of points on each side which the article did not look at, I'm not going to get into it here and now because the MacSlash comments cover a lot of it.

I owned an NES, but the Super Nintendo Entertainment System was the bait that drew out my inner gamer. And so the prospect of what amounted to a handheld SNES really got my heart going. And the prospect of having updated versions of classic SNES games, including F-Zero and Mario Kart, in the palm of my hand made me sigh blissfully and remember all those good times. And that it was backwards compatible with all my old game boy games was just the icing on the cake.

So how could I not get a Game Boy Advance?

For starters, it's exactly as advertised -- a handheld SNES. It's a great little 2d powerhouse, but don't expect to be seeing Quake 3 on your GBA. Doom, maybe, but not Quake 3. It can't actually render 3d graphics, but F-Zero (much like it did for the SNES) shows just how possible it is to make a game seem like it's 3d without it actually being 3d. So I'm impressed with what the system is capable of, and I'm looking forward to many of the games, both the new and the re-mixes, that are coming out in the near future.

The GBA is capable of SNES level games, but there's a slight problem with that. It's missing two buttons. Which means that game designers have to get creative when they start bringing their old SNES games out on the GBA. F-Zero, for example, seems fond of having the player hit both shoulder buttons at the same time to effectively create another button. Now, I understand that because of size limitations, they left out the four button scheme of the SNES, but I'm wondering why they didn't go with a triangle shaped three button layout, for example. And for that matter, I wonder why they didn't borrow other aspects of the Gamecube controller scheme, and have a bigger A button with two (or even three) smaller buttons around the center button. But they didn't, and what they did is tried and true, and all I can really complain about is how annoying it is to have to hit both shoulder buttons at the same time in F-Zero.

It's a tiny little system, and it fits in the palm of my hand. The problem here is that when I hold it, I effectively end up gripping it between the joints on my thumbs and the tips of my middle and ring fingers, with my index fingers gently resting up on the shoulder buttons. I'm not gripping it, I'm just holding it. There's nothing for me to grip on. I wish there were some handles hanging down off of the corners for me to wrap my hands around, and that'd make it a lot more comfortable. I've also noticed that the more I use the shoulder buttons, the more uncomfortable a game is to play. In Castlevania, the shoulder buttons aren't used very much, so I can move my index fingers off of the shoulder button and behind the unit, to provide some extra support. But in F-Zero, the shoulder buttons are used like crazy, and I can't play nearly as long before my hands start hurting from the delicate grip.

It plays old Game Boy games like a champ. The only drawback is that because of the new horizontal layout of the GBA, the old cartridges stick out of the top nearly an inch, meaning I can't just toss the GBA with an old game in my pocket without fear of breaking something. A minor complaint, and a trade off I'm more than happy to make for the new horizontal layout of the unit.

If there's anything that really bugs me about the unit, it's the screen. First of all, the screen is wider than the old Game Boy, and that's nice, but... The screen is really reflective, so it's had to keep the glare away. It also attracts fingerprints like crazy, and I've already got a little scratch on my screen from wiping the fingerprints off. Those are all unfortunate qualities, but the real downer is the lack of backlighting (this especially sucks in Castlevania). Sure, a backlight would have made the unit more expensive, and gobble more batteries, but I don't care. I've got a battery pack, so when I'm not playing my GBA just sits on it's battery charging stand, and it's happy. And when travelling, I'd be perfectly happy to carry a few extra batteries if it meant I could see Castlevania. But more on Castlevania later. It's a damn shame they made this trade off, because I ended up having to buy a Wormlight so I could see things, and then I noticed just how badly the reflective screen glared. So if there's a shortcoming of the unit, it's definitely the screen. Pity, considering that's the only possible way to see what you're playing.

I rate the Game Boy Advance a 4/5. The screen pisses me off on a regular basis, and the grip occasionally leaves me wanting something more, but that's really no reason not to buy it. If you're in the market for a Game Boy, and you see the Game Boy Color on clearance next to the Game Boy Advance, do not buy the color. If all you can afford is the Color, wait until you can afford the Advance. It's not worth buying a Color at this point -- the game makers are going to jump on-board the Advance and leave the Color like a sinking ship, because they've already milked the Color for all it's worth, and the Advance offers so many new possibilities. I can't wait to see what they come up with.

Haha, I love The GIA. Their assessment of the upcoming console wars sums things up perfectly. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be enlightened! Well, you might not cry, but you'll definately laugh and/or be enlightened.

Way back in the day, when I first hopped on the Internet, I signed up with lightspeed.net, a local ISP. I've had a lightspeed.net email address for as long as I've been on the internet... Last year, I believe, lightspeed was bought out by OneMain, a larger ISP -- I forget their coverage, but it was larger than lightspeed. The funny thing to me about this is that at one point lightspeed was actually an expanding company. But now, OneMain has been bought by Earthlink. I don't know why I even linked to lightspeed and onemain, because lightspeed already redirects to earthlink, and I'm sure onemain will redirect to earthlink soon. It strikes me as strange that Bakersfield now has no local ISP. Bamf! Gone!

At least bsii@lightspeed.net is still working. Occasionally an important message still drifts across that account -- I wonder how much longer it'll last? I wonder how much longer there'll be any little guys around? Will it some day just be reduced to Earthlink, MSN, AOL, and the cable and dsl providers? Sad questions, but it looks like that's how things are going these days.

Hot on the tails of the release of Mac OS X, Microsoft has released Windows XP Beta 2... Win Super Site has extensive review of the beta, and a lot of interesting features are mentioned. It's interesting reading, and it leaves me wondering why so many people are dismissing this upcoming version of Windows as just another Microsoft product. Either those people haven't read about the system, they're blinded by hatred, or they're afraid of what they're hearing. It's something to watch, and it's a good thing OS X 10.1 is slated to come out before XP.

Nothing puts a smile on my face like a tale of the little guy sticking to the man, in one way or another. This week I've come across two such tales, one involving They Might Be Giants and the other involving a member of the mac community named Wincent.

The tale of TMBG, sticking it to the man: In 1990, TMBG signed with Elektra, and they published "Flood", which is probably TMBG's most well known album. After publishing 3 more albums with Elektra, TMBG left Elektra in the dust, as they weren't happy with their contract. At this point, TMBG was probably no longer getting any royalties from "Flood", "Apollo 18", "John Henry", or "Factory Showroom". Shortly thereafter, TMBG released the album "Severe Tire Damage" with the label that had gotten them into the business so many years ago. "Severe Tire Damage" featured a lot of "greatest hits" recorded live. However, much to the disappointment of the fans, most of the greatest TMBG songs weren't to be found on STD -- instead, most of the songs were from Elektra owned albums -- Elektra still retains rights on all the TMBG songs on the albums, but new recordings of the songs are fair game.

In the last several months, TMBG held several "Flood" concerts, where they played the songs off of Flood straight through. At the time it was a nice treat for the fans, but then TMBG Unlimited March came out, which featured The Flood Show in mp3 format. Now TMBG has another copy of "Flood" which they got royalties off of again, and the fans who were at the concert got a treat, and the recordings themselves are much more meaningful than the sterile studio recordings on the album. Perhaps you'll find this a little more ironic if you're reminded that Metallica is also signed with Elektra, and as a team, they went after the mp3 trading tool Napster. It's a pity this won't make a very big splash, but it's still a highly strategic move.

The second tale is of Wincent, who acquired a copy of the final version of Mac OS X more than a week before it's going to ship. He initially made the mistake of announcing on his site that he was going to publish a review of the golden master. After making this announcement, he claims to have been emailed by Apple fans and asked not to spoil the surprise. Readers immediately took to his forums claiming it was a publicity stunt on Wincent's part, so Wincent posted a poll asking what readers wanted. Pretty much every vote on his poll said that the readers wanted "full disclosure." A few hours after the poll was posted, however, his forums disappeared and he posted a note saying that he couldn't post the review for fear of being sued. Now it looked like even more of a publicity stunt -- He'd let people vote, making it look even more like he was trying to grant the wishes of his readers, but he claims to have been threatened, and there was no longer a forum for readers to dissent in.

But then, today, in the face of whatever threats kept him silent two days ago, Wincent posted a review of Mac OS X final. Only his review is pgp encrypted, with the passphrase to be announced on the 24th. Now, assuming that pgp file actually contains a review, Wincent has saved his reputation and will be the first person on the net to publish a review of Mac OS X. Sure, he admits he didn't think of the idea, but he's still published a review of Mac OS X in the face of threatening to be sued.

I took Philosophy 132 to satisfy one of my major requirements, and assuming I pass it, it will. Not that I'm overly worried about not passing it, but I don't feel that I did stupendous on my final, and my feeling seems to be worse than everyone else I've talked to. The title of the class was "Philosophy of Mind," but I think a better title probably would have been "Philosophy of Searle."

You see, the course was taught by John R. Searle, and Searle wrote the books we read in the class.

If I'd taken this class from anyone but Searle, it probably would have been a fairly even and objective summary of several points of view, instead of the Searle is right and here is why everyone else isn't point of view. Though he admits that some other people are right, too. But only when what they said happens to agree with him.

So while the course material was a little skewed, and Searle had some strange ideas about attendance, Searle is an Okay lecturer. He managed to be amusing at least once a lecture, and he knows what he's talking about. However, one problem with his lectures was that hunks of them were frequently straight out of his books, right down at the wording, even though he seemed like he was being spontaneous. Another problem was that he was too easilly sidetracked, meaning he frequently didn't cover everything he intended to cover. Also, the topics presented in class didn't always seem to flow together. He frequently seemed to be repeating himself, also.

The papers were fine, but a Philosophy final sucked. I suppose that a final is necessary to make sure that people have read the material and not just read what was necessary to write a paper, but dang, having to study "The Philosophy of Searle Mind" and being able to regurgitate it on a final is a large task.

Given that Searle is heavilly entrenched right now, I spent a lot of time wondering what will become of him and his views when he's dead and gone. He's been loud enough and made a big enough splash that he'll be on the books for a long time to come, but will it be as a footnote saying "He thought all this, but he's wrong", or will he be right, or what? Once he's gone, will his views wither away without anyone to defend them, or has he built enough of a following? It'll be interesting -- remind me to check back in 50 years, if I'm still around.

Somehow I ended up at a site that seems as positive towards Windows as most of the Mac and Linux sites I frequent. And then I found several articles talking about the future of Windows, which is Code Named "Whistler", and which will probably be called Windows.NET when it ships (Wonder how much Microsoft paid for Windows.NET when they realized they wanted it?). The are articles that start with the earliest glimmers of Whistler, things in between, and now on Windows Whistler Beta 1.

For better or for worse, there actually a lot of new interface ideas being thrown around in that soup, and it'll be interesting to see what ultimately emerges. Based on what I'm seeing, however, I do think that it will almost entirely be an improvement on what Windows is right now, even if the interface still has other fundamental flaws which Whistler isn't even going to come close to addressing.

All the same, I find myself being in the unique position of actually being curious about a Microsoft Operating System. Never before now have I wondered what will come of a system, but I'm almost looking forward to finding out how well Whistler will smash all these ideas together.

Between all the new ideas and simplification in Whistler, and all the new ideas and simplification in Mac OS X, it really looks like the next generation of Operating System wars is going to be very interesting. Both systems should be on equal footing as far as stability goes, even if OS X offers more things for the unix geek in me to do. Whistler has the Windows installed base going for it, while I'd say OS X has maybe a little more eye candy going for it.

The final thing I'd like to comment on is the task based interface paradigm which Microsoft seems to be embracing completely. I haven't thought about it much before now, but off the top of my head, it seems like the "What do you want to do today" interface should be very easy for beginners to comprehend and master. It should make it very clear what there is to do with the computer, which is a big problem I've seen people have. When I was an RCC, I couldn't count how many people asked me "So what do I do with the Internet now that I have it?" The "{What|Where} do you want to {do|go} today" interface paradigm seems to exactly address that issue, and I give props to Microsoft for using it. Now, I want to know where they stole the idea from.

So it looks like OS X versus Whistler is going to be a really fantastic fight to the death, and I don't think Linux has a chance in hell of competing with those two. And that's fine by me, because OS X offers me all the unix I need. It should be clear which side I'm on, even if I'm slightly enticed by the dark side. The battle should be nearly as fierce as the next generation video game console wars that are shaping up for next fall. Between Mac OS X, Game Boy Advance, Nintendo Gamecube, Microsoft Whistler, and Microsoft Xbox, along with the PlayStation 2 and Dreamcast, the second half of next year is going to be quite a spectacular thing to behold. Let's hope that one company doesn't come out on top of all this mess, because that would be a bad thing. On the bright side, the side I'm rooting for (Nintendo and Apple) should beat Microsoft (Xbox and Whistler) to market, giving them a headstart.

Thursday I downloaded Apple's Mac OS X development tools, and I started playing with them, and I was incredibly impressed. I'd read all the articles saying how cool the tools were dozens of times, but here I was playing with them and realizing for myself just how powerful they are. As I was playing with these tools, I realized there were two very big things that Apple needs to do if they want their advanced technologies to become widely accepted.

The first, and most important thing, they need to do is release Cocoa support for Windows. If this doesn't happen, none of the big names will use Cocoa because they can't release they would effectively have to create their applications twice, and that would a waste of resources for the large software houses. So, to address this, Cocoa for windows is a necessary evil which. However, I think that because the Cocoa development tools are so incredibly powerful, even Windows developers would start using Apple's tools to create cross platform applications, both increasing Apple's market share and bring more applications to the Mac. That's the first thing

The second thing is Apple needs to build in support to compete with Microsoft's .NET mess. With Cocoa, I'm pretty sure that it would be pretty easy to create Applications which are able to dynamically load pieces of themselves from the network on a rental basis. There are many reasons I think this capability should be built into the system. Notably, this will allow application developers who want to make rental applications do so, while allowing everyone else to make the same applications they always have.

And while you're thinking about OS X, read what the CEO of Ambrosia Software has to say about OS X.