Skinny on the Mini

Here I am again, responding after MacWorld05-now that the Apple pundit/evangelist/rumor sites have had their say. here's mine: I suggest you go to Apples' website and take a look at the keynote. Not very exciting but you can at least scroll through the boring parts and take a look at the demos. Obviously Steve is selling Apple in his usual way-black turtleneck, paced very carefully, i was hoping for as "under the seat" surprise like the wireless toilet-seat iBooks I saw in NY MacWorld one year. No such luck but some nice things did show. SOFTWARE iWork (Keynote 2 & Pages) (word processing app) Hooray! Keynote is great and the one thing it is lacking is useful text editing. The "Appleworks" folks can stay with Appleworks if they need a spreadsheet, I don't need one. Integration with the iLife apps looks promising. Output Keynote to Flash...? this means Pages will be your simple html editor. Since I'm a fan of Create and Composer (and NVu) I welcome the competition for simplifying this stuff. iLife 05 (iDVD 5, Garageband 2, iMovie HD, iTunes 4.7) The iLife suite is a great and cool suite of Applications. Like the iPod it introduces people to Apple software, which if needed scales to Pro Apps very well : iDVD to IDVD Studio, Garageband to Logic, IMovie to Final Cut, iTunes 4.7 to ??(iTivo?)??. Ok, you have to ditch your sub 1.25ghz iMacs to really use these applications (see below) and a DVD drive is useful. But since this is included with new Macs-everyone has the tools for rudimentary file editing- be they pdf,txt,jpg,html, etc... Final Cut Express HD -A nice upgrade and includes Soundtrack-precurser to Garageband, but a little more powerful. iPod shuffle $99 dollars for an iPod? cool. Mac mini $499 for an Apple CPU with iLife05? Awesome...be sure to get more memory, bluetooth, airport card, the combo drive- the faster cpu--uh oh- better look at that iMac G5 again. Really, I'm hoping Apple treats this as the loss leader it can be. Sure you can build your own *nux box inside a Shuttle case but this is so well constructed, technology folks will just salivate. --- So I wait for more stuff to come along: Griffin Technologies released an awesome number of peripherals this week, and NAMM is coming up -that may be interesting as well. I just ordered an Alesis Micron- from what I hear this is the coolest keyboard anywhere. more on this later... O

Solutions and Problems

Owlgarden People who know me well also know that I am no friend to Corporate greed and short-sightedness toward Energy policy, Employee responsibility (formerly known as loyalty), and the exploitation of third world industry in order to better the bottom line of an accounting sheet presented here in America. There are lots of problems with America, especially perceived if you're a liberal who has compassion toward all the hungry and impoverished people here and elsewhere around the globe. Industries like Automotive, Tobacco, and Petroleum corporations are failing the American people with their lack of motivation to address these issues and , by way of their international sales, this also fails the rest of the world . Our republican administration seems to want it this way by supporting corporations as if they were wealthy individuals- not as an infrastructure to our economy, letting these corporations perform terrible acts of irresponsibility toward the environment, and forgetting that generations following us will be left with a deathly planet of poison and disease. Rather than complain endlessly about this arrogant attitude (which I do elsewhere on this blog) I propose doing a bunch of stuff to help forward the cause of building a New World Order, not THAT New World Order based on terror politics in the Middle East and Asia, but replacing the conservative policies of our government with that of a peaceful initiative, future forward looking policies, and the rebuilding the attitudes of Energy, Health, Education, Transportation, and Media Industries toward a more social corporate responsibility. First off, you cannot blame American people for smoking. The key problem here is the tobacco industry and the failure of FDA to ban nicotine as a problematic ingredient. It is obvious to me, as a smoker, that I would smoke way less without the addictive qualities of nicotine, and probably not smoke tobacco at all if other substances of less addicting qualities were legalized. I find it weird that as a smoker who would like to quit, the government is not taking responsibility in this. I mean, the government should be telling the tobacco companies to shape up or pick up the tab. All instances of litigation of the 90's -billions of dollars - were mishandled and abused-dumped into lame-ass programs hardly benefitting anyone but the lawyers. The government has to step up and strike the industry where it hurts- and that's in the addictive fuel of nicotine. How do you do this? 1) Declare nicotine a controlled substance on the level of Cocaine and heroine. 2) Create a policy of 0% Nicotine in non prescribed products. 3) Let the tobacco companies continue the business but give them a time line to eliminate the nicotine in their products. 4) Encourage Big tobacco to grow Big cannabis instead. Why cannabis? Because it is economically sound to grow and has far more useful purpose in producing cloth, paper, and oils than tobacco has. Legalize it, don't criticize it. Secondly, There should be NO tolerance for lowering gasoline and industrial emissions standards at all. SUVs burning less than 25 miles per gallon should taken OFF THE ROAD. Trucks should be forced to comply with equivalent standards as well, and conversion to alternate energy propulsion systems must start today. . There are dark days ahead if this is not done now. We have the technology to build personal and industrial technologies that don't pollute and Americans will have to learn to move a little slower for the sake of the world. If America does this so will the rest of the world. This I know. Third, We have to change what we are teaching children. The Republicans and the Democrats seem to think that Arts, Music and Sports aren't that important compared to math scores and reading comprehension tests. By requiring schools to meet some politicized standard for learning isn't learning- it is Pavlovian training. Creativity through multiple means of expression, coordinating resources among communities rather than forcing them to compete for funds (children being the victim in this case) is not right. We have to turn this around and make Arts, Music and Sports the conduit for Math and Reading and social learning. We are in a society that is short on long term achievement and long on short term attention span. And we reward this. Growth, in a child, is combined process of society, parenting, learning by doing, and experiencing positive behaviors in peers and adults. Fourth and lastly, We are predisposed to some ancient Judeo/Christian ethic that does not reflect our society as a whole. Indeed, where our founders established freedom of religion as long as it was their religion to practice freely. People need their religion in order to cope with their own personal issues but in America we should not tolerate the demands of any particular religious morality- which by itself often is defined by a political infrastructure. All Americans have a right to believe what they choose to believe in, regardless of the Government. This includes Buddhists, Atheists, Polytheists, Satanists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Sun worshippers, what have you... The government cannot discern between these cultures, nor should it referred to on our money, in our courts, or in government institutions anywhere. Time to take your religion home and to your preferred temple. Don't try to proselytize me, I have my own relationship with my own peculiar Godhead and I won't try to convert you either. I have more to say on how we should change our America -Today I see a decadent society starting to tumble into calamity and our nationalistic attitudes reek of fascism and exploitation with our own population and in the world at large. Time to change this now. Revolution starts at home. -Owlgarden

America 2004

this was a response to a friend about impressions of 2004 events: war, baseball, elections, etc.... it is unfinished and also (obviously) encouraged by Alan Ginsberg, may he rest in peace, (thanks to rocktripper (www.rocktripper.com) for the Jelly Roll Beat stuff, them cats is cool) america I'm breathing and there is phlegm in my lungs america I've decided that my tomorrow isn't any more important than your yesterday - so here we are right now america i'm inundated with market strategy, branding, targeted sales, personalized credit cards and classical hits advertising a gas guzzling monster truck and a 50 inch tv america I block out the noise with my ipod, don't mug me for it america I am fundamentally christian in a fundamentally christian nation, raging christian values against other religious fundamentalists america, the reality is bleak but it's in high definition as long as you don't show any tits america my boys and girls are dieing on foreign soil we are defending a nation that doesn't exist - where they have a reason to hate me america I'm promiscuous, fucking the small potatoes into french fries, serving them up with an obese and greasy breakfast combination america I got my bikini waxed and i've been liposucked into the somebody i wanted to be america see my blog for more information, google my picture, steal my identity but don't ask for my social security number america i am a right click to make it my desktop and you're forensically searching my files, america would you verify this information with me before you send me a gmail invation america I wonder about nuclear bombs and how are they doing, how do they feel so unused and alone america I voted for the guy who didn't get elected, i should move to Ohio america you sold me heroin for cheap, and i can shoot-up a twenty-four hour hard-on with it and a little extra cialis america i want to be a patriot, a designated hitter, i liked being a red sox fan when they were underdogs, now i like the iraqi america i have the whole 1993 season on four dvds and the extra bits and bloopers are great america i get all my news from a late night talk show host, i stepped up to the window and you served me and thanks for the toy, i think i'll collect them all america the aids quilt isn't big enough to cover africa america i murdered my child, my wife, i had a boat that should have taken me to china or at least let me sail away from a setting sun america i am your terrorist, in your waking dream, your cold sweat on the pillow, behind your locked doors, living your catholic pornography, I'm your jew nigger fairy putting a jaw with teeth under your pillow america i am freely speaking america i am in your classroom, sitting in the back, waving my hand trying to get your attention, and you call on me and then march me down to the principals office america i'm downloaded, america i'm standing on a beautiful shore, on a beautiful morning, and wave of sadness rises up out of the ocean america excuse me i have to blow my nose

Unpredictable Apple

Here's my blog post for today on Apple.... If you're a rumor junkie like I am- trying to detect just what old Steve Jobs will announce next weekis a great game. This week has been amazing - today Apple stock jumped 4+ to just shy under 70. Yesterday Servers were publicly released with 2.3 gig g5s and a faster buss (and top off at 1.2 gig sata internally), Xsan boxes are shipping. Imagine connecting your 5 G5 FCProHD Edit suites to an Xsan sitting on top a 36 terabyte disk array (not just Apple's array either-Sun boxes/IBM/etc can be added to the array..um just plug them in.. 10.3.7 was released last week and they dropped the price by 200$ on all the Displays. Rumors are motorboating along and its propellor is Apple suing the rumor mills. HAH! what does this mean? Apple did this last year and I remember Macworld 2004 being a bit underwhelming. Lots of rumors (Apple pda mainly) This year there will probably be lots of whelm. rumor count: 1) Apple Phone with itunes (motorola alludes to this), 2) a G4 rectangle headless box (rumor lawsuit material) 3) Flash Pods (2 gig solidstate? or 5 gig mini or 80 gig pods? Beatle ipod (that's my own rumor)(lawsuit) ? 4) a new 17" monitor? (for the switchers) 5) A fw i/o box for garageband users? I hope so... 6) Appleworks and Keynote and ??? as iWork suite (where goeth MS Office?) Office for the rest of us... 7) Plus there will be talk about X.4 Tiger (uh, NDA alarm on) Maybe a date set... some great stuff is in Tiger: widgets, Core DATA, Automator (you gotta see this )Spotlight, Safari all in 64 bit(? maybe..I'm sure the kernel will be 64 bit)- Finally data to saturate the bus. 8) Steve Jobs CEO at Disney? 9) Aqueducts discovered on Mars? and I think Wednesday's Apple financials will be amusing as well... And though Microsoft is still King, it's a one eyed King, and Apple seems to have 2 or 3 eyes. if this isn't amusing enough Folks, read the transcripts for the CES keynote with Conan O'Brian and Bill Gates. (demo gods were not kind to Bill again) http://www.cesweb.org/attendees/conferences/keynotes.asp Conan Rules! please note I bcc'd a bunch of folks on this message be kind! happy nu b