iTunes 12 - why?

For whatever reason, Apple decided we no longer need a sidebar.

Not only did it disappear from the default view in prior versions, it has now completely been eliminated, and cannot be turned back on.

This is the kind of issue that could drive me to switch.

The times are a-changing...

A client sent me this in a forwarded email - so I can't take credit for writing it.

Whether these changes are good or bad depends in part on how we adapt to them. But, ready or not, here they come!
 
 1. The Post Office. Get ready to imagine a world without the post office.  They are so deeply in financial trouble that there is probably no way to sustain it long term. Email, Fed Ex, and UPS have just about wiped out the minimum revenue needed to keep the post office alive. Most of your mail  every day is junk mail and bills.
 
 2. The Check. Britain is already laying the groundwork to do away with checks by 2018. It costs the financial system billions of dollars a year to process checks. Plastic cards and online transactions will lead to the eventual demise of the check. This plays right into the death of the post office. If you never paid your bills by mail and never received them by  mail, the post office would absolutely go out of business.
 
 3. The Newspaper. The younger generation simply doesn't read the newspaper. They certainly don't subscribe to a daily delivered print edition. That may go the way of the milkman and the laundry man. As for reading the paper online, get ready to pay for it. The rise in mobile Internet devices and  e-readers has caused all the newspaper and magazine publishers to form  an alliance. They have met with Apple, Amazon, and the major cell phone companies to develop a model for paid subscription services.
 
 4. The Book. You say you will never give up the physical book that you hold in your hand and turn the literal pages. I said the same thing about downloading music from iTunes. I wanted my hard copy CD. But I quickly changed my mind when I discovered that I could get albums for half the price without ever leaving home to get the latest music. The same thing will happen with books. You can browse a bookstore online and even read a  preview chapter before you buy. And the price is less than half that of a real  book. And think of the convenience! Once you start flicking your fingers on  the screen instead of the book, you find that you are lost in the story, can't wait to see what happens next, and you forget that you're holding a gadget instead of a book.
 
 5. The Land Line Telephone. Unless you have a large family and make a lot of local calls, you don't need it anymore. Most people keep it simply because they've always had it. But you are paying double charges for that extra service. All the cell phone companies will let you call customers using the same cell provider for no charge against your minutes.
 
 6. Music. This is one of the saddest parts of the change story. The music industry is dying a slow death. Not just because of illegal downloading. It's the lack of innovative new music being given a chance to get to the people who would like to hear it. Greed and corruption is the problem.
 
The record labels and the radio conglomerates are simply self-destructing. Over  40% of the music purchased today is "catalog items," meaning traditional  music that the public is familiar with. Older established artists. This is also true on the live concert circuit. To explore this fascinating and disturbing topic further, check out the book, "Appetite for Self-Destruction" by Steve Knopper, and the video documentary, "Before the Music Dies."
 
 7. Television. Revenues to the networks are down dramatically. Not just because of the economy. People are watching TV and movies streamed from their computers. And they're playing games and doing all lots of other things that take up the time that used to be spent watching TV. Prime time shows have degenerated down to lower than the lowest common denominator.
Cable rates are skyrocketing and commercials run about every 4 minutes and 30 seconds. I say good riddance to most of it. It's time for the cable companies to be put out of our misery. Let the people choose what they want to watch online and through Netflix.
 
 8. The "Things" That You Own. Many of the very possessions that we used to own are still in our lives, but we may not actually own them in the future. They may simply reside in "the cloud." Today your computer has a hard drive and you store your pictures, music, movies, and documents. Your software is on a CD or DVD, and you can always re-install it if need be. But all of that is changing. Apple, Microsoft, and Google are all finishing up their latest "cloud services." That means that when you turn on a computer, the Internet will be built into the operating system. So, Windows, Google, and the Mac OS will be tied straight into the Internet. If you click an icon, it will open something in the Internet cloud. If you save something, it will be saved to the cloud. And you may pay a monthly subscription fee to the cloud provider.
In this virtual world, you can access your music or your books, or your whatever from any laptop or handheld device. That's the good news. But, will you actually own any of this "stuff" or will it all be able to disappear at any moment in a big "Poof?" Will most of the things in our lives be disposable and whimsical? It makes you want to run to the closet and pull out that photo album, grab a book from the shelf, or open up a CD case and pull out the insert.
 
9. Privacy. If there ever was a concept that we can look back on nostalgically, it would be privacy. That's gone. It's been gone for a long time anyway. There are cameras on the street, in most of the buildings, and even built into your computer and cell phone. But you can be sure that 24/7, "They" know who you are and where you are, right down to the GPS coordinates, and the Google Street View. If you buy something, your habit is put into a zillion profiles, and your ads will change to reflect those habits. And "They" will try to get you to buy something else. Again and again.

All we will have that can't be changed are memories.

iTunes 9.1 on Windows 7 (64-bit) is BROKEN

Just updated my iTunes to 9.1, and now it won't start.

Apparently I'm not alone:
http://discussions.apple.com/category.jspa?categoryID=150&start=45#threads

No error messages, no apparent problems during installation. :(


UPDATE: TURNS OUT IT'S A PROBLEM WITH BONJOUR - WHICH IS USED FOR APPLE TV. I REMOVED IT AND ALL IS WELL WITH THE WORLD.

Chris Dodd, Barney Frank: Officially Sons-of-Bitches

Double standard?

If, as David Letterman insists, this is
the "slutty stewardess look"...
























Then what, pray tell, is this?
























First Lady Obama exiting Westminster Abbey.

More about Obama firing IG Gerald Walpin

When asked for the reason for firing Gerald Walpin, the White House rep said that Walpin had appeared "...confused, disoriented, unable to answer questions and exhibited other behavior that led the Board to question his capacity to serve." Essentially, they called him SENILE.

See http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/06/white-house-plays-hardball-says-fired-ig-walpin-was-confused-disoriented-engaged-in-inappropriate-co.html

Really? Well, it seems Glenn Beck thought this was pretty unreal as well, so he proved that Mr. Walpin is anything but senile.

See http://hotair.com/archives/2009/06/17/sweet-glenn-beck-gives-gerald-walpin-a-senility-test/

Another bad sign...

The Americorps' Inspector General is supposed to be independent, so that he/she can investigate government waste and misconduct. The most recent Inspector General, Gerald Walpin, was just fired by President Obama because he was investigating a friend of Obama's, Kevin Johnson. See the the following:

http://www.google.com/search?q=fired+Inspector+General&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090612/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_national_service_inspector_general

http://www.seattlepi.com/national/1151ap_us_national_service_inspector_general.html

Why is this not on the mainstream (non-cable) TV news?

Chastity Bono -- Becoming a Man

Chastity Bono -- Becoming a Man

Yeah, yeah... Empathy, tolerance, yada yada yada...

I just can't wrap my head around this sort of thing.

If I was with a "woman" who told me that she had been born a man, I'd be very upset about what I consider false advertising.

One of the articles on TMZ mentions that Chastity Bono has been in a committed relationship for several years. This relationship is with a LESBIAN woman. So when she changes to LOOK MORE LIKE A MAN (because she's still got female chromosomes) will her partner suddenly be "going straight?"

Or will she be like that "pregnant man" who has a beard and KEPT THE VAGINA AND OVARIES???

Jeanene Garofalo is out of her mind

Recently there were protests across the country that were billed as "Tea Parties", to conjure up images of the original "Boston Tea Party". The idea apparently was to protest taxes and spending by the government. Whatever.

Most media outlets were at best skeptical of the protests, and many refused to refer to them as legitimate protests, choosing rather to refer to them as "teabagging parties" and calling the participants "teabaggers." (Yes - on national news) Many of the anchors on these news channels dove right in with double entendre, saying things like "licking their lips for teabagging" and "it's hard to talk (coherently) when you're teabagging." Seriously. I'm not making this up.

Well, once the demonstrations were over, I thought the story was over too. Not for Jeanene Garofalo, who not only dismisses the protests completely, but labels them as RACIST. I've always known that Jeanene Garofalo "leaned left", and ignored that fact due to her comedic talent. She refers to the protesters as "teabagging rednecks." Again - seriously, I'm not making this up.

Watch the clip below (replayed on Fox News' "Red Eye")

iomega's customer support is CRAP

A client of mine has an iomega NAS 150d RAID box. He bought it to use as a network storage device, and since it was advertised as a redundant RAID, he felt that it was a sort of "built-in" backup. I questioned the strategy, and suggested that a different approach might be better, as well as provide faster access to his files. He rebuffed my suggestion, probably because he paid nearly $1,000 for the device, and truly believed that it was adequate for his needs. I didn't push the issue further, and figured I'd address it again at a later time.

A few months later, he moved his office, which necessitated a change the IP addressing of his network. Since it's configured using a built-in webserver, the directions clearly say the device must be reset to factory settings. Okay...

The device was configured by the client to have four named folders, each with their own permissions. Again, according to iomega, when you reset such a device to the factory settings, all you have to do is "re-create" the folders and you'll be able to access them.

Unfortunately, the firmware on the device was 4x.xx, and the current firmware is somewhere around 8X.XX. This is significant. With the older firmware, when you try to "re-create" the folders, you have to click "browse" to get to them. When you click browse, the subsequent window never populates. So normally, the answer would be to update the firmware so that it functions properly. However, to go from 4X.XX to 8X.XX would erase all data on the device. In order to keep your data when doing a fimware update, iomega recommends using the device's built-in backup function. You hook up an external USB hard disk to the box, and use another "browse" button to tell the box what folders you wish to back up. That function doesn't work either.

Iomega's telephone support took days before even getting a return phone call to me, and by that point they told me there was nothing that their tech support could do. However, they also were quick to inform me that they have their own in-house DATA RECOVERY SERVICE. Hmmm... Let's build a device that's horribly flawed and overpriced considering those flaws. We can then charge THOUSANDS of dollars to recover data from a device we built - data that is only inaccessible due to OUR OWN DESIGN FLAWS.

During the whole process of contacting iomega for the client, I gave one of the phone reps my email address. I got various boilerplate/automated messages from the support department, but none of them were helpful. The client also mentioned that he dutifully registered the device, but never heard anything from iomega about updating the firmware. He and I both, however, have been receiving plenty of advertising emails from iomega.

In the end, rather than sending the box via fedex to iomega and spending at least $3,000 to have the data retrieved, I personally took the device to a local data recovery service that I had used in the past. The owner of the lab (with over 30 years experience in the field) described NAS devices in general as a "bad idea". He and his staff spent several days hacking into the Linux-based device, and eventually were able to recover the client's data. The final cost for that service was $1,000. It's a significant discount over iomega's data recovery service, but it's still a bitter pill to swallow.

What's worse from my perspective is that because it happened on "my watch", I felt partially responsible, despite the fact that I followed iomega's instructions and did nothing wrong. I "ate" a significant portion of my fees, and did a lot for the client without charging him. I also believe the client feels that it's my fault that he had to spend $1,000 to recover his data.

In short, I will never buy or recommend another iomega device. Their device (and apparently all similar iomega NAS devices in the product line) shipped with such serious flaws, and rather than HELPING me, they added my email to their marketing list.

Can you tell I'm upset by this??? ;)

Idiot Sighting

I went to the grocery store tonight, and saw a woman walking through the grocery store. She was probably in her early 20's. She was talking loudly on her cell phone, and of course oblivious to anyone around her. Of course this happens every day. It's always annoying, but in this case it really irritated me. Why?

1. The conversation was clearly of little importance or substance.
2. A stream of f-bombs was emitted from this idiot's mouth.
3. She was pushing a baby stroller.

I was tempted to say something, but let my better angels win this time.

I curse sometimes; perhaps too much. It's never in public, and never around children.

Morons like this may be common, but the triple-threat combo performed by this idiot makes her extra special.

Nuttin' But Stringz

I ordered a CD from Nuttin' But Stringz via their website (www.nuttinbutstringz.com) - well over 6 weeks ago.

No email confirming the order. And still NO CD.

It's only $15, but it's the principle that's important.

They're talented guys, but apparently I'm not the only one they DEFRAUDED:

http://www.complaintsboard.com/complaints/nuttin-but-stringz-c115419.html

UPDATE: I FINALLY RECEIVED THE CD ABOUT TWO DAYS AFTER THIS POST. The disc itself was very professional looking, but the outer packaging felt cheap - no jewel case, just a sleeve.

I gave the disc away, since I already had it via bittorrent. It's now on my iPod and my iPhone - and it's good, but their crappy follow-up may hinder their growth. It's a shame, because they're very talented.

Vegans

I just went to a graduation dinner for my cousin Seamus. It was at a VEGAN restaurant called "Real Food Daily". Apparently this is because his girlfriend, Lauren, is vegan. No one else in attendance is vegan. Only Lauren.

I ordered a diet coke. No dice. I ended up drinking some raspberry ginger ale, which was nice enough, but not what I wanted to drink.

I ordered pasta. It was described in the menu as having "parmesan sprinkle". I asked the waitress if it was parmesan... Nope. It was a walnut something-or-other.

By the way, instead of making a simple tomato sauce, they put some ridiculous fake meat sauce crap on it...

My other cousin, Darcie, ordered a "Grilled Cheese Sandwich" for her 5 1/2 year old daughter. She took one bite and declared it "yucky." Darcie took a bite and agreed. Lauren took a bite and said "Yeah... it's different." Ya think?

When the waitress was reciting the dessert offerings, she mentioned at least three items that were chocolate-whatever... Of course, I had to ask if it was in fact chocolate. The waitress replied that it was "mocha", and then further described it as cocoa powder. So technically NOT CHOCOLATE.

The classic end to the evening was when I ordered a double espresso. When it arrived, I asked the waitress for sugar. You guessed it - NO SUGAR!!! (What's wrong with "Sugar In The Raw?) She brought out a shaker of "Maple Crystals", which were so clumped up I had to open it up and break off chunks...

BOO!!!!

The whole thing is a fraud. The common justification for a "vegan" lifestyle is to prevent cruelty to animals. Of course, this is Los Angeles... Many of the other diners had leather products (purses, shoes, etc.) and got into cars (and some BIG SUV's) with LEATHER seats.

Moby (the musician) was there. I've known he was vegan, but I've never bought his albums... I digress.

Anyway, the fact that she (Lauren) would make all of these people (10 not including her) go to a VEGAN restaurant seems at least a little bit self-absorbed. It was pretty clear no one (other than her) enjoyed it, except maybe for the (non) chocolate cake...

Seamus seemed to suggest to his dad that they'd have similar food at the wedding. If that's the case, I may either boycott the reception or have pizzas delivered... I'm serious.