Thursday, August 22, 2002

What Ever Happened to Subtlety? Jennifer Lopez is on the cover of this month's Stuff Magazine. Is that picture supposed to say anything more than "I'm Jennifer Lopez, and this is my ass"? 8:20:29 PM     What do you think? ()

Who Did This? Looking through the referer rankings for Gnosis today, I found that someone had used Google to translate it into Spanish. It looks to be a pretty impressive translation. Is there anything that Google can't do? 8:09:50 PM     What do you think? ()

Why Is OS X the Best Consumer Operating System Available? The New York Times reviewed Mac OS X 10.2 today. It's a very positive review, but more important, it's an informed review. Though I have committed senseless acts of Mac zealotry, I'm not really a Mac zealot. I hated Mac OS 8 and 9, and used Linux until about a year ago. I switched to OS X because it offered all of the stability and transparency of Linux in a convenient and media savvy package--in short, it's nothing like either Mac OS 9 or Windows. This review recognizes the important ways in which OS X is different that are generally not noted in the mainstream press: On the other hand, Apple could afford to point out a few larger issues that rarely come up in the Mac-Windows debate. For example, while viruses are an expensive, exasperating fact of life in Windows, not a single one yet affects Mac OS X (knock on silicon). Furthermore, Apple is not Microsoft--that's the understatement of the year--and isn't nearly so Big Brotherish. There's no 25-digit serial number to type into a new Mac before you can use it, as on a new PC. Mac OS X imposes no copy protection, no Windows XP-style activation process and no risk of being locked out of your own PC if you upgrade too many of its components. Nor does Mac OS X ever interrupt you with little balloons that nag you to sign up for Passport, .NET or some other Microsoft database. Mac people rarely feel like they're living in the persistent, lurking shadow of a software company. 6:34:33 PM     What do you think? ()

Is Soul Train Still on the Air? Soul Train has decided to present its annual Lady of Soul entertainer of the year award (winners of which "are determined by an unspecified group of radio programmers, recording artists, and music retail personnel") to Ashanti over india.arie, Alicia Keys, Mary J. Blige , and Destiny's Child. Someone understandably took exception to this and started a petition calling for the selection of one of the other nominees. As of this writintg, that petition has gathered more than 23,000 signatures. But the highlight of this story came when: Soul Train officials posted an unsigned reaction on the show's Web site that expressed outrage "over the fact that a people, whose ancestry suffered 400 years of slavery, can be herded so easily into a virtually bottomless mud hole and be taught to sling such mud therein." Can someone please parse that statement for me (it sounds like Damon Wayans's old jailhouse scholar routine--"we must masticate the cuticle of this enema"), and tell me what any of this has to do with slavery. 8:28:03 AM     What do you think? ()

What Did Bobby Hill Ever Do to You? In the course of pointing out the hypocrisy of an idiotic comment by Peter Chernin, President of News Corp., Eric lumped King of the Hill in with the "logjam of valueless clutter" that Fox spews forth. I feel obligated to defend that program (and a handful of others like The Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle, though not the rest of Fox's parade of moral and aesthetic obscenity), because, among other reasons, I believe that Bobby Hill is the richest, most fully developed character on television. He transcends his medium. 8:04:10 AM     What do you think? ()

© Copyright 2003 Morgan N. Sandquist. Last update: 11/2/03; 10:26:48 AM.

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