Categories
game news tech

Boot Camp vs New Coke

Follow up to my previous Boot Camp post.

Eric over at Websnark dual-booted windows on his MacBook Pro and loaded up City of Villains. Evidently the result was even more impressive than he had anticipated.

I ran at full native resolution with all the bells and whistles. It was beautiful. Effects I’d never been able to see before showed up perfectly. In the middle of a gigantic fight with a giant monster (the Ghost of Scrapyard, for those playing along at home) I and two other Masterminds, along with a pile of corruptors and brutes, were all in a pack alongside about sixty minions, the giant monster, special effects of everyones’ attacks, at least twenty Henchmen and a giant blue glowing thing… oh, and explosions everywhere… at absolutely no choppiness nor loss of framerate.

This poses a quandary for PC-manufacturers, who have until now at the least dominated the gaming market through sheer windows-compatability brute force. And the gaming market makes up a very significant chunk of change in the computer hardware world. If Macs can, all of a sudden, do everything and play everything, and do it as well as Eric’s post describes, the PC is gonna be in a heap of trouble.

But of course, the real winner here is Microsoft. But then, that’s nothing new. In fact, according to Chris over at Apple Matters, this could be a bad move by Apple in general (though I agree with Eric that once the cat was out of the bag, Apple was beholden to make a move).

Why is Boot Camp the Apple equivalent of the New Coke fiasco? Well, because Apple is trading a little short-term gain for a long-term negative. At this moment in time, OS X does have a big lead over Windows XP but Vista is around the corner and it promises to address a lot of the problems found in Windows. So, for the next few months, people might buy a Mac with the idea of using it as a dual boot machine and get slowly but steadily sucked in by OS X’s superiority, but once Vista comes out that will likely change.

In fact, Apple has tried this before. In an effort to stave off dwindling sales Apple once offered Macs with PC cards in them. These were the equivalent of dual boot machines. The theory went that people would buy the machine for their Windows needs, but use the Mac OS more and more as time went by. Finally, unable to resist the allure of Mac OS you’d have a full blown Apple zealot on your hands. The reality was that Mac users bought the machines (they were brisk sellers) and got converted to Windows users. This was when the cutting edge Windows was 3.0, it is hard to imagine that Boot Camp won’t make at least as many Windows converts out of Mac users than the other way around.

Having Macs and PCs out there, appealing to different users with different needs, was much like having two distinct political parties. You were either a Mac user, or a PC user, and the line rarely blurred between the two. With Boot Camp, that line is officially blurred. Is it only a matter of time before we have essentially the same computers trying to sell themselves under completely different names?

Additional reading:

More additional reading (added 4/7/06):

Categories
humor webcomics

It’s got cake. And, umm … ponies.

With a tagline like “We have only the YOUNGEST ponies eating the hottest chocolate CAKE!”, CAKE PONY feels like it should be NSFW. But really, there isn’t anything objectionable there. You’re just going to feel dirty. Other than that, I’m really not sure what to make of CP; I just know somehow I’m strangely drawn to it. It’s got a bizarre, surreal charm, and at the least, it’s certainly unique. (link via Lore)

Fairly unrelated except that it posts once a week and is focused on its own brand of odd animal, the Secret Crocodile Adventure Club is one of my favorite secret adventure clubs. You’ll get the most out of it if you join the mailing list (you’ll get one email a week and no more, on Saturdays, which is a nice day to get email). Stig’s ravings, via the most honorable Archcroc V, are consistently chortle-worthy.

Categories
internet libraries

Ever stumped a wombat?

I subscribed for a time to the Stumpers mailing list, hosted by the Graduate School of Library and Information Studies at Dominican University since 1992. I unsubscribed because the email provider I was using (Mailblocks) got bought by an evil company (AOL) who integrated its features into their email service and then threw it out. I’m happily using Gmail now, but that’s neither here nor there.

It took me awhile to resubscribe, and when I tried the other day I found out that Stumpers has become mysteriously defunct. There’s no explanation on their webpage as to what happened, which was frustrating, but eventually I found out from Phil Bradley that Stumpers still exists, if in a different incarnation.

Project Wombat is a much cooler name, in any case, and offers the same expertise for which Stumpers had long been known. Perhaps the best part, if you simply have a question that you need answered, is that you can post your question to the list without being a subscriber. But make sure you read their posting guidelines before you do. Think of it as helping them help you; and believe me, they are quite helpful.

Categories
humor internet

Irony is not dead.

There’s not a whole lot to say about Subversive Cross Stitch, really. I think the site pretty much speaks for itself. If you’re easily offended, you probably shouldn’t look at it. But I hope you’re not, because I think it’s one of the greatest things ever. (from dooce)

Categories
internet tech

All I need … is a little RSSPECT!

RSSPECT is a new offering from Ryan North, allowing anybody on any site to serve up warm, savory feeds for their devoted readers. Its tagline is “Syndication made simple.” and it certainly seems to offer up the goods. Ryan, who previously released Oh No Robot, a free search engine service for webcomics, focuses his attention mainly on projects for the webcomics community. Even so, the products themselves are solid, and RSSPECT particularly is useful for any site that would like to offer RSS services.

With RSSPECT, all you have to do is add some markup tags to your website, and you can be syndicating your content instantly. There’s no fees, no programming, and no hassle. You don’t have to install any software, and you can create as many feeds as you want. We take the sucky parts out of RSS.

We’ll check your website automatically, and when there’s new content, it’ll be added to your RSS feed. You control what gets added to the feed and what doesn’t. And you can always log in to add, update, or delete posts by hand, if you want. You have complete control.

It doesn’t stop there. We give you the tools to publicize your feed automatically, and the code that allows your readers add your feed to their Google homepages, to their MSN accounts, to AOL, to Yahoo – the list goes on. We’ve done the hard work so you won’t have to.

Categories
internet news

The new ‘Times’

NYTimes.com, the online portal to the New York Times, wrote a letter to its readers on Sunday describing the redesign of their site. Among the new features are improved navigation and an up-to-the minute “most popular” section. Also added is a tab that takes you to articles as they appeared in the newspaper. In a word, their page has become more interactive, customizable, up-to-date, and functional. With all that function, I hope they don’t forget they have to keep posting news.

We also wanted to give our readers a greater voice and sprinkle a little more serendipity around the site by providing prominent links to a list of most e-mailed and blogged articles, most searched for information and popular movies. A new tab at the top of the page takes you directly to all our most popular features.

Categories
news tech

Macs do Windows, too.

Apple has announced the Boot Camp Public Beta. Set to be included in the next OS X release: Leopard, Boot Camp allows Mac users to run Microsoft Windows on their Mac. Essentially, they’re offering Mac drivers for the Windows platform. Even so, they have to get in their anti-Windows quips:

EFI and BIOS

Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

Categories
humor internet

This is just what Satan intended.

I love finding new websites, especially sites that provide even more fantastic links to rampantly further my internet browsing on a quiet Saturday afternoon. I’ll follow John’s example, since my birthday’s tomorrow; Argument #26:

ARGUMENT FROM INCOMPREHENSIBILITY
(1) Flabble glurk zoom boink blubba snurgleschnortz ping!
(2) No one has ever refuted (1).
(3) Therefore, God exists.

Yeah. If you’re not likely to be insulted by atheistic humor, you should check it out.

Categories
humor internet wordpress

Action figures sold separately.

I was a bit confused if the WordPress dev blog was playing an April Fool’s joke with their announcement of “Wordpattern”. Having read it over, I’m fairly convinced it’s a joke, but should note that I can tend to be unfortunately gullible, at times. In any case, here are some items of humor I came across while researching this “hoax(?)”.

Our groundbreaking, no-nonsense approach of creating a fast and lean CMSMS (CMS management system) is unparalleled and will fulfill the need of every user out there – we won’t be content with anything less.

A “Content Management Software Management System”? Awesome.

The Wordpattern features page has some choice tidbits:

4 Minute Install

The latest InstallMark™ benchmarks clock the WordPattern install process in at 3:47 – that’s a 25% improvement over WordPress 2.0, and a whopping 41% faster than Textpattern.

Gidgets

Like widgets, only cuter.

I think this marks the first time a web application benchmarked its install speed. I also like BJAX, Web2.1 (beta), and invisible URLs. The roadmap section is not to be missed, detailing Wordpattern’s “5 milestones” (the 5th being World Domination). I like the idea of “Tiger Teams”, as well as the Marketing and Evangelism Team. Also linked from the roadmap is Huhcorp, who they’re evidently working with. Their page is hilarious as well.

Our name will confuse you, but, you have to admit, the logo design is pretty cool. And we’re good at turning regular words into “e-words,” such as “e-consulting,” “e-business” or “e-sexual harassment.”

Our office is really modern and we’ve got nice computers and stuff. If you ever saw it, you’d say “Wow, cool office. These guys are legit.”

Following more links, to Huhcorp’s “ideas” page:

Our female staff members are all hot, so, even if there’s nothing to meet about, we’ll sit and flirt with them, and charge you for the time. When one of our new-age marketing gurus or design experts or consultants has an idea, the rest of us look at him or her with serious expressions and write stuff down on paper.

I’m really temped to quote their entire site, because I find it all completely awesome, but you should just go and check it out for yourself. The coup de grace of this Wordpattern Masquerade is on the legal page, where one finds the following:

The Fine Print

All content, code, images, sounds, smells, ambience and the warm fuzzy feeling you get while basking in our glow are Copyright (Q) 1972-1976 The WordPattern Concern. WordPattern™, the WordPattern Logo™, the letters W™ and P™, the colours white™ and black™, and the non-breaking space™ are registered trademarks. The WordPattern Concern does not represent the accuracy or reliability of the information on these so-called “web pages”, after all you can’t believe anything you read on the internets these days.

Things like this make April Fool’s Day worthwhile. But on a more serious bent, why don’t companies make their “serious” web pages this interesting? Would I want to use a company like Huh? for marketing by looking at their website? Maybe, and maybe not, but they would certainly stand out from the crowd, and that’s never a bad thing. Offering serious and quality information about your product is a good thing, certainly, but it can be oh so dull. I would love to see companies manage to fit factual aspects into entertaining text. I mean, when was the last time you READ through the entirety of a corporation’s site because it was entertaining? Yeah, me neither. If we’re going to start talking about aspects of Web 2.1 (beta), I think a defining feature should be humor.

** Mention of “Wordpattern” dates back awhile, at least to January 2005. It appears the original coinage of “Wordpattern” (and Textpress) belong to Jina Bolton, though her post is lost to everything but Google’s cached pages. Her post was in response to this post on Joshuaink. Here’s Google’s cached version (2nd post down) if you’d like to read it. There, I’ve done my snooping for the day.