We Are Not A Mused

A few weeks ago, I gave in to the marketing for a two week trial subscription to Netflix.  I’d heard about Netflix integration with Windows Media Center and XBOX 360.  We watch TV through a Windows Media Center PC and connect to that from other rooms in our house with two XBOX 360 Media Extenders.

The Netflix setup on the Media Center PC was a bit tricky.  It’s necessary to switch from the Media Center TV console to the PC desktop and a Web browser to get things going. The Media Center TV console got a bit confused, showing two Netflix selections.  After putting some movies and TV shows in the Netflix Instant Queue, the shows started up OK.  Our experience was also OK, the audio was good but the video jumped a little.  I don’t fault the Netflix player, since our Media Center PC is about four years old, powered by a single core AMD 3200.  The playback would probably be very good with a more current PC.  It is important to mention that our Internet connection is broadband through cable modem (Comcast).

Encouraged by the initial tests, I sprung for a XBOX Live Gold membership, which provides access to the Netflix player on our XBOX 360s.  After a very easy setup, we were ready to go.  After watching a movie and some TV shows, I am still astounded at the apparent HD quality of the widescreen display.  Video is very smooth and the audio is great.

I would totally recommend Netflix on XBOX360. Netflix has a good selection of movies and TV shows for the Instant Queue.  You also get access to their full DVD selection by mail.  If you haven’t used the Netflix service by mail, that is also very good.  The value for the money is fantastic.  We get access to a lot of shows produced on premium cable channels without paying cable’s high fees.  If we see two movies a month, it is far cheaper than going to two movies at the theater (and we don’t have to put up with chattering and cell phone calls and sticky floors).

-- Walter Lounsbery, 6-30-2009

I am a Microsoft Developer and I am a PC.  But that little company Apple Computer has managed to press a lot of hot buttons.  The complete frustrations Apple identifies and exaggerates in their Apples Versus PC ads are often bogus inane things that Microsoft allows in their operating systems.  But every now and then, it seems that Microsoft goes out of their way to make things easy for the Apple sharpshooters.  When that happens, I would like Microsoft to honestly take the bullet and get their act together, instead of putting it to the customer so badly that it makes Apple’s marketing easy.

A recent hot button is Apple’s marketing around their photo management software.  Their Apple actor talks about face recognition while the PC actor searches through piles of unorganized pictures.  “It’s built in to Apple software and it’s free!”, the Apple actor proclaims.  “I don’t have that”, the sad-sack PC complains.

The trouble with this scenario: I know I’ve seen something about face recognition with Microsoft Live Photo Gallery.  So I search in the application and on the Internet and there’s nothing about face recognition for Photo Gallery or Windows.  Nothing, nada.  I have Windows Live Photo Gallery, so I actually run the application.  There is photo tagging, but that’s it.  Then I poke around for another half hour and discover that Photo Gallery help says you can do “people tagging”.  It seems very easy and direct, so I try to follow the steps with my computer.  Wouldn’t it be great if Photo Gallery had face recognition and the marketing wonks just insisted on calling it something else!  But the feature just doesn’t exist!  People tagging just is not there.

At this point, I have a lot of time invested in proving that the Apple ad is wrong, despite a certain knowledge that the Microsoft lawyers would be all over them for truth in advertising if Apple is lying.  I am trusting Microsoft Help more than advertising regulations, and we all know that Microsoft Help is always 100% accurate if you can ever manage to find the information you need.

Obviously, I don’t have a current version of Microsoft Live Photo Gallery.  Trick is, there is no version number information to be had for this application.  Microsoft apparently changed its rules for including version numbers in their products.  I try to download the latest version from the Web, and it refuses to download.  Hmmm, I must have the latest version.  Why doesn’t it work as described in online Help?

At this point I have spent way too much time trying to prove that Apple advertising is a pack of lies.  Maybe if I just had an Apple instead of a PC, I would be sitting here smugly nodding my head in agreement instead of finding all kinds of wrongness in Microsoft products.  Perhaps the Apple tax is simply that, pay a bit more money for your computer and get a substantial peace of mind, eliminating all kinds of unwanted, unneeded, customer-unfriendly frustration.

As always, good comments are welcome.  Especially those explaining what the hell is up with Photo Gallery.

-- Walter Lounsbery, 5-3-2009

What’s not to like about the cable networks run by Scripps Networks Interactive?  Whether renovating your home, upgrading your lifestyle, or loving good food, their networks are informative and entertaining.  The company also pursues cutting-edge media with social network Websites such as food2.com, which features bloggers, a companion facebook site, and other ways for foodies to interact outside the TV network experience.  I’m not biased at all because these networks are based in Knoxville, Tennessee, where I live.  Or that they have a random drawing on Friday’s for people that blog about their Website…

Seriously, if you like food, check it out.

-- Walter Lounsbery, 5-1-2009

I believe that the Earth deserves our best efforts to prevent poisoning the environment and to avoid obliterating species and the beautiful natural expanses of land we occupy.  Some terrible things have happened in the past, most of them have been local or regional in their effect.  Any student of industrial history will understand that there have been tremendous benefits from industrial technology.  Anyone that depends on the food industry enjoys the benefits of modern farming technology, storage, and global shipping.  In America, dependable utilities, fuel supplies, and the ability to drive any kind of automobile are basic assumptions of life.  As progress is made, many of the ecological mistakes of the past century have not been repeated and the great panics of man-made disasters have not been realized.

So it is amazing to find in this century that one of the greatest hoaxes ever, curing global warming, was born as the great panics of the 1970s were finally dying out.  A few people, determined to benefit from this fraud, have become legion.  This past Earth Day has turned into Earth Week and more through the power of politicians and mass media backing.  Never mind all the real, curable disasters of the world, the globe must be saved from the plague of humans upon it.  The drum beats so constantly that no week passes without some new evidence of the disaster, another prediction of the rise of the seas, melting of ice here or there, eradication of species, or massive health problems.

The silly report that prompts this post is an excellent case in point.  Researchers have reported that the Greenland ice is melting.  If it all melts, the seas will rise 3 feet, flooding the great coastal cities of the world.  I have found reports stating this information as far back as 2004, yet it was reported as news today.  The early reports state that all the Greenland ice would melt in less than 1000 years at the current rate and that it had melted completely away at least once in the history of the Earth.  Apparently the follow-on studies have sprouted like weeds, providing more strident and alarming warnings over the past five years.  Some think the seas will rise 27 feet, some think global warming will accelerate as the ice melts away.

Think what you like about global warming, it is clear that no prediction for disaster is missed by the press.  And they like to repeat the messages to keep subscribers and ratings.  Today’s example is only one scenario.  There seem to be a thousand crackpot warnings hanging on the thread of the global warming panic.  Over the centuries many such panics have been fueled by the weight of accumulated nonsense.  The accumulation of junk thinking drowns out sensible responses.  If you can’t spot the holes in the Greenland warnings, then certainly I can’t help you in this short post.

In fact, I will only attempt to deflate the core of the panic.  The core assumptions are that global warming is happening, it is man-made, it is caused by carbon dioxide emissions, it will affect a climate disaster in a relatively short period of years, and that we can stop global warming if we take the proper draconian actions.  It should be clear that the whole cloth of this fraud depends on every single one of these threads, even the assumption that global action by people will stop the disaster.  So let’s take a look at that one.

If our science is so good, so accurate, and uncontroversial, it should be possible to calculate the permissible level of man-made carbon dioxide emissions.  We should know how much is too much and have the number for an emission rate that doesn’t drastically change the climate.  I propose that this number is not available because we don’t have that science and politics is not good with numbers.  That is why “cap in trade” and bogus “carbon neutral” calculations are permitted and promoted already.  The objective is control of society, not control of climate change.  The exchange of money required in many of these schemes proves not only the fraud, but the profit motive and self-interest of global warming panic promoters.  If you can’t calculate the overall number and show it is achievable, then you can’t measure progress towards stabilizing the climate.  So the goal must be profit and self-promotion.

In a crime such as blackmail, the criminal strives to bleed the victim dry over a period of time.  The victim has no choice but to pay the first time and every time the criminal threatens exposure or violence.  All the global warming cures share the methods of blackmail.  The victims are panicked and has no choice but paying.  The global warming cures have no substance, no payoff, and no clear goals, so they will potentially take all the available resources to the end of time to do absolutely nothing.  Do we have to give up SUVs or all automobiles?  Are supermarkets responsible for generating too much carbon dioxide to get food to our table?  Should we slaughter the beef herds that generate so much methane?  Are there just too many people for the Earth to sustain (a popular theme from the 1970s Earth Day panics)?  Some of the media have already complained that our current economic crisis will prevent draconian global warming cures from moving forward.  Apparently global warming profiteers are unhappy with the payout.

-- Walter Lounsbery, 4-26-2009