Your current blogger here at Stargeek, me, is moving over to a new host. Dan Zarrella has set up NEGeek.com as part of the BWP network of websites. So if you like my unique view on tech, politics, and culture intersecting you can find me there.

Has anyone else seen this steaming pile of (err…) video yet? It’s almost like Google is out to prove that I’m right about their grappeling with how to spend all that money.

C’mon. With that much cash and talent you can’t come up with a better video sales mechanic than slapping on the google search engine interface with an extra pulldown? There isn’t actually enough video for sale to warrant the search engine, but it could use a decent frontend.

Google’s minimalist approach works great for a search engine. It doesn’t work all that well with a set library of video content. Although to be honest, yahoo doesn’t have a clue either.

So it appears that Microsoft has decided MacOSX is no longer a threat. Considering all those Mac users that will soon be buying up Windows to run on their boxes, it’s not hard to see why.

Windows is releasing a Windowsmedia plugin for quicktime on the Mac platform. This should also help the software behemoth to shore up support for it’s flagging media standard.

Victor Yodaiken makes some good points about Digital Rights Managment and the law of unintended consequences. There isn’t a “good” way to implement DRM where it won’t affect all systems in unpredictable ways, some of which can have deadly consequences.

Imagine, if you will, your doctor suddenly not being able to check your allergy status because someone used a DRM protected machine to upload information it thought was “protected” and shut itlself down.

That’s a pretty nightmarish scenario but could become a reality in the new more DRM friendly hardware environment. How many lives is a image of Mickey Mouse worth?

So really, is there any difference between an Intel PC and a Mac Intel PC? No. No word on if they’ll allow Linux to run on the (what do you call it now) PC(?).

Apparently Microsoft is thrilled that their will no longer be major retail architectures that don’t run Windows. They don’t sound like they expect the whole OSX thing to swing users away. Why they don’t just sell OSX is anyones guess. Pride, maybe?

Just in case you thought I was joking with the post about The Register and podporn here’s a link to one purvayor of the stuff. It’s a landing page, so (as of this writing) there’s no actualy content on there to offend. Just don’t click the links.

So. Seriously. Podporn. I didn’t actually think someone had monitized on that one yet… but I probably should have, considering porns the market that usually figures out how to cash in on new transport layers first.

While little Johnny is beating a prostitute to death in GTA3: Liberty City Stories he may be at risk of (err…) malicious porn sellers. El Reg has brought to light the nefarious plot to subvert the youth of wherever you happen to be by way of the good people at Surf Control.

Who sell a package to block internet content. Small wonder they’re bleating about the horrible dangers of youths mixing porn in with their violence, eh?

Here’s an idea. If you’re a parent worried about your kids getting the “wrong content” make sure they don’t. Seems simple, yet affective. Better yet, simply don’t buy them whatever they want.

Now that that’s all sorted…

A team from Missouri-Columbia has found a causal link between people viewing violent images and being inured to violent images.

While it’s no great shock that people that regularly view something have a muted reaction to it (this probably occurs in war zones and violent areas, too) their immediate conclusion based on the findings is a bit odd.

There’s no reason to jump to people being innured to violence and those same people commiting violent acts themselves. While it’s a bit disturbing overall, I don’t think there’s any way to show a causal effect based on the findings listed in the article.

While the media wonks over at the BBC have masterfully put together an article that deviates from the topic in less time than it took to read, they do manage to bumble through an entire range of topics, getting each one wrong.

First, phones will not replace mobile gaming gear. It’s quite obvious no one on the writing or editorial staff responsible for this article has ever had to suffer through a Java based phone game.

Second, this is the same bloody reason that console convergence doesn’t work. Yes, phones can play games. But much like consoles acting as an all-in-one media hub, they can’t do them very well (go ahead, replace that high end audio system with an XBox). The console convergence bashing is what they carry on about not a paragraph later.

But one thing they may have gotten right. If console game prices reach up toward the 70$ mark sales might just not be sustainable. 50$ is starting to peak quite a few checkbooks as it is. Only selling to fanboys works in a total of one market, far as I can tell. Japan’s a great place, but it be your only market if you’re selling consoles.

Now what kind of a farce is this. If I had a monopoly of 90% market share, a product that is pervasive and a toehold in every other related market, I’d pretty much figure that my continued existence was in the bag. Especially if somehow worse came to worse, I could simply sell the competition’s product.

Which is exactly the situation Microsoft finds itself in. Even if they had to capitulate to the Linux crowd, they can actually sell Linux. So if they loose, they’re still the single most well monied software vendor with a pervasive presence in damn near every market.

So articles like this one make it look like someone’s taking out a little too much marketing spin. It’s bad enough that I can’t browse to anywhere on the internet without tripping over an MS ad. Now I have to put up with their flac showing up on my google news.

I’ve gotta wonder, is this all some kind of game to keep trust regulators off of crippling their monopoly? It’s almost like they’re trotting out non existant competition so they can spread through other markets without being hampered by trust regulation.

Not only are they regressing to Television sets as a “portal technology” but now both Yahoo and Google are “going mobile”. I swear if I didn’t know better I’d assume they had the same marketing department and shared it to cut costs.

While the cell phone has long been touted as the place to be in tech, it hasn’t really taken off. Now… don’t get me wrong. The little gadgets are useful devices. And in Japan, they’re huge on stuffing the kitchen sink worth of technology into them. But stateside we don’t really have much use for watching video on our phone. We just don’t have long commutes on public transport like the Japanese.

Which is why, even though a cell phone with a search engine is neat, it’s not as neat as a cell phone that places calls over 802.11b networks. That’s the kind of technology that’s useful in a phone

My first objection to this, and I think the most sane, is that it won’t happen because you’d have one too many Bills at Microsoft. I mean. Seriously. You couldn’t insult “Billy-Boy” without someone saying “wait.. do you mean the one with the intern or the one with the money?”

But as far as Microsoft goes they could do worse. Balmer’s always been a bit over the top. He’s in good company with Oracle’s and Sun’s chief of staffs. But a slightly more refined (I think I just referred to Bill Clinton as more refined) person at the helm might not be a bad thing for the company.

Anyway, it’ll happen right after Google releases their PC and MS purchases Opera.

We’re going to go (errr…) back to the future and start using TV’s for everything. That’s right. While everyone’s been flocking to any alternative media in site what we all really want is Google and Yahoo on that big paperweight in the living room.

Let me make something perfectly clear. Push media is dead. Deader than that even. I mean dead in bold print. Sure, it’ll still occupy a niche as long as there’s some good content to be had.

But it’s not the future. Somehow, I don’t think Microsoft has much to fear from it’s younger rivals if they think the future is in TV sets that most folks can’t afford.

Open Document will still reign as the standard of the state of Massachusetts, according to this eWeek piece. Apparently Microsoft didn’t have the sway to flat out bully the state into eating it’s Office products.

While it hasn’t already happened, which would make me a whole lot less skeptical of the outcome, there has been quite a lot of muscle leveraged. All of the media attention and the spotlight of public scrutiny may be barring Microsoft from doing their usual backroom politicing to get rid of opposition to their dominance.

Apple’s attempt to hobble the Motorola ROKR phone with embedded iTunes has been sucessful, and Motorola is droppying iTunes for Linux. The hundres song limit and crappy interface seemed to have doomed the ROKR v1 to an early death.

The new phone has a raft of new features. Included are bluetooth, a headphone jack, 1.3 megapixel camera, FM receiver, and most important: no song limit.

I suppose that’s what happens when you artificially hobble a gadget. The gadget manufacturer simply makes changes to no longer use your software.

BBC is running a nice wrapup on Sony’s CD fiasco. Apparently they’ll make mewling noises and fling cheap product to the masses then walk away.

Now, my problem with it is this. If you or I were to infect 10’s of thousands of computers with trojans we’d be seeing serious jail time. Sony? All charges settled in exchange for a pat on the back, a promise to not be bad, and a stick of gum.

Wikipedia, the online dictionary and general web reference, is thinking of going with advertisements. Actually, I”m not entirely sure what comprises “Wikipedia” or who makes the decisions, so it might just be the founder Jimmy Wales who’s hot to monotize on the “open” dictionary.

This seems to be a horrible idea in so many ways. First, all those contributors to Wikipedia did so without the thought that their contributions and work would be bracketed with advertising. They probably weren’t concerned with some nebulous “greater good” that the controllers of wikipedia can do, just creating a decend resource on the web.

To then take the content created in this way and start whacking ads on it would somehow cheapen their contributions. Someone, somewhere would derive a healthy paycheck generated entirely from the selfless contributions of individuals. And once that road is trodden, I don’t see those people suddenly deciding to forego all that income coming in because it’s not working out or causing people to not contribute.

Besides, there’s better ways to make money off an extremely well used and popular service than ads. Why not provide custom and backend service for customers or create a feeder company that monotizes indirectly on what Wickipedia creates? It is free content, after all.

Groklaw has an interesting piece on the life and times of Peter Quinn, the man who tried to state that open formats are the right way to go for Boston. Apparently the politicians that receive money from Redmond didn’t like that and forced him out.

Moreover, there’s been a media smeer campaign against the man from some very unsavory journalists. It just goes to prove my point that you could have one person insert a few random sounding technical terms in a document, get a monkey to do the filler, and it’d end up better than half the crap at eweek.

You see, they’re under intense pressure to produce even if there’s nothing going on. They can’t sit back and editorialize (apparently) without bashing the heck out of someone. That’s what get’s the ad revenue, after all.

So even if you agree with the target you still have to state they’re an idiot to do “x”. In this case “go against Microsofts wishes”. Which sounds suspiciously like Microsoft is.. I dunno.. a monopoly abusing it’s position.

Who knows, maybe they’ll get an editor to look it over and pull the article. Miracles do happen. Grok the law

I finally figured out how to use DAP Tex foam sealer. You need to shake it. A lot.

Also, make sure to clean out the nozel and straw before putting it away. Trust me, you’ll thank yourself later.

This has been your Northeast Winter Home Improvement tip of the day.

Looks like PC hardware has taken a boost in 2005. Sales for hardware of the personal computing variety were up 126% while the console and toy department was down 9%.

There isn’t as much of a trend away from the PC as gaming outlet stock would suggest. There recent turn from PC based games to more of a console focus was starting to make me think console gaming was going to scoop PC users.