Yeah… THAT’s gonna do it…

 nerdery  1 Response »
Feb 132009
 

Yahoo! News – Microsoft to open own stores, take on Apple by Reuters: Yahoo! Tech

Microsoft Corp announced plans Thursday to open its own chain of branded stores as it looks to catch up with rival Apple Inc’s successful move into retailing.

Because *what* they were selling had NOTHING to do with their success… it was just the fact that they had retail stores.

This is going to be a colossal failure. Just like every other feeble “also-ran” attempt Microsoft has tried to become a “cool cultural icon” (Zune, Plays-For-Sure, etc) in the wake of Apple’s resurgence. And just like Dell’s attempts at the same “also ran” retail strategy.

Good luck, kids. YOu’re gonna need it.

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 Posted by at 1:52 am

Windows 7, or Vista Second Edition? – The Tech Report

 Mac OS X, nerdery  No Responses »
Oct 312008
 

Windows 7, or Vista Second Edition? – The Tech Report

So… apparently Vista wasn’t as awesome as Steve Ballmer swore? I know I can’t believe it…

Just two weeks ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said that “Windows 7 will be Vista, but a lot better.” So what was Vista, a practice run? Microsoft is addressing the problems it introduced with Vista (like UAC), but rather than offer free fixes, it’ll offer to sell us Windows 7. When asked why new users should now make the upgrade to Vista, Mr. Ballmer almost seemed dismissive of the current flagship OS, saying that “if people want to wait they really can.” From the perspective of a Vista user, that almost sounds like abandonment of the platform.

And then there’s this little nugget…

Speaking of Apple, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the much shorter Mac OS X release cycles, which Microsoft could end up mirroring with its future OS updates. Do I have a problem with that? No. The key difference is that Apple’s operating system upgrades cost $129. You don’t have to worry about what edition to buy, and the full-featured retail version doesn’t have a $399 MSRP.

Bottom line? Most of the time you get what you pay for. That’s not the case with Microsoft OS’s. Buy something good instead. Preferably something that ships with SSH installed out of the box.

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 Posted by at 4:52 pm

New toys at work

 minutia, nerdery  No Responses »
Oct 302008
 

Because I are a nerd.

desknerd.jpeg

For those of you keeping track, here’s the lineup (roughly from left to right):

– Jango Fett
– Emperor Palpatine
– Gargantuan Black Dragon (D&D)
– Darth Maul
– Anakin Skywalker (Darth Vader)
– Aayla Secura
– General Grievous
– Kit Fisto
– Asajj Ventress
– Clone Commander Vill
– Yoda

Now I’m just waiting for Shaak-Ti to arrive and my desktop collection will be complete.

iTunes: Hypergeek by Devin Townsend, from Synchestra

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 Posted by at 1:01 am

Apologies to Wes

 Music, nerdery  2 Responses »
Oct 292008
 

So I have two apologies to make to my friend Wes.

First of all… he was raving about the band Muse awhile back. And I just didn’t get it. They were OK… but nothing special.

I was wrong. They’re quite the awesome.

Second point of clarification… Evernote. It’s quite the awesome. It basically is a client/server app that lets you create and store pretty much any sort of note you want for retrieval from any other client… so there’s a Mac client and an iPhone client, for instance. Which means I can take notes on my iPhone (voice, digital ink, text, etc) and they will get auto pushed to my Mac for use later, and vice versa.

This is just the short description, of course… it’s much more cool than that. And it’s free, with a pay client that adds improved performance, uploads, etc.

Anyway Wesley, you were right and I have updated the “quite the awesome” file. I am just now embracing your wisdom.

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 Posted by at 11:42 pm

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along-Blog

 nerdery, TV  No Responses »
Jul 242008
 

Joss Whedon is my hero.

My friend Shane and I have been ranting about the “New Order” for some time, in which content could be made directly for iTunes and distributed without the evil networks having to bless it (to avoid them screwing things up like Fox did with Firefly)… and now it seems like Joss is ready to make it happen. According to this blog post by Jeffrey McManus (which has been validated by comments from Joss himself), this distribution methods appears to be financially viable.

In other words, something like “Firefly Season 2” would be plausible in a “pay per view” via iTunes format.

The revolution will not be televised, but you will be able to download it from iTunes for $1.99 an episode. And the networks can suck it.

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 Posted by at 6:25 am

drobo

 Mac OS X, nerdery  No Responses »
May 012008
 

I ordered my Drobo last weekend. It arrived yesterday, along with two of the three 750GB disks I’ll be using to populate it.

Only problem is, it didn’t work. I took it to work and did some debugging, and it looks like both of my disks arrived DOA.

That sucks. At least the drobo itself works nicely.

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 Posted by at 7:09 pm
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