Mac OS X is simply the most beautiful thing I have ever seen on any computer, anywhere. My girlfriend, a life-long Windows user, took one look at the 128×128 icons and the animated window minimizing “genie effect”, and now she wants an iBook for Christmas. Oh no, she’s not high maintenance at all…
The Register: More on XPod. XPod is an iPod-compatible transfer program/plugin for Windows. Just a few more details here, and The Register seems to think that it will be Windows XP-only. That would be unfortunate if true.
Dive Into Python 3.8 is out. There are 4 new sections in chapter 7:
This has been a long time coming. At one point, I didn’t know if I would ever get back to technical writing. I’m glad I did.
Harry Potter movie a whopping success. The film, which reportedly cost Warner Bros. Pictures $125 million to produce and an additional $40 million to market in North America alone, surpassed the three-day record of $72.1 million held by 1997’s “The Lost World: Jurassic Park.”
The article also contains this telling disclaimer: Warner Bros. is owned by AOL Time Warner, which used other units such as its flagship America Online business to promote the film. AOL Time Warner also owns CNN.com.
In other words, this article is part of a $40 million marketing campaign.
How long will it be before everybody stops caring about such disclaimers? Not because our priorities change or because we get less paranoid, but simply because every news organization is in some way associated with the story it is reporting, everyone knows it, and everyone simply (and correctly) assumes that their news is tainted by such associations and gets on with their lives? I thought about this a lot when MSNBC was reporting on the Microsoft anti-trust verdict. Also when a Slate reporter was going to court during the trial itself and writing a weblog-ish series of articles about the day-to-day happenings in the courtroom. And of course, news that the Harry Potter movie broke opening weekend box office records is news, of a sort. But does it deserve to be on the front page, above the news that hard-line Taliban leaders are executing moderate members of their own party? If CNN were independent, would that question even occur to me?
A while ago (not coincidentally, after receiving yet another AOL CD in the mail), I made a list of all the things in my life I’d have to get rid of or avoid in order to “stick it to” AOL Time Warner and not support them in any way. The list includes my internet connection (a cable modem through RoadRunner via Time Warner), my cable TV (also through Time Warner), HBO (even if I got a satellite dish, the HBO channels themselves are owned by AOL Time Warner). I gave up after that. We each make our choices and pick our battles and hope for the best and get on with our lives. I’ve spent today writing my free-licensed book and playing with Ximian GNOME, and I’m writing these words in Mozilla on Red Hat Linux, and maybe that’s enough counterculture for one day.
§
I am no longer accepting public comments on this post, but you can use this form to contact me privately. (Your message will not be published.)
§
firehose ‧ code ‧ music ‧ planet
© 2001–8 Mark Pilgrim