The Mike Rowe Thing

CNN.com - Microsoft takes on teen’s site MikeRoweSoft.com - Jan. 19, 2004

I’ve heard that part of copyright gestalt says that you can’t let even the slightest infringement take place or you set the precident for far greater transgression. Which is exactly why this whole engagement should be less of an alarm to copyright advocates than it is to anti-industrial complex supporters. I’m not a fan of Microsoft’s tactics, to be sure, but they’re not alone in their stance on these issues in big business. It’s time for the humanist revolt — Microsoft, RIAA, MPAA, all of them are on a far more slippery slope than ever before: alienating more existing customers every day than they are recruiting new ones.

I wonder what Mike Rowe’s development platform-of-choice happens to be?

iLife ‘04: Worth All That and a Bag of Chips

OK, I’m gonna say it: iLife ‘04 is worth easily five times what you pay for it. As it is, the dramatic speed increase in iPhoto was worth the $49.99 I paid for it all by itself.

I remember the uproar of those calling for the heads of Apple marketing on a giant silver platter when Steve Jobs announced the auspicious iLife-for-money plan a year ago. Then, you could still download iPhoto for free, not to mention iTunes and iMovie, but iDVD was the bully that required a DVD to install it, and thereby the price tag.

Yeah, I woulda bought the thing if I’d needed it (already had a new mac which had all the apps pre-installed. I woulda bought it because I’m an addict. But I could see the arguments of those who wouldn’t buy the suite back then. With iLife ‘04, no excuses. This simply kicks.

Garageband is the pinnacle. I’ve been using it for about five minutes and I’m thinking of changing my name to 49-cent. Yeah, I’m almost there. The coolest part of it is how they’ve organized the GUI — I can use it quite effectively on my 12″ screen and still have access to all the loops and tools I need. I know I’ve only scratched the surface on the power of this little guy, but it’s already making me sound like a champ.

CBS Dumps MoveOn.org Ad

All right, how silly is this? Like the network has never run an issue ad or special during primetime? Whatever.

No More Windows Support

There was a time, I was the man. I worked in Windows every single day, knew it inside and out, from 3.1 to XP. When friends needed advice, I was the guy they’d call. When they screwed something up and needed to be bailed out, my phone would ring.

So, even though I’ve been a Mac user for two years, it was me that got the call when my friend Lauren’s Sony VAIO started acting up. She’d told me that she thought it was acting up because it was full. It was, at least one partition, so I started going through apps to dump to free up some space.

We got to Hotbar. Now, I really detest Hotbar. It insinuates itself into every little thing you do, from Explorer to Outlook, really ugly. So I ask her — do you use it? No? Mind if I delete it? No? Great!

“The file MSVCRT.DLL is a shared file. If you delete it, other programs may be affected. Do you want to delete the file MSVCRT.DLL?”

We were talking and catching up and I was sort of haphazardly clicking and said “Yes.” Everything continued to work.

A few hours later, I was sitting at my office and my phone rang. It was Lauren. “Do you know why my computer won’t boot up?” Damn. I buzzed back by her place at 4:30 in the afternoon and rebooted myself. This is the error, I swear to God:

“Explorer cannot find the file MSVCRT.DLL. You must reinstall Windows. OK.”

So, this is it. As of this moment, I’m no longer qualified to do Windows tech support for friends. That’s it, there it is. I knew the day would come, and today is it.