Recently in Rant Category

Please stop trying to advertise on my blog. I've removed the comment in question (posted by one 'iMobimac_Guru', from a Brazilian IP address no less) and will do the same to any other obviously commercial comments. Feel free to contact me directly if you'd like ad space on Fibble.org, but the price just went up. Way up.

As a side note, I'm not opposed to iMobimac - there are models of BlackBerry out there who won't be able to connect any other way. But if you own a bluetooth-capable BlackBerry that can be upgraded to OS 4.2.1 or later, you're wasting your money by buying someone's software to accomplish what you can do yourself for free, with very little effort.

Before:

Your hum is fearsome
Dentist's drill, or High Voltage
My beard quivers

After:

Shorn, denuded, raw
Crimson red on neon orange
Where's that styptic pen

(This is my first attempt at an editorial - criticism warmly welcomed and filed away for future entries in the 'Rant' category.)

I found this particular piece of suspect journalism in New Zealand's ComputerWorld via MacBytes under the somewhat misleading heading of "Mac developers are a major victim of piracy". The author is Tom Yager, who writes for InfoWorld and (only slightly ironically) is the author of the Enterprise Mac weblog for that publication. I say ironic because the ComputerWorld piece bemoans the widespread acceptance of blogging as a legitimate source of news, when his own mac blog has a total of two articles that are essentially rehashed press releases with a heaping dose of superlatives thrown in. Hey Mr. Yager - write up a piece on why Mail.app's Exchange integration sucks, with some technical detail, then pop off.

For those impatient, disinterested (you're still reading?) or executive, I'll summarize the ComputerWorld article: Discussion of pre-release software by anyone other than legitimate news sources is bad. Sure, he pays lip service to the plight of the modern software developer in today's piracy-filled world, but what he's really saying is "stop talking bad about software".

Let's look at his arguments. I can't say with any certainty whether piracy actually improves the market for commercial software and neither can anyone else, and I have no idea whether most pirates would never buy the software they steal. More importantly, I don't care. I think we can all agree that taking something of value without paying is wrong, even if you say you would never pay for it anyway. But the revenue lost because of people using pirated software isn't the real problem anyway, according to the article - it's the fact that these nefarious hoodlums are then talking to each other and writing about their crime. On the Internet.

Mr. Yager takes umbrage to the fact that people with access (illicit, presumably, as otherwise they'd be under NDA) to the unreleased Mac software are talking about their experiences using the software and making potentially untrue statements about it. These wrong-thinking individuals are then discovered by evil, foolish publications who turn it into news, publishing detailed instructions or even linking directly back to the evildoers' own websites. (Publications like oh, say, InfoWorld, Mr. Yager's employer. Would've gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for that meddling web search!) Large corporate buyers read these articles and decide to run BeOS or Minix instead of MacOS. Angels weep.

The subtext is clear - stealing from software companies is bad, but stealing potential revenue from a software developer by publishing negative information (however factual) about an upcoming product is downright heinous. Reviews of pre-release software should be the domain of responsible, professional news organizations, not the general riff-raff. Suddenly, those two Mac blog posts I mentioned earlier make an eerie sort of sense - if publishing negative information about an unreleased product is bad, imagine the impact of doing so about a released product!

The name of the original column is Ahead of the Curve, but here InfoWorld seems to be playing defense. They're saying "Independent news sources are evil, wrong and untrustworthy. We only quote them to show you how evil they really are, or when we need a story and they've got something really juicy. But even if our story is just a link to a web site and a couple of 'refused to comment' quotes, we're still adding value." I call Shenanigans. Because while simply reprinting a blog post isn't real journalism (though the blog post could be!), most of the corporate mouthpiece journalism put out by the likes of IDG isn't either.

(Warning: links require iTunes to function - I know, I'm such a fanboy these days.)

I'm thinking of starting a weekly tribute to old, good music that's been brutalised by some no-talent hack to turn a quick buck for nothing more that a few hours of studio time and a licensing fee (I'm looking squarely at you, The Used/My Chemical Romance). Today's entry would be entitled 'Stevie Doesn't Need a Posse'. I'm sure most everyone reading this (okay, Mom and Dad, maybe not you), has heard Coolio's "Gangsta's Paradise", but how many of you have actually heard the Stevie Wonder track it's based on? It's called Pastime Paradise, and it kicks serious ass. Good luck getting your local Star affiliate to play it, though - "deep cut", indeed.

Any interest? Or am I the only one sick and tired of wishing they just play the original damn song and quit screwing it up? (Open question to Gwen Stefani: What did Joseph Stein ever do to you?)

So I take the truck into the shop, sweating bullets the whole time. What if it's the cat? How much am I willing to spend to keep this thing on the road? Then I get the call: "We cleared the computer, and nothing came up - there weren't any stored codes, either. Come pick it up - no charge." Woo Hoo!

Today I took the truck in for a smog re-test - the guy didn't even charge me (well, $8.25 for the cert, but whatever)! An hour later I'm ready to head over to AAA to renew my registration.

Oh wait. The rear passenger window (which the shop rolled down for some reason) isn't rolling up. Oh wait, it's sliding loose in the channel. So, back to the shop it goes.

Shit.

An anonymous commenter on my original post on the MGM class action suit directed me to this site, which presents some very cogent arguments why this suit is a at least a semi-farce. As most of my DVD collection is in California right now , I'm unable to confirm whether the affected movies I own are in fact 1.85:1 aspect ratio, but the guys over at The Digital Bits are pretty sharp so I'd be surprised if they're wrong. For those of you disinclined to learn the gory technical details of widescreen movie production, the short version is that a MGM isn't doing anything underhanded - the filming technology used to create the lion's share of the 'affected' films produces a full-frame image, which is then cropped for widescreen display in theaters. In these cases, full-frame does not necessarily mean Pan and Scan. Thanks to the commenter for the link. Can't get 'em all right, I suppose.

Get this - if you've bought a widescreen MGM DVD between 1998 and 2003, you've been ripped off. It seems every one of these DVDs isn't actually widescreen - it's pan and scan with black bar covering the top and bottom of the picture! I specifically buy widescreen because I want to see what the director intended, not what some studio hack thought would look good on a square screen. You have until March 31st to file a claim. You can either get a copy of the movie in the proper aspect ratio or $7.10 per title, your choice.