Posted by Alec LaLonde
Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:58:00 GMT
I've been typing on an Apple-branded keyboard since I was 11 years old. For ten years I sang the praises of the technically superior Mac OS, the elegant hardware of the iMac, and the flawlessly user-centric iPod. I owned an iMac, iBook, and three iPods. I was an Apple fanboy.
The mind-opening experiment we call 'going to college' started to change all that. As a junior I had an internship at Kodak testing digital cameras, and one of my co-workers had a sister who worked for Apple. I was rather impressed (she was pretty cute too) and longed for a position at my beloved Apple. Yet this was when DRM was becoming the norm in the downloadable music industry, spearheaded by Apple's agreement with the Big Five record companies to enable the iTunes Music Store. I mentioned my disapproval of all things DRM and her response was something like "well, yeah, but that's the only way they could come to an agreement with the record companies."
Sorry, but that doesn't cut it. Four years ago I agreed, but there's a lot more to it than that. How long did it take for the record companies to reneg on that previously unalterable agreement? Less than three years. Jobs still held the cards and could've bargained for the right to sell plain ol' DRM-free MP3s in the first iteration of the iTunes Store. But now, Apple's success has rendered it the single (successful) gatekeeper to legal downloadable music over the thousands of traditional record companies of yesteryear.
And how about the iPhone? Sweet device, yes. Remarkably marketed, yes. A digital Alcatraz? Oh, yes. The first iteration was glaringly lacking any sort of SDK for third-party applications developers to use. It was like Microsoft releasing a version of Windows that runs Office and nothing else. Sure, Apple has rectified that situation with its own SDK, but with loads of further restrictions unheard of on any other popular development platform.
What really kicked off this tirade, though, was viewing Apple's latest TV ad. Is it just me, or has the company hired advertising executives directly from the Republican Party? It's a classic smear, straight from the stagnant strategies of modern presidential politics. This has been going on for years, with most of the ads not even offering a shred of evidence concerning the actual features of the Macintosh.
Are we witnessing the rise of the next Microsoft?
Posted in Rants | 1 comment
Posted by alalonde
Fri, 19 Jan 2007 09:24:00 GMT
...or so says the gigantic music publishing conglomerate that is determined to stifle any musical inspiration in this country. How? Well, this link sums it up pretty well. If you don't know anything about guitar tabs, then check out the linked article before proceeding...
I must say that I only realized how bad the situation had become after doing a thorough search for Pearl Jam's "Animal" guitar tab. Four years ago I viewed the tab easily through my favorite tab search engine, Guitar Tab Universe, but tonight couldn't find it anywhere. That is, anywhere except Ultimate-Guitar.com, which didn't include the solo (which happened to be exactly what I was looking for, the rest of the song is trivial). It turns out that this site is one of a very few sites offering tablature for viewing these days. Unfortunately a great internet democracy has turned into an authoritarian state where choice doesn't exist and servers are located in Russia to avoid legal threats from entities such as the NMPA and MPA, who make peanuts (and always have) from selling overpriced guitar sheet music for mainstream artists.
The battle is much like the peer-to-peer file sharing battle of years past. The RIAA and MPAA have largely won this battle [save the fantastic thepiratebay.org, located in Stockholm], but at what cost? Conglomerate radio now spews a pathetic selection of mainstream crap to its audiences while record sales, well, haven't really changed at all. Several studies have proven this; simply do a Google search on "record sales" and see for yourself. There is so little worthwhile music on mainstream radio that everyone with the least bit of musical knowledge turns elsewhere for creative inspiration. This hurts everyone, and eventually, the music industry will feel it itself when the eventual backlash occurs.
This particular battle is an egregious trouncing of Amendment Number One. A musician's interpretation of a song is just that, an interpretation, and should be the sole property of the transcriber. People shouldn't be forced to buy published transcriptions of their favorite songs, especially when (in my case) such transcriptions don't exist.
Posted in Rants | 1 comment
Posted by alalonde
Thu, 14 Dec 2006 23:25:00 GMT
Ever get the feeling that you're turning into someone's chew toy? Well, before this month, I hadn't.
Last monday my employer informed me that I would be no longer employed after two weeks. This was a bit of surprise, but I guess it shouldn't have been since I hadn't had any real work for several weeks and was spending each day working on a personal web site. Anyway, "employed" isn't really correct since I am technically a contractor (more like a glorified co-op). They had offered me employment at the end of the summer but I turned it down because I didn't want to make the commitment. (Looking back, I doubt anything would have been different had I come one as en employee anyway.)
So over the past few days I've been probing various colleagues about the cause for all the layoffs (at least 4 people in Rochester and 2 elsewhere were being canned). Apparently one of our customers cancelled a service contract with us and it was a pretty big hit, so they couldn't afford to pay so many people anymore. But the unique thing about this company is its size (60-70 people). Most of the time when large companies do layoffs their oldest, most expensive employees are the first to go. In this case they are just getting rid of all the contractors and one new hire (who was a rather sub-par developer anyway), while all the oldest, more experienced people will stay. My reasoning for this is that the company is only 3-4 years old; I doubt the most senior developers are making much more than the newbies.
Another problem involved project management. In my case, I was one of three developers who rolled out the first version of one of our web apps. This was finished by late October, the next few weeks were just bug fixes and minor adjustments due to requirements changes. After that, there was supposed to be a rather large "phase II" to the project, but nobody could agree on the details of the requirements so I just sat by idly. Finally, yesterday my boss handed me the requirements for this next phase of the app. I sarcastically informed him of my being canned in three days and he responded with a "well, we can keep you on for another week if that's ok with you." By that point I had very much accepted my situation and responded with a "yeah, ok, whatever." So I am employed until the 22nd, which isn't bad timing for the pending holidays.
So what's next? Well, I might take some time off, but it's too early to tell where I'll be next so I won't speculate. I'm looking forward to a healthy raise wherever I end up.
But for now I'd better go clean up all this saliva and teeth marks...
Posted in Rants | 1 comment
Posted by alalonde
Tue, 27 Dec 2005 05:25:00 GMT
Time for a good ol' rant...
I was watching highlights from the English Premier League matches on Boxing Day (today) and was very entertained with the exciting football that had taken place. However, I was sorely disappointed with the emphasis on officiating placed throughout the show. During an hour and a half of highlights the commentators managed to criticize a referee's decision for just about every game. Yeah, handballs happen, as do controversial tackles in the box and not-so-innocent nudges during cornerkicks, but remember that the referees are at just as high a skill level (in what they're doing) as the players are. Referee decisions are a part of every sport, and in the long run, these decisions always even out for any team. What pisses me off is the constant complaining by players and managers alike. During the highlight shows, for instance, after each match is a short interview with each team's manager, no more than 20-30 seconds. Yet somehow, the managers always focus this valuable time on criticising the referee rather than commenting on his team's progress or performance. For instance, after the Aston Villa/Everton match (in which Everton were thromped 4-0) the Everton manager spent his entire interview bitching about how the first goal should have been disallowed because it was a handball (it grazed Milon Baros's arm), blah blah the first goal is very important in a game, yadda yadda it was the worst decision I have ever seen in my 40 years of managing etc etc...well maybe you should shut the hell up, and realizing how your team got it's ass whooped, comment on your team's atrocious defending instead of whining like a little girl.
This isn't even mentioning how in all professional sports (footballers are especially guilty) athletes routinely criticize every decision by an umpire, referee, linesman, or whoever. A typical sequence of events might be...
1. midfielder plays a thru-ball up to a forward, who controls it in mid-stride, fires and scores, then goes wild in celebration
2. linesman raises his flag, indicating the forward was offside, as agrees the referee
3. player runs over to the referee, shouting obscenities in a tantrum and carrying on like a three-year-old
4. referee calmy explains why he was offside
5. player continues whining like a little bitch, manager goes hoarse yelling obscenities
6. player throws the ball or kicks something/someone
7. referee awards player a yellow card
8. (repeat steps 3-5 until player walks away or is ejected)
Post-game whining is simply an excuse for a (player's, team's) performance that could've been better. An extra effort on a midfield run to reach that low-crossed ball at the goal mouth, a lapse of concentration in the penalty box allowing an attacker to slip behind, a misplaced shot, poor defensive communication; these decisions and performances will decide the result of any given game, not a single refereeing decision. So shut up already.
Posted in Rants | 1 comment
