boxtech.org

Hey folks, just wanted to let you all know that we’ve moved to so GoDaddy hosting. If you’d like to donate money to purchase hosting and get rid of these damn ads, just email me at boxcaster@gmail.com and we’ll set it up. Hope you all enjoy the enhanced Boxtech Blog.

Shit Coming Out Of Someone’s Mouth Is Gross

GeekBrief.TV | Video Podcast » Archive » GBTV #372 | GeekBrief.TV

If you haven’t watched this episode, check it out first or this post may not make sense.

I am fairly OS Agnostic as I actively use three machines at home, 2 Macs and a Vista Machine. My Macs are actually supplementary to my Vista Machine that I primarily use. I like the Macs but I guess Windows has been ingrained in my life for so long that I can’t seem to get away from it. Vista is running great for me so I have no qualms with it. It’s just shiny happy to me. As for cell phone OS . . . . . The shit that was coming out of that guy’s mouth was incredible. Does he know anything about the iPhone? Seriously. Had he not heard that ActiveSync was coming to the iPhone so it can be used with Corporate Exchange Servers? Now don’t get me wrong, Blackberry’s are great and probably are a better choice for a business users but honestly, I think that with ActiveSync on the iPhone, the email sync is going to work 10-100 times better then Blackberry. The functionality of the phone hardware wise might be the tipping point. The physical keyboard may be a boon for anyone whois using SMS, email, or editing documents.

This video wasn’t about the physical device, it’s about the software on the iPhone. Krakow is stating that the iPhone OS is crap and should be replaced by WinMo or Blackberry. I don’t think so, OS X iPhone is a great operating system. What the phone needs is exchange access. Hm, Microsoft licensed ActiveSync to Apple to put on the iPhone to intergrate with the mail, calender, and contacts on the phone. The email application on the iPhone is very nice, it just needs to get access to Exchange. With ActiveSync, this is done without any middleware services like BES on the Blackberries. Apple has made a better, slicker interface with corporate email. Windows Mobile is just too hard of an OS and Blackberry doesn’t put it’s OS on any other phones by Blackberries so why would they license it to Apple? I don’t think Krakow understands that the resolution is not putting a different OS on the iPhone but getting the features onto the phone. In this case, it’s ActiveSync. I don’t know if the iPhone will be a viable enterprise/business phone, but the crap Krakow was spewing was absolute non-sense.

Bingo for WWDC

This is a repost from my friend Fredo’s blog, Grapefeed.

They’re at it again! The folks at Ars Technica put together another Bingo card for next week’s Worldwide Developers Conference. Back in January, they released one for the Macworld Expo in San Franciso.

A Google search for “keynote bingo” reveals variations on the same theme from a myriad of others.

I’ve always liked Ars Technica for their great analysis of all things tech. Leave it to them to inject some fun into a Stevenote. Can’t wait for Monday.

An Open Letter to the RIAA and MPAA

There was a time when copyright was valuable.  It was the mechanism artists used to protect the massive investment they placed into the creation of intellectual works.  There was a time when copyright benefited the artist.

Those days are long past, and you, RIAA and MPAA, and the corrupt industries you represent, are directly to blame.  You have failed to adapt, to change with the landscape.  You whine and complain about piracy, about people stealing intellectual property.  Then, you have the temerity to claim that it “hurts the artists.”  Bull.  It hurts your bottom line, plain and simple. Be honest about it.  You know that it’s true.  Musicians make their money from concerts, not from albums.  Actors are guaranteed scale, at the very least(unless they do video game voiceovers; a posting for another day).

Television studios get it.  They’ve moved their content to the web for FREE!  They allow you to embed that content ANYWHERE!  Sure, you can’t download it, but who cares.  If I can watch whatever I want whenever I want, who cares if I have to watch it online.  The convenience overshadows the inconvenience, and that is, in fact, the magic formula.

But you just make things too inconvenient.  I buy a DVD, and you tell me it’s illegal to decrypt it and store it on my hard drive.  You tell me I can’t rip CD’s and store the songs in MP3 format for transport to my iPod.  You sell me digital music online with DRM so I can’t even change it into formats for multiple devices.

Yet all I have to do is turn on a bit torrent client, and if I wanted, I could find every one of your properties in an easily transportable format.  I can use it anywhere, and on any device.  Not only that:  I can get content you won’t release.  I can watch old TV episodes.  I can download old silent movies.  I can listen to unreleased tracks.

You don’t seem to get it.  The genie is out of the bottle.  You will never be able to cork that bottle again.  You can do what you like, but every measure you’ve taken has been countered.  You don’t understand the technology.  If you did, you would USE it rather than fight it. You claim bit torrent and other peer to peer mechanisms, are destroying your business.  I hate to tell you this, but it’s no secret that your business model has failed.  IT IS NO LONGER RELEVANT.  Peer to peer just demonstrates that, it didn’t cause it.  You see the internet as a disruptive technology.  It’s not.  It’s a revolutionary innovation.  It’s time you saw that.  Embrace that innovation, or die in the wake of its change.  Those are your only two choices.

I’m not advocating piracy.  Far from it.  I think people SHOULD pay for media.  I just think that the consumer should have some rights in the exchange.  They should have the right to convert that content to multiple formats so it can be used in a variety of devices.  They should be able to make a reasonable number of backup copies of all media they purchase (which is guaranteed by fair use, and has now become illegal due to the Digital Millennium Content Act).

Intellectual Property law is broken.  That became obvious the day Congress extended copyright length to protect Disney’s copyright of Mickey Mouse. So how do we fix this?  First, RIAA, you need to stop suing people for downloading content.  That’s just ludicrous.  Just because you can’t get at the real pirates doesn’t mean you should take out your frustration on Ma and Pa Kettle.  MPAA, you need to stop PURPOSELY ruining audio quality on movies just so you can track where they were recorded.  Don’t ruin my movie experience just because you’re paranoid about intellectual property theft.

See what the TV studios are doing?  It’s called adaptation.  You can do the same thing.  You can’t protect your current revenue stream.  It’s impossible.  You need a new one, an internet based revenue stream.  For the MPAA, that probably means commercials in your content, something you’re obviously not opposed to since you now place commercials at the start of movies that run in the theaters(and really, don’t get me started on that rant).  For the RIAA, it means selling all of your content DRM free.  ALL OF IT.  And no playing favorites with some stores.

Work our your foreign licensing.  Open up your content to the world.  Offer ALL of your content.  Make it more convenient for people and I guarantee you that they will flock back to you.  You just need to make it worth their while.  Why should they pay $20 for a movie they can only use on their DVD player when they can get legal content online (from places like Revision3, CNet, Mevio, etc, etc) for FREE and use it anywhere they want.

Oh, and a final word just for the MPAA:  Indiana Jones 4?  What the hell were you thinking.  STOP IT.  Just because a franchise made you some dough, doesn’t mean you need to resurrect it.  STOP making really good old movies into horrible new ones.  Here’s an idea:  Take really bad old movies and remake them into really good modern movies.  Now that would be worth paying for.  TV shows don’t make good movies.  You’ve demonstrated that again and again, so STOP DOING IT.  Stop thinking about the bottom line and start thinking about making great content.  Really, it works.  People would rather pay to watch a forward moving plot and interesting characters than pay to watch one liners and huge explosions.  Really, you underestimate our intelligence.  STOP THAT.

Okay, rant over.

.Mac Changing It’s Name To “Mobile Me”?

‘Mobile Me’ the new name of .Mac? – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

CrunchGear » Archive » Mobile Me the new name for .Mac?

Huh? What? No, this can’t be right. In the lastest version of the iPhone Software, CodingRobots.com and Deep Apple found a string with the term “Mobile Me”. With the evidence that Apple had trademarked this name back in 2006, it’s irrefutable that this will be the new name for Apple’s .Mac Service. I’m thinking to myself, “BULLSHIT”. I don’t know about you but that sounds like an aweful name of a service and the name to me doesn’t decribe what .Mac is. Not that it’s much of anything right now. So I went a little deeper into the trademark filing:

AppleInsider | Apple applies for “Mobile Me” trademark

Quoth:

“Telecommunication services; electronic transmission and retrieval of data, images, audio, video and documents, including text, cards, letters, messages, mail, animations, and electronic mail, over local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular and satellite networks; electronic transmission of computer software over local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular, and satellite networks; electronic mail services; facsimile transmission; web site portal services; providing access to databases and local or global communications networks, including the internet, intranets, extranets, television, mobile communication, cellular, and satellite networks; internet service provider services; message transmission services, namely, electronic transmission of messages; telecommunication services for the dissemination of information by mobile telephone, namely the transmission of data to mobile telephones; mobile telephone communication services.”

Hm, this looks interesting. This look to be an expanded .Mac. Which would be cool, but “Mobile Me”? Honestly, this name is one of the worst names I’ve ever seen and it implies a service that is mobile. I’m thinking more like mobile phone mobile. .Mac to me is more of a web based service that start getting you and the operating system to the cloud. Andy Ihnatko speculated about the perfect .Mac service. It would essentially let you log into any Mac and it would pull down all your settings and desktop. It would be exactly like using your Mac at home, except, maybe some of your programs aren’t available but the experience would be relatively the same. Is this what Mobile Me is suppose to be about?

If Apple is going to go with the Mobile Me branding, I suggest this: Mobile Me is the iPhone/iPod Touch interface to .Mac. The Mobile Me service will allow .Mac users to access files on there iDisk and even give a version of remote access to their Macs, a la Back To My Mac. It would allow you to control your iTunes or Apple TV from the device. Like you select the media you want to play then iTunes or your Apple TV immediately starts playing it. I’m sure there are other things you can do with this, but I think the Mobile Me should just be an interface into .Mac and not a renamed .Mac.

The 18: Features Windows Can or Already Has – Part 2

PC World – 18 Features Windows Should Have (but Doesn’t)
18 Features Windows Should Have (but Doesn’t) … Or Does It? – SuperSite Blog

The Score is Strohmeyer 2, Thurrott 8. Not looking good for Strohmeyer. I also have to say, Strohmeyer even shoots himself in the foot by proving himself wrong in most of these. Let’s get back to it.

Windows Live Mesh to the Rescue

I use Twhirl as my Twitter client. This morning, I left it running at home when I went to work, so between my work machine and my home machine, I kept running up against Twitter’s API limits. It was frustrating, until I remembered I had a Windows Live Mesh Account.

I was able to log in to my home machine, and shut Twhirl down there, right from my desk at work. Of course, remote desktop lets you do the same thing, but only if you have remote desktop service running on the machine you want to connect to, and only if you know the ip address (or have a Dynamic DNS service pointing to your machine.)

Below I’m logging in to my home machine.

And there’s the offensive program, Twhirl. I just clicked the close button and it was gone. API limits were no longer an issue. (Click for a larger version)

Now they just need to finish that darn Mac client that they’re promising, and all will be well with the world.

The 18: Features Windows Can or Already Has – Part 1

PC World – 18 Features Windows Should Have (but Doesn’t)
18 Features Windows Should Have (but Doesn’t) … Or Does It? – SuperSite Blog

Paul Thurrott is my Windows hero. He knows the real truth about Windows and it capabilities. He pointed to this almost absurd article on PC World by Robert Strohmeyer about features that Windows should have. Then, he rebutted. Now, my take on the whole debacle after the cut.

Refresh . . . Refresh . . . Refresh

And down the store goes and the blogosphere goes nuts. Here comes the iMac refresh. It’s not going to be that exciting I’m sure.

Update: What did I tell ya.  iMacs were refreshed.

A new split

< Rant >

Ballmer, give up. I have. It’s time to think that you have to have two operating systems. XP and Vista. Think of it this way. XP is the low level, stable operating system that will be great for businesses and some homes. Vista can be the powerhouse operating system with all the security, media, and good looks. XP is the new classic. It’s the one that most people want that they can run on most any computer they have, weather old or new. It’s the lightweight system. Vista is the more robust system. Unfortunately, the robustness of Vista is becoming more like bloat. This bloat is dragging Vista down into an OS that a lot of people do not like. People do not want to be forced to get 2GB of RAM to successfully run their applications. This is the reason why people want to “upgrade” to XP! Ballmer, give up, extended XP to be a parallel to Vista. You will continue to make XP sales and still make money. Focus on making Windows 7 be the ultimate merger of the advance technology of Vista and the lightweight of XP. Windows 7 MUST be a convergence of the two or you are screwed. Drop support for anything Pre-XP. You don’t need that code anymore. If any programs have not updated themselves to at least XP, then they need to be forced to. It’s not the hardware that you need to force upgrades, it’s the software. Why should people be using Archaic software for their business. Windows 98 is obsolete, don’t support that software. Everyone else should have already upgraded to XP by now. Support XP, drop anything older. Work on stabilizing Vista and reducing the the requirements and recommendations to run Windows for 7. Take your time with it. Clean up Windows. Don’t have the installs make a mess. Look at Mac OS X, the installs are essentially just a package on the machine and doesn’t use a registry or anything. Windows is on a downwards slope and you need to make sure that the OS is clean, lightweight, easy to use, but also powerful. I want to see Windows 7 run just as good as Windows XP on a computer built in 2004. That’s your goal. Do it, do it well, and you’ll be golden.

On a side note, I myself love Vista, but I have a machine that meets all the recommended settings. At work, my machine only has 512MB of RAM and would choke if Vista was installed on it. It’s kinda sad. 512MB should be the “Recommended” Ram amount for Windows 7.
< /rant >