Merv Griffin, Not for Sale
Milk and Cheese rock. No not the dairy products (although cheese is good), the dairy products that have gone bad. Please someone, buy some of this art for me.
It’s Snowing
Yay! A wintery storm has finally come. I like it when it snows. Quiet. Peaceful. I guess this is it for winter 2006.
The future is now
The latest flick from my Netflix queue is The Triumph of the Nerds: The Rise of Accidental Empires. This was a documentary on the rise of the personl computer industry done around 1996, the Jurassic period in computer epochs.
The narrator was Robert X. Cringely who used to write a weekly column about the movers and shakers of Silicon Valley. He writes an online column for PBS.org and has very insightful things to say about the industry. I read his writings every week. This week he explains why Jobs is good for Disney. Read it. Then go buy stock in Apple. Jobs is just that good.
Anyway, back to the DVD. The story ends in 1996. Windows 95 was just released and the internet had yet to become the ubiquitous thing it is today. At the end, Cringely goes over the fortunes of the main players: Gates, Microsoft, Jobs, and Apple.
In 1996, Apple’s fortunes were down and it looked as if the end was near. Steve Jobs was 10 years in exile from Apple after being unceremoniously dumped in 1986. He was just the CEO of a little animation company Pixar. Oh and also of a small startup NeXT computing.
In 1996, Bill Gates was the richest man in America. Microsoft was the dominant computer company. It was good to be a Microserf.
In 1996, Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, preached the joy of the internet and the future of computing as a thin client connected to the Web. The PC was not in the picture.
What happened in the PC industry in those 10 years until now?
Microsoft still got bigger. Is still the 100lb gorilla of the personal computer industry. Apple did not fail. It has become a major player in the new computing world order. Bill Gates is a successful philanthropist and is the richest man in the world. Larry Ellison is a nobody. Steve Jobs is now the head of Disney.
Cringely closes the show with an acknowledgement that the industry will always be changing. He said that it would take 30 years for society to find uses for technology that has been introduced. In 1996, the personal computing industry had been around for about 20 years. He said he would like to revisit the Silicon Valley players in 10 years. It is now 2006. I wonder what he will find?
A billion souls crying out…
… for music.
Can you win at the billionth iTunes download? Check out the prizes. $10,000 worth songs. How many albums is that? Or even how many TV shows?
You can buy or use this entry form to enter. No purchase necessary. For those running Tiger, use this dashboard widget to help estimate when to enter.
Good luck. And if you win can I get one of those iPods. Thanks in advance.
“The sleeper has awoken!”
I see from APCB that the powers that be are releasing an extended version of Dune. No not the scifi channel’s remake, but the honest god goodness of David Lynch’s masterpiece. This is something to watch out for.
Green Machine
HULK’S DIARY THAT IS ON THE INTERNET
That statement alone does not sum up how funny this thing is.
100,000 miles and running
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Today my car has past the 100K mile mark. It occurred around 8 AM on 695 right under the Stevenson Rd. overpass. You can check the last hundred miles until I reached this mark in my flickr account. Check the set out.
I need an image consultant
I need to change the layout of my blog. If I this was a few years back, I could’ve done it myself. Now, I am to lazy to find out how to make changes this site’s HTML code. Sad, but true. I need help.
Underworld (D)Evolution
When I saw the first Underworld, I was slightly impressed. I don’t go for vampires. No fascination with them whatsoever. Yet, this war with werewolves was intriguing. If I had blogged the movie back then, my review would’ve been a solid 3 of 5 stars. Mediocre but watchable.
Well the sequel to Underworld had opened up last week and I had to watch it. I confess that I was anticipating it for the last month. Not only for Kate Beckinsale in tight leather, but to finish up the story. I was sorely disappointed. In fact, I think I was played for the fool.
This sequel starts off perhaps minutes after the last, but it is light years from the first. I can’t believe that this was the same setting as the last. It seems as if the writer and the director wanted to throw out everything good about the previous film and start anew. And where they started was at the core of Blood Rayne (I have not seen it, but I am sure it is just as crappy). It then flows into a mire of crap. The trilogy seemed condensed into a two-parter. Perhaps they knew with this stinker of a movie that they could not tell it all because they’ll all be fired by then. There was more chases, more Kate Beckinsale skin (a plus!!), and more vampires. After the defeat of the werewolves there was no more enemy except themselves. Vampire v. Vampire. As Butthead would’ve said, “This sucks, Beavis.” What happened?
Don’t make the third installment. I won’t watch it after being robbed.
2 of 5 stars. For the naked side of Kate Beckinsale.