Getting your music via a subscription service like Napster may seem like a great deal ("Hey, $20 bucks a month for all I can download! Who needs to buy the music when I can just rent it!") until the landlord kicks you out and all your music vanishes into thin air.

Nice move, Microsoft.

Microsoft has lost its appeal to hide more internal emails that deride Vista and it's ability to run on current PC's from the prying eyes of the court. Microsoft claims the emails could "jeopardize Microsoft's goodwill" and "disrupt Microsoft's relationships with its business partners."

More than forcing Vista on said business parters has done already, that is.

Imagine a photography musuem devoted to Speed-Graphics, Hasselblads and Leicas.

Or an art musuem with exhibits on camels-hair brushes, marble, and gesso.

That's why I can't get too worked up about the Newseum.

The medium isn't historical, the message is.

And their mission of "providing a forum where the media and the public can gain a better understanding of each other" leaves me cold. We're not the serfs wandering around the castle halls, trying to understand what it's like to be king: Now we are the ones in charge of the information we produce and consume.

Le media, c'est moi.

My four-year-old is a pretty good shooter!

*head explodes*

Well, seeing how they're not in the PC business anymore and are pushing *NIX heavily, why not?

If my company put out something like this, I'd update my resume.

In a hurry.


At least it doesn't have Monkey Boy yelling out "DEVELOPERS!DEVELOPERS!DEVELOPERS!".

A thought-provoking monologue on defining photography by what it's not. Can't say I agree with all of it: Painting has played role in the development of photography, (and vice versa), and his philosophy on editing has my inner photojournalist all tied up in knots, but it's definitely worth a read.

From Sandy McMurray comes this great list of why any future Microsoft retail store is a bad idea.

Top 10 things overheard at the Microsoft retail store:
• "Please check all torches and pitchforks at the door."
• "You can browse, but you must use Internet Explorer."
• "It does work. You just need the patch."
• "We don't support that. Try the [partner name] store."
• "Very funny. No, we don't sell copies of Monopoly."
• "Please see the officer at the Authentication Bar."
• "The next version of the Microsoft Store should have that."
• "I'll give you an Xbox if you stop crying."
• "What other choice do you have?"
• "Beep. You seem to be shopping for an iPod. Can I help?"

Stop making men look like idiots, and you'll sell more stuff, says Advertising Age.

We tend to live down to the standards that are given to us, and constantly portraying men as morons or overgrown children or both is no way to get us to buy something that will improve our lives. I know who I am, (and if I didn't, my wife would tell me who I am :) ), I don't need Toyota or Budweiser to tell me I'm actually a 14-year-old boy in a man's body.

...you have to buy a book to understand the youth of the day.

Or at least TRY to understand 'em.

And what's up with their music, anyways?

Sigh.

I'm getting old.

TechCrunch's Michael Arrington goes through his own version of "Dell Hell" and survives, thanks to an alert Comcast exec monitoring Twitter.

Where there was once Technorati and Google Blog Search, now there's Tweetscan.

You customers are talking. Are you willing to listen?

Roger L. Simon has some interesting thoughts about recent changes inside the book industry:

In a radical departure from traditional book-publishing practices, News Corp.'s HarperCollins Publishers is launching a new business that won't accept returns from retailers. In addition, the new entity intends to pay little or nothing in the way of advances to its authors.

Instead, the unit, which hasn't yet been named, will share its profits with writers and focus much of its sales efforts on the Internet.

My question then is - what's the point of the publisher?

Well, there's editing (which one can get elsewhere) and the fancy publishing house imprimatur, maybe a little help with production and publicity (again available elsewhere - many authors pay for their own publicists anyway). It this really enough? The author can do much better on percentages, I am sure, by self-publishing. And that same author may know his or her way around the Internet better than the publisher, when it comes to publicity. So I am skeptical of this model. But I'm not surprised that it is happening - it is another symptom of the huge shakeout in the arts and letters instigated largely by the online world.

Presenting... Helvetica Serif!

The horror... the horror...

Thank Vint we don't have to worry about the «marquee» tag anymore.

But if you need a copy of Netscape 0.9, you can find it here.

Ahhh, the good ol' days.