MAUS is a pretty mellow group, our membership drive consists of occasionally asking people to join. The meeting attendance varies from a few geeks to a full house depending on the surf conditions and the weather.

The first thing I realised is that nothing I own will plug into an iTV, I mean AppleTV. My stereo will, but that runs off a spare PowerBook or an Airport Express. My ten-year-old analog television on gets turned on by my wife, and only then for Oprah, the Travel Channel, House and the Daily Show. We get the rest of our news and entertainment from the web and these things called books - you’ve heard of them? 

I may write more detailed accounts of the AppleTV and there will be a Podcast about it as soon as I can get Carmen back into her chair. - i promise. Until then, I’ll just say that wile I personally can’t imagine buying one - I’m saving up for a $100 book called “Recording the Beatles” - it does everything it says better than you could imagine.

Because I couldn’t set it up at home, I had to go from ignorance to demo in a half-hour as the room filled. The TV in or borrowed our Lab at Maui Community College had all the right parts, and I had uncharacteristically  read a few pages in the teensy users manual.

The set-up is about as hard as configuring an iPod and the on-screen menus are brilliant, beautiful and practical.  We got three different Macs hooked up with no trouble and the performance was as good as the content.

In short the AppleTV is an iTunes server which makes whatever you can put into that program available on your big screen either over a wireless or an ethernet connection. If you’re into Final Cut Pro, iMovie or torturing your friends with slideshows you’ll be able to justify this as either a terrific way to demo, proof your work or make people leave the room.

If you regularly download iTunes videos and want to see who else may be living in your house and your content is  safe for family viewing - you could be a potential user.

If you’re into serious hi-fi and have a drive full of lossless files the optical output circuits Apple uses are said to make this one of the best sounding wireless systems on the market. The Airport express is a less expensive option, but it isn’t as much fun to play with.

Finally, if you loose the remote, you are screwed because that’s the only way to control the device - so but a spare on day one, “pair” it and hide it in a drawer against the inevitable day you lose one.
 
Bottom line - if you have one of those new wide-screen Tv thingies eating a hole in your brain, you can find some content worth watching and have lots of stuff in iTunes you’ll no doubt want a AppleTV - the $299 price is fair enough and it’s fun to play with.

What’s that word… oh yeah: greedy!

The Vista Backups That You Can’t Have

…Even though the Home Basic and Home Premium versions of Vista are backing up all files including user data files, users can’t access the backups of their own data. Want proof that the backups are there? Use Microsoft’s Windows Anytime Upgrade feature to upgrade from Home to Ultimate. When we did that, the Previous Versions tab appeared and revealed changes to data files that were made before the upgrade occurred.

Previous Versions has other problematic behaviors. Vista grabs 15 percent of each drive to archive the combination of user data and system files, with just a cryptic command line interface to change the number. There is no way to selectively add or remove a file or folder from the backup; someone could easily find an old version of a file that you thought you had removed for good. Unfortunately, it’s a package deal; you must take it all or nothing at all. Disabling Previous Versions removes user data backups, but it also disables System Restore and deletes all restore points.

Vista users may have to live with these design tradeoffs, but Microsoft’s decision to intentionally hide backups of user data is just plain wrong. If Vista keeps backups of user data, the user is entitled to see, use, and remove them. Users shouldn’t need an expensive upgrade to Vista Ultimate just to rescue their data backups.

Link and laugh

My answer is simple: Get one made by a real camera company that has a good lens and uses normal batteries. The victim then responds with a string of Japanese company names and numbers which includes the word “megapixels” and something a friend said.

To which I reply, as my wife cringes and heads back to the punch bowl: “Magapixels are bullshit.”

If you’re not a professional photographer shooting REALLY big pictures, there are more important things to be concerned with than the number of dots on your thingy. Learn to take good pictures with a cheaper, easier to use camera and you will get better photos. Being able to replace the battery in Peru is more important than the quantity of bits in your box. Falling for more is more better will just cost you more - for something that’s usually not any better.

So now, famous David famous Pogue of the NYT puts his quarter on the rail - once again demonstrating how some of the people are fooled all of the time.

Breaking the Myth of Megapixels
By DAVID POGUE

For an industry that’s built on science, the technology world sure has its share of myths. Thousands of people believe that forwarding a certain e-mail message to 50 friends will bring great riches, that the gigahertz rating of a computer is a good comparative speed score, or that Bill Gates once said “640K of RAM ought to be enough for anybody.”

But one myth is so deeply ingrained, millions of people waste money on it every year. I’m referring, of course, to the Megapixel Myth.

It goes like this: “The more megapixels a camera has, the better the pictures.”

It’s a big fat lie. The camera companies and camera stores all know it, but they continue to exploit our misunderstanding. Advertisements declare a camera’s megapixel rating as though it’s a letter grade, implying that a 7-megapixel model is necessarily better than a 5-megapixel model.

Oh, there’s more: LINK

In fact, it’s clear that Windows Vista stands just below the
Patriot Act for evil intent with no redeeming qualities. Vista is
nothing more than a power-grab by greedy corporations and the federal
government. In fact the well-loved National Security Agency recently
admitted to “assisting” in the development of the new operation system
in unspecified areas. That’s like giving the police your house keys and
wallet while carrying your own pair of handcuffs just in case you do something bad.

As more people have an opportunity to crawl under the hood, the real pathology of Microsoft’s intentions will be revealed.

Consider this short excerpt from “Analysis of Microsoft’s Suicide Note:

“The entire operating system now seems to have turned against the
user. Zero tolerance drivers and regulation code will lock the system
down if any type of deviance is detected. So called “tilt bits” will
signal an attack on the system if anything is found out of the
ordinary. These changes won’t enhance user security unfortunately as
they were designed to protect only “premium content”. Medical data,
credit card numbers, and other private things that do deserve this
level of protection are completly ignored. Untrusting of any
environmental changes the system will shut down or degrade performance
in response to a perceived attack.”

Rest assured there will be more revelations of Microsoft’s villainy as time goes by just as there will be more people buying Macs this year.

LINK to more of the above