Yea, you know what would be, but isn’t, only because I don’t have the time for it. Or you know what would be cool if..

1. Driving down a roadway and hearing music that would relate to the scenery. GPS would be used to determine where you are, and then the music system would play songs based upon your global position. If you were in a historical district, classical music would be played, or if you were driving in the mountains lounge music would be played. Each user of the system could tag certain locations with a perticular songs. Other users would then benefit from the tagging and be able to choose user’s selections for that roadway or route. So if you were driving from Phoenix to Los Angeles you could view other user’s playlist for that particular route and play one that is suitable to your tastes. Users could upload playlists from their music devices or compile a playlist for a road trip on their computer and then play it on the system. To prohibit unwanted music selections you would be able to block music based on the genre or user. It would be a social navigation-based satalitte radio system.

2. A website dedicated to promoting television programming through the use of ratings observed by the BitTorrent network. Simply put it would allow content providers such as NBC the ability to see ratings for shows delivered via BitTorrent. Currently there is no way to track how well a particular show “doing”. A website could be developed that could track and monitor each show through the use of the BitTorrent protocol and then figure stats out for each day for each show aired that day. It would be Nielson ratings but for BitTorrent and the information would be publically available.

3. A website (not a blog) that would track release dates for all sorts of things through the use of an advanced calendaring system. Instead of giving reviews about the items that are being tracked, it could instead link to the reviews of others. There are so many products that are being developed these days that it is hard to keep up with what is being released when. Such a website would keep track of release dates. If users wanted to see what new and exciting things were being released in Q3 2008 they could easily. It would be sorted by company or product genre. Users could then see when Microsoft is planning on releasing its next version of ProductX. When visiting the website, you would be presented with a top-level calendar view of important release dates. Then you could drill down by year and by quarter and by month and see more specifics. The website could even be a Wiki in so much that the burden of keeping up with the release dates could be community driven.

No, I do not have the holiday spirt nor am I a Christmas nazi, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

We do not have a Christmas tree and for that I am glad. Christmas trees are a pain in the butt. You have to go out and buy them, set them up, decorate them, make sure they don’t catch on fire, and then after it sits there for a while you have to go and throw it all away. It sounds kinda frivilous doesn’t it? Yea, it does. Some people act as if the only place that they can put store their presents is under a tree. Presents could easily be put on top of the refrigerator instead! Why are people so fasinated with putting presents under a tree?

Some will tell you they do it for their children. The truth is that they don’t do it for their children, they do it for themselves. Parents are the most selfish people I know. All they want to do is to be able to see the look on their children’s face when they come down the stairs on Christmas morning. Adults will do almost anything to see that look, and in all cases they will lie to their children for it. Heart breaking isn’t it? Imagine being told stories of a large fat man coming down the shoot in the middle of the night with loads of gifts on his back, all addressed to you. That is enough to fill any child’s head with lofty visions and to wet their lips with pure anticipation and excitement. How any parent could live with themselves after tricking and decieving their children like that is beyond me.

Let me put forth that suppose one day in the future I have children of my own. If that ever does happen, I will not buy a Christmas tree, or tell them about Santa, or buy them loads of gifts. During the holiday season we will all jump in the car and drive to some place like Target or Walmart and they will each get to pick out one thing that they want and that will be their “holiday gift”. Most children have enough toys as it is, and those that don’t have enough toys don’t appreciate the few toys they have and therefore don’t deserve anymore anyways.

Ah, Christmas is a special time of the year though. Not really.. Wait, well.. we do get off of work and off of school and off of whatever else we hate doing. Yes, in that sense Christmas is a special time. It is a day of rest for most everybody. But Christmas is not a special time of the year in that it is the birth of Jesus. Because Jesus was not even born on Christmas day, he was born near the time of the feast of the Tabernacles if anything. Christmas if anything is a tradition create by man. The roots of Christmas are most likely in some pegan festival that was marketed as the birth of Jesus just so that it would be more attractive for Christians to celebrate. Of course I don’t really know where Christmas came from, but if I had to speculate based upon my own idea, that would be it. Though, you’ll probably find that people 100 or 200 years ago did not celebrate Christmas like we do today. To me Christmas isn’t really very special. More or less it is a time to take a break and spend with family.

Around the time of New Year people come up with resolutions and goals for the coming year ahead and reflect on the year that has past. What is the purpose of a resolution and why does it have to be done at New Years? Resolutions are things that people save up throughout the whole entire year and then when New Years come they decide to act upon them. New Years is just that, a fresh start of a new year. But honestly, to me I feel more of a fresh start each time I wake up in the morning than I do when New Years comes around. Why can’t people just do their resolutions in the morning when they wake up? The benefit of doing so would be so that at the end of the year you are not overwhelled with how many resolutions you have to do. If you distribute your resolutions evenly throughout the year you don’t have to worry about them piling up on you while you are away on vacation.

New Years has never been appealing to me. Watching a ball drop is not that great, especially when you live in a different time zone than where the ball dropping at. The problem of the ball dropping in another time zone is easily solved, but I do not know why people don’t do it. If you shoot a ball into outerspace so that is in a desending orbit around the Earth, it will drop in every time zone as it makes its way around the Earth. This way all tribes and nations could celebrate the dropping of one ball regardless of the time zone that is in. Furthermore if the ball took 30 years to completely drop to the Earth, we could always celebrate the fact that each new second is the start of a new year ahead into the future.

Perhaps one of the worst things about New Years is that teachers all across the world make their students write out their resolutions and goals for the the next half of the year. They force their students to come up with something that they feel they should improve upon. These assignments are meaningless and nothing but busy work to those few students that are perfect. For this reason alone, New Years always leaves a bad taste in my mouth. How should anybody know what they need to improve upon if somebody does not tell them? It be easier and more just if teachers did the assignments themselves and taylored the answers toward the students that need improvement.

For me, the holiday season is not about the holidays but about the time I get to rest and relax with family and friends.

Oh the holidays..

The artist formerly known as Prince and all his girly songs play way too often on the radio. I listen to 70′s/80′s/alternative/mix stations both in my car and on the Internet. Prince is played probably more consistantly than any other artist. It makes me sick and I feel like puking every time I hear his wussy songs. Radio stations of the world, do us all a favor and stop playing Prince and anybody else who sounds like him!

I remember when I got my copy of Windows 95. I had been using Windows 3.11 for such a long time even after Windows 95 was released. At the time I was about 12 years old and my parents bought me a copy of Windows 95 for Christmas the one year. I was so thrilled.. I could play Red Alert. The copy that I got had like 6 floppy disks and it ended up not installing because one or more of the disks were bad. We returned it the next day only to recieve another copy of Windows 95 that also had bad floppy disks. The third time we returned it, we purchased the CD-ROM version and it worked perfectly, duh. Check out the Windows 95 Launch Video.

Steve Jobs, in the Pirates of Silicon Valley and Triumph of the Nerds, used this famous quote from Pablo Picasso – “Good artists copy, great artists steal”. Jobs believed what he had created with the Macintosh was art.

Anybody that has a problem with Microsoft stealing or copying ideas for their Windows operating system should thank Apple. Microsoft learned that stealing/copying was acceptable business practices from Apple who copied Xerox. The fact is that people just need somebody to complain about because their life sucks.

Furthermore, everybody stole from IBM. I don’t hear anybody bitching about companies like Compaq and NEC that cracked and stole the hardware design from IBM’s first personal computer.

Check out the video.

Steve Jobs claims originality. I find that hard to believe. Steve Jobs is just sour because he got burned, fair and square.

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.” (Ecc. 1:9-14)

Yeah this comes straight from the head of Apple, Steve Jobs, himself.

Steve Jobs said, “We believe Internet Explorer is a really good browser.”
Finally, he speaks the truth.

Steve Jobs said, “We need all the help we can get.”
Yeah that’s for sure.

Steve Jobs said, “You always had to be a little different to buy an Apple computer.”
People that work at Walmart are a little different too.
The truth is you have to be stupid to buy an Apple computer. That’s the only prerequisite.

Don’t believe me? Watch it and discover the truth for yourself.

Check out the video

Let’s just say that I have been stock piling a ton of DVDs with media on them and waiting to label them in the future. Most of the DVDs are of the brand name Maxwell or TDK. I recently had somebody inquire has to what I had on all my DVDs so that meant I had to catalog and label each DVD. Here’s what I found out about the different types of DVD/CD labeling.

Labeling with Stickers

One of the worst ways to label a DVD is with a sticker label. The downfalls with sticker labeling your DVDs are listed below.

1. Putting the sticker label on the DVD incorrectly could cause it to spin unbalanced.
2. Buying the stickers is a pain in itself, some stores carry them, others don’t.
3. Most sticker labels require an ink jet printer to print the label on them.
4. If you print your label on the sticker with the ink jet printer you could run out of ink quickly

Thermal Ink Jet Labeling

Thermal Ink Jet labeling is perhaps a better way to label your DVDs. I tried the Casio CW-75 Thermal Ink Jet Printer / Disc Title Printer and found out the hard way that the technology is really not there. The problems I had with Thermal Ink Jet labeling are as follows.

1. Thermal Ink Jet labeling does not work on all types of DVDs, depends on the coating
2. If there is data on the disc before labeling, it could mess up that data
3. Sometimes it does not completely print what you desire, leaving the printing messed up and the DVD ruined.
4. It requires special ink which costs money!
5. You need a special Thermal Ink Jet printing device, like the Casio which I returned to the store. It will cost you over $100. I’ve looked online and seen some for $1000-$2500.

I was able to label half of my collection, atleast 150 dvds using this method. After that, the Casio pooped out on me and stopped labeling correctly altogether.

LightScribe

After my adventure with Thermal Ink printing I thought about looking into LightScribe for future uses. It is true that I can’t LightScribe my existing DVDs, but I could LightScribe future DVDs. I found out that LightScribe is still expensive and will probably remain expensive. About 25 LightScribe DVDs cost $50. That is an outrageous price which can most likely be attributed to HP’s licensing of the LightScribe technology to other companies. HP was the only company I saw selling LightScribe DVDs at Fry’s Electronics. Maybe I didn’t look hard enough, but the hgih price turned me off almost immediately. There is no way I could burn 300 dvd’s at that price plus the cost of a new LightScribe DVD burner. Ouch. Here’s a list of the issues I have with LightScribe at the moment.

1. Cost per DVD is too high
2. Requires $90 LightScribe DVD burner, which doesn’t burn CDs
3. Rumors that labeling takes a fair amount of time

Labeling with your Hand

Sharpie’s are cheap. I got a box of them at Walmart for around $8. I don’t have the best looking handwriting, but hand written labels work right the first time every time. Writing the label by hand is the cheapest way to label a ton of DVDs, I highly recommend it. Sure your hand may start to hurt, but take a break.

So I am left with labeling the rest of my burnt DVD collection by hand. I would have preferred to have them all printed with a nice professional label, but in the scheme of things, I don’t think it matters anymore. I won’t be going through these DVDs everyday so it won’t really bother me as much. There is no perfect labeling solution out there for CD/DVD labeling yet, all methods have their drawbacks. I have come to realize that it is better just to get your DVDs labeled then to have them half-labeled or not labeled at all.