Art Machine
Just another former infatuation junkie

From NBC News’ Meet The Press, guest Chuck Todd:

And this is where you find out who the bloggers are.  These are these troops of people—Howard Dean, on any given posting, will have 150 to 200 comments per these posting. That means there’s probably about 80 to 100 people at any one time, they’re just chitchatting. It could be that they’re immediately responding to seeing Dean on television or they’re probably blogging right now while they’re watching us talking about them right now. No doubt probably they’re getting mad at us. They’re very anti-media. 

I put this quote first for serveral reasons. First of all – it shows that the media is used to bloggers, now. They know that we’re out there, ready to make our own comments on the mass media.

Second: They’re actually inviting us to shred them, these days.

And third: I don’t think that most of us are anit-media. I think most of us are anti-media whores. I’m actually quite fond of Meet the Press because it seems to be one of the few balanced shows left on the air. While Tim Russert can be very confrontational, he actually seems to be confrontational on all fronts – liberal, conservative, establishment, and revolutionary. In a world of Rush Limbaugh’s and Michael Moore’s, Meet The Press comes across as the way confrontational journalism should be.

At least, to me, it does.

But that’s not what I’d like to comment on today.

Again from NBC News’ Meet The Press, this time from U.S. News and World Report’s Roger Simon:

I am a blogger sort of. I mean, the difference between—look, a true blog is I woke up this morning, I decided to skip chem class, now I want to write about the last episode of “Friends.” That’s what blogs are. You know, it’s people talking to each other. My site is actually written columns. There’s a difference between writing and typing basically.

Thank you, Mr. Simon, for clearing up for us what a “blog” is. We bloggers can’t even decide on a concrete definition of the term, and we’re the folks who write the damn things. But now that you’ve cleared that up for us, I’ll go ahead and start my commentary on the last episode of Friends. Or maybe I’ll just shoot myself – it would probably be more fun.

Simon’s awfully dismissive of the blogging community. “There’s a difference between writing and typing,” is not the sort of thing one says when they actually want to be part of it. But let’s check out his blog. Hm. Looks like a blog. Smells like a blog. Hell, if the ArtMachine can be considered a blog, then RogerSimon.com can surely be called a blog. Oh, wait. I forgot.

Roger Simon’s a writer, I’m merely a typist.

I would love to see some people drop by Roger Simon’s not-really-a-blog blog and let him know that we don’t mind if he’s not part of the blogging community. Really. Doesn’t diminish us a bit.

And now, the senior member of our panel, David Broder of The Washington Post.

Well, I am not and I never have blogged, and I’m going to get to the end of my career without blogging. I think…

[snappy banter from others edited]

I think it’s a tremendous tool, and it’s part of what is the healthiest trend in our politics, which is going back to personal communication, away from the mass media—forgive me, NBC. But I think the healthiest thing that’s going on now is people talking to people, either through the Internet or, as we’re seeing on the ground in Iowa, face-to-face communication.

So, why does fresh-faced (relatively) Roger Simon, best-selling author, get it so wrong when elder journalist David Broder (reporting since 1960) get it so right?

No, I’m really asking – why?

Yahoo news reports that Adobe has admitted putting government anti-counterfeiting technology into Photoshop without telling anybody.

Adobe, the world’s leading vendor for graphics software, said the secretive technology “would have minimal impact on honest customers.” It generates a warning message when someone tries to make digital copies of some currencies.

The U.S. Federal Reserve (news – web sites) and other organizations that worked on the technology said they could not disclose how it works and would not name which other software companies include it in their products. They cited concerns that counterfeiters would try to defeat it.

Well, yeah – counterfeiters will try to defeat it, anyway. They’re counterfeiters. That’s what they do. At best, the software prevents the kind of casual counterfeiting that the new twenty dollar bill was supposed to stop – college kids running off a quick copy of a twenty to pay for a pizza delivery. But that only lasts until the appropriate crack appears on semi-legal servers and can be applied with the click of a button.

But at least Adobe admitted it to their users instead of letting their users make an unfortunate discovery.

Adobe revealed it added the technology after a customer complained in an online support forum about mysterious behavior by the new $649 “Photoshop CS” software when opening an image of a U.S. $20 bill.

Whoops.

Which raises some issues. After all – this is more than just a counterfeiting tool. There are lots of legitimate uses for pictures of money – that’s why stock photographers like to shoot them. And while there are regulations regarding the types of money photos that can be taken, the fact is that these photos are legal and using them in designs are legal.

And unless they’re paying for it in cash, I really can’t imagine a poor college student looking at a $649 piece of software and thinking, “Dude! I could totally defraud the government and private corporations with this!”

Well, yes, they could download it for free. But then they’ll just know where to go for the anti-anti-counterfeiting crack once it’s available.

See, counterfeiters are a determined bunch – even if they don’t always pay close attention to detail. About the only people who wind up being hurt by this kind of shadow play are the legitimate users – all assurances from Adobe aside. If you want to include the software, fine. If you don’t want to reveal how the software works – that’s perfectly fine.

But putting it in the software without disclosing it to the public? That’s just wrong.

It’s time to rally ‘round the throne, boys! The Bush administration is up in arms over that rabble-rouser O’Neill’s new book, The Price of Loyalty.

President Bush showed little interest in policy discussions in his first two years in the White House, leading Cabinet meetings “like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people,” former Treasury secretary Paul H. O’Neill says in an upcoming book on the Bush White House.

O’Neill, who was forced out of his post in late 2002, spoke extensively to former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind and offered up 19,000 documents, including private White House transcripts and personal notes for the book “The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill.”

O’Neill, of course, is not exactly the most reliable source according to the usual standards. He was removed from his job in the administration for frequently voicing his own opinions, including those that were in opposition to the official policy of the administration.

Now, in some peoples’ eyes, that also happens to make him a perfectly reliable source. Especially when you consider the current administration.

But whether you think O’Neill is reliable or you think he’s a liar (or, like me, you hover somewhere in between), there’s one thing that seems to ring true. O’Neill’s depiction of a “disengaged” Bush in the White House fits well with what we’ve seen coming out of the President’s office. There’s the fact that – despite the common story of a President who was on the ball on 9/11 – Bush did not ground American planes. Instead, it was FAA national operations manager Ben Sliney (thanks, Maha). Then there’s the President’s slow response to the recent Mad Cow scare, the President’s belief that the economy is golden, his common insistence that there are still massive chemical and nuclear labs in Iraq….

You start to wonder if Bush isn’t just disengaged, but if he’s living on a completely different planet.

BBC News reports that chemical weapons have been found in Iraq. Well, sort of.

The 36 120mm mortar rounds appeared to have been buried for at least 10 years, the army said.

All showed traces of blister gases, the army said, a group of chemical compounds which include mustard gas.

So, yes. It’s a chemical weapon. It’s an outdated chemical weapon that appears to have been disposed of – however ineptly – and did not nearly represent the imminent threat that Bush and Blair tried to portray in the days leading up to the war in Iraq. It is not evidence of an onging chemical weapons program, it’s not nearly in the quantities Bush and Blair claimed Iraq had, and it’s not a good example of “weapons of mass destruction.” These weapons pre-date the first Gulf War, and have been buried at least since 1992.

Still no brass ring, guys.

In other news, the World Health Organization suggests that there might just be a very slight possibility that we’re all screwed.

Spoiler Warning: We Apple users are a funny lot. So nobody should be surprised that I am actually including a “spoiler warning” for Steve Jobs’ keynote address. If you haven’t checked out the webcast yet and you want to remain surprised at what Steve had for “one more thing,” then you may not wish to continue reading this until you’ve watched the 1:49:00 presentation for yourself.

I have to admit, Steve. You really had us going today. I mean, you had that crowd in the palm of your hand. You laid it on nice and thick, kept the pacing going smooth, and then got to the stinger—
And then you lost me.

Steve, it was all going so well. You were storming the competition. Complete integration of iLife? Amazing! A new app? Not only that, but a new music app that does for $49 bucks what you typically have to pay $200 to even come close to? Astounding! And that demonstration for GarageBand was a nice touch, too—hearing John Mayer play 70’s style guitar over that backing track he created using GarageBand loops and then porting the whole thing – live track and all – over to your iTunes music library? That had to be one of the coolest things you’ve ever done to present a new app. The only way you could have done better would have been if George Lucas had walked out on stage and used the new iMovie to edit a lightsaber fight for Episode III. Of course, the movie would eventually have sucked – but it would have been such a cool! Macworld moment. And the movie sucking wouldn’t have been iMovie’s fault. It would have been Lucas’. But I digress.

So, then you got us up to the okey-doke. The one more thing, made available at no additional fee, you paid for twelve acts and you get thirteen. And you started off nicely. You got us going, thinking it was jsut financials. Two million iPods sold? Whoo! iPods have taken up 31% of the mp3 player market (out of all brands)? Wow!

Then you hit us with the One More Thing^TM.

And it started off almost sublime, Steve. It really did.

Let’s look at the closest iPod competitor – the flash memory mp3 player. That was nice. “Look, this wedge is almost as big as ours! We want some of that wedge! So, let’s meet the new iPod mini.”

And you loaded up your shells and took aim.

“They have 256 MB of storage – we have 4 GB.” Boom!

“They store 60 songs, we store 1,000.” Boom!

“They have a cheesy little stripped down interface – we have the actual iPod interface.” Both barrels, right between the eyes – Boom-Boom!

And then you got down to that last box – the one where you absolutely blow the competition away and they try to drag themselves to the door only to collapse in a bloody heap.

“Theirs sell for $199…”

Here it comes…

“Ours sells for $249.”

...

Excuse me. What was that again? These old ears don’t hear so good, sonny.

Yes, Steve. It’s an incredible value. Yes, I know that it’s almost 16 times the storage for only fifty bucks more. You know what? It’s also only fifty bucks less for one third of the storage of a low-end iPod.

It’s also contrary to the strategy that’s propelled you this far in so short a time. Remember the iMac? The late, great Douglas Adams praised Apple’s attitude. “I’ve got an idea. Let’s make a computer that’s more powerful than our competition’s professional models, that’s easier to use than theirs, that includes more software than theirs, and then – just for kicks – let’s make it cost less than almost all of their consumer models.”¹

Do you see what you’ve done?

Let’s make it more powerful, easier to use, bigger – and then you’ve gone ahead with the idea that people would be willing to pay more for it.

Steve, if I have the $50 bucks extra to buy the iPod Mini, then the chances are good that I’m actually in the market to buy a real, honest-to-God iPod. There’s certainly not that much difference in the price.

Don’t get me wrong, Steve – I still love Apple. And I still think the world of you. I think that charging for .Mac when it had previously been free was a sad truth of a rapidly-expanding marketplace. I understand the unpopular decisions Apple has made so far.

The iPod Mini isn’t a bad product, Steve.

It’s just not what we were set up for.

Sorry. See you at next year’s MacWorld. Hey! The Mac will be 21 years old in 2005! Sounds like a heckuva party to me.

An independent organization is looking to get the world’s opinion on the last film in The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (thanks, Creativity Machine).

If you have the time and you’re actually able to put your feelings about the movie into words, you might stop by and fill out their incredibly detailed survey.

The ArtMachine has reverted back to its original design due to cross-platform woes. Thank you for your patience.

So much for “What happens here, stays here.” The Casino City Times reports that the FBI is asking hotels, casinos, and airlines for information about their guests, including some personal information (thanks, TalkLeft).

FBI spokesman Todd Palmer confirmed the federal action and said the requirement that the companies surrender customer information is a “normal investigative procedure.”

However, Allen Lichtenstein, general counsel for the Nevada Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, said the program “clearly is not part of a normal investigation.

“What we seem to be witnessing at this point is a move on the part of the government to keep tabs on what everyone is doing all the time, which has serious civil liberties implications,” Lichtenstein said.

“It’s one thing to have some specific security concerns and a targeted investigation with some basis in fact, but to … try to follow everyone goes beyond what is called for.”

Personal details – including names and addresses – of more than 300,000 visitors to Sin City a day may be sent electronically to the FBI.

Of course, they aren’t asking for information about peoples’ gambling habits. Not yet. And it’s a shame. If they did, Bill Bennett couldn’t lie about his winnings any more.

It may just be that it’s way past my bedtime, but my eyes seem to be blurring and I can’t tell if the new design is annoying, unreadable, too busy, or a combination of the three.

An important lesson learned. I just went to re-capture Alive From Birkenau from its MiniDV master – and found that the mastering had apparently been marred by sound that drops in and out, along with other errors.

Fortunately, the original raw footage is still intact, so I can re-create the finished product.

Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the original editing equipment – so I’m moving from a dual-processor G4 with Final Cut Pro and 120GB to an iMac G3 with iMovie and about 7GB to spare. Considering that 30 minutes of footage takes up about 5 gigs and there’s around 90 minutes to cut from, this could get ugly.

See, you’re not supposed to have this kind of problem when you’ve finished shooting and editing – and the film has actually already been submitted to a festival.

Fortunately – other than the VHS copy submitted to Tromadance – there’s one more extant copy of the original edit of Birkenau. And it’s on SVHS.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to an SVHS compatible player.

I feel a documentary coming on.