Posts from — February 2007

I never thought my Norelco and I could be so controversial.

But, beard warnings are popping up in Pakistan.

Yikes, what about ear hair?  I hope removing that isn’t against Shariah. 

Global warming is a hot topic, no pun intended.  I have various views on the subject (hasn’t it been getting warmer since the ice age?) and so do my friends.

There’s also lots of other interesting stuff to read out there, such as this.  I find it so funny how right-wing conservative folks are always accused of being money grubbing, cold hearted power mongers, etc. and somehow the liberal crowd adeptly dodges this moniker.  Its at least as true there as across the aisle.

This aside though, one of my cars is still an ULEV.  No harm in that.  And, while I’m not SO excited to strap a tank of pure hydrogen to my rear, I really do wish they’d hurry up with fuel cell cars.  I look forward to the day when we aren’t beholden to foreign oil.

Until that day, please use your head and realize that many global warming band-wagonists aren’t true modern day altruistic prophets.

I’ll bet they never saw this coming during the initial marketing meeting…

Jim Samples resigns as head of Cartoon Network.

While many of you know this, I thought I would write a note to officially ”announce” that I’ve started a new job as a Solutions Architect for Artesia, the Digital Media Group of Open Text, Inc.

This change concludes a total of almost 8 years at Mainsoft, my previous employer.  Leaving Mainsoft was a tough decision, as the people there are some of the brightest and hardest working folks I’ve ever known.  Their products are rock solid and fit a real need in the market.  I’m truly thankful for my time there.  Eight years is a long time though.  I was looking for something with less cross country travel and something that was more indigenous to my home city of Los Angeles.  Enter Artesia!

Artesia focuses on solutions for the digital media ecosystem, meaning primarily providing Digital Asset Management software for companies who work with digital files.  A mouth full, I know…  In a nutshell, Artesia helps companies with huge amounts of digital content (images, video, Photoshop files, InDesign files, etc…) store, index and categorize that content and then provide for easy searching and distribution of it throughout the enterprise and to their partners.

The usage spans across most industries and verticals.  Companies like Major League Baseball use Artesia as the repository and workflow manager for creating their “Condensed Games” on MLB.TV.  A company like Molson Coors uses Artesia to help them manage brand consistency.  Getty Images uses Artesia to underpin their entire editorial division.  Many uses, but a single architecture.  Very flexible, and very neat!

Headquartered out of Rockville, MD (just outside of D.C.), Artesia is the leading company in the Digital Asset Management space.  Their customer list is hugely impressive, and the people have a lot of vision.  Its exciting to move to a new space and start fresh.  Mainsoft will be a tough act to follow, but Artesia seems to be up to the task.

So, I just moved my Blog from one system to another hosting service, Dreamhost.  They are one of the best hosts I’ve ever worked with – and that is saying a LOT!  Its a Unix-Only hosting service, but has amazing prices and wonderful policies of automatic disk space and bandwidth growth built-in to their plans.

I’ve arranged a discount for anyone who wants to sign up with them – they are pretty cool about that kind of stuff.  You can use Promo Code: DHMILOCO or simply start surfin’ through this link to get the discount.  Its anywhere from $30 to $50 depending upon the package you pick.  Given some of their sales going on, you can actually get service for next to nothing with this promo code!

Since I’ve just changed hosts too, please let me know if you see anything not working with the Blog!  Thanks!

Did I ever metion that I game too much?  Probably.

Well, I haven’t been doing that much lately.  I got into Elder Scrolls for a while but started moding the game more than really playing it.  Here’s a mod character model that I named Charle.  She’s made from a 3D face scan and then molded onto the 3D in-game model.  Lots of work, but lots of fun too…

Now, if I could just get some time to actually play. 

The latest game I’m flirting with is Medieval II: Total War – its an amazing strategy game where you can find yourself commanding litterally thousands of troops in a huge global war.  Quite intense!  Unfortunately, the multiplayer aspect of it is simply horrendous.  Every use GameSpy?  Don’t bother – its a piece o’ junk IMHO.  It won’t let me use my firewall for some reason.  I open the correct ports, etc. but still no game-lovin’.

That’s terrible as far as I’m concerned.  At a time where an unpatched XP machine can be taken over in less than 1 minute unprotected, not using a firewall  isn’t an option.  Besides, I have 6 PC’s and a Mac on my LAN all sharing my connection, so directly hooking up one of them to my broadband link isn’t really feasible anyway.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to read a book.

So, Steve Jobs is on the record as wanting the music industry to do away with DRM.  Link here.

I find this most surprising, considering that one of the biggest complaints about iTunes is the fact that these songs will only play on an iPod.  Jobs says that it was the record companies that forced this on Apple to begin with, and that only 10% of the content is DRM’ed anyway, so why the restriction?

Interesting indeed!

My questions:

1. I don’t know that I believe him – is this a ploy to gain favor from the rank-n-file, knowing full well that the top brass will never go for it?
2. Is it some kind of public slander campaign to ease some sort of negotiations that are going on in parallel
3. Is it just the European legal troubles that have really prompted this stance?
4. Or, is he serious?

My conclusion:

Who cares if he’s serious, as long as someone of his weight is advocating for true “fair use”, I’m thrilled.  Nothing makes me more mad than companies who shackle the paying customer with annoying DRM that can be circumvented by anyone with half a brain.  If people want to steal music, they will.  Personally, I’d rather pay for it knowing that I can play it where and how I want, and that I won’t loose it due to technology issues (like a new PC or new MP3 player, etc.)

That last issue of loosing the music isn’t so front and center now, but it will be as iTunes gets older.  The established four “re-licenses” may seems fine now, but it won’t be in the future.  XP needs a reinstall every year and PC’s change about every 2 to 3 years, etc.  I know, Vista may be better, but I’ll believe it when I see it…

I still have CD’s that I bought 15 years ago.  Will I be able to say that about music that I’ve bought from iTunes?  I don’t know, and that really worries me.