reason #4329 wireless in the us sucks: Mobile Messaging: Not in the USA – sms is built into the gsm standard and mo sms has been standard in europe since the early 90s. recently, mo sms has been grafted onto cdma and tdma systems in the us, but there are still patchy interconnect agreements for sms gateways and such. apparently there’s a firmware revision for my startac that’ll allow mo-sms, but verzion tech support denied any knowledge of it when i called. i’d switch to sprint but they want me to buy a new phone. err, no.
i saw ai today. i had lowered my expectations because of the negativity i’d heard (despite the generally positive reviews in the mainstream press), but i was pleasantly surprised by the first two hours. and i was feeling pretty good about it until the very end… ick. oh, some thoughts (spoilers): as i see it, there are two options. cut off the whole ending (but unacceptably i think, change the theme/message of the movie), or … and this is the frustrating part, just to have done it a bit better, without the 10 minutes of exposition and contrivances. ie, thematically the coda was fine: david’s quest was to find love, that was what he was designed for. he would love forever. but why are we being bludgeoned about it? anyway, the execution sucked. the original david in a virtual world ending would have worked also (actually, it very well could be the case, but it’s one of those things you would have to imagine. maybe if you were a critical studies major you could write a paper arguing it, but that’s beside the point right?). in a way it reminded me of the type of frustration i had with contact.
there’s some neat stuff going on though: oedipal / freudian subtext, wish fulfillment, god-shaped hole, the simulacral, and the juxtaposition of some of these (super-bleak and cynical) meditations couched within 1) a fairy tale, and 2) spielberg schmaltz. well, it’s left me thinking despite the complete derailment in the end.
mozilla 0.9.2 is out. a good improvement from the already excellent 0.9.1. i’m pretty much switching more or less permanently to browsing mozilla. it’s more than fast enough now and recall is damn skippy useful. gonna try blogging w/ moz soon, and maybe get back to doing some dev work if i have a chance (but judging from my current schedule, that probably won’t be for a while.
$HOME is where the .*shrc is
$379 burning a hole in your pocket? check out the cerfcube. there’s also a slash powered site w/ more info on it.
the reviews for ai are starting to roll in. overall positive. it’s on my to see list. of course, both memento and moulin rouge have been on my to see list for about 2 months. hmm, can’t blog, tengo que hacer mi tarea por la clase.
more on redhat db @ /. interesting comment, wrinkledshirt sez:
One word: “Branding”
Yes sir, we folks at Red Hat, known for the Red Hat Linux Distribution, RHCEs and enterprise-level solutions, are now packing with every forthcoming Red Hat distribution a Red Hat configured database solution for low- to middle-tier database needs. The RHDB will be specially customized for Red Hat systems, which are put out by Red Hat, the most prominent Linux distribution on the market today.
You laugh, because it seems obvious here, but I remember taking a look over at a Microsoft story on MSNBC, and found no less than 75 instances of Microsoft branding, using “Microsoft” or “MS” or “Windows”. And this was for one story, on one web page.
Any new avenue that Red Hat can use to drop its own name is an opportunity to solidify mindshare. Entering the database arena with a core product that won’t embarass them is a no-brainer. They’ve even got GTK+ experts in-house that can make the thing look pretty.
This could be a SERIOUS hit to MS Access and SQL server. And with Postgresql functionality built straight into php, the whole MS-IIS-ACCESS/SQLS-ASP combination can be easily matched in terms of quality, performance and reliability by Linux-Apache-RedhatDB-PHP combination, totally surpassed in terms of cost, and only lagging behind a little bit in the gui department. From a marketing standpoint, it makes the solution LOOK more cohesive (even if it isn’t), and that’s always been the selling point of going with an MS solution — smart move by RedHat. And with the GPL on their hands, we can trust them not to be sluggish and proprietary in terms of responding to the community’s needs — good move for us.
impreza gti vs bmw m5 – pretty funny.
hmm, red hat db = postgresql – interesting political stuff going on.
saw coldplay at the wiltern tonight. apparently a last minute addition to their tour. pete yorn, the opening act wasn’t bad. my friend rich dragged me out during the intermission to see tobey maguire at the bar. he’s slightly less pale and sickly looking in real life, heheh. rich had already gone up to shake his hand and wished him good luck on spiderman, but i decided to let tobey have his space and enjoy his drinks.
hmm, looking at his imdb profile… hard to believe that he’s only five years my senior… his filmography goes back ten years. anyway, getting sidetracked. um, that’s the fun in having a useless blog right? and being scatterbrained. and having way too many things going on at one time. and having 5 todo lists overrun w/ overdue stuff. crap i suck.
On Magazine.com — ON Magazine — Who You Gonna Call? – report on tech support quality of Apple, Compaq, Dell, Gateway, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Sony and Toshiba using brand new laptops w/ planted glitches.