Atari in trouble: Story here. But the story understates Atari's effect in home computers. For a brief period in the early 1980's Atari outsold Apple. Then Atari (which had it's own version of Visicalc) concentrated on games and ignored productivity software. And then they made matters worse by concentrating on games for their game systems rather than their home computers. Eventually they were sold off by Warner to the founder of Commodore Computers who later in the 80's introduced the first mass computer with a full megabyte of ram, back when ram was $300 per megabyte.

MovieBeam - DOA - Again? With Cable, DirecTv, Echostar, Netflix and Blockbuster; why would you pay for a set-top box that will only store the newest Disney Movies, and then charge you to see those movies. Whats wrong with Moviebeam?
1. You have to pay for a set top box.
2. You have to pay an activation fee.
3. You have to pay for each movie you wish to view. Currently $3.98 for new releases.
4. Only Disney Movies are available as current releases. Some older Warner titles also available. At present no Sony movies are available. Other studio movies
will be available later, as they are released to Pay-per-view.
5. "Upto" 10% of 100 movies stored on Moviebeam are replaced each week,
if it's one you rented POOF, you can't watch it anymore.
6. You can watch a rented movie as many times as you want, but only for 24 hours.
7. If you live out in the stix, you can't receive OTA datacasts to update the box.
Elsewhere, hopefully the antenna will work OK.
8. Will they leave you holding the bag when they shut down again?
9. Why does the 800 number on their website not work?
10. CNN panned it on their morning news show on 2/14.
11. Why does 100 movies seem like less than 50,000 of Netflix?
12. Only some of the movies are HD format, and their rental currently is $1 extra.
13. You have a 14 day trial period, during which you can opt out and return the hardware, BUT there's a $39.99 restocking charge in the fine print.

Great cell phone: I ended up with a Sony/Ericsson w600i to replace my Motorola v600 which at 20 months age started having reception issues. The Sony phone is mahlvelous.
Sony calls it a Walkman phone, but its everything an iTunes phone should have been but wasn't. Only shortcoming is you can't add memory.

w600i .......................................v600
256 Megs Memory .................5 Megs Memory
400 Hours Standby ..............175 Hours Standby
.....battery Life .............................battery Life
Infrared
18 bit color screen ...................16 bit color screen
1.3 Megapixel Camera ................VGA Camera
Flash for Camera
FM Radio
Supplied USB Cable......................USB Cable extra cost
Supplied software .......................software extra cost
for PC transfer

Firefox minor fix out. Firefox 1.501 is now available, even in custom builds for Macintosh G4 or G5, available here. For the rest of you folks, it's here.

First report of running Windows XP on an Intel Mac: Someone has figured out how to do it. Whether its an easily reproducable technique is another matter. In theory, it should be easier to run XP on the new Macs, than run Mac OS X on a PC. Story here:

Fake MSN phishing web Pages shut down : Guess they weren't bribing enough. Bulgaria shut down some scammers. Story here.

New Firefox Browser for Intel Macintosh : Read about it here. Download it here.

Outrageous fear mongering : A storage "Expert" with perhaps a vested interest in Backup Tape solutions warns that CDs can have a 2 year life span, maximum 5 years. Story here. Silly me, despite the lack of credibility of the story, I pulled out some 5 and 6 year old CDs, and they were ALL perfectly 100% as readable as one created yesterday.

Google Earth - The Killer App for 2006. Totally awesome. And free for the Basic version. With the $200 add-on for the $400 Pro version you could plan a trip, make a video of the route, export it to a wmv, and then to a Podcast? Get the software (Windows or Macintosh) at earth.google.com

Same Tune, different verse - I'm sorry, I'm underwhelmed by new "Intel" Macintosh computers with Intel Dual core processors. If I thought it was bogus talking how much faster these processors make your computer before, it's still the same if they're in a formerly single processor Macintosh. Folks with an iMac tend not to be the one's doing commercial movie editing where (when it comes out in March) there's a high-priced application that can take advantage of the dual core Intel processor. Indeed, for now, most Macintosh applications are in worse shape. Not only don't they take advantage of the dual core processor, they don't even run directly on the Intel processor, but have the added overhead of "Rosetta" which translates PowerPC apps for Intel on the fly. It was sad watching Steve Jobs trying to double talk his way through using Photoshop that was struggling on a new Intel iMac. And of course forget about "Classic", as there's now no way of running OS 9 aplications on the Intel Macs. Real Soon Now, however, you will be able to run PC apps on such a Macintosh.

Free is Good - Thank you Google: Google announced that it will give away free software to help folks with their PCs. Story here:

Intel trickery - Fast new dual core Pentium D chips allow parallel processiing. Too bad no extant software you are likely to use gets any benefit from the more expensive chip. Read here:

Where's the Beef? of VISTA Bill Gates gave a "keynote" speech at yesterday's opening of the CES. It was largely a commercial for the next version of Windows : "VISTA", which has already been delayed. Microsoft is now in a lose-lose situation. It's credibility is suffering by the continued delays in anticipated release dates for VISTA (not to mention patching serious bugs in Windows WMF files). Microsoft already has web pages urging people upgrade to this vaporware OS. Computer sales will soon start to slump as folks will hold off buying Windows XP loaded computer(s), but rather have a VISTA loaded computer, thereby saving $200 per machine. Very soon, if not already, it will be time for Microsoft to issue "Technology Guarantee Upgrade" coupons for free upgrades to Windows VISTA with each new computer loaded with XP.

Symantec doesn't understand how a calendar works. My Macintosh has one of their products installed, Norton AntiVirus 10.0.2, and today Jan 1, 2006, it says "Your virus definitions appear to be out of date", despite the fact their date is 12/28/2005.

Cables 25 years ago when a parallel cable was only available as a hand made item from the United States, it cost $40. These days, mass produced in China, even the best are under $10. So it amazes me that stores would charge (and get) $29.99 for a USB 2 cable, when they are also available at your local 99 Cent store for 99 cents.

FOLLOWUP: For 99 cents, its an "Office Essentials USB 2.0 Device Cable"; fine print on the back of the package says "Manufactured by Belkin Corporation", the very same folks who make the $29.99 cables others sell.

HAPPY FESTIVUS - If you forgot about Festivus remind yourself here.

DirecTv rollout of their own DVR - It's not going so well. Story here . DirecTv could break their arms patting themselves on their backs as they try to spin it that its going well, when even the DVR newbies are complaining. It's gotten so bad that if you buy the unit on their website it's now FREE. How good can it be if they have to give it away to get people to take it. Smart folks still ask for TiVo.

Problem with Apple Powerbook screens : New 15 inch screens on Powerbooks are (in a word) defective. Story here. I assume Apple will do their usual stonewall, and then after a month capitulate and do the right thing. I had the identical problem with a Sony 19 inch standalone LCD monitor and ClubMac took it back and gave me full credit.

New use for Cell Phones - As a wireless pong paddle. It's called Gesture-based technology.
Georgia Tech folks developed it using the cell phone's camera as a motion detector. Their link is here.

BellSouth uses strong arm tactics to try to stop New Orleans WiFi - The only way I know how to protest is to complain to Cingular, since I do not live in "BellSouth" territory. Story here.