Rumor-Beatles on iTunes Tuesday

This has been a question for years. Why aren't the Beatles on iTunes, especially since Steve jobs is known to be a big fan? Has it been money, the lawsuits over Apple's name, the remaining Beatles not wanting their music downloadable? That's what I have always thought, but couldn't figure out why. "We're so important & special, why degrade our image by putting it on a site that sells Britney & Bieber". Well that's just silly.

Every other big group is available. The Stones, Zep & Elvis. So the point is moot. On the other hand, I have most of their recordings on CD, so it's no problem for me to put it on my iPod. But the fact is that iTunes is the biggest music retailer in this country, so having their music there would help sales of their catalog, especially since Beatle CD's still sell well.

I suspect that if this is announced tomorrow you will see large sales of albums & individual songs. I have every album from Rubber Soul on, except for Yellow Submarine because there were only four new songs. I would definitely download Hey Bulldog, a very good, lightly played song.

Server fails football fans

Technology is great for sports fans when it works. When it doesn't, it's frustrating. As a football fan, I like to go on a fan site for my team on game day to read the the fans are saying. that worked today for a half. then the server went down.

Not only did it go down, it never came back up. This is an issue. If your technology can't handle heavy traffic, then why bother having the site at all? After all, it shouldn't take a genius to figure out that you're going to have a lot of visitors during a game. There's an auto racing site I'm registered at where the fans complain about the same thing.

Come on people, don't be cheap with the equipment. If you want to be taken seriously, you have to have a certain level of service. A small local site doesn't have the traffic of say, ESPN. So no, it doesn't need the servers they have. but it still should be able to handle a large number of fans who want to discuss the game & the team. Otherwise we will go elsewhere.

My local paper had an article today about Google planning to build a new headquarters complex of 42 acres. Right now they have 17,000 workers in 65 buildings in Mountain View. The new complex will be at NASA & will be 1.2 M square feet. I don't think they will have server issues.

The website I'm talking about probably is one room in an office or someones house. With moderators all over the place. Some of the regulars live overseas. I think a certain degree of service should be expected.

Beautiful animated theme for Firefox

I have just installed a great theme on my browser. Oskar is a dark animated theme that I had at one time on Ubuntu, but never put on Windows. It's a wacky dark theme with flashing lights, multi colored panels & other assorted goodies.

This is why people like Firefox, because you can change it's look & feel. As I look at my browser right now, here's what I see. On the "awesome bar" because I have FF on the add-on page, on the left Mozilla Corporation (US) is in green, with it flashing. The tab for the page is in red, & the new tab plus sign has blue dots circling around the sign. The icon for the bookmarks toolbar on the sidebar is flashing.

I'm using Scribe Fire to post. On the right of the editor where it lists your blog, there's a green square surrounded by a bigger green square. It is, of course, flashing. If I click "posts", it becomes a dark blue page with the posts listed in white. If I go to the top of the page & click bookmarks they are listed with flashing blue arrows to send you to the next directory. In fact all the drop down menus on the menu toolbar do that. This is just a beautiful, georgeous theme. The developer is russian & it's the 2nd most downloaded theme for Firefox. You think?

science, technology

Online video fails for no reason

The new thing is to claim that people will stop subscribing to cable & watch everything online. This only works if the format works. I tried today to watch two different college games on ESPN 3. Both froze up for no reason.

Now I am a regular viewer of ESPN 3. I have never had this happen before. The reason I do this is that I work on Saturdays, so this is the only way I have to watch college ball. I watch a game every week. Today it failed. First i tried to watch Nebraska-Iowa State. I saw about two minutes before it started freezing up. So I switched to Oregon-Washington, a rivalry game with the #1 team in the nation. Made it until the end of the first half, then it froze twice within two minutes.

News flash to Disney: I am not going to watch your video if this becomes a regular issue. I have a brand new computer with plenty of memory (4GB) & plenty of speed (3.07 MHZ), so it's not the computer, especially since my previous computer with only 768 MB & a 2GHZ processor didn't have this issue. It just had a blurry picture.

And BTW Microsoft, why did you make it so hard to find the defragger in Windows 7? It was on the quick launch bar in XP. I had to go in the explorer search box & type it in to find it. Why do that? I like 7, & especially like that Windows Explorer can be launched from the task bar, but don't hide important programs.

Tech around the house

I don't have a Plasma or LCD tv. And I have no interest in a 3D tv (not much being made). I don't have a digital camera either, although I would like one. But this is what i do have, & why.

I have a computer obviously. With cheap $10 speakers that don't always work. This means, thanks to the internet, I can watch David Letterman & Craig Ferguson at a reasonable time. It means I can watch college football games on Mondays, since I work on Saturdays. And catch some shows that were on at the same time as something else that I was watching. And I can inform myself by reading websites like Huffington Post, Lifehacker & others.

I have an ipod nano. Yeah, I only have 300+ songs on it. But it's still easier than loading & unloading my cd player, just to listen to songs by multiple artists on several different cd's. I also listen to podcasts, either on my ipod or directly from the website.

I have a microwave. Since I get home from work so late, this is a godsend. TV dinners are obvious. But on my days off, I will cook a meal, & place it in plastic containers so when I get home I can just heat up the meal. I have two different soups in the fridge right now. I'm good till Friday with those. After i get off the computer I'm going to make some chicken, then place it it in the fridge, again for this week (I don't go back to work until tomorrow).

Hooked up to my tv (a 25", yeah I know) is a cheap home theater-$50 at Walmart several years ago. This gives me stereo sound for regular tv, & also sound for my stereo. I also can hook my ipod to it. I would like a DVD player that can play DVD-R discs. Right now I don't burn DVD's on my computer because nothing can play them. Boo, hiss. I would love to burn games off of ESPN 3 or itunes downloads of the podcast I listen to every week (it would be cool to see TWIT on my tv, & CFB on my 18" monitor is ok, but just barely).

I have an answering machine that I use to monitor calls. Most calls I get are sales pitches, or the last month annoying election pitches. Great way to avoid nonsense. I use to answer all my calls, but have you ever tried to get a telemarketer off the phone? They don't understand the words "I"m not interested".

As you can see, I'm not a geek. Not that much stuff, & not planning to. No smartphone. What would I use it for? Would I like a big tv? Yup. But it ain't gonna happen. Just like winning the lottery won't either.

Antivirus issues

Sometimes my anti-virus software doesn't want to work. This is a problem since this is the most important thing on there to protect it. But since updating to the current version it seems like it doesn't like to do the automatic updates.

What is it with software? This is hardly the only program out there with issues. Example number one is, of course, itunes. A program known to corrupt your library & actually lose all your files. I'm sure there are others. This is not just an Apple problem. My anti-virus is a freebie from Germany. But I'm sure the pay programs from here have similar issues as do Microsoft programs, & since I have experience, I know that Linux has it's own set of issues.

I don't like to complain & I'm sure no one else does. But why are there so many problems associated with software? I just used Microsoft Excel starter (a free version that came with my new computer) to balance my checkbook. I even printed it out. Works just fine. Why can't everything be like that?

South Korea to have 1Gb broadband

The average right now in South Korea is 12Mbps. My connection speed is 1.5 which is the main speed my provider sells. A 100Mbps subscription costs $19 a month in South Korea, which includes internet tv. I pay $40 a month for my slow speed. But hey, that's the market in the USA. And the Republicans want to kill net neutrality because it doesn't enrich them.

I am not surprised that we are behind the rest of the world in something. But the internet? Now I don't need massively fast speeds, because I rarely download anything. But it probably affects the way my computer works. This is a new computer with a processor 50% faster than my previous, & I can't tell that it's much faster. Except that video is smooth rather than choppy, & it doesn't freeze up like the old computer did. But websites don't appear to be any faster.

The only time I have super fast speed is when I run Ubuntu off a USB stick. Because of course, I'm using flash memory, not the hard drive, which has to spin & whirr, while running all the programs Windows has. Thus, the processor speed isn't that important. So I don't think my processor is that important for that, & I don't think 1Gbps would improve on that. And frankly the ISP's in this country wouldn't be charging $19/month like South Korea, try $100 minimum. If that fact doesn't change we will remain behind the world.