Ramblings of a Wayward Code Slave

This Tuesday marks the second anniversary of the breakup of the space shuttle Columbia over Texas and the subsequent deaths of the astronauts on-board. Being reminded of this has brought back a lot of memories...

I was two years old in 1969. Right around my 2nd birthday, I remember sitting in front of the television and watching Apollo 11 launch itself toward the moon. A few days later, I remember seeing Neil Armstrong jumping off that last step and touching the surface of the moon. I was too young to realize the enormity of the history that was being made in front of my eyes, but these are some of my earliest memories and ones that I've treasured through my life.

Now shoot forward to around 1980. I was in the 7th grade and the first space shuttle mission was all that I could think about. Having lived in Houston -- home to NASA's Mission Control -- during the height of the space race was an exciting experience, and it's left me with a deep and profound admiration for the work done by NASA and the people who do it. So when I found out that Columbia was going to land while I was at school, I was really depressed about it until I realized that it was going to be during my GT class. I arranged to bring my little 13" B&W television up to the school and we all sat in this tiny classroom in the basement watching the live broadcast from Edwards AFB. When Columbia came into sight I remember holding my breath until it touched down and the parachute deployed. That was a triumphant moment for NASA as well as the nation, and I remember it vividly.

Moving forward again, I go to early 1986. The space shuttle Challenger explodes about a minute into its launch. The nation later finds out that the cockpit was probably intact after the explosion and that the terrified astronauts were most likely aware of their imminent fate as they plunged toward the Atlantic Ocean. The final analysis of the debris and the data concluded that the explosion was due to a faulty O-ring, a $2 rubber gasket.

Finally, it's 2002 and the video that shows the bright yellow streak going across the Texas skies as the Columbia burned up in the atmosphere is all over the news channels. It's hard to believe that it was two years ago already, but then again I remember seeing the Challenger explosion in 1986 like it was yesterday. What I find comforting about these tragedies is that we never quit. It would have been easy to say that the shuttle fleet is old and unsafe and the United States could better use the money budgeted to NASA elsewhere anyway, but that didn't happen. The nation acknowledged the tragedy, grieved with the family and friends of the deceased, and found comfort in the fact that they gave their lives in the pursuit of something in which they believed. Space travel isn't without its risks, and nobody goes up there without believing that they're doing it for a greater purpose.

This May, Discovery will be the first shuttle launched in over two years. Standing by on the pad will be Atlantis, prepped by NASA for the first-ever rescue mission. Since the astronauts on Columbia might have been saved if a rendezvous had been possible, NASA is ensuring that they're prepared for any unexpected problem with Discovery by having Atlantis ready to launch. I, for one, will be happy to see the shuttle fleet back in action again.

While I remember Columbia, I want to remember those who perished: Willie McCool, Rick Husband, David Brown, Michael Anderson, Laurel Clark, Kalpana Chawla, and Ilan Ramon. The crew was from three different nations and several had spouses and children. Most of them worked their entire lives trying to get into space and they died at the apex of the realization of their dreams. I didn't remember the names of the astronauts until I looked them up, but I'm glad that I did. Their dedication, sacrifice, and courage fills me with admiration and at the same time shames me for not being like them. I raise my glass and offer a toast in their honor...

I thought I knew most of what there was to know about the Internet. Well, I figured out something else about the Internet tonight. The nameless, faceless society of people who connect to each other over it are, to a large extent, sore losers. I knew what sociologists have told us from their studies -- hardcode Internet users are tech-savvy, usually male and under 25, with a fondness for things over people and are late bloomers when it comes to maturity. Well, as if this isn't enough to guarantee that the typical Internet junkie won't have a date until after they're 30, we can now add sore loser to this list of traits.

I've never liked sore losers. Perhaps it's because I'm a highly-competitive person myself despite my laid-back attitude and if I can suck it up and lose with dignity then I expect others to do the same. The Internet, however, gives people an easy out. They don't have to see the person later on, talk to the person later on, or really have any interaction of any sort later on. In fact, many times you simply don't know who the other person is. This leads people to act like a horse's ass because they think that they can get away with it since nobody's looking.

Case in point: I like backgammon. I learned how to play when I was around ten years old and at one of those online gaming communities I have a grand master status. I've been playing now for 27 years, so I'd better be good at it. Well, I don't always want to have to get on the Web and load up those slow-as-molasses Java applets to play, so sometimes when I just want a quick game or two I use the Internet Backgammon program bundled in with Windows. Unlike the online games, where one forfeits and loses points if they leave the game, IB simply says that the other person has left the game and offers to find someone new for you. Well, I guess you take the good with the bad -- easy access vs. getting dumped. I have never, even with IB, dumped someone because they were winning. I finish the game, always. If it's not my day and I repeatedly get my ass handed to me then I might throw up my hands in disgust and, after the match is over, just quit and let the fellow find someone new. But I never dump someone.

This is proof that the Law of Reciprocity, a.k.a. the "Golden Rule", doesn't work. I get dumped on IB about 50% of the time I'm winning. Sometimes I get dumped if I win the first roll. What does that say about people in general? Can we extrapolate the behavior of people under the veil of Internet anonymity to the population at large? I would reason that we couldn't simply because most nontrivial Internet users fall into certain categories that don't apply across the board. On the other hand, perhaps this tendency to let one's hair down and act childish and irresponsible is something that transcends geekdom; perhaps this is a glimpse into human behavior itself.

Someone named J.C. Watts said, "Character is doing what's right when nobody's looking." Sore losers abound on the Internet because nobody's looking...at least at this kind of behavior, anyway. So does this mean that our character, as a people, is slowly eroding and we're regressing into some kind of technological Neanderthals? Lack of character leads to a lack of ethics and a lack of morality, which to me at least signals the fact that we have big problems, especially if this is happening with the under-25 crowd, who are very technosavvy and are the so-called "Future of America".

I've inferred a lot here from the online behavior I've witnessed, but it seems consistent with what I've heard from others who venture into online areas where I haven't. I don't IRC, MUD, MMORPG, or any of that stuff, but it seems that whenever anonymity exists people seem to act like four year olds. It'll be interesting to see what society is like 20 years from now. In the meantime, I'm still on a quest for a good online game of backgammon that I can actually finish.

The last remaining Star Trek, Enterprise, looks like it might be getting the axe soon. According to one report everyone is due to get canned in March, but according to another report quoting Rick Berman it's just another inane rumor. The problem is that the first report is based off of an insider working on the show doing, from what I can tell, photography. So...cancelled or not? Time will tell.

It should be noted that Trek franchise bigwig Berman (executive producer) has an axe to grind. There's another Trek film in the works but it's still at the what-a-great-idea-so-give-me-money stage. Cancellation of the series isn't likely to give it a leg up.

I, for one, would be sorry to see it go. The original series was awesome, but before its time. The whole "Wagon Train to the Stars" idea might have sold the series to the network initially but people weren't ready for sci-fi outside of Rod Serling and Robbie the Robot. In the mid-'80s we saw a resurgence of Trek thanks to the films, which gave the franchise a big shot in the arm. Unfortunately, whatever the original series had that gave it its uniqueness and its charm was lost in the translation.

TNG was, for me, a disappointment with its cheesy main bridge and less than spectacular scripts. That didn't stop it from lasting seven seasons and being possibly the most successful syndicated series in television history. Any port in a storm, I suppose... DS9, on the other hand, had some good scripts and fine acting -- especially by Avery Brooks -- but suffered from being a beached whale in space. By the time they figured out how to get the characters to move around it was too late for a lot of people. I stuck through until the end, but I know of many folks who hated this show with a passion. My true gripe is with Voyager. More of a soapbox with nacelles rather than a starship, Voyager flew through space on a mission of getting back to home in as politically-correct and culturally enriching a way as possible. This show actually made me long for the bad scripts and spotty acting of early TNG. I made it through two seasons of Voyager before I just couldn't take any more and switched it off.

When Enterprise debuted, I didn't expect much. With the captain being Scott Bakula, I was wondering how Mr. Quantum Leap would make the quantum leap to being the first captain of the Enterprise. Unfortunately, up here in Ruston we didn't have a UPN affiliate on our cable system until the start of the third season, so I had to hear about it from people elsewhere. Thanks to some of my students downloading .mpg and .avi versions of the shows posted to P2P networks, I was able to borrow and view video CDs of the first two seasons. The first season was incredible. Perhaps it was the several years between when Voyager ran out of steam and Enterprise started, perhaps it was being grateful for anything new from the Trek franchise, or perhaps it was just being so relieved that the show wasn't Voyageresque, but it seemed that the old magic had returned. Personally, I think that Babylon 5 raised the bar for the Trek people and, with the gross disappointment that was Voyager, they new it was time to put up or shut up.

The second season, however, was dismal. The season-long story arc just about killed the series and shows what happens when Berman puts his finger into the pie instead of just sitting there and raking in the cash. They got someone new to do the third season, which is decidedly better but is still dragging a bit from the material inserted into the second season plots. The show deserves a fourth season to prove its gotten back on track, but I'm not hopeful that it's going to get it. Of course, UPN has a long history of sponsoring crappy shows so they shouldn't drop Enterprise even if both nacelles fall off the ship and they get towed around the galaxy by a garbage scow. We'll see...

I don't normally blog stuff without talking about it, but I think that this fellow did quite enough talking already. It's nice to know that the Ivy Leaguers hop around on one foot from time to time along with the rest of us.

http://www.local6.com/education/4090001/detail.html

I've now seen the miniseries as well as the first 7 episodes of the regular series thanks to British TV and a friend from Tech and can make a few comments on what I've noticed about the latest iteration of the series...

The Pros:
1. Edward James Olmos. The man is the grand master of powerful understatement. His presence practically carries the show by itself.
2. Good acting by much of the cast. Many sci-fi series in the past have suffered from stiff and uneasy acting early-on; consider the first seasons of ST:TNG and Babylon 5, for instance, which had exceedingly bad acting in their respective first seasons. We don't have that here.
3. More realism in the space scenes. Even though BSG still has noises in a vacuum, at least we have rocket-based propulsion and physical missiles/bullets and not the wowee technostuff like laser beams and the like. BSG still has the FTL propulsion thing, but it's more of a plot device to move them through space rather than a gee-whiz gadget.
4. There's no Trekesque technobabble, e.g., "we can reroute the warp drive through the plasma relays and bombard it with a tetryon field, after which we can focus it through the pattern buffer in the transporter and shunt it into the food dispensers so we can get a Peach Melba." I always hated it when the Trek engineers started patching things together in ways they never previously considered after having contemplated it for, oh, 5 seconds, and it always worked right the first time. Talk about unrealistic. I'd have liked to have seen LeForge once say "Oops! Sure got that one wrong!" as Picard got mildly electrocuted on the transporter pad.
5. The show has humanity in it. It's not a whoopee-let's-shoot-em-up show and it's not one with shallow acting and shallow plots. The atmosphere is grim, but it inspires people to act like people and not caricatures of such.

The Cons:
1. Jamie Bamber, playing Captain Lee "Apollo" Adama. Dubbed "Captain Wuss" by the reviewer on one website, this fellow is a devout follower of the Steven Seagal school of emoting. He's just not believable as an authority figure on the show.
2. The amount of face sucking and other stuff going on is distracting and superfluous. Sure, the show centers on a crisis and people act strange in crises, but the show pushes the edge of the sexual envelope when you consider that a lot of teens and preteens are going to be watching it. Between Boomer and the chief shucking their britches in the storeroom on one hand and the Cylon Nookie Machine on the other we've got a PG-13 show for certain. I'm not prudish, but I don't think that the lewdness factor of seeing the CNM bouncing up and down on that Baltar fellow is doing the show a service. Take a hint from Olmos' portrayal of Adama -- understatement can be more powerful than connecting the dots, so to speak.
3. Subplot city. Trek suffered a lot from this, where the show would have a main plot and then 3-4 subplots that were designed to strengthen the characters but just mainly served to distract people from the main plot and to rob time away from it. I always hated it when a Trek plot neatly wrapped itself up in 5 minutes. BSG has the same subplot problem. Sure, they're developing the backstory on the characters, but don't take too much time from the main plot. It makes a few of the episodes hit-and-miss.

By and large, the show has promise. It's certainly better than the 1978-79 series, which pales in comparison both in terms of plot and acting. On the other hand, there's some growing pains that need to be worked out, especially with Bamber and the subplots. The original series had 17 or 18 episodes and was cancelled after one season; it briefly surfaced again in 1980 with 6 episodes before being cancelled again. I think the SciFi channel made a better committment in terms of talent, both in front of and behind the camera, and that this will make this iteration of the idea more successful and longer-lived. We'll have to wait and see if this becomes another Stargate SG-1 or whether it will be like Farscape and fold after a few seasons.

Why on earth am I posting a brownie recipe here? Lord knows my can is already big enough without having brownies -- I've been expanding faster than the former Soviet empire for two decades now. But, like the former Soviet empire, there's always an end to things and that drives my hope. No, I'm posting this here because several people have commented that they're trying the cheese noodles recipe and this is another favorite from my childhood.

My grandmother was this tiny dynamo of a woman who could cook like nobody else. More like a sorceress weaving spells with pots, pans, and an oven, she could turn the ordinary into the fantastic and the exceptional into the extraordinary. People have wept while eating her meatloaf and her fried chicken is the stuff of legend. I don't think she ever made anything that wasn't a hit.

Unlike some of her recipes, this one is pretty simple. In fact, I used to make this myself as a kid -- it's actually simple enough for someone that young to make. It's also the best brownie I've ever had -- extremely chocolatey and a bit gooey in the middle. These brownies don't need icing; in fact, icing this brownie would be too much. You can also double the recipe and just double the cooking time; however, you should start using the toothpick test about 75% of the way through just so you don't go over on the time. There's not a lot of time between perfect and burnt and doubling the recipe doubles the variable effects of humidity, etc.


2 sticks butter
3 squares unsweetened chocolate
4 unbeaten eggs
2 1/2 C sugar
2 t vanilla
1 t salt
1 C flour
2 C chopped pecans (optional)

Prepare a rectangular pan by lining it with foil, having the foil extend 6 inches on both sides; crush extra foil to make a handle on each side. Coat sides and bottom of lined pan with vegetable spray.

In a large heavy pot, slowly melt butter and chocolate together over medium-low heat. When cooled a little, stir in sugar, salt, and vanilla. Crack eggs into the pot and beat with a whisk until thoroughly combined. Stir in flour and add pecans if desired; beat until combined. Pour mixture into pan and bake 45 minutes at 300 F. Brownies are done when a toothpick inserted into the middle comes out clean. Once removed from oven, immediately remove from pan via foil handles and place on cookie sheet. Cut into squares immediately.


Remember, the brownies are supposed to be somewhat gooey and sticky inside; if they're not gooey then they were cooked too long and are dried out. A big glass of extra cold milk is a perfect accompaniment to one of these. They'll keep for several days on the counter if you wrap them tightly in aluminum foil or plastic wrap.

I've been working on this web application for a while now. It's something I plan to eventually offer as a subscription service and it's a great idea because nothing like it currently exists. Unfortunately, nothing like it still exists. Including from me. What is it with getting this thing done?

I initially thought it was just a bout of creative constipation. Then I thought that I might be using the wrong technology and instead of using PHP and web pages I should be using something more flexible and configurable like Java. Then I just stopped working on it altogether. I've finally figured out the problem: employment. When I'm working at Tech my free time drops to nil. Also, searching for new employment is sucking up a lot of time as well. I'm simply unwilling to sacrifice the few hours I have left every night to programming.

I'm still battling with the dilemma of PHP-based web app vs. Internet-enabled Java app. The former is easier but slower and harder to configure, plus even in the most generic of cases can display just differently enough in each browser to look strange. The latter is still cross-platform and very configurable, but requires a download and can't be accessed anytime, anywhere without that download occurring beforehand. This might make someone at an Internet cafe balk since they probably won't be able to install the application without administrative access to the machine.

Maybe the answer is to just do both. Or else make it a web app and have two actual apps -- one for IE users and one for the Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape crowd. I haven't tested Opera and Safari lately but hope they would fall into one of the aforementioned two groups.

So while death and taxes might still exist after this app is finished, it might give Dick Clark a run for his money. We'll see...

As a college professor I'm constantly amazed at the attitude of my students. Don't get me wrong -- they're by and large a decent group of folks who've always been nice to me. On the other hand, they just don't care about the value of their tuition dollar. These kids -- people who save fast food coupons, look under sofa cushions for loose change, and line up at the plasma center every two weeks -- just couldn't care less about getting their money's worth in school.

On occasion I'll let a class out early if there's not enough time to do a decent job of introducing the next topic or if we hit a stopping place, like finishing a review prior to a test. In these cases, I tell the students that we have an extra howevermany minutes (usually 5 to 15) and I can answer any questions they have or we can go over something again that they're hazy on. Silence abounds. I'm talking Sprint hear-a-pin-drop kind of silence. They just want to go.

College is truly the only place where I've seen people who so desperately didn't want their money's worth. Of course, usually it's either Mom and Dad's money, the government's money, or their future money via student loans. I think if they had to work for the cash to enroll before they could attend college they'd want that extra 5-15 minutes. This attitude is one of the biggest contradictions in education that I continually try to fathom but just can't: how can people dedicating 4+ years of their lives to higher education be so desperate to not have class or get out of class early? Perhaps it makes perfect sense to a career student majoring in bartending but it makes no sense to me.

On the flip side, though, if I hold them over a few minutes -- which sometimes happens by accident, but never intentionally -- most of the time they just sit there and wait for me to finish or politely remind me that they have another class after mine. I appreciate that. It's rude for people to just get up and gather their belonging while the instructor is in mid-sentence. Fortunately, this has happened to me only a few times.

So while the apparent value of an education is on the decline with my students, courtesy and politeness is on the rise. An interesting, if uncommon trend. Speaking mathematically, if we take the limit of this as time approaches infinity then I suppose we've just definitively proven that ignorance actually is bliss...

Seeing as how I lose everything, this seems a fast and easy way to record something so I can find it later on. As a result, here's my grandmother's recipe for cheese noodles, quite possibly the most delicious side dish in existence.


2 packages wide egg noodles
1 stick butter or margarine
5 T flour
1 C milk
4 packages Kraft extra sharp cheddar, grated
1/2 C grated parmesan cheese
1/2 small package Velveeta
1 t dry mustard
2 T dry sherry

Boil noodles in salted water until soft, not al dente.

Cooking process should be on low heat. Melt butter and stir in flour. Cook until bubbles form. Slowly stir in milk. Cook and stir until sauce becomes thick. Add cheeses and mustard, stirring continuously until all cheese is melted. Stir in sherry and remove from the heat.

Thoroughly coat a baking dish with butter or Pam. Drain noodles well and combine with cheese mixture. Pour into baking dish and bake at 350F until the edges are slightly browned and a few bubbles rise to the surface in the middle. If the edge starts to get too brown, cover with foil and continue baking until you see bubbles.


This recipe uses Kraft cheddar cheese since that's what my grandmother and mom have always used, but would work well with any brand -- the Kraft is left in the recipe above since I don't recall if a package was 8 oz. or 16 oz. Now, on the other hand, the Velveeta isn't optional. This is probably the only dish that I'm willing to consume that has Velveeta in it, and it's used to make the sauce creamier and smoother than it would be with just cheddar. This is a tangy and rich dish that will raise the corners of your mouth as well as that needle on the scale. It'll also make you slap your momma for not thinking of it herself.

In another appalling blow to privacy by the courts, we now have New York state police being given carte blanche ability to plant GPS trackers on vehicles without a court order. The specific case concerned Hell's Angels and methamphetamine, but no matter how laudable the intentions were of law enforcement the methods used were shockingly Orwellian. The fact that a federal judge upheld the use of GPS technology in this way is equally shocking.

Read about it on CNET News...

A small quote: "What's raising eyebrows, though, is the increasingly popular law enforcement practice of secretly tagging Americans' vehicles without adhering to the procedural safeguards and judicial oversight that protect the privacy of homes and telephone conversations from police abuses."

So how long is it going to be before Trooper Dave can watch you pick your nose from your rearview mirror cam while he tags the event with your exact latitude and longitude? Better not pick it and flick it out the window or else that might constitute littering...

With all of the media attention directed, and rightly so, toward the destructive effects of the tsunami that hit coastlines in the Indian Ocean, I was reminded of something I read a while back regarding the Canary Islands. For the sake of anyone as geographically handicapped as I am, the Canary Islands are a small chain of volcanic islands off of the cost of West Africa. One of these islands, La Palma, has a volcano on it called Cumbre Vieja. This volcano last erupted in 1949 and caused a few cubic kilometers of rock to fracture from the side of the volcano. This rock is still held in place thanks to friction, but nothing else.

There are several reasons why a trillion tons of rock should bother us all. First, La Palma is the steepest island in the world. Second, the fractured side of the volcano is facing the United States. Third, tsunamis created by landslides are often called mega-tsunamis to distinguish them from the plain old vanilla kind. Tsunami waves can travel upwards of 500 mph, so 8-9 hours after the eventual landslide the eastern coasts of North and South America will get the brunt of them. Various articles make different claims, but most agree that the Sahara will get the nastiest waves at 330 feet. That's the height of a a 33-story building, by the way, and they'll hit 15 minutes after the landslide. What's working for the Sahara area is that it's largely unpopulated.

Now the Americas are a different story. The mega-tsunami will hit from Newfoundland all the way down to Brazil and will be around 165 feet by the time it gets to us. For those local readers, this is about the height of Wyly Tower on the Louisiana Tech campus. Also remember that these waves aren't simply the crash-in-suck-out variety -- they're more of a wall of water than just a plain wave. This is what makes tsunamis so deadly. Computer models forecast that Boston, New York, Baltimore, D.C., Newport News, Charleston, Savannah, and the entire Atlantic coast of Florida will be gone, i.e., wiped out. The 165-foot high wall of water is expected to make it as far as 20 miles inland. Moreover, in places where the water is channeled, like the Chesapeake Bay (D.C., Baltimore) or the NYC harbor, the waves will actually gain height. Any harbor that is wider at the mouth than at the land will focus the waves and intensify them. Of course, the Carribbean islands will be gone as well as any cities along the northeastern coastal areas of South America.

The tsunami in the Indian Ocean was probably the biggest natural disaster we'll see in our lifetimes -- 147,000 dead and rising, unfathomable amounts of damage, and reshaped coastlines and seafloor. However, when Cumbre Vieja decides to give up its western slope and that trillion tons of rock goes crashing into the Atlantic Ocean, millions are going to die and the eastern seabord of North America as well as the Carribbean will never be the same. Fortunately for us, the volcanoes (yes, there are more than one on La Palma) haven't erupted since 1971. This could change today, tomorrow, or in 1,000 years. Geologists just don't know. Talk about the Sword of Damocles...

Here are some URLs in case you're interested in reading more about it...

http://www.cdnn.info/article/tsunami/tsunami.html
http://www.ing.iac.es/PR/lapalma/inde9606.html

Well, it seems that I'm not the only person who's irked at Apple's iTunes store giving us DRM-laced music files that don't translate into more compatible MP3s. Check out this story...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4151009.stm

The lawsuit sounds like it's on shaky ground, but the sentiment is right-on. I'm still upset at having to jump backwards through flaming hoops to remove the DRM from my iTunes-downloaded tracks and make them compatible with MusicMatch and Windows Media 10. If I were a naieve or parametric user of computers then I wouldn't have been able to do it and would have just had to throw up my hands in disgust.

Remember, my gripe isn't that Apple has DRM-laced downloads but that they don't tell you about it before you make the purchase. You find out after-the-fact that the downloads can't be converted to MP3s using the iTunes software and that you're stuck with using iTunes as your only PC-based player. It was only through some Google searching and some specialized software that I was able to massage the files into MP3 format. Now this fellow's gripe is different from mine -- I was complaining about having to use iTunes rather than another program whereas he's complaining that his iTunes downloads can't be played on regular MP3 players and just on the iPod itself. For many users this is true -- I was just lucky in finding what I needed on the web. Why he's iPodless and using iTunes as his music management software I'll never fathom, but I guess it happens.

Perhaps Apple might eventually sing a different iTune and give people notice of the DRM-protected and Apple-proprietary format of the iTunes downloads prior to people purchasing them. One can hope. Regardless of what I've thought of Macs in the past from a technical perspective I've always had respect for the way that Apple was consumer-oriented and consumer-friendly. This pay-and-get-played routine is something I'd expect of Microsoft. I'm not an anti-Microsoft person, by the way, I just know from experience that nothing gets between them and a dollar bill. Apparently, Apple is travelling down that road as well...

What's with the iThis and eThat these days? If we don't put an "i" or an "e" in front of something then I guess it's just old tech and we're behind the times. We have the iPod, the eMac, the iMac, eMachines, iTunes, et cetera ad nauseum. I guess I've been noticing this more and more since I got an iPod for Christmas and have come to the realization that Apple can't market anything unless it has a trendy letter in front of it. That's just one extreme of an increasing trend in the consumer electronics industry to make everything sound interesting by using a leading letter to distinguish the items.

Of course, "e" is for electronic and is inherited from e-mail. By the way, while I'm on it, it's e-mail and not email, E-Mail, EMail, or eMail. We can all thank the AOLers from the mid-90s for the misappropriation of these alternative (and incorrect) spellings. Getting back on the original subject, "i" is for Internet. So by marketing something as an eMac I guess we're to assume that one can read e-mail with it. But what about the iMac? That's connected to the Internet, so what exactly does the eMac give us that the iMac doesn't, or vice-versa? Just goes to show that the e's and i's are thrown around with impunity and don't mean squat.

Case in point: the iPod. I own one of these gadgets and, while I am quite willing to sing its praises for doing what it's supposed to do very well, I can tell you without a doubt that an iPod never sees the Internet except when you go to Apple or HP to buy one. The iPod connects to a computer via a Firewire or USB 2.0 port and is limited to interfacing with iTunes so the music files can be downloaded. Now iTunes is net-aware, having a built-in browser so you can buy DRM-laced music from Apple's overpriced store (ha!) so I guess the iLabel isn't too iNcorrect.

While I'm on the subject, the Apple iTunes store blows when it comes to downloading content. Tracks are $0.99 each, with albums sometimes being cheaper than the sum of their tracks, but all Apple iTunes downloads are DRM-protected. This means that you can't convert them to MP3 files and use some other PC-based product other than iTunes to play the downloaded tracks. On the flip side, I figured out how to get rid of the DRM protection. I can burn the tracks to an audio CD, which just makes a plain old CD out of the music. From there, I use Windows Media Player to copy the CD to WMA files -- if you use WM 9 don't pick MP3 or else you're stuck with 56 Kbit quality, the WMA files being lossless. Once I do that, I use this program called Advanced WMA Workshop to convert each WMA to a 160 Kbit MP3 (I use 160, you can use whatever quality you want). The result is an MP3 that is equal in sound quality to the DRM-protected stuff but is an MP3 that can be played using Winamp, MusicMatch, or whatever.

This is, of course, jumping backwards through flaming hoops to do something simple, but nobody told me when I bought an album from the Apple iTunes store that it would be DRM-protected. No thanks, folks! I don't pirate music, I don't share my music with others, and I only have music that I legitimately bought. I don't need some swastika-toting anal-retentive Teutonic from the record industry giving me crippled files just to make certain that I don't do what I don't do already. Anyway, getting forced ethics from people in the recording industry is like getting marriage advice from Bill Clinton. I only bought the album from the Apple iTunes store because RealRhapsody charges $0.79 per track and the $9.95 album price from Apple was cheaper than getting it by the track from Real. Of course, I paid for saving the $2.37 with that mess I described earlier. No more Apple iTunes store for me.

Incidentally, RealRhapsody is a deal. For $12.99/month I can not only shop and download -- which admittedly you can do with MusicMatch and iTunes for free -- but you can listen to the music as you wish and from any Internet-connected PC. Perhaps it should have been iRhapsody? (Ugh.) Moreover, the purchases are DRM-free and instantly burn to a CD -- downloading to a file on the hard drive isn't an option. The Real format for just listening is protected for certain, but that's okay. Their technique is to download 99% of the file in a protected format to your hard drive (you can specify a maximum cache size so it doesn't eat you alive) and then whenever you want the song played it downloads the other 1% after verifying your account is current. I've burned a lot of CDs from RealRhapsody and it's not only more convenient than shopping via Amazon.com or the local mall, but is a darn sight cheaper as well.

Getting back to iTunes, it really sucks as compared to MusicMatch. The user interface is a mixed bag, having a cool brushed aluminum look and feel, but lacking a collapsable library. As a result, where MusicMatch has my library sorted by artist in a collapsable tree, iTunes has this massive (almost 5,000 entries) grid with everything listed. You also can't create a playlist on the fly without actually making a named playlist and saving it. Now on the flip side, iTunes has been rock solid whereas MusicMatch 10 crashes like a nerd trying to pick up a date. MusicMatch 9 was pretty solid, but the upgrade is twitchy. It doesn't seem to like it when you change tags or rename music files based on tag information, either thing leading to a program crash about half the time. The UI in MusicMatch is acceptable although not as nice as iTunes, but then again the ability to create one-time playlists and the collapsable library makes up for it. I use iTunes to interface with my iPod and that's about it. I use MusicMatch -- and endure the flaming crash-and-burn problem -- for ripping MP3s and for simple listening.

Now for audiobooks I use Windows Media. MusicMatch inserts obvious pauses between tracks that aren't user-definable and can't be turned off, so some of my audio books have a serious pause about every 3 minutes and this is just enough to bring the technology to the surface instead of letting me drift along with the book. Windows Media has no such pause, immediately going from one track to the next.

It would really be nice if there were one product that did everything I needed. iTunes is great for an attractive UI. MusicMatch kicks serious fanny with its capabilities. Windows Media is useful in a minimalist way. The only problems are that iTunes is a dog with fleas under the surface and all bought content is DRM-protected, MusicMatch is quirky and buggy, and Windows Media (and yes, I have WM 10) is like Winamp on Demerol trying to play catch-up to the heavy hitters. At least WM 10 allows the quality of MP3 rips to be changeable -- WM 9 forced 56 Kbit, but WM 10 allows 128, 192, and better. Unfortunately, I rip at 160 since my ear can pick up the loss in 128 and not in 160. I guess I could go with 192, but why? I like having options and Microsoft is limiting them...

Perhaps I'll write my own. I can call it uPlayer. I think it's time for another vowel, don't you?