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Spiderman 3 is a disappointment

Robert May — Sat, 05 May 2007 03:24:51 GMT

First of all, the movie was o.k. The special effects were pretty awesome, and the action seens were o.k., although sometimes they were too fast to see what really happened.

The plot, however, was questionable and unsatisfactory. Too much talking, he didn't get the girl, he was never told about the plot to make him hurt, etc. Too many loose ends. Did the girl ever get cured? We don't know. Did the blond fail class? we don't know. How could the explosive devices only scar the face of Harry, but completely disintigrate the black goo, which was heated to thousands of degree's when it entered earth's atmosphere? What about the blob that the professor had?

Like I said, if you liked the first two, you'll probably go see this one, but I think the first two were better.

Al Gore needs to get a clue

Robert May — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 04:11:00 GMT

This is great--Gore doesn't seem to be very inspired by his own propaganda. I guess he's using all of that electricity keeping the internet running . . .

Response to Vista? That's it?

Robert May — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 02:04:00 GMT

This is in response to a comment about my last post.

I expected something revolutionary and significantly better than what was currently on the market. Microsoft consistently does this with other applications. Sql Server is, in my opinion, FAR superior to Oracle and MySql. .net kick’s Java’s behind. Visual Studio is so far ahead of the competition that using anything else is painful. For those of you that live and die by Eclipse, VS 2005 is clearly a superior product. The XBOX 360 is also much better than just about anything else, although the WII comes close in sheer fun.

So why isn’t the operating system and browser far superior to the competition? Microsoft has 70,000 employees for crying out loud! They had 100 or so developers working on WPF alone!

My point is this: They started from the Server 2003 core and then modified it. It took them 5 YEARS and it looks and feels like Service Pack 3 for XP.

Why couldn’t they have released this incrementally? After all, we know that it can run without Aero, and we know that the .net bits can be back ported to XP, so why the large release?

There’s got to be a better way to do security. Surely the smart folks at MS can come up with a way to monitor the intent of an app to determine that’s its going to do something that would be perceived as bad and notify the user appropriately.

The logic you used for why they are being restrictive is the same logic that people use to explain why communism is a good thing. The “people” are too stupid to run their own lives, therefore, the big government must come in and do it for them. I don’t buy that. I think a better solution would be to anticipate when an application is going to do something bad and stop it and notify the user then. No, that’s not going to be easy, but it’s possible. Assuming that everything that touches something that some developer in a cubicle somewhere decided could possibly be used badly is something that should be blocked is stupid. Start with that, but then take it another step. Look what the change is going to be and if it is, block it (roll it back) and notify. Yes, that's hard.

You should have a more user centric view of the world. In general, software isn’t for the developers, it’s for the users. Calling the users stupid serves little purpose other than demonstrating your lack of concern for your customer.

Software is for the user and should behave how the user expects it to, not force its will on the user. The stuff that the user can’t see is only important if it meets that goal. The general user population DOES NOT CARE about the bits inside of the machine. They only care about whether or not the software helps them do what they want to do.

Software does “magically” develop from ideas. Coming up with the ideas tends to be the hard part. The “programming” aspect is merely a constraint of time and computing power. WinFS was innovative, but it was cut. Aero is a mac look alike. WPF and WCF are innovative, but they’re not the “OS”. Maybe my standards are too high.

Anyway, this is too long already.

Vista: That's it?

Robert May — Thu, 25 Jan 2007 16:20:00 GMT

O.K.--so I got a shiny core duo 2 from dell the other day, and have vista loaded onto it. The performance thingy rates me as a 3.5 (because of the video card), and says I should be able to enjoy all of the snazzy new features of Vista.
I start to tinker, and soon find that the Aero stuff is really only skin deep--as soon as you go into any of the dialog boxes for more advanced stuff (like the system dialog boxes, the "advanced properties" of the display, etc), you quickly find that this is just XP with a little paint.
The annoying nag screens are also pointless. After 10 minutes I was promptly ignoring them and just allowing them to do whatever they wanted to do without even reading them. They won't change security, they'll just irritate people.
So we got WCF, WPF, and WWF. I view those as extensions of .net, NOT as features to the operating system, and those should have happened in spite of the OS.

I’m really left wondering, “Is that it?” It took them five years and that’s it?? What a disappointment.

Update to respond to comments

1. I spent more than 5 minutes with the OS and read more than one review. My favorite is this one. Yes, they did a lot of work, yes the network stack is nice, yes, hooking up to my wireless network was nice. But did all of that REALLY take 5 years?

2. Security is always an issue with users. However, I've dealt with far too many users that become accustomed to boxes popping up and become numb to them and stop reading the contents. This will become the same way. After all, users have been warned forever that running attachments from e-mail spreads viruses, but we still have no shortage of viruses spread in that manner. Couldn’t they have done something better that was smarter about determining if an attack was taking place and THEN warned the user? That way, the user would only see the messages once in a while, rather than all of the time.

3. The users don’t give a rat’s rear end about what they can’t see. They just want it to work.

4. DirectX 10 is wonderful. The removing of kernel mode drivers was a good thing (although I’m not a driver writer, so I don’t know how good and may not understand this exactly). However, isn’t DirectX 10 something that should have been given to us anyway, and did it REALLY take 5 years to do?

Ultimately, my point is that although there are some nice new features in Vista, I was expecting a lot more after 5 years of development. Everything they’ve done in this release should have been done with incremental releases to XP. This feels like Service Pack 3, or like the ME launch was to 98. Maybe that’s why MS is saying there will be shorter release cycles.

Sony's Spin

Robert May — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 20:03:00 GMT

This news story is laughable.

Why can't Sony stop the spin? Comparing 1 million Talladega Nights movies that were packaged with the PS3 to 60,000 HD DVD movies that were actually SOLD is really not the same thing. People don't, in general, buy the PS3 because it's a Blue Ray player. Sheesh!

Additionally, he doesn't know how many games they have or how many they will have in short order? I would think that's a key focus of his, since with no games, nobody wants to buy a ps3.

Finally, news.com is so biased against Microsoft it makes my teeth ache. If they had been doing a similar story with an MS exec it would have read something like "MS Exec doesn't know what's going on."

Just the facts, ma'am, just the facts.

Countryside Cabinetry Final Review

Robert May — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 18:45:00 GMT

So after the delays associated with storms in Denver, the missing boards (two to be precise) were finally delivered. The remaining set up was a snap (they included the right screws and everything) and I had the table together in about 15 to 20 minutes.

The table and chairs are wonderful! My wife especially likes them. The chairs are unusual--they're wooden, but when you sit in them, they are so comfortable that you could sit in them for hours and not get sore. We were very surprised by that.

The workmanship is outstanding and the table is perfect as far as we can tell.

We're very happy and will be getting more chairs for the table in the future. Through the whole delivery problem, Countryside Cabinetry gave us outstanding support and made sure that we were taken care of.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to anyone!

Countryside Cabinetry

Robert May — Wed, 27 Dec 2006 18:37:00 GMT

Well, the table and chairs arrived when expected. There was a problem, however, the table was missing the mounting pieces for the pedistals to mount to the table.

I'm not sure how this happened. Everything was wrapped so that you could have dropped a truck on it and it would have been fine.

They said that they would have the parts shipped to us before Christmas, but the blizzard in Denver, which grounded a lot of planes, fouled us up, so we're supposed to receive them today.

Countryside Cabinetry

Robert May — Thu, 14 Dec 2006 16:42:00 GMT

So far so good! After a couple of months of waiting, our table is set to arrive tomorrow; just in time for Christmas! My wife is very excited.

I'll post how the delivery goes here and my final recommendation on countryside cabinetry.

Politics

Robert May — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 14:07:00 GMT

I used to be a staunch Republican, starting from the time that I was old enough to care until probably the end of the first Bush term, I supported them, even gave them money. That's all changed now. I didn't vote for Bush the second time, and I haven't voted Republican the last two elections. I'm still a conservative, but the Republicans are no longer conservatives. Here's why:

Not only is the Homeland Security Department the largest expansion of the government ever, something the "Republicans" are supposed to be against, but it also is the KGB.
The Medicare Prescription Drug Plan is the largest entitlement program (I HATE socialism) EVER! The Federal government shouldn't have a welfare program--that should be the states.
The people we send to congress and the senate don't run most of the government, which limits the amount of representation that we get. For example, the FCC can make really stupid rules that are as binding as law, but that we can't do anything about, and the patent office is just dumb.
President Bush wants a unified Canada, Mexico, and the US, sans borders.
The US has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world, something the Republicans should have changed but didn't.
Bush has only vetoed one bill, and that deals with stem cell research. What happened to the balance of power?

I think that's enough for now. I wish the federal government would just get out of the way and let us live our lives. There really isn't much difference between the liberals and the republicans. Maybe with the branches of government split, nothing will happen, which is good, but I would bet that Bush will just rubber stamp everything all in the name of "Getting Along."

Politicians make my stomach churn.

Windows Live Image Search

Robert May — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:31:00 GMT

Just tried out the windows live image search. Wow! It's far better than google's image search. The scratchpad is a great idea--I can't tell you how many times I've wanted something like that.

Viewing the image AND keeping your last search up is also a great feature. If you haven't tried it, you should, its really good.