Microsoft is finally selling its brand new operating system, Vista, and they’re making sure the world knows it. They’ve had acrobats on billboards in cities around the world, put LeBron James in commercials, paid TV networks to alter their between show graphics to copy Vista’s flip screen feature, and paid for a slew of traditional advertising too. Microsoft isn’t saying how much all this costs, but the Windows XP launch cost $200 million.

I planned on ignoring this hoopla until I realized one person is going to ask me about this. This would be a particular coworker who often comes to me with computer issues. She won’t start asking about Vista right away but I know she will in a couple of weeks after the advertising sinks into her brain. I can already hear the questions. So tonight I was doing some preemptive research. Yes I already had my preconceived notions about Vista. For the last year I’ve heard the angry cries from the nerd community about the DRM being built in. I had pretty much written off ever using it. I figured the DRM checks and user license verification would be so onerous, Vista would not be worth the trouble of installing. I planned to stick with XP for a few more years before finally moving to some type of Linux in the future.

Anyway I started searching for some concrete complaints about Vista. Eventually I found my way to Bad Vista, an anti-Vista website set up by the Free Software Foundation. I looked through it and I am left dumbfounded by the FSF. That site is of no use to the average person trying to learn why people have a problem with this new operating system. Bad Vista is a site written for linux zealots. The site provides a few links to free software, but in the section “What’s wrong with Microsoft Windows Vista,” which I was expecting to be a gold mine of info, it had nothing. They said to read their news section and left four links to long articles I don’t have the energy to pretend to care about. Titling your article with “Microsoft’s Suicide Note” does not give me a reason to read it. Really those articles were written so zealots could read them and whip themselves into a frenzy bitching about Microsoft. Most likely while chatting on IRC.

If those Free Software people want to persuade a regular person to avoid Vista, they need some accessible content. Title your articles with something that lets me know it will answer my question. How about starting off the page with a bulleted summary. If you can get your complaints down to soundbytes, people will pay attention. Just link the bullets to more details. If I want to know more, I can always click.

I continued my search beyond Bad Vista but I didn’t get much info. If I understood it right, the DRM complaint is that videos with a content protection flag will require Vista to check if your monitor is HDCP compliant. If it is not, either the video won’t play or will play at a lower resolution. Only videos that have copyright protection are affected by this. I think this means that, for example, if I download a copy of an HD-DVD, I should have no trouble playing it because an HD-DVD disc needs to have its content protection broken to copy it in the first place. So the only people screwed here are those with legit copies of videos, but do not have monitors with HDCP. Do I understand this issue right? It seems like much ado about nothing.

If this is the only problem with Vista, then my mind has been changed. I see no reason to avoid this operating system. I’m not gonna bother to run out and get a copy now because I would rather other people work out the bugs first, but that just means I’ll be considering Vista in a year. I would love for someone to come along who can talk about this, and other Vista issues I don’t know about. After hearing phrases like “chock full of DRM” I have a hard time believing this one piffling issue is the cause of so much hot air.

I know lately I’ve been complaining about my job more than usual. Since it’s so familiar here’s some more!

I received this ad in my email today from Monster. It’s the first job posting that has seriously got my attention. This is the best deal I’ve seen. Most dealerships only pay a $30,000 minimum. The cheap ones only pay a minimum salary for two or three months before switching over to all commission.

I’ve been curious to know what it’s like to be on the other side for a long time too. I always said if I got fired my first move would be to head to the nearest dealership and see if they’re hiring. As it is now I spend a lot of time talking to people about cars. Could I make the leap to selling them?

Sadly I’m not very confident of that. I’ve tried to get exposure to sales before without much luck. There was the day I spent selling spa gift packages on the street. Then there was the one day I spent as a stockbroker trainee. Then my company refused to train me for their sales department. Oh yeah and I couldn’t sell a single damn mortgage even in the hot market of 2005. Sales has not been my friend.

For all those reasons I can’t justify jumping over to car sales even though I’m curious as hell about it. I guess it will always be the dream. Until I get fired of course.

I had high hopes when I ordered Three Men in a Room. I heard about this book from a passing reference made in an article about Eliot Spitzer’s coming term as governor. I got the idea in my head that this was a muckraking expose of Albany’s corrupt leadership. The three men in the aforementioned title are the governor, assembly speaker and the senate majority leader. Lachman argues that these three men control all political power in the statehouse. Nothing gets approved, rejected, voted on, debated, or addressed without their unanimous agreement. I thought I was going to read stories about these legislative battles. Lachman spent ten years as a state senator so I expected him to name names and dish out the dirt on the bills that passed and failed in those years.

That’s not what this book is about at all. Three Men in a Room is more like a manifesto for good government for New York. Don’t think Lachman ignores his years of experience in the legislature. There are a few stories in here about the repeal of the commuter tax, hidden lobbying by the tobacco industry, and patronage shenanigans along with others, but there isn’t the detail I expected. Frankly his insider viewpoint didn’t seem any greater than what could be gleaned from newspaper articles.

I think my disappointed expectations prevented me from really enjoying this book. I read the first two chapters thinking, When is he gonna get to the juicy bits? If you go into this book knowing it’s less like Inside Edition and more like Nightline, I think you’ll enjoy it more than I did. One thing that’s certain is there is a lot for us commoners to learn about life in the statehouse.

One lesson Lachman repeats is that Albany legislators are powerless. They can’t do anything in the statehouse without the approval of their leadership. They aren’t even able to get their name on a bill as a co-sponsor on their own. After explaining the various ways these legislators are incapable of getting things done, Lachman talks about the punishment legislators receive for striking out on their own and opposing the leadership. That would be ostracism. If you start crying about reform you’ll never have your name on another bill, you won’t get a dollar of the discretionary funding that’s doled out to bribe constituents, and when redistricting time comes around expect your district to be divided up so you have no hope of being re-elected.

Yet after all this, Lachman’s solution to the pseudo-democracy that has developed in New York is a constitutional convention. The current constitution allows two paths towards a convention. Either in two consecutive years, one before an election and one after, New York’s legislature must pass bills calling for the convention. This would put the question on the next ballot and the voters must approve the idea of a constitutional convention. This is, of course, impossible. If you don’t realize that, you need to re-read the book. If legislators can’t get anything done, how can they go against their leaders to pass these bills twice? It was a real shame that Lachman didn’t address this at all. I would have accepted a hopeless platitude to fight the good fight. Anything would have satisfied me that he at least recognized this contradiction.

The second path to a convention is an automatic voter referendum. Every twenty years a referendum is automatically included on the ballot that asks if the state constitution should be changed. This was last rejected in 1997, so we have to wait until 2017 for the next opportunity. I think Albany can relax though. I really don’t expect the voters in 2017 to notice.

Kanye West is moving into a new apartment designed by acclaimed architect Claudio Silvestrin. Fortunately Dezeen has posted the renderings. Below is a copy of the floorplan.

This is how I imagine the distant future to look. That’s not really a compliment though. The place feels cold and uncomfortable. I can’t imagine myself calling that home. I would feel like I’m on display in a show house. Silvestrin has let his minimalism run amok!

Let me walk you through this bizarre floorplan. Look to the lower left corner. This is the entrance, or, if you will, portal to the future. It opens to this narrow, curved hallway. This is nothing but a mistake. Not only does it make it less convenient to go in and out but it looks foreboding. I do not want to describe my home as foreboding.

So you make it to the end of the hall and you’re facing…something. I don’t know what that blueish slab is. It looks like frosted glass to me but I can’t be sure. Is that a coat closet? Anyway turning to your right will take you into the most useless kitchen ever devised. The space looks too tight for appliances and I suppose cabinets aren’t minimalist enough. I guess that’s not a big issue for West. He doesn’t seem too keen on cooking for himself. Celebrities probably eat out 95% of the time. That kitchen would be fine with a mini fridge under the counter for drinks and a microwave.

Well this has me thinking now. That design is a huge waste of space. Sink, microwave, and a mini fridge could all fit against a wall. There really doesn’t need to be much storage space for dry foods anyway. I wonder who is responsible for creating that. Could it be that the celebrities want to spend money on kitchens they won’t use or is it just the hubris of the designer forcing it on a hapless celebrity? I don’t want to say it’s because they’re thinking about the resale value because what we have now is a poorly thought out kitchen. A future buyer will pick up on that anyway. But I’ve blathered enough about that.

Further down the kitchen is an architectural abomination. Your eyes do not deceive you. Yes you actually have to walk through the kitchen to get to the toilet. This isn’t uncommon in New York apartments but that’s because a lot of bathrooms were shoe-horned into old apartments built in an age when a single bathroom might serve an entire floor or even a whole building. This isn’t the case here. This is brand new construction committing a heinous act on its resident.

By the way, in case you haven’t noticed, look around the entire floorplan for a second. Did you catch something weird? This apartment has no doors in it. So that bathroom right next to where you keep your food is always exposed. How wonderful it will be for everyone to hear you fart in there. Nothing bring friends closer together than sharing a bowel movement.

But let’s move on to the other side of the apartment. The top right corner is your living room. I’ll give this place at least one compliment. It has fantastic windows. West will not be starved for natural light in there. For a commoner like me though this presents one problem. Where do I put the TV in that well lit living room? I suppose I could get some kind of stand and sit the flat screen on top of that. Then those fantastic windows will have to be covered up with heavy curtains to keep glare off of the TV. At least I’ll sleep better knowing they exist.

The bottom right is the bedroom. I’m guessing that rectangle between the bed and the couch is the closet? That’s plenty of space for me, but I can’t imagine any celebrity being satisfied with that little area. By the way, it looks like Silvestrin won’t allow you to hang up your clothes. Minimalism requires sacrifice I guess.

Now look to the left of the bed. I think that long table is a sink and countertop. Beyond that is the shower. Can you find a toilet over there? Either it’s supposed to go in that square right underneath the shower (it looks empty to me) or West is going to have to run around the kitchen every time he wants to pee. Now that’s a chore!

I don’t know why West is settling for this design. He has plenty of money so scrimping shouldn’t be the cause. I wonder if he’s just dazzled by a famous name designer.

For reasons unclear to me, there’s a new piece of technology out there that irks me. Silent Guardian was created by Raytheon as a non-lethal weapon for crowd dispersal. It uses radio waves to heat a person’s skin to an uncomfortable level. It should feel like standing in front of an open oven. It won’t burn you but it’s unpleasant enough that you want to get away. I haven’t a clue what this system costs though. I tried but I couldn’t find any estimates.

Silent Guardian is actually a stripped down version of a larger program called Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial System (V-MADS). Silent Guardian works out to 550 yards, while V-MADS is planned to work out to 700 yards. Interestingly enough, to me at least, GlobalSecurity.org says V-MADS can be nullified by wearing thick layers of clothing or using a metal sheet as a reflector.

I know this is a non-lethal technology so I should be happy that there’s another option for crowd control besides shooting a bunch of people. Yet it just doesn’t sit right with me. It seems like if there is a non-lethal option it will be used at the drop of a hat. Today police have to exercise some restraint before deciding to break out the tear gas. This way a protesting crowd at least has the chance to behave themselves before being removed. Since this technology is so easy to use I’m concerned it will end up silencing any opposition to the government. I suppose I shouldn’t be that negative though. A government that would shut off all avenues of communication probably wouldn’t hesitate to use tear gas today anyway.

History buffs should already know this sort of weapon isn’t a new idea. Well the non-lethal part of it is new. The Japanese were working on a microwave gun to protect their shores from invasion. The hope was to bombard American soldiers with microwaves while they were still on their troop transports and essentially cook them. Luckily for the US the microwave gun only worked out to a few yards. Doubly lucky is that, according to the History Channel, the Japanese diverted resources away from their atom bomb project for this dead end. *WHEW*

It’s no secret I’ve thought Europeans are the whiniest people around, but they have taken whining to new heights! Germans have managed to turn complaining into a commodity. For a fee, a company called Erento provides people to protest for you.

All this time I was attempting to exaggerate the amount of protesting that goes on in Europe. One day it’s a protest against economic reforms. The next day you have transit workers striking for higher wages. The day after you have a motley assortment of anti-globalization groups protesting free trade. Then you may get students protesting that school is too hard. It turns out my exaggerations were spot on! They have to be. Otherwise how else could a company make money providing protesters-for-hire?

I’m glad to see any free enterprise in Europe but this industry only reinforces my hatred for protesters. These are people who only want to impose their agenda on everyone else, and don’t care how they disrupt life for their neighbors. They scream, yell and bitch as loud as they can until government or industry caves on their pet issue. The very fact that groups would hire phony protesters shows they don’t care if their issue actually matters to society at large. All that matters is that they win.

Lots of pundits doubted it. Some said Somalia could become Ethiopia’s Iraq. Even I had my doubts against the Ethiopian Prime Minister’s boundless optimism. Meles Zenawi, that very prime minister, turned out to be right. At least according to The Price Is Right rules where you must come closest without going over. Ethiopia has started pulling its troops out after a month long invasion, where the Prime Minister said it would take two weeks.

It’s a pretty smart move too. Ethiopia bowled over the Union of Islamic Courts, and now that they’ve won, they aren’t going to hang around with a bunch of resentful Somalis. It would be kind of like the US leaving Iraq in 2003 after knocking out Hussein’s government. Unfortunately we didn’t have a government waiting to take over like Ethiopia does. Granted, Somalia’s transitional government is powerless, but they at least have the trappings of authority.

With Ethiopia heading for the exit, the African Union is attempting to fill the vacuum. Remember though that the African Union is so inept, it makes the UN look good. Only Uganda and Malawi have agreed to send in peacekeepers, and those two countries total only 2,500 soldiers. I would be ready to declare the mission a failure already except that the European Union has pledged to offer financial aid to countries in the peacekeeping force. No information on the particulars of that deal though. Money is always the sticking point for AU missions. It’s the reason the tiny force the AU had inside Darfur couldn’t be sustained.

I know it was just a few days ago when I voiced my skepticism about a touch screen phone, but Nokia has got me excited about cell phones again. They have released photos of a concept phone named (officially or unofficially, I’m not sure) Aeon. It has a full surface touch screen.

A lot of people will say this is just a ripoff to compete with Apple’s iPhone, but for a prototype to exist there has to be months or even years of work behind it. Besides BenQ Siemens came out with the Black Box concept phone in Q3 last year, and a tiny company called MyOrigo produced the first touch screen phone in 2003! So really this is a direction mobile phone manufacturers have been moving towards anyway.

I think this design has the potential to make the iPhone irrelevant. The Aeon’s body is all delicate curves. The iPhone looks dowdy in comparison. It’s this big chunky block that fills up your entire palm, while the Aeon is sleek, elegant and looks like you can use it with just one hand. If Nokia gives this a mini hard drive it could completely replace the need for an iPod. Of course a lot of it depends on the user interface. Neither phone is available to play with so I can’t say anything about that. I don’t even know if the Aeon is a smartphone, although I would be surprised if such a cutting edge phone wasn’t.

Here are Nokia’s pictures to salivate over. Oh please Nokia, if you can hear me, get this phone into the stores!

Today I was just wiped out. It doesn’t make a lot of sense because I naturally woke up 30 minutes before my alarm went off. Even so as I was driving to work my eyes were barely open. It’s a fairly scary feeling to have your eyes unfocused while you’re doing 80 mph. Yet the fright wasn’t enough to wake me up.

I trudged through my work day as normal. Then it was time to drive home and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to keep my eyes open. So in 30-degree weather I slept in my car. I felt pretty damn bizarre doing it. What would you think if you came upon one of your coworkers sleeping in their car? I did it anyway though because it’s better I look strange than drift off the road in my sleep.

It was remarkably comfortable. I slept in there for about a half hour. One jacket was my blanket, my windbreaker was my pillow and the moonroof gave me a view to let my mind drift away. I never expected that car seat to make a good bed. I guess it’s good to know I can use it in an emergency. Perhaps I should keep a pillow in the car from now on.

This is the sort of news you gotta suspect is phony. I wonder if the BBC was duped by The Onion and ran one of their stories. A German zoo is going to introduce a few female penguins from Sweden to their population of male penguins to test if the males are gay. Apparently the males have been trying to mate with each other, and have been trying to hatch rocks. The zookeepers want to check if the males prefer males or if they’re doing it because of the scarcity of females in their zoo population. I guess that’s like saying they’re jailhouse gays.

What catapults this story to goofy is that the zoo is now receiving outraged protests from gay rights groups all around the world. I can’t understand this reaction at all. It’s not as if the zookeepers are holding prayer vigils to turn the gay penguins straight. If they turn out of be gay, they aren’t going to be thrown out of the zoo or stoned to death. The zoo staff just wants to know if these guys can be expected to reproduce. The Humboldt Penguin population is dangerously low and the biologists need to know if these penguins can be counted on for their estimates. I suppose it’s a testament to the times that these gay rights organizations have so little to do that protesting penguin procreation policy is a priority.