February 2010 Archives

I've been putting together a media center PC setup for the past 3 months. It's definitely been a learning process. I've tried 3 different PCs, 2 TV tuners, 2 TVs, 2 OSes, 2 wireless keyboards, and a countless number of setup configurations. Some things I've learned along the way:

• A good remote control for Windows Media Center is essential. I got the Noah HA-IR01SV, and I love it.
  
• Windows 7 is not yet ready for prime time. Both of the TV tuner cards I tried don't yet have drivers that work. I finally ended up back with Vista running Windows Media Center.
• The first "TV" I got was just a big computer monitor, but it was defective. That turned out to be a blessing, since I got a real TV, which has many more inputs and a remote control, for not much more money.
• I ended up with a Dell Studio Hybrid, which is small and quiet—perfect for a living room computer. I considered the Dell Zino, but I found a great deal on a used Hybrid at CedarPC.
• I'm still not 100% happy with my video out. I'm using VGA. I couldn't find a screen resolution via the HDMI connection that would fill the screen fully without clipping.
• And finally, I tried the top-rated Logitech Dinovo keyboard, and I hated it. The trackpad is round, with clever but useless features that ignore trackpad convention. And it's about 3 feet off to the right of where my hands are when I'm typing.

Which leads me to my rant: why do all of the major hardware brands produce crap wireless keyboards? I'm not talking about quality, or performance, or any of that. I'm talking about basic ergonomic layout. There are probably a couple billion keyboard/mouse layouts out there that people use every day on every laptop that has shipped in the last 10 years: keyboard above, and touchpad centered below. It's second nature to me. So I really don't understand why the only companies manufacturing wireless keyboards in this configuration are cheap, non-name brands. When Logitech or Microsoft or maybe even Apple starts selling these, I'll look at an upgrade. But until then, I'm stuck with wireless keyboards like the Adesso or the Visenta.

Maybe the grass is greener, but I probably should've just got an Apple TV.

The University of Michigan Men's Glee Club was the highlight of my time as an undergrad. I was a introverted young adult, and pretty focused on my school work. The Glee Club was a structured social and music outlet for me, and a constant across my 4 years at U of M.

I have so many great memories of my time with the club. I met one of my best friends in Glee Club; I single-handedly recorded all our concerts on our European Tour which then became CD Great Halls of Europe; I fell for a girl at our joint concert with Smith and Mt. Holyoke; And the pinnacle, I won the Michigan Song Writing Competition with my composition Memories of Michigan.

In the years since graduation, I have consistently given back to the Glee Club with financial donations every year. But I can no longer do that with good conscience, and it saddens me.

Perhaps you've seen my previous posts on the dangers of football, or even further back (on my now defunct Yahoo 360 blog) about how U of M President James J. Duderstadt decried the college athletic programs:

"...big-time college football and basketball programs have been transformed into commercial entertainment businesses with only marginal relevance to the educational (and, I might add, tax-exempt) mission of the university."

And here is Sol Gittleman, Provost of Tufts University:

"Does anyone actually believe that a freshman varsity basketball player at Duke, Stanford, or Georgetown can handle a normal first-year curriculum at these rigorously academic institutions? Division I-A college athletics has nothing to do with education. The billions of dollars of NCAA contracts with the media have nothing to do with education. The sneaker contracts and deals with basketball and football coaches in Division I-A programs have nothing to do with education."

Over the past few years as I've developed my opinions on the the philosophy of conflating semi-professional sports and higher learning, I convinced myself that supporting the Glee Club was helping to promote the core mission of the University: an excellent well-rounded education including the arts. While this is mostly true, I now realize that even the Glee Club is an unfortunate player in supporting and promoting the non-educational arm of the University of Michigan that is the athletics program.

At nearly every concert the Glee Club ends its program with the college fight songs Varsity and The Victors. Fall concerts are always performed on the day of a home football game to lure more alumni into the audience. And straw that broke this camel's back, at the Glee Club reunion concert this year, ex-head football coach Lloyd Carr is the guest speaker.

So, sorry guys. I'm through supporting an institution that on the one hand claims academic excellence, yet on the other runs a decidedly non-academic semi-professional sports program exploiting young athletes, most of whom would have no hope of attending the university based solely on their academic abilities. The average SAT score for Michigan students is 1271. The average for a player on the Michigan football team? 834. These "students" wouldn't even be eligible for admission to Eastern New Mexico University. I cannot abide a double standard, but even less so one of this magnitude.

The system is broken, and unfortunately it's deeply entrenched. Yes there are a lot of alumni and  supporters in general who focus on athletics as their tie to the University. But I'm not one of them. And to me, we could well do without these "fans". They only serve to push the university further off its path, supporters only for reasons that are best irrelevant but in reality are detrimental to the core reason this institution exists in the first place.

I'm pragmatic. I realize that it's unlikely things will change significantly. U of M is unlikely to drop football altogether like Boston University did. Personally I'd like to see them follow the Division III model. No scholarships, no recruiting, and no double-standard. Students who want to play in addition to their studies are welcome to do so. Another model that could work is to spin off the sports teams into their own franchise. the University licenses the use of the name and logo and performs some basic oversight, but otherwise is an independent business with it's own P&L sheet.

In any case, I do know that I can no longer support the status quo. And if you are a Michigan donor, I encourage you to join me in eliminating financial support to the university. It is a great institution that has unfortunately lost its way. I wish to see it focus uncompromisingly on higher education and academic excellence once again.

References

• College Sports: Should We Legalize the Prostitution?
• Intercollegiate Athletes and the American University
• Unpaid Professionals: Commercialism and Conflict in Big-Time College Sports
• College Athletes for Hire
• The View from the Helm: leading the American university during an era of change

This was posted to Lifehacker, and it's a brilliant insight. Which is the better customer experience?

Ah, sweet irony. This article on FontFeed is quite comprehensive, but to summarize:

• Anti-piracy group unveils logo.
• Font used to create the logo is revealed to be licensed fro exclusive by France Telecom. Thus, there is no legal way to use this font.
• Anti piracy group claims a "sketch version" of the logo was accidentally released, and they release a new version.
• It turns out the fonts used in the new logo were licensed on that same day. So clearly they hadn't done any font licensing up until they got caught.
  
• Also, the trademark application for the original logo—submitted two months previous—used the France Telecom font.
• So their story was bullshit. The anti-piracy group got caught pirating, and it was no accident.

I hope France Telecom sues their sorry ass.

 I read this article in Wired about how Google responds to DMCA notices. This part in particular caught my attention:

The accused blogger must file a counter-claim or, after an unquantified number of complaints — valid or otherwise — the law forces Google (or any other blogging platform) to terminate the accounts of “repeat offenders,” even if their only mistake was not to file paperwork against the accusations of an anonymous robot — sad and wrong, but mandated by current law.

I got to thinking, would this apply to any hosted content? What about the GOP web site, or whitehouse.gov? Could a copyright holder file claims against these sites, and even if they weren't valid, if you filed enough of them you could effectively force these web sites offline? That'd be pretty cool.

So I read in the Atlantic that there will be a "war game" simulation of a cyber attack on Feb 16. So wouldn't that be an ideal time for a real cyber attack to occur? I'm no military or counter-terrorism expert, but does seem odd to publicize this before it happens.

This is brilliant:

And so is this:

Follow along with the lyrics here.

Know of anything similar? Let me know in the comments!

This is why I can't in good conscious donate any money to educational institutions (like the University of Michigan, where I went for my undergrad education). Not only is semi-pro football detrimental to higher education, it is detrimental to the health of the players.