ZedneWeb: January 13, 2001

This, then, is the last ZedneWeb entry of the second week of the third millennium. Doesn’t sound as impressive as the last one, does it? (And yes, that is correct. I'm referring to the second calender week, from Sunday to Saturday, not a period of fourteen days.)

The problem with going this long between entries is that the links and anecdotes pile up, waiting for me to create some overarching theme or, failing that, throw together a grab bag of stuff. I don’t see a real theme in the pile I’ve accumulated this time, so here’s a quick list. #

My family went to see Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon on New Years Eve and found, to our amazement, that it had sold out. We got tickets for the next day, and when we arrived the theater was packed. Not only that, it was an older audience complete with little old ladies. Definitely not the crowd we expected would be at a subtitled, Chinese-language, martial-arts movie.

The movie itself was spectacular. Wonderful photography and fight choreography, a convoluted plot that mostly made sense at the time, and engaging actors. Perhaps a bit more noble suffering than I like, but that’s a small complaint. #
Apple has finally announced the release date for Mac OS X: 24-Mar-2001. I could be cruel and point out that most of the new functionality in OS X was promised for Copland, which was supposed to be released in 1995, but I’m feeling too good. It looks like some of the stupid decisions they made in the interface are getting adjusted, and the official web pages are running an ad for Oni. The new Power Macs they announced are making seriously consider going back on my vow not to buy a new Mac until I could get OS X pre-installed on it (my current machine was listed as Rhapsody-capable when I bought it, but when Apple renamed it Mac OS X, my machine fell off the compatible list; I was just a wee bit bitter).

The top-level machine includes a combination CD-RW/DVD-R drive and free software for mastering DVDs. I suspect I’ll never need to do that, but I’m thrilled at the idea of being able to do it. Plus, it has about 30 times the hard disk space of my current machine. Yeek. #
Speaking of Oni, the demo has been released. If it weren’t 70MB (!) I’d try it out. There’s been some discussion of the lack of blood of the game (which is apparently synonymous with “realistic violence”), with some parties claiming it is a betrayal of Bungie’s ethos and the gaming community, while others point out that gameplay is more important than gore and carrying a rocket launcher one-handed isn’t all that realistic to begin with.

I’ve been looking forward to Oni for a long time now (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and since I never bothered by buy a 3D accelerator, it looks like I may be computer shopping soon. The fun part is, now I’m gainfully employed and can easily afford something stupidly grandiose—but that would require silencing the voice in my head yelling “Never buy a machine right after it’s released! Are you listening to me?” #
Three articles from Salon caught my eye recently:
1. A comparison of the Oz and Narnia series comes down in favor of the latter, pointing out that Narnia had danger and uncertainty, whereas nothing in Oz was any worse than unpleasant. The reader responses largely agree with that line of argument, but point out that Narnia showcases an extreme form of social conservatism: the world consists mostly of heroes, scholars, villains, and happy workers. Oz, in contrast, is a world where anyone can get ahead.
2. A column arguing that Java is more hype than reality (responses) points out some of my complaints about the language. To be honest, I prefer the language itself to C++, which is an abysmal mess, and it’s great to have a large, standard class library, but I never liked the requirement that the language be run in a virtual machine. (I like having the option, but I don’t like it being required.)
3. The author of The Alienist claims that the internet surrounds us with misinformation, which we are increasingly unable to sort through. He calls for a government organization to enforce regulations whereby anything that isn’t true or merely rumored to be true must be marked as such. I have to agree with the readers and columnists who point out that such a scheme is undesired and impossible. People have always put too much trust in new media, and the solution is to educate people to be critical thinkers. (After all, we’ve had so much success with that so far….)
#
The U.S. government has released a set of usability guidelines for official web sites. This is part of the Americans with Disabilities Act, so it’s a good idea for sites to do some accessibility testing. (If you’re curious, ZedneWeb does pretty well. And considering all the kewl web tricks I avoid, I should hope so.) #
Someone is selling plush Cthulhu dolls. Seriously. #

That's all for now. Hopefully, I won’t let the pile grow so large next time.