How can Win 8 win great?

For a while now all the tech talk has been about leaked previews of Windows 8. So far it has been a real yawn fest. I haven't seen anything worth reporting yet. Who is Microsoft building it for? We all know not the people that buy their products. Especially those talking about them on their arch-rival's blog service, and does the pre-write on a free office suite.

Have I ever let that stop me before?

While flipping through those other articles on PCWorld, MaxPC, and Leo LaPorte, I had some other ideas that I think would be a big improvement.

We only need one version. Not starter, home, pro, and ultimate. And certainly not in OEM, upgrade, and full retail. There really wasn't any differences between XP Home and Pro. Every possible version of Vista was on each disk. Now 7 is a little bit different, there seems to be some code hidden on the disk that tells the installer what version the disk is, but I have a feeling that it can be easily removed and you can install any version you want. I did it with the release candidates.

All these different versions do is confuse people. They're too busy trying to figure out what version to buy and at what price. I have used both Ultimate and Pro. I've seen no differences. If I were to switch to Home, I'd probably type away happily. I would miss XP Mode, but only so I could test out new apps without junking up my hard drive. You can get Virtual Box for free with out spending an extra $80 for visualization from Microsoft.

Also, there really is no difference between an OEM, upgrade, and full retail disk. Except for that little line of code that tell you what it is after it is installed. And the differing prices. Win 7 Ultimate goes for $250 OEM, $220 upgrade, and $320 full. It's the same damn thing. Just one version of Windows is all we need. One price.

Look at Mac. One disk, one version, one price. $30 dollars, $50 if you want to have the five install family pack.

Looking again to Apple, Microsoft should not try to build Win 8 for the desktop and try to adapt it for phones and tablets. They shouldn't build it for phones and tablets and adapt it for desktops. Apple has separate OSes for desktops and phones/tablets. Apple built the iOS on it's own and is not really related to Mac OS. Microsoft has failed for ten years in tablets because they haven't done that.

In other words, I recognize the fact there should be at least two versions of Windows.

Once again we barrow another page from Apple. Apple has this habit of telling software and hardware venders to suck it up when Apple releases a new OS. Meaning that if a program no longer works when Mac OS is upgraded, too bad. Fix it. Microsoft needs to do the same, by making a 64 bit only OS.

Awhile ago I talked about switching form 64 to 32 bit. I did it as an experiment. And found that 32 bit runs everything better. The reason for this is that all apps and drivers are written in 32 bit. So there are going to be some bugs running 32 bit apps in a 64 bit OS. It's time for Microsoft to stop being coy and make the switch. Since Vista, most new computers have come with 64 bit Windows installed. But you could still get 32 bit on the shelf over there. No more.

There is a consumer demand for Windows to do more. People want to be able to edit photos with overly bloated software, watch streaming videos, constantly running anti-malware suites, and play games. All at the same time. You need RAM. Unfortunately 32 bit OSes can only address 4 GB at once. I just checked, right now I'm using I'm using a gig of RAM just to type this out. I remember just getting 128 MB (that's megabytes) of RAM was a big deal. Now I'm seriously reconsidering switching permanently to 64 bit just so I can have that extra RAM.

Wow, I certainly can talk up a storm, and there's a lot more I want to say concerning Windows 8, but I'll save that for later.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 26.

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Waiting in line at the lunch counter, everybody's watches said 12:05. But not the manager's. He had a atomic clock wrist watch powered by a black hole singularity that somehow kept amazingly inaccurate time. Why didn't we just go somewhere else? Because the next place was a half an hour down the road.

Mr. Popper's Penguins.

Tom Popper is on the verge of the greatest financial success of his life. First he must buy the restaurant from a fire brand of an old lady, deal with his teenage daughter, memories of his own father, and the gift of penguins. Hilarity ensues. While taking care of these birds Mr. Popper realizes the one thing he needed all along, his family.

This is your fairly typical Jim Carrey movie, one of the good ones. Like Liar Liar, Bruce Almighty, or even The Mask, you have someone that is thrown into an impossible situation, falls on their face, then rises above it all. In this case, Pet Detective was thrown in for good measure. I was too busy laughing throughout and enjoying the reuniting of the Popper Family to even care about that. Or all the poop flying around.

It was worth it at full price.

A couple of side bits: There were a couple of mistakes. When the bathtub floods, you can clearly see the overflow. This handy little device prevents water from filling the bathroom. That is unless it is full of penguin feathers and poo. This mistake was worth making just to see the penguin waddle up to the glass door, and then swim up the door.

Maybe Tom Popper's copy of March of the Penguins had that scene with the uncovered eggs freezing cut out. That's what happens when you don't let the bird sit on them.

Best of all, it was great to see Angela Lansbury again. She was just perfect in this movie and practically stole the show.

Online snail mail.

One of the many weird and totally boring hobbies I have and have decided to not bore all of you with is coin collecting. Trust me, I have become a total nerd and can really bore you about the proper way to clean a coin.

The point I'm going to make is that if I do buy form the U.S. Mint directly, I do it online. So why am I getting advertisements and catalogs in my mailbox? You know, U.S. Mail. United States Postal Service. Everything I buy from The Mint is from The Mint's website. I have never ever filled out an order form made from paper.

What? Do they need to spend the money or their budget is going to get cut? (Yeah right.)

This missive was prompted by Adobe. They sent me a card in the mail, U.S.P.S. an offer to buy CS5.5. Why? They got my email account. How many people got that mailer? How much did that cost? Is that why CS5.5 costs $1900? To make up for all the stamps Adobe bought?

Ravy 2011 Pg. 25.

Click Here.

Reading all that Lucky Star finally paid off. I got a reference worked in.

Black Friday.

Yes, you can count me as one of the over 145 million people that has actually watched Becky Black's video "Friday." For those who don't know me probably expect me to be amongst the 2.8 million people that dislike this video. And talk all about how I hate it.

And for those that know me are expecting me join the overwhelming 401 thousand that like her video and to talk at nauseating length about how much I love it.

EHHHH!! Both wrong. I have decided not to say a word negative or positive.
You see I took a look at my own music collection. Two words: Chisa Yokoyama.



(What? Were you really expecting me to post her video?)

Academia Waltz: Snake bit again.

Years and years ago I found the comic Opus by Berkeley Breathed. While I thought it was better than Outland and not as good as Bloom County. I was very much pleased to see Berkeley get back to what drew me to his work in the first place.

I post links all over my site to the comic Opus. Only a month later to have it stop production and completely disappear. I now have to go back in and remove all the links.

Back in April I'm all agog over Academia Waltz. Only a few weeks later the comic stops. I caught it at the end if its two year run. All the links become broken. However this time the comics are still up. All I had to do was click around and find comic one and change all the links to that one.

I have been keeping an eye on it to make sure the links are still good. Which reminds me, I think I'm at that two or three year interval that requires a check of the links page at my site.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 24.

Click Here.

That picture of "Penny" that's been in the upper left of the nav bar for 6 months now?

How I love misdirection.

That is unless its me trying to find a coin shop that moved and they never updated their address.

X-Men: First Class.

We get to see the formation of the Children of the Atom team. Going from the trials, triumphs, and tragedies. We get quite the insight into the true motivations and what made Charles Xavier and Magneto. Set during the Cuban Missile crisis, we also get quite the look at early sixties history and quite the reminder of the Cold War mentality of the struggle between the Soviet Union and the United States.

Overall I felt I got my money's worth. Of course, I'm the guy that actually liked X-Men 3 and Wolverine. This was the first movie I saw this year that was worth paying full price.

Now let's have some fun by riffing it. There were some technical glitches I noted. In the scene where Eric is trying to turn a giant satellite, I could easily tell that not a whole lot of time was spent animating it. Then there was a scene of the Soviet ship carrying the missiles to Cuba, it too looked as if somebody forget to touch it up before being sent out to theaters.

Another part were the weapons being carried by the CIA agents in Russia. They looked like late model M-16s. In what research I did for this article, the M-16 was in development long before 1962, doubtful that even the CIA would have a variation that looked like ones from the 1980's or 1990's. These things were only on screen for split seconds, so I couldn't get a good look at them. Going to have top wait for the DVD to come out and freeze frame it to tell. Probably going to have to come back in here and line through this section.

I never really understood how Magneto's powers could affect non-magnetic metals such as brass. I totally understand iron, steel, and tin, but copper wires? Is he using magnetic fields to do this? Take a magnet and try and pick up an aluminum can. In the movie Magneto twists around the railing of a brass bed to choke out Emma Frost. How is this possible? Guess I should just chalk it up to comic book logic and move on.

To Mystique. Aside from Magneto and Xavier, she is one of the most well developed characters in this movie. What I don't like is her character design. It looks like scales of a fish or the exoskeleton of an insect. Is it some sort of clever way to get a naked woman on screen as much as possible? In the comics and cartoons it's just blue skin. Why take all the time for this kind of make-up job? Star Trek was able to pull off the green skin of Orion women back in 1965 and it looked good.

My final critique: They claim that it is nuclear energy that is creating the mutations that we see. How do you explain Xavier, Eric, Raven, Emma, Shaw, Riptide, and Azezel, who were all born before any atomic testing began? Madam Curie? How about Wolverine and Beast? Was there radiation in the chemical used in flash photography of pre-Civil War?

My my my: One more: There was no bonus scene. Most of the theater stayed through the credits. I saw a few people come back in. Apparently remembering that there is usually some teaser. We were all verbally disappointed by that. Especially me. I had to pee really bad. I waited through all that for nothing. I almost didn't make to Subway in time before it closed. I was expecting someone to find Bucky frozen in ice. Or Peter Parker stumbling into the Auotbot Ark. Maybe even Barbara Morse getting hit with a gamma bomb.

I think I'm tapped out. Go see it, it's worth you time and money. Though maybe they could have done a better job of editing the training sequence scene together like how it was done in 24.

Secret of the century: It's okay to pass a cop.

I'm tooling along, doing 55 in a 55 on a 4 lane highway. Well in the left lane is a cop. I'm catching him pretty quick. That's pretty unusual. Cops around here normally do the speed limit. I decide to slow down and take in the situation. So now I'm doing 50.

I look at his car and see no lights or even turn signals. The cop is looking straight ahead. I look around and see nothing out of the ordinary. I wait another few seconds, and then gun it. Back up to 55. As I start to pass him he speeds up and pulls even with me.

I can see out of the corner of my eye that he is looking me over. Probably thinking what crackhead passes a cop? A crackhead that wants to do the speed limit. I just keep doing what I normally do: look straight ahead and do 55 in the 55.

We hit a red light. It has been red for quite awhile, not a situation where I could have had it green if I had been doing the speed limit. (More on that some other time.) The cop is in the left lane, there's a guy in front of me in the right. The light turns green the cop takes off, then the guy in front takes off. And we ever so slowly get it up to 50. It's like that for about two miles. Slowpoke on the right has his front bumper about half car length behind slowpoke cop's back bumper. Meaning there's now way for me to safely pass them.

Police officers are just like everybody else. They are required to follow the law and do the speed limit while not on a call. If one is doing five, ten, or fifteen below pass him. As long as the law is on your side. I'm not going to get into a what if scenario about getting pulled over. This rant is getting long.

Would I pass a cop doing 50 in the 55 on a two lane road? No of course not. Five miles per hour isn't worth it. Ten or fifteen? I would think long and hard about it. Probably would.

The cop I was talking about earlier does a u-turn and speeds back the other way. I don't pass the slowpoke in front of me, because a block later I have to make my turn.

Ravy 2011 Pg. 23.

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Remember kiddies: If you don't want to know what the inside of a dragon looks like, share.

here.

Hangover 2.

Everything that was wrong with the first movie was in this one times ten.

I'm not going to harp on it. All I'll say is why do we get naked real women during the credits and only in still shots?

I will say the Ken Jeong's role is greatly expanded and practically steals the show.

Dollar theater for Hangover 2 that left me feeling hung out to dry.

(I'm not going to put in the "One Night in Bangkok" video, too obvious.)