Dig this headline:

Cash, not idealism, behind ISP embrace of music biz

I had to laugh at this story. The tone is so incredulous....GASP!! The ISPs, they want...well you'll never believe it...MONEY!

Wait, they do?

Ok fine, there's idealism in plenty of companies. Google seems to be the current poster child for corporate idealism. But let's not forget that this particular Dot Com is also absolutely lousy with money, and that's the reason its idealism is possible.

I love ArsTechnica. Such an attitude of being shocked, shocked! cheapens ArsTechnica's credibility and makes it hard to take its stories seriously. Not to mention the fact that even though it's now a Wired property (hello, money?), spelling errors, mixed metaphors, and cliche abound.

Please clean up your act, Ars. Your smart readers deserve better. Have your new Wired bosses provide some editorial support.

I ran across this in BoingBoing today: http://jtaplin.wordpress.com/2008/06/14/fiscally-responsible-john-mccain...

Apparently, John McCain has a higher net worth than Barack Obama, most of that worth is from his wife, and they have quite the credit card bill.

Barack, on the other hand, has about 1/10 of the net worth of McCain, but earned it himself, and although the article said nothing about what he owes on credit cards, he has put a size able amount away for his kids' college fund.

Hm. I wonder who will manage the country's finances better?

*Quick note: I'm not here to push a political agenda, though I will make no secret that I'm leaning heavily democrat this election, as I do most elections. I just wanted to make an observation.

Disclosure: I'm a member of a word of mouth campaign, and the Harmony One remote I'll be writing about here was given to me for free. I get to keep it whatever I say, and in fact I'm encouraged to say exactly what I think about it, whether I think it's good or bad. I promise to do exactly that.

I bought my Logitech Harmony 659 remote from Amazon in January of 2006. The $95 Amazon charged me for it at the time was a very good deal, and I remember my excitement at the thought of upgrading to it from the pretty but garbage All-For-One Kameleon I had been using previously.

To rewind just a little, Kameleon was like a high-minded art school student's pet project; pretty, rule-breaking, expensive, and difficult to use as intended. It had a blank blue face. It was meant to turn on and show the available buttons when picked up, and sometimes that worked fine. More often though, it would turn itself on while sitting still on a coffee table, or I'd pick it up and it wouldn't turn on without a good hard shake. Because of this, it sucked batteries down vigorously.

To add to those issues, the flat, featureless face of the Kameleon remote made it impossible to use without looking at the thing. Even if you had your thumb right where a button was, you'd have to press the button once to turn the remote on, and then press it again to send the command, and odds are your thumb had slipped by that time and you weren't just perfectly on the button, and no command would be sent at all. The Kameleon was an extremely frustrating remote for me to use, and I'm glad that I got a Harmony.

When I did get the Harmony, I loved it immediately. The software to set it up on my PC was easy to use, all of my devices took commands from its powerful IR LED array every time, and batteries lived a reasonably long life inside it, even though its monochrome LCD screen never turned off.

So when I was offered the new Harmony One to test and review recently, I jumped on it quick. I don't want to give away too much too quickly, but I'll say now that I'm glad I did. I like this remote. Here are the pros and cons, ArsTechnica style.

The Good:

• Fits well in the hand (just like the Harmony 659).
• Controls all of my devices (just like the Harmony 659).
• One-touch activities work great (just like the 659).
• Knows the time and date.
• Has a rechargeable Li-ion battery with a good charge life, and comes with a charging base and wall wart.
• The pretty color screen really stands out, makes tasks a little easier to get to.
• Uses the same standard mini USB cable as the previous remote and most other modern devices.

The Bad:

• If you remove the battery, the remote forgets the date and time.
• The Remote Assistant program on the remote is annoying and useless (But it's easy to turn off).
• The Logitech Harmony software no longer runs in a browser; it's now a dedicated app (I liked it in a browser better).

The Ugly:

• The Harmony software would not allow me to have two remotes (the Harmony 659 and the Harmony One) with two different configurations in one account. I had to create a new Harmony user account in order to keep my original Harmony 659 configuration untouched and create a new one for my Harmony One. Who knows if I'll remember the new user/password?
• HarmonyRemote.exe uses 155MB of RAM and does not close itself when you're done. Watch for this in your Task Manager.
• The software will not tell you the model numbers of the devices you've already programmed in. I couldn't just look at my Harmony 659's configuration to get the model numbers, I had to walk to the living room, write them all down, and come back to the PC to get it done.
• Some idiot at Logitech decided that the user sessions should expire in the configuration software. I spent twenty minutes entering in model numbers, had to go to the living room for one I had forgotten, and when I got back and entered it in, the software kicked me back to the login page. The model numbers I had entered were gone, and I had to enter them again. This made me very, very angry.

Overall, it's a great remote. Not perfect, or even close to it. But it's very good.

I think it's very telling that all of the items in the Ugly list apply to the Harmony software, not the Harmony Remote itself. It seems pretty clear that there's a discrete team for each, and the Harmony software guys are way behind their hardware counterparts in usability.

Verdict: Buy, but wait until the price comes down just a bit. The current $250 price tag isn't quite justified with the remote's flaws, especially in the software arena.

Alright, this is just funny as hell

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=359...

And you know that WoW nuts would really go for it.

(For those of you unfamiliar with the Onion, it's a comedy site that posts fake news. So in other words, no, this isn't a real game.)

I hesitate to post about this because of the echo in the internets, but I want to respond to this post by Seth Godin on his blog.

For the most part, I agree with him, and for someone who isn't very responsible with their money, it's great advice. But what happens when you walk into a bank and ask for a loan to buy a house (one of those things that increase in value)? Well, if you follow the advice that Seth gives, they'll pull your credit and see that you've never exercised it, which means you have limited credit, which means that if you do qualify, you won't get as good a loan as you might otherwise.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for living within your means, and on a personal level, the idea of owing someone else money always bothers me. So, my advice is this:

1. get a card with a reasonable limit, ie, a limit no higher than what you could reasonably pay off in total within a normal month;

2. use it lightly, say keep the balance at no more than 30%;

3. keep enough money in reserve that you could pay off all your credit card debt at a moments notice if needed;

4. make regular payments, preferably more than is required;

5. finally, never ever get an adjustable rate on any loan that you plan on paying for more than a year.

If you aren't ready to do all of those things, then definitely, Seth's advice is solid. Better to rent and live frugally than end up with debt collectors chasing you down.

Another chapter is upon us. In this one, our author illustrates how important it is to know your audience. This is getting into the "nuts and bolts" of making a connection. There are a few steps to take here;

1. know ahead of time who you want to make a connection with. This usually involves getting an idea of who will be at a given event. In the author's example, he helped organise a business conference, and so had access to the list of people who would be there.

2. Find out about your target. A little research goes a long way. Try to find some common ground that you can use to kick start a conversation. People will appreciate that you made the effort to find out about them. After all, "people naturally care, generally above and beyond anything else, about what it is they do." (Ch. 7, p. 67)

It kinda sounds dehumanizing to call a prospective contact and valuable part of your network a "target," but that's really what your doing; you're singling out a specific person. And really, it works a lot better than a shotgun approach.

I did mention that my posting schedule would be unpredictable at best right?

You'll probably see me point this out again in the course of these posts, but brevity is a virtue, and Keith Ferrazzi seems to understand this. I believe my 11th grade social studies teacher put it best, "Keep answers like miniskirts; short to keep it interesting, but long enough to cover the subject."

The chapter is short, but an important point is made; there is no point in making a connection if that connection has no value. That value of course, is the benefit derived from the contact. It could be as insignificant as just knowing a person you like because they are interesting and you like them, or as earth shattering as being the connection for your next big break for your business.

Kieth points out that when one mentions networkers, the image that springs to the minds of most people is a guy in a suit handing out cards, always looking for the bigger fish to fry. This is one of the most ineffective ways to network, because even though you may end up with a bunch of names, none of them mean anything because there was no meaningful connection. If any of them do remember who you are at the end of the day, then it will almost certainly be with a negative connotation.

It is preferable by far to spend the better part of an hour long social event making a real connection with a few people than making a lot of weak, probably bad connections with many people. It's really not hard to make a good connection with a person, all it takes is some effort at being a decent human being. Be honest about who you are, what you need, share your goals when and where appropriate, and listen to what others have to say. It's so simple, I almost hate to just come right out and say it, but to have a valuable network, you need to convince your network of your value to them, and that's what you are doing when you treat people like people.

Thanks everyone, for a great time Wednesday night. It was a fun dinner.

Left to right: Mindy, Bryant, Crystal, Jake, Jeff, Missy, Izaak, Blake

Yeah, that's right, I'm hijacking Jake's schtick. He's not the only one who reads rss, and I've got a couple of contributions.

Feed Title: VGCats
Feed Link: http://www.vgcats.com/vgcats.rdf.xml
Content Link (Non RSS Feed): http://www.vgcats.com/
When I Started Reading It: I've been aware of it for some time, but I started reading seriously about 2 or 3 weeks ago.
Update Frequency: Weekly, mondays.
Core Demographic: Video Gamers (right up my alley!)
What I Get Out Of It/Notes: I like webcomics, and this one is just plain funny on a very consistent basis. The guy obviously is a gamer and has a very funny, sometimes very twisted take on some of the biggest games on the market, as well as classics. A lot of the jokes are inside ones that you have to have played a certain game to get, and that's a little frustrating at times, but you almost get a sense of accomplishment when you see a joke and think, oh, man, I remember that part *proceed to rofle*.

(BTW, in case you're wondering, my first post here, entitled "Who do you shink I amf?" that was a reference to the vgcats character Dr. Hobo.)

Mario Kart Wii. Now, I'm a fan of the Mario Kart series. It's not the best game around, but for a driving game, that's just plain fun, you can't beat it. Yeah, you can go with Gran Turismo or Need for Speed or another game that tries to mimic real life driving by putting you behind the wheel of a car that's far too expensive for anyone to actually own while cops may or may not chase you down as you cruise down what appears to be an open track but is in fact a closed circuit, all while safe in the knowledge that if you crash, not only will you walk away unscathed, it won't cost you more than a couple of seconds to get back on course.

If, on the other hand, you have friends, and any inclination to play a racing game with them, it's hard to do much better than any of the Mario Karts that have been released for Nintendo's various home consoles. Mario Kart Wii, however, dropped the ball on that one though. Yes, there is multiplayer, but compared to the next most recent Kart game, it's a huge step back.

My biggest complaint here is that when you play with friends, (max 4 without using wifi connection) you are forced to play with a total 12 racers on the track. What that means is that when you throw that bomb, you have a bit worse than a 1 in 3 shot of it actually hitting another player, and not just a computer. Maybe I'm just old fashioned, but when I play a game with friends, I like to play a game with my friends. If I wanted to be constantly playing against computers, I'd have become a recluse and social retard after high school.

So you're constantly playing against computers. big deal right? I guess if you want to play with real people, you can always use the wifi connection, but here's the problem: unless you have a total 6 Wiis amongst you and your 11 buddies (that's two players to a Wii) you're gonna have to play with either computers or complete strangers, which can be even worse than playing against computers, for more on this subject, see any public counter-strike server anywhere. (I should mention that I have not yet tried the wifi connection for kart yet. I'm just not much of an online player.)

Ok, let's just put that whole problem on the back burner for now; if that was the only thing wrong with the game, I might have had a better chance. After all, there were certainly a number of steps in the right direction. The graphics are nice, if predictably cartoony for the series (hey, I like cartoony), there are plenty of characters, and lots of new vehicles so anyone's driving style can be accomodated. Speaking of which, Nintendo really hit on a good thing with the control system. You can use practically any controller made for the Wii on Kart, so even though the Wii wheel felt nice and natural in my hands, my buddies were happy with the GameCube controllers they're so used to.

I did have some trouble with the controls, but I worked it out eventually (it felt like every vehicle, no matter how small and agile, handles like a cow unless you drift on your turns. It takes a lot of getting used to.)

Two more points I'd like to cover before finishing up; first, and I know that it's been covered by other reviews, you have to play single player to unlock everything. I'm just going to say that they could have gotten away with having a lot more unlocked out of the package and people would have been just as happy, and that it wouldn't have been such a big deal if there were a co-op mode where you could unlock all that stuff.

Last, Bob-omb blast, and to a lesser extent, Shine Theft (both multiplayer battle modes from Double Dash) were a heavily felt loss. yeah, you there's the classic balloon battle which is fine for a while, but Kart needs a mode where you can hit your opponents all you want and the game doesn't end becuase everyone else gets knocked out. Coin battle tries to accomplish this, and I guess it's adequete, but Bob-omb blast will always be superior for two reasons; one, no computers to ruin your good time, and two, there's just something about blowing up your opponent with a barrage of colorful explosives that gives you warm fuzzies.

so there you go, Mario Kart Wii gets a resounding "meh." I guess it's an ok game if you like racing games you can play alone or online, but if you're that kind of person, I'm thinking that a different racer might be up your alley, so go check out Gran Turismo and Need for Speed. You'll be happier. If your the type of gamer who likes a fun game you can play with a bunch of friends, I'd say Mario Kart Double Dash would be a better use of your money.