Rob Fahrni:

I found it interesting that Apple is incorporating ideas from other vendors into OS X (Jaguar). Oh, I’m sorry, it’s called integration. This is what killed Microsoft in court. Integration, or bundling, of features into the OS. It’s ok for Apple to do it because they haven’t been found guilty of monopolistic practices, 5% market share and a competitor walking on egg shells can do that for you.

Add Sun’s drivel about sedimentation to that, and the irony is complete. Some of these guys may now be suing Microsoft, but are at the same time liberally taking pages out of MS’s playbook.

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El Reg:

The kudos Apple won by introducing a generous all-you-can-eat pricing for its server offerings has been lost by gouging its most loyal consumers. If you’ve been working with OS X since the public beta, your bill for the OS alone will have topped $400 by now. In the same period Microsoft has introduced one upgrade costing consumers $99 or $199 for the “professional” SMP-enabled XP.

Even if we forget the beta, which IIRC cost $20, it’s still a goodly $350+.

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USS Clueless:

When Motorola just racked up losses in the quarter larger than most companies have gross incomes, why is it that it’s had a consistent “buy” rating from the brokers since, well, nearly forever? And why is it that out of 26 broker recommendations, only one is negative?

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Outlook 11 screenshot (sourced from MS Presspass, so has an air of authenticity to it). Good use of screenspace. Got the link via neowin, I’ll probably be visiting this place more often in future.

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How long before this page turns into search.amazon.com?

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$129 for OS X Jag-wire. Hee Hee, this is good. It is now obvious that the relation between Apple and its customers is a strong, healthy, one; based on love, mutual respect and lots of money changing hands :-). No other company imho has such a loyal user base so positively excited about being screwed over time and again. I had written once about the dangers of a hardware+software monopoly — I think I’ll continue to be a happy [WL][intel|amd] user for some time to come — A decent PC will set me back around $800, plus zero OS cost if I go with Linux; or $200 more for Windows XP Pro ($100 for XP Home). And I can live without buying an upgrade for years. Macs may look droolacious, but I think I’ll pass — give me the wider app base of a PC anyday.

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Dean Ornish in the NYTimes:

So the diagnosis is correct: we are eating too many simple carbohydrates. But the cure is wrong. The solution is not to go from simple carbohydrates to pork rinds and bacon, but from simple carbohydrates to whole foods with complex carbohydrates like whole wheat, brown rice, and fruits, vegetables, grains and legumes in their natural forms.

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Saw Devdas on Sunday. This is probably the seventh or eighth of a long line of adaptations of one of India’s most enduring tragic heroes, and the first ‘musical’ to boot. Bottom line: this doesn’t come close to either the 1936 Sehgal or the 1955 Dilip Kumar version. That said, it has a number of things going for it, and I’d say watch the movie if you can. Quick notes:

• Eye Candy. Strongest point of the film. Gorgeous sets; art director Nitin Desai will safely take a Filmfare award home.
• The background score was promising but disappointed, it started well but was too monotonous, and was a bit too loud and overbearing in parts.
• Not-so-good group dancing. Somebody should have picked the extras with greater care; the dances of quite a few wouldn’t have been out of place in a typical Bollywood jhatka number.
• Madhuri was good. Have to say that even though I’m not a Madhuri fan.
• Ash tried, and was good in parts. But dancing is not her forte — yet.
• Shahrukh — good in parts. But he has to lose his mannerisms before the actor comes out of the star persona. As a SRK fan, I was disappointed.
• Atrocious Bengali. After spending crores on the sets, you’d think they could hire one diction tutor. Or at least excise all the Bengali lines out of the script. I know Bengali and this one point basically ruined the film for me.
• The original novel on which this is based has a great deal on life and politics of 19th/late 20th century Bengal. The film glossed over most of that. Read the novel (or a translation) — it’s good.
• For a musical, the music was strangely .. forgettable. Nothing worth coming out of the theater with. In fact, the dance remained in my memory for longer.
• Kiron Kher gets a thumbs up for her role as Paro’s mum. Smita Jayekar as Devdas’ get a thumbs down — ‘thakurains’ are made of sterner stuff, or should be. In fact, Ash as the newly wed thakurain looked more convincing than she.

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Blogger seems to be back up, after a long-lasting outage involving a template server. Troubles not over yet, though.

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BBC: Humans have anti-HIV gene.

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