I’m a big advocate for speaking one’s mind, especially when large corporations are involved. I have this habit of sending out long winded letters to customer service departments, you might even call it a hobby. Believe it or not, I do get enough responses to justify my doing so. A free month of service here some coupons there, it’s amazing what you can get with a little tactful complaining. My latest letter is a perfect example…

Not too long ago I wrote a post on this blog titled WTF Nintendo?. In it I expressed my frustration toward the button layout on the GameCube controller when playing Super Mario World on the Wii. There were many similar postings on various forums, so I felt justified in my position. I knew that a single post on a no-name blog wasn’t going to do anything so I turned my blog post into a letter; Presented in a slightly more diplomatic fashion of course. I mailed it out the next day but really never expected a response.

Two weeks later, the phone rings and my wife answers. “Matt. Nintendo’s on the phone.” My flight response started to take over, especially since I didn’t include my number in the letter, but I had nowhere to run so I took the phone. Amanda, a customer service rep for Nintendo of America, was on the other end. Much to my surprise she gave me a very detailed and thoughtful response to my letter. Here were the basic points:

• Not much QA is done on Virtual Console games, after all these games were well tested 15+ years ago. They just make sure the game runs and send it out.
• If you compare the button letters of a GameCube controller to a Super Nintendo controller you can see that they match up perfectly. It’s the GameCube button layout that’s messed up.
• Nintendo does not have a mechanism in place to “recall” a VC game.
• Nintendo designed the Classic Controller for the virtual console and thus it is the preferred method of input. (read “Cough up the cash, that’s what we made that classic controller for.”)
• Nintendo reps have no fore-knowledge of upcoming VC games (I had to ask about Pilotwings).

I was impressed just to get a response, not to mention that she tracked down my home number. Then Amanda pulled out the big gun. She sent me a free Classic Controller, in the hope that I would refrain from calling it “useless” in the future. Touche; consider my silence bought. The controller came in the mail yesterday and I’ve been using it quite a bit. I can honestly say that I like it a lot. Do I now think it’s worth $20? Barely. But I will no longer call it useless.

It’s no secret that I’ve never been a fan of OSX. I should qualify that statement, but I won’t get into the specifics of my dislike for newer whiter Apple. I will however mention that I am a huge fan of classic Mac OS. The first computer I ever bought ran System 7.1p2, and my all time favorite work environment is still Mac OS 8.6. After spending 5 years trying to find some reason to stick with Windows; I finally settled onUbuntu (now running Edgy Eft and loving it). But I digress. Even after escaping the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field, I still love to watch his keynotes. I generally get all fired up, caught in the moment, until I realize that nothing he’s announcing is really new… just new to the Mac. While watching theWWDC 2007 keynote, there was one thing that really stuck out to me. More of a philosophy, that I hope and pray Apple will embrace whole heartedly.

Before I get to that one (more) thing. I just want to briefly comment on “stacks”. Stacks are the hot new thing coming to the dock, where folders of items can be stored in a single icon and revealed on demand. As I stated earlier, most things inOSX aren’t really new. As you old time mac users should have noticed, the stacks feature isn’t new… not even to Mac OS . I can’t verify the exact version, but I believe OS 8.5 was the first to have “Window Drawers” (may not be the flashy apple name). With window drawers you could drag any open finder window to any side of the screen and it would collapse into a tab. Click on the tab, and your window slides out. It really bothered me when that feature went away and I’m glad to see it back.

Now that I’ve got my friendly jibe out of the way; I’m really excited about the new finder coming to Leopard. I see what I hope is the first baby step towards my dream operating system. That is, a tag-based file system. A tag-based file system means there are no folders, every file simply exists on your hard disk. You organize your files by assigning tags to them. The biggest advantage to this is simple, your files can appear in multiple places at once. Say you’re working on a presentation for next Tuesday, you’re also collecting documents for Steve in accounting (there’s always a Steve in accounting). Which folder does your Power Point (Keynote) presentation go in? If you still don’t get it, use gmail exclusively for an entire month and tell me you still prefer sticking your email in folders.

What apple did with the new finder was integrate the iTunes model of information management. As pragmatically inefficient as iTunes is, it’s an excellent information manager. You can instantly search out what you need. But even better, you can create dynamic searches called “smart lists”. Say you only want to hear the music you haven’t heard in a couple months, create a smart list. I swap out music on myiPod by assigning 5 stars to the tracks I want in a list called “Current Favs“. When I’m bored with a song, I can bump down its rating on the pod and it’s off on the next sync. Using that method, I never have to organize my music files,iTunes does it for me. The same should be for my OS. I shouldn’t have to organize my documents, my OS should do it for me.

The new finder is a good first step in this direction. It may even change my opinion of OSX and the newer whiter Apple. Some day soon I hope take that Mac Mini off of my TV set, and put it back on my desk.

All we hear from the entertainment industry is how precious their content is. Yet they protect it with the technological equivalent of the kind of lock found on a young girl’s diary. Perhaps you’ve seen a string of sixteen 2-digit hexadecimal values floating around the Internet. It’s getting pretty hard to miss lately. That’s all you need to unlock any and all HD-DVDs. The industry’s response? You better pretend that doesn’t exist or we’ll sue you!

Setting aside the fact that the cat is already out of the bag; and the method of encryption is laughable; Hasn’t anyone learned yet that this simply doesn’t matter? Years ago a young Norwegian named Jon Johansen cracked the CSS protection in standard DVDs. For years now we all have had the means to copy DVDs the same way we copied VHS. Oh yeah, copying didn’t hurt VHS either. So what is the problem? I’m really not sure, except that once again the market has to suffer not from customers but from producers.

Frankly, I whole heartedly believe that downloadable content is going to make the high definition disks the modern Laser Disc. But, just to prove the absurdity of this whole thing; I am presenting to you the infamous hex in the form of six colored squares.

Last Tuesday we went to see a taping of The Colbert Report. I must admit that these days I don’t have a whole lot of time for TV, the Report included. But I do catch most of it on YouTube. The card in the picture was our ticket in to the studio. We got VIP seating because we gots mad connectionz . My first reaction walking in was to the size of the set. Seeing it through TV gave me the impression that it was a lot bigger. At one point some audience members were asked to move in order to make room for the camera.

If you ever come to the show, bring a question with you. Colbert does a little Q&A before he starts. One girl even got an autograph out of the deal. I couldn’t think of anything good so I just kept my mouth shut. Colbert’s performance was just impressive to watch. He did the entire show in one take; stopping only between acts, so that the crew could reposition for the next scene.

High recommendations for anyone who likes the show and can get out to NYC. I’ve never been to a TV show taping before but I think it’s safe to bet that this is one of the more fun ones. From what I hear, regular tickets aren’t that difficult to get either. I did have one disappointment, no free samples of Americone Dream, I’m still waiting for that stuff to come to VA.