Britney Spears and Bill Gates

You know that famous video on you tube, the one with the tearful girl pleading with everyone else to leave Britney alone? Well I’m wondering if the next Microsoft commercial will be a teary eyed Jerry Seinfield pleading the same for Microsoft. Even I’m feeling a little bit sympathetic. Articles like this are still banging on about Vista.

I have already commented on my Vista experience and as I said it’s not horrible and it’s not unusable it’s just not as good as it should be. A lot of Vista’s problems come from the fact that Microsoft promised so many new features, including a whole new way to manage files, that just never materialized.

Seems Microsoft haven’t learned. I was really angered to see some of the write ups for the next version of windows (Windows 7). The write ups include long long lists of features. It is like Microsoft looked at all the complaints about Vista, even the conflicting ones, and said,

“We’ll fix that.”

And of course when the product arrives, no matter how good, it will be a disappointment again.

Come sob for us to Jerry.



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Bazza

World Music - Lazy or racist?

I have a bunch of MP3s and being a bit of a pedant they all have tag information. If I search by genre there a dozens of genres to describe each miniscule subset of rock, electronica, hip hop etc. but when it comes to music from India, Africa or South America it all gets the same genre, ‘World Music’.

You can’t tell me I need 14 different genres with ‘rock’ in them (not including metal and other rock related genres that don’t include the word rock) and yet anywhere outside of Western Europe or North America is just called ‘World Music’. Even Reggae and Soca are called ‘World Music’ in iTunes.

This is lazy but more than that, it is deeply insulting to other forms of music.

Agree?

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Bazza

PPPick up a Penguin

So there I was this morning, drinking my tea, feeling a little bit disaffected and disconnected. I was watching out of the kitchen window as the clouds bumped each other across the sky; the radio was on in the background. I slowly became aware of the music that was playing. By the time the piece ended I felt just a little more in step with this planet and its people. The piece was ‘Prelude and Yodel’ by Penguin Café Orchestra.

Who? I hear you ask. Well if you live in the UK and watch TV or live in the US and listen to NPR I guarantee you will have heard their music. It is used in many commercials, as theme music and as segment link music on radio, the music is impossible to catagorise (though iTunes uses ‘New Age’). It is sometimes whimsical and at other times dramatic. Typically it is woven from a number of simple phrases which combine for a more complex and moving river of sound. Songs will often start out feeling melancholy and end up feeling upbeat and you will realize you don’t know how you the transition happened

The founder of PCO and its main creative force was Simon Jeffes who sadly passed away in 1997 – I don’t know how musical genius is defined but for me PCO does it; elegant, apparently simple, moving and fun.

I’m not linking here to any of the sites that provide 30 second clips because it needs a little more listening than that – go on throw a few units of your local monetary currency and take a risk. I recommend ‘Preludes, Airs & yodels’ or ‘Broadcasting From Home’ for starters.


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Bazza

More From The Pedant Box

In 'Pixar need to study Elementary Physics' I introduced you to my pedant box ( things that I am fussy about). I must thank my friend Nancy for sending me this, which forced me to look into the pedant box and pull out two of the things that make me scream (occasionally laugh).

The first is, literally. This word, which has provided deep humor to ‘private eye’ readers for years, still makes me laugh often. My Collins Dictionary defines Literally as: “1. In exact accordance with or limited to the primary or explicit meaning of a word or text. 2. word for word.” Bearing that in mind when dear old Murray Walker announced that:

“… quite literally, I have my heart in my mouth!” It was a kinda gross mental image.

Another example came the other night when watching Fox61 news. The presenter quoted the leader of the Connecticut Democratic Party as saying:

“Joe Lieberman has literally broken my heart.” I wondered when Mr. Lieberman would be arrested for murder.

The second word is, Decimate. To decimate is to reduce by one tenth. (From Latin decimare ‘to take the tenth (decimus) part of anything’). So when the presenter on the Discovery show said:

“…The Chachapoya were decimated by 90%.” It was a mathematical nonsense.

Everyone’s pedant box probably has some of their own, what’s yours?

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Bazza