Nick Starr.com : Nick Starr dot com

This is a great little read. I don’t want to spoil it, but you will need to follow the jump to finish the story. Here’s the beginning:

 I wake. For a moment, I stare at the ceiling trying to remember something. Something important. Something important happened last night, but the details escape me. Something fascinating yet sinister, like touring the CIA offices. Something exotic yet somehow familiar, like putting hot sauce on meatloaf. I wonder if I have a hangover. I wonder why I am thinking about the CIA and meatloaf. I roll onto my side.

There is a strange woman in bed with me.

A lot of things happen at once. First, I realize that this is the most beautiful woman I have ever seen, and I am a lucky, lucky man. Second, I realize that this is not my wife, and I panic. Third, I realize that she’s awake, has been watching me sleep. Fourth, before I can really react to thoughts 1 and 2, she smiles at me and speaks with a lovely accent I can’t quite place: “So. You like new wife, yes? Yes. Up now, I make breakfast.”

She gets out of bed and stretches, perfect curves sliding under silky lingerie and momentarily making me forget about breakfast, meatloaf, and whoever it was I was married to before last night. She seems to know this, and smiles at me again, but apparently she’s serious about making breakfast. She turns and strides confidently from the room. As she does, I see for the first time the large Microsoft logo splayed across her back. My stomach lurches as I suddenly remember everything.

Read on

This video features a bit of coarse language, but it’s pretty funny to watch Steve Jobs battle it out with Bill Gates in iWorld:

[YouTube]qHO8l-Bd1O4[/YouTube]

At work I’ve installed a MSDN copy of Vista Enterprise Edition, and I am really enjoying it. I want a copy of Ultimate so that I can have all of the Media Center extras.

So, I am purchasing 2 copies of Vista. One for my pc and one for my MacBook Pro. I also am getting Office 2007 to give that a test run, and find out if it’s all worth the hype.

So far, I am in love with the Aero Glass and look/feel of the OS. As you might know I am a huge mac guy, but this puts the mac Finder to shame. I REALLY hope that Finder gets an upgrade in Leopard, otherwise Vista has the mac beat visually.

This is a great read for anyone who has ever purchased an iPod or music from any online music store. Steve Jobs tells it like it is, that DRM isn’t working and the big music companies are still selling over 90% of their music DRM free.

He goes on to say that, “If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store.”

I think this would be a great thing. He also statest that where 2 billion songs were sold last year online with DRM, over 20 billion were sold without.

I think this is a very bold move to put right on the front page of Apple.com, but I also think that he’s right. DRM sucks, and the best part is that Apple (the number 1 seller of online music and portable music players) thinks so.

Read it here

I have found this feature to be a bit annoying, the “Cancel or Allow” for nearly every single thing you do on a Vista system. On a Mac you get this type of dialog box when you are installing a new program, and must enter the root password.

On Vista, it literally gray’s out your entire screen until you press cancel or allow.

[YouTube]p79F-qdCCDU[/YouTube]

A necessary evil on Vista? Sure, I don’t want my system getting filled with spyware or viruses.

Anthony, of the Opie and Anthony show on XM (aka Norton and Friends), recently purchased Windows Vista. Doesn’t look like the install went so well, so he decided to install it in another machine of his. Watch it below:

[YouTube]LxQm3IsSKAo[/YouTube]

Personally, I installed Vista Enterprise Edition on 2 machines this past week. One was a fresh install and took almost no time at all. The other was an upgrade and at 5pm when I had to leave, I was 5 1/2 hours into the installation, and only at 54% of the Completing Installation screen. One tip, make sure you have a graphics card capable of handling the Aero graphics. It just seems less cool without them.

Wow, I’ve been quite busy this past week, so a few stories slipped through the cracks.

• If you are on Vista and using iTunes, Apple recommends you shouldn’t of upgraded yet, but since you have download this file to help fix the problem.
• Spanning Sync has re-opened it’s beta doors for syncing between iCal and Google Calendar.
• Apple Inc. and The Beatles have hugged it out and made up. There was no ad in the superbowl, but from the keynote at MacWorld, looks like the Beatles songs will be in iTunes soon.
• Colts win the Superbowl 29 to 14.
• Parallels for the Mac announced Release Candidate 2 with cool updates, and major Vista support.
• Apple’s new Airport Extreme got unboxed, and I am debating about getting one.
• Adium finally announced version 1.0, although they are so far ahead of every other IM client out there, this is like a 8.0 release.
• Bill Gates, “doesn’t get it” when talking about the Get a Mac ads.