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Not that I’ve ever really been into horse racing… But as a sports fan, yes, I pay attention to the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. And when a horse has a chance of winning the Triple Crown, I get excited about the Belmont Stakes. I’m old enough to remember watching Secretariat, Seattle Slew, and Affirmed win the Triple Crown.

When I moved to Maryland, where horses are part of the local culture, my interest in the Preakness Stakes rose a little bit, too. So over the last thirty years, I, like many other non-horse sports fans, have paid attention to the potential Triple Crown winners, and have been disappointed every time. Just so you know, I have never bet on a horse race, so I have no financial interest in any of this business.

This time was supposed to be different. This time it was supposed to happen. This time there was no reason, other than a flat out injury, that could prevent Big Brown from making history. But it didn’t happen. Instead, I watched the big brown horse fail to make his move on the back stretch and then fade as they turned for home.

The immediate assessment was that there was no injury. The horse didn’t show any signs of breakdown. I turned off the TV. I wasn’t interested in hearing any more details.

I’m just done with the whole thing. I’m done with watching the Kentucky Derby. I’m done with watching the Preakness Stakes. I’m done with watching the Belmont Stakes. I don’t care if a horse wins the Derby and the Preakness. Let me know when someone wins the Triple Crown, because until then, I’m not interested in listening to any more commentary or watching any more races.

Hey, the Phillies are 3 and a half games up in the National League East!

Tags: Opinion, Sports by BrokenClaw
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One of my pet peeves is hearing people, especially those in the broadcast media, use a particular word to emphasize their point, but use the incorrect definition of the word. Two such words are prototype and literal.

How many times have you heard a sports broadcaster describe a player as “the prototype of an NFL quarterback” or “the prototypical Major League closer”? The idea they are trying to convey is that the player has all the physical skills and attributes desired of that position. However, the word prototype does not mean that at all. A prototype is an unfinished, often nonfunctioning, novelty. The prefix, proto-, means “first” or “earliest form of”.

When manufacturers develop a new product, they often build a prototype for display and demonstration before continuing with full production. In this age of rapidly advancing technology, we hear the word prototype all the time. “Within a year, they produced a prototype of the stealth fighter.” “The trade show was full of interactive prototypes.” Can I buy this product now? “No, it’s just a prototype.” Those comments are all proper usages of the word.

However, when a broadcaster means to laud an athlete’s abilities, the correct word is archetype, which means the completed model of perfection, the principle example. Archetype is certainly not a word in common usage, although the prefix is commonly known in words such as archenemy, archrival, and archbishop.

The word literal imparts strict interpretation of the words used, by the letter, the exact meaning, verbatim. Literal is the functional opposite of figurative or metaphorical. Broadcasters, however, seem to use the words literal and literally, merely for emphasis. Vehix.com currently has a TV commercial running, in which the prospective car buyer extols the virtues of the website. She says, “You can literally take a test drive!” I think not. Perhaps you can virtually take a test drive.

I’ve also heard descriptions in the media such as “Literally every crumb was gone.” Really? I think practically every crumb was gone, unless the dog cleaned up afterward. “Her house was literally filled to the ceiling with stuffed animals.” Maybe her house was filled, figuratively speaking, to the ceiling. “The forwards on this basketball team can literally jump through the roof!” They’d be medical marvels! Another sportscaster described a team’s strategy against a formidable goalie by saying, they should “literally get in his shorts.” I think that would be a penalty. Another broadcaster informed us that a particular player “literally carries the weight of his team on his shoulders.” He’s obviously in the wrong sport.

Earlier this week Scott Van Pelt on ESPN was describing the Boston Celtics’ standing in the NBA playoff race. His meaning was that there wasn’t much of a chance that they could improve or worsen their position, so he said that they could “literally take their foot off the gas and coast” to the playoffs. It was a clever metaphor ruined by the misuse of the word literal.

I remember a scene from the movie, The Princess Bride. Vizzini, who is amazed at his pursuer’s tenacity, repeatedly describes the situation as inconceivable. Finally, his partner, Montoya, calls Vizzini’s attention to it: “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” He isn’t the only one who needs a dictionary.

Tags: Humor, Opinion, Sports by BrokenClaw
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I attended my high school Homecoming football game yesterday. There was no particular reason for me to go, other than that my mother called and invited me, and I had no other plans for the day. The last time I had been to a football game at my old high school was probably about fifteen years ago.

I grew up in Pennsylvania, only a couple hours drive from the metropolitan areas of Philadelphia and Baltimore, in a rural school district that still has a healthy dose of farm families. The population has not changed much since I moved away some 30 years ago.

The Saturday afternoon crowd at the football game was largely a mix of the general residents of the town and surrounding countryside that make up the school district — students, parents and children, grandparents, and just plain folk who enjoy watching local sports. To be clear, our little public school is not a football hotbed by any stretch of the imagination. It’s nothing like the fanatical high school football programs like you may have heard about in the South and Midwest. High school football and basketball games are social events, win or lose. My parents no longer have any grandchildren at this school, but they still attend high school sports together, and they still cheer for our alma mater. Sitting next to us on Saturday was a man and wife, around my parents’ age. When my dad introduced me, I realized that the man had been one of my Little League baseball coaches, and their son had been a teammate and classmate of mine.

But what really struck me was the appearance of the students at the game. Remarkably, that hasn’t changed much, either. Teeshirt and jeans or shorts was the normal attire. I didn’t see one student with spiked hair. I didn’t see any non-human hair colors. I didn’t see any body piercings. I didn’t see any exposed boxer shorts. I didn’t see any baggy black trousers with chains and zippers. Admittedly, a football game may not be completely representative of the student body at large, but it was certainly different from the variety of high school students I see in my daily life.

And in case you’re wondering… our team lost the game, 46-0. So the placekicker never made it onto the field, except at halftime, when she was escorted by her father as part of the Homecoming court.

Tags: Opinion by BrokenClaw
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Okay, so there are thousands of websites and blog posts which discuss, or argue, the rivalry between Microsoft Windows and Apple Macintosh computers. The problem with all of these arguments is that there is no point of argument. By that I don’t mean that there is no purpose (point) in arguing, but rather that there is no common assertion (point) to be debated. Windows is an operating system that can be installed and run on a wide variety of manufacturers’ hardware. A Macintosh is a computer built by the Apple company which only runs Apple’s own operating system (currently OS X), natively. In other words, a Macintosh (hereafter called a Mac) is a closed system, and Windows is a completely open system.

So what exactly is the point to be argued?

1. That the Macintosh has better hardware than a Dell, a Gateway, a Hewlett-Packard, an Acer, an eMachine, a Falcon Northwest, a Lenovo, a Voodoo, an Alienware, a Sony? Which one? Or are we arguing…
2. That Windows is a better operating system than OS X? How can you compare two systems that have completely opposite goals? Windows is designed to run on any of the above-named systems or on anything else you can throw together from parts off the shelf. OS X only runs on Apple systems. Or are we arguing…
3. That a computer user would be better off with a Mac than with a computer running Windows? There are a lot of variables to factor into that decision which can change the answer.

Mac users tend to be very passionate about their computer choice. What I mean is that some of them are very vocal in defending the qualities of their Mac. They’ll use the word love to describe their relationship with their computer. Just put “love my Mac” in Google and you’ll get about a hundred thousand results. Those same people, usually male in gender, tend to be faithful to the Apple logo as well, hence, the term Apple fanboy. They will purchase any product which has an Apple logo, and they dismiss any criticism of those products as coming from an Apple-hater. The fallacy of that attitude is that there are no Apple-haters. Why would anyone care enough about a piece of hardware to invoke hate of the company who makes it? Only a self-proclaimed Apple-lover can imagine the existence an Apple-hater.

It is often said that the opposiste of love is apathay, not hate, and the same is true here.

The vast majority of Windows users tend to be less passionate. They tend not to get involved in this debate because, quite frankly, they don’t view their computer choice as a vote for Microsoft. It’s just the computer they bought at the store. They have no particular allegiance to Microsoft and probably couldn’t even name another Microsoft product.

A co-worker of mine once came to me and expressed her desire to have “Microsoft” put on her computer, which, of course, was already running on Microsoft Windows XP. After some further questioning, I realized that what she wanted was the Microsoft Office suite.

Most home users have probably never even seen a Mac, because Apple doesn’t sell Macs in home electronics departments, and none of their family members have a Mac. If the computer at the store came with Linux, they’d probably not notice that there was no Windows logo on the box, and if they saw a big LINUX sticker, they wouldn’t know what it meant anyway.

At one time, Apple ruled the personal computer market. They practically gave them away to schools so that kids’ first computer experience was an Apple computer. But, like youth soccer in America, they were never able to catch on to the adult market. Apple chose to remain a closed system while the IBM personal computer, running Microsoft’s operating system, became so open that anyone could build one, which meant they would also run Microsoft’s operating system. As a result, a Microsoft system was much less expensive than an Apple system. And cost drives the mass market.

I remember when a friend of mine was sending his son to college to study engineering. His son told him he had to have a Mac, which at the time cost about $5000. That same year IBM-compatible computers were selling for about $1200.

Today the Mac’s pricetag has become more competitive. It’s still a premium machine, but there are more expensive Windows machines, especially those built for video games. But that’s really the point. The normal consumer sees Windows machines in the store starting at about $400. They don’t know what they want, and they don’t know what they need. They just go by the price. Only computer-savvy buyers go online and customize a Windows machine with high-end components that drive the price up.

Windows runs about 90% of the computers sold in the US. Apple computers no longer fill the classrooms. Most business software is written for Windows, so Macs have a hard time making mass sales to large businesses. Historically, Macs have found their niche in the multimedia arena — music, photos, audio and video editing. Macs are overwhelmingly the choice for those professionals. That’s why you’ll see an inordinate number of Macs and Apple logos in movies and on TV. It is still one of their main selling points to consumers as well.

While Mac users passionately extoll the virtues of their Mac, deep down, they don’t want you to become a Mac user. If you did, and Macs became as pervasive as Windows PCs, then the Mac would lose its place on the pedestal. Mac users would lose their identity…

“You have a Mac? Yeah, my grandmother uses one to check her email.”

Tags: Operating System, Opinion, Tech Comment by Smilodon
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It was all over the Internet and television news the past few days. Bette Midler was in big trouble for cutting down over 200 trees on her property in Hawaii without the proper permit. The story was more newsworthy because Ms. Midler has been an advocate and spokesperson for environmental causes for many years now. The news about her arboreal faux pas broke earlier this week when the Board of Land and Natural Resources finally took official action, recommending a $6500 fine and a replanting program.

Most of the early news stories failed to report that the misdeed actually took place last fall. On October 17, 2006, conservation workers noticed the trees being cut down and reported it to the proper authorities. Ironically, it was only eight days after Ms. Midler made news in New York City with Mayor Michael Bloomberg and her New York Restoration Project, where she and Bloomberg planted the first ceremonial tree in the Million Trees initiative. In other words, while she was promising a million trees for NYC, she was already planning to cut trees on her Hawaiian property.

By all accounts, Ms. Midler was unaware that she needed a permit to clear the land. After her people were notified, Ms. Midler hired a botanists to survey the damage and identify the fallen trees. In retribution, earlier this year she also hired professionals from the National Tropical Botanical Garden to design a replanting program. Her lawyer said she was concerned with replacing some of the non-native trees with native Hawaiian species, and that she would not contest the fine.

The missing part of the story is that no one asked, or at least no one reported, who actually cut the trees down. I’m fairly certain that Bette wasn’t out there with a chain saw. Did she just hire some guys off the street? If she hired an actual landscaping or tree service, why didn’t they know about the permit? Why weren’t they named in the investigation? It sounds like they got off without a scratch. Hey, maybe they can use this incident to their advantage. They could use it as a slogan: “Permits? We don’ need no stinkin’ permits!”

Yes, I know that’s not how the line went in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but that’s the way that most people know it, and that’s the way they repeated it in Blazing Saddles.

Tags: Humor, News, Opinion by Smilodon
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User-generated content is all the rage on the Internet. Sites like YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, and Digg.com have been highlighted in mainstream media, so a lot of people have at least heard those names, even if they’ve never visited the sites or understand how they work. These four sites in particular, and probably hundreds of others, exist only because users (that’s people like you and me) take time to submit their own material (known as content on the Internet) or to edit and rewrite someone else’s material.

The issue is, that if any of these websites become wildly popular, the owner becomes wildly famous and/or rich, while no compensation is considered for the hundreds and thousands of people who volunteered their time and energy to make it popular. So what is a person’s motivation for participating in these user-generated sites? Well, I can tell you my motivation.

For a few years, I was a volunteer editor for the dmoz Open Directory Project. I did it because I felt like I could improve the product for the benefit of other users who shared the same interests as me. I did it because these niche categories were mostly ignored on the ODP, and I felt that I could bring a level of expertise, from a technical standpoint, to edit these non-technical categories. So there was an element of self-satisfaction in the whole process. On my personal website I certainly included a link to my ODP categories (ODP always made it clear that the correct terminology is not “my category”, but rather, “the category I edit”) where users could see my name listed at the bottom of the page. I left the ODP because I found other interests which took up my free time.

I have never submitted anything to YouTube or the other video-sharing sites, but it seems to me that they actually provide a tangible service to their submitters. Similar to the photo-sharing site Flickr, they provide a free service for users to share digital media with family, friends, and the world. Of course, commercial ventures and wanna-be professionals use YouTube as free advertisement. Other amateur submitters hope to gain their proverbial 15 minutes of fame by producing a viral video.

The term viral has mutated once again. The biological virus is characterized by its ability to infect a host for the purposes of self-replication. It was adopted into the computer lexicon as a piece of malicious software which gets copied covertly to your computer, and then replicates itself onto other computers. Now the term is used to describe digital media, a video or audio track, which gets passed around intentionally from friend to friend as “you gotta see this!”

In the case of Digg, the users find news or feature articles from anywhere on the Internet, post the link on Digg, and then other users vote on which are their favorites. The stories that get the most diggs move to the front page. There is a definite benefit for the actual writers and publishers of the original content, in that, the higher they are on the Digg rankings, the more traffic they get to their site. In fact, sometimes having an article posted to Digg can generate so many visitors that servers on small websites get overwhelmed, causing the site to crash. This phenomenon is the well-known digg effect. For the people who submit stories, there is a competition of who submits the most stories that make it to the front page. As I see it, it’s similar to a video game. You play the game for the entertainment value and to get bragging rights for the top score, but there isn’t much benefit beyond that. So when the owners of Digg cash in their highly-valued website, all of those users who spent countless hours playing the game to make digg what it is, get nothing. But I don’t see any difference from a company that produces a popular product. People buy it, tell their friends, they buy it, and the company makes a lot of money.

The Wikipedia is another huge website built on user-generated content. In essence it is an online encyclopedia, but its scope goes well beyond the traditional 30-volume set of books from your childhood. But the most unique feature is its method of growth. Any user, including you, can add material to the Wikipedia. The advantage is that the Wikipedia can be instantly updated. For example, when Barry Bonds broke the career home run record, it was immediately updated on his entry and on Hank Aaron’s entry before the game was over. For those unfamiliar with the site, it may sound like Wikipedia would get trashed by a lot of false information. The theory, though, is that so many people view and edit the articles, that people with expertise would immediately correct any misinformation. I have added material to Wikipedia myself. In all cases, my contributions are concerned with historical people and events, and I always post my references as part of the article. My motivation is similar to what I described about the ODP.

So what is the current state of funding for these sites? dmoz ODP is funded by the Netscape/Mozilla family of Internet products. YouTube was purchased by Google from the original developers for 1.65 billion dollars earlier this year. Digg is still funded by venture capital investors. Wikipedia is a non-profit venture which is funded by donations. Recently I heard the founder of Wikipedia being interviewed. The host asked him why he doesn’t just put advertising on the site, and he defended his decision to keep it non-profit. From my perspective, if Wikipedia ever becomes a profit-generating site, it undermines the motivation for users to volunteer their time and effort. Consider the following scenario.

An elderly widow in our neighborhood could not maintain the general upkeep on her home. The mortgage was settled, but she had no means to hire someone to do general repairs or even to cut the grass. So the neighborhood association took it upon themselves to help her out. The neighbors donated funds and material, and every weekend there were volunteers to mow the lawn, paint the porch, repair the roof, and even replace part of the tile floor inside. After several months, her house was looking pretty good, and we all felt rather proud of our accomplishment. And then her son showed up. He took her out of the house, put the house up for sale, and sold it for much more than it was worth only months before. How do you think the volunteers felt then?

Tags: Opinion, Tech Comment, User Content by Smilodon
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