It’s really cool and gives a great overview of the backstory behidn Phyrra, the world of Duels.

So I tried again, this time I bought Revolver (a Guy Ritchie movie with Jason Stratham that I’d never heard of before). I let it start downloading. Found 28 Weeks (or maybe Days) Later and left that on while I watched some work. Then I watched Revolver. No issues. (Maybe it wasn’t true HD, the “buy” option is a little ambiguous about what you get - “iTunes Widescreen Format”, what the hell is that?). The quality was pretty good, the movie was reasonably good - although really weird.

I’m not sure it’s ready for primetime, but it is pretty cool. I’m getting ready to move so I haven’t spent much time setting up the configuration I want. I really want to have all this media on my Windows Home Server, but I have heard it is corrupting iTunes stuff in some cases so I’m waiting for a patch to mess with that. Until then I’ll just mess around with the Apple TV directly.

Microsoft should restructure into four divisions:

* OS
* Office
* Media and Advertising (Yahoo! and Live)
* Entertainment (Xbox 360, games)

I’m not sure where TV should go, probably Media.

Anyway, they should then appoint Susan Decker from Yahoo! to run the media group. I think they can turn that into a wildly profitable business by combining Yahoo!’s sprawling empire with the many good, but underutilized Microsoft web properties.

If they are really smart they’ll also figure out how to unlock the value of Flicker, delicious, and the various other web 2.0 properties that seem to get lost in the Yahoo! shuffle. In my opinion, this largely arises from trying to hard to tie everything together. I personally think a more loose confederation - both in terms of management/teams and actual presentation to users - could dramatically increase the value of a myriad of smaller Yahoo and Microsoft web properties.

Maybe they’ll also figure out how to unconfuse this giant Live initiative that Microsoft has going. I mean, who names something “Microsoft Office Word Live 2008″ …. the rate they are going it will be “Microsoft Office System Word Live 2009″ or something. It’s confusing and makes no sense. Maybe Microsoft Word and Microsoft Word Live might work - where one is a license and the other is free with ads or subscription.

Anyway, I could see how this merger could fall into the “putting two rocks together just sinks them faster” category, but I don’t think that is the case. I actually think it could force clarity in a way that creates compelling outcomes. Of course, that requires someone with a strong force of will to run these divisions and make them successful. But at least, divided up this way it’s pretty clear who the competitors are for each group and, in my opinion, a relatively clear direction for each group.

Good luck to them both - I hope they figure it out.

(Disclosure: I own Yahoo shares. So yes, I hope they go up either through a Microsoft acquisition or through something else. I think an AOL deal might be interesting too if they could actually figure it out - but the Microsoft deal is far better.)

– I welcome any posts on SSD performance from anyone that may read this.

Also, I’m happy to note that after a bit of escalation I found out that upgrading your video card does not invalidate your warranty. Obviously the new card (unless you bought it from Alienware) isn’t covered by the warranty, but the basic warranty is still valid. That’s good news.

My new Alienware is now in Phase 6 - “Integration” and I hope it will ship soon. I’ll be posting a review as soon as I get it.

I’m excited to see what Quad-SLI is like. Not to mention the cool Alienware case.

I’ve been planning to buy a really high-end desktop for quite some time now. I cannot figure out why Alienware doesn’t have a reasoanble configuration. So I asked them about adding another video card (for SLI) to an Alienware ALX (which supports SLI, but they don’t offer the new nVidia 9800gt2 or 9800gtx cards in an SLI configuration). I figured I’d just buy a second card (but it needs to match) and pop it in. This would also require an SLI bridge which normally comes with the motherboard, but I don’t know if they ship it. So this is the answer I got:

John L.: Hi, my name is John L.. How may I help you?
andrew busey: i want to buy a new alienware, but i want 9800gtx or 9800gt2 in SLI - can I add my own to the new A-51?
andrew busey: and if so will the SLI bridge ship with the computer and which 9800gt2 card do you guys use so I can get another one
andrew busey: or will you be offering it soon
John L.: As to whether we will offer it soon, I am unable to say as that information is not given ahead of time. Also adding it yourself would void the warranty.
andrew busey: adding a video card voids my warranty?
andrew busey: does that mean upgrading my video card voids my warranty?
John L.: Yes adding it on by yourself would. If you wish to upgrade it you would need to contact our tech support department for them to do it.

These guys are selling to the high-end, enthusiast market. This audience upgrades stuff in their PCs frequently. I’m pretty sure most of them don’t know it voids their warranty. If they did they probably wouldn’t buy Alienwares. Personally I’m guessing the CSR was just clueless, but I’m going to call and find out.

In the meantime, Alienware:

• Please add an 9800gtx or 9800gt2 SLI option!
• Please add an SSD option on the ALX. You have it on the ALX Crossfire - but frankly I’m not fond of ATI.

They also couldn’t answer questions about overclocking either. Very disappointing. Oh well.

Anyone that wants to recommend high-end PC makers that make quiet, very fast computers please post in the comments. Some of the guys I’ve looked at use these really obnoxious or cheesy cases, which sucks… but I’m running out of choices and I don’t really want to build it myself.

One last plea to Alienware: I want to give you guys my money. A lot of it. Please offer cutting edge configurations.

/rant

UPDATE: Please also read Alienware Redux.

Obama’s Capital Loss

The fact that it is in response to an Obama position - that raising capital gains to 20-25% is ok - is not what makes this article interesting. It actually has some pretty interesting stats that show increases in capital gains materially decrease tax income because the higher tax changes peoples behaviors.

My favorites:

The 2006 law forces banks and other financial intermediaries to police money flows that could be related to Internet gambling. It never received a formal up or down vote in the entire Congress; instead, Republican congressional leaders simply glued it on to an unrelated port security bill that was approved nearly unanimously.

Got to love the largely libertarian Ron Paul. I wish more of our politicians thought about things this way:

Rep. Ron Paul, the libertarian-minded Republican candidate for president, said that could lead to more Internet regulation: “Though I do not endorse gambling per se, people should make their own decisions. It’s a personal choice. I’ve always been concerned about this type of regulation and legislation–it’s likely to open the door (to control and regulation) of the Internet itself.”

And, the one issue I agree with Barney Frank on:

Rep. Barney Frank, the Democratic chairman of the full House Financial Services Committee, used the chance to talk up his bill that would effectively legalize–but closely regulate, including with criminal background checks and financial disclosure–the online gambling industry.

Why can’t we have a govenment that acknowledges personal responsibility?

I recommend reading it. Especially if you support Hillary.

• It randomly inserted  all over my old posts. What’s up with that? Can anyone tell me how to get rid of this because it makes all my old posts look like crap and it would take forever to go back and edit them.
• The new interface isn’t quite as good as the old one for writing posts. They should check out confluence - it’s awesome. (It’s an enterprise wiki - we use for all our internal stuff at Challenge Games.)

So my apologizes for the weird stuff in the old posts. Although if people are reading them they are probably deep linked or Google search results anyway, so they won’t see this. Ah well.

This article about the $53 trillion asteroid is a pretty depressing look at our grand retirment (cough cough entitlement) system and how it’s screwed. I’ve been reading a lot about this recently. I should have linked more of it. One article said we should have turned the social security fund into a sovereign wealth fund - which is a brilliant idea. However, I can’t seem to find the article.

Anyway, on to the other topic. I had been leaning strongly toward voting for Obama. I voted for him in the Texas primaries - the first time I’ve ever voted for a democrat. However, I’ll admit that I was swayed by the whole preacher incident. I’m not a huge fan of religious influence in government to begin with, but Obama calls this guy his “spirtual advisor.” Which, even if the guy wasn’t over the top, is disturbing. Although this is even worse, since from what I have read Jerimiah Wright is just plan nuts. It’s note like you can just ignore this either, Obama has been going to his church for 20 years - he had to know this person’s opinions, especially given the spritual advisor stuff. It’s just a sign of bad judgement and bad people selection. (Which are probably also the root causes of the failure of current administration.)

Anyway, this article (The Audacity of Rhetoric) was pretty interesting. It was written by Thomas Sowell at the Hoover Institute / Stanford. I don’t necessarily agree with everything in this column, but it’s definitely a point of view worth considering.

I haven’t written Obama off yet, but this thing has certainly killed off my enthusiasm. I went to a rally and even met him while he was in Texas - so I definitely put in some effort. The whole situation really disappoints me.

It’s a shame to put this in a negative post, but hey:

I will say Obama certainly has charisma and gravitas.