Scripting News for 10/14/2006

Yeah the Mets didn’t look like World Champeens tonight. 😦 

Army News Service: “Big Brother is not watching you, but 10 members of a Virginia National Guard unit might be.” 

Congratulations to the Detroit Tigers, American League champions. 

I’m getting tons of email saying the Mac Mini does have digital audio out.  

James Robertson says some of my recent political writings may have crossed a line that I said I wouldn’t cross. It’s possible, and I’d add, deliberate. Here’s the problem, when an opponent takes repeated advantage of your honesty, and people are dying because of it, and you believe that many more will, you start thinking about those lines, and whether or not they’re serving you. The only people I really will trash personally here are the leaders of the Republican Party, the President, VP, etc. I don’t feel good about it James, but I feel even worse about what could happen if they retain control of the US government. I’m also trying to do what I can to make “Republican” a dirty word, but that’s not an ad hominem, because it’s about a party not a person. You may disagree with it, and that’s fine, that’s what makes our country great. But I won’t stop doing it. “Republican” once wasn’t a dirty word, and maybe someday it won’t be again. But the criminals who run that party now are responsible for its sad state, if you have an issue about that, take it up with them (no better way than to vote them out of office, btw). 

Frank Shaw: “In this world of citizen journalists, who covers the city council meetings?” 

Nick Carr is a snarky dude, that’s for sure. I have a straight comeback. If we’re still in Iraq in ten years, we’ll be getting our news from regular people in the Iraqi populace, delivered via the web. Otherwise known as bloggers. Nick thinks he’s disproving my point, but he’s making it.  

AP: “Sniper fire, roadside bombs, kidnapping and murder are among the risks that Western journalists face covering the war in Iraq. Their Iraqi colleagues must cope with more: Families attacked in retribution for what they report, and possible arrest if someone believes them linked to the violence they cover.” 

If my receiver had an integrated HTTP server, I could tell it to switch to play music from my Mac Mini (that’s Aux 3, btw). Then I could send iTunes a network Apple Event (does it support XML-RPC?) to play my Grateful Dead for Travelers playlist. I could do this from my desktop computer, without even having to get up. I’m very close to audio-visual nirvana. When Apple partners with Denon, we’ll be all the way there. Or maybe Apple will go all the way and make an amp and speakers, better quality stuff than the boom box they’re selling now.  

BTW, curiously, I don’t need my receiver to have an FM tuner built in, because all the stations I’m interested in have Internet webcasts. That’s mainly three NPR stations: WBUR, WNYC and KCRW. There might be a couple of others that don’t yet have a net presence. The Mac Mini gets it for me. Cross another analog item off the list. 

Here’s something that seems pretty silly — there’s no digital line connecting audio from the Mac and the Denon. My settop box has this kind of connector, so when Fox broadcasts baseball in Dolby 5.1, my stereo plays what the mikes are picking up at Shea Stadium. The effect is stunning. It’s as if my ears are right there in Flushing, but it seems as if my head is as big as the stadium itself. Anyway, here’s the Mac, 100 percent digital from top to bottom, and the bits have to be converted to analog to be played through the digital stereo. Also, I see the day coming that MP3 compression isn’t going to be good enough.  

ConvergeSouth starts today in Greensboro, NC.