MacWorld or more accurately the World-Wide Developers Conference kicked off in full swing today. Announcements were more or less as expected:

The new apple monitors (including the 30″ model) now sport a nice aluminum feel to it. The big bonus on the 30″ models is the resolution of 2560×1600 (however, currently the 30″ model requires using the NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra DDL Card). That is much more than some of the other 30″ monitors I have seen. The costs are a little more than expected. They are: 20″ - 1799CND 23″ - $2799 CND and the 30″ - $4699CND. However, those still aren’t that bad when considering the NEC/Mitsubishi 30″ model is $4,503.31 and has far less resolution and capabilities. Like the previous line, they sport power features as well, housing 2 USB 2.0 ports and 2 firewire 400 ports. The other neat feature these monitors now feature is a setting save, which allows different users to automatically save color profiles, etc. Just too bad it doesn’t save the actual positioning of the monitor! Another very smart thing that apple has done is that they got rid of the ADC connector! These monitors now use a standard DVI connector, so they will work with PC video cards (as long as they support DDC)

The other news is the preview of Tiger (OS X 10.4). The new OS has a new finder (aka spotlight) which now has supposedly instantaneous search results. In addition to traditional search for files, folders, etc, it will now search for e-mail, contacts, calendar entries, etc. iChatAV is now multi-user capable, meaning you can video conference many people at the same time. Another interesting feature is the dashboard. The dashboard (seen in action here, as far as I understand it so far, is just a special utility that lets you grab widgets that you most commonly use. ie: should you want to quickly grab iTunes, you can use the dashboard to do it. Why this is an improvement over the dock, I am not sure yet. I think one of the most interesting features is the Automator. The automator is exactly what it sounds like. It is a GUI for creating scripts to automate regular tasks without the need for code. While this might lose some power from actual code, it is great for anyone who wants to do a cron-like job but doesn’t want to learn how to do it. Apple has always been famous for making things easy for those who want to just use the machine and not care how it works. Apple finally brings back Audio commands. This was a feature of OS 8 and 9. They’ve enhanced it somewhat, but from the looks of it, it still uses the old voices… yuck! However, voiceover supposedly supports learned voices, and better voice comprehension… hope they left out the jokes! Xcode 2.0 has also been released. Xcode 2.0 allows you to quickly and productively build OS X apps. I just hope that XCode doesn’t try to use too much Objective-C like it did before and has the ability to choose between C++/C/Objective C. OS X is even more optimized for 64 bit now. However, 32 bit is still available through the use of fat binaries. Apple now also has a better standard video compression. H.264/AVC is basically just MPEG-4 Part 10 with support for 3G and of course High Definition.

All in all, this year hasn’t shown much in terms of improvements. iMac was rumoured to get an improvement, but didn’t

I was wondering why we didn’t have a strip club in town (though Jin seems to have mentioned recently that we do somewhere). We now I have the answer, Canada is in the middle of a Stripper Drought. Canada imported 582 Romanian strippers last year. Canada only employs something 880 strippers, so that is a lot of foreign strippers (more come from the US, Costa Rica, and other such places). Apparently Romanians are selected because they speak both French and English and once their visa expire (usually a year), they go back home (thus not causing any problems for the immigration board).

Apparently Canadian women don’t think stripping is a good career. I’m in complete agreement, but come one! Some of you women should be thinking about it. I mean tuition costs have been going up. I recall someone once saying the reason the US has so many strippers is because of the high cost of education … how much further up does it have to go before we get some Canadian Strippers? jk

The part I loved the most of the article was: ” To obtain a visa, the women must show a resume to prove they can dance nude, pass an interview, medical and security checks.”. Apparently they get their Visas at the Canadian embassy in Romania … Garrek, IIRC, you were looking for work abroad? How about working at the embassy in Romania … checking out Visa applications? LOL

While it is still “rumour” at this point, apple is to release a new line of displays.

They are as follows:
20″ -> $999 USD
23″ -> $1499 - 1799 USD
30″ -> not to exceed $2999

The new displays are supposedly going to sport the aluminum casing to match the G5’s. As I mentioned, they are still rumours at this point, but giving that WWDC is only a few days away, rumours out at this time are usually pretty accurate. In other WWDC news, OS X 10.4 will be previewed and out for release in likely a month or two. Meaning I can’t get Server edition until Sept/Oct.

In other apple news, some people finally got around to showing the actual liquid cooling unit that is in the newer G5 (only the 2.5GHz G5 gets liquid cooled). It has been getting a lot of flack about it being an elaborate heat pipe, but the photo finally shows the radiator, pump, etc. all packed into one nice and tight unit.

Overall, I like the compactness of it. I just wish they could reduce the overall size of the G5 case now… it currently is larger than the G4… about the same size as my Thermaltake XaserIII case

Another possible (but I think this is the biggest rumour of them all and likely won’t see light of day… yet) is the iMac G5. Supposedly the case will be redesigned to be like a “pizza box,” with the Logic board behind the LCD screen. The G5 is apparently going to be a “hangable” computer.. Like I said… doesn’t seem likely just yet.

While it is only BMW at the moment, there is a new development for car audio BMW and apple have developed a car stereo (currently only in BMW 3 Series, and X3 and X5 SAV, Z4 Roadster or MINI) . Simply connect the iPod via the special connector (in the glove box… I actually don’t like this setup… leaves the iPod flopping around) and all the data is displayed on the stereo unit. To make things easier, the controls for the iPod are found on your steering wheel. Find out more here and watch the commercial here

So cool. The Register has an article about a new type of stun gun which doesn’t require wires to work. It fires a stream of plasma and then conducts the current across it. A picture of it can be seen here. This also ties into the story on slashdot today about the US Navy’s plans to deploy railguns on their DD(X) Frigates by 2011. Ladies and Gents, the future is here.

So I finally got a version of Firefox to work on my AMD64 Computer under linux. Firefox 0.9. First thing I noticed is that this site breaks under 0.9 (tested it on my parent’s Windows System as well, same result). I can’t figure it out, it works nicely under IE and 0.8 so the designers must have changed something with the way it renders CSS … but in what manner? Is it due to a bug on my part or their’s? ARGH! I hate web design!

Was flipping through the channels when I came across Jerry Seinfeld, Superman and American Express. Talk about wierd. I knew that Jerry had a thing for superman (according to TBS there is a superman or superman related thing in every episode of seinfeld).

Anyway, apparently all these shorts or on the web as well. Watch them here

personally I think they make superman look like a big idiot, but they are amusing

Someone tell me why I am still here in this country. After six weeks of having everything planeed for me, and having classes, now I get to plan everything for my stressed out parents. Help? Anyone?
Oh, and someone take away my credit cards. Now that my TD card decided I have no money, I am just racking up the credit cards… Bah.
Oh my god, it’s Manamana, in German. This country is more fucked than I thought.

Oh, and do people still want stuff? And what stuff?
17 days left, and I can´t wait to return to Regina. Fuck, that felt weird to say.

A new, internet-only (so far) Alien-vs-Predator trailer has been released. Me like.

Photos