This article recently came to my intention, and I decided that it’s very interesting, so I would post about it. The bloggers who were of interest to Microsoft, were given a very nice Acer Ferrari $2,299 laptop pre-loaded with Vista, with very nice specs like a Dual Core 2ghz CPU, 2 GB of RAM, and a 160 GB SATA drive, along with a 1.3 megapixel camera. The blogger that came forth has also said that he is not the only one Microsoft has bribed, as others have come forth and said that they have been bribed, although some people are still keeping it a secret. If the blogger has a large amount of readers, and says even neutral things about Microsoft, they might be given a gift, and become inclined to write good things about Microsoft. Whenever you read an article about Vista and its good points, be aware that that blogger may be posting from a very nice, brand new laptop.

This is also not the first time Microsoft has done something like this before, when they paid for some bloggers to fly to test out the Zune early, to give their “un-biased opinion” on it, although Microsoft obviously expected them to offer praise of the product.

So, Microsoft, what do you say? Can I have a cool new laptop if I praise Vista? Please?

Something that people should take into consideration is proof-reading what they type, whether it be posts (Firefox has this handy spell checking feature for text fields, that I am using on my Dell laptop while my Macbook is sent in for repair) or online forms. A 21 year old German tourist trying to meet up with his girlfriend in Sydney, Australia, bought tickets and flew to Sydney, Montana, around 13,000 km away. This happened when he mistyped his destination on an online booking website, although he is usually good with computers, claims his mother. He didn’t say anything, because he figured he was flying through the US to Australia, until he was about to board a flight to a small oil town with around 5,000 residents.

The moral of this post, you ask? To always check over your work, and spell check everything you type, especially when submitting it to someone for review and critique. For the age of the readers that I have hopefully gathered, this means that you should always spell check your homework, projects, or typed tests before handing it in.

Because I am getting a Nintendo Wii for Christmas, or sometime after Christmas, I decided I would make a place for me and my readers (I have readers, right?), to see all of the coolest things available or soon to be availble for the Wii.

Wiimote
Another very cool thing about the Wii is the Wiimote, which is fun for games like Wii Sports, but also has many other uses. People are developing drivers for both Mac and PC so the Wiimote will be able to control their computers, offering a lot of fun in both First Person Shooter games, and things such as Google Earth.

Wii Sports
Wii Sports, which is bundled with every console, allows you to play many fun sports games, including Tennis, Golf, Baseball, Bowling, and Boxing. For people who don’t usually play video games, and think that video games should have been played like this from the start, this allows them to jump into the action with arcade style fun.

Virtual Console
With the Virtual Console, you will be able to play all your old Nintendo classics, such as the original Donkey Kong. NES games are being sold for 500 Wii Points, while SNES games are being sold for 800 Wii Points, Nintendo 64 games for 1,000 Wii Points, Sega Genesis games for 800 Wii Points, and TurboGrafx16 games for 600 Wii Points. To obtain Wii Points, you can buy them online or at retail or around 2,000 points for $20, which you can spend on Virtual Console games and other things. To play some Virtual Console games, a Classic Controller may needed, which is sold separately.

Opera Internet Channel
The Nintendo Wii comes with free internet access, so when Opera decided to develop an web browser for the Wii, it really caught on. Just recently, it was released in trial form, where it will be free until June, when the final version will be able to be downloaded in March for 500 points from the Wii shop channel, which is the same price as old NES games from the Virtual Console.

Wii Forecast Channel
Nintendo just released the Wii Forecast Channel, where you can find real-time weather around the world, without even leaving your couch. From the videos I have seen if this being utilized, it looks very natural to control the globe with the Wiimote, so I’m looking forward to this.

Mii Channel
The Mii Channel allows you create Miis, which are three-dimensional portraits of your friends and family, that are very easy to create. Once you make a Mii, you can watch it come to like in some Wii games. So your Mii can always be with you, you can save your Mii on your Wiimote, and bring it to a friend’s house.

I’m sure there is some other stuff, so if I left anything out, you can hit me up in the comments.

In the top left side of the address bar, you should notice something new. I finally made a favicon for the site. Now all I need is to make some error pages, then I am all set.

I’m still taking suggestions for posts, through email.

A bit of humor and irony never hurt anyone, right? The Golden State Fence company has been found in using illegal immigrants, and is now getting fined $5 million. The funniest part of the matter, is that this company is engaged in contracts to build fences along the US and Mexico border to prevent illegal immigrants from crossing this line.

I recently wrote a research paper on the subject of Internet piracy, so whenever I see an article such as this, I think a lot about it. This article has many good points such as the fact that with online file sharing, people have the opportunity to discover new types of music, and new artists. Because people can discover less popular artists, they can spend money on merchandise and concerts, where the artists get most of their money. It also mentions that while the RIAA reports that album sales are falling, it could be caused partly buy the increasing online distributors of legal music, such as the iTunes Store. These online distributors of music allow people to decide what songs they want off an album, giving them an incentive to buy the music if they believe they should not have to pay such a steep price for music, even if it is ridden with DRM.

Some points that I want to raise, from my paper, include the fact that CD sales are decreasing because sellers are starting to charge people a lot per album. Also, many people who pirate music off of the Internet would not be buying the music that they are pirating, so the music industry is not actually losing sales. While people are downloading music, it is increasing incredibly valuable exposure to the artist, which is the key to becoming successful. People also pirate songs because they believe they are spiting the record companies, that are already rich, and don’t give any respect to the artists. Record companies don’t allow the artists to hold the copyright over there music, and don’t allow the artists to distribute their music at their will, or now allowing them to create exposure for themselves, by themselves.

Basically, artists just need to learn to use Internet piracy to their advantage, and have their record companies allow them too.

Recently, 19 year old Christopher Montgomery who worked in an AMC theater in Rockville Center, found a zippered bank pouch while cleaning between seats, filled with $100 bills held together by rubber bands. After he found the money, he reported the finding to his manager, who discovered the money was $24,000. Soon after, the woman who lost the money tried to buy ice cream at a nearby parlor, when she made the blood-chilling discovery. She tried to recall where the money could have been, when she called the theater to find someone had found her money. Once she came back to the theater, the manager returned her every cent of the money. She said that the teen refused to accept a cash reward.

Anyway, the reason I am posting this is because I feel that this is an incredibly honorable thing to do. If you had been the teen, would you have returned it?

Earlier today, a new wonderful theme for Shapeshifter was released on the MacThemes Forums. It is a very unique theme, because the menu bar has a gap, and the whole theme has a very flowing color scheme and beautiful decorations for spotlight and the window close, minimize, and zoom glyphs. It includes an application skin for iTunes, Safari, Mail, Calculator, DVD Player, VLC, QuickTime, and iChat. If you like to modify the look of your Mac, I encourage you to download Shapeshifter and the theme. To see it in action, look at the screenshots portion of this website.

Download it here.

In a new holiday ad for Apple, PC gives a “C++ GUI Programming Guide” to the Mac, but when he does, pronounces GUI as Gooey. GUI is the Graphical User Interface, or how a user interacts with their operating system and software. Personally, I pronounce it like “Jee-you-eye”, so I was suprised when the refer to it like that. The reason I was shocked, is because it’s not an acronym like NASA or SCUBA, and because no one I know calls the USA “oosa.” Soon I learned that in the XEROX PARC and Apple history documentaries, the people interviewed refered the GUI as “gooey” since the word was coined. Personally, I’m going to continue refering to it as “Jee-you-eye”, but that is an interesting way of putting it, that I may adopt.

I wasn’t originally going to post this, but the blog is called Inside Conner’s Mind, and I was just thinking about it. Many people say that there is only one reason that there aren’t any profound viruses on a Mac, and that is its lack of a large userbase. That is a false claim. The reason this is false, is that even if Macs were more wildly used, and were more of a target for attacks, they would have less holes in the operating system, or security vulnerablities. This is because of the way Windows and Mac OS X are made, Mac OS X is more efficent, and safer. So, if you think the only reason Macs don’t have viruses is because no one bothers, you’re wrong.