Superheroes and the Law

I was reading some marvel digital comics and hit a few issues from the Civil War arc. That got me to thinking about what the relationship would be in the real world between superheroes and the government. I'll do a second post on how the topic evolved in the comics.

Civil War was meant partly as commentary on the Patriot Act and other policies of President George W. Bush. Because of this background, many of the plot elements were meant to show the government as being over-the-top. The conflict was over an act that required superheroes to register with and work for the government. The split between the heroes was between the conservatives on the side of the government and the liberals who opposed the act.

So, how would today's real world react to superheroes? This gets complicated because many heroes are not actually super. Some are costumes acrobats using archaic weapons (Captain America, Daredevil, Hawkeye). Batman would also be in this group but the DC universe has always been different from ours while the Marvel Universe is based on more closely on the real world.

Anyway... the next group consists of regular people using advanced technology (Iron Man, War Machine). The final group has the people with actual powers. These distinctions can get a little fuzzy. Daredevil has radar sense, Iron Man's armor has been part of him at times. There are also people who use technology or magic to gain powers. Giant Man originally used a gas and later a helmet to change size. Thor used to change back to a human if he lost hold of his hammer for more than a minute. I'm making the call that Daredevil could (and has) functioned with regular vision and that having real powers is more important than how they are obtained. That still leaves Iron Fist who has a real super power but seldom uses it but no classification is perfect. The fact that he can demolish a building with a single punch puts him in the people with powers class.

Now, I'm going to extrapolate from the real world and assume that conservatives would accept superheroes more readily than liberals. My reasoning is that most gun-control advocates are liberal and that the areas with the tightest gun controls are liberal strongholds. The same goes for militia groups and volunteer boarder-watchers. Conservatives support them and liberals hate them. Real vigilantism is very rare but the few examples break down the same way. Bernie Goetz, the subway shooter, comes to mind. He shot four men who were trying to rob him. Liberals believe that the four men were only asking for loose change and were shot unprovoked. Conservatives believe Goetz's version, that the four men threatened him and would have hurt him if he had not shot them.

So, my extrapolation makes me think that liberals would tend to see superheroes as a threat and might start examining the race of offenders caught for signs of racism. Conservatives would be more likely to take superheroes at face value. That would cover the costumed acrobats. With the exception of the Punisher (who would be on the Most Wanted list), the acrobats use bare hands and minimal weapons against criminals who often carry guns.

Things change when we get to the group that uses advanced technology. It is one thing to take out an armed robber with a stick. It is something quite different when you are wearing the equivalent of a tank. It is illegal to own a tank with a working cannon or a warplane with missiles. I doubt that the government would support someone wearing armor that could tear either of these to pieces. Again, I expect that more conservatives than liberals would support this class of hero but I suspect that the majority of the country would want some sort of official control over technology like this. There are strict prohibitions against using US military force against the citizenry. These restrictions would probably be extended to superheroes. They might be treated like firms such as Backwater Security (AKA Xe) which is allowed to carry weapons under contract to the government. Again, support for Blackwater is higher among conservatives than liberals.

This brings us to the people with real powers. Things get trickier when you have someone who cannot be disarmed. They might be forced to work for the government as in the Marvel Universe or they might be treated as contractors. There might be exceptions made for people with powers who do not use them as long as they do not use them. But how do you handle people who start fires because they are irritated or can wreck a city block in a fight over a girl? And this is just the Fantastic Four (in the Silver Surfer's second appearance the Thing started a fight over Alicia and a block of condemned buildings was leveled).

Liability insurance for these beings would be impossible. They would have to have federally-backed insurance like flood insurance.

Just being close to these heroes can be dangerous so they might be ordered to post their location and stay away from locations where people assemble, especially children. In short, we might end up treating superheroes like sex offenders.

Or we might go the route taken in the Incredibles and offer superheroes a deal - retire and receive amnesty or be outlawed. Regardless, I doubt that the real world would be as hero-friendly as the Marvel Universe.

Some Thoughts on Harry Potter

So, the Harry Potter series is half-way through the finale. I'm not going to write a review, just some thoughts on the movie. I don't think I'm including any spoilers that aren't in most reviews.

First, this isn't exactly a Harry Potter movie. True, it features Harry and most of the characters from the other movies but it abandoned the formula. All of the other movies followed a year at Hogwarts. Not this one. Harry never gets near it. The closest the movie comes is when some Death Eaters search the Hogwart Express. So, there are no classes, no moving stairways, No talking paintings, no Quidditch, not even Harry on a broom. We only see a few of the teachers and not for long. On the other hand, this movie refers to the other movies more than most - things like "the wand chooses you" and the composition of the wand.

This is not a kid's movie, either. Parts of it are scary. The rest would be boring to small kids.

Harry and company spend more time in the modern (muggle) world in this movie than in all of the others put together. It is a bit jarring having Harry and company order cappuccinos. An opening scene in Hermione's house underscores how different muggles live than wizards. Wizards tend to live in ancient houses in remote areas. The one exception is an ancient townhouse.

Wizards are also decades behind on technology. They use candles and other flames for light. Newspapers are printed on 19th century presses or by magic. The Hogwart Express is a steam engine. The most modern technology we see them use is at least 50 years out of date - the Weasley's flying car, Hagrid's flying motorcycle, and Hermione's transistor radio. Even the elevators at the Ministry of Magic and the toilets they use are pre-WWII. Harry's uncle's family is more modern but even they seem a couple of decades off.

For something really scary, think of what the movie would have been like if Chris Columbus directed it instead of just the first two.

Inkers

During the Golden and Silver Ages of comics, the process for creating a comic book page remained pretty much the same. First the artist would draw the pages in pencil, possibly using a blue pencil for guidelines. Then the pencils would be inked over, usually by a separate inker. Room would be left for word balloons. A letterer would fill in the word balloons in ink. Copies would be made of the pages and sent to a colorist. The printing process was in four colors with different shades of each color. This allowed 32 colors. From there, the colors were separated back into their individual four colors and sent to the presses.

Today I'm going to talk about the inker's role in the process. On the surface, his job is simple - just follow the pencil lines. In practice, the inker had a much stronger impact. Just deciding how thick to make the lines can have a major effect on the art. The inker also added the shading, cross-hatching, and zip-a-tone. An artist with a strong style might overpower the pencils.

For an example of how an inker can affect the finished work, look at issues #6 and #7 of the Silver Surfer. Both had the same artist, John Buscema, but issue #6 was inked by Joe Sinnott and #7 was inked by John's brother, Sal. The Surfer seemed to lose 100 pounds of muscle, going from the Silver Surfer to the White Wipeout.

During the 1950s and early 1960s, the inker also enforced the house style. Most of the time during this period, any artist was expected to be able to draw any comic book and the readers were not supposed to know the difference. Neil Adams, who is best known for his ultra-realistic work on Batman, did some issues of Archie. At Marvel (which was still Timely), the artist would come in for a monthly meeting with Stan Lee. Lee had a pile of scripts and would hand the artist the one on the top. There was no permanent assignment. Kid Colt might be drawn by Dick Ayers one month and Don Heck the next. Inkers who knew the house style could cover over any differences in the artists.

When Timely switched to Marvel, artists were assigned to individual books but, even then, there were exceptions. Most of the early issues of the Avengers were drawn by Jack Kirby but a few were not.

Things changed over the next few years. Artists were allowed to develop their own style and were assigned to books for long stretches. At the same time, inkers began to develop their own style. This was especially true of inkers who entered the field after the mid-1960s.

Joe Sinnott was one of the first celebrity inkers, but with a twist. The fans still hadn't noticed inkers but the artists were always concerned with how the finished product looked. Sinnott was in demand by artists because he made them look good. Stan reserved him for flagship books, especially the Fantastic Four which he inked for 16 years.

On the other hand, Vincent Colletta had the reputation of simplifying backgrounds and even eliminating characters in order to make tight deadlines. In his defense - many people consider his work on Jack Kirby's pencils to be the definitive look for Thor. I have a page of original art from a Frankenstein black and white that he inked over Val Mayerik's pencils and it is a really nice piece of art. Marerik had a light, sketchy style that was complimented by Colletta's inks.

One of the first fan favorite inkers was Tom Palmer. He was knows for imaginative shading and cross-hatching. He also colored his own work, combining colors and zip-a-tone to give the impression of more than the standard 32 colors. Palmer was involved in fan favorites such as the Roy Thomas/Gene Colon Doctor Strange and the Tomb of Dracula and contributed a lot to their atmosphere.

Tony DeZuniga was an artist with a strong style that carried over to his inking. He was from the Philippines. While he was working for Marvel in the 1970s, he hooked them up with several other Filipino artists who became mainstays at Marvel. One of these, Alfredo Alcala, became an inking star for his work on John Buscema's pencils on the black and white Conan books. Rather than rely on short-cuts like Zip-a-Tone, Alcala did all of his own shading by hand with intricate crosshatching and whirls. His inking over Buscema's pencils was so popular that their art overshadowed the stories. Robert E. Howard had only written a limited number of Conan stories and Marvel had been parceling these out carefully. Most of the Howard adaptations from the 1970s were done by this pair.

Another popular inker was Klaus Jonson. He is best known for his inking over Frank Miller's Daredevil during the 1980s when it was the top-selling comic book in the country.

I'm not sure why but inkers seem to have declined in importance since the early 1980s. Most inkers also pencil and it might be that the rise in comic books stores and independent comics allowed new artists with strong styles to launch their own works.

Despicable Me vs Megamind

Like the year that Ants and A Bug's Life came out, we have two CGI movies with sort of the same premise - a villain reforms through outside influence. Beyond that, the two movies are very different.

Warning, from here on I'm dealing in spoilers.

Despicable Me features the type of villain that James Bond usually fights. He thinks big and he has someone else actually build his gadgets. He dresses distinctively but is outfit is based on regular street clothing.

Megamind is a super-villain. He is centered on fighting a super hero. He builds (most of) his on gadgets. He wears an over-the-top costume. Even his pajamas are over-the-top.

Both have a main minion and a horde of lesser minions. Gru, the villain in Despicable Me, it is a scientist and a crowd of beings that look like walking Twinkies. Megamind has a minion named Minion (an alien fish in an exoskeleton) and a horde of flying disk-like robots.

Gru is fighting a competitor who is younger and better-financed. Megaman fights a pair of supermen with nearly unlimited powers.

Gru reforms after adopting three orphaned girls in order to infiltrate his rival's lair. Eventually he discovers that he has feelings for the girls and risk his life to save them. Megamind falls in love with a plucky woman reporter (think Lois Lane). He also discovers that his life was entered on fighting Megaman. After Megeman's apparent death, he spends a while looting and vandalizing Metro City but quickly tires of it.

Megamind starts with a flashback to his childhood. He was not naturally evil. He turned to evil after being rejected. We never get any backstory on Gru, just an opening sequence where he consoles a child who lost his ice cream cone. Gru make an elaborate balloon animal which quiets the child - until Gru pops it. He really was evil.

Despicable Me is the better of the two movies. The plot flows better. In the other hand, Megamind is visually better. Both are in 3D but Megamind make better use of it. This is the first movie with a flying superhero to really capture the flight. Regardless, both are very good and well worth seeing.

Both are successes, also. Despicable Me was a first movie from a new studio so expectations were moderate. So far the domestic box office is around a quarter billion. World wide box office doubled that for a total take of around a half billion. Megamind took in $60 million on its opening week and took first place in the box office two weekends in a row. It should make money but nothing like Despicable Me or The Incredibles.

Dino De Laurentis

The movie producer Dino De Laurentis died at the age of 91. IMDB lists him as having produced 166 movies, some of them in Italian. Some of his movies have become cult classics. Others, like The Battle of the Bulge, regularly show up on TV decades after they were filmed.

Only a few of his movies are relevant to this blog - King Kong, Conan, and Flash Gordon.

De Laurentis movies emphasized spectacle over everything else. Sometimes the spectacle got in the way of the action. King Kong, for example, is a very ponderous movie compared with the original. It has not aged well. The movie was heavily updated for the 1970s and the emphasis of the love story. The original featured multiple fights between the prehistoric animals of Skull Island and the humans and/or Kong. The remake eliminated all but a fight with a snake. The original ended with a fight between Kong and airplanes. In the remake this turned into an execution. The original set the standard for stop-motion animation. The remake used a man in a monkey suit (plus a very poor robot that is only seen for a couple of seconds). Regardless, the remake was popular when it came up and launched a year-long King Kong craze. The Peter Jackson remake was better (although it had its own problems) but failed to generate the same level of buzz. There was a sequel but the critics hated it and I never bothered seeing it.

De Laurentis's two Conan movies were better but they were also ponderous. Fights tended to be over in seconds in Conan the barbarian, the first movie. The second movie, Conan the Destroyer, is only slightly better. This is ironic since Conan was one of Arnold
Schwarzenegger's first movies. The first Conan movie threw every memorable scene from the stories together. Most of them lost their impact and the plot didn't resemble anything that Robert E. Howard ever wrote. The movie also stole a bit from The Empire Strikes Back with a villain, voiced by James Earl Jones, told the hero "I am your father." It didn't make much sense in Conan. The Conan movies were better than the King Kong ones and were gorgeous to look at, as well.

I don't have a high opinion of these other movies but I think that Flash Gordon is underrated. While it has a lot of the spectacle of the other movies, it also mixes in a stylized, tongue-in-cheek humor. It never bogs down the way the others do and it has aged well. Flash Gordon was made in the wake of Star Wars and was a box office disappointment but since then it has become a cult classic. Of all of De Laurentis's movies, this one shows up on cable most often.  

Portable Devices

Sony stopped making the Walkman cassette player this week. I haven't owned a working portable cassette player in years and I never paid the Sony premium price but it still made me reflect on all of the changes that have taken place over my lifetime.

When I was born TVs were pieces of furniture. The screen was fairly small and oval and the picture was black and white. It used vacuum tubes which were huge and took minutes to warm up. There were three networks and no cable. You used an antenna for reception and your signal quality depended on the time of day (signals carry further at night) and the weather. You had a channel selector for the first 13 channels. There was an outer dial that you had to use to tune the reception once you put it on the channel. For channels above 13, you put the selector on "V" and used a separate VHF selector. That one did not have pre-selected channels. You had to hunt around or leave it on one channel (chances are that you only had one selection, anyway). A "portable" TV could be put on a stand and rolled from room to room but you had to be careful because the cart was top-heavy.

Radios were also big with tubes. The only portable ones were installed in cars. The tubes were so big and used so much electricity that there was no possible portable version. Chances are the radio only received AM.

If you wanted to record something then you needed a tape recorder. This used open reel tapes. The tape was 1/4" and held on a reel. To use it, you had to unwrap a foot or so of tape and start it on an empty reel. Then you carefully fed the tape through the read/write tape head and took up the slack. The length of the recording was based on the length of the tape so an hour tape was much bigger in diameter than a half-hour tape. Again, this was big and heavy with tubes.

Devices based on transistors started becoming common around 1960. The transistor radio was the first really portable entertainment device. The early ones only received AM radio and had lousy fidelity but you could take it anywhere and, compared with vacuum tubes,  it seemed indestructible. If you wanted to listen by yourself you could plug in an earphone and listen through one ear.

TVs changed. Color became common. As transistors replaced vacuum tubes, you started seeing "instant on" sets that didn't need minutes to warm up before you got a picture. Remote controls were invented. The first ones were sonic with four buttons (on/off, channel up, channel down, and mute). Picture tubes became nearly square instead of oval.

By the end of the decade you could get a real portable TV. This had a 5" black and white screen. The set itself was around a foot in each direction.

Cable TV was becoming common with additional channels. These were mainly independent stations offering syndicated shows (mainly reruns of successful series). HBO didn't start until the 1970s.

Small tape recorders were available by the mid-1960s. These were just small open reel recorders that took the smallest (and shortest) tapes. In the early 1970s, new types of tape were introduced. There was the cassette tape which the Walkman used. This was a small version of the open reel tape with the tapes permanently attached to the two reels. The tape had four tracks - two for stereo in each direction. There was also 8-track which had four stereo tracks on an endless tape. 8-track was popular in cars for most of the 1970s because it would play until removed. Cassettes had superior quality and became dominant in the 1980s.

The 1980s saw the Walkman which was a cassette player small enough to carry while running. Radios also became smaller, often being incorporated into a cassette player and FM became the dominant signal.

Sony also introduced the first pocket TV - the Watchman. This had a tiny black and white screen. The screen size increased and the overall size decreased rapidly. While this was a nice innovation at the time, the decline of broadcast TV made these into niche devices.

CDs were invented in the late 1970s but were slow to be adopted. Purists insisted that the digital sounds were too "cold". Also, CD player were very sensitive to vibration so runners could not carry one with them. It wasn't until the 1990s that players could read several seconds ahead and compensate for vibrations.

Early video tape units were available in the 1970s but they really took off in the 1980s. Prior to that there was no way to time shift a TV show or to watch a movie at home except through broadcast. Video disks using disks a foot in diameter were also introduced. They offered better picture but could not time-shift and flopped. Rather than join with other makers on a common format, Sony used their own Beta format. The quality was not much better and the selection of tapes was worse so this flopped.

Hand-held recorders were introduced in the mid-1980s. Prior to that you had to shoot 8mm movies without sound. The film was expensive and the results were usually poor. The first hand-held recorders used separate tape decks. The combination could weigh 20 pounds or more and was bulky. Camcorders combining the camera and recorder came out soon after.

With the camcorder, the biggest constraint on size was the VHS cassette. There were two alternatives - the VHS-C (for compact) which was a short VHS tape in a smaller cassette. This needed an adapter to play on a regular VHS player. Sony introduced their own format (again), using an 8mm tape. In order to play these back you had to hook the camcorder to the TV.

DBDs were introduced in the late 1990s and were adopted quickly. They were sold for less than VHS tapes, they were smaller, they offered a better picture, they never needed rewinding, and they usually had extra tracks. Players reached casual purchase prices quickly and they worked with existing TVs so the price for adoption was very low.

When the CD was introduced home PCs were just coming out and none had hard drives so no one thought about copying. By the early 1990s "multimedia PCs" were becoming standard. These could play CDs. By the late 1990s, they could also copy CDs and save them as compressed files - mainly MP3s.

The first MP3 players either had a limited amount of memory or used removable memory. These could hold at most a few hours of music, probably less. Apple's first iPod was a major innovation because it had a built-in hard drive that could hold megabytes of music. Later models could also play video. Sony tried introducing its own players using proprietary formats and failed (does anyone see a pattern here?).

Which brings us to the end of the Walkman. It was an innovation in its day but today's MP3 players and phones are infinitely better. During the 1980s Sony was the biggest name in portable entertainment devices. Now they are an afterthought.

Overlooked Horror Movies

I've seen a few lists of best and scariest horror movies. There are a few that have been overlooked.

Black Sunday - 1960. I've always been hard to scare but I watched this movie alone at night when I was around 13 and it scared the crap out of me. My wife who saw it at the same time with friends and it scared them, also (and they were two years older).

The movie stars Barbara Steele in dual roles as a witch and as her decedent. It was an Italian production at a high point in Italian movies.

It begins with the witch being executed by having a spiked iron mask driven into her face. She was supposed to be burned after that but a rainstorm put out the flames. She was buried in a tomb in a stone coffin with a cross on top and a window so that her corpse could see the cross.

Two centuries later a pair of doctors are on their way to a convention when their carriage loses a wheel. While waiting for it to be repaired, the doctors explore the witch's tomb. A bat attacks the older one and he tries to hit it with his cane, breaking the cross and the window. He reaches through the window and takes the mask as a souvenir but he cuts himself in the process and a drop of blood drips onto the witch's dried-up remains. This is enough to revive the witch a bit. She brings her servant back to life.

The doctors have taken rooms for the night. The servant poses as a messenger for the local noble and summons the older doctor and leads him through the castle. He does not notice it but he has been led into a secret passage.

The doctor stops to look at some old furniture. The servant with the lantern continues on for a ways. When the doctor catches up he finds the lantern floating. He reaches for it but it drops, leaving him in the dark.

There is a door but it opens into the tomb and the door to the outside is swinging shut. He rushes to it but is too late. Then the door he entered through swings shut. Trapped in the tomb the witch's coffin starts to vibrate then explodes, exposing the partly restored witch.

I'll leave off the description from there.

The Others - 2001. This movie is best seen in a dark theater. That's how I saw it. The audience was mesmerized. In the light with people talking you completely lose the tense atmosphere.

The movie is about a woman and her children living in a haunted house on an island off the British coast just after World War II. Nichole Kidman stars as the mother who is so tightly wound you expect her to snap any moment.

Son of Dracula - 1943. This is a real oddity for 1940s vampire movies. There is no real heroine and the hero is insane by the end of the movie. While poor by today's standards, this movie is the first to show Dracula changing into a bat or a mist. Lon Chaney Jr. as the Count makes no attempt to imitate Bela Legosi. Still, it is one of his better roles. He is much more impressive as the Count than the tortured Wolfman.

The Beast of Morocco - 1968. Not even IMDB has much information on this movie except that it was an independent production. It is sort of a cross between the movie She and a vampire movie with an ageless vampire queen living in the desert. By day she has to take shelter but at night she comes back to life and the ruins of her palace are whole again. Will the hero join her in her half-life? Does he even want to?

Looking back at Trek

Star Trek: The Next Generation (ST:TNG) has been in syndication for over a year. It has been over 20 years since this show premiered and more than 40 since the original show (ST) began. That is enough time to properly compare them. Here are some random thoughts on the two shows:

In general, ST:TNG was better done. It had higher apparent production values and the characters were better-developed. This does not make it the better show.

ST was more exciting. Kirk and company were usually saving planets, eliminating space monsters, or overthrowing repressive governments, Prime Directive be damned.

The crew on ST got out more. Nearly every episode involved a trip to an alien planet. Granted, these were often sets and looked like it. ST:TNG has many more episodes taking place entirely on the Enterprise. This gives the show a more claustrophobic feel.

There was too much techspeak on ST:TNG. Writer Ronald Moore takes about it here.

Moore said he used to put the word tech in his scripts as a placeholder, which led to stultifying dialogue like this:

Picard: "Mr. La Forge, I need you to tech the tech."

La Forge: "But Captain, if we tech the tech then the tech will override! The tech main engines might tech too much!"

It didn't seem so bad at the time but looking back at the show, this is a major fault. It also shows up with the number of "level 1 scans" and "level 2 diagnostics". They tossed these terms around constantly like they meant something.

ST:TNG was closer to real military structure. On Star Trek, Kirk was in charge and Spock was second in command. After that, the chain of command became murky. Any time Spock was in charge, one or more crew members became insubordinate. Then there is the whole issue of the bridge crew being the first to beam into a hostile situation.

ST was brutal. Having characters die, even red-shirted extras, was a new thing in the late-1960s. This was cutting-edge at the time. I remember watching the show in first run and being shocked a few times when someone died unexpectedly.

The crew members of ST:TNG were too competent. Anyone could make anything from anything. Warf could generate a force field from a communicator. Data could make anything from his own spare components.

The Holodeck was too real. People were constantly getting trapped in the holodeck. In one episode, Picard and Data couldn't even tell that they were in the holodeck. It was just a room. You should be able to walk in a straight line until you hit a wall then feel for the door.

ST only had two good seasons. When it was in first-run, I knew that the third season was the last. The show felt tired. Most of the episodes revolved around Kirk falling in love (again).

The first season of ST:TNG stank. Episodes were just plain boring. Some were also dumb like the time Wesley was sentenced to death for breaking a window on the planet of joggers (seriously). The first season seemed bad at the time and it has not improved with age. In contrast, some of the second season episodes are among the best.

Even though ST:TNG lasted longer, it did not run out of energy. Some of the episodes in the last couple of seasons were weird but the show never felt as tired as the original did in its last season.

Both shows were much better than Deep Space 9 or Voyager.

Sherlock Holmes

In the last year we have seen two very different interpretations of Sherlock Holmes. The first was a movie, set in Victorian England and starring Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. The second is a series set in modern England and currently running on PBS.

Both versions offer new interpretations of Holmes and Watson. The traditional movie version of Watson as an older, befuddled foil for Holmes is gone, replaced by one who is Holmes's friend and contemporary. More jarring, both versions also show Holmes as someone who becomes self-destructive unless occupied by mental challenges.

The Holmes stories hinted at several things not shown in prior movies. Holmes was a drug user who practiced the pistol by writing "VR" and engaged in prize fighting.

The TV show Holmes is somewhat better behaved but still goes out of his way to be annoying.

After seeing the pilot for the PBS series, I want to see the Downey version again. It was a lot more fun.

There is also the issue of bringing Holmes into the present. I know that it was done in the Basil Rathbone movies in the 1940s but I never considered those movies to be very good. Also, they did not go out of their way to reinvent Holmes the way that the PBS version did. Holmes was very much a product of his time. Move him and you have a completely different character. Naming him Holmes is intellectual dishonesty.

------------------------------------------- SPOILER -------------------------------------

I also have an issue with the plot of the pilot. Holmes didn't really find the serial killer or deduce his motives. The killer relieved himself to Holmes and explained his motives. Worse, the final question was left unanswered - who was smarter?

The serial killer made people poison themselves. He did this by pointing a gun at them an making them choose between two identical bottles containing identical pills. One was poison, one was harmless.

Even after Holmes realized that the pistol was a fake (do they actually sell convincing gun-lighters in England?), Holmes took the killer's challenge and seemed to be about to swallow one of the pills. This left the question unresolved, did Holmes pick the right pill?

There is also the Princess Bride scenario - both pills were poison and the killer as immune.

The Walled Apple Garden

Apple has long exerted total control over the IPhone. Now it is expanding this trend to its Mac line of computers.

First the is the app store for the Mac. Potentially, a few releases in the future, you will get all of your programs and much of your web content from apps with Apple getting a cut and selecting what is allowed through arbitrary standard.

The new Macbook Air shows several interesting developments. It does not have an optical drive. This is in keeping with Steve Jobs's belief that the only proper way of getting content into your computer is through his store. An optical drive lets you rip tunes from the CD you already bought or play the movie you just got in the mail from Netflix. Apple doesn't get a cut of either of those. Granted, you can use the USB port to add a separate optical drive but Apple has made it clear that they will never support Blu-ray.

Just to cover all bases, you can't change the hardware, either. They use proprietary screws to keep you out and proprietary memory to keep you from doing your own upgrades.

None of this is surprising. When the Mac was introduced in 1984, it violated your warranty to connect it to a peripheral made by anyone else. Apple did not offer a hard drive so for the first year, customers had to choose between violating the warranty or living with a single floppy drive.

It looks like those days are returning.

Phone Wars 2010

The Microsoft Windows Phone 7 was released this week with the first units actually being delivered early next month. Only a few phone companies will offer the WP7. Verizon and AT&T are not among the first adopters. There is also a report that Verizon will begin offering IPhones in 2011.

So what does this mean to me? Nothing. Ask me again in a couple of years when my current plan expires.

I suspect that the majority of the smart phone users are like me. I recently upgraded to a Droid Incredible. The WP7 would seem like a downgrade since there are so few apps for it. The IPhone might have been a bigger deal if Apple was offering it through Verizon last Summer but Steve Jobs is so heavy-handed about managing his phones that this was enough to make me prefer a Droid, regardless.

Apple has a good thing with its AT&T contract. They actually get a cut out of everyone's monthly phone bill. In exchange for this, only AT&T could sell IPhones. That gave the rest of the market an incentive to come up with an alternative and some breathing room for it to mature. The IPhone is supposed to have a slicker interface but a lot of the features of the most recent IOS were there to catch up to Android. Then there are the problems with the antenna and the glass back. When Verizon finally does start carrying IPhones they will be just one in an assortment of smart phones.

Microsoft may have missed the boat completely. By all accounts, their new phone is solid and has a unique interface. It is still missing several features like multi-tasking and cut and paste. I just used both of these to copy a phone number from an email to a contact.

There has been a lot of talk about how fractured the Android market is. There is no standard phone so developers must write for a variety of screen sizes and allow for touchscreen and hardware keyboard. By contrast, there is only one IPhone model per year and Microsoft has very strict requirements. This actually gives Android an advantage. Not everyone wants the same phone. The huge screen of the Droid X may appeal to some but I wanted a smaller phone. Android also allows the carriers to add branded content. Some of this is junk but it offsets the price of the phone.

The phone market has a very real chance of replaying the early 1980s PC market. Then, as now, Apple made their own computers with little variation. You could be certain that anything would run on any of their computers. Regardless, the PC was more open and quickly left Apple behind. Ironically, this time around Microsoft looks more like Apple.

Spider-Man Big Time

Wired has a preview of a new Spider-Man story arc, Big Time. They say:

Peter Parker finally gets a career and nets A-list supporting acts in Big Time. In the upcoming Spider-Man story arc, writer Dan Slott and artist Humberto Ramos give the wise-cracking superhero a maturity upgrade.

Who cares? Peter had already grown up, married, gotten real work. Then Marvel decided that they preferred him as a single, poor student so Mephisto whipped out nearly everything that happened since Gwen Stacy died. They proved that Peter will not really grow up. At any time they can just say, "oops, do-over".

The new Spider-Man movie has him in high school. When it comes out, will Marvel roll back even more of Peter's life and make him a teenager again?

When Vampires Were Scary

Last Friday, TCM showed four Dracula films by Hammer Films. Three starred Christopher Lee s Dracula. Two had Peter Cushing as Van Helsing. This was from back when vampires were scary. They didn't sparkle and if they made you into a vampire you became a souless monster instead of a brooding teenager.

The first of the movies, the Horror of Dracula is loosely based on the novel. There were significant differences. Johnathan Harker was an undercover vampire hunter and became one himself. Dracula attacked Harker's fiance, Lucy, as revenge after Harker destroyed his companion. They never said where Lucy lived but it was not England since Dracula was able to return to Transylvania by hearse.

When they made the movie, Hammer made several artistic decisions. Their vampires were more realistic - they could not change form. The movies were shot in color which was still unusual for horror movies so they made the best of it. There was lots of bright red blood. There was also a generous amount of cleavage. They were sensitive to how easily a horror movie can turn into camp so they were careful to understate the wooden stakes. These were short and business-like with lots of blood spatters.

At the time, Peter Cushing was Hammer's star. Christopher Lee was cast in lesser roles, often as the monster. Hammer's Frankenstein also starred Cushing with Lee as the monster.

The movie was a big hit. Hammer made two sequels that did not have Dracula. One of them was terrible and barely had vampires. The other one, the Brides of Dracula, featured Van Helsing and a blond Baron Meinster as the vampire. Meinster wasn't nearly as scary as Lee's Dracula but the movie does have some memorable scenes. In one, a vampire's victim is lying in state in a locked coffin. One of the padlocks falls off. The caretaker is trying to figure this out when the other locks fall off.

After that, Hammer revived Dracula but left Van Helsing out for several movies. In Dracula Prince of Darkness, a quartet of tourists gets lost and are offered shelter in Dracula's castle. That night one of them is killed, hung upside down over Dracula's ashes, and his throat slashed. Dracula revived and feasted on the tourist's wife then pursued the other couple. He ended up drowning in a frozen lake.

While Dracula was in this movie, he did not have any lines beyond snarls. Either the director thought that he was more menacing without lines or Lee refused to say the dumb lines written for him, depending on which version you believe.

In the following movie, Lee did have some lines although they were kept to a minimum. The movie was "Dracula has Risen From the Grave or You Can't Keep a Good Man Down" - a typical title from the late 1960s. While exorcising Dracula's castle, a priest falls down the mountain and his blood revived Dracula. Angered because of the exorcism, Dracula attacks the Monsignor's daughter. He is eventually impaled on a giant cross.

According to IMDB, this last movie was Hammer's most profitable. Feeling that there was an inexhaustible demand for vampire movies, they pushed them out as fast as they could film them. By the early 1970s they had flooded the market and Hammer went bankrupt.

The Flintstones

The Flintstones turned 50 yesterday. It lasted six seasons with several follow-up spin-offs and sequels. It held the record for longest-running prime time animated show until the Simpsons blew them away (season 21 just premiered last week).

Basically the Flintstones were an animated version of the Honeymooners. There were a few differences besides the obvious. The Flintstones were more affluent. They lived in the suburbs and Fred had a fairly good job in the construction industry. During the 3rd season the Flintstones had a baby, Pebbles. Half-way into the next season their best friends adopted a boy, Bamm Bamm, the strongest baby in the world. In contrast, the Honeymooners lived in a run-down apartment building and were childless.

The show had a number of running gags around how prehistoric life was the same as modern life. The Flintstones had stone-age equivalents of all of the modern comforts. Dinosaurs provided power. Birds and small mammals acted as vacuum cleaners and garbige disposals. An instant camera had a wood-pecker who would carve a picture into a small piece of stone.

The show was an example of Hanna-Barbera's limited animation. The characters were designed so that entire episodes could be filmed with no or limited new drawings. Each character had a torso that never moved and covered the hips and shoulders. This only left the lower arms and legs and head to move. The heads were oversized so that the mouth could be animated on a stationary head.

Even though the animation was primitive, it did give the writers a lot more freedom. The Wikipedia entry dismisses the plots as standard 1960s sitcom plots but that understates the show. New locations were cheap - they only required a new background painting - so the show was freed from the fixed set. Because of budget constraints, most sitcoms took place in a few regular sets. Shows seldom ventured out into the sunlight.

By the show's sixth season it had jumped the shark. It introduced the Great Gazoo, an advanced alien with nearly magical abilities who could grant any wish. Gazoo was unreliable and the wishes always came out wrong. This is usually considered an example of a show that has lost its novelty.

The show moved from prime time to syndication and Saturday morning. Pebbles and Bamm Bamm became teenagers and received their own hour-long Saturday morning show.

The show inspired a pair of big-budget, live-action movies produced by Steven Spielberg. The movies were box office hits but won some Razzies.

The Great Race

Tony Curtis's obituaries include the first time he worked with Jack Lemon in Some Like it Hot but overlook their second movie, The Great Race. That is a shame. The Great Race is a marvelous piece of slapstick.

The movie centers on the rivalry between The Great Leslie and Professor Fate. Curtis played Leslie who was always perfect. He wore white outfits which never got dirty. His (white) car was always clean. His teeth sparkled. He was a noted escape artist (a nod Tony Curtis's role as Houdini) and held various speed records.

On the other hand, Professor Fate, played by Jack Lemon, always failed, often crashing into a barn and landing in a pig wallow.

The race itself was from New York to Paris, the long way. A race like this was actually held in 1908. The organizers expected that the cars could drive across the frozen Bering Strait. This didn't work out and the racers had to ship their cars across. In the movie the cars rode an iceberg.

While most of the movie was a straight-out comedy, it did have an adventurous side-plot near the end. This involved a Prisoner of Zenda plot around Professor Fate. The Professor's assistant, Max, and Leslie had to rescue the others climaxing in a duel between Leslie and an evil baron played by Ross Martin. This gave Curtis a chance to show off his fencing skills and his buff physique.

Jack Lemon and Peter Falk as Max got to chew the scenery. Curtis as the straight man managed to keep from being overshadowed.

The Great race also starred Natalie Wood at the peak of her career.

The Onslaught Crossover and Thor

Marvel recently digitized Thor #502. This was the last continuous issue of Thor dating back his first appearance in Journey into Mystery #83 (prior to that Journey into Mystery was a horror comic. It continued to be "Journey into Mystery Featuring the Mighty Thor" for years and kept the numbering when the name was finally changed).

The early 90s were not kind to the original set of Marvel heroes. Tony Stark was replaced by a teen-age version of himself. The Human Torch had married the Thing's girl friend who later turned out to be a skrull impersonating Alicia. The Thing had gone through various mutations and scars.

Thor was replaced with an architect for a while then went crazy. In the last few months leading to issue 502 he lost his powers and started speaking like a regular person. He regained his powers and got a new, rather silly, costume. He and Odin had one of their many arguments and Odin created a "new" Thor from a mortal named Red Norvell. The rest of the Asgardians, including Odin, had been transformed into humans to hide them from the god Seth.

As far as sales were concerned, Spider-Man and the mutant titles were doing great but the other comics sales were doing poorly.

The Solution was a total reboot. This came about through Onslaught - a company-wide event. Onslaught was a psionic being in almost indestructable armor. Once his armor was breached, he could be destroyed if enough humans entered his psionic body. The Avengers, the Fantastic Four, and the Hulk did this, apparently dying.

As part of the continuity-wide event, the comics for the various heroes would would "die" had a final issue taking place the night before the final battle. This is where Thor #502 comes in.

Thor and Red Norvell are camped across the river from Manhattan, preparing for the battle ahead. At one point Thor tries to induce a berserk rage and fails. He reminisces about his early life and how be came to be transformed into the mortal doctor Don Blake. His old girl friend, Jane Foster, appears and asks for his help as a doctor. Near the end of the issue the death goddess Hella appears and offers Thor a spot at her side. He considered the offer but opted to fight beside his companions even if it meant certain death.

It was a quiet recap of Thor's run and a nice finale to his original run.

The follow month the comic book Thor again became Journey into Mystery with a rotating series of stars.

In the meantime, the Avengers and the Fantastic Four were transported to a different world with a similar history to ours. In this world, Thor was trapped in ice instead of Captain America and the newly-formed Avengers freed him. That Thor turned out to be unstable and was killed and replaced with our Thor.

Eventually the heroes returned to the Marvell Universe.

Journey into Mystery continued until #521 when the heroes returned. It was replaced with a new Thor title and the numbering was started over at #1. With the "Heroes reborn", Marvel put new creative teams on all of the relaunched books. Most of the continuity from the last few years was conveniently forgotten and the new creative teams were given a blank slate to work from.

In Thor's case, he was merged with another mortal, this time an EMT named Jake Olsen, and sent to free the missing Asgardians.

The Thor comic book started using a dual numbering until it was canceled with issue #85/#587. It was brought back as volume three with a new #1 but picked up the original count at issue #600.

The Black Hole

Rumor is that Disney is going to remake 1979's The Black Hole.

Why?

The original was rushed into production after Star Wars became a cultural (and box office) phenomenon and came out months before The Empire Strikes Back. The Black Hole promised great special effects, cute robots, and a Star Wars style plot.

What it delivered was ok special effects (the effects got an Oscar nomination), most done through puppets on wires, annoying Disney-style robots, and a confusing plot with a mystifying ending. The black hole itself changed from an astronomical and physical oddity into a metaphor for hell.

The movie featured an all-star cast, all of whom were slumming. The critics hated it. At the time it was the most expensive movie Disney had ever produced with a $20 million budget. It did manage to turn a profit but Disney swore off big-budget productions like this for a time.

This was also Disney's first PG-rated movie.

Word is that the remake might feature a little science.

Cross-comic Events

For decades the events in one comic book pretty much stayed in that comic. No matter how momentous, only one hero or team would be involved. Marvel changed this a bit. When city blocks in New York started sinking, the FF had to convince the Avengers to let them handle the situation. Regardless, this was confined to a few panels in a single comic book.

Heroes did meet each other but not often. Marvel had a lot more cameos and team-ups than DC but, again, these were limited. One of the most memorable was an Iron Man/Sub Mariner fight that was continued across both characters' strips.

During the 1970s, there was a little cross-over between comics. Newly-hired writer, Gerry Conway, introduced a common villain to all three comics he was writing - a mysterious and forgettable figure called Mr. Klein. Artist Jim Starlin came with a stable of characters that followed him from his first assignments on Iron Man to Captain Marvel and eventually Warlock.

Steve Englehart was a huge fan of Starlin's and wanted to be part of Starlin's plot. Accordingly, in Captain Marvel, the mad titan Thanos sent a fleet to attack the Earth. It was stopped by the Avengers, in their own comic book. The Avengers battled the Defenders in a multi-issue cross-over.

For Halloween one year, Conway, Englehart, and Len Wein did a crossover between Thor, Batman, and the Beast (this was the first Marvel/DC cross-over and was unauthorized). The cross-over was limited to the supporting cast and some events (i.e. a car being stolen).

In the early 1980s, Jim Shooter changed everything with the Secret Wars. This was a 12 issue limited series staring nearly everyone in the Marvel Universe. It was also the first company-wide cross-over. All of the affected heroes were called to Central Park where they vanished. When they returned things had changed. Some changes took place during the Secret Wars. Others took place in the heroes' absence. A few happened right after the heroes' return. Spider-Man returned with a new costume. Tony Stark, who had been drunk and living in a cardboard box finally sobered up. Storm lost her powers.

A follow-up changed the formula. Secret Wars 2 was a nine-issue limited series but each month additional chapters took place in different comic books.

That set the stage for DC's original Crisis event. Crisis took place in a limited series but spill-over events happened in nearly every comic.

For the next couple of decades, Marvel would have cross-comic events but they only had a lasting affect on a small core of comics featuring Warlock and Thanos. Marvel also had some cross-mutant events that mainly affected the various "X" teams. DC did some fine-tuning on their original Crisis reboot.

Things changed again in the last few years. Marvel launched their Civil War story arc which covered a total of something like 80 comics. It seems like they have had one major event after another since then. DC has done the same thing. In both cases the goal seems to be packaging a major story arc so that it can be sold as graphic novels.

I think that these big events have been overdone. They lose their impact after a while and they become self-limiting. It becomes too difficult for the casual reader to follow a few comics.

Predicting the Future

It's a tricky business showing the future. Novels and movies usually get it wrong.

The Back to the Future trilogy was on last weekend and the middle movie begins with a trip to 2015. The movie was made in 1989 so they were predicting how things would be around 25 years in the future. We are not quite to 2015 yet but we can make a pretty good guess at how accurate Back to the Future was. Lousy.

Things they got wrong:

Hovercars, hoverboards, portable fusion reactors, self-fitting/self-drying jackets, dust-free book covers, holographic movie ads, weather control, electronic sleep inducers, and artificial intelligence waiters. The legal system streamlined by the elimination of lawyers.

Things they got right:
Self-tightening shoe laces (just announced last month and inspired by the movie). Teleconferencing. Wide-screen/flat screen TV.

In addition, there are a few things that are close enough to get partial credit. It looks like USA Today will still be around. The teens in the movie walk around with their pockets pulled out or their pants worn inside-out. That's close enough to the continuing trend of guys wearing their pants pulled down to the crotch and showing their underwear.

This is one in a long line of failed predictions. 1984 was not like 1984. 2001 and 2010 have passed without manned flights to Jupiter or talking computers.

It is tough predicting the future. Often writers take current trends and project them. In the 1960s, everyone expected the space program to continue so lunar colonies and trips to other planets seemed likely.

It is also tempting to throw in major technological advances like flying cars. The physics breakthroughs needed to do this may never happen but nothing says future like some form of personal flight.

Some things are totally skipped. Hardly anyone predicted today's interconnected computers. The best example that I can think of was Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. This was written in 1975 and had a "data-net" that corresponds to the Internet. It even had computer worms (this is where the term came from, nerly a decade before the first actual worm was written). Even that version of the future was passed years ago. I am not aware of anyone who predicted that all of the world's knowledge would be available through my phone.

While writers missed the interconnected computers, artificial intelligence seemed so easy, usually with negative results. For every Robby the Robot, there is a HAL 9000.

In the end, the future is never as interesting as predictions make it out to be but it is safer and more comfortable.

Blogging from a Droid

Ok, it can be done. The touch screen isn't too bad. It will probably get ea sier with practice. The autocomplete could be a lot better. I'm not going to do any long posts this way.

Published with Blogger-droid v1.5.8

Substitutes and Inferiors

One of the funniest superhero comic books ever published featured a team-up between Superman and the Legion of Substitute Heroes. A close second is on sale now, featuring the Legion of Substitute Heroes and the Inferior Five.

Some background. The Substitutes were people with superhuman powers who failed the try-outs for the Legion of Superheroes. Considering that the Legion accepted members who could bounce or eat anything or make things lighter, you had to be pretty lame to be in the Substitutes. Members included Night Girl who had super strength unless she was in sunlight and Stone Boy who could turn into immobile stone (a sub-plot in the Legion/Ambush Bug story involved figuring out how to dig Stone Boy out after he got embedded head first in pavement).

Both groups lived in the 30th century and started out as a backup feature to Superboy. The Legion eventually got its own book and the Substitutes made occasional appearances along with the Legion of Super-Pets.

The comic in question also featured Ambush Bug in his second appearance. At the time Ambush Bug was a slightly crazed guy in a head-to-toe green suit with gold trim and antennas. He could teleport almost instantly. In his first appearance, Superman realized that Ambush Bug had a swarm of bug-like drones that acted as receptors for his teleports. Eliminate the bugs and Ambush Bug was powerless.

In the Legion team-up, Ambush Bug hitched a ride on Superman's cape just as he started traveling to the future. They ended up in the 30th century. Ambush bug released a new swarm of bugs from his antenna tips and started having (destructive) fun. The Legion proper was away so the Substitutes tried to reign him in. None of them were up to the challenge and they finally had to resort to a Looney Tunes bit - putting a "do not touch" sign on a Phantom Zone projector. Ambush Bug just had to touch and ended up capturing himself.

The new comic builds on the Substitutes long-standing inferiority complex. After reading about the Legion saving the world with the help of the Doom Patrol and a time bubble, they decided to steal a bubble and save the world before the Legion did. After a few mistakes and alternate worlds, they ended up with the Inferior Five instead of the Doom Patrol.

The Inferior Five was created during the Silver Age as a parody comic. The team was a group of second-generation heroes who (sort of) inherited their powers. Their leader was Merry Man, a 98 pound weakling. Other members included Awkward Man who had super strength but tripped a lot, the Blimp who could float, White Arrow who was a skilled archer and afraid of nearly everything. The final member was a curvy blond with super strength named Dumb Bunny. There is a telling line in the Legion/Five team-up where she says, "You have to be pretty smart to act as dumb as I do."

I'm giving all of this background because the comic skips over it. The book is entirely plot-driven. The heroes are rather interchangeable and have little time to use their powers. Which doesn't keep it from being hilarious.

Using the Droid Incredible

I've had my Droid Incredible for a few days - long enough to put it through its paces so I can put down my general impressions.

First, size. The screen is nice. It is almost exactly the same size as my Zune HD although the whole package is larger (after all, the incredible does everything the Zune does plus it is a phone and camera and it has speakers).

The phone is very responsive. Programs just come up. The only time there are waits is when an application is refreshing its data. The phone is fairly intuitive. I figured nearly everything out by myself although I still recommend reading the manual.

It works well as a phone. Calls are clear.

I've only taken a few pictures but they look good. There is an option to upload photos to a variety of common sites. It did have some trouble uploading the photos to Picasa. It would make it part-way through and fail then repeat a minute later. This runs in the background and I might not have noticed it if I wasn't paying attention to the process. The camera was set to its highest resolution (8MP). I reduced it to 5MP to see if it helps the upload time but I have not tried it yet.

I don't have any hand-on experience with the IPhone but my understanding is that you have to do some functions through your PC. Droid is not like that. You can connect it to a PC and it will function as a USB disk but everything else is stand-alone.

I've tried playing a little music and a few videos on it. They work fine - as good as on my Zune. It comes with a 2 gig MicroSD card and I want to replace this with a larger one before loading it up. I probably will not use it to replace my Zune since the Zune has much better battery life (that may be inaccurate - I keep my Zune turned off when I'm not using it and the phone is on all the time, so the Zune may only appear to have better battery life because it is used less and usually does not have WiFi on).

I got spoiled with my previous phone. I had a long-life battery on it and it could go for days without charging. The Incredible needs daily charging. I used it a fair amount of time yesterday. I checked emails, did a little web-browsing and a lot of poking around the Marketplace. That used up around half the battery.

I've check out the Android Marketplace. Supposedly the IPhone has several times more apps than Android. I suspect that a lot of these are duplicates of each other. There are a lot of duplicate Android apps. Many of them are add-supported but the ads are subtle.

I downloaded a couple of ebook reader apps and some free ebooks. I already had the Borders one for my PC and it downloaded the books to my Droid that I already had on my PC. My only complaint with this one is that it will only display in portrait.

The virtual keyboard isn't too hard to use in landscape mode but I have a lot of trouble with it in portrait. Good thing that most applications support either orientation.

I was able to compare web browsing between my Droid and my Zune. Both reformat according to orientation and both support pnching to resize the display. The Droid does a lot better job with this. On the Zune, zooming does not reformat the text, it just pushes it off to the side so you have to move the display back and forth. The Droid reformats the text which prevents this.

I can check my home email but in text only. It is not formatted for HTML.

Android is a full multi-tasking operating system. You can leave a program, return to it, and it is still open with all of its data. This is a strength but there is no explicit way of closing many programs. There is an app that will list running programs and allow you to close them. My battery would probably have lasted longer if I had installed that earlier. This is about my only complaint with the android implementation.

Android 2.2 (Froyo) has been released for the Incredible but was not installed yet on mine. Even without it, I was able to play some video but I didn't do enough to really test it out. I will update this when Froyo arrives.

Choosing a Droid

I spent a while at a Verizon store comparing Droid models. There are currently three top-of-the-line Droid models - the Droid X and the Droid 2 from Motorola and the Droid Incredible from HTC. All have similar CPU and memory and all have or will have the newest version of Android.

I eliminated the Droid X right off the bat. This model is just too big. I know that some people want the biggest phone they can get but this is too big to carry in a pocket.

The Droid 2 and the Droid Incredible are similar size. The Incredible is slightly smaller and the corners are more rounded. The Droid 2 has a slide-out keyboard which makes it a bit thicker. The Incredible has a better camera, the Droid 2 comes with more memory.

Originally I thought that the keyboard would be the deciding factor but after trying the Incredible's virtual keyboard I decided that I could live with it.

Outside of the keyboard, the biggest difference between the two is the user interface. Both makers have made their own tweaks to Android. This ended up being the deciding factor. The Incredible was a bit more intuitive. Even after I figured out how to do the same thing on the Droid 2, it still seemed a bit more complicated. Also, I preferred the Incredible's smaller size and rounded edges. I use my phone for taking pictures so the higher-definition camera should come in handy.

The store had the Motorola models in stock but the Incredible had to be shipped. This was fairly painless. It arrived the next day.

More after I've had some hands-on.

Windows 95

I got an invitation to the live-via-satellite launch of Windows 95 which was held 15 years ago today.

Prior to that most people used a variation of Windows 3.1. Gaming was a nightmare. Most games ran from DOS and needed a custom boot disk in order to get the right configuration.

I was using IBM's OS2 which was a big improvement. It could run Windows programs from within OS2. You could also set what configuration DOS programs were to have so you could run most games without having to reboot with a special disk. In many ways, Windows 95 was a step back from OS2. Regardless, it overcame so many problems that OS2 became irrelevant overnight.

Windows 95 had four main advances. One was the new GUI featuring a Start Bar which Microsoft still uses. Another was that it allowed long file names. Prior to Windows 95, you were limited to eight characters plus a three character extension. It had a new memory manager which solved the problems with boot disks for games. Finally, it supported networking, out of the box.

It is hard to believe but prior to Windows 95 most PCs were stand-alone. If you wanted to connect to another local PC then you had to install a network card and special drivers. If you wanted to connect with the Internet then you normally needed a modem (which was usually built-in by then) and different drivers. Windows 95 came with network drivers. It also came with drivers for most CD-ROMS and some other common hardware.

Technically, Windows 95 was two products - Windows and DOS. Microsoft decided to package the two of them together to sink OS2 and DR-DOS - a strategy which worked perfectly.

The launch event didn't go perfectly. At one Bill Gates picked a couple of people from the crowd at Microsoft and sent them off to install Windows 95. This was supposed to show how easy it was. When they checked on the installers a while later they said that everything went perfectly but you could see that one of them had gotten the Blue Screen of Death.

With Windows 95, Microsoft squelched its competitors. I already mentioned DR-DOS and OS2. It also took over the office suit world. Prior to Windows 95, most people used Word Perfect and Lotus 1-2-3 for their word processor and spreadsheet. The Windows launch was delayed for more than a year. During that time, corporate purchases dropped. Businesses did not want to buy new software that would be obsolete as soon as the next operating system came out. Microsoft had deeper pockets than it competitors and could handle the lag in sales better.

When Windows 95 finally did come out, a new Office 95 suite was released at the same time. There was a long list of programs written for Windows 3.1 that did not run perfectly on Windows 95. Rather than waiting for new versions of the programs, many businesses switched to Microsoft. Consultants recommended that this was the only safe approach.

In 1994 Microsoft was the dominant desktop operating system vendor but was, at best, second place in office suites. By 1998 it was a near-monopoly in operating system and office software, all because of Windows 95.

Late in 1995 it became obvious that Microsoft had missed something important - the World Wide Web. Windows 95 came with a buggy web browser. Most people used Netscape instead. Somehow Bill Gates had become so focused on upcoming technology that he missed the importance of the existing Internet. In his book, The Road Ahead, he only mentioned the Internet a couple of times.

Back then, Microsoft was nimble. By 1998 they released a new version of Windows. This one had a perfectly good web browser pre-installed. In fact, Microsoft swore under oath that it was so deeply embedded in the operating system that it could not be removed. Netscape quickly lost market share after that and eventually ended up providing the basis for the free Firefox browser.

Te last few years have not been kind to Microsoft. It has lost desktop market share to Apple and Linux. Firefox is challenging its browser share. The "cloud" has made the operating system irrelevant. It's smart phone operating system, which was originally based on Windows 98, is dated and the replacement is not due out for weeks or months. It had a couple of operating system flops with Windows ME and Vista.

Still, on this anniversary, we can look back fifteen years to when it seemed like Microsoft was unstoppable.

Somewhat Surreal

Yesterday I was watching the movie International House on my Zune HD. This movie written as a vehicle for as many comedians and performers as possible. Ostensibly it stars W. C. Fields but he only has a cameo appearance until half-way through.

The plot revolves around various people coming to a Chinese hotel to bid on a new invention - the television (also called the radiovision a few times). The cast includes Burns and Allen as the hotel's doctor and nurse, noted character actor Franklin Pangborn as the hotel manager, notorious gold-digger Peggy Hopkins Joyce as herself and Bella Lugosi as one of her ex-husbands.

The Chinese inventor tries to demonstrate his television by showing the six-day bicycle races but keeps tuning in on musical numbers instead - things like Cab Calloway's band doing a number about the "Reefer Man" (yes, this is just what it sounds like) and Rudy Valley singing a slow love song to his megaphone (before electronic effects, singers used things like a megaphone to change their voice).

the movie came out the year before the Hays Code was created so many of the jokes and situations are fairly adult for the time.

The movie is a great way to see some of the best talent of the 1930s, even if tastes have changed considerably since then.

The surrealism came when I thought about the difference in technology. Here was a movie about television, a product which was still in its infancy, and I was watching it on a device that makes a television look like a tinker toy. I doubt that anyone who watched the movie when it came out in 1933 ever dreamed of a pocket-sized device that could store hours of movies and music and play it back.

How Does ST:TNG Hold Up?

Star Trek, the Next Generation has been in syndication for several months. It is interesting to see how the show holds up around two decades after it was produced (it ran from 1987 to 1994 so some episodes are more than 20 years old and others are less).

My memory of the series was that the first season was awful but that it improved a great deal half-way through the second season and continued to be a good show after that. Re-watching it confirms that impression. Some of the first season episodes are painful to watch and the second season had some really strong episodes.

Not everything holds up. In retrospect, a lot of the techno-babel was just that, terms thrown at the viewer to justify a plot point. Data is more annoying than he was during first runs but Wesley is not (this may be a personal preference).

Many of the weakest episodes relied on the formula of strong A and B plots. Sometimes the B plot seems to be thrown in just to include more cast members. The best episodes either skipped the B plot or blended it into the A plot seamlessly.

The various members of Star Fleet seem a little too perfect with little room for personal quirks or failings. Any episode with Lt. Barclay is a relief since he is the closest to an regular person. His first appearance was a classic, involving holo-addiction. Let's be honest, if holodecks really existed then we would all be holo-addicts.

The holodecks have always been a complaint of mine. In one episode, Pickard, Barclay, and Data are unaware that they are in the holodeck. You would think that one of them would bounce off of an unseen wall at some point.

TNG managed a difficult balancing act. On one hand, the original show looked pretty dated by the 1980s. TNG is nowhere near the period piece that its predecessor was. On the other hand, the follow-up shows often went over-the-top with regulars dying during an episode only to be revived at the last minutes. In general, TNG holds up fairly well 20 years later, far better than most other shows from the late 1980s.

Superman Saved Family for Real

Actually, it was a copy of Action Comics #1 that turned up just in time to save the family home. See here.
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EReader Wars

Amazon has announced two new Kindles. These are respectable units with better contrast, longer battery life, and lighter weight. In fact, they weigh around 8oz or 1.5 as much as a Droid X. The best part is the price which is $140 for the WiFi version and $190 for the version that includes a built-in phone connection.

There is speculation about the cost of producing these. Informed opinion is that the $140 model costs at least $100 to manufacture and possibly as much as the list price. That is bad news for anyone trying to sell these at a profit.

I don't think that this is a consideration for the three big book retailers - Amazon, Barnes and Nobel, and Borders. They could just about give the readers away. In fact, they are giving away software that runs on other platforms. The object is to sell EBooks. The readers are incidental.

I've written about this before but the latest round of prices seems like a good time to repeat myself.

With the Kindle, Amazon had a chance to do for publishing what Apple did for music with ITunes. Their rivals recognized the danger and reacted. Time will tell if they reacted in time but the important thing is that they are still in the game.

Amazon made one big mistake with the Kindle. The IPod can play MP3s as well as content from Apple. Right now the closest thing to MP3s is the open EPub standard. The Kindle will not read EPub books, only Kindle books.

This is important to my wife. She might consider an EReader but she gets most of her books from the library. Our library system has provisions for checking out books... in EPub format. So that means that any reader we get will have to support that format. That means a Nook or one of the readers that Borders sells. That, in turn, locks us out of Amazon.

Now, if Amazon supported EPub then I might be pre-ordering a Kindle now.

What about the IPad? There is no way I am going to buy one to read books. I can expect to save more than $140 over the next year or two and the EReaders are a lot lighter and easier to carry than an IPad. It would take forever to save enough to justify a $500+ device. If I was going to buy an IPad anyway then I would go ahead and download the apps for Kindle and B&N and Borders but that's a different rant.

The next move may be up to the publishers themselves. How strongly will they push the two competing standards? If they do nothing then Amazon may be able to win through its sheer size. If the publishers make at least as many books available through EPub as through Kindle then Amazon may be forced to capitulate.

Happy Birthday Bugs

Seventy years ago today, Bugs Bunny made his first appearance in "A Wild Hare". You would have trouble recognizing him if you only knew his later appearances. He looked much more rabbit-like. He was being hunted by a character known as "Egghead" although his real name, according to an earlier cartoon, was "Elmer Fudd".

Bugs was not the first Looney Toons rabbit. A white rabbit had appeared in a couple of shorts starting with a Porky Pig one, and Pinhead/Elmer Fudd had tried to photograph a gray rabbit. It was not until the July 27, 1940 cartoon that Bugs began sounding like himself. Mel Blanc who did the voice said that he wanted the rabbit to sound tough. The two toughest-sounding accents he knew were Bronx and Brooklyn so he used a combination for Bugs.

The two characters evolved quickly and were pretty much fully fleshed out within a year or so.

The only real changes to Bugs came after Chuck Jones took over. Bugs grew taller and thinner but kept his voice and character.

Just as Micky Mouse defined Disney for generations, Bugs Bunny became the symbol of Warner Brothers.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Disney Studios has a long history of mining older properties for live-actions moves. They have made them based on previous live-action movies, feature-length cartoons and rides. The newest installment in this is a live-action movie inspired by an animated short. Not just any animated short, though, but one of Disney's favorites - the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

Given that the source is so short, that leaves a lot of padding. This was given to the team that created National Treasure.

The result is mixed. It is not as good as Pirates of the Caribbean and not as bad as the Haunted mansion.

The casting was a problem. Nicolas Cage is a talented actor but he doesn't come across as a 1,400-year-old-sorcerer. He is ok in the role but not as good as Alfred Molina as the villain.

The real problem is with the star, Jay Brauchel. Since he is in nearly every scene, he needs to carry the movie. The problem is that he is more of a sidekick. He has a whining, nasal voice that can be grating. He also looks and dresses too geeky. At one point we see him preparing for a date and pulling out a new, white shirt. Then he covers it in the same layered flannel and hoodie he has been wearing since the first reel.

The plot itself is familiar - a young man suddenly finds out that he is special. With the help of a mentor, he learns to use his gifts and beat the villain. This was old when Star Wars used it. Just this year we have seen it in Percy Jackson and in How to Train Dragons (also voiced by Jay Brauchel).

There is also the cliche that a young hero in training is told about an impossible-seeming feat that can only be performed by the chosen one. In Eregon, you knew when Bron was told that only the best dragon riders could stand on the dragon's tail that he would be doing it by the end of the movie. The same thing happens here.

Casting aside, there is nothing wrong with the movie. The plot is well-thought out without any obvious holes. Dave, the apprentice, may come by his powers too fast (he picks up more in a couple of days than Harry Potter does in years) but you do see him having to work for it.

The movie is at its best when the wizards battle. There are several battles and they are much more imaginative than anything in Harry Potter.

Did Futurama Get Edgier?

When Futurama moved to Comedy Central, did the show change it's tone, adding shock for its own sake? The question was raised after a couple of things in the first three episodes. In the second new episode, Leela and Zap Branigan spend some time naked except for leaves, conveniently held in place by sticky bark. Leela is showing more skin than usual but no more than a bikini would cover. In the third episode, Fry and Bender have a bet in which the loser has to dive into a pool filled by the PukemePoopyou, a creature with two goat heads. It spends much of the episode spewing from one end or the other.

So, given that Comedy Central is the home of South Park, where you can say anything except "There's Mohamed dressed as a bear!", is Futurama upping the shock level? I don't think so. The show was originally on Fox at a time when it was known for bad taste so the standards have not really changed. Consider a few classic episodes:

In Three Hundred Big Boys, Leela stuffs her swimming suit with rotten fish in order to retrieve a watch that Mushu the whale swallowed. It works and the whale spent some time vomiting. "It just keeps coming and coming," the robot cop observed. At the same time, the whale ate Leela's swimming suit and she had to wrap herself in a banner, showing about as much skin.

Slurm is excreted from the rear end of a giant slug.

Fry was once infested with intelligent worms. The Planet Express crew journeyed through his bowels. At one point Zoidburg appeared riding a sperm cell saying, "You'll never guess where I've been."

Nibbler once ate Amy's bikini top. She used a couple of hamburger buns for modesty until the Professor could spray on a replacement.

In the episode with Fry's petrified dog, Leela and Amy were dressed in sexy leotards, practicing disarming each other in sexy ways. Later Leela started to tear her already brief outfit off.

The professor appeared fully nude from the rear several times. Leela, disguised as a man, had to avoid Zap while showering. Zap was nude with his modesty preserved by Nixon's head.

There there was the episode with "human horn".

Clearly, Futurama was never a model of decorum. I think it only seems shocking now because we have seen the older episodes so many times (I lost count years ago).

Steve Job's Mixed Year

It's been an amazingly mixed year for Apple and Steve Jobs. On the plus side, the iPad got rave reviews. It and the new iPhone 4 have sold millions. But there has been a lot of bad press mixed in.

Many reviewers felt that the new iPhone and the upgraded operating system were mainly about catching up with Android.

When Gizmodo acquired a prototype iPhone 4, Apple managed to overstep the law. Even after they got the phone back they still arranged for Gizmodo's offices to be raided and equipment confiscated in clear violation of laws shielding the press.

Steve Job's insistence that Flash cannot be allowed on the iPhone or iPad seems to be more about control than technical considerations. With a version of Flash about to be released for Android, it appears that Apple wants to keep people from using services like Hulu and force them to but from iTunes instead.

The iTunes app store has gotten a lot of bad press. No one knows what the standards are for accepting an app. They seem to change over time. At one point Jobs admitted that he banned an entire class of app because one developer had leaked information about the iPad.

Apple's censorship also earned them bad press. A Pultzer-prize winning editorial cartoonist was rejected because of the nature of editorial cartoons. Other adult material has been rejected or had cuts in order to pass Apple's standards.

Apple's policies about stopping leaks also came out. At any time, any section believed to have a leaker can be placed under what amounts to house arrest while workstations and phones are searched for incriminating material. Anyone found to have leaked information to the press is fired on the spot.

All of this was more background noise than anything else but the antenna issue has really hurt Apple's image. First, it means that they can release a flawed product. Apple hates to admit it when this happens. In fact, at Steve Job's press conference last week he didn't really admit anything. He claimed that this happens with all phones and Apple put up video showing problems with other phones. Had Jobs been more contrite they story would have gone away. Instead, the new story is Job's arrogance.

How bad is this? My dentist was talking about it. He is around fifty and is not likely to ever buy an iPhone. He does not text nor does he send emails through his phone. But he knew all about the antenna issue and the other phone companies' objections to Jobs' press conference.

When people talk about you the same way they talk about Lindsay Lohan, you have a public relations disaster on your hands.

Apple will survive, of course, but this will give a big boost to Android and the upcoming Windows 7 phone (which got great reviews). In two or three years people might look back and see this as the turning point where Apple lost their dominance of the phone world.

I've seen a couple of telling columns about Steve Jobs. One pointed out that he is in his fifties and already had a major health issue. He can't live forever. At some point Apple will have to replace him. The other pointed out that, these days, Bill Gates makes the news because of his charitable work. Steve Jobs makes the news because he is selling defective phones. Which coverage would you prefer?

Toy Story 3

Toy Story 3 has been out for weeks but we've been busy and we just got around to seeing it.

Anyway, by the third installment, series usually feel a little tired. There are exceptions but those usually had a week second installment (Pirates of The Caribbean, Back to the Future). Series with a strong second installment usually fare particularly poorly (Spider-Man, Shrek). Then there is the problem of a sequel years after the original. By that time, the excitement of the original is long gone.

It is a tribute to the Pixar development process that Toy Story 3 still feels fresh. It helps that it was constructed as a totally stand-alone movie. There are only a few of explicit references to the previous movies and can be picked up from context.

Of course the premise is the same - toys are sentient creatures and come to life when no one is around to see them. There are a few plot elements that are in all three movies - one or more toys are separated from Andy and have to return. Near the end each movie has an exciting action sequence involving danger to the toys. Also, it wouldn't be a Toy Story movie if Buzz didn't get confused about reality somehow.

The big difference in this movie is that Andy has grown up and is going to college. The toy's big hope is that they will go to the attic to a peaceful retirement instead of being thrown away and destroyed. They are accidentally donated to a day care which seems like the perfect retirement until they end up in the pre-schooler's room. It turns out that the many of the daycare toys aren't all that nice.

It all works out and comes to a satisfying conclusion.

One problem that the movie had to overcome was the lack of sophistication in the original. The toys looked fine but the humans looked like big versions of the toys. When we first see Andy, he still resembles his original version but the college-age version and the other people look much more human.

When Pixar announced a couple of sequels (Toy Story 3 and Monsters 2) it seemed like they were running low on creativity or had been corrupted by the Disney merger. This proves that they can still make good movies.

Attack of the EReader

When the iPad came out speculation started about which would win the eBook wars - the iPad or the Kindle? What people didn't seem to understand is that Amazon doesn't really care. As long as they do not lose money selling the Kindle, market control does not matter. That is because they are after dominance of the eBook market, not the reader. In fact, they give away Kindle applications for the iPad, the iPhone, android phones, and PCs.

Things in the eBook market got really interesting a few weeks ago.

First Barns and Noble cut the price of their eBook reader, the Nook. Amazon followed by cutting prices on the Kindle. Now Borders has entered the eBook market. Rather than subsidize their own reader, Borders is selling four readers made by others. These readers lack the wireless and cell phone features of the Kindle and the Nook which makes them less expensive. The lowest price one, the Libre eBook Reader Pro is only $119. Unlike the others, it uses a black and white LCD instead of the E Ink that nearly every other reader uses. This gives it a shorter battery life but makes the display refresh faster and gives better contrast. Like Amazon, Borders also has eBook reader software for a variety of platforms. Borders also supports the open EPub standard rather than using their own proprietary standard.

With an entry price around $120-$150, eBook readers start looking attractive. If you only buy a dozen books you are ahead financially and there is a lot to be said for the small, lightweight form factor. Also, there are a lot of books that are otherwise out of print.

Music players show that connecting to a PC to control content is not a burden. My Zune HD can sync wirelessly but I seldom use that feature. As long as I am syncing content, I might as well charge the battery. The Kindle's original Whispernet was meant to encourage people to make impulse purchases or to pay premium rates for newspapers and magazines. I do not have a long commute on a train so I have no need for these.

Over a decade ago technologists told the recording industry that it had to change or die. It refused to listen until Steve Jobs convinced them to sign on with iTunes. Now that is their biggest source of income.

Hopefully publishers will not make the same mistakes. There may always be a place for paper and cardboard but electronics will play an increasing role in future publishing.

Costume Changes

According to news reports, Wonder Woman is getting a completely new costume and origin.

I can't say that I care for the new costume. It would be fine for an entirely new character but it isn't Wonder Woman. In fact, it is barely a costume, more like distinctive street-wear like some of the X-Men sport. I am also slightly offended by the need to "globalize" her by getting her out of the American Flag.

Realistically, the new costume will just be a phase. In a couple of years she will be back to her blue and red tights. DC has way too much invested in her iconic look to permanently switch her.

Still, this gives me an excuse to go over other costume changes.

Wonder Woman's own costume has changed over the years. In her first few appearances she had a skirt instead of satin shorts. In the early 1980s, DC's lawyers were concerned that they could not trademark the eagle on her chest so it was quietly swapped out for twin "W"s. During the late 1960s, Wonder Woman changed completely. She lost her powers and learned martial arts. She started sporting a series of cat suits inspired by Emma Peel from the TV show The Avengers. Obviously, she switched back after a few years.

In general, once a hero becomes established, his costume changes very little. the really big heroes may change their outfits for a while but they always seem to go back to the original. Spider-Man has changed his costume twice (not counting the clone's costume). Both times have been part of a long-term plot arch which ended with him back in his original red and blue costume. Superman never changed costumes for more than an issue or so. Batman added a yellow circle to his chest and experimented with an all-black outfit but keeps going back to the blue and gray original.

Heroes who have not become established can get away with a costume change. Daredevil's original yellow and black outfit looked like it was designed by a blind man and was swapped for his red outfit pretty fast. I've already written about Iron Man's changes.

Captain Marvel started out in a white uniform with green helmet and accents. He got a new red and black uniform just in time to be canceled for a while but kept it when his strip returned.

Team heroes are more likely to change their look. The Fantastic Four started without costumes (prompting Marvel's first fan mail). By the third issue they were given uniforms. they kept these until the mid-1970s when the Torch switched to a red uniform. They switched back to the original blue uniforms in the 1980s followed by a darker version with white accents.

There was a general move away from team uniforms around 1970. The X-Men started with identical uniforms but were given individual costumes later.

Several members of the Legion of Superheroes got new costumes during the 1970s and again in the 1980s. Long-standing solo DC characters sometimes changed their costume after joining the JLA. Black Canary and the Elongated Man are a couple of examples.

Sometimes a character's costume changes slowly over time. Spider-Man started out with webbing between his arms and his torso. Later artists abandoned this but it has been brought back a few times. Daredevil's red tights started out black with red highlights (artist Wally Wood was thinking of velvet when he designed the look). Later artists switched to straight red.

Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch's costumes stayed recognizable over the years but Quicksilver's went from green to blue. The Scarlet Witch started out in a modest body stocking with loose bodice, long boots and gloves, and a headpiece that only left her face and the top of her head exposed. As time went on, her bodice became much tighter, shwing a lot of cleavage. Her body stocking became sheer and her headpiece became a hair band.

Like her male counterpart, Ms Marvel changed her costume. He original one was based on Captain Marvel's second costume but with bare legs and stomach. The artists quickly grew tired of drawing the stomach cut-out. After resolving a split-identity issue, she changed to a tight black number with a belt/sash.

Marvel often tried to boost sales with a costume change. Besides Captain Marvel and Ms Marvel, they tried this with Doctor Strange in the late 1960s. Strange was given a skin-tight costume with a full-head mask. It didn't work. Fans hated the new look. The book was canceled a few issues later. When it was brought back, Strange reverted to his original costume. 

The Wasp probably holds the record for the most number of costume changes. During the 1970s she seldom appeared twice in the same outfit. Her ex-husband did her one better, changing identities as well as costumes. At various times he was Ant Man, Giant Man, Goliath, Yellow Jacket, and simply Doctor Pymm. He had at least eight distinct costumes to go with these various identifies.

Muscle-men like the Hulk, the Thing, and Conan the Barbarian have changed outfits several times without altering their over-all look.

In her first strip, She-Hulk didn't dress for her change and usually wore something ragged. After joining the Avengers she settled on a swim-suit-style outfit. She temporarily joined the FF and used an abbreviated version of the FF's dark blue uniform.

Luke Cage and Iron Fist had very 1970s costumes when they were introduced. When the characters were revived they got different looks.

Super Girl changed costumes numerous times. She started out with a mini-dress version of Superman's costume. After graduating from back-up strip to having her own comic book, she got a series of more stylish costumes. This was back to something like the original except with a red skirt when the character was killed.

Supergirl was revived as a new character but with the previous costume. Eventually she vanished leaving an empowered human alter-ego who improved a costume based on a cut-off tee-shirt and a mini-skirt. The bare mid-rift looks continued into the next incarnation.

Wonder Man started out as a one-shot in a garish costume in the 1960s. He was brought back from the dead in the 1970s and swapped his costume for a red safari jacket. In the 1990s he got his own book and a new costume featuring a big "W".

For the most part, Thor followed the rule that costume changes were part of a long-term plot arc and reverted back to his original when the arc ended. At one point in the 1980s his face was injured and he grew a beard to cover the scars. Injuries mounted and he ended up in full-body armor. In the 1900s he lost his powers and spent a short time running around shirtless. In the last few years his costume has been reworked but still suggests the original.

Microsoft's Phone Failures

Microsoft lost its edge years ago. Now it seems to have lost its way.

Last year they introduced the Zune HD. I have one and it is a nice music and video player with the added attraction of touch-screen, a web browser, and a limited selection of apps. Many people felt that this would be the basis of a new Microsoft phone. Microsoft confirmed this earlier this year. They will be launching a new phone under the Windows 7 banner this Fall.

Then they came out with the Kin phones. These amounted to feature phones. They did have a browser built in but otherwise their capabilities were locked-in. They were considered rather deficient and they had nothing to do with the new phones coming out this Fall.

The Kin didn't sell. You can tell that by the advertising blitz that Microsoft launched (although I don't believe the rumor that they only sold 500 units).

Microsoft is supposed to have sunk around $500 million into the Kin effort. Some of it may be salvaged. The phone backs itself up regularly and everything on the phone is available through a web interface. Microsoft promised that the new phone will probably have that capability sometime in the future, just not at launch.

This seems typical of what Microsoft has begun. During the 1980s and 1990s, they evaluated a market then entered it. Their initial offering was seldom very good, the joke was that you should never buy a Microsoft product before it's 3.0 release. By then it was usually on par with the industry leader. From that point, Microsoft would use its leverage to shut out the competition.

For most of the 2000s, they have tried this formula in different markets and failed. Bing is the newest in a string of search engines that failed to attract Google's business. Hotmail has been losing market share for years. Internet Explorer is still the dominant web browser but their market share keeps dropping. At one point they had better than a 90% share. Now they are around 60%.

They also failed at establishing themselves in the music market. They have gone through several services including the ironically named "Plays for sure".

Microsoft has deep resources. It is possible that they can regain their momentum. By all accounts, Bing is a credible search engine and there is some excitement about the new phone. At the same time, the Kin flop has hurt them. It may have soured their relationship with Verizon which will limit their potential market a great deal.

Maybe the real problem is that Steve Balmer need to go.