Posted: September 13, 2009 at 2:05 pm | Tags: Apple, college, country, Girls, History, HP, Job, Markets, oakland university, opencourseware, picture, Pictures, profiles, public, school, st. john, university, wayne state, work
I was recently discussing the issue of the Oakland University strike with someone. While the pay and benefits are obviously big factors in collective bargaining agreements, something else came up. One of his talking points for supporting the strike, well, stuck me. He was the notion of intellectual property in the classrooms and who it actually belongs to: do the lessons belong to the professors or the University.
Well, he wasn’t the least bit pleased about the idea of putting lessons online for people to see. He didn’t think it fair that “some kid in Oklahoma” could view the lessons and “learn for free”. Realistically, if schools like Yale, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, etc. all do this and see no threat, than Oakland University has absolutely no argument and no reason to be threatened. Lets take a look at why.
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Posted: March 16, 2008 at 4:28 pm | Tags: Apple, Front Row
In fall of 2005, Apple held a special event to announce a new program: Front Row. A multimedia interface for your Mac that allowed you to access pictures, movies, and video via a remote. Not a lot of people cared, myself included. Now that things have all come full circle, I can see that Front Row wasn’t as much an effort to making an entertainment center out of your Mac as it was trying to perfect the software for their set-top box, the AppleTV. Which is cool, but still something that I never think that I will ever buy until it does more stuff that I want it to do. I’ve dismissed Front Row up until recently as not being able to find any realistic use for it.
Well, I found one.
I no longer have a need to buy a stereo for my bedroom. Sometimes I’m just lying around, going to bed, etc and want to listen to some music, but even with buying a stereo my music would be limited to an iPod input (and my iPod stays in my car now 99% of the time) or CDs or even worse, radio (I’m not paying for XM, screw that). Either way, I’d have to get up to change it.
So now, I’ve discovered that I can put my Macbook on my dresser, and with the Apple remote, fire up front row and have everything in my music library in 1 place where I don’t have to get up and change the music when I want to.
The only thing that’s bugging me is I don’t know if it can repeat songs/albums or not. Which is a bit frustrating. But I’m working on it. Either way, I’m very happy with this program. Good job, Apple.
