Random Musings:
* I don't understand American television's obsession with the show American Idol. Is this like the Survivor of two years ago? Why haven't I ever seen this show, other than the "top story" on Entertainment Tonight?

* I can't wait for Amazing Race 3. Amazing Race is an extremely entertaining and well produced show. I'd love to do it myself (and I would never do Survivor, and you would have to heavily medicate me to get me to be on Big Brother). Anyways, can't wait for it to be on.

* I wouldn't be surprised if that was it for The Mole. I enjoyed Mole 1 immensely, and Mole 2 was interrupted by a long delay - more than a year between when it was taped and when it was aired, which deflated some of the excitement. It was still an OK show, and Anderson Cooper has moved on to CNN or something as a real news man. He probably is hoping Mole 3 never gets made. Me too, kind of.

* Cannot wait for football season to start.(I love Will Ferrel's Hank Williams Jr. impression... They should replace the real Hank Williams Jr with Ferrel for at least one of the Monday Night Football games!)

Bending Reality

Recently, so-called "reality TV" has contained less and less reality. I liked the original idea of Survivor - stick 16 people on a remote island, and through a combination of social interactions and producer-created contests, only one person will eventually be left to win.

Now that several of these shows exist, and in an effort to rescue TV ratings, producers are introducing unexpected twists into these games. Like on Survivor Africa and Survivor Marquesas, when the producers had the teams randomly switch, breaking up strong alliances and upsetting the balance of power in the game.

I can see why they wish to do this - after all, people will tune in when there is a lot of suspense and drama. If one person or team is clearly has a huge advantage, there is often very little suspense or drama.

But despite these ratings related goals, surprise changes in any type of contest are unfair. Imagine if the NFL introduced a new rule during half-time at the Super Bowl that drastically affected the game? Or if the finish line to a marathon were suddenly relocated during the race? Survivor, Big Brother, and all the copy-cat programs are, after all, a contest for real money.

These producers must clearly spell the rules out to the players before the game begins. They can keep the TV audience in suspense, if they must, for TV ratings. But the players should not be surprised by some mysterious twist the producers dreamt up the night before to improve ratings.

If somebody has used a brilliant stategy to build an unbreakable alliance, or in any way gained an upper hand in the contest, the producers have no right to arbitrarily change the way the game works in response.

Just my two cents. Mark Burnett, if your reading, please take note.
Scott

Who is the Mole?

The Mole, season two, ended tonight, and I can't believe Bill is the mole. I have been split between Heather and Dorothy for the last half of the season, finally settling on Heather.

Dorothy could not possibly be the mole if you think about it - she won a number of games at the last minute (car/greenhouse, & the mind puzzles). Moles do not win games at the last minute - they would be better off barely losing games. I also felt like Heather could not be the mole. She hadn't apparently sabotaged any games, and she physically looked too much like last season's mole, Katherine. So why, after eliminating these two in my mind, didn't I pick Bill??? That is the question...

I never, ever suspected Bill. One thing I decided early on was that people who were 'too nice' or were 'trying too hard' to win, for lack of a better term, could not possibly be the Mole. This eliminated Al, Bill, Lisa, Katie, Myra, Darwin, Patrick, and Rob. Whoops. I guess the mole can indeed be 'too nice'.

Will Open Source End Up Destroying Paid Software Developers?

Companies that develop and sell software are generally evil. Take Microsoft, for instance. (Forget all that monopoly crap - I think that so-called anti-trust is a bunch of crap.) They sell Windows XP Home for around $150 a copy and add another $100 for the Professional edition. Why does an operating system have to be so expensive? They know that they are going to sell hundreds of millions of copies a year. That's $20+ Billion a year in revenue... Did XP cost $20 Billion to create? No, of course not. Even if it cost $1 Billion to create (making it the most expensive software in the history of software development), they could still charge $20 a copy and make a 100% profit every year!

But at the other end of the spectrum you have open source software. Is open source also evil? It's hard to tell. It's surely hard to argue against free - I like the ability to download an operating system (Linux), web server (Apache), database (MySQL), and programming language (Perl). Other than the hardware, you can set up a decent server environment for free.

So let's say you are a company that relies on server software - like Sun or Oracle. Is open source good for you? No, it might actually drive you out of business. Other than the established players, is anybody stupid enough to start a new database company in 2002? Or an operating system company? Entire categories of software (those that have decent open source versions) are off limits to new competitors. Netscape went out of business because their paid browser (Netscape used to cost $99) could not compete with a free one (and, well the free one was a better browser let's not forget).

How many companies will go out of business due to open source? How many will not even be formed? Is open source killing jobs and killing innovation, even worse perhaps than Microsoft? After all, companies can compete successfully against Microsoft (AOL vs. MSN, Intuit vs. MS Money, CNN vs. MSNBC, etc.) You have to be able to adjust quickly (Netscape could not adjust). But can companies compete against free??? Time will tell...

Scott

I saw a news report yesterday on an American television channel, that said while the Pope was in Mexico, he canonized the first "Native American" saint.

Political correctness ruins another sentence. They're afraid to say the word "Indian", so even though the poor fellow was from Mexico, he becomes a Native American...