What exactly is it with these product names lately?

Some time ago, Microsoft came out with “Windows ME”, which to me sounded a bit patronizing (then again, I honestly never did care much for the whole “My Computer”, “My Briefcase”, My This and My That naming convention).

Not to be outdone, Apple came out with some poorly named products of its own. The iPod Mini (and Mac Mini), for example. Surely I’m not the only whose first thought upon hearing these product names is of Mini Me from Austin Powers.

Of course, then came the Mighty Mouse - a two-button no-button (yeah, you heard that right) mouse with a miniature scroll-ball built into it. My new Mac came with one, and while I’m quite happy with the mouse itself the name is terrible. Mighty Mouse? They should have shipped it with a tiny blue cape and made it squeak when you click on it. Yes, I realize that Apple’s marketing trends toward vaguely effeminate metrosexual types (Err - why are you looking at me like that?), but they could have done a little better.

Finally, the MacBook Pro. The product itself, again, is something I would love to have. Given that this is Apple’s high-end laptop, they (thankfully) opted to go for a more adult sounding moniker. However, that doesn’t make it sound any better. MacBook Pro. Three sharp syllables that go together like eggs and chocolate syrup.

I thought it couldn’t get any worse than these, but… It did. By a significant margin.

This time, from Nintendo. Their eagerly awaited new gaming console, code-named “Revolution”, finally has a real name. While I know that the word Revolution (and its close cousin “Evolution”) have been pretty played out in recent years, it couldn’t possibly be any worse than the final name of the console.

Yes, I will say it again, so that it can soak in a bit.

Nintendo is going to call their console “Wii”. More details on their site. Imagine the marketing possibilities!

Wii: Where every player is player ‘number 1′

Down the road, when they refresh their portable line-up:

GameBoy’s sucessor: Piddle

Their online multiplayer gaming initiative:

Play with your friend across town: Wii Wii

Somebody stop me. Please.

Granted, Nintendo long ago diverged from the territory held by Sony and Microsoft. They’ve expressed (and I believe them) that they aren’t really interested in the “hardcore” gaming market, and are more interested in catering to normal people - especially kids - who want fun, engaging, innovative gaming experiences. Hell, while I will be in line with everyone else when the PS3 comes out, I know that Nintendo has been a pretty consistent source of creative game design in an otherwise increasingly conservative industry. The Revolution (err, Wii) controller is testament to that.

The thing is, though, just because someone was smoking something when they came up with the controller doesn’t mean that said crackpipe should be extended to Nintendo’s marketing team as well. Nintendo can and should be carefree and creative and whimsical, but if you can’t make people even say the name of your product without chuckling or turning red you have a problem.

If this were Apple I’d probably add the caveat that my concerns will likely be for naught. Apple has sold bazillions of stupidly named products, and - in the MP3 player market at least - they are dominant. Nintendo doesn’t have quite as much room for mistakes, though, as they are no longer on top of the console gaming pile.

Brett’s latest weblog entry reflects on the things that changed as he transitioned from a child into an adult. Everything from owning a car and a house to being able to drink to the point of violent regurgitation should he wish to do so.

As I’ve gotten older, these things occur to me from time to time. If I want to eat ice cream for breakfast - well, I can, and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop me. If I want to stay up to 4 in the morning posting something to my weblog, that too is something I can do if I want.

Of course, all this freedom comes with responsibilities. I have a mortgage to keep up with, car payments (on two cars!), a couple of cats who expect to be fed - and get pretty intolerable if I put it off too long, an employer who expects me to show up every day and a wife who would be understandably upset if I didn’t help her with household stuff every weekend. There’s a lot of stuff to do!

Looking back, though, I wouldn’t trade any of it. My childhood carried with it numerous anxieties and weighty issues that I have long since jettisoned for the more mundane. Things are much better now - far less drama, overall - and have been since my mid-teens or so (around the time I met Glenna - probably not entirely a coincidence). Life still throws curveballs at me, of course, but I have found that I’ve been able to dodge most of them with relative ease.

Still, it honestly blows me away when I am confronted with the fact of my current adulthood - and this has been happening with increasing frequency lately. When the girl at the checkout counter calls me “sir”, it takes me a moment to consider that she is talking to me and not the grizzled old man behind me. Why shouldn’t she? We’re probably only 10 years apart, but there’s definitely a generation gap. The Nine Inch Nails concert I went to a few weeks ago in Vegas is another example - it looked a bit less like a Hot Topic fan club gathering (as did the Portland show Glenna, Sarah and I went to in 2000, during the Fragility tour) and a bit more like a Rolling Stones reunion show. I swear that some of the people in the audience were collecting Social Security checks.

The fact is that everyone is growing up and growing older - not just me. I wonder if they’re as surprised about it as I am, or if it has been so gradual that it just “happened”.

Ultimately, though, youth is largely a state of mind - not a number. Looking at some of the things I do, I couldn’t imagine my parents doing them (even at my age). I still play video and computer games when I have the time, and follow developments in that industry. I still consider a box of Lego bricks to be a valid purchase. I love music, and have recently endeavored to learn how to make some of my own. Not long ago I bought a fast, sporty car and enjoy driving it. I make plenty of dumb jokes, and perhaps don’t always care quite as much as I should about who hears them (example: I probably could have kept that whole “Rolling Scones” thing to myself when I was at the coffee shop the other day).

Brett, more than most people, is a good example of this. He is a guy who has clearly kept things in perspective, and refuses to grow up in any way he doesn’t need to. He works hard at what he does, but still finds the time to play tricks on his cats and get excited about fake skid-marked underwear.

There are more than a few other people I know at work who fit this phenomenon as well. Hell, most of our company fits this mold, I think. I have to wonder if maybe I just surround myself with immature people - and I don’t mean that in a pejorative sense - or if there’s something specific about the tail end of Generation X (and/or the first gasp of Generation Y) that makes us a bit more resistant to succumbing to the calls of boring, dull adulthood.

Suffering from a head cold over the weekend (which has persisted into this week) and needing something to cheer myself up, I decided to break down and finally get around to buying a new Mac. I had actually been planning to do this for a while, but only recently did I have the funds on-hand to make the purchase. After a quick trip to the Apple Store, I picked up a dual core 2.0 Ghz iMac. The Dell box I bought a while back can now be relegated to gaming purposes, which is more or less what it’s best at.

The main reason I procured this rather nice piece of hardware is because I needed something to run Logic Pro 7.2 on. At about $1000, it’s by far the most expensive piece of software I have ever purchased (I now have a burnt hole in my pocket where my wallet used to be).

In a nutshell, Logic Pro is a pretty powerful digital audio workstation (DAW) tool and MIDI sequencer, used in order to create music using a computer and any myriad pieces of MIDI-compatible instruments/hardware you may have laying around. Logic Pro essentially allows you to create, modify and mix audio into songs using a computer-based user interface. It also includes a drum machine, a number of virtual synthesizers, as well as a wide assortment of filters and samples you can use to mimic real-world instruments or create entirely unique sounds. There’s also a thriving 3rd party plug-in industry, should the included assortment not be sufficient.

It’s also a pro-level tool, commonly used throughout the recording industry. I was a bit apprehensive at first as the UI at first looked pretty daunting, but after a few sleepless nights I’ve mostly gotten the hang of the software’s user interface and have developed a rudimentary understanding of the various plug-ins and effects available. There’s a lot to learn, but the main UI is not really all that much unlike Player Pro - a MOD tracker I used to mess around with over 10 years ago.

The biggest problem is that, despite some playing around with computer-based composition in the past, I’m not in any manner classically trained. No amount of nifty software or hardware can make someone a good musician, and while I’ve had decent results in my experimentation over the last few days it’s going to take me a while to come up with something original that anyone would actually want to listen to. I imagine it’s safe to bet that I will be producing some horribly cheesy electronica for the foreseeable future until I get the hang of things.

…

As for the iMac itself, Apple has really outdone itself with this one. I wasn’t a big fan of the original iMac (though I recognized that it was instrumental in saving the company), and aesthetically speaking the 2nd iteration looked a little too much like a desk lamp for my tastes. The 3rd generation version, though, is just about perfect for an all-in-one box. The Front Row interface in particular is really well designed, though I hope Apple continues to add functionality and opens it up to 3rd parties.

Performance-wise, it’s hard to say where the iMac falls. It seems sufficient for my own uses, though I plan on throwing a little extra RAM into it before too long.

I haven’t tried an install yet, but I’ve also formatted a second partition to use with Boot Camp. There’s something just so incredibly wrong about booting Windows XP natively on a Mac, but at the risk of violating all sense of taste and decency I think I will have to give it a shot when I get a chance.

If you hadn’t noticed, there has been a dust-up in recent weeks over illegal immigration. Political maneuverings among Democrats and Republicans in response to calls for immigration reform have been pretty enlightening. From what I am able to tell, there is both a complete misunderstanding of what “reform” actually means and a rather obvious lack of interest in actually doing something about it. Having found itself unable to agree on what constitutes reasonable reform, we are now forced to wait for Congress to take another look at it in the future.

The problem

By most estimates, there are somewhere near 11 to 12 million illegal immigrants in the United States right now, with over a million more arriving every year.

The influx of illegal immigration has had a very real impact on our country. As most illegal immigrants do not work jobs that provide employer sponsored health care (or wages high enough to pay for it out of pocket), when they become sick or injured they must seek help through subsidized health care providers - often at emergency rooms with heavily inflated costs - with the bills for those services passed along to tax payers. Further stresses are placed upon the courts, law enforcement agencies and public schools as these institutions are asked to take on demands that they were not designed for.

Finally, the influx of illegal immigrants has significantly depressed the demand for unskilled laborers in certain industries, making it difficult for legal immigrants and US citizens alike to make a living (the true reason why Americans aren’t “doing those jobs” is that they’re already being done at artificially low wages, and legal residents just can’t compete against those who will do it under the table).

Nowhere are these impacts felt more strongly than here in the Los Angeles region. Here, health and welfare institutions are buckling under the stress, and there isn’t much hope of this improving much in the near future. As it is, the effects of illegal immigration are beginning to be felt elsewhere, too. Los Angeles - and California as a whole - are suffering from problems that will soon be felt across the country if the problem is not dealt with soon.

Heads in the sand

The first thing we all need to do is recognize the immigration issue for what it is - a real problem, and one that needs to be taken care of. As it is, those in political power have done little to address the core problem - that people are entering the country illegally, rather than going through the legitimate processes offered - resulting in increased strain on social institutions and a marked impact on certain sectors of our economy.

It’s not hard to see why this problem has not been dealt with: Democrats see a largely sympathetic political force (and, if their amnesty-presented-as-immigration-reform efforts come to fruition, a strong and consistent voting block), whereas Republicans see a source of cheap labor for their own constituents’ business interests. Sadly, in a time of contentious disagreement among our leaders one of the few things that can be agreed upon is that political interests take precedence. Wrap it all up in a healthy dose of political correctness (having the termacity to question people entering the country illegally is a good way to end up being labeled a racist or xenophobe), and you have a rather uncomfortable topic that nobody in power wants to approach.

How to deal with it

When you strip out the emotional arguments, the entire illegal immigration issue is more or less a classic example of supply and demand at play. You have people outside of the United States with very real reasons for wanting to come here - largely economic in nature. Within the United States you have employers who have a strong economic incentive to hire an illegal workforce. Such workers can be paid far less, and it’s unlikely that the laws against hiring illegal immigrants will be enforced (think about it: how often do ever you hear about enforcement against corporations for hiring violations?).

Rather than talk about building walls, turning illegal immigration into a felony, etc. the solution is actually far more simple and less divisive: We should disincentivize the hiring of an illegal workforce by requiring employers to fully vet their workers, with strict penalties and potential for jail time for those that do not.

Do this, and suddenly the option of hiring illegal workers under the table doesn’t look quite so enticing. The main source of illegal jobs dry up - going to legal residents who will then receive fair wages, pay into social security, pay taxes and so on.

Of course, to some extent we will still need to police our borders and work to ensure that law enforcement is able to do its job. By attacking the economic root of the problem, though, the task will not seem quite so daunting.

One incredibly divisive aspect of some immigration reform legislation proposed has been the criminalization of helping illegal immigrants. To some extent this is fine, but it should not be enforced too broadly. I don’t agree with criminalizing those who provide free care to those coming over the border (ie. groups that leave water and food in the desert so that immigrants won’t die as they head north), but we should still work to enforce laws against those who knowingly profit from assisting or trafficking illegal immigrants across our borders. Such human smuggling “coyotes” often move people from place to place in the most deplorable of conditions, and deserve every bit of contempt they receive.

None of this will come to fruition, though, until as a nation we come to terms with the fact that illegal immigration is, in fact, illegal. It’s not just “undocumented”, no more than my stealing someone else’s car would be “unauthorized borrowing.” As any other country we have a right to set our own immigration policies, and asking that these policies be followed is a right and necessary as a matter of practicality.

It’s absolutely true that illegal immigrants are usually people who simply want the best for their families and are doing what they can to get by, but it cannot be dismissed that the very first act upon arriving in this country was to violate one of its laws (a far cry from the oath that legal immigrants take). While illegal immigrants should not be prevented from applying for residency or eventually obtaining legal citizenship, they should not receive a pass to the front of the line or any sort of leg up on those trying to enter legally, and should be asked to enter in accordance with the laws of their new home.

An important part of the solution: Opening up legal immigration

One thing that you will often hear from those who have immigrated to this country legally is that it’s damned difficult to do. I don’t envy anyone who has to rely on the US Federal government for getting anything done in a timely manner, but when it takes many years and a great deal of money to come here, it’s no wonder that otherwise honest - but desperate - people choose to do so illegally.

As a part of any immigration reform legislation we should streamline the process to every extent possible and increase our legal immigration quotas to allow as many people to enter legally as our nation can reasonably handle. We are, after all, a nation of immigrants and we should welcome to those who wish to come here here through legitimate means, dreaming of a better life. It’s worth remembering that history has shown that every single influx of immigrants in the past have eventually assimilated into our country’s cultural fabric - we’ve found a place for them, and became a better country for it - and today’s immigrants will be no different.

In a bit of a surprising move - I’d have expected them to completely ignore the possibility - Apple just announced the public beta of Boot Camp, a tool they are providing (unofficially) that allows Mac users to install Windows on their computers (including Mac-specific drivers).