criticalviewertemporally organized thoughts on media, politics, and the arts.Smartest Guys Showing Here- May 28, 2005 The local Boardman's Art Theatre is showing Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. This documentary follows the rise and fall of one of the largest corporate failures in American history. I wrote a review of the film a few weeks ago, so it's nice to see it arrive in our little town. The new Art seems to do a good job of attracting relevant, current films on controversial topics to downtown Champaign. And best of all, you can pick, reserve, and purchase your seats online!http://www.criticalviewer.com/archives/2005/05/smartest_guys_showing_here.html The Times Seeks Irrelevance- May 17, 2005 The NY Times has decided to start charging for a portion of their content, including op-ed and news colummns. This is part of an attempt to secure a new business model to replace waning paper subscriptions for newspapers nationwide. They will charge $50year for access to the columns, as well as their archives (which they already charged for). I guess the NYT hopes to equal the influence of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, which has been secured behind a pay-required screen for years. .http://www.criticalviewer.com/archives/2005/05/the_times_seeks_irrelevance.html Why Word on the Mac is a Drag- May 9, 2005 While my normal and daily computing platform is Windows XP on the PC, I've also owned and used a G4 Powerbook for several years. I continue to have fits of rage at the ugliness of XP (and the slowness of Photoshop, but that's another entry) which keeps me trying the Mac from time to time. When I first got my Powerbook about 3 years ago, one thing that drove me nuts was the display resolution in Microsoft Word. Text at "100%" in Word was way too small. Alternatively, on Windows XP, I find...http://www.criticalviewer.com/archives/2005/05/why_word_on_the_mac_is_a_drag.html |