No settlement in sight for writer’s strike: F
Oh yes, we almost forgot about that, now that a new American Idol season has started that will probably keep us entertained for the next couple months.
The Writers Guild of America strike began Nov. 5 over the issue of writers not being paid for the use of new media such as Web episodes or DVD releases.
Following the strike, Americans have been subjected to television that appeals to the lowest common denominator.
This week’s The Ellen Degeneres Show’s opening monologue was replaced with the hostess playing the popular video game series Guitar Hero. Late Night with Conan O’Brien had an interesting segment in which O’Brien flew from the audience to his desk on a zip line. To eat up more of the void left by the absence of a monologue, O’Brien repeated the stunt, this time while wearing a helmet that shot smoke out of the back.
The writers’ demands are not outrageous. They are only asking to get paid for their creative works, not demanding to be compensated in cases of gold bricks.
Thursday’s Directors Guild of America settlement on a three-year contract with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers gives hope to the end of the writer’iacute;s strike, but there are no guarantees.
MacBook Air: C
Apple’s latest holier-than-thou product, the MacBook Air, was unveiled this week at the Macworld Expo and is available now for preorder at www.apple.com starting at $1,799.
The commercial shows the laptop as being thin enough to fit perfectly inside a manila folder. Apple.com describes the MacBook Air as being a "full-sized notebook encased in the 0.16 to 0.76 inch of sleek, study anodized aluminum."
Weighing in at three pounds also helps with the portability of the tiny laptop. But once the novel of having what Apple calls "the world’s thinnest notebook" wears off, all that’s left is what’s left out.
Apple took away many of the features that consumers are used to having on their computers, such as a disk drive, to have such a tiny computer.
That means no more watching DVDs instead of paying attention in class, and installing software and ripping your CD collection into iTunes will become a complicated pain.
But Steve Jobs is an innovator, and he probably knows before we do that the disk drive’s life is going the way of the floppy drive. When that time comes, the MacBook Air will be ideal, but until then, save your money.
