December 2010 – Page 2

Google’s Chrome OS test pilot programme has generated quite a buzz, with even people who asked for stickers getting a shiny new Chrome OS notebook to test out. It’s early days of course – they aren’t selling these Chrome OS tablets until early 2011. I think the crucial factor to its success would be pricing – is it cheaper than normal netbooks? Google has ‘solved’ the always-on connectivity issue by bundling in a free 100 MB 3G data subscription from Verizon with the option to buy more in case a user needs it, and the ‘need it’ users certainly will. (100 MB is a pittance of data allowance – I use up more than that on my crappy Nokia ‘smartphone’ which doesn’t in have the same class of data intensive apps that iPhone / Android do.)

Google Chrome OS Cr-48 notebook — Nope, not a Thinkpad. That's Google's Cr-48 netbook, er, notebook. 'Cr' is the element symbol for 'chromium', in case you didn't know.

Running applications ‘off the cloud’ (storing everything online) is something you can already do on existing netbooks, laptops, desktops – you can even get the same experience by installing Chrome Web Apps as you’d want on Chrome OS from the Chrome store. So if a Chrome OS netbook is priced higher or the same as a normal netbook, I don’t see why I should buy the former.

The touted 10-second bootup speeds that Chrome OS has is not because it’s significantly better than others, but because it uses a solid state disk rather than a normal hard disk. Try booting Ubuntu on an SSD system and you’ll get similar startup times. (It’ll be a bit more, but come on – isn’t an extra five seconds worth it for having a ‘full’ system?) Chrome OS is essentially a Linux-based operating system just like Ubuntu, except that they are purposefully blocking access to anything other than your ‘online filesystem’.

This is all moot for the casual user of course – they’ll love it. With Google’s marketing might, Chrome OS might even be a success in the way netbooks haven’t been. But they’ll potentially open themselves up for anti-trust lawsuits from their competitors. Google has been able to avoid such allegations till now in the search engine market simply by saying “Users can choose a different search engine anytime they want“. That’s the not the case with Chrome OS – you have to sign in with a Google account.

When Google’s distributing 60,000 test notebooks at no charge, destroying 25 for this video must have been approved without so much as eyebrow being raised.

Once you start using Chrome OS at home, you’d be forced to use it at office and other places too. That easy-sharing of documents with friends and family? Well, that just means they’ll have to sign up for Google Accounts too to access shared files. Chrome OS simply leads to a scenario where everything is tightly locked in to Google’s network, with not much hope of switching. You simply can’t copy your files and shift from Windows to Mac (say) as you can do with normal computers. If you decide one day to shift to Microsoft Office Web Apps instead of Google Docs, how do you migrate your data? What if you want to use Skype instead of Google Voice Chat? Skype doesn’t even have a web app version!

I also don’t buy the argument some tech analysts have made that Chrome OS could be posturing itself as a cheap IT solution for enterprise use, at the long tail of the usage chain with adoption as point-of-sale terminals and mobile workforce. IT departments for companies are usually wary of vendor lock-ins, and though Chrome OS may be cheap to deploy I don’t reckon companies would want to give up complete control in the way that would be required of them.

With this tight lock, with the user constantly signed in to Google, they have a pretty solid idea of what you do all the time, not just what you search. They’d want to capitalize on this rich amount of usage data by trying to serve more targetted advertising. If Google sticks on to its current vision AND Chrome OS becomes a success, it’s inevitable that their competitors will have a very strong anti-trust case in the courts. Such an anti-trust case could very well bring Google as we know it close to oblivion, just like what almost happened in United States vs Microsoft.

Thank you, but no thank you Google. I’ll stick to my netbook which gives me complete freedom to do what I want.

PS – If, however, you’ve already been seduced by Google Chrome OS’ s ‘always online’ vision but can’t try it out because you aren’t in the Cr-48 pilot programme, give Jolicloud a go. It’s an Ubuntu-based cloud OS much like Chrome OS; additionally, also an HTML5-based web-OS that you can try out in the Chrome Web Store. One of the complaints against Chrome OS has been that it doesn’t play Flash videos very well, which I’ve heard Jolicloud has sorted out (supports playback of HD Flash videos).

I chose not to watch Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 immediately after it was released; I wanted to re-watch the whole series of films before I did so. (I would have liked to read the books too, but between end-of-semester exams coming up next week and applying for industrial placement for next year, I haven’t much time.) I completed that last week, and saw Deathly Hallows yesterday.

Deathly Hallows is a good film; there’s no denying that. David Yates gets the luxury of spreading out the narrative in a two-parter, and that obviously helps. What I enjoyed about his direction is how in this film (and Half-Blood Prince), Yates touches up emotional scenes through the judicious use of silence. That Radcliffe can’t act out anything that requires anything beyond the ’emotional range of a teaspoon’ was amply clear in his botched up crying scene over the dead body of Cedric Diggory in Goblet of Fire – and Yates, to his credit, realizes that.

Having Harry/Radcliffe sob stiflingly, or keep his trap shut, instead of hamming his lines adds that much more gravitas to important scenes. This propensity towards silence works with the soundtrack too; rather than going for a questionable score as in certain scenes of Order of the Phoenix, Yates opts to have no background score at all during fight scenes in Deathly Hallows. Fight scenes that shine, as if they are quiet gunfights. It’s a tiny, almost unnoticeable change from previous films – and yet, it makes measures of difference in driving home the ‘reality’ of what’s happening within a fictional world.

Ron Weasley Ministry of Magic attack — I found this frame from the movie so funny that I *had* to put it in this blog post. Also, clicking on the image will take you to a high-larious 'ginger' joke.

No matter how much I or anyone else deny liking the Harry Potter universe – being a guilty pleasure – its undeniable how pervasive this ‘liking’ is. Watching back the older films the past week and reading critical reactions of the Harry Potter movies after each one’s release, I observed how even hardcore film critics – from whom nary a word of praise is uttered unless a movie does something spectacularly extraordinary – gleefully award top-notch ratings to Harry Potter films. The same critics also join the chorus of Potter fanatics screaming “THIS ONE WAS THE DARKEST INSTALLMENT EVARRR!!!”

Diagon Alley entrance — Every pixel of this image screams out "PHOTOSHOPPED!" (including Robbie Coltrane)

One of the aspects that stands out clearly is how painfully fake some of the then-cutting-edge CGI looks. This makes me wonder whether Warner Bros will go down the Lucasian route of releasing ‘digitally remastered’ iterations in the future to milk profits from this franchise. It’s clear in the earlier films how the directors tried to avoid anything that required a lot computer-generated animation by trying to merely hint at action happening off-camera. As the franchise progressed, the use of CGI just got bolder and bolder – to the point that the yet-to-be-released second part of Deathly Hallows will digitally ‘age’ the actors for the epilogue, à la The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

Having seen the whole series including and up to Deathly Hallows, I stand by a statement I have made many times over the years: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the best Harry Potter movie of all time. Now, I know that among most fans this is the least loved one, for a variety of reasons – but I want to list why I think it’s the best of the series (and will probably remain so) for a variety of reasons.

You see, Prisoner of Azkaban was the first AND only movie in the series to visualize magic as a part of the Harry Potter world, rather than an artifact that had to be worked into the script because of the storyline. From the guy stirring a cup of tea while reading a battered copy of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time…

…to the cleaning lady with a bewitched broom who has to deal with magic gone wrong in her daily work…

…the wacky interpretation of the Knight Bus…

…every one of these fleeting scenes makes Prisoner of Azkaban a better film. The choice of the book, for instance – A Brief History of Time – reminds the viewer how Harry Potter is set in the present ‘Muggle’ world, not some distant lost land in the mists of time.

Look at the kids! They just can’t wait to get out of their school robes and into casual clothes – just as you’d expect from teenagers of their age. I feel it’s one of the reasons why this movie feels so out-of-sync in comparison to the others, because the later films don’t adopt the same liberal sartorial policy.

And how can I ever forget the Hogwarts choir singing Something Wicked This Way Comes (the lyrics were inspired by William Shakespeare), each singer holding a bulbous toad in their hands that chimes in with a subtle croak every now and then in the song!

Each director in the series has brought something unique to it: Chris Columbus brought his slavish adherence to recreating a picture-perfect version of the book (exemplified by how he had to have an announcer at Quidditch matches – utterly pointless!); Mike Newell, with his focus on making Goblet of Fire a B-grade action film; David Yates, adding an impish touch of humour running through an incrementally ‘dark’ storyline. But only Alfonso Cuaron put the leeway implied in ‘based on the novel by JK Rowling’ to good use; he was the only one with the vision to imagine a world where magic and reality coexist. Each of the examples I mentioned above adds a spark that bring Prisoner of Azkaban to life in a way that none of the other movies in the series do.

Sadly, the immaturity of Potter fans (at least, ones that I know or have read personally) shows in how fixated most get with “But…this is not in the book!” when judging Azkaban. I’d rather have Cuaron be the Chosen One to direct Deathly Hallows.

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One last thing. This might sound a bit…awkward…so I’m just going to spill it out. I find the way “the actor who plays Voldemort” handles his wand…exciting. You know…the way he always gently – almost reverently – caresses his wand…and then is suddenly, like, all “Avada Kedavra!” and shit. I just can’t stop myself from clapping and cheering on in those bits.