End Of An Era

March 6th, 2001. A day that will live in stupidity. My last recorded day at Rocket Science Central, although I was put on administrative leave pending investigation five days before. I was then given the opportunity to either be fired for cause, or resign. I chose the option that allowed me to collect unemployment. Not too much to actually say here, as I signed a non-disclosure agreement; however, the moral to the story is: make sure when reinstalling core software on the assistant to the executive assistant vice president in charge of a lot of things’ boot drive, that you save the Eudora Folder. So, once again, I’m looking for work, in all the wrong places. At least I’ve kept my sense of humor. Only if you laugh, of course.

Conspiracy Theory

Not the movie with Mel Gibson, but an incredible simulation. “I don’t know what I know, but I know that it’s big.” There are three levels of conspiracy, in increasing order of severity: a conspiracy, The Conspiracy, and of course, The JFK Conspiracy. The latter is so far reaching that it transcends all understanding, and involves the highest reaches of the government, so much so that it deserves its own category.

Today’s conspiracy fits somewhere between the first two categories. I’ll let you, my three loyal readers, decide where that is. A recent post on the MacDV list (that I hope by now all of you are familiar with) came up with the following:

I smell politics between Apple and Adobe, and it stinks awful. Obviously, Apple held the codec/OS/QT close at hand without letting one of their biggest supporters/developers work with it to develop their own product…simply to have a brief edge by way of releasing Final Cut Pro 2.0 before Adobe could get their stuff to work right.

This sounds like The Conspiracy Guy from the early days of Late Night with David Letterman. The purveyor of this bunk will thankfully remain anonymous, and I don’t need his permission, because it’s Fair Use. The rest of the listers were fast and furious, myself included. We all came to either Apple or Adobe’s defense, or both. The Apple defenders maintained that it wouldn’t be good business for them to do this, and the people speaking for Adobe stated that Adobe simply isn’t ready to release its products yet.

The dictionary definition of a conspiracy is: an agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act. The legal definition is a bit more complex; however, we don’t need to enter into it here. Suffice to say, it involves big men named Bubba. And in a sense, it is a conspiracy. I mean, Apple did give the codec in question to any and all developers that needed it. Where the conspiracy breaks down is meeting the requirement of being an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act. Unless of course you describe Apple attempting to create a de facto standard as subversive. Many would say that QuickTime already is a standard that others must adhere to, while still others would say, “Can’t you do this stuff on a PC?” To which I always reply, “The Macintosh is a Personal Computer…,” and watch them wiggle and squirm when they have no response.

But I digress…at a recent lafcpug (pronounced laugh see pug) meeting, I was witness to all the new things that you can and cannot do with Final Cut Pro 2.0. One of the creators of the software was there to demo all the latest tips and tricks, and to answer questions. Not once did the mention of a conspiracy come up. Don’t you think if one exists, it would be mentioned here, where most of the people that are actually using both pieces of software get together and meet? OK, I admit, I just went looking for a job, and most were there to win the world-famous raffle. I was two chairs away from the guy who won Final Cut Pro 2.0, complete with 1400-page manual. Not a joke, not even a punchline—the manual is actually that long. If there’s any conspiracy here, it’s that.

72 and sunny in Redondo.

e You next time.