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The following is a compensated review for PokerStars for Mac.

If you’ve ever played online poker, you’re probably familiar with PokerStars.com, one of the most popular poker sites on the Web. The ‘Mac-friendly’ poker reference site PokeronaMac.com, is reporting that the Mac version of PokerStars’ downloadable PC client will be hitting the Web soon. If you want, there’s a place to voice your support of the new Mac version, and press PokerStars for its release.

Now, it’s pretty neat that PokerStars is choosing to support a Mac client, especially in light of the fact that most new Macs will run Windows just fine. It speaks to the volume of PokerStars’ subscriber base that they have seen a significant demand for a Mac client from their customers. However, what I don’t understand about PokerStars or many of the other popular poker sites is simply why a well-written Java client is not the standard. Java will run on Mac, Windows, and even Linux, and it’s this sort of thing that the sometimes cumbersome, always lethargic language was designed for. There’s no offline play in the downloadable clients of any of the companies, as far as I know, so it seems that there’s no reason to use the player’s computer as the source of the application, when a universal client-server language exists that is universally compatible with all desired target platforms.

In spite of this note (and perhaps someone from PokerStars will care to comment), I think it is pretty nifty that the Mac client will be coming out. I’m only a little hesitant because there doesn’t seem to be a release date on PokerStars.com or PokeronaMac.com for the Mac client, and this wouldn’t be the first time that such a project never appeared after a lot of advance publicity. I certainly hope this isn’t the case here, but only time will tell. Until then, hope springs eternal!

mac, poker, pokerstars, pokerstars.com, poker on a mac

The Institute for Advanced Personhood: Microsoft’s new Vista campaign

The new Microsoft Vista ad campaign is out, and it’s…..weird. The story involves Demetri Martin, a comic, who shot a Comedy Central special, which ran last night (and two weeks ago), and was entirely underwritten by Microsoft. The company used their ad space to run a series of shorts about the IAP, or Institute for Advanced Personhood, a mythical and somewhat silly organization dedicated to eliminating clutter from people’s lives. Vista itself is never mentioned, although it’s used to give some presentations and is constantly displayed on all computer screens within the ‘Institute.’

Visiting the IAP’s website, at theiap.org, lets you view additional footage, including the story of Martin’s visit to the IAP, and his subsequent treatment, etc. The whole thing is a viewing experience that could waste up to an hour of your time, and is actually quite funny (as was Martin’s special on Comedy Central last night). Furthermore, this is evidence of what promises to be a truly massive advertising campaign by Microsoft to get the word out about Vista through unconventional means. After watching a series of annoying Mac commercials featuring a snooty preppy making snide off-hand comments about PCs running Windows, it’s nice to see the corporate giant flexing its financial muscle to once again re-crush the indy into submission. I never thought I’d say that, but I’ve really come to hate the Mac guy.

For additional info, check out this link on digg.com.
comedy central, demetri martin, iap, institute for advanced personhood, mac, mac guy, macintosh, microsoft, PC, vista, windows vista

You know what? I’ve had enough of the self-righteous bullshit I constantly hear from people who, for one reason or another, use obscure operating systems and feel it necessary, solely for that reason, to rag on Windows at every opportunity. Take for example, the plethora of smug, overbearing Mac users that seems to crawl out of the woodwork to make fun of virus protection. Case in point is a poll on Techdirt.com, which asks users to list the number of ‘anti-’ programs running on their desktop. Clearly, this was intended for the 95% of users out there running Windows, but that didn’t stop the beret-wearing crowd from chiming in brilliantly:

Why is it that if somebody doesn’t have ANY anti-something, that they are “living dangerously”?

Perhaps it should be renamed to “I don’t use an OS/Software the forces me to use this junk”

Here’s the thing: I love Macs. I think Linux is neat. But the fact of the matter is that most of the world is running Windows, so most of the pond-scum writing viruses and spyware are going to target it, because they’re skeevy assholes, not complete idiots. No one really cares if their popup displays on Safari 1.0, if their malware-anti-spyware product will install on FreeBSD, or if they can hijack your browser to dial aged Portuguese women in South Jersey for per-minute tele-sexual services. There’s millions of other people out there running Windows who are ready to eat that shit up. But you know what? If your operating system was popular, all the other kids would hate it too, and try to hurt it both phyisically and psychologically. Plus, here’s the thing that other OS users are always afraid to admit. Windows users can afford to run anti-spyware, anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-phishing, anti-bellum, and anti-quated software all at the same time on their machines, and still be able to do exactly what they want with their computers. And you know why? ‘Cuz all that porno’s optimized to run on fuckin’ IE, bitch. So have a nice day staring at the command line, nerd.