A "stunning" problem with Windows 7, racism lives at Ole Miss and college football thoughts

- This college football Saturday did not get off to a spectacular start. But that’ll happen when the snooze-fest that is the Big Ten provides most of the big-name teams playing in the games with a noon kickoff. With barn-burners like Indiana-Northwestern, Ohio State-Minnesota and Purdue-Illinois leading the way, I damn near fell asleep watching the first round of games. Literally no ranked teams lost and the games weren’t all that exciting. The most intense scene was clearly in Morgantown, W. Va., where the host West Virginia Mountaineers hosted a Connecticut team that had suffered the incredibly difficult loss of teammate Jasper Howard after he was stabbed and killed at a school dance last Saturday night. West Virginia did all sorts of things – a fan-signed banner of support in UConn’s entrance tunnel to the field, stickers on their helmets, ribbons passed out to fans coming through the gates – to support UConn and it was definitely a moving scene. The Huskies played with emotion but were unable to cash in a late-game drive into West Virginia territory and lost a tough 28-24 decision. The excitement level of games ratcheted up a few notches in the second wave of games, with Clemson going on the road and stunning No. 10 Miami in overtime, 40-37. A touchdown pass ended the game for the Tigers after Miami could only manage a field goal in its lone OT possession. Likewise, No. 16 Utah needed overtime to win against scrappy Air Force, 23-16. The Eagles went for it on fourth down twice on overtime, but the Utes were able to stop then when it mattered and get the win. Another noteworthy performance on the day came from Bowling Green receiver Freddie Barnes, who caught 14 passes for 172 yards and his team’s lone touchdown in a 24-10 loss to Central Michigan. In his last three games, Barnes has 46 receptions for 610 yards and seven touchdowns – in the last three games! That’s a great season for most receivers and this guy has done it in one quarter of the season. A matchup of so-called BCS busters fizzled out in Provo, Utah, where the eighth-ranked TCU Horned Frogs came into town and thumped the Stormin’ Mormons, i.e. the BYU Cougars, by a 38-7 margin to keep their slim national title hopes alive. Sadly, Iowa was able to do the same in a typical butt-ugly Big Ten game, scoring on literally the last play of the game, a seven-yard touchdown pass from Ricky Stanzi to Marvin McNutt for a 15-13 win over Michigan State less than a minute and a half after the Spartans drove 60 yards for the go-ahead touchdown. But for all the SEC honks who like to “be-downgrade” the Big Ten for its ugly style of play…..that Tennessee-Alabama game was no better. Alabama beat a mediocre UT team with no offense whatsoever and did so on the strength of four Leigh Tiffin field goals and two blocked field goals by mountainous defensive tackle Terrence Cody, 12-10. If Alabama is supposed to be one of the SEC’s elite…..color me unimpressed. In the last round of games for the day, both No. 1 Florida and No. 4 USC were pushed but hung on for wins. Florida was tested by unranked Mississippi State and the Bulldogs hung around until the fourth quarter. when a fake field goal inside their own 30-yard-line did them in. The Bulldogs failed to convert the first down and a three-point deficit quickly expanded to nine when Florida took advantage of the short field and scored a touchdown to go up 22-13. They held on for an unimpressive 29-19 win, while USC lit up the scoreboard with Oregon State, the same Oregon State team that beat them to ruin the Trojans’ national championship hopes last season. This time around, USC held on for a 42-36 win in one of the day's most exciting games. All told, a day of games that started out dull but ended in exciting fashion.........

- Count Google in on the digital music revolution. This week, the popular search engine announced its plans to launch a music service. Not much is known about the service at this point, not even the name. "Google Music," "Google Audio," or "One Box” are all possible names, but the official moniker won't be announced until Wednesday. We do know that Google’s music enterprise will link out to two music services: Lala and iLike. Google will not technically be a music retailer itself, but will offer enhanced music search with a streaming. When you search for an artist or song, the new service will bring up a box with a streaming link randomly assigned to stream songs from either Lala or iLike. The official announcement of this new musical conglomerate will take place next Wednesday at Capital Records Music in Hollywood, California, with musical guests OneRepublic plus members of Linkin Park and Dead by Sunrise. Two out of three of those artists absolutely suck, so Google’s new “Whaever It’s Called” music service isn't off to a good start there. But fear not, there may actually be some good music options on this debacle, as Google's music search service will include music from all four major labels and indie content from iLike and Lala. Like iTunes, iLike currently streams some songs as 30-second samples, but unlike iTunes, it streams some others as full-length songs. The service also sells MP3s for the usual prices, while Lala allows registered users to stream complete songs and albums once, for free, after which point they can buy streaming songs 10 cents that can be credited to the purchase of the full download. What Google must explain is how it will integrate these services into its search interface. All of this comes as Google works hard to build the back-end for the majors' upcoming Vevo music video service and potentially prepares to release other search verticals, possibly including a travel booking service. In other words, Google is trying to take over the world and it’s up to us to stop them, so let’s make it happen………

- The Manhattan district attorney's office is really racking up the celebrity convictions on criminal possession of a weapon charges these days. They’ve already nailed former New York Giants receiver Plaxico Burress for toting an unlicensed gun into a Manhattan nightclub and shooting himself in the leg and now the DA’s office has rapper Lil Wayne in its sights. Lil Wayne, whose real name is Dwayne Carter, pleaded guilty Thursday to attempted criminal possession of a weapon. He is expected to receive a one-year jail sentence when he returns to court for sentencing in February. Had he not plead guilty now, his trial would have begun in January. Carter was indicted back in February 2008 (once again, the swiftness and expediency of the U.S. legal system at its finest) and he pleaded not guilty to a charge of criminal possession of a weapon. His high-priced attorneys went to work, got the charges reduced and thus the guilty plea to those reduced charges. The actual arrest occurred in July 2007, when Carter and another man were smoking the hippie lettuce on a street and the officers found a .40-caliber pistol in Carter's possession. Being as he was (allegedly) baked out of his mind, I’m guessing he wasn’t able to put up much of a front when the cops began questioning him. But being a rapper and having more tattoos than just about anyone in the industry, I’m guessing that a year in prison (possibly less with good behavior) will only boost Carter’s street cred and make him that much more popular when he gets out. And who knows, perhaps a year in the clink will give him plenty of ammo with which to craft another of his mediocre hip-hop beats. I can’t say that for certain, but I am sure of that fact that if you are a celebrity in any industry and you are going to be in the New York area, you’re going to want to leave your illegal firearms at home or you too will be heading to the pokey just like Messrs Burress and Carter………

- When adding profanity to your college’s fight song is considered an upgrade, I’m not sure that says anything good about you. This is the dilemma faced by the University of Mississippi, which has shortened one of its fight songs to discourage football fans from chanting "the South will rise again" during part of the song. In its place, the Ole Miss student government passed a resolution suggesting the chant be replaced by the phrase, "To hell with LSU." Solid move, one and all. But who isn't down with a chant that evokes memories of your state and region’s intolerant, embarrassing past of slavery, segregation and bigotry? The song in question, "From Dixie With Love," (and what’s not loving about a South that persecuted blacks and treated them like second-class citizens?) is played by the Ole Miss band before and after football games. Even after the school made a point of asking fans not to chant the offensive phrase at the end of the song, some fans of clung to their inner racist and continued to do so. Dan Jones, the Ole Miss chancellor, asked the school's band director, David Wilson, to modify the song to support the efforts of the Associated Student Body because he has received dozens of complaints from fans who feel the chant is offensive. "The fact is, the phrase 'The South Will Rise Again' is not part of our tradition or spirit, and it is inconsistent with the university's values and what Ole Miss stands for -- a great public university with a focus on the future," Jones said. But even with the modified version of the song, which ends abruptly before the chanting phase starts, some ignorant, racist fans in the crowd still broke out the chant when the song was played at Ole Miss's homecoming game against the University of Alabama. Representing those ignoramuses is Brian Ferguson, head of the Colonel Reb Foundation, an organization that works to preserve traditions at Ole Miss. He objects to the university’s actions and wishes to continue to insensitively offending black people. "I think it's a big to-do about nothing. There were very few people other than the students who knew to say it," said Ferguson. Just shut it, B. Your school has an incredibly bas history as a bastion of the Old South, fortified by the ugly scene that took place in 1962 when James Meredith's was admitted as the first black student and his presence led to a bloody standoff. Let go of the racist chant and just enjoy the football game, seeing as your team is actually good for once………

- Surprise, surprise. Microsoft has barely launched the latest version of its crap-tacular operating system and already we have a problem. In a shameless attempt to boost sales of Windows 7, Microsoft offered the electronic version of Windows 7 Home Edition to college students for $29. That’s still overpriced by about $141, but in spite of that, there are still a lot of stupid college students out there and so many of them jumped at the offer. However, when the stupid students bought their copy of the OS and attempted to install it, they ran into a serious issue. Turns out that the $29 electronic version of Windows 7 Home Edition sold for Microsoft through Digital River doesn't seem to install properly on some 32-bit Vista machines. In a mistake that you just had to expect from Microsoft, the download files weren't properly packaged and when some users tried to "unload the box" they got an error that read: "We are unable to create or save new files in the folder in which this application was downloaded." It took all of three hours after Windows 7’s release for a discussion thread about the problem to pop up on Microsoft Answers' Windows 7 install forum. By Saturday morning it had generated more than 500 replies and been read nearly 44,000 times. Faced with yet another f’up in its never-ending history of them, Microsoft owned up to the problem Thursday evening and by Friday was offering refunds. Quite a product you have there, Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. Your “great new OS” is so bad and fault-riddled that you are forced to offer people their money back or else subject them to a five-step Download Squad workaround that is more complicated and convoluted than the operations manual for a NASA space shuttle. If only someone could have predicted these problems with Windows 7 and advised people to avoid it like the plague…..oh wait, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing. Guess it just goes to show that listening to me is always a good move for you…………