Welcome to Loose Cannons!

Let us say up front, the folks here at AppleLinks have no idea who we are. They have no responsibility over what is said in this column. We made the offer to write this over secured email and they foolishly thought it was a good idea.

Why do we have that disclaimer up front? And why don't we identify ourselves?

Well, The Loose Cannons are well known people/personalities in their fields who can't say certain things in their usual forums, perhaps because their bosses won't let them or would fire them if they found out. Perhaps they have to suck up to various Powers-That-Be and can't afford, professionally or financially, to piss them off.

It's a horrible situation. Pity us. We hate the constraints being put on us in our Real Lives/Jobs. So we went looking for an outlet for our ranting. It got less and less fun just ranting back and forth at each other on our private IRC Channel. One of "the West Coast Posse" came up with this idea.

And we'll be taking names and kicking some ass. Don Crabb, Steve Jobs, John Dvorak, Stewart Alsop, ABCNews...these are just a few of the people we plan on going off on. CNET, ZDNet, Apple, Macworld, MacCentral and even AppleLinks will not be spared.

Unfortunately for you, Dear Reader, it means you don't know if you can trust us or not. Well, that'll be your problem. Ours will be to vent our spleens and see how much hate mail we can generate.

And make no mistake about it. This column will generate mail. Why do we say that? Well, we know what we're going to say and we argue with each other about it. We can imagine how pissed some of you are going to be about what shows up here.

We plan on telling what we know, telling what we think, talking about rumors, making up rumors, dishing dirt and getting down with the slime. We'll get filthy so you don't have to. Sound like fun?

The problem we're having is, where to start? We have so much pent up anger and bile that it's tough to decide. How about Apple and QT Streaming? Sounds pretty cool doesn't it? That is, unless you are behind a firewall (like most corporations are). Now, RealNetworks has figured out a way to stream behind firewalls. Hell, the serfs at Microsoft have even figured it out. Why hasn't Apple?

How about Mac users ranting at John Dvorak? C'mon, people. Dvorak does this stuff on a regular basis and yet Mac users jump on it like a bunch of Pavlovian trained dogs while Dvorak laughs all the way to the Banner ad bank.

How about those online columnists who don't think Apple should be suing the iMac rip-off PC makers? It's called "Protecting Intellectual Property Rights." Look into it.

Or how about ripping on Wall Street Analysts who have been wrong over and over again and yet the mainstream media keep going back to the same trough without ever looking for any kind of accountability?

Or we could go after Computer Super stores. The "CompUSA Experience" is a lot like the Jimi Hendrix one: only fun if you're drugged into submission. And don't even get us started on Sears. One day, the sales guy is in the lawnmower section, the next, he's selling iMacs. And what about the users who buy their computers at Sears? You get what you pay for, kids.

How about Mac News Web sites that just regurgitate Press Releases? Look, Mr Hot Shot Webmaster, if you can't/won't pay real reporters, get out of the business, OK? You're making the "real" news sites look bad.

Or how about FreeMac? This idea has more holes than the guys in our East Coast office who have ear piercings.

We could do an entire column on Anne Marie Feld. Her GameSpot article had folks she interviewed running for their fave HTML Editor to write rebuttals faster than you can say, "I've been misquoted!" We know Anne Marie Feld. We've spoken to Anne Marie Feld. And Anne Marie? You ain't unbiased.

There's nothing wrong with being unbiased as long as you let the audience *know* your biases so they can make their own decisions on your information. But when you cloak your biases in "Objective Reporting," you lie to your audience. And there is no worse sin than that for a journalist.

Our biases? Too many too list here But be assured that when they are relevant to the story, we'll tell you up front.

But they biggest one we all share here at Loose Cannons is a bias, a hatred, a fire burning in the pits of our small, charcoaled hearts that is hotter than a thousand Pentium chips. We hate all manner of mediocrity, hypocrisy and stupidity. Yeah, we know that covers a lot of ground. But being confirmed misanthropes, we expected that.

Rather than leave tracks in previously dug up ground, let's just leave this column as an introduction. Come on back next week when we'll poke around at fresh BS. I'm sure there will be something for us to Dennis Miller about.

In the mean time and in the between time, if you have anything to say to us, good bad or indifferent, send it to "cannons@applelinks.com"

Cannons out!

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March 19, 2010