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December 29, 2007

Folks, I have bad news for you:

*Pro* sports are not about "sport". They are about money. If you are a team that wins a lot, you get more money so you can hire better players. The losing teams? Not so much. Note, hire. You hire your players. You do not choose them, nor do you give them cookies. They are the employees of the team, and they are paid to play. If you want to see sports played for the love of sport, watch pickup games. If there are sponsors, if people are raising serious amounts of money for gear and the like, it's not about sport, it's about money.

Lots of money. Billions of dollars. How many of you really know what a billion dollars is? Not just the number, but what it will buy you. I do. Literally. It will buy you, in 1986 dollars, a B-1B transcontinental strategic bomber, crew, (pilot and maintenance), parts, and armament. People will kill each other for ten bucks, and y'all are somehow shocked that people will bend and break bullshit rules when we're talking about billions of dollars.

Give.your.heads.a.shake.

You want your teams to win, not "play well" and lose. No, don't even give me a buncha shit to the contrary. I know sports fans too well. You, the ones with the gear, and the towels and the toys. You want Super Bowl/World Series/Final Four championships, not "Well, we didn't go to the playoffs, but damn, we were great sports all season long." You may be able to lie to yourselves about such things, but if you try that with me, I'll laugh at you like the self-delusional idiots you are. Fans want winners. Period. They pay good...what's that word, oh yes, money to see the games, and buy their little trinkets. They spend money on the players, they want results. It's not the cheating that bothers them, it's when teams get caught, and then even worse, don't have the decency to have a losing season afterwards.

Face it, if the Patriots had ended with Miami's record this year, you'd not hear half the whining, because everyone who's not a Pat's fan would be sitting in front of the TV, all sanctimonious and smug, saying "cheaters never prosper". It is the fact that the Patriots took their penalty, and then went on to win every damned game, some close, most not, that really pissed everyone off. Bad. Because it's better to blame the Patriots for playing the way the fans, the owners, the sponsors and everyone else with money on them want them to, than for those groups to blame themselves. Me? I realized long ago that pro sports are about money, and this sanctimonious "sportsmanship" bullshit was for the losing teams to spout. Then again, I think the Raiders team that won Super Bowl XI were one of the best teams to ever play, and that Jack Tatum was the best fucking defensive back ever. Obviously, my priorities are better aligned with those of pro sports. Which is funny, because I'm not that into them.

Whose fault is it? Everyone's. How do you fix it? Remove money from it, and go back to watching pickup games. Get together with some other parents, buy your kids some gear, bring some sammiches, and watch them play just because it's the weekend. But if you're talking Pro/NCAA or even big High School, STFU about "sportsmanship" when we all know that it's the money that drives the game, and lots of it. Stop crying in your tea towels about cheating, and the lack of "fair play". Because as long as you have that kind of money involved, you'll have the people breaking the rules. Furthermore if you support it, monetarily or not?

You're a "cheater" too, just one without the talent to actually play.

There's no moral high ground in pro sports. Grow up and stop pretending there ever was.

Technorati Tags:
Sports Fans = Whiny Bitches, Sports Hypocrisy

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This line, from Dave Winer (Gee, THERE'S a shock), ensures that not only will I never use his new toy, (not that I had planned on it, since I am the last person on the intertubes not using Flickr), but that I will never, in the future, voluntarily use any software he has had any sort of direct influence on:

I'm going to try to add one feature to FlickrFan every day.

I cannot imagine that kind of thinking...it's like a version of a bad commercial from the 70s: A sprinkle a day, helps keep smart people away...

That line just gives me the fucking willies man. Tell me again why people still kiss his ass? RSS doesn't cover THAT much.

Technorati Tags:
NOT THE RIGHT WAY

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I'm serious. You look at almost any time one of the "A-list" Bloggers recommends something as "the best blog of the year", or "the best writing", and about 70% of the time, it's a site talking about some personal tragedy. Someone's kid dying of cancer. Someone talking about how hard it is to move after a busted relationship. Someone kvetching that they have a really hard-to-pop zit. Billy won't ask them to the prom. On and on.

What, you can't write well unless you're "sharing" the trajedies of your life with the world? (Yes, I know, and I meant the plural of trajedi. It's not a tragedy. What happend to Ms. Bhutto in Pakistan? That's a tragedy. That nice young girl who was gang - raped in Iraq in a legally - protected manner? That's a tragedy. You get dumped and move? That's just life.)

I swear, it's like these idiots are wannabe TV News Bobbleheads, only they don't get to ask Mrs. Jones what here feelings were when she realized her husband was dead, so they have to find blogs about trajedi, then wax rhapsodic about how "This...this is what blogs and the internet are for...the human connection, bringing us together."

Fucking rubbish is what it is. It's picking over the emotional drama of someone who has no one else to talk to so they post their lives on the internet, and hope for the reactions in comments that they can't get in real life. It's some kind of emotional zombie feeding frenzy via remote access, only instead of "BRAAAAAAINS" they walk around chanting "PERRRSONAL HUMANNNN TRAJEDIIIIII". Someone wants to post the details about their failed attempts at a relationship with someone who their "real-life" friends were probably trying to tell them was all wrong for them anyway, fine, but for the love of DOG, don't elevate it to the level of people out there who are writing to educate, to elevate, to make us laugh, and sometimes do all three.

I'd rather read nothing but a month of PZ frothing on Pharyngula, or Gruber going deep into font and pen esoterica for weeks or Matt's analysis of the bizarreness that is NCAA sports in Oklahoma or Chuck's never ending "Name that car" which I never get, than some of this "OMG, LIFE IS NOT ALWAYS PERFECT, I AM IN A DEEEEP PIT OF DEPRESSION AND DARKNESS" emo shit that gets thrown up as examples of "TEH BLOG OF DA YEEEER".

Because I find that a) most drama - driven writing isn't that good, especially from the source, and b) that since I don't know these people? I just don't care. Remember folks, apathy is the emotional state of the universe. The sooner you accept that, the happier you'll be.

Technorati Tags:
Drama Queens, Blogosphere = Dorkosphere

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December 27, 2007

Under the heading of "My Pussy Hurts", we have this dingaling: Marc Fizman, aka "Captain Marc". Okay, so as soon as you see someone calling themselves "Captain" *anything* in an attempt to be all Old Sk00l haxx0riffic, you know you're dealing with someone who has the mental and emotional maturity of a 12 year old discovering the other uses for their privates...and that they'll never be sharing them with anyone.

Marc is sad. Sad Marc. Marc is sad because a free thing is no longer completely free. The Blue Meanies at Iconfactory have decided that the amount of work they do to keep Twitteriffic going requires compensation, and I don't mean a nice email and a handjob. I mean cash. Cold, hard cash. Filthy Lucre. That's right, the eeeeeevil bastiges at Iconfactory want MONEY. Even worse, if you want to use Twitteriffic without paying MONEY, you have to look at ADS!

MY GOD, IT'S LIKE LIVING IN A CONCENTRATION CAMP! WITH ADS! OMGWTFKHAAAAAAAAN!!!!!

Come on people, it's fifteen fucking dollars, and if you don't want to pay it, a random ad a few times an hour. It's not a fucking crime against humanity, nor did Iconfactory take your parents and your dog and make you live in a tar paper shack in the Mojave Desert. Marc's just another one in a long line of douchebags who can't stand not getting everything for free, and so is all whiny about having to pay fifteen fucking dollars for an app. Or see ads. Wah-fucking-wah. You want the best part?

The little pinhead doesn't even USE Twitteriffic:

but personally I’m spending most of my time in Snitterland and am loving it.

No, he's just doing this as a public service. Hey Marc, you want to be of service? How about you do something useful, like volunteering at an old folk's home, instead of being a whiny little cock about an application you don't even use.

Of course, you better not get too uppity with Captain Marc, or he'll try to insinuate that something bad will happen to you:

Idiot, eh?

You’re just asking for some hacker meditation, Mr Dillingham…

Not that the Great and Mighty Marc would do it himself, because hey, he's such a whining wuss:

@43: I’m merely suggesting you’re asking for an attack. I would, of course, never dream of performing such an attack myself.

Now it’s entirely possible there are people within my various circles who would dream of performing such an attack.

But I can’t be held responsible for their actions. Can I, Mr Dillingham?

Actually Marc, if it's shown you induced, through action or word, someone to perform an illegal act, then you can in fact, be held responsible. Ask Charles Manson about it sometime, I hear he's got time to spare.

GAH, the only thing Marc deserves is a good whuppin' with a switch. He's yet another fucking entitlement queen who thinks he "deserves" shit for free, because he's a "loyal supporter". In the computer world, "Loyal Supporter" is another way of saying "Big pain in the ass entitlement queen douchebag". They're like squabs: Make a lot of noise, and are unable to chew their own food, much less go out and get their own food.

"Captain" Marc Fizman: Entitlement Douchbag.

(Oh, for the record, no, I haven't paid for Twitteriffic. I've no problem with the ads, so I don't see a point, and it's got some strange shit going on with it that make me unwilling to drop the fifteen on it. But really, the ads are not bad at all. Hell, they're barely noticeable at all. Unless you're an Entitlement Douchebag. Like Marc.)

Technorati Tags:
Entitlement Queens, Bynkii Awards, Marc Fizman - Entitlement Douchebag

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Dear god, not only is the blogdorkosphere a big stupid echo chamber, but it's fucking ignorant too.

First, let's clear one thing up. Think Secret never mattered to me. Nick Ciarelli's little circlejerk of OMGWTFSCOOP!!!111 didn't matter to me, because Nick wouldn't have known anything I cared about if it bit him on the ass. No, really, can you imagine him with a "scoop" that SNMP was going to be massively better in Leopard? "SNMP? What the fuck is that? Moron, all I care about are iPods!" I think I read that site ten times in its entire history.

The IT world is a little more grown up about how we find out our info, and our methods work a shitload better than Nick's anyway. So the existence, or lack thereof, of Nick and his little wankorama site matters not to me.

The implication that "This will have a chilling effect on writing about Apple" is fucking lame too. It hasn't slowed down the requests for articles on Apple in my inbox one damned bit. Hell, I think it may be picking up. I didn't get any bad email from Apple for delving into the details on Leopard's SNMP implementation. Not a one. Who knows, with Captain BreakMyNDA gone, maybe people will calm the fuck down a little. Probably not. Anyway, this is not a first amendment issue. It never was, unless you're the EFF and Cory Doctorow, and your cock is sore from wanking about DRM, (which, for the most part is at least useful). Regardless of what dingalings like Matthew Ingram think, (and wtf is a Canadian journalist bitching about U.S. First Amendment rights for anyway? The Canadian version of the Official Secrets Act says "cast out the beam in thine own eye before thou pointest out the mote in mine"), the First Amendment is fine, or rather, this case isn't doing it any harm. No, it isn't, no matter how much Ol' Matt cries or whines about it.

See, what Matt, and too many others don't get is a fundamental point of the US civil judicial system. In fact, it may be the point: Lawsuits are the only way to settle a dispute in a legal forum. Bitch and whine about Mean Old Apple suing that nice Ciarelli boy all you want, but Apple had no other options to get the information. Well, not legally. Once they asked Nick directly, and he said "no", their legal options were:

1. Walk away


2. Take Nick to court

(I'm not counting arbitration, because that is an extralegal option that both parties have to agree to, it's not got the prominence or precedent-setting abilities of a suit in front of a judge, and quite frankly, Nick would have been an idiot to agree to arbitration, that shit is totally biased for the bigger company.)

Walking away wasn't really an option from Apple's POV. (Spare me the PR shit. The only people who think Apple needs that kind of PR still whine about HyperCard and Mac OS X not running on their fucking IIci.) They had people they knew were breaking NDA, and here's this little prat who knows he's getting NDA'd information, (It is impossible he did not. He got enough C&D's from Apple to keep him in free toilet paper forever), in fact, he's inducing people to break NDA,(Again, this is fact), and inducing people to break a legal contract, particularly where trade secrets are concerned is a major no-no. Apple had a case. Whether dorkosphere fanboys think they should have doesn't matter. I can't imagine too many sober-minded (oh look, just excluded Cory Doctorow) legal experts who wouldn't think Apple didn't have a good case.

True, they didn't have to sue him to get the info. But sending goons over to smack Little Nicky around is called assault, and is frowned upon in polite society. They could have hacked his site, but again, illegal. In fact, once you eliminate all shady/illegal options, and you realize that just walking away sets a bad precedent for Apple, the only option left was suing him, and allowing the legal system to work the way it was designed to work. Is that system stacked in favor of the rich and powerful? Of course, welcome to the entirety of human history.

But think about it. Once you removed the blathering idiots on both sides, and let the lawyers do their jobs, this was settled painlessly. No one roughed up. No one shot. No Karen Silkwood shit. It was all civilized. Keep in mind, Nick did not have to agree to the settlement. There was no gun at his head. (Yay civilized legal system!) He could have fought it if he thought he had a good chance to win, and had he won, the chances of the judge awarding him damages in addition to his costs would have been pretty decent. He chose to settle. That's how things work in this country. People may not like that lawsuits are the only option to get a dispute up in front of a judge, but that's how it works. If you think that this is some kind of OMGTOTALITARIANISM shit, go ask Benazir Bhutto what it's like getting stuff done under real totalitarianism. Or Walesa. Or a coal mining union sympathizer in the early part of the 20th century.

Nick Ciarelli settling did not kill the First Amendment in this country, nor whatever the equivalent is in Canada. It didn't even dirty it up. In fact, it showed that the system, such as it is, still works correctly, because if it really didn't? Then Apple would have won ten seconds after filing the papers, because when the system doesn't work, it never screws over the rich and powerful at the expense of the little guy.

Oh, and here's a tip for judging an issue pinging around the blogdorkosphere: The louder the blogdorksphere screams about something, the higher the probability that they're full of shit, and the truth is whatever is the opposite of their opinion.

Technorati Tags:
TEH STOOPUD, Think Secret, Everything is not about the first amendment

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December 22, 2007

I've been deliberately not commenting on the Think Secret settlement, because it's such a fucking mess of stupid that even thinking about it gets stupid on you.

But Dave Winer calling Apple "Fascist Scumbags"?

What a stupid fucking thing to say. Especially from someone so oppressed. Dave's a fat, balding white guy. In other words, Dave Winer is the man. Seriously. Let me lock that stupid fuck in a room with some real fascists. In five minutes, he'd be begging to lick Steve Jobs' balls and more if it meant getting out of that room.

Fucktard.

Technorati Tags:
Dave Winer: Living Up To His Name

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As some long-time readers of this site know, bynkii.com is hosted by digital.forest, (I really need to get that banner up one day), and has been since the beginning of the site. They are not the cheapest hosting provider. They don't offer the most space. They don't offer unlimited bandwidth for a nickel a century. They don't have a supercaptaincoolguy control panel.

They don't have a lot of things.

What they do have is fantastic tech support, a thoroughly professional attitude towards things, and because of how they work, I know I'll never get emails telling me people are seeing this:

(This is from a webcomic I recently started to read.) I've had steadily increasing bandwidth over the years, but I don't worry about shit like that. I have to pay for it, mind you. d.f. is cool, but they ain't running a charity. (SO CLICK ON MY ADS!) However, I know I don't have to worry about shit like that happening. So what am I paying for if it's not gobs of space and bandwidth?

Peace.Of.Mind.

Yeah.

I'll pay for that.

Technorati Tags:
digital.forest, Good ISPs

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December 21, 2007

While I am normally happy to poke fun at the crazy, the stupid, and the like, there is a level of crazy that even I have the sense to just leave alone, at least under normal circumstances. Like Rixstep, http://rixstep.com. That site is just a whole mess of crazy. Not the fun kind. I don't mean like the Andy Stone kinda crazy, which is the Nutty Professor kind. The kind that's a really nice guy, really smart, and working really hard to do good. It's just that you *really* want to know what his earth's gravitational constant is, because you have the feeling that it's just a wee bit different from ours

But we need guys like Andy, crazy as they are, because well, they make the world a lot more fun than it otherwise would be. I'd be very sad about a Mac OS X world without Andy Stone.

That's not the crazy I mean with Rixstep. Whoever the fuck runs that festering pool of shit is a decidedly different kind of crazy. The kind that decides that if you are not one of their sycophants, that you're unworthy of even basic human dignity. Disagree with them, for any reason, and they will attack you in the most immature, vicious, spiteful way possible. They claim to be long-time programmers and consultants, with a long list of impressive-sounding names to drop, but in reality, they're the idiot savants that prove every bad stereotype of computer programmers to be based in fact. They are an eternal Roy Stalin, forever screaming in anger at his defeat on the K-12 by Lane Meyer, and normally, I use them for my weekly moment of WHATTHEFUCK, but deliberately leave them alone. Because it's like fucking with a rabid chihuahua. The entertainment value isn't high enough to justify the annoyance factor.

Tonight ain't normal.

Rixstep, as part of their Joe and Wendy Whiner-ian jihad against Apple for not making Mac OS X a "pure" port of OpenSTEP, decided to poach a few years worth of Stepwise.com WWDC reviews, to show how Apple pulled a cross-platform bait and switch on us. Normally I wouldn't care what a bunch of Exceptionally Small-Penised, (ESP'd) nutters do. But, this has really upset Scott Anguish, who has run Stepwise for 13 years, and worked hard to make it a site that helps a lot of people learn to become better programmers. Scott talks about it, http://www.stepwise.com/

The deformed dldos running Rixstep stole a bunch of Scott's WWDC columns, and posted them in a way that would make it look like Scott agrees with Rixstep, and worse, actively supports their POV. This is most emphatically not true, and reading between the lines, I'll hazard that Scott's been on the receiving end of Rixstep's standard abuse for people who don't greet them on bended knee with open mouth. Judge for yourself:

Where is Stepwise??

Although it makes me sick to have to do so, I have temporarily pulled the main page of Stepwise off-line. The rest will likely go this weekend.

The "Rixstep" site has stolen a large chunk of my WWDC 1999 coverage and republished it without permission. I won't link to the article (I don't want to give him the spider traffic) but it is here http://rixstep.com/2/4/20071221,00.shtml.

Frankly, I can't take the stress of fighting this with "Rixstep", it makes me ill just thinking about it.

Let me just state...

I did not write this for him.

I did not write this for him to steal and misrepresent.

I do not agree that we were 'lead down the garden path', nor that there was a bait and switch.

My copyright has been violated by his reproduction. But given the track record, I see no way to stop him from doing this. He's published incorrect information about me before.

I only hope that the long-time readers of Stepwise will recognize that this is not my feelings on the matter, and that my co-workers also understand this.

Frankly, I don't know when, or if, I'll put Stepwise back online unless that content is removed from his site.

Fuck you Rixstep. To every one of the diseased leaky douchebags running that site, Fuck you, and the cayuse you ride while dreaming of a human sex partner. Scott has, for over a decade, made Stepwise a site that did good, that helped people. All you have ever done is shit on everyone who didn't beg you for another helping of jizz. You're a fucking blight on the Mac web. Even the delusional ravings of Rob Enderle are preferable to the slime trail you leave in your wake.

But what to do about it? Caling them names won't really work, and shit like hacking them is descending to their level. So what to do?

Expose Them

Go read Scott's take on it, then dead some of the crazy at Rixstep, including their ass-raping of Scott's good name at http : // rixstep.com / 2 / 4 / 20071221,00.shtml, and if you agree with me, call them out on your blog, site, lj, whatever. If you like, use my new Technorati tag with your post to make it easier for people to spot the kind of dicksnot they are.

Then shun them. Don't link to them, don't visit that site anymore, make them dead to you. Rixstep has the right to be a bunch of dogfuckers, but they can do so alone. Let them shit where they eat, and befoul whatever they touch, but let them do so in an oubliette. Shun Them.

Then send Scott an email so he knows he's appreciated.

Just in case Scott reads this:

Scott,

I may not have always agreed with you, and I know I probably went off on you at some point in the past, but I have always respected what you and Stepwise have tried to do, and largely succeeded at. You have a lot more people on your side than you think.

Technorati Tags:
Rixstep - Diseased Douchebags

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I has a new logo!

Melissa did the artwork, and it's one of the best pics of me I've seen. There's still some tweaking left to do but I think it's really well-done

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December 20, 2007

1. I've decided to come up with my own awards. After much Twitter deliberation, they'll be called "Bynkiis".
2. T-shirts and new logo(s) are coming. The shirt prototypes may be at Macworld Expo. I'm going to go for quality first, as I hate a shitty t-shirt.
3. Going to Orlando for xmas week. Shorts at xmas for the fucking WIN.

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December 15, 2007

Of course, with New Year's coming, it's time for lists. CIO.com has gone after both low hanging fruit, and a hitcount monster, namely, the iPhone, and Ten Reasons no to support the iPhone. Now to be fair, this isn't really a CIO.com - originated piece, but one from Forrester Research. However, I'm not paying almost $280 bucks to read the original bad analysis. I have gifts to buy, and no one on my list wants crap like that.

But, as an IT professional, I do have to read at least the CIO version, and while there are some really solid points, the others? Not so much. In order:

1) The iPhone Doesn't Allow Data on the Device to be Encrypted

There's currently no way for enterprises to secure sensitive data on iPhones through file or disk encryption, according to Forrester. There's also no way for IT to enforce password policies since the decision to use a password (and when to change it) is up to the user.

I do agree with this. While you can't easily stop someone from getting corporate email on an iPhone, (Unless you block the ability to forward email, and we all know that's not happening), the inability to encrypt data, or enforce password policies can make the iPhone problematic for the business world.

That's not the same as "OMGNO!!!!!!111". Not all businesses are the same, and encryption/password policies have to reflect the reality of that business. If you don't carry around sensitive data on mobile devices, or if all the iPhone is used for is email that doesn't have sensitive information, then this issue isn't. But, it is at least a legitimate point. Unlike the next one:

2) The iPhone Does Not Natively Support "Push" Corporate E-mail or Wireless Calendar Syncing

Push e-mail (e-mail that is delivered to handhelds immediately upon receipt in a user's mailbox) is an essential feature for a business device because of the productivity such a feature enables, according to Forrester. If users need to physically retrieve messages--as opposed to having those messages pushed directly to them--they won't get them as quickly as possible and they'll waste time in the process. The iPhone can sync with Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes over IMAP and SMTP, Forrester says, but IT infrastructure must be tweaked accordingly or a separate gateway product must be purchased and even then mail is delivered only every 15 minutes.

The Apple iPhone
Apple's device also doesn't wirelessly sync with PCs, which means users must have access to the company's proprietary USB sync cable to retrieve calendar updates or contact changes, according to Forrester. If a meeting plan or location has been changed at the last minute, an iPhone user on the go could easily not get the notification in time.

Okay, so this one's stupid. First, the push thing is hardly a life or death requirement. It's a convenience. IMAP on an agressive schedule means you get your email about every 15 minutes. While I tend to prefer every ten minutes, this is not something that's going to make you lose your business and end your days on the street. If someone has to get a hold of you for a meeting that's suddenly happening RIGHT NOW, here's a suggestion...you have a phone, they should CALL YOU. The same thing with the lack of wireless sync to individual desktops. First, that's such an unreliable way to sync, it created an industry to bypass the desktop, and have the phone sync directly with the server. Goodlink anyone? Exchange OTA ActiveSync? Those aren't popular because desktop syncing is so damned popular. It also ignores, completely, the fact that starting with Windows Mobile 5, and it's version of ActiveSync, Microsoft disabled wireless desktop syncing. So guess what? Yeah, Windows Mobile devices are just as screwed here. Besides, if you send an email, you'll get the friggin' thing in the next 15 or so minutes anyway, so it's not that you won't get it, you just won't get it now. Maybe..because Forrester ignores the fact that email is neither guaranteed nor reliable. If your network is getting hammered by a large scale SMTP attack, it is entirely conceivable that your oh-so-important email is going to get delayed. In a building made with much love for granite and steel? You may not have enough signal to get the email. On a plane? Not getting the email. Driving? Well, you may not get the email, and if you do, I hope to $DEITY$ that you aren't reading your email while driving. Forrester is living in a bit of a fantasy land here.

3) The iPhone Does Not Run Third-Party Applications Without Voiding Its Warranty

Though Apple has promised a software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone so that external developers and businesses can create their own applications to run on the device, the iPhone does not currently support such applications--unless certain device components are hacked, which voids the phone's warranty. Companies that deploy, for example, sales force automation apps on mobile devices won't be able to port those applications to the iPhone until this issue is resolved.

That's funny, it doesn't seem to have stopped SAP from porting its stuff to Web interfaces so its sales force can use iPhones. Who tested it? Why, another small company nobody's heard of: Intel. Intel had many nice things to say about it too:

"It didn't look like SAP," said Daryl Ganas, director of sales and marketing operations for Intel, one of several companies that has helped SAP test the software.

"It felt and looked to me like something my sales people would use," he said in an interview

It would seem that there is significant customer demand for such a thing. Not my words, but rather SAP's:

"The iPhone has become such a popular thing," said Bob Stutz, a SAP senior vice president who is responsible for developing customer relationship management software. "Everybody wants the ease of use of the iPhone."

Hmm...and it also seems that moving applications to a web UI would help deal with that whole "has sensitive data on it" thing. Funny that.

4) The iPhone Cannot be Locked or Wiped Remotely

Forrester says the single most important feature of mobile device management offerings is remote lock and data wipe functionality, both of which the iPhone lacks. Apple doesn't currently offer any mobile device management software that's anything like the many offerings available for BlackBerrys, Windows Mobile or Symbian devices. Forrester doesn't anticipate any vendors offering such a product before mid-to-late 2008.

This one's legitimate. In a case where you have sensitive data, phones are small and easily lost/stolen. A remote wipe function can be critical to a business.

5) The iPhone Lacks a Physical Keyboard

The iPhone's touch screen interface and virtual keyboard may be cool, but it is not ideal for power users who e-mail and text message very frequently. The problem with the touch screen is that it doesn't provide tactile feedback, according to Forrester, which makes it difficult to type without paying attention to every single key you hit. The faster you can type, the faster your messages get sent out and the more work you can do in a shorter amount of time. That's not necessarily the case with the iPhone.

Oh gimme a break. You aren't writing 3,000 word missives on a thumb keyboard anyway, and if you have big hands like me, there's not a thumb keyboard made that you can type any more accurately on than the iPhone's. I have to pay exactly the same amount of attention to my typing on a thumb keyboard as I do on an iPhone. This one is "Crap, we need something to make it ten, bitch about the keyboard again". Dear Forrester: no one really cares.

6) The iPhone Has Limited Carrier Support Outside the United States, It's Locked Into Carriers

The iPhone is currently only available through exclusive carriers in the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, and it's locked to those specific carriers. That means business users who travel internationally can't use iPhones via the carriers they have contracts with in any other countries, even if those carriers offer networks that are technologically compatible, according to Forrester.

This one is semantic games. First, you can indeed roam with the iPhone. People do it all the time. It ain't cheap sometimes, but they can do it. In fact, I can get a (not free) international roaming option for my iPhone via AT&T. Again, it's not cheap, but that's not the same as you can't do it. As well, "Limited carrier support"? Oy.

7) The iPhone is (Very) Expensive

The iPhone sells for double what the average BlackBerry or Treo costs. At $400, plus voice and data charges, Apple's smartphone is one of the priciest such devices on the market, even after a $200 price cut last fall. Corporations seeking mobile devices often consider price a selling point, especially since many device makers or carriers offer business discounts and service plans. Apple and AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier, don't offer any such discounts for business use.

Oh for pete's sake, it is not. The big problem here is that you don't get any discounts. However, if you want an unlocked Treo or Blackberry, so you can more easily use it with other services, which is evidently quite important to Forrester as they point out in item 6), well, then the price changes a bit. Sans contract and rebate, a Tre0 750 costs more than an iPhone costs, as does the Pantech Duo, the Moto Q, the BlackBerry Curve 8310, the Blackberry 8820, the Treo 680, and the AT&T Tilt. Actually, even with the contract and the discount, the Tilt's only a hundred bucks cheaper than the iPhone.

But the worst part about this point is they bury the closest they come biggest reason why businesses should stay away from the iPhone for now in the last sentence of this "point":

Apple and AT&T, the exclusive U.S. carrier, don't offer any such discounts for business use.

They don't offer discounts, because you can't get an iPhone on a business plan, period. If I had to guess, there's exactly one company with an iPhone business plan, and they make the silly thing. Maybe AT&T has one too, but other than that, they're personal use contracts only. They are not being sold in a way that makes sense for businesses. The best point of all, and Forrester blows it, just whiffs it. That's what happens when you value hitcounts over accuracy, you miss the valid points.

8) The iPhone Is a First-Generation Device

No mobile device is perfect when it's initially released. In order for handset makers to refine their products, they often rely on their masses of users to highlight their weaknesses. Some of the iPhone's weaknesses are, according to Forrester:

• it can be difficult to activate quickly
• battery life is weak/short
• sound quality is less than impressive
• it's currently only a 2.5 generation device, which means that data transfer speeds aren't as fast as they could be

The next iteration of the iPhone will likely address these issues. In fact, AT&T's CEO recently said a 3G iPhone is due in 2008.

Okay, Forrester's just cheating here, they bury 4 points in this one, but then again, they're all weak. As well, one point is something they bitch about later on, so that's even more of a cheat. But anyway. First, all phones can be difficult to activate quickly. I've had phones that took a long time to activate, I've had phones that took minutes. Windows Mobile , Palm, there's no guarantee that the process will work quickly 100% of the time. The same applies to the iPhone. This one's just stupid. Secondly, battery life on the iPhone is not significantly worse than any other phone, and better, by far, than the darling of the Windows Mobile set, the Q. The Q, at least the original release had a batter that could barely get through the day when it was doing nothing at all. In contrast, I can easily get through two days of normal use with my iPhone without a charge. If I can do that, I'm set. I'm not off wandering in the woods. I don't need a week without a charge. Third, the volume is indeed less than impressive, but the sound quality is quite nice. People have no problems understanding what I say when I talk on it. The last bullet is a scream. "aren't as fast as they could be?" Well, for that matter, neither are 3G speeds. That whole nastiness of the real world means you rarely hit theoretical max. Stop shucking for hits man, that's lame.

9) Apple Doesn't Offer Replacement Batteries for the iPhone

Apple doesn't currently offer battery replacements for the iPhone, so users cannot carry backups to ensure that they never lose power. Forrester says that third-party vendors will likely begin to offer replacements in the near future, but because the device needs to be disassembled in order to remove a battery and insert another, the replacement process may not be simple enough for less tech-savvy users.

That's because Apple doesn't do like far too many smartphone manufacturers, and ship the iPhone with a crap battery that can barely get through a day of normal use, (PPC-6601, XV-6700), or not even that good, (Moto Q) without a spare battery. If more manufacturers didn't ship with batteries that suck, this wouldn't be a problem. I'm amazed at how people are so Stockholmed by smartphone batteries that they now view a workaround to bad engineering as a plus.

10) There's No Proof That iPhones Are Suitable Business Devices

The only large enterprise that is known to fully support iPhones is--surprise, surprise--Apple, according to Forrester. And it hasn't published any case studies or other support materials. Enterprises often make mobile device purchasing decisions based on the experience of their peers or industry analysts' recommendations, but with such information lacking about the iPhone, Forrester says it won't likely be making its way into many businesses anytime soon.

First of all, stop relying on other people, like oh, Forrester Research to do your damned thinking for you, and secondly, based on what enterprise companies like SAP and Intel are saying, Forrester appears to be full of shit on this one.

Look, if you're going to let anyone's "Top Ten List" make your IT decisions for you, you have far greater problems than an iPhone. Analyze your real needs, then use that analysis to guide you. Six clowns wasted on moonshine could have come up with a better list of reasons for not supporting the iPhone in the workplace than this crap.

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iPhone

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December 14, 2007

Hmm...because according to this interview with William Dembski, Mr. ID himself, (Thanks to ERV for the link!), it most certainly is:

4. Does your research conclude that God is the Intelligent Designer?

I believe God created the world for a purpose. The Designer of intelligent design is, ultimately, the Christian God.

The focus of my writings is not to try to understand the Christian doctrine of creation; it’s to try to develop intelligent design as a scientific program.

So one of the two biggest voices/proponents of ID, right up there with Michael Behe in being the "public face" of ID says point blank that ID is based on the Christian version of $DEITY$.

So much for it being about science and a valid scientific alternative to evolution. I wonder if it hurts when you fuck yourself in the ass like that? Especially if you don't stretch first. Fucking idiot, does he think anything can hide from Google?

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Evolution, Religion makes you stupid, Science, Dembski: He's the new Dumb, Hoist on your own petard, Intelligent Design has neither

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December 11, 2007

Yeah, and that's the NICE version of the title. I read a really well-done article on Violent Acres about the bullshit inherent in gift-giving and "real" gifts, and in it, Vi references another article from MSN called "Gift Cards are not Gifts". When I read the excerpts from the article, I thought that Vi had perhaps taken things out of context. Couldn't be that bad, right?

Wrong

Weston, (how appropriate that she's named after a suburb full of overfed yuppie larvae) spends two pages whining about how impersonal and evil gift cards are. That's right. In a world where you're lucky to get a "Thank You", she's whining about gift cards:

A gift, ideally, says, "I thought about you. I considered your likes and dislikes, your needs and wants, your dreams and desires, and found you this token of my esteem that I hope will delight you."

A gift card says, "There! Checked you off my list."

Hey fuck you, maybe that's all I had time for. Maybe there was some shit going on, and instead of ignoring everyone, I did what I was able to. Jesus, sometimes life sucks, and you don't have time to make doilies for everyone.

It's not just me that says so. Judith Martin, the doyenne of etiquette known to millions as Miss Manners, dismisses gift certificates -- and, by extension, gift cards -- as "a pathetic compromise convenient to people who do not trust their judgment about selecting the right present for those whose tastes they ought to know."

In that case, Miss Manners can hob my knob too. What happened to the ettiquette of "don't be a greedy bitch", aka, "judge not lest ye be judged"? What, that only counts for everything but gifts?

Think about it. Would a lover, in the flush of romance, lean close to the object of his affection and present . . . a gift card?

Reading that, I am SO in love with my wife right now, because a) she's not an ungrateful greedy fucknut like Lizzie, and b) if I handed her a gift card to Target or the Apple Store on her birthday or valentines, she'd be happy as can be. It's not that I can't get her a nice gift, but I also know there's a dozen little things she wants, but will NEVER get around to actually buying. So, I get her a gift card, and watch her have fun. It's like getting your kid a train set. So what if it's a lamer Lionel starter kit. Half the fun is watching people use the gift.

Would proud grandparents present the latest addition to the family with . . . a gift card?

You show me a parent who can't use a gift card. Kids are expensive, and people never get that shit right. Fuck clothes that are going to be too small in a fortnight. Right after my son was born, if you'd have given me a gift card that let me buy diapers for a month, I'd have fellated you on the spot. A gift card for new parents is a gift that makes their life easier. Who wouldn't want that?

Would your best and closest friend, the one you've known for years, who's stuck with you through the roller-coaster ride of life, walk into your hospital room and give you . . . a gift card?

No. They wouldn't give me a damned thing except a few minutes or hours to sit with me, tell me bad jokes, tell embarassing stories about me to the nurses, and in general, alleviate the boredom and terror of a hospital stay. How fucking thoughtless do you have to be to think "Hmpf. Drove out of their way to see me and only brought a gift card. Fucker"? Liz Pulliam Weston-level thoughtless.

However thoughtless that is, Liz Pulliam Weston is even worse.

The harm is that the art of gift-giving is quickly devolving into an entirely commercial exchange. How much longer until we simply start thrusting wads of dollar bills at each other?

Spin, Magic Wheel of Entitlement Douchery, Spin! There have been times in my life when I was blowing off bills so that I could buy groceries. Someone handing me a wad of dollar bills would have made me almost cry for joy.

Some people, apparently, would be delighted with that prospect. While researching party themes for my daughter's upcoming celebration, I stumbled across a posting by a woman who proudly included the horrifying words "monetary gifts would be much appreciated" on her 3-year-old child's invitations. She went on to explain that "I wanted money as gifts for my daughter's savings and for us to buy bigger toys, like a big kitchen and a Barbie Jeep that she wanted, instead of guests giving her small toys."

It's official. Shame is dead.

Pot, Kettle, Bitch

But it's on the second page that she shows just how unbearably entitled she is:

How would I have felt, for example, about the new friend I rushed to the hospital one night had she thanked me with a gift card rather than a basket of chocolate-dipped strawberries, each more luscious than the last? Of course, no gift was expected or required, but her thoughtfulness created a bond.

Yeah, a bond of "LIZZIE BETTER GET HER FUCKING REWARD, OR YOU JUST WALK TO THE HOSPITAL, BEE-YATCH!". Some bond. I got news for you Lizzie, maybe you expect a fucking reward for being a decent human being, but the rest of us grew up. You know what I want for rushing a friend to the hospital? The "reward" of having not having their funeral be the next time we hang out together. What kind of jackoff entitlement bitch douchewad gets pissed because they didn't get fucking gourmet candy as a reward for not letting a friend die? CANDY. How old is this bitch, three?

Or would I have felt nearly as welcomed by my new mother-in-law if, on my first Christmas as a wife, she'd presented me with a gift card rather than the antique soup tureen that had been in her family for years? Her present told me I was part of the family.

Or that she knew you'd be an insufferable bitch to her son if you didn't get some Martha Stewart Fantasy. How dare you expect anything as a gift? Or a gift at all?

But I bet you anything, Lizzie says "Oh, it's the thought that counts" six times a month. Hypocritical asshole, that's all she is: a hypocritical asshole.

And should I give up trying to please my husband who is -- Kenneth Cole as my witness -- one of the hardest human beings in the world to shop for? I think not. With each gift, and each return, I learn a little bit more about his tastes and style. It's a challenge to delight and surprise him, but occasionally I do -- and it's worth the effort.

Yeah, I bet he's thrilled, because you know that Lizzie ain't putting out unless she gets some fucking thing involving candied platypus eyeballs served on a hand-carved mahogany dildo. This guy has to be wanting to eat fucking glass every time he gets a gift from his wife. With her sense of GIMMEGIMMEGIMME he's got to be thinking, "No one told me I was really marrying AUDREY II!!! HERE! I KILLED SOMEONE FOR YOU? IS THAT SPECIAL ENOUGH YOU PASTY-FACED HARRIDAN?"

I want to add something here. Note her phrase, "...with each gift and each return..." Now, is it just me, or does that sound like someone who is way too fucking busy to actually, oh, pay attention to her husband, to listen to him, and actually know what he likes? Yeah, you bet. I'll bet you a box of hot Krispy Kremes that what he likes has verrrry little to do with what she thinks are "proper" gifts for him. Stupid bitch, try listening to what he says instead of what you want to hear. I've had better luck with bartenders I barely know than you do with your own *husband*.

It also drove home the point, as few things do nowadays, that special occasions are about people -- not about getting more stuff or increasing our net worth.

Wait, Wish-I-Was-Martha spends two pages bitching about the quality of stuff people give out, and then says it's about the people, not the stuff or the cash? I have one question for Lizzie:

Aren't you even a little afraid there's a hell?

Here's how you handle a "situation" where someone gives you a gift card instead of a hand-waxed donkey scrotum:

"A gift card? Wow <name>, thank you so very much! There's a dozen things I can use this for. What a thoughtful present."

If you can't bring yourself to say that for a gift card, and mean it, then fuck off, you don't deserve to get so much as a flaming dog turd on your porch for a present.

You want to know what's wrong with gift - giving in general? That self-important entitlement queens like Lizzie are treated with anything other than derision and mockery.

Technorati Tags:
Manners, Gift-Giving, Liz Pulliam Weston is a greedy bitch in D-minor

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December 10, 2007

For those of you subscribing to the site feeds, no you haven't lost your minds, things did go very screwy during the MT 4 upgrade. I took advantage of that to consolidate things, so the new feed URL is: feed://www.bynkii.com/atom.xml.

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Feeds, Site Maintenance

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December 9, 2007

It occurred to me that a great many people say that homosexuality should not have protected status, ala race, sex, religion, because it's a choice. In other words, just as you choose to be gay, you can choose to not be gay.

I disagree, but okay, let's run with that. No federal protection for conditions that are choices. Sex, but not sexual identity. Gender, but not gender preference.

So keeping that in mind, why is religion protected. I mean, it's obviously a choice. There's no "religion gene", right? There's no sequence that spells out "J-E-W", "M-U-S-L-I-M", or "C-H-R-I-S-T-I-A-N". It's a choice, whether by voluntary election, as in the case of the Amish, conversion from another religion, (converted jews, catholics, et al. Heck, Rod Carew, converted Jew.), or familial tradition. But it's not a genetic issue.

I'd say that's obvious even without science backing me up, that a black person can't "convert" to whitey. Surgery, as of yet, can change your appearance, but it cannot change your genetic encoding. So, with that in mind, religion is quite obviously a choice.

A federally-protected, protection enshrined in the Constitution, protected at every possible level, possible more protected than any other single quality a person can have in this county, but nonetheless, a protected choice.

We obviously have no problems granting federal protections to choices, so using that as an excuse is rank hypocrisy. So why is being gay different than being Christian?

I'll give you a hint...it's the same reason that organized religion in this country had a reaction of "tsk-tsk, what are you going to do?" about Fred Phelps when he was only screaming obscene shit at families of dead gay people, but the instant he gored a more popular ox, namely families of dead soldiers, he suddenly became an evil, wicked, nasty man, who should be silenced and shunned.

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Critical Thought, Religion makes you stupid, Religion: It's how 'merican's spell hypocrisy

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December 7, 2007

Because if there were, this statement from Mitt Romney would require lightning:

Romney said religion is essential to freedom, without pointing to any specific faith.

"Freedom requires religion, just as religion requires freedom. Freedom opens the windows of the soul so that man can discover his most profound beliefs and commune with God. Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone," the GOP contender said.

BAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH!

Freedom requires Religion?

AAAHAAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHahAH

Oh the stupid, she makes me laugh again.

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Presidential Elections, Religion makes you stupid

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December 5, 2007

...that some of the formatting in the SNMP article is fugly as good as it's going to get. I'll have to replace it I've replaced the particularly ugly parts with screencaps...ugh. Stupid HTML.

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December 4, 2007

There is no way in hell that they're keeping Sherri Shepherd around for any reason other than to show how funny stupid is, and that's just mean:

Actually, I don't believe anyone can be on television, not continuously digging in random orifices, and be THAT STUPID.

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Religion makes you stupid

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November 28, 2007

Looks like the site is running okay on MT 4.

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November 27, 2007

There's nothing like following the instructions for an upgrade, and still having it fail.

MovableType 4, you RULE

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MT4 is a pain in the ass

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November 26, 2007

It's not just writers here. Artists too. Programmers. Designers. if it's worth asking someone with skills you don't have, to do for you, then it's worth paying them for.

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Work has value, Time has value, Pay the writer, Pay the artist

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November 25, 2007

First, this isn't a review of the Kindle. That would require me to have one, and honestly, I don't care enough about one to even try to get a review copy. Of the Kindle itself, I'd have to say, it looks awkward, the design seems rather biased against lefties, and it's yet another piece of technozoomdweebie gear to carry around.

I got into smartphones years and years ago to get away from carrying multiple single-purpose gadgets. The idea of one that's taller and wider than any paperback I've ever carried, and weighs 5/8 of a pound has utterly no appeal to me. Really.

The idea that it will replace books is laughable on multiple levels. For one, 90% of my reading is on a plane. I can read a book on a plane from taxi to taxi, and the only interruption is the safety lecture. With a Kindle, you can't read from taxi to 10K feet, and during final approach. If I don't want to keep a book, I can leave it in a coffee shop. I'm only out a couple of bucks, and I've maybe made someone else's day. Sweet. With a Kindle? It's a damned albatross. Too big to shove in a pocket, too expensive to not worry about, just heavy enough to be annoying, and I'm not seeing anything in it that says "walk down the street and read me".

Yes, I read while walking. I'm good at it. I've got some awesome radar that lets me be deep into a book and register traffic, people, street signs, you name it. I've got an internal inertial nav system that's got to be seen to be believed. No one, and I mean, no one, is going to roll me for the latest Clive Cussler or "Destroyer". Really. But something electronic and shiny? That'll buy a rock or two. No thanks. I have enough overpriced electronic shit I have to worry about.

The other major problem with replacing books is that there isn't an online store that you want to browse the way you will a book store. Jeff Bezos can hump his Kindle until it's as sticky as a stripper's shoes, but you don't browse Amazon, not really. You might link-hop a bit, but face it, Amazon's strength is that it lets you get shit done like a SEAL sniper. You find your target, take the shot, and get out. That's not bad, not on any level. It's one reason why I use, no why I love Amazon so much for buying gifts and the like. They have a lot of stuff, it's easy to find, and it's usually pretty cheap. It's also really easy to get through the whole "trading money for stuff" part of the transaction.

But when I go into a bookstore, it's with the knowledge that I'm going to have hours to kill. I wander. Every section, (okay, not the romance novels. If I want porn, I just get it off the internet, not bodice-rippers), looking at covers, thumbing through ones that look interesting. I don't have a goal in mind. I want something to jump off the shelves at me. Maybe it's a magazine with an interesting article about the sinking of the Scorpion. Maybe it's a study of Keith Richards' guitar licks, or a history of the CIA. I go to book stores because I don't know what I want, and I want some random "a-ha" mojo to smack me in the head and make me take it home. I find most of my best books that way. Basically, I want some random author to run up and cerebrally bugger me. I'll smile and ask for more.

In a book store, I'm rather adventurous. Online? Not so much. Online, I'm going to get stuff I already know I want. Amazon is perfect for that. Low-hassle and convenient.

You aren't going to browse on a Kindle. Oh you can come as close as Amazon lets you, but in the end, you aren't browsing even remotely close to how you will in a real, honest-to-god book store. Besides, I adore used book stores, and Amazon sucks ass compared to that, 'cause Amazon ain't got no trade in lovin'.

That's not to say I think the Kindle will be a flop. Well, they need to fix that fucked-up design, make that thing about 12.5% of it's current cost, kill that stupid DRM shit, and make it fit in my damned pocket better. But there is a market for the Kindle, even outside of the technophile dingalings like Le Scoble or Winer, who cream their underoos every time someone hands them a new technotoy. (Please, for the love of humanity, don't show Sta-Puff 2.0 or Capt. Gouda the level of computerization in sex toys. Even if they could write worth a crap, the idea of either one of them even knowing what a sex toy is makes me vomit in my mouth a lot.)

The Kindle, while utterly horrid for replacing books, is fantastic for replacing dead trees in what I call "disposable reading", aka newspapers and magazines. (You'll note I've left off blogs. That's deliberate. I still pretty much hate the New Media Douchebags who are, mostly due to mass stupidity, and ease of manipulation, the "A-list" of the "blogodorkosphere". There are about six "blogs" worth reading. This one ain't one of them. Daring Fireball is. Other than those few, stop reading blogs with shitty writing. It rots your mind.)

Face it, you don't keep newspapers unless something truly important happened that day. You don't keep magazines except for the same reason, or they're National Geographic. You get the paper, read it, maybe do the puzzles, then chuck them, or leave them for someone else. You get Time, you read it, you dump it. They're disposable. Completely forgettable once the next edition comes. For this? The Kindle is brilliant. However, this brings to mind some form issues and a marketing plan that looks like they found the one for the Segway, and substituted "Kindle" for "Segway" throughout the document. Repeating the dumb doesn't make it smart. It just makes it refined dumb.

First, stop obsessing about portability, and think about more ways for ease of use to make the Kindle v.X better for disposable reading. For example, do the deal with Starbucks, Panera, Indie Coffee shops to build Kindles into the tables. Dump the keyboard and go for gorgeous screens. Don't worry about battery life, and instead make them AC power only, and stupid easy to maintain. Go for an iPhone-style screen that can be cleaned with Windex and a paper towel, but one that's 8.5"x11", and at an initial cost to the shop of about fifty bucks a unit. Don't stop there. Waiting rooms cry out for Kindles, and would be a willing audience for them. Who here loves medical waiting rooms? Love them old magazines and big pharma ads? Yeah? No? Thought not.

Airports are another great place for Kindle v.2. Large amounts of people waiting in predictable places, wanting something to make the time go faster. What better place for an unlimited amount of reading? Ads won't be a problem here, we have ads in papers, magazines, and TV news now. For once, you have an audience that won't mind ads. Sweet!

For the portable versions...honestly, pick something to focus on in v.2. In this case, the reading experience. Leave the file upload stuff alone. Concentrate on making it as pleasurable to read as possible. Jack the res higher. Much higher. iPhone-and-then-some higher. Make it smaller. Actually, make it fold. And get rid of the friggin' keyboard, there's far too many ways to get around that silliness, and we all know it, especially when you're talking about a lamer keyboard like on the Kindle v.1. That's just some cowardly nod to whiners for whom the lack of a keyboard somehow equates to being useless. They suck, and their opinion is not only stupid, but proven wrong. They need to get over it. There's nothing about reading that requires a keyboard.

Also, sponsor recharging stations. Along with the static mounts in airports, coffee shops, what have you, have inductive recharging stations. Lay the Kindle down, pick up a charge while you read.

Finally, drop the fucking DRM. That shit doesn't work. It's never worked, and it never will. It's absolutely stupid that even v.1 came with it. If there were publishers that wouldn't play without it, Bezos should have flipped them the finger and let them sit on the outside looking in. So what if I buy a book and want to move it onto someone else's. Why should that cost anyone anything. Note...move, not copy. It's worked for books for oh...centuries. I think that's a good model. No lamer "you can only loan it for n days" shite either. I want to turn a friend onto a magazine article I think they'd like, I just make with the tappity-tappy, and bang, they've got mail. Sure, it cost me a couple bucks, but how do you think I let them read the latest cool article in my copy of Time now? Same way. Again, just in case you didn't get it: DRM is for idiots who think that they're smarter than every other person on the planet. Or Ballmer. Which is the same thing, when you think about it.

If it seems I'm advocating an infrastructure as much as the device, well, I am. Look, e-readers have by and large failed like cost-cutting on the Titanic, because they're all enclosed worlds. You can't do anything with them but read stuff you either send yourself, or download yourself. What's up with that? Lame. Why not let indie bookstores have Kindles and Kindle stations where they can offer up their own downloads for customers of stuff they think is cool? Same thing for libraries? Hell, libraries could make all kinds of cool uses out of this damned thing, and face it, they're on board bigtime if it increases reading and patronage. Why ignore a built-in fanbase? if you get out of the mindset that created Kindle v.1, you have a real potential to create the next...fuckit, the first next big thing. Screw following everyone else's example, do it different, and do it right.

But that's going to involve some risk-taking, and some looking ahead beyond the next quarter, or the next mastubatory outflow of the technophiles. Because if you sell it to technophiles, it's doomed. Who does Apple sell to? Not the technophiles. Who is the Wii aimed at? Not the technophiles. Technophiles are like baby birds. They're cute, until you realize that what they really are are a bunch of small, loud, brainless nincompoops who spend all day sitting in their own shit, waiting to be fed by the momma bird, and don't even realize they're getting nothing but ABC worms in the form of warmed-over vomit.

Again...don't listen to the Technorati Circle Jerk Crowd. They're all short-sited dingalings who think the entire world is going to get better because of HDTV and blogging. They're stupid. Design Kindle for people who read newspapers and magazines. Who want to sit down and enjoy every aspect of reading. Fuckit, figure out a way to turn a damned page by dragging your hand across the screen, instead of this next/back button bullshit. Make this thing cool to people in a diner in Des Moines and a southern restaurant in Binghampton. Make it something that Our Lord of the Bad Haircut Megachurch in Arkansas wants to put in all the pews. (Face it, the religious market are sheep by design and intent. You get some fundie megachurches putting this in, and the money will flow like rain in a hurricane man.) If the technophiles whine, give them a USB key and some bullshit speech with the words "new media" and "community building" in it. They'll be so into the afterglow that it won't occur to them that you're ignoring them. Look at the set of people who aren't inane technophiles compared to the set that is. Which one's bigger? Yeah, thought so, and face it, we're talking about Amazon. Even the computer illiterate know what Amazon is. That's a hell of a lead. If you don't fuck it up.

The Kindle has some real potential. The question however, is this: Does Bezos want to just be better than existing e-readers, or does he actually want to change the world?

Technorati Tags:
Blogosphere = Stupid, Echo chambers, Le Scoble, Networking, New Media Douchebags, No Fear, Der Kindle, Stop following, start leading, Don't suck, Amazon.com, Jeff Bezos

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November 22, 2007

I liked this video so much, it's now my new favorite Technorati Tag: New Media Douchebag.

Think of the time I'll save with this handy, flexible tag, that applies to so many people!

Technorati Tags:
New Media Douchebags

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November 20, 2007

But when the horned one says:

And perhaps the horny one said it best when he said "The writings of Robert Scoble are like a thousand monkeys typing, short about 999 monkeys."

I simply must disagree, as it's incorrect, and insults the monkey.

Technorati Tags:
Le Scoble, TEH STOOPUD

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November 18, 2007

So when blogmeisters like Scoble and Winer talk about the "power of the Blogosphere", you do know what they're talking about, right? 90% tech circle-jerking, 9% politics, and a wee bit of personal babble. For all their blathering about the power of the "blogosphere", they don't talk about anything about that inane circle-jerk tech bubble they live in.

Great...more geeks talking about geeks. I can feel the world becoming a better place already.

NOT

That's not to say there aren't blogs or groups of blogs trying to do more than bitch about technoshite and how mean commenters are. It's just that if you use Technorati and the rest to find blogs, all you're going to find is the same shite that Scoble and Winer link to.

Luckily, you read this site, so here, let me link you to some sites that might actually teach you something beyond how to make your tech-dick bigger and harder:

• Language Log, which has some fascinating, if not often esoteric posts about the myriad ways we use and abuse the English language. The link list there is pretty cool too.


• ScienceBlogs, an entire community devoted to well, science, and learning, and the promotion of both. Note to the Scobleites: These are cranky, cantangerous people. They live in a world of facts and proof. They will not hesitate to attack stupidity like a horde of pissed-off army ants, and if you're stupid enough to complain they aren't being nice, they'll laugh even harder and tell you to fuck off. Some of my favorite SB sites are Retrospectacle, Pharyngula, The Questionable Authority, Respectful Insolence, and Adventures in Ethics and Science.


• TDJ, who manages to prove that contrary to what the "Blogorati wish you to think, there's some pretty cool stuff on LiveJournal


• The Bad Astronomy Blog, part of an overall website that is just fascinating to anyone with a love for astronomy and snark


• ERV: Warning...don't poke the ERV.


• Diane Duane, my favorite author


• Finally, Crummy Church Signs

A plethora of blogs, none of them will ever appear on Technorati, some of them make my head hurt when they get down and dirty. (ERV and pals going deep into evolution of various HIV virii...owww...but SO cool.)

The only reason blogs have been taken over by Scoble, Winer, et al is because people have allowed them to be. There's far more out there than that technobubble bullshit, no matter what the rating sites tell you.

Technorati Tags:
Science Blogs, Blogs that don't suck

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November 17, 2007

I swear, it's like the universe is trying to turn me into the "Taseinator" or something, and they've hired Gruber to be my personal trainer. Once again, thanks to Daring Fireball for the targeting assistance.

Robert Scoble is having a full-blown "Where's my fucking latte, it's been 30 seconds", overprivileged yuppie larvae, princess two-step fit because his Macbook is kernel panicking on boot. He ran an upgrade, and now it's going nuts. Of course, this is not the real problem. Sure, kernel panics after upgrades suck ass, but there's a clear and reliable method for taking care of them. This isn't really about that. This bitchfit has nothing to do with his Macbook. Robert knows more geeks per square inch than anyone. He knows that all he has to do is get on Twitter and and say "OMG, MY MACBOOK IS SICK, HELP ME MAKE IT BETTER", and there will be a miles-long line of free support practically killing each other for the privilege of fixing the Scoblebook.

No, it is not computer problems that are the cause of Le Scoble's tears and chest-hitching dramatic proclamations. The cause is something far worse. It is something that is so awful, so wrong that I hesitate to mention it. Apple has committed the ultimate sin, taken the unmentionable action, done something so callous, so evil, so unbelievably wrong that I urge those of you with delicate constitutions to please, for the love of $DEITY$, find another site to read.

For those brave souls who rush in where angels fear to tread, for those Daniels who will brave the lion's den, for you, my gallant brigade, for you, there is only the horror of Apple's crime against humanity, nay against the very universe itself:

Apple isn't kissing Scoble's ass

Quick man, can't you see it was too much for him? Fetch the smelling salts and my scotch. You, out of that chair, the lad needs to sit and recover his constitution!

That's right. Apple PR has gone and once again, refused to join the rest of the tech community in rimming Le Scoble. Hell, they won't even give him a kiss on the cheek. I know, it's such an improbable idea, that the mind beggars even to suggest it as a flight of fancy, but look, read Le Scoble's own words:

What’s ironic is lots of other computer companies would LOVE to give me free stuff (I don’t take it) but Apple is the only company that’s never raised a PR finger to help me. Instead I feel so honored to spend my money on this crap. Why? Just to have a shiny machine?

I know how shocking this is to all of you. I myself was initially unable to read that paragraph without a terrible attack of the vapors.

Okay, enough, this level of sarcasm is starting to make my bowels cramp. Just how out of touch do you have to be to start acting like you have the right to special treatment. What level of entitlement do you have to possess to think this way? Make no mistake, that's what this is: the pouting of the biggest, most spoiled entitlement queen in the "blogosphere". This is what happens when you start thinking of yourself as better than everyone else. This great swollen ego is what happens when you start believing the sycophants who tell you that your shit really doesn't stink, and that anyone telling you different is just a "hater".

It's bullshit and it shows his moral posturing, (I don't take free stuff), to be utter hypocrisy. He's every bit as bad as those he infers lack trustability for the crime of taking free stuff. Sure, he doesn't take free stuff. But if you don't kiss Scobleizer ass, then you gets what you gets. Fight the bull, you get the horns. (insert inane "horns" hand gesture here)

Someone tell me how demanding that you be treated as better than everyone else is more moral than taking review copies of stuff? Because i'm not seeing it.

For the record, yeah, I get free stuff. I get a lot of it. I don't do a lot of reviews, not in the usual sense, but I get review copies of software on a regular basis. What I get more of are free copies of things I beta test. I'd rather do it the beta test way, because then the company gets my feedback in time to maybe fix some things. At least that's the theory. Besides, I prefer seeing a product get released and knowing that I had something to do with it. Or as George Marshall said:

There is no limit to the good you can do if you don't care who gets the credit.

But I never, for a minute, think I'm better than anyone else with a web site, or writing for a magazine. I'm not one tenth the writer that Gruber or Ihnatko are. I can't program to save my life compared to Dori Smith, Daniel Jalkut, or Michael Tsai. I've never come close to putting together a community the way Rob Griffiths has. No matter where you look on the Mac web, or the tech web, you will find better, smarter, more well-spoken people than me. If I have one advantage, it's that I can type fast, and read faster, and I'm a decent sysadmin.

Any time someone asks me to review software, or to write an article for their site, I feel privileged. I may hate the product, and the fact I got a free copy of a turd won't make it any less of a turd, but if I get that consideration, I feel lucky. I don't like asking for free stuff, it always feels so presumptuous.

The idea of pulling a Scoble, and calling a company out for not fellating my ego? Dear god, I hope I've never even come close, and if it ever appears that I have, then it was either unintentional, or the stupid made me do it, and I apologize.

I will say that if Apple is bound and determined to shit on Scoble's ego parade that way, then there's only option left for me:To buy as much Apple stuff as I can possibly afford.

Technorati Tags:
Blogosphere = Stupid, Crackheads, Robert Scoble, TEH STOOPUD, WTF?, Entitlement Queens, Le Scoble, Whining at the speed of light, Dumb is faster than light

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November 15, 2007

Once again, our glorious president shows where he stands on helping the U.S.A. be the leading center of scientific and medical research in the world:

In a cave, dressed in sackcloth, his fingers firmly in ears, (we can only hope he washed them when he removed them from other orifices), eyes shut, continuously screaming "IF THE BIBLE SAYS IT, IT MUST BE SO!!!"

Yet we have all the money in the world for his "Faith-based" bullshit...and we wonder why our kids view science and math education as punishment.

I'm going to go read "A Brief History of Time" again, and see if I can find DVD's of old Carl Sagan shows. They always make the dumb go away.

Technorati Tags:
TEH STOOPUD, Science is worth the money, The Deciderer pooches it again

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If none of the presidential candidates are willing to have a serious debate on how they will approach government support and encouragement of math, science, and support for scientific research, (and I mean real science. Spare me voicing of support for bullshit like Reiki and the rest of the stupid. Along a similar vein, the only place ID belongs is right next to Voodoo, shamanism, and "Bullfinch's Mythology", and should be mocked unto the tenth generation), then to hell with all of them.

If they can't be bothered to seriously think about science, even though they could not reach the masses effectively without it, then none of them get my vote. I'll just vote for Joe Walsh. Sure, he's a little odd, but the press conferences would rock. Literally.

(Many, many thanks to PZ Meyers of "Pharyngula, Shelley Batts of "Retrospectacle", and all the other folks at ScienceBlogs for all their excellent posts on things scientific and cultural alike. It is comforting to see a community that devoted to improving the world and the silly people in it through the real pursuit of knowledge. In a country dominated by fundamentalist fear-mongering, and the exultation of ignorance and stupidity, ScienceBlogs, and its members are truly a light trying to guide us greatness.)

Technorati Tags:
Science, Presidential Elections

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November 14, 2007

Henceforth, ZDNet shall be both written and pronounced "ZDvorakNet", until such time as they perform a corporate cranirectoectomy, and their corpus callosum is no longer lodged within their descending colon.

So has it been written, so shall it be done.

Technorati Tags:
ZDvorakNet

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I see this pile of crap from, of course, ZD(vorak)-Net. I normally would ignore ZDNet, but since Tom Negrino, via Twitter, pointed out that Paul mentioned my review of Leopard in his silliness, well, I have to say something.

Paul is basically ragging on every Mac OS X 10.5 review as being nothing but puff-pieces. I get a special mention, because...

Now, obviously, I didn’t read all available reviews -but among those whose efforts I did read only one: John Welch writing for information Week, mentioned DTrace - and that in passing

Specifically, I said:

For developers and sysadmins who have a need to monitor the low-level activities of any application on a given Mac, Mac OS X 10.5 now comes with its own implementation of DTrace.

That's evidently not good enough for Paul. Well Paul, I wrote 5,528 words in that review. While I did not in fact, spend a lot of time on DTrace, it's because a) I'm not really a developer, and b) I don't know enough about DTrace to speak intelligently on it, so I, (here's the whacky part), didn't say anything about it because I would then be guilty of talking about something I don't know anything about. I know that's a silly concept at ZDvorakNet, but in my world, it's important. Of course, Paul leaves out the list of non-UI puffery that I did mention like:

• The death of Netinfo, and some details on its replacement


• Improvements in Directory Services behavior for mobile users


• File System events, a major component in how Time Machine works


• Changes in AppleScript and the OS scripting architecture


• What the new AutoFS implementation does for you in the real world


• A light overview of security changes

But evidently, since I didn't spend another 10K words on developer items that I am rather unqualified to talk about, I was writing a barbie interview.

Of course, I'm still doing better than Ol' Paul, who is talking out his nethers all over the place:

Similarly, none of them mentioned ZFS or its relationship to “Time-machine”

That would be due to there not being a relationship between ZFS and Time Machine. (Not "Time-machine". Time Machine. Two words...."Time"..."Machine". Time Machine. New backup application from Apple. Big hit. Time Machine) Time Machine uses HFS+, not ZFS. Of course, the fact that ZFS support in Mac OS X 10.5 is read-only would make it rather hard to use it for backups, because, as I recall, there's rather a lot of writing in the backup process.

exactly nobody mentioned that the new Spaces capability (essentially the standard Unix multi-screen capability) now supports separating the display from the rest of the machine.

Huh? WirelessVGA? When did *that* happen? Or maybe he's confusing Spaces with Apple Remote Desktop. Paul...Spaces is just multiple desktops. It doesn't "disconnect" the display from the machine. It's not Terminal Services, nor is it even X11. That would be of course...um...X11.

It gets better:

But if you ignore the partisan reviewers and ask what the real bottom line on “Leopard” is, the answer turns out to be the iPhone - because the current Mactels are this generation’s Apple IIIs.

Okay, come on, admit it. There's a "Most Full Of Crap Article of the Month" award at ZDvorakNet, and Paul's really working it hard to get his bronze crapper. By the end of it, he's not even writing English:

What’s going on is that 10.5 is a mixed bag reflecting both short and long term agendas. In the short term it cleans up some x86 issues and offers some new user features raising the bar for Microsoft’s next effort -particularly with respect to time machine because this will be hard for Microsoft to duplicate while Apple’s adoption of ZFS means that all of the compexity here will disappear in the next release.

In the long term, however, what 10,.5 is about is positioning Apple’s application developers to jump to the integrated server/playphone world of the future - that’s why there’s so much Solaris and Java development stuff there.

I'd try to interpret that, but gosh, it appears I don't speak idiot.

Every time Paul Murphy mentions my name, I taser a baby. Is that what ZDvorakNet really wants?

Technorati Tags:
Beat the Dumb, TEH STOOPUD, WTF?, Paul Murphy: Dvorak Wannabe, ZDvorakNet, Just say no to ZDNet

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November 13, 2007

You know, the only thing missing from Abbie Smith's epic beating of Michael Behe and ID?

Film of her bouncing a basketball off his face telling him to squirt a few.

She's my new friggin' hero!

Technorati Tags:
Evolution, ID is for the stupid, Science rules!

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November 8, 2007

You realize there's been some bad domestic violence in an apartment in your building, there's like six cop cars, an ambulance, police tape sealing off your building...

...and what do Melissa and I quote from one of our favorite movies, almost in unison?

ARE WE ON COPS? ARE WE ON COPS? ARE WE ON COPS?

We are evidently incapable of taking this seriously...this was highlighted when I realized that I was joyfully taking pictures of the police tape.

Technorati Tags:
WTF?, ARE WE ON COPS?, Not quite right

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November 5, 2007

Here's a tip...never, never, ever piss off SA Smith, author of ERV. If you must, don't be like Michael Behe, and dismiss her qualifications when it comes to discussing things like the mutations and evolution of HIV et al.

Because if you do, it's going to hurt.

real bad.

I am rapidly becoming a science blog junkie.

Technorati Tags:
Beat the Dumb, Critical Thought, Evolution, Evolution of cells, HIV , ID is for the stupid, Science Blogs

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November 1, 2007

Web gave me a ride in his Ferrari today.

Oh.My.God...what a car. At one point he asked "do you want to hear the stereo?"

My reply "No! I have all the sound I need coming from right behind me"

I also remember thinking "My, we appear to be going rather fast." Then I looked at the speedometer. 90+...in traffic My next thought? "Yes. We are indeed going rather fast."

I also know something else. A Ferrari is the male version of a vibrator.

Technorati Tags:
Ferraris, WE GO FAST NOW

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October 29, 2007

New rule: No more leaving easily -knocked over coffee cups on the laptop wrist rest where clumsy people like me can knock them over.

Technorati Tags:
TEH STOOPUD, I'm Dumb

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October 25, 2007

From an article on eWeek, about the Interop keynote delivered by Matt Glotzbach, Product Management Director for Google Enterprise:

"At Google, we really focus on failing wisely," Glotzbach said, noting that it's common at Google for programmers to create a feature and get it out online for testing in a few weeks. "There is no penalty for failure. In fact we encourage it because if you're not failing it means you're probably not trying."

If Google doesn't fear failing, they have removed the most serious barrier to success.

Another quote:

In another example, Glotzbach told the audience Google encourages its employees to use 20 percent of their time, or one day a week, to work on projects outside of their normal everyday workflow. Gmail and Google News both came from this approach, he note

Somehow, I don't see that happening at Microsoft.

As long as Google operates like this, they're going to continue to kick ass.

Technorati Tags:
Google, Good Leadership, No Fear

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October 22, 2007

Well, to put it bluntly, Halo 3 did something I was doubtful it could do: It had a huge effect on Xbox 360 Sales. AKA: Wow! For the first time since I started keeping track of these numbers, the Xbox 360 was the number one - selling console according to NPD. Numbers below:

Xbox 360: 527,800 Units
Wii: 501,000 Units
PS2: 215,000 Units
PS3: 119,400 Units

So even for being in second place, the Wii had a hell of a month, increasing their numbers from Sept. by almost 100K units. However, that's nothing like the month the Xbox 360 had. Personally, I think the entire Xbox team, and everyone associated with it at Microsoft should be kissing the asses of the Halo 3 team until they're soda-cracker white. That's pretty astounding that one game could do that.

Percentage of change from August:

Xbox 360: Up almost 91% Daaaaaaaaamn
Wii: Up close to 24%
PS2: Up by 6%
PS3: Down by around 9%

So really, the only loser here was the PS3. However, even taking the PS3's drop into account, there doesn't appear to be any cannibalization to account for the increased sales of the other three consoles. The 360's increase is far out of line compared to the PS3's decrease for there to be a direct correlation there, and there's no way you can say the 360 sales hurt the Wii at all. (Who in their right minds cries about a 24% increase even though Wii availability is still constrained?) It was just a hell of a month for everyone but Sony.

Now the real trick will be the next few months leading into the holiday buying season. Was the Xbox 360's increase strictly due to a...er....Halo effect, (dude, how could I AVOID that pun), or is this a sign of renewed sales strength over the long term for the 360?

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Nintendo Wii, Microsoft Xbox 360, Sony PS3, Sony PS2, NPD Game Console Sales

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October 21, 2007

Due to my old TV's AV inputs getting so bad as to be essentially useless, and Mel's not having a decent set of AV inputs, I got an LG HDTV last night. A nice one, LG 26". Would have gotten the Sony, but it was too big to fit in the entertainment center.

It's very nice, lots of inputs and outputs, easy to hook up.

So I have an HDTV. I have even watched things on it.

WHERE IS MY EPIPHANY??

According to Scoble, and his friend Buzz, I was supposed to have some fucking religious experience the moment I watched HD.

WHERE IS MY HD RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE?

WELL???

See, goddamned technology. Big promises, never delivers.

Technorati Tags:
Robert Scoble, HDTV - Just prettier TV

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October 17, 2007

In another "letter to the world", Steve Jobs announced that there will be an iPhone SDK in February.

Gee, what a shock. Let's see, Leopard comes out on the 26th of October, and about 4 months later, there will be an SDK for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Why, one would think that you'd need Leopard to properly develop applications for the iPhone, and that it was silly to think that you'd get an SDK prior to Leopard. I wonder why, in all the screaming and crying and whining about the lack of an SDK on the iPhone, no one every pointed that out. Oh wait, a few of us did, but when you're the voice of reason in a room full of cranky infants, well, you don't get heard. But there were some voices saying that you probably wouldn't get an iPhone SDK until after Leopard.

Like mine:

The point is, unlimited third-party development on an embedded device with stringent operational requirements is not the magic spell of good and light that people think it is. That's not to say that I don't think Apple should release a "proper" SDK for the iPhone, just that I'd rather they take their time and create one that, above all else, does no harm. It's an iPhone -- I expect that part to never be troubled by anything other than carrier signal.
But there's another possible reason as to why Apple didn't release an SDK at the iPhone release: The version of OS X the iPhone is running. I'm going to make an educated guess, based on the way the iPhone does certain things, and how the iPhone's launch delayed Leopard, and say that the version of OS X that the iPhone is running is not, in fact, an embedded version of Mac OS X 10.4, but an embedded version of Leopard.

This is speculation, but I'm pretty happy with the reasoning behind it. If this is the case, then it would be quite difficult to release an SDK that allowed you to build features that don't run on the current OS release. Apple could build a "simulator," but unless that simulator included the full iPhone OS, it wouldn't be something you'd want to trust. True, Apple could have released an SDK at the recent WWDC, but then you'd have a (probably) beta SDK that used beta developer tools running on a beta OS release that targets a device with a tiny margin for error. This is not a recipe for reliability.

So I do think we'll see a "real" SDK, but it won't be until after the release of Leopard, at the earliest.

Mmmm...sweet, sweet reasoned analysis, even sweet 'cause it's mine.

Hmm...let's see...without screaming or whining, but a bit of critical thought, I was right. No screaming, no demands, none of that shit. Just a bit of thinking about what the iPhone is running, what Apple is doing, and the timing of various things. Maybe some other people getting all dramatic about stuff should think that over a bit.

Nah, it's the "blogosphere". Who wants "thinking" in that?

Oh, and Nick Winfield? Contrary to what you think, Apple never said "No non-web applications ever", so no, they did not in fact reverse their position.

Technorati Tags:
iPhone, Critical Thought

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It just equals mass stupidity.

One of the things I rant about regularly is the tendency towards "echo chamber" behavior in the "blogosphere". That is, one site publishes something and dozens more all automatically agree with it, even if it's stupid. Sometimes, especially if it's stupid. Now, this is nothing new. Echo chamber behavior has been going on as long as there have been people. It's just that the intarweb makes it happen so much faster. A great example of this was the somewhat recent dustup about Harry McCracken at PC World. He quit to preserve his "journalistic integrity". Everyone came down on Colin Crawford, because, supposedly, Colin didn't like an article that was critical of advertisers. This idea was ridiculous if you have followed the publications Colin's run, but once the "blogosphere" echo chamber got ahold of it, bang, done. The funny thing was, out of all the posts about it on Techmeme, there was pretty much one original article. The rest all linked to/quoted that. It was a "big" story, but only one person did any actual work. Everyone else? LinkLinkLinkLink.

The result? Echo Chamber at warp speed.

Some other folks are noticing this, such as Tim O'Reilly. In a recent post on O'Reilly radar, he says:

There's always a risk of self-fulfilling prophecies in social media. Sites or applications become popular, and then stay popular because they are popular. This may be a key to the unusually high concentration of Facebook applications in the "short head" rather than the "long tail." When a system provides powerful feedback mechanisms for herd behavior, it can actually undermine the "wisdom of crowds" rather than enhancing it. (One of James Surowiecki's key observations in his book of that name was that a diverse collection of independently-acting individuals produce the wisdom of crowds effect. To the extent that those individuals reinforce each other's opinions rather than preserving independent decision making, they tend to undermine that group intelligence.)

But there's an even more insidious corollary: when a group of seemingly independent actors are making decisions based on the same limited pool of information, they become more highly correlated, and thus "stupider."

Now, in this paragraph, Tim is specifically talking about things like Facebook, but it applies to the way the "blogosphere" works in general. Don't believe me? Take a look at what happens when Scoble or Winer say something stupid. (It doesn't take long.) Because they're "A-list" bloggers, they get up on Techmeme. Of course, this prompts a dozen or more posts that are little more than comments on what the original stupid was, but these new posts are not commentary or analysis. For the most part, they're an electronic version of Limbaugh "dittoheads". But they keep that original stupidity going, and suddenly, the stupid has become the truth, because there's so many people talking about it like it's true. It's "The Big Lie", only at speeds that make worldwide propagation nigh-simultaneous.

(As an aside. I am not saying that you should never comment on someone else's post, or write your own article about another post. Since this article, and quite a few of my other posts are literally, about other posts, that would be silly. But don't *parrot* the posts. It is the *parroting* that creates the echo chamber.)

Later on in the article, Tim directly addresses this:

So what does this have to do with techmeme? When reviewing the Techmeme leaderboard, and then bouncing from there over to Techmeme itself, I was struck by the fact that the surest way to stay up on the leaderboard is to make sure to comment on stories that are currently appearing on the front page of techmeme! This is a self-reinforcing system, where all of the major tech blogs end up covering the same stories. Yes, someone always breaks the news, but you see this amazing pile-on effect. I'm not sure it's healthy.

Pile-on = echo chamber.

It's not just Tim O'Reilly talking about it. One of my favorite Chuqs, in fact, the only Chuq I know talks about this too, and uses the iPhone as an example. He has a great quote on this effect:

The first thing an echo chamber does is convince itself it's not an echo chamber

Chuq further uses the Apple TV and the iPhone to illustrate not just how silly the echo chamber can be, but how self-delusional.

Classic cases of this are the iPhone and the Apple TV. Both are products that are built for consumers, and while they have strong geek attraction, they aren't built and designed for geeks. Geeks complain about things these products don't do. Apple ignores them. Geeks try to spin them into failures because they don't cater to geeks. the product sells zillions of units anyway. The geeks brains hurt.

Dear lord yes. If you tool around the "blogosphere", you'd think both were utter failures, or the tools of ultimate evil because they don't cater to geeks. But that's not really the case:

for instance, best as I can find, the new generation Tivo sold 30,000 units in the first few months. Apple TV? 250,000 units. Yet you look around the geek echo chamber, and they declare the Apple TV a failed product, while drooling over Tivos. Of course, if you read Sean Avery's NY Times article this week, you'll see he calls out his Apple TV as a toy he loves. It's a great product. Just not a geek product. But since all products ought to be geek products -- that makes it a failure inside the geek echo chamber.

One thing to keep in mind about the "blogosphere": the number of Scobles in it far outnumber the number of normals. That is, regardless of how many people chant the mantra of the blogosphere, "it is the ultimate in democracy, and therefore the perfect medium", the truth is, it's still mostly made up of technophiles. Crap like Techmeme and Digg exacerbate this to where most of the volume is from a crowd of geeks and technophiles, all convinced that they are the true force in making great products. This is hilarious when you consider how few of them have ever created anything beyond geek toys. Winer's one of the few who ever did anything for normal people.

Another example is the hue and cry over iPhone unlocking. If you believe the blogosphere, everyone wants this. That's crap. Geeks want this, and the only numbers I've seen, (courtesy of Chuq), look like, at most, ten percent. Now, ten percent is a decent number, but it's not a majority, it's not even a large minority. But it is a loud minority. Or as Chuq says, (he thinks the unlocking numbers are closer to 5% rather than 10%):

Still not a small number: 5% of a million iPhones is 50,000 iPhones; a great little cottage industry, but it's still ONLY 5%. And for all of the geeks who want the iPhone to fail because it doesn't do all the things THEY want, and obviously, everyone wants those things.

Except, of course, Apple's selling hundreds of thousands of iPhones. Why? because if you get outside the geek echo chamber, most people don't CARE about what the geeks care about. They want the iPhone.

That, by the way, makes geeks crazy. Just frothing at the mouth nuts. They won't admit it in "public", not ever, but deep down, they know that they are this minority, and the iPhone, and the Apple TV, and the Wii are all wildly successful without their approval. Even worse? The manufacturers of those products don't give a rat's ass about geek approval. Telling geeks that "As it turns out, selling to everyone but you is a much better idea than not" makes their insecurities rise to the fore in a big way. Once that happens, well, even reality doesn't mater.

Just because a lot of people agree on something, they're still wrong. They're just louder about it.

Technorati Tags:
Blogosphere = Stupid, Echo chambers, I Like Chuqui, Geeks don't know all

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October 16, 2007

...a pundit just a-pol-o-gized...

No, really. Robert Strohmeyer wrote an error-laden post, and instead of trying to justify it or dance around it, ala Dvorak and too many others, he apologized and corrected it.

Don't believe me? Read it yourself:

Dear readers,

Last Friday, I posted a commentary about the shortcomings of the iPhone with respect to business computing environments. Unfortunately, in my hasty exploration of the iPhone's software, I overlooked an important feature of the device and erroneously stated that the iPhone does not include support for virtual private networking. In fact, it does include VPN support. I also misstated that the iPhone does not open Word and Excel documents. What I had intended to say was that it cannot edit them. I deeply regret these errors, and I offer my sincere apologies to all of the readers of Networking Know-How and PCWorld.com.

The original text of the post follows.

Sincerely,
Robert Strohmeyer

If only more folks would do that, what a bright world this would be.

Technorati Tags:
Apologizing for Mistakes, Robert Strohmeyer - Owns up to his mistakes

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October 12, 2007

The only time I was on my computer during my honeymoon was when I had to be to fax some things to the movers.

All the other times? iPhone. I quite deliberately picked a place with no internet access on premises.

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October 11, 2007

Damn dude, at least make me wait a day before finding yet another reason to use my "Steve Ballmer - Dumbass" tag.

What's next, he's going threaten to sue Chris Burke for personal image infringement?¹ It could happen, Ballmer's just that stupid, hell, it already sounds like Enderle is writing his speeches.

1) calm down people. obviously chris burke is far smarter, humorous, talented, and more sane that ballmer will ever be. it's just a shame that ballmer keeps doing a "single white female" on chris...it's gettin' kinda stalkerrific, ya know? chris, if you read this, i'll understand if you're offended that i compared you to ballmer, but it was either you or young frankenstein, and these days, you're the more interesting, not done-to-death reference.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Steve Ballmer - Dumbass, TEH STOOPUD

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Tell me another one Steve, I never get tired of this story.

Does anyone outside of his paid assistants really give a rat's ass what Ballmer has to say on anything besides what brand of moisturizer he uses on that great shiny skull of his? I bet Skeletor would love to know, as the S-man has some wicked dry scalp. Come on people, Ballmer's about as relevant as someone bitching about who won the county "Hustle" dance contest on disco revival night, only with worse taste in clothes. Ozzie's not much better, (he designed NOTES and GROOVE. Exactly WHAT does Ray Ozzie know about designing software for HUMANS? That's right, NOTHING).

Here's everything Ballmer will say for the next ten years:

"Blah, blah, cloud, blah, blah, services, blah, blah windows is still the center of it all, blah, blah, Zune/Xbox/Live/<insert me-too product>, blah, blah, thin clients suck unless they talk to windows, blah, blah, Open Source is a marginal group of fanatics, blah, blah, Oh yeah, we make stuff for Macs, blah, blah, I promise, the stock price will stop sucking any day now."

It's all he's said for the last few years, why should the next decade be any different?

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Ray Ozzie - Brainless Zombie, Steve Ballmer - Dumbass

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October 1, 2007

"Shut her down Clancy, she's blowin' mud!"

That's something I heard as a way of saying that an oil well was all tapped out. Alas, there are few things in life that are all tapped out, but one of them should be the screaming about the Apple 1.1.1 update. I get people are pissed. I get people want total control over ever damned doo-dad they own. However, the screaming on this issue is getting stupid, to where I'm of the opinion: "Just take the fucking thing back, eat the restock fee and get the fucking Blackberry you obviously wanted in the first place, and some fucking iPhone skin. Get a Windows Mobile device, get a fucking Treo, but for the love of god, stop whining."

Were you to listen to it, you'd swear that Apple had personally gone into their houses, and violated their dogs.

One of the longer, better written screeds on this is by Rob Griffiths in Macworld. I think Rob's wrong all over the place, and I'll guess he's never had to do either developer or large-scale user support, but at least he can put together a proper English sentence on a consistent basis. That doesn't make him right, but it's easier to read such things when they are well-written.

However, as you’ve also read by now, the update did a few other things. First, as Apple had warned, it turned unlocked iPhones into expensive paperweights, rendering them useless. (A Macworld staffer who unlocked his phone so that we could document this procedure, had this happen to his iPhones.) Second, if you had a modified iPhone that ran third-party applications, like I had, the update removed those apps. So much for my plea to Apple. Finally, if you used Ambrosia’s iToner, or any other such ringtone utility, you discovered that all your custom ringtones were also gone.

"So much for my plea to Apple". I think that right there is a central point in this. Rob wanted something very badly and didn't get it. He's so very mad about this that he ignores a few things. First, in what universe did he think that Apple would, considering the deal with AT&T, not ruthlessly undo unlocking procedures, or at the very least, invalidate that device? (Spare me any ranting about AT&T being so evil you have to do it. Bullshit, because for that argument to have any validity, there would have to be some cellular provider that wasn't a festering pool of greed and corruption. Since there is not, stop acting like AT&T is that special. They aren't. All cell providers suck. Arguing which one sucks worse is like arguing about which hurts more, getting stabbed in the eye with a dull ice pick or a rusty nail. Furthermore, all my dealings with AT&T have been at worst, professional, but I've had several potentially sticky problems handled in a very nice manner for all concerned, with nary a bad attitude to be found. Just like Sprint. Hmm...) Apple and AT&T have a contract, one, I'll guess, which has very specific requirements for both parties. For Apple to know about ways to unlock the phone from AT&T and not do anything about it could be seen as tacit approval. That would be bad for Apple, but very good for AT&T, or at least AT&T's lawyers. Or Apple could just be acting like a bunch of dicks. However, I've learned that if you have two choices for stupid maliciousness, and one option is a cell provider, go with the cell provider first. Do I think it's a great strategy? No. But then, I know Apple doesn't give a fuck what I think, and I'm fine with that. I bought the iPhone with full understanding of its limitations, and don't see how whining that those limitations are really real is any better than people moving next to an existing airport and discovering that, OMGWTFKHAAAAAN!...airplanes are loud.

Rob also leaves out that a lot of the changes that broke iToner and the like have to do with application signing. I won't go into that whole deal, because it's equal parts good idea and stupid, but will suffice it to say that unlike a general purpose computer, which the iPhone is not, an embedded device, which the iPhone is, is a good place for application signing. Do I miss my iToner ringtones? Sure, but come on, it's a picayune thing to whine about on this scale.

Unlike most Apple software updates, I held off on running this one until there were some field reports about exactly what happened. Once those reports started trickling in, I came to a painful but obvious conclusion: I will never install the 1.1.1 update on my iPhone.

"BUT THEY CAN NEVER TAKE AWAY...OUR...FREEDOM!!!!!" Spare me the histrionics and drama. "Unlike most Apple updates". Please. Rob, if you blindly run every update Apple releases as soon as it comes out, you have far more problems than the iPhone 1.1.1 update. But I don't actually believe you do that.

I’ve chosen not to upgrade because I value the productivity, entertainment, and customization abilities offered by the third-party applications I’ve added to my iPhone. I don’t want those abilities to go away just to earn the “right” to send Apple more money via the new Wi-Fi Music Store. No thanks; my iPhone will stay at version 1.0.2 for quite a while, it seems.

"I bought the iPhone knowing that it really didn't meet my needs, and so relied on unsupported hacks to make it usable. With that in mind, I shall never update my phone again, because potential security flaws are far outweighed by Tetris." <eyeroll>

Now, if some brilliant individual or team of individuals figures out how to work around the locks that Apple has put in place on the iPhone and again enables third-party apps, I will then upgrade my phone—I want the new features, but not badly enough to give up what I’ve already got.

"I've spent far too much time and effort on this to get something that would better meet my needs out of the box. Given enough time, I'll come up with a nearly coherent reason to explain this."

Now, before I go any further, I believe Apple was well within its rights to do exactly what it did. I understand that I (well, my employer) purchased a phone that wasn’t designed to run third-party applications; that it’s Apple’s right to upgrade the iPhone however it sees fit; and that if bad things happen to my modified iPhone as a result of any Apple upgrade, it’s not Apple’s fault.

"However, I'm going to spend pages and pages explaining why Apple is a big bunch of assholes for doing this thing that they had every right to do and even warned us about, because otherwise, this post would be really short."

I also understand that the new encrypted communications between the iPhone and iTunes may very well have been necessary to prevent SIM unlock programs, which directly impact Apple and AT&T revenue, from being created. I fully believe that Apple has the right to do what it needs to do to protect its revenue, and that of its partners.

"See? I'm showing that I'm really quite reasonable. It will make the rest of my screed look better, even in the face of factual error."

Still, with that understanding, I have to ask…what was Apple thinking?

"How dare you not spend time and effort to work around random unsupported hackery to give the 95% of iPhone users stuff they seem to really like in spite of the fact that it pisses me off?"

What I don’t understand is that Apple apparently doesn’t see any upside to allowing third party applications on the iPhone. This confuses me, because an active third-party development community can only help, not hurt, Apple’s bottom line. If there’s a large and diverse pool of iPhone applications available, then there’s a large group of potential customers (think geeks and techies, at the least) that would put the iPhone on their shopping list. If they then chose to buy the device, Apple would welcome both the initial $399 in hardware sales as well as the portion of the monthly service charge it’ll receive from AT&T.

Ah, this old saw..."Sell features for techies, we drive sales, we're the people who get non-techies to buy your stuff!" You know, this is crapola when Scoble uses it, and it's crapola here too. Here's my answer for that one. If geeks and techies were that important, the iMac and the Wii would have been great whopping failures, because neither of them are aimed at that market, and indeed, that market tends to not like either. Perhaps propellerheads are not the great indicators of success they so desparately want us to think they are. I've had over a hundred non-techies ask me about my iPhone and none of them have cared about hackery and third party applications. Only one asked me about Exchange, and I knew he would anyway. Linux sells to geeks, Apple sells to normal people. Who's doing better, Ubuntu or Apple?

These poll results seem to show that there is such a market of potential consumers out there: fully 15 percent of the respondents indicate they are no longer planning on purchasing an iPhone, thanks to the inability to run third-party applications with the 1.1.1 update. (And an amazing 42 percent of the voters are taking the same approach as I, and simply not upgrading their iPhones.) Granted, this isn’t a scientific poll, but the number of respondents in the “will not buy now” category indicates that there are quite a few users who value the ability to run third-party applications on their phones.

Rob's using an Internet Poll to back his opinion up. I don't have to say anything else here, except to note that his "quite a few users" adds up to, according to when I looked at that poll, right around 10,000 people. That's not exactly a huge groundswell anywhere but the intarweb echo chamber, and I'm assuming no one voted more than once.

So how does Apple lose at all by enabling (and hopefully helping to promote) third-party applications on the iPhone? The company gains more hardware sales, and more revenue from monthly service fees from AT&T. It seems like a no-brainer decision to me, but apparently I’m mistaken.

Well Rob, no, they don't actually gain more revenue in fees from AT&T off the phones that are unlocked now do they? No, no they don't. You may want to reword that part. Of course, now Rob's splitting hairs by attempting to disassociate "third party application developers" from the "hacktivators". I don't really buy it either.

But here's the biggest mistake of the piece:

I think this is completely the wrong approach: The iPhone is a Mac, and it should be treated as such.

No, it's not. It's nothing like a Mac. By Rob's logic, there's no real difference between my Verizon 6700 Windows Mobile device and my Toshiba Wintel box at work. Just because it runs OS X, it's not automatically a Mac, and no amount of wishing nor Tinkerbellian hand-clapping, nor clicking of heels even in sparkly red shoes shall change that. The iPhone is not a Macintosh. Even if Apple comes out with a proper SDK for it, it's still not a Macintosh. Nor shall it ever be. I understand that Rob wants it to be a Mac, and very badly, but it is not one. It is a computer, but not all computers are the same. Rob, and the others under his banner really need to learn that, and badly.

When you combine the iPhone’s OS X core with the large, gorgeous and innovative multi-touch screen, there’s an amazingly vast amount of software that could be developed for the iPhone.

There's a lot that could be developed for almost any computer. That still doesn't make the iPhone a Mac, anymore than it makes the iPod a B&O system. Similarities of function do not create identical states of being.

In just a few months, we’ve seen more than 60 applications developed for the iPhone—and all of them were created without any sort of documentation or an official development kit from Apple!

This describes almost every programmable device ever made. The iPhone is nothing new here. The fact that it has been hacked doesn't make it special. It just makes it a programmable device. Just because it says "Apple" doesn't make it all different and unique.

There are developers eager to help turn the iPhone into a most amazing device, if only Apple would recognize the potential of the platform and the contributions that third parties could make to its success.

Who says they haven't? Maybe Rob, Apple's not as stupid as you think they are. Maybe they're waiting for an OS release that would be the same basic version as the one on the iPhone? One that wouldn't be in beta? With dev tools that weren't in beta. Maybe they're a little busy on that, and decided that an iPhone SDK can wait for said OS release. Nah, it's stupidity. That's the only possible answer.

And why would we need third-party applications on this “revolutionary and magical product that is literally five years ahead of any other mobile phone,” as Steve Jobs described it? Well, this revolutionary device lacks a full Internet messaging (chat) program, something you can find on the giveaway phones found in any cellular store. This revolutionary device lacks the ability to locate itself on a map, something found in quite a few phones via a GPS chip. This revolutionary device lacks any way to customize its look, beyond the opening screen wallpaper—again, you’ll find this ability exists on nearly every other cell phone out there. This revolutionary device can’t customize sounds for various events, such as the new mail sound, the sent message sound, and the unlock sound. This revolutionary device can’t play any games, unless they’re hosted on a web page. This revolutionary device can’t use any MP3 as a ringtone, unlike many giveaway cellphones.

Astoundingly, a rather huge number of people know this, and don't give a fuck. Jesus, it can't make me a margarita, nor can it give me a pedicure, do I slam Apple for everything the iPhone doesn't do? $DEITY$ on a stick, what's next, the iPhone sucks because it doesn't squirt like a Zune?

But amazingly enough, my iPhone can do all of those things, and much more. All thanks to the third parties, who have done all of this without Apple’s help, and without any sort of official documentation. Just imagine what would be possible if they had both support and documentation: The iPhone really could be a revolutionary device.

Right, because a safe supported SDK and dev environment on an embedded device is something you just whip up overnight, and that infrastructure takes no time at all. They take no time, just ask Microsoft and Palm, why they've never had a third-party application written with their SDKs do anything bad to the device they run on.

I think Apple blew it here, and blew it in a big way. Instead of embracing and extending the development of third-party applications, it seems they’ve gone in the opposite direction: to make it as hard as possible for third-party applications to exist. From a consumer’s perspective, this is awful, as it’s removing choice from the consumer—not everyone is going to want the same apps and the same look on their iPhone, yet that’s what Apple’s telling us we must have (“Enjoy your new iPhone. Everything you could ever want is right there, and we’re sure you’ll love the theme we’ve installed for you.”)

Yeah, who'd want a device like that..why, it would be as hard to sell as the iPod! Again, Rob is confusing his loud, yet really astoundingly small geek squad with the larger set of all consumers, and while I bet his ego purrs like a well-fed tribble when he does that, it's still not true. Rob, the vast majority of consumers don't hack their shit. Ever. Again, I give you the success of the iPod as evidence.

Of course, consumers still do have a choice, but that choice is to purchase a competing brand’s smart phone. Is that what Apple really wants us to do?

At this point, I almost wish that a certain segment of the iPhone population would do that, and soon. Really. You never really wanted an iPhone in the first place, so please, go buy something that you do want.

Until that happens, though, I’ll keep using my non-updated iPhone with its assortment of third-party applications, and hope that Apple eventually sees the upside of opening iPhone development to those who are eager to extend and enhance this amazing device.

"I'll make sure that I make all of you who don't give a fuck about hacking the iPhone suffer until I get what I want."

Look, I get wanting more out of the iPhone, but come on already, enough. If third party developers are that important to you, then why the hell did you buy the thing knowing it was missing a critical feature? However, since you did, if you must whine and gripe about this, and obviously you must, then stop assuming you speak for the majority of iPhone users, or anything more than a vocal whiny majority minority. The rest of us are quite happy with the device we bought when we bought it, and are getting tired of being misrepresented.

Technorati Tags: iPhone 'tards

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September 30, 2007

This is my fault, they evidently released this a while ago.

Wii: 404,000 units
Xbox 360: 277,000 units
PS2: 202,000 units
PS3: 131,000 units

Gee, what a surprise, the Wii won again, outselling the second-place Xbox 360 by 1.46:1. Probably the biggest news this month was that for a change, the Xbox 360 finally outsold the PS2. This should be the norm, by the way.

Percentage of change from July:

Wii: Down about 5%. It will be interesting to see if Metroid Prime 3 has any affect on their sales or not, but that will wait until September, as it wasn't released until August 27th.
Xbox 360: Up about 63%, a very nice change for them. We'll have to wait for September's numbers to see how Halo 3 helped.
PS2: Down about 9%. If there's a better statement about how little the public really cares about the PS3/Xbox 360, I don't know what it is.
PS3: Down about 17%, but that's not surprising, since price cuts tend to be blippy. But it's at least over 100,000.

The big news from last month is that according to the numbers at VG Chartz, the Wii has now sold more consoles than the Xbox 360. That's pretty amazing considering the lead time the 360 had, and unlike the 360, the Wii has been profitable since day one. I'm really running out of silly analogies for the waterfall of money that is in place at Nintendo.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft Xbox 360, Nintendo Wii RULES, Sony PS2/3

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September 21, 2007

I'll buy you dinner at a nice place in San Francisco for Macworld if you do.

Once again, the lead evangelist for Acrobat, Lori DeFurio shows how you can be enthusiastic, motivated, a very nice person, and still not have a clue as to why the Mac universe hates Acrobat, even though we love PDF.

Every so often, the Acrobat teams goes through one of its "PDF GENERATED BY ANYTHING BUT ADOBE ACROBAT IS BAD!" spasms. I think most of the world is insightful enough to see that while there is some technical accuracy to this, the truth is, this is just Acrobat marketing spew designed to fearmonger you into buying Acrobat. The latest version is also Lori's latest post designed to show you how only Acrobat can give you real PDF. Lori's not the only one. Rick Boren, who specializes in Acrobat for the legal profession, has a similar post. Now, I'm not going to bother commenting on Lori's blog. There's a variety of reasons behind this, but honestly, it's mostly because I realized that the Acrobat Marketing team, of which both Lori and Rick are a part of, not only have a total lack of caring for Acrobat users on anything but Windows, but also fundamentally don't care about any business that isn't in their definition of Big Enterprise. Oh, I'm sure they might read this and get six kinds of indignant, but as people sometimes say "the proof is in the pudding" and the Acrobat pudding is sour indeed if you're a small business or on the Mac.

I did attempt to post a comment for Rick's post, pointing out how Acrobat is not a good solution for anyone not on Windows. I tried to point this out in a factual, reasonably non-confrontational way. Rick never published that comment. His right, but I can't say I'm surprised. The Acrobat team is not so good with dissent. The fact remains, Acrobat is non-existent on Linux, and on the Mac, its Office integration is still crippled. This lack of functional Office integration is still justified by statements so blatantly false that at this point, I can no longer be nice and say they're misleading. When Adobe says there's no way to improve Acrobat's integration with MS Office on the Mac beyond what it is today, they are lying. No, they are. I have proof that there are in fact, ways to get more information out of Office documents than Adobe claims. Were they to say "We can't do it in the only way we are ever going to try to do it", then they would not be lying. However, that would not allow them to put the blame on Microsoft. Acrobat marketing is not good at being honest with Mac users. Note Adobe's deafening silence on Acrobat support for Office 2008. Anyone care to start that dead pool?

However, yes Rick, there are lawyers who don't use Windows. If you use Linux, well, Adobe's response could be distilled down to "Get a real OS you hippy", and if you're on a Mac, it's "You're lucky you get what we allow you to have". Note: this is ONLY the Acrobat team. The CS team, i.e. Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, etc., have never had this particular "must only care about big enterprise" disease that affects the Acrobat team. From what little I can tell, this isn't even the attitude of the engineers on the Acrobat team. It's pretty much the Marketing team saying this, (and had I not been so sick at Macworld last January, the Acrobat mouthpiece spewing the standard falsehoods would have gotten a rude shock in the form of technical accuracy.) and since the Marketing team makes the decisions, well, the poor suckers who have to buy Acrobat for the Mac pay the same price as the Windows version, but get royally reamed on the feature set.

So let's see here. We should only use Acrobat, a product whose decision-making team has shown, consistently, since at least 2001 or so, that they regard the Mac market as a boil on its ass, instead of PDF making clones, most of which are made by companies, at least on the Mac, show that they care about our needs and appreciate us beyond the money we throw at them. Huh. Now, don't get me wrong, Acrobat is really a solid application, and the full PDF feature set is really damned useful and well designed. But every time I use Acrobat on the Mac, I feel like Pilot-Captain Blackthorne getting pissed on by the local samurai for being a bit too mouthy.

It's not like I haven't tried to talk about this with the Acrobat team. At the WWDC, I tried to set up a meeting with the Acrobat team and some of the Mac enterprise IT people attending that event so that both sides could sit down, and maybe the Acrobat team's decision makers could talk to people they don't think exist, and realize that yes, the Mac market is worth more effort than "as little as possible". Didn't happen. The Acrobat team couldn't be bothered to even show up at a local bar to just sit down and talk. We didn't want to string them up. We wanted to talk to them about how their installers completely fuck up deployment on managed Mac networks, how their first run requirements make setting up deployments of Acrobat and Reader for non-admin users really painful, etc. Yes, there would have been a lot of criticism, but you know what? Microsoft talks to MacEnterprise, Apple does too. But Adobe? Heh..no way dude. That's not everyone on the Acrobat team. There are a few individuals who do try to do the right thing, but as a group, again, the Acrobat team works very hard to make the Mac market think that they don't matter to the Acrobat team. When the protests from the Acrobat team happen, if they do, I will happily show them all the items that prove my point, and wait for yet another round of stony silence, which may be punctuated by angry muttering.

So while Acrobat is indeed a better way to generate proper PDF, so long as the Acrobat team does its level best to make the Mac OS market feel like some kind of boil on Acrobat's ass, they can just deal with the fact that we're not going to be real thrilled about laying out the price to do it the Acrobat way.

Here's one...maybe, just maybe, if the Acrobat team starts treating the Mac market like a group of valuable customers, maybe we'll start acting that way...

...but don't hold your breath.

Technorati Tags: Acrobat, Adobe, WTF?

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September 19, 2007

So Thomas O. Barnett and the DOJ are kinda snarked that the EC had it's own ideas on how to deal with Microsoft.

Translation:

Goddamnit, if I have to spend all my time swallowing corporate choad, why should you get out of it?

I guess fellating big business isn't so cool when you're the only one doing it.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, EC

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Stephen Fry has a blog. Yes, that Stephen Fry.

But that's minor. What is important is that he states everything I dislike about Windows Mobile and Windows so much better than I, that I am greener than a cucumber at how well he uses his native language:

Windows for Mobiles is certainly better than Windows for PCs or, God help us all, Vista, but it is still an insulting offering. The feeling, as with all things Microsoft, is that all design features and functions are there to suit MS rather than to delight, enthuse and compel the user. Compromise, short-cuts, inconveniences, vestigial residues - no one responsible is likely to pat themselves on the back for the design or the s’ware engineering, any more than the architect or project manager of a 60s council flat is likely to point it out with pride as he rides by with his grandchildren. You’re only on this planet once – do something extraordinary, imaginative and inspiring. That’s the difference, ultimately. Those behind Palm OS and the Psion can justifiably be proud of what they did, what they created. WinMob just muscled in on a market they never spotted and they did it in a clumsy, bullying, ugly manner, exactly as they had with Windows before, and exactly as IBM had with the PC itself a decade earlier. Break free, all you corporate software engineers and designers: the excuse that you are under the rule of dullards, greedy share-price number crunchers and visually and ergonomically illiterate yahoos is not good enough. Persuade them. Otherwise we all get a digital environment that’s a vile as a 60s housing estate.

That's why Americans hate the British. The bastards took their language skills with them when they left. Greedy is what it is. Just greedy.

Technorati Tags: Language, Stephen Fry, Writing

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September 18, 2007

So let me just say here, that I'm a Donnas fan. A huge fan. Fan-BOY. I don't have any Donnas tattoos, but don't tempt me too hard.

With that in mind, Bitchin' is one kick-ass album for anyone, but if you're a fan of hair metal and 80s arena rock? Heaven, pure loud, sparkly, Aqua-Net/L.A. Looks HEAVEN.

There are a lot of albums and bands that talk about being influenced by various styles, and letting that influence show through in different ways, and The Donnas are no different. Spend the Night always gave me flashbacks to Side A of KISS's Dressed to Kill. Hard driving, three minute rock with balls and absolutely...tasty...guitar. With Gold Medal the feel was different. This was in part a deliberate decision by the band to let their love of bands like Cheap Trick influence the songwriting, but also due to drummer Torry Castellano's issues with tendinitis that eventually required surgery. Although Torry played on the album after the surgery, she had to learn how to drum with "proper" technique, and could only play for short periods of time. This lead to Gold Medal having a somewhat less heavy sound with a wider range of musical styles throughout the album. While there were only two singles that most people knew about, Fall Behind Me, whose opening lick you couldn't miss for a year on VH1, and the nigh-Homage du Cheap Trick that was I Don't Wanna Know (If You Don't Want Me), (an amusing choice for a single, as it's written from the POV of a female stalker), I really liked Gold Medal. It's often easy for a band to crank out the same album over and over. I mean, look at Boston. They released the same album with the same song three times. So for a band known for hard-driving straightforward bar rock, Gold Medal was a risk, and one I'm glad they took. Besides the singles, my favorite song on the album is the title track. The tune is jaunty, the lyrics less so, but it's melodic, and fun, and a song that not only makes me want to sing along, but was a true surprise for me. In this day and age of marketing committee-determined sound, any band willing to throw a random left turn of a song on an album gains +10 on my scale just for trying. When it works as well as Gold Medal, (the song and the album), booyah.

If it was possible to do more of a 180° from Gold Medal than Bitchin', I'm not sure how. Where Gold Medal was at times muted, Bitchin' is...big. Big Drums. Big Reverb. Big Echo. Big EVERYTHING. It's everything I ever liked about hair metal and arena rock, and none of the stuff I hated. (Read: Brett Anderson may not be Robert Plant or Ann Wilson, but I also don't have to listen to her being Mark Slaughter or Joey Tempest, and that's a very good thing.) Torry Castellano's drums jackhammer 4/4 into your skull and out of your ass, taking your spine with it. But she avoids the sin of plodding through it ala Rick Allen. Yes, the drum lines are not anything ala Bonham or Peart, but they are played skillfully, and with care. One of my favorite drum parts on the album is in the first release from the album, Don't Wait Up for Me, a song that should be in the dictionary next to "anthem rock", and one that is sure to be a hit for any group planning a night of serious drinking. That's not to say that every song is her trying to do permanent damage to her kit. Torry's work on Wasted is another example of her skill as a timekeeper, and shows her ability to neatly move between the piledriver needed for Don't Wait Up For Me and a less thunderous, yet still hard-driving drum line. The opening to What Do I Have To Do will give moments of "I CAN HAZ WHITE STRIPES?" in the way it echos Blue Orchid, while other tracks like Save Me and Here for the Party have all the fills and cowbells you'd expect from a Def Leppard track. In truth, Here for the Party could almost be a Def Leppard song. That's not a bad thing, by the way, nor accidental, as the band has stated that this album was heavily influenced by Def Leppard and other giants of the late 80s.

The second leg of the rhythm triumvirate of The Donnas, bassist Maya Ford shines here for the same reasons as Castellano. While her role this album is not as prominent as on Gold Medal's Friends Like Mine, Don't Break Me Down, and Is That All You've Got, she is still a critical part of that combination of melody and hard driving rock which makes my li'l ol' heart go boom-boom when I listen to them. Then again, as aggressive as Maya plays, that could be my spine, it's hard to tell sometimes. (I'd swear she's trying to find the infamous "Brown Noise".) Maya's bass playing complements both the drums and the guitar, achieving that tricky balance that requires avoidance of being too overpowering and fading so far back that she may as well not be there. While shining as a bass player in a twenty-minute per song prog rock ensemble is sometimes a matter of waiting your turn for your solo, doing it in three minutes when you are playing between a drummer like Castellano and Allison Robertson's amazing guitar is tricky as hell, yet Maya pulls it off with aplomb, and onstage, a look that says you might get the headstock of that Gibson in an uncomfortable spot should you give her any shit.

It is impossible to talk about a Donnas' album without massive amounts of superlatives for Allison Robertson and her Gibsons. It's actually pretty hard not to gush like a sixth grader with a crush, especially if you're a fan of the kind of playing that Allison is so damned good at. The truth is, I'm a sucker, a total sap for a guitar player who can manage to play blistering lead and solid rhythm, and smoothly move between each. One of the reasons I have loved The Donnas since I first heard them has been their sense of melody. They aren't just hard to show they have bigger cocks than the guys, and in the effort, turn songs into collections of instruments. Every part in every song never loses track of the song. It's a quality that all my favorite guitar players share, from Page to Prince to Giraldo to Robertson. Yes, she does belong in that group too. Honestly, I think she's one of the top five active guitar players, and to be brutally blunt I'd piss on Clapton tickets to hear her play. (Okay, deal. Clapton's been sucking so much old black blues guy cock for so long that he's stopped being Eric Clapton, and turned into the Muddy Waters Tribute Band. When Clapton starts doing his own music again, ala 461 Ocean Boulevard and Slowhand, i'll start listening to him again. In the mean time, when i want to hear Muddy, I'll buy Muddy's albums.) She can hammer out power chords that will kick your nuts out of your spine, play blistering leads in a variety of styles, but it's never overdone.

Someone told me once that when they heard her play, the word "tasty" came to mind, and I can't disagree. Even when she's flinging notes out as fast as she can, there's never a sense that she doesn't care about each and every one of them. Like I said, tasty. On Bitchin', she shows off yet another side of her playing in homage after homage to every solo you ever heard from every hair metal band. Listening to Bitchin', I kept saying "Ooh...Scorpions...Slaughter...Kix..." and so on. But it wasn't just copying. All her licks are most definitely her, but she's able to copy the flavor of a dozen different artists. That's a tricky thing to do, and her ability to pull it off makes me want to sit in a dark room with good headphones and try to pull out every layer on every song. That's something that not many guitarists beyond Page and Prince inspire in me, and every time I listen to her playing, especially in "Turn 21" and later, i hear something else that I missed the last time. The fact that she's not regularly on the covers of more guitar magazines just shows how retarded the music press can be. As both an amateur guitar player for the last five or so years, and a guitar aficionado/fan for over thirty years, I can say that the fact Allison isn't viewed as a friggin' guitar god is astounding to me.

In truth, Bitchin' is both a kick - ass rock album, and a disk of mini-homages to various bands. The cowbell opening to "Here For The Party" could just as easily lead into "Rock of Ages". The opening guitar in "Wasted" brings to mind a slightly-distant conglomeration of The Cure/She Wants Revenge/Bahaus, while "Don't Wait Up For Me" makes you think of some Marvel-inspired "What If Joan Jett was in Bon Jovi?" alternate universe thriller. The lead-in to "Better Off Dancin" brings to mind the opening guitar bits to "I Ran", while "Give Me What I Want" reminds me of why the aforementioned first side of "Dressed To Kill" is still one of my favorite album sides of all time. One point I find interesting is that while you can get Bitchin' on iTunes, that's not really the best place. My personal favorite site for this album is on their 11spot page, where you can not only download the album in MP3 format at 192Kbps, but you can also get the physical CD, or (JOY!) the album on actual VINYL. PURPLE VINYL! Yeah, yeah, digital's better. Well, album art on CD's sucks rancid donkey cock, and everyone with a clue knows that album art kicks CD art's ass. Besides, look at the love for the 80s in the CD cover art and on the CD itself, and the fact that the album is on purple vinyl. They're even selling Nagel t-shirts! OMG80sSQUEEE!!!!!! I mean holy shit, if it came with a Versace jacket, it couldn't be more 80s. I don't often say this, but if you're thinking of picking up Bitchin', fuck iTunes. (Actually, if you want to be REALLY cool, buy it from the link in my Amazon Links section on the right ;-)) Get it at 11spot, it's just a better deal. (Oh for Donnas fans, they keep up their tradition of including a cover amongst the originals. This time? Safety Dance. That's right. Safety Dance. Sweet.

In conclusion, Bitchin' is Bitchin', The Donnas kick ass, and i can't wait for their show on the 27th in Omaha.

Technorati Tags: Gibson, Guitar, Music, Musicians, SQUEE!, The Donnas

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September 14, 2007

If DB2 was physically oblong, brown and stinky, it couldn't be a bigger turd.

Technorati Tags: TEH SUCK

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So a good friend sends me a link to this pile of WTF-ery. I read it, (some good writing there...not), and think "Well, I could bash the hell out of this", but then I realize, there's no point. With rare exception, ComputerWorld's Mac coverage is flame/trollbait looking for hit counts. I mean, just look at the title. Circular logic, not bothering to learn the market, and well, Mike Elgan. What more do you need as proof that ComputerWorld's Mac coverage is crap, well, 99% of it is. For example:

The fact that Microsoft hasn't updated its Entourage client for the Mac in several years suggests that its OS X support is waning, although a new Office 2008 version for the Mac with a new e-mail client is due in January.

See? Stupid writ large.

So do what I did as of this bit: Stop reading it unless you want to see what the output of a bunch of Dvoraking Chuckleheads looks like.

They aren't going to change, and they don't care about getting better. So why give them the hits? Just walk away.

Technorati Tags: Dvorakism, TEH STOOPUD, WTF?

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September 13, 2007

So Sun is going to become a Windows Server OEM?

Wow, I guess ol' Schwartzy forgot what happened to SGI when they decided to abandon their core competency to suck at Redmond's teat. Went from being a central innovator in the Unix space, particularly for high-end graphics and actually had a decent UI with Irix...to selling compute clusters for Linux and Windows.

Anyone care to start up the Sun death pool? After all, you can never have too many Linux and Windows compute cluster OEMs.

Oh well, Solaris wasn't used by anyone of not, right?

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Sun Go Bye-Bye, Sun, TEH STOOPUD, Windows

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September 11, 2007

Actual SPAM comment in my moderation queue:

Just serfed in. Great site, guys!c

Very nice. Now bring me my hasenfeffer you smelly peasant!

Technorati Tags: WTF?

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But unless it's about Segway polo, lame practical jokes or thirty - year old tech as a (valuable) historical reference or other "I'm a fat old rich white guy who does fuck all besides be a fat old rich white guy", (and that's pretty cool, don't get me wrong), stuff...

I don't fucking care what Steve Wozniak has to say about Apple or Apple products. He doesn't work there. He isn't involved in the decisions. He has lunch with Jobs here and there, according to his own words. He's no more better - informed than anyone else about what's going on there, and is full of shit just as frequently.

Can we please stop asking him wtf he thinks is behind various Apple things? 'Cause you know, if you're going to ask him, you may as well ask Bruce Horn or anyone who actually worked on a fucking Macintosh. Any of them would have the same kind of "insight" as Woz, only with less e-fellating. The dude had one successful company, and no doubt he did literally change the world. But he did it in 1977. A little less sucking of the Woznipenis would not kill anyone.

note: members of the Woz fan club...yes, I know what he did. let it fucking go, he's now just a historical figure enjoying his money. get your head out of his ass and see who's creating new stuff. i'm not saying forget the man exists, but stop hanging on his every word already.

Technorati Tags: tag

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September 7, 2007

His current one's gone all Dvorak in the middle.

One of his Computerworld articles, re-published by Macworld, entitled "It's official: Apple is the new Microsoft", while guaranteed to get you hits, is not the most factual look at things. Nor the best thought-out.

First, he's using some weak relationships to justify his claims, and with the EMI deal, they're really weak:

People love iPods (including me; my family of four has purchased 12 iPods in the past few years). But iPods come bundled with iTunes. Want to buy music from Apple? Guess what? You must install iTunes. Want an Apple cell phone from AT&T? Yep! ITunes is required even if you want only to make phone calls. Want to buy ringtones for your Apple phone? iTunes.

I ask, what's your point? None of this is hidden, none of this is unknown. You want an iPod, you use iTunes. However, that's not the same as his implication that you are forced to use the iTunes store exclusively. I have a number of tracks on my iPod from other places that sell MP3s from bands that aren't on iTunes, like Snocap. MP3s still work. As well, there are a number of ways to get ringtones on your iPhone that don't require iTunes at all. If you never wish to synchronize your iPhone to a computer, then you need iTunes exactly *once*...to activate it. After that, delete iTunes and have a party. You only need it for updates after that. Find a friend with iTunes, and use their system. It's no more onerous than Verizon or Sprint making you use their stores to activate their phones, or not letting you update the phones without their approved method. Actually, considering the hell that is smartphone updates in general, Apple's implementation is far superior.

Apple not only “bundles” iTunes with multiple products, it forces you to use it. At least with Internet Explorer, you could always just download a competitor and ignore IE.

You can no more ignore IE in Windows than you can ignore Cocoa in Mac OS X. That's because IE is not in fact, an standalone product. Like Safari, it has a rather huge number of system frameworks that are all over Windows. IE is simply an implementation of various frameworks and libraries. Just like Safari. Mike's being a bit disingenuous here.

But operating systems have browsers as part of core functionality, too. Doesn’t Mac OS X come with Safari? Doesn’t the iPhone?

As does Windows and damned near every Linux distribution.

And “bundling” works. Steve Jobs bragged this week that Apple has distributed 600 million copies of iTunes to date. The overwhelming majority of those copies were iTunes for Windows. And iTunes for Windows’ popularity isn’t driven by software product quality. ITunes is the slowest, clunkiest, most nonintuitive application on my system. But I need it because I love my iPods.

Bundling, or maintaining control over the entire experience? On Windows, you can't claim that Apple is "forcing" you do do anything Mike, and we both know it. You want an iPod, you deal with that ecosystem, the same as if you want a Zune or an Xbox 360.

At least with Windows, you could reformat your PC and install Linux or any number of other PC-compatible operating systems. Can I reformat my iPod and install something else? Can I uninstall iTunes but keep using the iTunes store and my iPods? Apple strongly discourages all that, claiming that the iPod, the iPod software and iTunes are three components of the same product. But that’s what Microsoft said about Windows and IE.

Okay this part is just stupid. But if Mike wants to play...can I reformat my Zune and run Linux or any number of other PC-compatible OS's? Why..no, no you cannot. Nor can you with a Windows Mobile device, or any one of a hundred devices running embedded OS's. Why?

Because neither the iPod, nor the Zune, nor the Treo, nor the Motorola Q is a PC-compatible device.

Mike should be ashamed of himself for trying to compare a handheld device to a full-on PC and whining that he can't use it just like something that has completely different hardware. That's almost moron-level logic there. But Mike has to make his point somehow, so he's taking what he can get.

The only downside is that he works out every day at the gym, where cardio machines face TVs that broadcast sound over FM radio. Six months later, when his iPod is stolen, he goes to buy another player — this time, he hopes, with an FM radio in it. Several competitors offer this feature, but not iPods. He’s about to choose a new player with an FM radio when it hits him: None of his files — now totaling 300 songs and 50 movies — will play on the new player. He bought and paid for all this content, but it only works with iPods and iTunes.

Lord. Um...Mike? The iPod Radio Remote. Solves the problem nicely. If you're going to rag on a product for its failings, make sure you know the product better. As well, if your dad bought anything from the EMI non-DRM'd collection, then he'd have almost no problems at all here. See, Mike is confusing the problems caused by the stupidity that is DRM, something Apple has, quite publicly come out against, with his need to fill space on the article. If DRM were to get properly buried, then your dad would have no problem at all. Perhaps you should have shown him how to legally get his music without DRM, and spared him any trouble at all.

Apple has an iPod customer for life. Microsoft never had this kind of monopoly power. Sorry, dad. I should have bought you a tie.

I've got a bunch of companies locked into Exchange that say Mike's talkin' stupid here.

That same shock rippled through the iPhone enthusiast community yesterday when Jobs announced with a straight face that iPhone ringtones based on iTunes songs would cost the full price of the song, plus 99 cents extra. What? The full song costs 99 cents! How on Earth can Apple seriously charge the same amount again for the ability to hear just 30 seconds of the song — the same length as the free iTunes “samples”?

The same way that Verizon/Sprint/AT&T/etc use their monopoly power on its devices to charge you over twice that for a song to play, and the same song as a ringtone. Apple is hardly breaking new ground here. I think Mike needs to vent more at the group of liars and thieves that are all cell carriers here. As sad as it sounds, Apple is actually not hitting you as badly as everyone else. Does it suck? Sure. But, come on. Custom Ringtones are a luxury item for any phone. You can own an iPhone forever and never use one. In fact, out of every cell phone I've had since 1998, the iPhone is only the third one I've ever used any kind of custom ringtone on, and only the second where I had different ringtones for different people. It's a ringtone, not air.

Apple fully understands the power of monopoly pricing. The company has sold the 8GB iPhone for two prices in its short, three months of existence: $599 and, now, $399. When the iPhone was the only way to get the whole multitouch, big-screen, Wi-Fi iPod experience — when the product had no alternatives — the price was $599. One analyst estimated Apple’s cost to build an iPhone is $245.83. I don’t know if that’s true but, if so, more than half the user cost was profit. That’s theater soda pricing. But as soon as Apple introduced an alternative to the iPhone — the iPod Touch — Apple dropped the price by one-third.

See, i cannot believe that Mike Elgan is so ignorant of the costs of a device such as the iPhone that he'd take a materials-only quote that isn't even authoritative and assume that engineering, developing and manufacturing have zero cost. He simply cannot be that ignorant, I refuse to believe it. Therefore, he's got to be playing some games here, and I really dislike that. As far as the price drops, well duh. That can't be a surprise to anyone. The amount? Maybe. But the drop itself? No way dude.

Imagine if another company were allowed to compete in the OS X media player market. These players would all drop to below $300. Don’t hold your breath, though; it’ll never happen. Apple has the power to exclude all others from software than runs on its media players. Microsoft could only dream of such power.

Ah, my favorite part. The part where I can just say "Bullshit". Mike, you're so full of shit here that it beggars the imagination. There's nothing keeping someone from having another media player on OS X. In fact, I have one right now. VLC. There's nothing Apple is doing or can do, physically or psychologically that's keeping Microsoft from allowing the full range of Windows Media to be functional on Mac OS X. There's nothing Apple is doing, nor can do that would prevent Microsoft and one of its partners from creating a Creative Store or an MTV store, or even the Zune store on Mac OS X. The fact of the matter is that Microsoft refuses to bring the full Windows Media experience to any non-Microsoft platform unless it's through something like Silverlight. You don't get full Windows Media on non Microsoft platforms, period. But that's a Microsoft decision, not Apple.

Although full details haven’t been revealed, NBC apparently wanted more “flexibility” to charge higher prices for its TV shows on iTunes. Apple said no, and NBC was sent packing. NBC now plans to sell shows on alternative locations, such as its own Web site and on Amazon.com. Prediction: NBC will come crawling back to Apple and beg the company for inclusion, and on Apple’s terms. Why? Because iTunes is increasingly becoming the only venue in which media companies can succeed selling music and TV show.

Jobs rules like Bill Gates never did. If you want to succeed in the digital music or downloadable TV business, you’ll do things his way.

Again, bullshit. Here, let me just use Active X controls outside of IE on Windows. What? I can't? But that means I can only use Windows for these web sites I need to do my job! DAMN YOU STEVE JOBS!

The only reason Jobs has the influence he does is because the music and media companies blatantly state they hate their customers and want to make it as hard as possible for anyone to view content outside of methods that they lock down far tighter than Jobs has to date. It's also because, well, face it. Other than Apple, the media companies are pretty damned stupid. if NBC can't succeed without Apple, that's not Apple's fault. They could easily make sure their content is usable by iTunes and iPods et al without deal one with Apple. But I bet they won't. Instead, they'll use some overly complicated and restrictive Windows Media DRM bullshit, and wonder why they aren't selling. Again, not Apple's fault. iTunes and the iPod handle a wide range of formats, only one of which is Apple-only. Again, Mike is guilty of playing with reality to make his story work better.

Is Apple a monopolist, copycat and bully? Yes, and deservedly so. And if anyone thinks Apple’s success is a problem, well, bringing in the lawyers wasn’t the solution for Microsoft, and it won’t be the solution for Apple.

This comparison is funny when you consider how hard Apple pushes for no DRM on anything in the iTunes store, which would effectively gut any ability for them to "lock" you to the iPod or iTunes from a content POV.

Mike, the next time you have an article to write, and no good ideas, just tell us about something cute your kids did over the weekend. It'd be better than this tripe.

Technorati Tags: Apple, DRM is Stupid, Throw Rocks at it, dumbass du jour, iPhone 'tards, Windows Media, TEH STOOPUD

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So Daring Fireball linked me to a story on pulling our heads out of our asses with regard to HTML support in email. I especially like this part:

So, it's not going anywhere and it's broken. If we can all get past this point together, it's obvious that the best path forward is to work with desktop and web-based email client manufacturers to improve how HTML emails are rendered, not argue amongst ourselves about personal preference.

I must admit, it sounded vaguely familiar to me, like I'd seen another post with the same basic idea...

But I think that if the major email client vendors, such as Microsoft, Qualcomm, Lotus, Apple, Ximian, etc., would get together and create an email subset of HTML...perhaps emHTML? Then you could have a nice, standard, way to have increased formatting in emails without making it an internet version of Word. So I think I shall have to officially get off the “Email must be nothing but ASCII text” train. It's going to happen anyway folks, so how about dealing with it proactively, as opposed to the fingers-in-ears-and-yelling reaction that the 'Net Pharts have to change.

That's right, I had seen it before, because I friggin' wrote about it over three years ago!

Jesus, when does the cool part of "being ahead of my time" kick in? Like the money and the naked adoring young women following me about wherever I go, making my life a living hell until I slink out of sight, unheard of until my untimely demise in a Mexican brothel?

Technorati Tags: Email, Standards Support

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September 6, 2007

Whine a little louder, the starving people in Darfur can't hear you.

To those of you wondering why my misanthropic tendencies are so well-developed? Shit like "YOU DROPPED THE PRICE, WE DESERVE MONEEEE" is why. I hate entitlement queens, and MacMacs are the worst of all.

Every.Single.Complaint resolves to "Waaah, I want my $200 because I couldn't wait, WAAAAH"

Fucking crybabies. Get bent all of you, and eat glass.

Technorati Tags: Crybabies, iPhone 'tards, MacMacs

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Eddie Griffin's show halted because he said "nigger" during his stand-up routine.

Yay, the home of the free and the land of the brave now has an actual list of BANNED WORDS. See kids, it's not just right wing fundie fanatics crapping on the spirit of the Constitution, that's a game we all can play!

Even better, now we'll have to put up with weeks of apologies and Oprah because of this, just wait.

Technorati Tags: Fear, TEH STOOPUD

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September 5, 2007

Now, most of you know I'm getting married, and that my Fiancee is an artist and graphic designer. What you may not know is that she works for the Osceola County Library system in well, Osceola County FL. One of the big projects that she and one of her coworkers have been the primary people on is a redesign of the Library system's web site. That link I have to it is the new design.

A lot of times, people do redesigns because well, they think they should. But they are never quite sure what it will get them.

In the library's case, the benefits of the redesign are clear, and obvious. In the months prior to the rollout of the new design, average hit count was around 12,500 hits per month. (I forget page views or unique visitors) Not bad.

The first full month with the new design? Over ninety-five thousand hits. That's right. From 12,500 to over 95,000. With a significant percentage of users hanging out on the site for over five minutes. An almost-eightfold increase in hits, and longer loyalty numbers. That's what a good design got them. Will those numbers hold in the long run? Hard to say, but that's not a bad start.

Technorati Tags: Good Design

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New colors for shuffles.

Redesigned Nano, for better video, 4GB for $149, 8GB for $199.

iPod, now iPod "Classic" in 80GB and 160GB sizes, for $249 and $349 respectively.

iPod "Touch", an iPhone without the phone part, with WiFi, in 8GB and 16GB for $299 and $399.

WiFi iTunes Store for the Touch and the iPhone.

WiFi deal with Starbuck's.

$200 dollar price drop on the iPhone, both models, with the 4GB model being discontinued, so the 8GB is now $399.

That thudding sound you hear is the Zune.

Hitting bottom.

"But we dropped the price of the 30GB Zune to $199!" says the Zune team.

Alas, they may have brought a sharper knife to the fight, but as the amazingly apt Andy Ihnatko said, Apple brought a cannon. That's the difference between being an innovator and a wannabe. I think Microsoft may want to rethink that Zune strategy which seems to be "make shitty versions of great products, and hope the people making the great products never improve theirs again".

Thus far, it's not working real well.

Technorati Tags: Apple, Apple Hardware, iPhone, iPod, iTunes

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So Silverlight 1.0 was released today according to Macworld.

Which begs the question of course, why? What's the purpose. Well, Microsoft has all kinds of happy clappy PR about how it's going to make all kinds of rich content available, blah, yadda.

But we have that today, with Flash and others. But Flash is not a Microsoft tech, so we all knew that at some point, it was going to be a problem for Microsoft. Hence Silverlight. Now, that's not to say that Silverlight doesn't have its advantages, but it has some serious disadvantages too. First and foremost, it's a cross-platform product from the Windows side of the Microsoft house. Over the years, I've learned that any cross-platform work from that group either has a lifespan measured in a single major version, if that long, (Cross - platform Active X, Outlook 2001), will be introduced in a fanfare, then upgraded rarely, if at all, never really work right, and in general be a total pain in the ass, (Windows Media Player, Services for Macintosh), or exist only to try and get people to dump !Windows for Windows, (Services for Unix). Sometimes, Microsoft doesn't really do a damned thing other than PR, (The Sun deal, Port25), and they can't even do that right, (The Linux vendor deals while making vague threats of IP suits against Linux users).

In other words, once you get outside of the Mac BU, Microsoft's cross - platform efforts lack trustability. Honestly, I'm not taking it seriously until the release of Silverlight 2.0 for !Windows with 100% feature parity with the Windows version.

Secondly, the dev tools are all Windows only. Oh sure, you can write XAML in a text editor, but then again, in theory, you can code Word with a text editor. Yet no one seems to do that. The issue here is that to do "real" Silverlight work, your coders, your designers, pretty much everyone involved with Silverlight from a creation standpoint has to move to Windows. Now, let's see...move a lot of Mac and Linux content creators to Silverlight due to great promises and PR from Microsoft, and a couple years later..."Oh, we're moving it to Windows only, and redoing the licenses so you can't use it anywhere else." Oops. Oh, yeah, it's happened before. Remember Rotor? Rotor version one was cross platform. Version 2? Windows only. Surprise!

So right now, Microsoft's sole real-world commitment to Silverlight, as in, they spent money and created code, the only commitment I take seriously from any company, is a web browser plugin for Mac OS X. Novell and others are handling Linux. So the Linux people get an artificial delta anyway. Yay for them.

But why? It's not just to push .NET, Microsoft could have done that years ago by fully backing Mono. What does Silverlight do?

Well, first, it makes sure that Microsoft has better controls over the dev environments. That's a big one. If they can get the major content providers over to Windows, then pull the plug on the non-Windows plugins, it will be at least a year, maybe two for anyone who went down that path to get back to being able to do cross - platform code. (If you don't think Microsoft would force you to only use the newest plugins, you have no clue about the history of that company.)

Secondly, and more importantly I think, it preserves and spreads Windows Media DRM, and it does so in a way that really sandboxes the content. What's the biggest complaint people have with Windows Media DRM these days? Well, if you're not running a Microsoft OS, you're kinda fuxx0r3d if you want to use it. But Silverlight makes that all go away. Now, you can provide Windows Media content with all the DRM you like, and best of all, it's locked to the browser. You can't save it to your hard drive! Well, not easily. The entire executive staff of NBC/Universal just came in their pants. Not only does Silverlight force a subscription model, but best of all, it's a more restrictive model with per - use approval. You could easily charge for every viewing of content with Silverlight, and the only way to get around that is to try and copy the video / audio stream to a local file. That's a lot of fun. Wait, no, it isn't.

Silverlight is the best thing to happen to DRM in years, which makes it the best thing to happen to Windows Media in years.

The sad thing is, while Microsoft and others try to push DRM, even with Silverlight, the rest of the world is realizing that DRM just doesn't work worth a crap, never will, and is figuring out better ways to deal with it that don't screw over the consumers. It's the last gasp of a dying model. If Microsoft really wants to make Windows Media universal, just open it up more. You can make tons of money with it, even when you aren't fucking over your users.

But Microsoft is incapable of being radical or even coming up with a new idea anymore, so they go down the IBM path, but they're still following IBM in the pre-Gerstner years. (No, The Man Who Invented Notes is not going to make it all better, get over it.)

They should have just called it "Blackout", because that's far closer to what it is really for.

Technorati Tags: Microsoft, Silverlight

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September 4, 2007

Dave Winer's just a fucking idiot. He was smart once, but lately? Nah, not so much.

From his latest attempt to look smart, while showing he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about:

What if the iPhone didn't come ready to talk to AT&T over the cellular phone network, rather it came ready to work over an EVDO network?

Huh? Dude, what exactly do you think EVDO is? Why, EVDO IS A CELLULAR NETWORK. From Wikipedia:

Evolution-Data Optimized or Evolution-Data only, abbreviated as EV-DO or EVDO and often EV, is a telecommunications standard for the wireless transmission of data through radio signals, typically for broadband Internet access. It is classified as a broadband technology, because it uses a broad band of radio frequencies. It employs multiplexing techniques such as CDMA (Code division multiple access) as well as Frequency division duplex (FDD) to maximize the amount of data transmitted. It is standardized by 3rd Generation Partnership Project 2 (3GPP2) as part of the CDMA2000 family of standards and has been adopted by many mobile phone service providers around the world – particularly those previously employing CDMA networks, as opposed to GSM networks.

Lord. He can't even be bothered to learn his terms.

More stupidity:

What if, like all Macs, it could then make its wifi capability available to all computers in range, wirelessly of course (Windows machines too).

You mean like tethering? Again Dave, this is not new. What IS new is your fundamental misunderstanding of minor issues like security and bandwidth. Evidently, Dave is followed by unlimited bandwidth whereever he goes. Let's see... with EVDO Rev. A, your max download burst rate is 3.1Mbps, and your max burst upload is 1.8Mbps. Now, every computer in range. Let's be nice and say WiFi published range of 150'. On a typical day for me, that's anywhere from 5 to 50 machines. Hmm...what's that do to our bandwidth. Yeah, because even Winer can't think they're building a wireless router into an iPhone. Well he might, but anyone lucid is not.

it gets better:

And what if there was already a wifi signal, that the iPhone would magically "just work?"

IT DOES THAT NOW YOU ADDLE-PATED NINCOMPOOP! Holy shit, the iPhone is absolutely maddening with how agressive it is at finding WiFi networks to use and asking you about them. No, not even Winer wants it to just grab any random network and just start using it. That's what those of us with a clue about security call "Fucking Stupid".

Evidently, Winer is now so into his own press, that he thinks every idea he has is original and innovative. Like his river thing.

Back off the meds dude, you're hallucinating.

Technorati Tags: Dave Winer, iPhone 'tards, TEH STOOPUD

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