GracefulFlavor

Pretty impressive piece of advertising from Cadbury touting its new Dairy Milk product. You’ll never listen to Phil Collins’ In the Air Tonight the same way again. However, as an ex-drummer wannabe of horribly limited talent, there are a few technical oversights: the gorilla misses a fill or two, even though he keeps the main snareline going perfectly.

Nonetheless, this is cool. Reminds me of the classic Levis Tainted Love television spot for some reason.

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[Via DF]

And it’s beginning in Wills Point, Texas:

Most spiders are solitary creatures. So the discovery of a vast web crawling with millions of spiders that is spreading across several acres of a North Texas park is causing a stir among scientists, and park visitors.

Sheets of web have encased several mature oak trees and are thick enough in places to block out the sun along a nature trail at Lake Tawakoni State Park, near this town about 50 miles east of Dallas.

The gossamer strands, slowly overtaking a lakefront peninsula, emit a fetid odor, perhaps from the dead insects entwined in the silk. The web whines with the sound of countless mosquitoes and flies trapped in its folds.

Allen Dean, a spider expert at Texas A&M University, has seen a lot of webs, but even he described this one as “rather spooky, kind of like Halloween.”

The only thing that disgusts me more than a spider is a gigantic, stinking web of millions of spiders spreading across several acres.  No fucking thanks.  Even at 38 years old, I cannot accept the fact that spiders aren’t malevolent hellspawn that consume flesh and poison souls.  Burn them all.

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As someone who thinks Comic Sans should be banned and never spoken of again, I think this says everything that needs to be said.

(Click to embiggen.)

If you take the Zune logo and flip it 180 degrees horizontally and take a wee bit of creative license, you get:

Amazing. It’s like Evian being naive backwards, only with ten thousand times the lulz.

[Via FSJ]

“Success breeds success because everybody wants to aid the successful, thereby fulfilling a law of nature.”

– William Feather

Maybe it’s the fever, but this is funny as hell. The best part is watching the system clock jump to random times every time you do something. I literally laughed out loud.

It’s probably the fever. You be the judge.

It was bound to happen, and it did. George Hotz, 17, spent his summer hacking the iPhone to unlock the device so it can run atop GSM networks other than AT&T. In his case, he got it running on T-Mobile.

The teenager, who posted his achievement on his blog Thursday, said unlocking the iPhone is complicated, takes about two hours and requires skill with both soldering and software. He estimated he spent 500 hours developing his technique. Hotz is going to be freshman at the Rochester Institute of Technology this fall.

So it’s hacked, but it’s a complicated hack. Because of this alone, it’s not something everyone is going to do — it will appeal to the geek fringe, those who are curious and driven enough to delve into their $600 phone and start messing with both hardware and software.

Nonetheless, the cat and mouse game has begun. I predict you’ll see a great deal more of this sort of thing.

Somewhere deep inside Cupertino, Jobs and his crew had to know this was going to happen. The grace period for which a device remains truly locked is so short when it comes to technology. Every day the iPhone stays locked is a gift that runs counter to geek/tech culture. It won’t last forever, and before long you’ll see more mainstream hacks for the iPhone.

Quick update, which may or may not be coherent: sorry about the lack of new posts. I have something resembling the flu, which basically entails:

• A 103 degree fever.
• Ridiculous, violent chills and shuddering.
• Random, instantaneous sweating.
• Feet that literally emit enough heat that I can feel it radiating onto the opposite leg.
• No appetite.
• Spontaneous tearing-up at a Marines commercial because I keep thinking of my son going overseas, far away from me.
• A strange affinity for green Rain Gatorade and root beer floats.
• A degree of stupidity so severe that I still played in my company golf outing this morning, despite waking up at 2 AM with a 103.4 degree fever. It rained most of the time.
• A newfound compunction to watch shitty Lions preseason football.

More content coming as soon as I realize I won’t pass out if I stay upright.

See here. Despite Sony itself predicting the PS3 would beat its rival Xbox 360 in unit sales for the month of July, the Xbox 360 still came out on top, selling 170K domestic units to Sony’s 159K. Close enough not to matter? That’s debatable.

What isn’t debatable is the Nintendo Wii handily beating them both combined by selling 425K domestic units. Think about that. The Wii, with its simpler graphics and innovative control scheme and focus on game experience is topping two considerably more powerful consoles by a significant margin. And it’s not like this trend is new.

Here in MI, you still can’t find a Wii. Target, Best Buy, EB Games, Costco: all sold out 95% of the time. You need to call ahead to find out when the next shipment arrives, then get to the store in a timely manner to beat everyone else who has called for the same purpose. It’s crazy. Anyone I know who has one either (a) camped out for one at launch, or (b) just got lucky and stumbled upon one. If you decide you want one tonight, well, too bad: your search begins. You just can’t go and get one in a local store. I suppose online is the best option for many, given the Wii’s supply shortage.

But John Gruber asks the question I’ve been discussing in casual conversation: imagine if Nintendo didn’t have these supply-side problems. How many Wiis could it be selling? It’s more than obvious that even the phenomenal Wii unit sales numbers are limited by unit scarcity across most of the United States.

(It will be interesting to see how the Xbox does during the month of August and September, what with Bioshock, Two Worlds and Halo coming to store shelves. These are three games that, depending on your tastes, could be killer apps for the 360.)

It’s rare that life presents a clear playbook for such things.

[Via BB]

“The idea of the past is as useless as the idea of the future. Both could be invoked by anybody about anything. There is never any more beauty that there is now. There is no more joy or sorrow or wonder than there is now, nor perfection, nor anymore evil nor any more good than there is now.”

– The Silver Dory
Gould’s Book of Fish - a Novel in Twelve Fish
Richard Flanagan

[Via Clusterflock]

“Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.”

– BERTRAND RUSSELL

See here. Professor Tal Ben-Shahar teaches “Positive Psychology” at Harvard. It’s the largest course on Harvard’s campus, and one many say is the most difficult class they’ve ever taken. Think it’s foo-foo? Think again.

About a week ago, Ben-Shahar made a brief appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Among the most notable dialog:

Jon Stewart: I hate to use the phrase ’self help“, but in some respects isn’t this is a self help class for college students?

Tal Ben-Shahar: Yes, and unashamedly so. The class is very much about improving the quality of the students lives and improving the quality of their communities.

JS: And when they leave are they happier? Is that quantifiable?

TBS: We don’t have long-term measures, but the reason the class is so popular is that students tell their friends, ”I’m actually better off because of this class.“

JS: Is there a scientific basis for happiness, is that the suggestion here?

TBS: This whole field of Positive Psychology has really been picking up around the world and it’s among the largest classes on numerous campuses, and the reason is for the first time we have a science of happiness. Until now the whole realm was dominated by the ’self help’ movement, which is mostly about the 5 easy steps happiness, the 3 steps to find your perfect lover.

JS: There’s also a ”Secret“

TBS: There are no secrets, there are no easy steps, it’s actually a work book more than anything else. Many of the students comment that it’s actually the hardest class they ever took at Harvard.

In this day and age, when everything is focused on the more traditional measures of progress and success, it’s amazing to see such attention be paid to what really is the core of happiness: believing in and trusting the courage of your own conviction. It’s time we stopped letting others — most notably, the collective “society” — dictate to us what success (and fulfillment) means. And it’s also nice to see the science of psychological happiness and well-being take a step closer to real credibility and away from hippie/gypsy self-help wonkery.

I recently subscribed to two great blogs, both of which you should read if you want to be like me. Which you may or may not, but if you can stop thinking about that for a second and focus on what I’m trying to say, then we’ll get somewhere. Okay? Okay.

1. Uncov — I don’t remember how I found this. I was jumping around my zillions of Google Reader feeds and I happened upon a clever bit of writing. After clicking the bit’s source link, it led me to Uncov. I started reading a few things, and immediately subscribed (something I don’t do easily). Uncov’s main author, as far as I can tell, is a guy named Ted, and Ted is very funny. I love his edgy, acerbic writing style. Uncov focuses on reviewing and exposing new internet/web 2.0 startups, and unlike TechCrunch that gives love to those who pander/pay the most, Uncov looks a little deeper and tries to tell a more pragmatic story. If something sucks, Ted says so. If it doesn’t, he gives it props, but sans the sunshine-up-the-ass tricks. It’s great writing, and it’s on my a-list. Check it out.
2. Mike Lee — I found this via Daring Fireball, and I spent some time reading his Sincerity Theory post. I immediately liked this guy. Despite Lee’s puzzling decision to name his blog ‘motherfucker,’ Lee has an engaging voice and writes well; he’s not the standard Apple blog tripe. Lee is a Mac programmer, so if you’re not an Apple slappy, it’s probably not going to hit you as hard as it did me. Then again, that’s what you get for not being an Apple slappy — you miss out on some of life’s finer things.

There you go — two great blogs that you should add to your feedreader unless you hate yourself. Enjoy.

It’s a tool. A solution. A world unto itself. An archive of mankind’s collective wisdom, hopes, fears and experiences.

Or, maybe it’s not. Maybe it’s for this:

If you want to feel nausea slowly crash over you like a cold, salty wave, see here. Otherwise, move along.

[Via Clusterflock]

James Wiebe:

Steve Jobs walked into the room, as all oxygen in the room exited simultaneously.

We were seven feet apart.

He said: “We don’t like it when you introduce accelerator cards which are faster than our computers.” (At that time, I was the CEO of Newer Technology, which ultimately sold somewhere around 150K+ CPU accelerator cards for Macs.)

Well, that was a nice Howdy Do.

See here.  Several Ubuntu servers were hijacked by Chinese bad guys and being used to attack other machines.  I suppose this will be forum-fodder to try to use against the Linux diehards to prove that see, Linux isn’t secure and is vulnerable just like Windows.

As fun as it might be to argue, it’s irrelevant.

Nothing is secure in absolute terms.  There’s relative security, and you’ll see Linux and OSX and various Unixes (or Unices, if you’re into Latin) score high marks there.  But the idea of bulletproof operating systems is a phantom in a networked world, so I wish everyone would stop hyperfocusing on every single security misstep a given OS suffers and accept the idea that the security game is constantly changing. 

Ubuntu got hacked.  Big deal.  OSX’s turn is coming.  Nothing is wholly safe unto itself, and the more we understand that, the more we can accept responsibility for our own behaviors and best practices when it comes to living in a networked world.  In the end, the technology base can only do so much to protect itself, just as the 5-star safety car can only do so much: When you get right down to it, it’s the driver who ultimately has the most control.

See here. Apple is uncharacteristically asking its developer community for feedback on the quality of the latest Leopard seed. This is even visible to the public, and all feedback is being requested by August 17. The word on the street is that the latest seed, while allegedly more refined than its predecessors, still suffers from widespread quality and stability issues, making many wonder how far away Apple is to a beta release candidate that is roughly on par with OSX Tiger 10.4.10 quality.

The functional areas in need of feedback are Mail & Web, Graphics & Media, Setup & Mobility, Desktop & Interface, Productivity & Communication, and Sharing & Devices. Or, put another way, almost everything.

As a guy who’s been in the software business his entire professional career, let me tell you what this smells like: a delay. Since the Leopard seeds have been made available to ADC members, the quality has been an issue. And for all of the improvements each seed has delivered, other areas remain — at least according to the Apple rumor sites and certain Mac forums — troublingly weak. If I had to guess — and I am guessing, so readers who like to read only a few sentences then go apeshit on me in the comments might want to pay attention here — I think Apple is coming up to a go/no-go decision meeting and they need all the data they can get before they pull the trigger on another delay. Operative words are guess and think.

If Apple is to hold to its October GA date, that means it likely only has a few weeks left of actual coding before system + beta testing begins. And once you’re in testing lockdown, not much coding happens outside of bugfixing. If there are too many bugs coming in from internal and external sources, you’re in trouble. You need more coding time. Something’s gotta give, and that something is the release date.

I have nothing to back this up besides my own reading of the tea leaves. I hope I’m wrong. But typically, when defect arrival rates don’t slow down considerably (which tells the developers the code is maturing), other feedback mechanisms are sought to corroborate the disappointingly steady arrival rates. And if that corroboration actually happens, well, it’s time to talk about pushing the date or trimming features, and Apple’s not too keen on the latter.

My nickel? Take your time, Apple. Yes, everyone wants Leopard ASAP, and yes AAPL will take a nosedive upon a delay announcement, but I’d rather suffer that than poor initial impressions of Leopard once it hits the shelves. Microsoft fucked around with Vista for five years and trimmed all sorts of promised features and still released what many consider to be an unfinished product. You have some wiggle room here, Apple. Use it if you have to.

If I’m wrong, great. If not, well, maybe Apple’s slowly trying to become more radically transparent in its own way.

Via Dinosaur Comics via YDA:

• Definitely Gonna Win
• Definitely Gonna Place, Anyway
• Two Chicks In a Horse Suit
• Two Sprinters In a Horse Suit
• Actually Four Smaller Horses I Just Taped Together
• Actually a Giant Dog I Found
• Aqua Horse
• Future Horse
• Back to the Future Horse
• Marty McHorse

I agree with YDA: Two Chicks In a Horse Suit and Actually a Giant Dog I Found are the best, followed closely by Actually Four Smaller Horses I Just Taped Together.

Someone deep within US national intelligence has decided that the ROI on spy satellites would look prettier in Excel if we used them domestically instead of only overseas, so hey, off we go. US spy satellites will be turned inward to counter potential terrorist threats. And, if nothing is found, what the fuck, we’ll use them for law enforcement too. And then to see if you’re leaving your dog outside all night, you heartless bastard.

The official said the use of satellites by law enforcement would proceed “slowly” to make sure that civil liberties are protected.

Read that over and over and let me know when you snap.

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George Orwell, in his first-person account of the Spanish Civil War Homage to Catalonia, describes the experience of being shot in the throat in Spain thusly:

Roughly speaking it was the sensation of being at the center of an explosion. There seemed to be a loud bang and a blinding flash of light all around me, and I felt a tremendous shock - no pain, only a violent shock, such as you get from an electric terminal; with it a sense of utter weakness, a feeling of being stricken and shriveled up to nothing. The sandbags in front of me receded into immense distance. I fancy you would feel much the same if you were struck by lightning. I knew immediately that I was hit, but because of the seeming bang and flash I thought it was a rifle nearby that had gone off accidentally and shot me. All this happened in a space of time much less than a second. The next moment my knees crumpled up and I was falling, my head hitting the ground with a violent bang which, to my relief, did not hurt. I had a numb, dazed feeling, a consciousness of being very badly hurt, but no pain in the ordinary sense.

I never thought it would be so much searing pain as much as an instantaneous crippling and imploding of your immediate ability to function. Glad to see my intuition was right without having to be shot.

[Via BB]

Dude’s got game.

[Via YDA]

Not much more to say, really. See here.

As for Apple, sure we’d like to be the biggest player on the desktop. But even on the desktop we think there’s a place for Linux. For people who can’t afford a Mac, or who have been prevented by our sales staff from buying a Mac because they’re too old or too fat or too physically unattractive in some other way, we here at Apple think a Linux machine is a fine alternative. For one thing, you’re not using Windows, which is itself a step toward healing the planet. And although you’re not getting actual Unix, you’re at least getting a clone of Unix. Sort of like buying one of those kit cars that looks like a Ferrari but sits on an old VW Beetle chassis. Still loads of fun. Bokay? Can we be friends now?

I get so much hate mail when I say this that I just can’t help myself: LOTD was dead from the minute it was incepted. Outside of hobbyists and freetard enthusiasts, it simply won’t see the light of broadmarket success. If you’re one of those, cool, have fun with your Linux. Just don’t tell me how Ubuntu is going to conquer the world, because, like, it won’t.

Lenovo chairman Yan Yuanqing says Windows Vista is new and “like unstable” and “could have some problems.” As a result, Lenovo is going to supply the Olympic organizing committee with 12,000 laptops loaded with Windows XP that will serve as critical IT systems for the games. Vista machines will still be deployed for non-critical shared terminals for athletes and to demonstrate just how many physical resources a GUI layer can consume on a modern PC.

Windows XP: the OS that wouldn’t die.

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I spent a half hour in my local Apple Store (Troy, MI) playing with the new ultraslim, short-throw iMac aluminum keyboard.  I wrote about these earlier (particularly the puzzling design of the Bluetooth model), and while they look great on paper, I wanted to see how they fared in the real world.

Disclaimer:  I’m an ex-Model M keyboard snob.  I used to think that the only keyboards worth having were those that weighed 5 lbs. and could be used as a snow plow if things got rough.  I loved the mechanical actions and buckling-spring assemblies.  They were the shizzle, even if they pissed off everyone around me.

As I used laptops more frequently, I became increasingly fond of the scissor-key, short-throw laptop keyboards.  Standard keyboards — be they mechanical or standard, el cheapo rubber dome — began to feel tedious, heavy.  The quick action and short switch throws of compact laptop keyboards just seemed so much more efficient.

I had very high hopes for the Apple’s new keyboard (which is given its own header under Apple’s accessory section on its website, and is plaintively dubbed ‘Keyboard’), because I had been wanting a full-size, laptop-style keyboard for a long time now.  I’ve used the deskbound version of the famous IBM laptop keyboard, and it was awesome.  Best keyboard I’ve ever used, in fact.

Until now.

I’m happy to report that Apple’s new keyboard is absolutely fantastic.  My accuracy on it was almost flawless after typing a bunch of text into Adobe Illustrator, and the switch motion is almost perfect: short, crisp, concise.  The keys have totally flat tops, which makes the contouring a little strange, as there is no concaveness in which you can rest your finger.  But otherwise, this keyboard leaves nothing to be desired: a full complement of keys, nice heft, gorgeous construction and two powered (albeit low-power) USB 2.0 ports.  And the thing just looks downright amazing — if you haven’t seen it yet in person, I strongly suggest you go take a look.

It’s just a keyboard, yes.  I know that.  But it’s the primary interface between you and your Mac, and I’ve long felt that you should spend top dollar on keyboards, mice and displays, as they form the holy triumvirate when it comes to interfacing with your machine.

The new Apple keyboard is fantastic, and at $49 USD for the wired version, worth every single penny.  Highly recommended.

A really fast dictionary…fast like a ninja.

Great execution — it’s a Google-Dictionary-historical activity mash-up all in one. Plus you can get random definitions just to satisfy the bored word geek within. Bookmarked.

Link

[Via Steve]

You’re in Cupertino. You have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to ask Steve Jobs a question in a rare, almost unheard of, Town Hall Q&A session. You raise your hand, get your turn, stand up and ask the most influential and respected CEO in American business any question you want.

If you’re a retard named Bob Keefe, your question is why Apple doesn’t put Intel stickers on Macs. You literally ask that question and stand there, looking at Apple’s CEO, waiting for a response. This is how you engage a literal technology icon. You wonder why Apple, to borrow a phrase from John Gruber, doesn’t booger up its computers with the same ugly-ass stickers you find slathered all over every other PC.

One more time: you want to know about stickers. On Macs. Of everything you could ask Steve Jobs, you can think of nothing better than why Jobs doesn’t put “Intel Inside” stickers on Macs.

I mean, just think about that. Think about the level of idiocy that requires. Keefe clearly just wanted to say something — anything — to hear himself speak to Steve Jobs in a public forum. So he opened his mouth and a giant failboat came soaring out.

The mind boggles. I would have paid good money to be there, let alone ask Jobs a question. And if, by some stroke of luck, I got a chance to ask a question and it was about fucking stickers, I would ask to be shot nearly immediately. If nobody did it, I would hang myself with my belt in the nearest restroom.

Bob Keefe, you truly are a jackass. It’s hard to imagine screwing the pooch any harder than this.

His employers at Cox Newspapers need to rethink having this twit on staff. How do idiots like this get into Apple events? Is there a requirement to let one village idiot into the press corps just to provide comic relief?

For the record, Jobs handled the situation with class, once he got his bearings after being hammered by Keefe’s laser of pure, crystalline stupidity. Listen to Jobs’ response, which comes after some embarrassed laughter immediately following Keefe’s question.

I cannot get over this. What a friggin’ turd.

I saw this and almost spit tea all over my keyboard:

It’s the Levo Book Holder so that if you become crippled or armless or dead (like the guy in the picture) you can be reminded of it every time you go to read a book and need an expensive, silly contraption to hold something as simple and pleasurable as a book. Looks like one of the weirdass things Denzel Washington had hovering around his bed in The Bone Collector.

Yours for only $165 plus tax and shipping and your name on a federal list of top-tier morons with more money than brains. If you’re too much of a douchebag to hold your own books, don’t read. While you’re at it, send me ten thousand dollars. In return, I will send you a paperclip dipped in chocolate.

Why do I write? Why aren’t I designing and hocking crap like this via schleppy rip-off retailers like SkyMall?

Not only is this funny, but I personally know a Microsoft enterprise software evangelist who told me nearly the very same story almost three years ago:

Because here’s how things work at the Borg. They’ve got all these zillions of teams out there dreaming up wacky new features, and none of them talk to each other. And they’re all competing with each other and they’re all looking for applications to stick their features into. Doesn’t matter if anyone wants these features. They’ve been dreamed up. And raises and promotions are at stake. Productivity reviews and so on. To developers at the Borg big apps like Word are seen as big ocean-going freighters that get launched every few years and are able to carry loads of new features. If you’re inside Microsoft on a product team, the goal is to get as many of your little things onto the next big freighter before it sails. Whether you succeed is largely based on whether your boss and your boss’s boss have any influence with the powers that be. Can they trade favors? Push their weight around? Hold out one good feature unless five crappo ones go in with it? And so forth.

Basically they create software the way Congress writes bills. Every House rep gets a crack at the bill, loading it up with pork, paying back favors, doing the bidding of lobbyists or whatever. That’s why bills end up a thousand pages long and full of stuff that even the people who vote for them don’t know is in there. Polar bear petting zoos in Alaska, corn museums in Nebraska, whatever.

I look at the new Microsoft Office suite and I’m almost in awe. I mean it looks like they just shipped it without anyone actually looking at the programs and without having any central authority over the project.

Reading this closer, I think Fake Steve might also work at my company when he’s not at Forbes Apple. Scary.

I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: simple, elegant software — with less features, not more — is the hardest to write. Why? Because then management has to commit to a list of what they’re not doing for a given software project, and having a ‘no’ list equals bad laziness in the eyes of upper management. And if you’re bad and lazy, how are you supposed to get your raise and promotion?

It’s easy to get a bunch of suits to say what they want to do with a piece of software under development. It’s nearly impossible to get them to openly admit what they’re not doing. This is how it typically goes:
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