GracefulFlavor

All things considered, this is a pretty minor tantrum, but entertaining nonetheless.

When I first saw this link on Daring Fireball, I thought it was a joke. Instead, it’s a real-life Windows help article on how to open the Windows Vista box.

(Granted, the box is funky, but so bad as to require a help article? As if Vista hasn’t taken enough heat. Jesus.)

Link

Forbes has published its first list of America’s Most Miserable Cities, and I’m not shocked to note that two of the top 10 are within a half hour of where I live.  Hooray.

1. Detroit, MI
2. Stockton, CA
3. Flint, MI
4. New York City
5. Philadelphia, PA
6. Chicago, IL
7. Los Angeles, CA
8. Modesto, CA
9. Charlotte, NC
10. Providence, RI

Interesting to note that most metropolitan hotspots get dissed — the exceptions are Boston and San Francisco.

From a personal standpoint, I can vouch that Detroit is a festering vat of misery (especially given the antics of our world-class mayoral fuckwit) with few bright spots, and Flint isn’t far behind.  The strange thing is that Detroit’s surrounding areas can be quite amazing — literally a night-and-day difference.

Since these two terms are often tossed about interchangeably, I found this a perfect illustration of the subtle — but critical — difference between the two.

[Via A Clever Cookie]

Looks like Comcast will begin charging a $3.99 “human interaction fee” if you pay your bill by calling them and talking to a live operator.

As if Comcast wasn’t shitty enough. It’s almost like they’re trying to be the most hated company in America (fortunately, there’s the RIAA, Halliburton and Monsanto to keep them honest).

[Via The Consumerist]

Engadget’s Ryan Block gives a solid review of the MacBook Air. He thinks it’s a gorgeous machine, which it is. He also appreciates the engineering that went into making the machine so thin and light. But, he summarizes, Apple conceded a lot to arrive at such a diminutive machine, and it’s obviously not a primary computer for most users. The MBA’s screen, heat management, MagSafe adaptation are all bright spots for the unit, however. For the road warrior, these can’t be overlooked.

(Huh. I think I remember hearing very similar stuff somewhere before, but I can’t quite put my finger on it. Strange.)

Anyway, before long the design concessions start, and there are a few biggies, chief among them the lack of a user-replaceable battery. Block goes on to say that the HD is quite slow compared to standard 2.5 inch models, and durability of the drive, especially over time, will be interesting. Finally — and quite predictably — Block notes that the lack of ports mean real-world sacrifices, such as the need for integrated 3G, given how it can’t be expanded via ExpressCard. (Or ethernet, Firewire, or reasonably standard DVI).

Overall, though, Block’s final verdict is somewhere on the fence, as are most mainstream reviews:

The Air is a tough call. On the one hand it proposes to be a no-compromises ultraportable, but on the other hand it compromises many (but not all) the things road warriors want. We’re all about removing unnecessary frills and drives (we rejoiced the day the original iMac bucked the floppy), but laptops are increasingly becoming many users’ primary — often only — machines, which is why the Air’s price doesn’t do it any favors, either. It’s hard to justify almost two grand for a second laptop (or a third machine) just for travel needs — and even then, that’s only easily done if all your data lives in the cloud. Given those sacrifices and that higher-end sticker, it’s more than likely not going to replace most peoples’ current workhorse laptop.

As I said before, the MBA is a great machine — for niche users. For those of us who want the love child of the MBA and MacBook Pro, we’re out of luck.

For now.

Sigh. The hateful, batshit-insane morons over at the WBC are at it again, this time threatening to picket Heath Ledger’s funeral.

I’ve discussed WBC before here on GF. I think they’re the social venom equivalent of the KKK, only hiding under the air cover of freedom of religion and speech. Scrape away that veneer, and you have a handful of weapons-grade stupid bigots who spew more hate into the world than a dozen run-of-the-mill criminals.

Someone should tell these imbeciles that Ledger wasn’t actually a homosexual — not that it matters one bit if he was — so the basis of their picketing is entirely misguided.

Then again, I know I’m asking way too much for a bunch of zealots to bother with facts. What am I thinking?

As I told a good friend of mine, one of these days the WBC will be protesting a soldier’s funeral or something and somebody’s going to whip out a nine and nail several of these nutbags to the dirt. It’s actually somewhat shocking it hasn’t happened already.

Quick deathmatch: WBC v. Scientology. Which is more insipid?

[Via A Clever Cookie]

Where would we be without The Onion?

“Strength, commitment, hope for a brighter future—you’re looking at the wrong goddamn guy,” asserts the television spot, as a still, unflattering image of Romney is struck with a large red “PATHETIC” stamp-graphic. “Do you know what I did yesterday? No, not campaign. I ate a gallon of ice cream. That’s right, the whole damn thing.”

“Is this who you want running your country for the next four years?” asks the damaging spot. “Someone who can’t even run a simple microwave without crying?”

Link

You may have seen shots like this before (they’re all over YouTube), but you haven’t seen one done by a nine year old kid.

[Via clusterflock]

Wired has a very cool, Flash-based infographic that illustrates what happens to your blog post after you submit it to the cloud.  From your original idea, to the idea’s composition, to the text-harvesters, ad-servers, aggregators, social bookmarks, splogs, data miners and readers — there’s more to blogging than just clicking Publish.

Link

Not too much of a surprise, but nonetheless Iowa isn’t looking like a fluke so much anymore.

Every year, The Edge asks a panel of distinguished minds (authors, doctors, professors, thought leaders, scientists, technology moguls) a question. 2006’s question question was, “What is your dangerous idea?”, which yielded some incredibly interesting answers.

This year’s question is, “What have you changed your mind about?”, and the questions are equally enthralling. In particular, as I read these responses (and there are many), Linda Stone’s essay resonated with me:

I’ve changed my mind about how much attention to pay to my breathing patterns and how important it is to remember to breathe when I’m using a computer, PDA or cell phone.

I’ve discovered that the more consistently I tune in to healthy breathing patterns, the clearer it is to me when I’m hungry or not, the more easily I fall asleep and rest peacefully at night, and the more my outlook is consistently positive.

I’ve come to believe that, within the next 5-7 years, breathing exercises will be a significant part of any fitness regime.

Her entire answer is fantastic, so do yourself the favor of reading it all.

Linda Stone is a former VP, Microsoft and Co-Founder and Director of Microsoft’s Virtual Worlds Group/Social Computing Group. She also worked for Apple for seven years.

The Onion:

“This team has already tasted victory against the Patriots,” head coach Tom Coughlin said Monday. “By which I mean we were so close to victory that we could taste it. True, we did not actually experience that victory, but we came as close to beating them as anyone else has this season. That’s the kind of team we believe we are, and I think the Super Bowl will prove that.”

MacBook Air: First Lab Tests:

Our tests reveal that the slower processor and disk make the MacBook Air quite a bit slower than the other portables in Apple’s product line. The MacBook Air was also outpaced in our tests by the its closest desktop cousin, the ultra-compact 1.83GHz Mac mini Core 2 Duo.

Not surprising when you talk about a machine that puts size/weight first. Nonetheless, the MBA’s performance is yet another indicator that it is a niche product and almost certainly not a primary machine.

It beats a 1.67 GHz G4 in most things. That’s something, right?

Here’s a surprisingly powerful video of students made by students about their lives, the rules they have to play by, and the discord between who they really are and who they’re asked to be.

It’s fine and well to talk about keeping up with technology and espousing the benefits as it relates to productivity and work, but what nobody talks about is how technology has transformed the culture to such a degree that anthropological mainstays such as schools and chalkboards have been rendered nearly powerless.  In a very literal sense, they’re anachronisms.

The video was shot by cultural anthropology students, class of Spring 2007, at Kansas State University.

The Internet never disappoints, does it?

Metafilter: Wookie Roar

John Gruber quotes MDJ via Twitter:

“It’s the only business in the world where being wrong about someone else’s facts gets them in trouble, not you.”

Depressingly true.

“The smartest and richest people people in the world have all turned off their TVs. [...] How difficult it is for someone to become curious: that for seven, 10, 15 years of school, you are required to not be curious. Over and over and over again the curious are punished. [...] It’s more about a five or 10 or 15 year process that people start finding their voice and they start realizing that the safest thing they can do feels risky and the riskiest thing they can do is play it safe.”

Seth Godin: Curiosity (short film)

It takes a real man to admit he’s always loved this song, and goddammit, I’ve always loved this song.

Anyone who tries to discredit it in any way is automatically a yeasty beef-witted harpy.

I can’t decide if this is merely funny or downright hysterical in light of Apple having a fantastic quarter and nonetheless getting murdered in after-hours trading. I’m chuckling pretty good over here, but then again that might be to deny the wave of anger and frustration that’s a result of me finally realizing the stock market is comprised of millions of miniature retarded lemurs.

(No offense to Mike Lee, whose lemurs may be miniature, but hardly retarded.)

[Via FSJ]

I’ve purposely waited a few days before writing this post, mainly to let my impressions about the MacBook Air (MBA) stabilize. They finally have, and if you want the short version, here it is: I’m not terribly impressed. It’s a reasonable machine for certain users, but I think my definition of certain users and Apple’s are two different things.

And maybe therein lies the rub: the success — or lack thereof — of the MBA will be how many align with my line of thinking, versus that of those who think the MBA is a runaway hit.

When the MBA was unveiled during the keynote, I was thrilled: I’ve been looking to replace my MBP with a newer machine, preferably one that’s smaller and yet still has pro-class power. At first glance, the MBA looked like it had a fighting chance to be such a machine. Those hopes fell away rather quickly. Now, as I write this, I can soberly say that I have no desire for an MBA given my requirements.

Cutting to the chase, here’s how I see the MBA: it’s clearly and unavoidably a second machine. To think it can be used as a primary machine is to admit that your computing needs are incredibly light or that you really haven’t thought through the MBA’s downsides. Anyone with even a mildly wide array of computing requirements trying to simplify and consolidate to the MBA as a single machine will likely be disappointed.

Like everything else in technology, the MBA represents a tradeoff in terms of benefits and cost. To me — and I’m guessing to the larger market — the costs associated with the benefits will be an upside-down proposition.

THE UPSIDES

The form factor, obviously. The MBA achieves what I’m sure was its primary goal with aplomb: the machine is thin and light to an otherworldly degree. When people talk about ultraportable or subnotebook machines in terms of minimalist heft and thickness, the MBA is the new high-water mark.

Aesthetics. The MBA is gorgeous, quite literally the most attractive and modern-looking laptop I’ve ever seen. And from all the Macworld show floor reports I’ve read, it’s doubly stunning in person. If you want a machine that will turn heads in Starbucks, your ship has arrived.

Remote optical disc technology. Seeing how the MBA doesn’t come with an internal optical drive, the fact that the MBA can access another Mac or PC’s on-board optical drive is outstanding. Again, however, this clearly suggests that the MBA is a second computer for a given user/family, and that there’s another, presumably more fully-featured, machine in the household. Nonetheless, a very smart and convenient technology.

THE DOWNSIDES

An insufficient array of standard ports. No ethernet, no Firewire, and only one USB on a modern machine? In my book, that’s badly crippled. I know you can by adapters/dongles to address these shortcomings, but (1) they represent extra cost, and (2) they’re inconvenient. I’d much rather have more functionality built into the machine at the expense of a few points of aesthetic/size. I/O functions are a huge part of daily computing, and to require the user to affix accessories to the machine to do them is shortsighted. What seems no big deal at first will become annoying over time.

Sealed battery, which means it can’t be replaced by the user. This is the biggest show-stopper for me, and likely the heaviest impetus to the comments I’ve seen around the web that decry the MBA as “not a real computer.” If you’re on a plane or vacation and your battery decides to go tits up, so does your machine until you send it in to Apple for replacement — which means you also send away your entire computer and personal data that’s stored on your hard drive/SSD array. This isn’t a phone or iPod; this is a computer. Having a non-user-replaceable battery again hints at Apple’s bias towards this machine as a second machine in a household or straight-away hobby machine.

Stupid nickle-and-diming by Apple. This isn’t so much a fault of the MBA, but it does relate and contribute to the MBA’s purchase and ownership experience. Want a Frontrow remote controller, even though the software is included in Leopard? That’ll be $20, please. Want an ethernet adapter? Cha-ching. How about a different video adapter? Upcharge. Would it have killed Apple to include these in the box, seeing how the machine has very obvious holes in functionality/convenience as it relates to the average user? No, it wouldn’t have.

The best way for me to explain my feelings about the MBA is this: it’s upsides are tactical, while it’s downsides are strategic. Over time and using the MBA daily, the downsides will permeate through the user’s experience far more than will the upsides.

Again, I go back to the notion that this is a satellite machine, period. And while that’s fine and well for some people, not everyone has $1800 (or over $3000 if you want the SSD storage) lying around for a convenience machine. Apple made the MBA’s target market smaller via conscious design choice, which isn’t a necessary concession just because you’re talking about an ultraportable. I think the assumption that an ultraportable computer would naturally be a second machine is a bad one.

If I were buying an ultraportable machine today on pure features vs. price alone, it’d be impossible to pass up the Dell XPS M1330, which is a very nice machine. LED backlit LCD, available 200 GB 7200 RPM HD or SSD option, cellular networking, 3 GB RAM for no extra cost, dedicated GPU, battery-powered WiFi catcher — it’s about the most loaded ultraportable on the market, and it surrenders about a pound to the MBA. Yes, it runs Vista and not OSX, so I’m not exactly talking apples to apples (the pun sucks, I know), but nonetheless it’s the best that the market offers in this computing category. I’ve seen and used one, and it’s a nice machine.

I’ve read several times elsewhere on the web that the MBA is the new G4 Cube, which is Apple’s most recent big-time flop. I don’t think the MBA is that far off the mark, but make no mistake: this is not a volume sales product. It will fit within a niche, and my hope is that it’s simply a first-generation model that hints of much better things to come, both unto its own product line as well as the standard MacBooks and MacBook Pros.

Right now, if the statistics are correct, about 15 percent of Americans are not happy. Soon, perhaps, with the help of psychopharmaceuticals, melancholics will become unknown. That would be an unparalleled tragedy, equivalent in scope to the annihilation of the sperm whale or the golden eagle. With no more melancholics, we would live in a world in which everyone simply accepted the status quo, in which everyone would simply be content with the given. This would constitute a nightmare worthy of Philip K. Dick, a police state of Pollyannas, a flatland that offers nothing new under the sun. Why are we pushing toward such a hellish condition?

The answer is simple: fear. Most hide behind a smile because they are afraid of facing the world’s complexity, its vagueness, its terrible beauties. If we stay safely ensconced behind our painted grins, then we won’t have to encounter the insecurities attendant upon dwelling in possibility, those anxious moments when one doesn’t know this from that, when one could suddenly become almost anything at all. Even though this anxiety, usually over death, is in the end exhilarating, a call to be creative, it is in the beginning rather horrifying, a feeling of hovering in an unpredictable abyss. Most of us habitually flee from that state of mind, try to lose ourselves in distraction and good cheer. We don inauthenticity as a mask, a disguise to protect us from the abyss.

You don’t need to look very far or wide to see the endless American pursuit of happiness: look at Amazon’s best sellers, check out an episode of Dr. Phil or Oprah, grab nearly any self-help book off the shelf at your local Borders. I’ve witnessed many people painting on happy faces that seem discordant with their circumstance and the larger worldstate, and the notion of inauthenticity quickly bubbles up into the conscious.

That’s not to say that happiness isn’t good or desirable or even virtuous. What’s missing from today’s sweeping “positive psychology” trend is the value of sadness, its place in the human emotional continuum, its contribution towards wisdom and a life lived in full. We are increasingly treating melancholy and sadness as an affliction in need of eradication, and that’s an unbalanced and unnatural objective. Do we really want a dystopian world full of Yin, completely devoid of the Yang? Do we really want a sterile, perma-smile society, accepting all that we have and never pushing to understand our world our ourselves through the natural mechanisms of self-actualization?

I certainly don’t.

Link: In Praise of Melancholy

AppleInsider:

“It comes as no surprise that Apple sets the standard in terms of customer satisfaction,” said Tobin Smith, founder of ChangeWave Research, “but there’s a new twist on why they’re outperforming the rest of the industry — it’s the amazing customer satisfaction rating on Apple’s new Leopard OS.”

Smith said that more than four-in-five Apple buyers (81 percent) said they were Very Satisfied with Leopard, which is “an exceptionally high rating” for a new operating system. This compares to 53 percent and 51 percent for Windows XP, and just 27 percent and 15 percent, respectively, for the Microsoft Vista systems.

The high customer satisfaction in Leopard not only dwarfs its competitors, but is also having a direct impact on consumer intentions to purchase an Apple Mac, Smith added.

The study revealed that more than one-in-four consumers (26 percent) say the Leopard OS is making them more likely to buy a Mac in the future.

I love Leopard and it’s literally been flawless for me, but I have to say this: I’m using Vista Ultimate daily at work, and it isn’t a bad operating system. I’ve had my share of issues (primarily one where my ability to print craps out every few days; this seems to be a problem with my machine authenticating against the domain), but overall, Vista is considerably better than XP. If I were buying a new Windows PC today, I would unquestionably configure it with Vista Ultimate.

Maybe I just got lucky, but I really don’t understand the Vista hate. I think for most users who are used to Windows XP, the wide swath of changes in Vista presents usability/navigation problems for them, and general users don’t cope with that well. That and the still-rough-around-the-edges driver issues, which I understand are being worked out slowly.

A brand-new OS will present brand-new problems. And for a computing populace that’s largely technically incompetent (that’s the majority of America), tolerance for fine-tuning a new OS is nearly nonexistent. Nobody wants to see something becoming, they want to see something arrived. And in the software business, especially as it relates to operating systems, that’s simply not always possible.

Vista needs some work, and from what I hear SP1 will make things considerably better. But in my experience — and I’m only one datapoint — Vista isn’t all that bad. (For the record, I’m running it on a Dell Latitude D630 with 2 GB RAM. Nothing special.)

Is it OSX? No, not even close, despite its best efforts. However, I don’t view it as horrible as others are letting on. Overall, I absolutely think OSX remains a far more polished operating system, and I understand the massive satisfaction score.

In the end, Vista is just a more modern Windows. And OSX is a more modern Mac. Preferences for either will continue to fall along this line of opinion delineation.

Okay. Done. /Editorial.

I have to hand it to this kid: despite being an utter jackass, he sticks to his guns no matter what. I love how he shuts down the chiding reporter, even though I think there’s a serious asskicking waiting for him in the not-so-distant future.

[Via Chris]

I’ve had several of these days lately, so when I saw this, I realized life does, in fact, have quite the edgy sense of humor.

[Image tipoff via kottke]

Mike Huckabee at a campaign stop, recommending to a rabid audience that the Constitution be “changed” to fit “God’s standards”:

I have opponents in this race who do not want to change the Constitution. But I believe it’s a lot easier to change the Constitution than it would be to change the word of the living God. And that’s what we need to do is amend the Constitution so it’s in God’s standards rather than trying to change God’s standards so it lines up with some contemporary view of how we treat each other and how we treat the family.

This guy is terrifying. This is what theocracy looks like in its infancy.

Mike Huckabee at Think Progress

Related, from the Think Progress comments:

“President Bush also said today that he is worried that Iraq will be overrun by religious fundamentalists. Hey, let me tell you something. If it’s good enough for the Republican Party, it is good enough for Iraq.” -– Jay Leno

I have to end this post on a good note or I’ll be up all night worrying about a guy who wants to change our Constitution to align better with his fundamentalist beliefs.

Dammit. I just did it again.

If you’ve never seen what utterly batshit insane looks like, sit down and buckle up. The following video contains Tom Cruise babbling for almost 10 minutes about fighting the good fight, helping the people he needs to help, avoiding the SPs, ridding the world of spectatorism, and an ocean of other drink-your-own-saliva shit. He’s even crazier than we thought he was.

This was originally posted yesterday, but the creepy Scientologist hive-mind had it yanked from YouTube before Cruise said too much and made it irreversibly apparent that Scientologists are all frothing lunatics with world domination delusions.

The only problem with this video is that I don’t understand what the hell he’s talking about. Is there a class I can take to familiarize myself with the terminology? One that doesn’t involve me getting drugged and winding up in a van with my memory erased?

Final thought, really, then on to the link: is it me, or does he seem like hs’s falling apart on camera right before your eyes, what with the strange hysterical outbursts of laughter and facial contortions and knee slapping? Seriously, is it just me?

Bah. Nevermind. I’m just not used to seeing batshit insane up close like this.

Link

If you’ve ever wondered what makes successful people successful (hint: not bionics), then you’ve probably heard the recipe is actually mostly common sense and very few shortcuts. (But, please, don’t tell dieters.)

In case you haven’t heard this and are still spending half your monthly salary on self-help books written by dudes with bulletproof hair, let me do you a favor: watch the video I link to below. Then, if you’re still not convinced, send me half of the money you were spending and I’ll send you a bundle of paper filled with common sense, laid out in four colors and a hot-diggity typeface. And I save you money in the process! What a deal!

Why do people succeed? Because they’re smart? Or lucky? How about: Neither. Richard St. John compacts more than a decade of research into an unmissable 3-minute slideshow on the real secrets of success. (Hint: Passion, persistence, and pushy mothers help.) Inspired by a chance encounter with a high school student who asked him how to become a success, St. John interviewed more than 500 successful people, then distilled what they told him into eight simple principles.

TED: Richard St. John: Secrets of success in 8 words, 3 minutes

If there’s any doubt the iPhone has transcended the stigma of standard mobile browsers, we can put that to rest:

On Christmas, traffic to Google from iPhones surged, surpassing incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device, according to internal Google data made available to The New York Times.

Amazing data, seeing how the iPhone accounts for about 2% of smartphones worldwide. That means iPhone owners really are using the device as a smartphone in the fullest sense of the word, not just as a glorified address book, calendar, and text messaging platform. They’re using the browser to genuinely access the web — something I even avoid doing on my new BlackBerry Pearl unless I can avoid it. (It’s not that the Pearl is bad, per se, it’s just still very obviously a mobile browser.)

Link