Why should iMac owners have all the eye candy?
Intel has set up a site to highlight concept PCs. Many seem to simply be your basic beige boxes that an elephant stepped on or spent too much time under a heat lamp, but a few worth checking out are the Bonsai (which sort of looks like a mutant corporate version of the iMac), the eXo, which looks like a Microsoft Xbox that has learned to stand upright, the Entrata, a vision of Darth Vader's latest fighter craft, the Magic Bean, which looks like the progeny of a PC and a peapod, and the Unimod, which looks like somebody decided it would be cool to melt the keyboard, mouse and DVD drive onto the monitor.
Luxo Redux
Speaking of the new iMac, more than one person was struck by the similarity between the beast and the star of "Luxo Jr." one of the first animation efforts from Pixar, you know, Steve Jobs's other company. This QuickTime video is a good introduction to the theory.
Via fozbaca.org.
01/16/02
So you think your job is bad
Read this list and suddenly repairing servers or staring at a monitor all day won't seem quite so awful. Take this extract from job description of a ham skinner:
Depending on how fast the line runs, I skin a ham every eight to twelve seconds, tossing the meat on to a moving conveyor belt. If I miss a square, the ex-Marine Foreman starts screaming at me. The hams weigh anywhere from seventeen to twenty-two pounds apiece. I hook a ham with my meathook, and slam it down on the machine, hitting a pedal with my left foot. I press and manipulate the meat against a roller/blade skinner, leaning on it, and if my hand touches that I can skin myself up to the elbow, whittle my fingers down to pencil-pointed appendages, etc. I cannot stop, but can't fully watch what I'm doing because I'm constantly looking up at a rear-view mirror, showing the giant vat of meat above and behind me. With my right foot I tap the hydraulic pedal which gradually dumps more meat out of the vat and down the chute into the holding bin directly beside me. An ice-cold mixture of blood and water also spills out, and I am spattered and bathed in it every time I tap down more meat.
Via MetaFilter.
Google as a DNS replacement? Not so fast
As noted yesterday (see below), Dan Gilmor and Bob Frankston can't heap enough praise on Google for making things so easy to find that you no longer have to try to remember URLs. Brett Fausett begs to differ:
I'm not ready to put "find me on google" on my business card in place of my e-mail address and domain name. Domain names still provide an easy to remember online reference for offline communications. And the fact that Google is the better tool for web navigation doesn't mean we don't need more TLDs -- it just means that all TLDs are irrelevant for purposes of Google searching. For everything else, domain names still matter, and I expect that will be true for many years to come.
01/15/02
Nokia exec cites stock plunge in speeding-fine appeal
Finland takes an interesting approach to speeding tickets - what you pay depends on how much you earn. Reuters reports that Anssi Vanjoki, the company's executive vice president for mobile phones, was recently fined $103,000 for going about 47 m.p.h. in a 31 m.p.h. zone in Helsinki, based on his apparently salary for 1999.. But Vanjoki is appealing the fine, arguing that his 1999 income included hefty stock options, which means that his salary plunged last year, along with the value of Nokia stock.
Via Boing Boing.
The tragedy of the .coms
This past weekend, Dan Gillmor wrote how Google is effectively becoming a replacement for the domain-name system. It's now so good at finding things, companies and people no longer have to spend zillions snapping up "good" or memorable domain names.
Bob Frankston, who's been arguing for awhile that DNS is a bad way to identify things, follows up with this essay:
One of the weird aspects of this ".com" debate is that we have clear examples of commercial mechanisms and their limits. The trademark system demonstrates the complexities and compromises necessary for even a simple system of identifiers. Unlike the DNS, near counts. So we can't have a Rolleks watch. But we do make distinctions between industries and allow Cadillac to be the name of a car, a dog food and a show polish. Names can be reused geographically also.
This is in sharp contrast with the ".com" system in which a simple typo sends one to an entirely different site – usually a porn site. The use of ".com" names is a major factor that makes it seem like the delivery of porn (or to be precise, the delivery of eyeballs to porn sites). I'm not passing judgment on content; I'm just pointing out that human (or "wet space") systems take such human factors into account whereas a plumbing system like the DNS doesn't.
01/15/02
The Google parlor game
The latest craze among a certain set of people is trying to devise Google searches that bring up exactly one result. It's a game best played in e-mail, because if you put your entries on a Web site somewhere, Google will, of course, eventually index them, increasing the number of results for your phrases to two. So, quick, before Google gets here, check out this results page as an example.
Dive Into Mark, where I spotted the above example, today reports on a variation for the easily amused: Check Google's image index for the most mundane, boring graphics you can think of, specifically, the tiny "spacer" images many Web sites use to align text (here at Fusion, we use such a beastie, but we don't call it "spacer.gif;" the exact name we do use is left to the reader as a source-code exercise).
Some people *like* Steve the Dell Guy
Kids today! Those Dell commercials, with that guy smirking "Dude, you're gonna get a Dell," make me want to a) smack that smirk off his annoying face and b) go buy a Gateway. Not everybody agrees, however. Take the following Web sites as examples (please!):
Steve the Dell Guy Fan Club
The gallery has pictures of the guy HOTTER than any pitchman of 2001... welcome to the fan club of the 2002's best new talent!Ben Curtis: Steve, the Dell Dude!!!
This is Courtney and Jenny's Steve site! We think Steve is so awesome! We enjoyed making this page!
Ban all Microsoft attachments?
Speaking of annoying, we have Richard Stallman's latest effort to get all the villagers to light their torches and storm the Microsoft castle. Stallman proposes that everytime you get e-mail with a Microsoft Word document attached, you reply with a note that includes:Sending people documents in Word format has bad effects, because that practice puts pressure on them to use Microsoft software. In effect, you become a buttress of the Microsoft monopoly. This specific problem is a major obstacle to the broader adoption of GNU/Linux. Would you please reconsider the use of Word format for communication with other people?
Yep, I can sure see dashing that right off to the CEO...
RELATED LINKS
Compendium archive: Week of 01/21/02 Week of 01/14/02 Week of 01/07/02 Week of 01/02/02 Week of 12/03/01 Week of 11/26/01 Week of 11/19/01 Week of 11/12/01 Week of 11/05/01 Week of 10/29/01 Week of 10/22/01 Week of 10/15/01 Week of 10/08/01 Week of 10/01/01 Week of 9/24/01 Weeks of 9/10/01 - 9/17/01 Week of 9/3/01 Week of 8/27/01 Week of 8/20/01 Week of 8/13/01 Week of 8/6/01 Note: Compendium's entire staff took the week of 7/30 off. Week of 7/23/01 Week of 7/16/01 Week of 7/9/01 Week of 7/2/01 Week of 6/25/01 Week of 6/18/01 Week of 6/11/01 Week of 6/4/01
Tracking down a stolen Mac; Dead C Scrolls; Googlewhacking; How bad is it in the Valley?; Storage lessons from the Wayback Machine; The pub-seeking handheld; Internet gang wars; Outlook XP breaks MIME.
Why should iMac owners have all the eye candy?; Luxo Redux; So you think your job is bad; Google as a DNS replacement? Not so fast; Nokia exec cites stock plunge in speeding-fine appeal; The tragedy of the .coms; The Google parlor game; Some people *like* Steve the Dell Guy; Ban all Microsoft attachments?
Dot-com to bare all; iMac Dance; Wendy's remembers Dave; Search engine bites the dust; Wendy's Web site ignores Dave's death; Geek comic strip; Youngest security expert ever; Spam poetry; Confessions of a hacker; Breathless Apple; Dave Barry does Windows XP.
Dropping everything to vote; The best Apple rumors, ever; Guess Steve Case isn't getting into Harvard; Make your own O'Reilly cover; Boosting your wireless juice; Telnet lives!
This space intentionally left blank (vacation).
The most useless software ever; Is Microsoft getting ready to squash PC vendors?; Excite@Home: The Watergate of the New Economy?; No more 3Com Park. Is CMGI Field next?; Are you an e-bore?; This site'll have you coming and going; Entertainment Weekly's loss of innocence; Ensign Crusher as Entertainer of the Year; Oh, for the old days.
The Museum of Broken Packets; Just in time for Thanksgiving; Tourist Guy found; Why virtual offices suck; A domain ruling that sucks; Hacking the iPod.
Why you shouldn't ship computers via UPS; When .Net requires Java; High-tech grafitti artists; Spam from beyond the grave; New group tries to oversee the whole Internet; Paging Dick Tracy; Students use PDAs to cheat; Windaz for Aussies, Newfies; Another alternative to Passport; A virtual honeynet
Bill Gates: Father of open source; Verizon exec: Monopoly is good; Weird molecule names; E-mail: too much of a good thing?; A cluster of one; More woes for dot-bombers; Spam as weapon in the war on crime; Just when you think the Web can't get any better; Just when you think the Web can't get any worse; More proof I shouldn't be a wiseass; Using your Web logs to ID hacker attacks; Help save the FAQs; Who do you trust, baby?; Powerpuff Girls powerless against virus; Big IP pipe between US, Europe.
The profit of turning thugs into programmers; Work Name Generator; A programmer's lament; The world's best ATM; Are anti-spammers killing people?; Web services and storage; Get your Aerons here; Perl for the XXI-imum century; Microsoft's blocking of non-IE browsers.
Government info taken off the Web since 9/11; Beware hackers who talk too much; A contest you can enter sitting down; Now don't try this in the office; Bob Patterson must die; Finally, a useful 404 page; Tech calls from hell; Teletubbies XP; More XP fun; Anthrax and e-mail; Larry's ID card; World's longest gum-wrapper chain.
Let's drop PDAs on Afghanistan; Voice control? Try grunt control; Spam gets back to business; A content-management portal; Share your system tray with the world; Would you let the recording industry onto your network?; Al Queda's low-tech high tech; 9/11 archive; Shoe company gets open source after all; Pod people, coming soon to a cube near you.
Larry and Scott's dueling ID cards; Cringely: Broadband is dead; The dangers of Photoshop; The dangers of copy protection; Microsoft mining whois for telephone solicitations?; How to REALLY throw a LAN party; Good fences don't make good 'Net neighbors; How Google adapted to 9/11 news; Web services as over-hyped hooey; Why shoe guys shouldn't do open source; Online air hockey.
AT&T waives 9/11 wireless charges for some; Shifting gears; Craig Burton on the Novell/Microsoft suit; In search of the post-PC interface; Vibrating PDAs and wearable phones; Gary Condit's Web site; No, that isn't a real photo of a WTC tourist; How to throw a LAN party; How sucky is your intranet?
For grizzled 'Net veterans; UK ISP forced to pull deceptive ads; Pretty Good encryption controversy; Are you as smart as Miss America?; Really securing your computer; Still lots of insecure IIS servers; Kids, don't try this at home; Anthrax Kills; Larry's national database; Nimda hysteria?
Attack and post-attack items.
999,999,999 bottles of beer on the wall; Finally, a wind-up cell phone; Enough with the ringing!; The VoIP calculator; 802.11b insecurity; Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf explains IOS DHCP; Is ENUM the mark of the devil?; AOL gives user permanent demerit; The Ballmer music video; Cleveland news flash: Y2K was last year.
Re-routing around censorship; Us vs. them in scripting; The boss button; Fighting off the hackers for fun; Peer computing as a weapon of war; Unix poetry; The Windows Fatal Exception Decoder; New Fusion widget: Getting rid of spyware; The sound of 200 cell phones going off at once; Taleban Web site hacked; Hey, sysadmin, remember Sircam?
On the importance of flame wars; Bill Gates sees dead people?; A markup language for grunts and groans; Is Microsoft leaking those Ballmer dance videos?; Good Samaritan not so good?; Steve Ballmer works up a sweat; Open-source wireless cracking; When technology goes too far; Another dumb computer arrest?; Is Cisco Communist?
Moron marketers threaten 'Net users; Finding free wireless access; Complete wastes of time; OS holy war flares in North Carolina; Are programmers weird?; Somebody actually buys an X10 camera; We're number, uh, two!; Those after-hours computer discussions; An entire city running on Linux; Distributed spam fighter under development; Could a Warhol virus infect the entire 'Net in 15 minutes?; Tell AOL what to do with its CDs.
Fusion shatters a myth; Bridging .Net and Java?; AT&T Broadband cuts off non-IIS servers to fight Code Red; Bluetoothless; Tennessee town bites into Apple; And you thought TI-99/4A fans were over the edge; Biometrics coming to your local supermarket; Steve Ballmer a-hootin' and a-hollerin'; Speaking of Web images; Just how far PC prices have fallen; Does Starbucks' CEO get his own wireless strategy?
Crackers getting more sophisticated; Sex and Microsoft Office; The wonders of science, part MXXII; Finally, a useful virus; A shocking game controller; Big Ball of Mud school of programming; Two vitally important new resources; Adobe: Ooops; Eudora Welty, dead at 92; Centralizing Unix administration in Perl; Spellchecking the entire Web.
Worm turns on Microsoft Web servers; The day the ISP died; Cell-phone users have no shame; Even Internet consultants can screw up the 'Net; Symphony for Dot Matrix Printers; The ultimate cup of coffee; The solar-powered ISP; Everhost; Internet VCer: Oops; The Lego Palm and the pink fuzzy laptop; The Microsoft-English dictionary; Putting a loved one in the home.
Saving those all important VoIP calls; This site is a bright idea; Could wireless end messy divorces?; How much will that software really cost you?; Ghosts of failed dot-coms; The spy's guide to securing your Cisco routers; Oprah for Internet czarina?; What's Microsoft doing at an open-source conference?; Like a big pizza pi; Cyber-bullies; Better check your phone bill; Have some birthday pi.
How HP wastes energy to save energy; New toy for the bored and lonely; Weird programming languages; When sponsors are speakers; The case of the disturbing backwards monitor; Congress to ICANN: Drop dead; Yet another video game made into a movie; Smile, you're on Candid (Police) Camera; High-speed hotels; Network Solutions blocking name transfers?
One of the fathers of Usenet dead at 45; Are you ready for insta-spam?; Diary of a site collapse; Skirting the issue; Assimiliating the Web; Trolling for help; Software wars; Rating the rater; True tales from the help desk; How about spam embedded in your mail?
Unix diapers; A beautiful waste of time; A P2P taxonomy; This page is too stupid; Homeless dot-commer bogus?; Whee, Linux is fun!; Blue Screens everywhere; Forget viruses: This fungus eats CDs; Microsoft revises Smart Tags a bit; Homeless dot-commers.
Slashdot crashes the NSA; They may be Smart Tags, but they're not Original Tags; What open source and California wines have in common; Jakob Nielsen no tyro; How to make Windows 2000 really, really secure; Where the Internet begins; A useful computer bug; The clothes make the geek; The end of the Internet; Why PDF bites; Novel use of a wireless phone; Hidden info; When Web sites tell too much.
DSL modems are so '90s; Bye-bye Netscape; Get ready to upgrade those mail servers; The anti-.Net; The real reason to buy a Palm; Anatomy of a DDoS attack; Pain is good.
