Tikkabik

It's amazing how much a piece of lucite has improved my Mac-using experience. Griffin sent me an iCurve a couple of weeks ago, and though it sounds absurd, I've really grown to love it.

The iCurve is a curved piece of lucite with a few non-skid strips on the top that has been designed to raise your PowerBook or iBook up to eye level from your desk. The idea is to reduce back, eye and neck strain by getting your focal point more in line of where it would be if you were using a regular monitor instead of the PowerBook screen.

It works really well. The only problem I've found is that it still leaves the wires and cables for all your PowerBook accessories dangling free, which is ugly, but I can't see any really effective way keeping in design with the style (clear lucite) to handle that. I suppose I could get a wireless keyboard and mouse to get rid of a couple of wires too.

At $40, the iCurve is a pricey lifestyle accessory compared to what you can do by stacking a couple of phone books underneath your PowerBook, but it's a lot cleaner and a lot more elegant.

Posted by flargh at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Jackie Chan, look out.

Posted by flargh at 10:24 AM | Permalink

As many of you know, my older son and my daughter have both been diagnosed with (and have classic symptoms of) ADHD and related problems. Earlier this week Bonnie and I went to the first meeting of a parent's support group for kids with ADHD that was put together by a person who works for our town's special ed department. Now that I've had a few days to assimilate the meeting, I've got some observations about it and ADHD from the parent's perspective, in general.

a) The meeting was really well-attended. About 14 parents showed up all told, including us. What interested me is that 5 of them weren't even from our town, but were from surrounding towns -- towns with worse reputations than ours when it comes to dealing with ADHD children.

b) All but three families, including us, are only dealing with boys with ADD/ADHD. Its frequency among girls is much lower, and the way it exhibits in girls is very different. Boys who have classic ADHD problems are the class clowns, the hyper ones that jump out of trees for no reason; girls with ADHD are the quiet "daydreamy" ones. Interestingly, Emme's presentation of symptoms is atypical: She's got impulse control issues, which gets her in trouble (though the daydreamy thing is common too. We say that Emme goes off into "Emmeland").

c) Many of us have had the same problems getting our kids the help they need in the classroom. I think that the school liaison was a bit surprised (and, as a relatively new employee, perhaps a bit disheartened) by just how much trouble some of us had alternately getting the administration and faculty to help us help our kids.

d) Almost all of us had different ideas for what we wanted to get out of the group, but one thing came through loud and clear: A lot of us were looking for emotional support as much as anything else. It's extremely isolating for parents to deal with a child who has any sort of problems that prevents them from acting like a "normal" kid.

e) All of us have different ways of dealing with our kids. Many of us have turned to medication, which in some cases has worked and in other cases hasn't. Some of us have tried dietary changes, like getting the dairy and gluten out of our kids' diets, with similar results. Others have gotten hyper-organized to remove as much distraction from their kids' lives as possible. Others are just now trying to figure out something that will work.

The basic problem here is that ADHD isn't one specific disease or disorder; instead, it's a general syndrome that can be caused by different things, requiring different treatments or different plans of action to deal with. So what's good for one kid may not be good for another. This can be a stumbling block especially when it's time to put together a plan of action for the school, because this may simply involve an understanding with the teacher. Other times this can require the school to put in place what's called a Section 504 plan, which outlines specific accommodations they need to make for your child. In other cases, this leads to an Individualized Education Plan, or IEP. Each process involves a geometrically greater amount of bureaucracy in the school system.

ADHD -- and dealing with it in your kids -- is really complex issue. Within the span of my life, kids with ADHD went from being the neighborhood "problem children" to having a recognized neurological disorder whose source isn't fully understood and for whom treatment can still be a shot in the dark. Even within the medical community, there's disagreement about what constitutes ADHD, what causes it, and how effective the treatments are.

As a result, a lot of people -- even a lot of people my age, but especially those older than us -- don't consider kids with ADHD to be "sick" in the conventional sense. Rather, they presume that kids who misbehave or act in odd ways are just ill-bred or left to "run wild" by parents who don't give a shit. In some cases, sadly enough, this is true -- there are some parents who just aren't fit to be parents. None of the parents that were there fit into this category, by definition -- they were all proactive enough to show up and desirous to talk with others about the issues they're dealing with.

Even now when I talk about it with certain friends and family, there's an almost casual dismissal of some of which we speak. "Well, that's just boys being boys," or "They'll grow out of it." There's also suspicion on the part of some parents about overmedication and the desire to medicate as a panacea to control kids in an institutional setting that some of them are simply not well-equipped to deal with.

This leaves a lot of parents of kids with ADHD feeling guilty that they've somehow done a bad job raising their own kids, or that they've failed them in some way. I know this one comes up a lot with Bonnie and me. This leads to feelings of isolation and anger. So having a group of other parents to bounce this off of is incredibly important.

But it's improving, and each year that passes sees a better awareness of these issues in medical professionals, psychological professionals, school teachers and administration. Having said that, it's still an uphill battle.

One parent at the group the other night pointed out that you have to be objective as possible and be prepared to educate people that you think should know better, like school faculty and administration, even when you just want to ball up your fists and scream, "*You're* the professional! Aren't you supposed to *know* this shit?"

I think the support group is a great idea, and I'm really happy to see the sped office put it together. I'm still unclear on how much it'll serve as an advocacy group to actually affect change within the school system, which is what I want to see happen -- particularly in the K-2 school in our town, which Bonnie and I feel has an adminstration that's openly hostile and really regressive with what they consider "behavior-related problems" (as opposed to "non-verbal learning disorders"), but it's a good first start.

Posted by flargh at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

My iMac issue still hasn't been resolved, but I did have a second experience on an unrelated issue that involved AppleCare that was handled better.

I have an iPod that I received as a gift from my boss and his wife. It's second-hand, but it was really, really nice of them to give it to me, and I've really enjoyed it since I got it a couple of months ago. Problem is, the battery doesn't work very well. It holds a four hour charge even if I drop the iPod into a continuous play list of looped music.

Now, I'm pretty sure Jim picked it up over last summer -- it's the first third-generation 15GB model, and was briefly their mid-range model until they bumped that up to a 20GB. The 15GB's supplanted the 10's this past January as the entry-level model. Regardless, the point is that it's still under warranty. In fact, these things weren't even made until April of last year, so it's definitely still in the ball park. But as I received it as a gift, I don't have a receipt in hand to show a date. After my experience with the iMac yesterday, I was frankly expecting the worst. While it didn't quite as simply as I had hoped, it was resolved.

I've done virtually everything Apple's recommended to fix the problem. I've restored the iPod to a factory condition; updated it with the latest software; rebooted it; I've even drained the battery dry, let it sit for a day, then charge it back up for 24 hours to see if that helps. Nothing has done any good.

Apple optimistically says that these things are good for up to 9 hours of play, but most of the people I talk with are lucky if they can get 6 hours, maybe a bit more. It has a lot to do with how you play your music -- if you have the backlight turned on and you futz around with playlists or tracks frequently, you'll run the battery down faster than if you just set the iPod to something and let it play. But still, 4 hours is low, even by this measure.

The main problem I had was figuring out how to get in touch with AppleCare in the first place. Apple's Web site tries to push you to this Web-based order system to process an iPod repair request. That would have been fine, expect for two problems: The first time, it told me that the serial number I entered was invalid (it wasn't), but offered no way to resolve the problem except to try again. The second time, the server apparently crashed, and stayed that way for a couple of hours.

Apple makes it really difficult to just find a number to call. I ended up simply hauling out the letter I'd just gotten that day and calling that number. I pretty quickly got a hold of a tech that at first tried to push me off to the Web site, but once I explained the situation, was helpful.

The way the warranty program works is that Apple overnights you a container to ship the iPod back to them. The courier comes back the next day and picks it up, and then Apple then replaces your iPod with a new or refurbished unit. This is fine -- I don't anyone for whom the iPod is a mission critical device in need of advance replacement. It's a lifestyle item, and you can live without it for a week or two if you have to.

The folks who I've spoken to who have already made use of this service are very happy with it. AppleCare didn't give me a hard time at all about using this -- I'm expecting a box to arrive on Thursday. I'll follow up and let you know how things go.

The guy I talked with at AppleCare was nice, cooperative, and persuasive. He sold me the AppleCare extended warranty, which I'd been giving though to since I got my iPod. Buying a replacement battery costs about $50 from a gray market reseller, and installing it yourself voids your warranty. Apple hasn't made the battery user-serviceable at all, and you have to pry the iPod apart to get at it (this is the same with most other large-capacity MP3 players, too).

For $59, AppleCare for iPod extends the warranty out an extra year, and covers it against another battery failure or other equipment problems. So it's small money compared to what a home-grown fix would cost if the battery craps out a second time, or if something else goes wrong, like the LCD stops working, or the touchpad fizzles out, or the hard disk dies. Any way you slice it it's 1/5th of what a replacement 15GB iPod costs right now.

Without the receipt in hand, I was anticipating a hassle on the length of the warranty, but what the tech suggested I think will work out pretty well: He's giving me 90 days on top of the release date, which means my AppleCare coverage will kick in sometime in late July.

Apple knows it has some QA problems with these iPods -- I'm not the only one with a battery problem, obviously. Before September, folks weren't that lucky, as Apple hadn't put this program in place, but the fact is that they're doing the right thing now.

I just wish the frustration I've had with the iMac could have been resolved even half as easily as this has been dealt with.

Posted by flargh at 11:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Late yesterday afternoon I found my family gathered in the living room. The two older ones were watching TV, while James was staring at his mother as she sat on the floor, struggling to get the covers back on the loveseat cushions.

"Mummy, why'd you take those off?" he asked.

"They were smelly, so I decided to wash them," she explained.

James observed the process for a few moments longer and announced, "That's because daddy farts on them a lot."

Posted by flargh at 10:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Apple's "AppleCare" warranty extension program apparently has some very serious data integrity issues, if my recent experience is any barometer.

Bonnie uses a flat-panel 17-inch iMac. The unit shipped from Apple last July. Apple provides a one-year warranty for its hardware. The company offers an extended warranty plan called "AppleCare" that extends the coverage to three years from the purchase date. Although they push it at the point of sale, you're eligible to buy it any time within the first year.

If you haven't bought AppleCare when you bought the computer, it's customary for Apple to send you a letter a few weeks before the end of your one-year warranty encouraging you to sign up for AppleCare. I got one of these letters today. It says my warranty expires in late March. Months before my iMac's one-year anniversary.

It gets better. Read on.

So I called AppleCare's toll-free number to argue the point that I still had at least a couple of months more warranty time than they thought I did. And here's the kicker: They're now telling me that it's two weeks out of warranty all together, and that I'm not eligible to get AppleCare at all. February 10, 2003 is recorded in AppleCare's own internal system as the sales date for this particular computer -- less than a week after the 17-inch iMacs of which this system is were refreshed with faster processors and better optical drives, and correspondingly announced.

It took me two phone calls and four different people before I finally spoke to someone on their "dispatch team" who -- after I explained the situation to him three times -- finally confirmed for me what I already knew to be true. According to Apple's own records, this iMac didn't ship from Apple until July 2, 2003. That record isn't apparently good enough, however, for the AppleCare folks to adjust their records accordingly.

AppleCare insisted that I talk with a sorceror in their sales support group who was going to be able to magically conjur a talisman that will make the AppleCare imps happy -- a sales record that would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that this product is in warranty. Unfortunately, I have no receipt that proves I'm right and they're wrong -- I'm dreadfully bad about such things. And, of course, the sales support wizards were of no help whatsoever.

The ironic thing is that I had planned to bring this iMac in to our local independent Apple reseller and repair center to be looked at because the screen is going wonky. And until I get this bullshit figured out, it's going to come out of my pocket.

The moral of this story is to buy AppleCare at the point of purchase, the next time you buy Apple hardware. Keep your records safe. And make sure to check dates when you receive mail or e-mail from Apple that doesn't jibe with your recollection, because clearly that company's database management leaves something to be desired.

Posted by flargh at 02:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

...to make our Presidents take a history and political science exam before being elected. Maybe it'd be a good idea for some reporters to do the same before they start reporting on politics, too.

Bush's statement that he'd support a constutitional amendment denying marriages to same-sex couples is totally meaningless. Bush doesn't and won't have a thing to do with the process of amending the Constitution, so his statement is irrelevant -- it's political pandering to the religious right, but nothing more.

Why it's being trumpeted in the press today is a bit beyond my ken, unless everyone who's reporting on this is woefully undereducated about the way our government works. Clearly, my supposition is not beyond the realm of possibility.

The important thing to understand here is that it's simply *not* that easy to amend the Constitution, and the American President has no formal role the amendment process. There are two basic ways the Constitution can be amended, and neither of them involve executive decree or whim in the slightest.

One method is for a bill to pass through the House and the Senate by a two-thirds majority. Then it goes on to the states for voting. This is how virtually every amendment to the Constitution has been passed since its inception.

The second method is this byzantine, circuitous route that's never been used in our nation's history. It involves two-thirds of state legislatures to convene for a Constitutional convention to make the amendment. Then the amendment must be approved by three-fourths of the legislatures or conventions.

Here's the important thing to understand: The President is welcome to make his opinion known. But his opinion is ultimately irrelevant to the process; He has no power to veto a Constitutional amendment, nor can he ratify one.

This is one of those "by the people, for the people" things that those geniuses who thought out our system of government did precisely to stop people like King George (W. Bush) from toppling the rule of law in favor of autocracy or monarchy, and God bless all of 'em for it.

Too bad the whole electoral college thing wasn't thought out a bit better.

Posted by flargh at 11:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Taking my kids out for special events always proves to be a stresser for me. They're good kids, but they're all very independently-minded and strong-willed, and that can be a real problem if you're in a place that's crowded with lots of other kids.

That's what happened to us yesterday when we brought the kids to the Museum of Science in Cambridge. Great place, and very family-friendly (albeit expensive), but we could hardly go five steps without our kids jostling with other kids for access to the exhibits. In Emme's case, this more often than not ended in tears. Bob was bored at points and just tired of walking around at others, and James was off the wall -- insistent on pushing every button or flicking every switch on every exhibit he could find. A few times he barrelled into other kids or grown-ups on his way to the exhibits; more than a few times he was barrelled into as well.

All told, they had a good time, and that was gratifying. But frankly, I was happy when the end of the day rolled around and we got back into the van to go home. Most relaxed I'd felt all day.

One thing I was happy to see was that they're still using Macs in the multimedia exhibits there, even the new ones that have been installed since we were there last about a year ago. Whoever's doing the development is still depending on Mac OS Classic, however -- there wasn't too much OS X stuff that I could tell.

Posted by flargh at 11:03 AM | Permalink

When was the last time you...

1. ...went to the doctor?

STFU

2. ...went to the dentist?

Seriously, just shut the fuck up.

3. ...filled your gas tank?

SHUT

4. ...got enough sleep?

THE FUCK

5. ...backed up your computer?

UP.

Posted by flargh at 09:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This entry is tangential to Corey's recent post entitled "I am not your help desk."

Corey and I are in the same boat. Because of what I do and my visibility in the community, I'm often asked by e-mail to sort out problems or make suggestions to people that are having trouble or need some sort of obscure solution for their Mac, and I'm occasionally accosted with the same sort of belligerence that Corey describes, where people seem to think that they'll get a response faster if they add that they're considering switching to the Windows platform. It's as if I have some sort of vested interest in making them use a Mac, when in fact nothing could be further from the truth.

It gets weirder, though. People apparently think I'm some sort of mind-reader too.

"I need to know if that [software/hardware/service] you wrote about will work on my Mac," is a favorite e-mail of mine. I get it about two or three times a week, and that's usually all the e-mail says. No description of the product, no details about their computer, and absolutely no reference to the article in question beyond the passing comment that I wrote about it.

Here's the thing: I write dozens of articles every week. I rarely retain any more information than is absolutely necessary about any of them, and only then if the product or service pertains directly to an interest of mine. And even if I had an encyclopedic memory, you'd *have* to say more than "you wrote about [it]" to remind me of what we're talking about again. It's common sense, but it's also apparently beyond the scope of most people's ability to cogitate.

The worst part about this is that almost every single question that's sent this way is something that could be simply, succinctly answered if the querent had simply used Google or even MacCentral's own search engine; had bothered to click through to the product page or Web site of the product maker and had looked in their FAQ.

I'm left with the observation that to these people, it's infinitely easier to just e-mail someone and be spoon-fed than to do any more work than is absolutely necessary to answer your own question. Just like when I did systems management for a living, I have very little respect for these people. They're not just consumers -- they're livestock. It's bovine behavior: Make no more effort than is absolutely necessary to eat, crap and sleep.

My other favorite is when people ask me for help regarding a product I wrote about -- on their PC. Apparently my Mac-centric article and the fact that my e-mail address ends in "maccentral.com" isn't enough of a clue that I'm not a PC help desk.

I'll often get people who threaten to return the products I've sold them unless I can get them working, despite the fact that I haven't sold them a damn thing. Some people think we're resellers. Others send long-winded recitations about their experience with their Macs and expect us to do something, as if we're Apple. We're not being blind cc:'d on these things -- they're sending them directly to us, because they've seen our e-mail address some place, or they've visited the site and figure we're Apple.

Other folks send us these commands and directives: Research this obscure issue or use your sources at Apple to find out what's happening with this, or pull some strings to get this done.

Actually, it's rather flattering when people do this, implying we wield that sort of authority with Apple or anyone else, when in truth we're simply a couple of guys who work out of our basement offices. Sure, we can call people at Apple to ask questions and probably have an easier time getting answers to some questions or interviews with some people than lots of other online news sites do, but we have to wait in line just like everyone else, and don't have a magic hotline Batphone that rings at Steve Jobs' desk every time we need to get something done.

I don't necessarily want these people to all of a sudden stop using Macs and go away, however. Despite their strident tones and occasional bouts of self-righteous pontification, most of these folks are by and large good people who like Macs for the same reason I do. I am, unfortunately and usually unnecessarily, at the receiving end of their occasional abuse and confusion.

I just wish they'd think through before clicking on their e-mail "Send" button and make sure that they can't answer the question themselves before asking someone else to make the effort.

Well, everyone except the PC weenies. I wish they'd just go away.

Posted by flargh at 02:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Dell on Monday introduced a new "gaming" laptop called the Inspiron XPS. It's a premium-priced, premium-featured portable with some neat capabilities, but the drawbacks make it not worth it.

The $2,900 laptop gets a 3.4GHz P4 or P4 "Extreme Edition" processor, along with ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics. What's more, the laptop sports an upgradeable graphics subsystem -- something that hardware buffs have wanted for a long time but most portable makers haven't been able to deliver on.

The system also gets a "QuickSnap" kit to customize the top (who cares?) and all the requisite bells and whistles you'd expect. But here's where I had to do a double take: It weighs 9 pounds and runs about an hour, maybe an hour and a half on a single charge. Part of the reason why it's so power-hungry is because the system needs three fans to stay cool.

We're always hearing about how PCs are cheaper than Macs, and what surprised me the most is how mediocre Dell's offering is compared to Apple's latest 15-inch PowerBook. A comparably equipped 1.25GHz Powerbook costs about $300 less and weighs about 2 pounds less. Anyone who thinks that 2 pounds isn't a big deal has never gone sprinting across Terminals B and C at O'Hare in search of their connecting flight with a laptop bag on their shoulder.

The big difference between the two -- beside the weight and the upgradable graphics, which I'm not convinced is really going to be worth it, long-term -- is Dell's use of the admittedly better Mobility Radeon 9700 graphics chip. Apple will get this into their next revision, I'm sure.

Posted by flargh at 09:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (8)

I've had a PowerBook as my daily driver for about three years now; I'm on my second one, an 800MHz 15-inch model. What I've come to realize is that my PowerBook is the modern-day equivalent of a teddy bear or security blanket -- I can never seem to put the thing down.

It's not a Mac thing, though I do love my Macs. It's a tether to the digital world. My persistent Internet connection. I feel naked and somehow lessened without it. I'll be watching something on TV and look up information related to the show or commercial; I'll be responding to e-mail or IM'ing people while I'm making dinner. The PowerBook goes everywhere with me.

What's so odd about this is that I *like* it this way. I *like* being that in touch with information, having it that accessible and that immediate. Some people try to get themselves off the information grid; hell, if I could have a cybernetic implant that would keep me connected continuously, I'd probably do it in a heartbeat.

Posted by flargh at 09:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

This may seem like much ado about nothing, but here's another example of government trying to over-regulate people's lives.

From where I sit, tongue bifurcation is icky. I don't like the look, am not turned on by it in the slightest, and find it to be jarringly ugly and really kinda creepy. Then again, I feel the same way about women in beehive hairdos who wear polyester double-knit pantsuits. C'est la vie.

The problem as I see it here is that the law in Illinois (and the proposed legislation in W. Va) makes tongue-splitting illegal unless it's done for medical purposes -- and since there's no medical purpose for this, it's totally cosmetic -- it is, by definition, an illegal procedure.

This legislative arrow pierces my occasionally Libertarian heart. It's none of the government's damn business if you want to chop your tongue in half, tattoo your face green and scaly and file your teeth down to sharp points like this guy did.

A certain amount of regulation is good -- making sure that safeguards are in place to assure people considering the alteration can have it done by a qualified professional, for example. But over-regulation -- providing legal loopholes to have the procedure outlawed by default -- is just bad government.

Posted by flargh at 12:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Ever since I was a kid, I've really loved PBS programming. It's intellectual, entertaining and well-produced without ever seeming smarmy or glitzy. Grew up watching Sesame Street and Zoom, Cosmos profoundly interested me in science, I love a lot of Masterpiece Theater productions, and I watch Frontline almost every week. What I can't stand, however, is PBS's fund-raising efforts.

I've been awaiting the broadcast of Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance since I saw an ad for it a week or so ago. The Medici family had a profound effect on art, politics and science during the Renaissance, so it's something that I'm interested in finding out more about. Last night I got about half an hour into the program and was really enjoying it when they broke for a fund-raising break. I ended up changing the channel.

It wasn't just their asking for money by abruptly stopping the show that irritated me so much. That I grudgingly accept because it's *public* television, after all. No, what caused me to find something else to watch was the WGBH spokesperson who stated that the station was looking for a modern-day equivalent of the Medici family to make sure these shows continue to be produced. Give me a freakin' break.

This just rubbed me the wrong way. The Medici were an incredibly powerful and almost incalculably wealthy family whose influence extended to many of the great artists, architects and scientific minds of the age. They were also master manipulators of politics and religion; they were warlords; some of them were right bastards too. That's one reasons why the special was subtitled "Godfathers of the Renaissance." As in, Don Corleone.

I'm just some schmuck sitting in my living room with my hand in a bowl of microwave popcorn. I'm no fucking Medici, and don't want to be compared to one, and sure-as-hell know that giving WGBH $30 certainly isn't going to get me any closer to greatness.

I admit I'm making a mountain out of a molehill, but it's that sort of cavalier pseudo-intellectual idiocy on the part of the station managers and staff for PBS -- regardless of what city you're living in -- that just frosts my tomatoes.

Somewhat tangentially related, I absolutely adore the new TV ads for Quiznos Subs. Watch them in Flash on the Web site if you haven't seen them.

Posted by flargh at 04:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (7)

Some folks have made a big deal out of how Apple is using Feature Cast's "Channel Surfing" in their iPod ads even though it's not available at the iTunes Music Store. Well, now it is. And it is the best $0.99 I have spent, like, EVER.

This is the tune that the iPod ad starts out with, "Are you ready?" and then drops into this siren wailing and horns blaring funktastic scratch thing that makes my ass shake ever time I hear.

Looks like Feature Cast's album drops in late March. I can't wait.

Posted by flargh at 02:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

A few days ago I did some hand-wringing about news emerging from this week's PalmSource conference that the next generation of Palm's operating system, "Cobalt" (formerly known as Palm OS 6) is not going to support the Mac. On further analysis that doesn't tell the whole story at all, and things are not nearly as dire as they might first seem. Here's a bit more information:

A) PalmSource is indeed forgoing future first-party support for the Mac, that much is true.
B) This doesn't necessarily mean that all future Palm PDAs won't have Mac support.
C) PalmOne makes the PDAs that you know as Palms; PalmSource is their OS licensor, much like how Dell sells PCs that use Microsoft Windows for an operating system.
D) Just like Dell or Gateway selling a PC, not all the software that's included on PalmOne or AlphaSmart or Sony's Palm PDA needs to be from PalmSource; ergo
E) It's perfectly feasible that Palm OS licensees will include Mac synching software themselves right in the box with their PDAs, from Mark/Space or another third party developer, or even their own solution. Even Apple could step in here with a home-grown iSync solution that eschews the HotSync architecture for something else when it encounters Cobalt-based devices.

We'll post more details on MacCentral once I have all my facts together, but I just wanted to give you a heads up.

Posted by flargh at 10:50 AM | Permalink

Here we go again with the Friday Five:

1. Are you superstitious?

Nope, not particularly.

2. What extremes have you heard of someone going to in the name of superstition?

Not really apropos of this question, but it comes to mind that my grandmother has this thing about presents with songbirds. Something about relatives receiving gifts with songbirds and suddenly dropping dead. So we all know not to give her anything with a songbird on it.

3. Believer or not, what's your favorite superstition?

The ones that always crack me up involve sports professionals who don't shower/change their socks/cut their hair/have sex/eat red meat during a winning streak. It never fails to amaze me that you can pay someone $20 million a year to throw a ball around a field, and he gets totally scared that if he changes his routine in the slightest he'll blow it. That's definitely superstitious behavior, but it's a good example of how powerfully the mind works.

4. Do you believe in luck? If yes, do you have a lucky number/article of clothing/ritual?

I don't believe in luck as much as I believe in statistical anomalies. And to that end, I don't have a lucky number, etc.

5. Do you believe in astrology? Why or why not?

Nope. Because it's full of shit, that's why.

Posted by flargh at 09:13 AM | Permalink

Every so often I find myself saying something so dad-like I totally shock myself. Case in point happened this morning:

"See that Finding Nemo puzzle on the floor? Pick it up and put it away or you'll be finding Nemo in the trash."

Posted by flargh at 09:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Hey, can Bicurious Barbie be far behind, now that she's finally dumped that simpering idiot Ken? I can't wait to see her accessories -- Mullet-Wearing Midge, for example, with a flannel shirt wardrobe collection and Barbie's Dream Pickup Truck.

Posted by flargh at 05:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This just seen in iChat:

Random Buddy: So is everyone where you are freaking out over this gay marriage thing in MA?

flargh: yeah, pretty much

flargh: it doesn't help that the governor is a mormon

Random Buddy: A Mormon or a moron?

flargh: yes

Posted by flargh at 11:26 AM | Permalink

I'm not really a PDA kind of guy. I've used them off and on for years, and Bonnie swears by her Handspring, which I bought for her as a Christmas present a few years ago to replace her bulky DayPlanner.

There are a few reasons for this -- what limited information management I actually do I find more convenient to do on my Mac than I do with a handheld; then the handheld becomes one more fragile, delicate and heavy thing to carry with me everywhere I go.

Now there's another reason for me to avoid them: It looks like PalmSource, the business unit that develops the operating system used by Palm PDAs, is ready to leave Mac users out to dry when it launches Cobalt, the new operating system it has developed as an advanced multimedia/enterprise solution.

Larry Slotnick, PalmSource's Chief Products Officer, recently provided an overview of Cobalt to attendees of the PalmSource Conference, and he said in no uncertain terms that PalmSource is leaving it up to third parties to develop connectivity solutions to support Mac OS X and Cobalt.

Getting support from Palm has always been an uphill battle for Mac users -- market share and all that. Palm Desktop is a squirrelly application that still doesn't work completely right in Mac OS X v10.3 "Panther," by Palm's own confession (they plan an update sometime in the first half of 2004 to compensate for these problems; meanwhile Mac users are just expected to suck it up). We're the redheaded stepchild, to be sure.

Palm's third party developers aren't much better. Countless really cool apps don't support the Mac because of their lack of conduit support for the Mac version of the Palm Desktop app.

Apple's tried to compensate a little bit -- its iSync software works well enough to shunt data to and from a Palm PDA via Address Book and iCal, but it's still dependent on Palm's HotSync technology to work.

Now, Slotnick is telling developers that with Cobalt, those days are behind them -- it's going to be up to Mac-specific third-party developers like Mark/Space to create software that Mac users will have to buy for the privilege of being able to exchange data with their PDAs.

This just sucks, especially since Palm was, at one time, and still is, to a lesser degree, populated with ex-Apple employees, many of whom worked on Apple's own ill-fated PDA, the Newton MessagePad. I'm really sad to see it go this way, because it's yet another nail in the coffin of Mac marginalization in enterprise and consumer environments.

I'm hoping that either PalmSource will change its mind and continue to support the Mac directly, or that this will give Apple the impetus they need to develop a less half-assed synchronization solution than iSync affords right now.

Posted by flargh at 07:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

So it's my wife's birthday today, and to celebrate, I'll get an ice cream cake from the grocery store later on today and make her dinner. She's already gotten her presents, though -- we brought them home last night. We adopted two cats from CLAWS, a local cat shelter. (Neither of them are pictured on the site, by the way, although we did get to meet a few of the cats featured there).

Up until last January, we had a cat named Fletchen. He was very elderly, bordering on 20. He was a Maine Coon, and had been Bonnie's cat from high school on. Almost from the time that Bonnie and I started living together we'd kept Fletchen inside, because he was an outdoor cat who wasn't faring particularly well out-of-doors -- he'd already had one near death experience by the time I'd met him and then wandered home one day with a huge abcess on one side from where he'd gotten mauled by another neighborhood cat.

Fletchen was already there when I met her and already there when we had kids; he seemed like a permanent fixture in our lives, although we knew with each passing year that he was getting more elderly and frail. His eyesight and hearing were fading, his beautiful coat had an ashy, grey sheen to it. He moved slower and less spryly, and began to lose weight. Fletchen finally died last year, and what's so odd about it is that he didn't die of old age or any sort of disease -- he got out one day, purely by accident (we'd kept him indoors for years) and was struck by a car. Maybe I'm rationalizing a bit here, but I strongly suspect Fletchen knew the end was near and wanted to get out and away from us before it happened. If the neighbors hadn't found him after he got hit, I suspect we probably wouldn't have seen him again.

Losing him was a personal tragedy for Bonnie, and for me and the kids to a lesser degree. We all loved him very much, but we were grateful that we at least got some closure by seeing his remains off to the vet (and ultimately into a nice little cremation box that Bonnie still has).

So we went a year without another pet save for our goldfish Goldie.

Bonnie announced some time ago that she felt she was ready for another cat, and we'd superficially discussed whether to get a kitten or adopt an adult and what kind of cat to get.

The local newspaper runs a column for the CLAWS program, which is operated by the animal control officer for the town we live in. Every week, she lists the cats that she has available, along with any new arrivals and adoptees. In fact, her basement *is* the shelter, where she keeps almost two dozen cats that are waiting for homes (a lovely place, by the way -- she heats the basement and keeps it meticulously clean and spacious for the cats, some of which have to be kept in cages because they haven't passed medical muster yet).

In last week's issue of the paper they ran a black and white photo of a cat that looked startlingly like our old cat Fletchen. Bonnie gave June, who runs CLAWS, a call, and we set up a time to meet last night.

Handsome, he is called, and he's a longhair of possibly Maine Coon origins -- he's incredibly stocky, very furry, and marked with the breed's distinctive black and brown mackerel tabby stripes.

Apparently Handsome's background is tragic. He was a family pet whose family -- which lived in a neighboring town -- died in a car crash sometime last year; a neighbor of theirs fed him but didn't necessarily take care of him for as long as she could but ultimately remanded him to the custody of the local vet, who turned him over to CLAWS. He'd only been there for a couple of weeks by the time we got to meet him last night.

He's very shy but very sweet, likes to be cuddled and petted and purrs loudly when you do -- he's not vocal at all, nor is he aggressive. As I read him, Handsome has probably been traumatized by all the changes that have happened to him, and I expect it's going to take him some time to settle down and get comfortable in his new surroundings -- like, a month or two at least.

Her name is Scully, and outside of her similar tabby stripes, she's Handsome's polar opposite. While he's a bit reclusive and shy, Scully is outgoing and playful -- she wants to be where the action is, as Bonnie says. We think she's a bit longer in the tooth than Handsome is -- her face and eyes tell me that she's got some years on her, but she's cottoned to the kids immediately, and is very gentle with them and likes to be the center of attention. Like Handsome, she is remarkably quiet and docile. She's also been my shadow. I'm something of a night owl: I got up a couple of times in the night, and found her at my feet each time.

Scully came to CLAWS infested with ticks, roundworm and tapeworm, and had wasted away to nothing at all. Now she's got a healthy, sleek coat and a bit of a paunch, and a ferocious appetite for moist food. She's such a sweet cat we couldn't say no to her. It was nice that June offered to give us Scully for free, because she just wanted to make sure she found a good home. (She'd been there since November with no takers.)

So, we're once again a home with cats in it, and this has made Bonnie incredibly happy -- and that's something I can't put a price on, so it pleases me to no end as well. What's more, all the kids -- even James, who resolutely insists that he is a Dog Person -- are enthusiastic about having cats again too.

Posted by flargh at 09:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

For Massachusetts, a chance and a choice:

"... the distinction between [civil law] and ecclesiastical law is as important as the necessary distinction between church and state.

"...It is to the civil rights of the citizens of Massachusetts that the Supreme Judicial Court responded in the Goodridge case, and this was no attack on the church, nor on religion. It was recognition that the social custom restricting marriage to heterosexuals, a custom long sanctioned by church and society, was no longer to be regarded as consistent with the rights of citizens under the constitution."

I agree with Peter J. Gomes, the author of this article, a Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard University (and an American Baptist minister to boot). Gomes, however, draws a very clear distinction between civil marriage and religious marriage.

It's a division that many people on the opposite side of the Mass. SJC's ruling are fundamentally incapable of understanding or accepting -- including George W. Shrub. To them, marriage is a sacrament, and the state's acknowledgement of it is simply a formality.

To many of those who oppose it, gay marriage is an abomination, just as half a century ago (as Gomes points out, a man of color himself), miscegenation -- or blacks and whites intermarrying -- was considered by many a religious affrontery that the courts had no business invalidating laws against.

This will take much time to resolve. It's not a matter of passing legislation, it's a matter of social engineering. And it's an incredibly polarizing issue that goes straight to the core of what we as a society identify as a family. My only hope is that we can all see some common sense and common ground in the SJC's ruling, but maybe I'm too optimistic about the open-mindness of my fellow citizens of this Commonwealth, and the legislators that we have ultimately endowed with our collective voices.

Posted by flargh at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

...and I could make a million slush puppies in the front yard.

We got about an inch or two of snow this morning, and it's been raining since noon. The snow hasn't dissolved into the rain, however. Instead, it's turned into watery slush. Watery, goopy, horrid slush.

*sigh.*

Posted by flargh at 06:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Via MeFi:

So is ad violence okay then?

"The apoplectic outrage over the halftime show is comically absurd. It reveals, once again, just how much we 'celebrate' violence with our entire families (to borrow a word from [FCC Chairman Michael] Powell) while trying to protect our children from even the briefest exposure to nudity."

And this, written by a former Denver Broncos player.

Posted by flargh at 01:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Continuing my comments the other day about Safari 1.2's "reliance" on Panther technology, Apple's done it again, this time with a public beta version of iChat AV that supports video communication with AIM clients in the Windows world. It's an exciting development because it desegregates Apple and Windows users on the same popular instant messaging network, and opens up the possibility of wider iChat AV use in enterprise environments.

Yet it's Panther only, and people are pissed.

This is a tricky thing. Apple has a very well-deserved reputation for supporting legacy customers long past the point of sensibility; Mac users used to crow about how their six- or seven-year-old Macs could run this software and that with nary a diminished feature.

Those days are long gone, and people holding to that tenet are living in the past.

Since I've been writing about the Mac professionally, Apple has gone through three major CPU architecture revisions and a total operating system overhaul, unconditionally ceasing development and effective support of those legacy systems.

It may not be the nicest thing to do to old customers, but the fact is that if you're running a "NewWorld" Mac (an iMac or newer, basically) and Panther, you have a kick-ass, modern system. I installed Panther on a Rev B iMac -- that's a machine I bought in 1998, I believe -- and while it's not the fastest system in my office, it's actually quite serviceable for everything from Web surfing to listening to MP3s to productivity software.

On one hand, I can understand the displeasure of users of six or seven-year-old computers who want to run today's software but can't. But they only have one reasonable solution, and that's to buy a new computer. It's the equivalent of someone who owns a ten year old car upset that they can't refit it with ABS and side-impact airbags and laser-guided cruise control and all the stuff that today's luxury automobiles have, and it's just as pointless.

To people who forked out $129 for Jaguar and feel they haven't gotten their money's worth, I'm even less sympathetic. You probably spend the equivalent for one or two months' worth of cable television (especially if you're a broadband subscriber), so you don't really have much of a reason to complain. It's small money for a big benefit.

Posted by flargh at 03:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

The New York Times has an interesting article that lays blame for MyDoom where it belongs: Upon the heads of countless users that ignorantly open e-mail attachments without knowing anything about the contents.

To quote:

At a time when more than two-thirds of American adults use the Internet, [computer experts] say, such carelessness is no longer excusable, particularly when it messes things up for everyone else.

Perhaps it's because I have a background in IT, but I share the contempt expressed in this article for the willful ignorance that has led to this widespread problem. Clearly, Microsoft's laggard security and sloppy programming is the underlying issue, but that shouldn't stop people from being smart about what they're doing.

Of course, the New York Times author disregarded the best thing that users concerned about viruses and worms can do: Dump their PCs and buy a Mac.

And yes, it continues. I've continued to refine my spam filters and they seem to be working well, but I'm still besieged with hundreds of MyDoom related e-mails and server bouncebacks daily.

Posted by flargh at 12:03 AM | Permalink

I love this guy. Last year he tried to reach Florida from Cuba in a modified truck; this year he used a '59 Buick. I really wish the INS would let him in the country, just on the basis of effort, originality and perseverance.

Posted by flargh at 02:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Fact is, I've never been a big sports fan my entire life. Played a few when I was a kid; never stuck with anything; really don't push it much on the kids either -- I never want to be one of those fist-pumping, bellowing dads you see on the sidelines -- though the two older ones are both interested in things like Little League baseball and youth soccer, which we're happy to sign them up for.

Never much watched sports either, and I suspect that's an environmental thing -- didn't grow up in a household where televised sports were that big a deal, contrary to my wife's experience, where they were a major social focal point of family and friends gatherings.

Anyway, I've noticed that as I'm getting older I'm enjoying sports on television more and more. Not to the point where I'm tuning into ESPN every day to watch whatever they're showing, but I followed the Pats pretty closely this year, and didn't miss any games after the first three, I think, and that one playoff game we had a local blackout for and missed. Now that the Pats' season is over and they've won the Super Bowl, I'm turning my attention to the Bruins.

So I've been doing some self-analysis to try to figure out *why* I'm finding sports more entertaining than I used to, and I think I've put my finger on it: It's a controlled environment with rules that are fairly easy to understand, but the outcome isn't always predictable, and because of that it's unlike a lot of other forms of entertainment.

Movies and TV, for example, follow a fairly established formula that make it pretty easy to figure out what's going to happen once you know the basic plot and have a handle on the main characters. I find most TV and movies -- even the stuff I like -- to be horribly predictable.

On top of that, sports are just fun to watch. I find the grandstanding of pro football to be a bit much to bear -- the end zone shenanigans and so on -- but I love a good fight at a hockey game. Plus, think about the constant barrage of statistical information that's being thrown at you during the average pro sports game -- player stats, team roster information, game data. Picture-in-picture displays with head shots of players or team formations. Play by play analysis. For someone who thrives on information stimulus to the point of overload, it's a cornucopia.

It's even better when I've got the PowerBook handy; the last few games I've watched I've had the laptop open and turned to the Web page of whatever team I'm watching, and it really helps me get an angle on the team and the players that I've never really had on my own, as I'm not particularly good at memorizing stats and averages.

Bob and Emme are both getting into it now, and I think that's good. If they plan to make any headway in the corporate world, being able to communicate a basic sports vocabulary to coworkers is a good social networking skill, and one that I hope to encourage.

Posted by flargh at 09:34 AM | Permalink

Since Safari 1.2's release yesterday, much has been made in various user forums and other areas about the fact that it's available for Panther -- Mac OS X v10.3 -- only.

What makes this particularly interesting is that with this new release, Safari is making use of user interface technology, security technology and a couple of other things that are built into Panther, not Jaguar. It's a similar tactic that Microsoft has employed in its own Internet Explorer technology -- a tactic that ran Microsoft into legal trouble, at least temporarily.

I'm not sure how I feel about this yet; I don't suspect Apple is going to run into problems, since the Safari Web Kit is something that third-party developers can license and use in their own applications (in fact, the morning after Safari 1.2 was released, a third-party browser based on the technology was updated similarly).

Posted by flargh at 10:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)

Andrew Orlowski has apparently gone totally off his meds, judging from his most recent psychotic ramblings posted by The Register.

Orlowski calls Sunday's Pepsi/iTunes Super Bowl an attempt to "exploit abused children." If you didn't see it, the short spot featured kids who have been accused or prosecuted by the RIAA for stealing copyrighted music. I find his comparison absolutely insulting.

These kids aren't abused or exploited -- the RIAA nailed them doing something wrong, dead to rights, and they're getting paid well by Pepsi for appearing in that ad -- in fact, one of them mentioned in an interview how she plans to use some of what she was paid to pay off her debt to the RIAA for stealing commercial music. How either the RIAA or Pepsi's machinations translate to abuse or exploitation is puzzling at best. What I find most offensive is Orlowski's careless use of language, which trivializes the serious issue of child abuse.

"The broadcast encourages children to buy as much teeth-rotting Pepsi soda as they can in the hope of finding a token that allows them to a free, DRM-infected piece of music," Orlowski froths.

Okay, first of all, the kids can suck down a 20-ounce Diet Pepsi if they prefer and stay away from potential tooth-rot. I won't even go near his baiting "DRM-infected" comment.

Then, in a totally incoherent twist, Orlowski uses the opportunity to start shrilly barking about CBS' decision not to sell MoveOn.org a 30-second spot to show an anti-Bush commercial, citing its policy not to sell ad space to advocacy groups -- something that MoveOn.org probably should have checked on before publicly announcing plans to buy air time during the Super Bowl.

"We're not sure what vacuum these arbiters of public taste live in," Orlowski spews.

Well, CBS lives in a world where they DON'T SELL AD SPACE TO SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS. If MoveOn.org was selling something -- like, say SODA -- they'd be as entitled as the next company with 2.5 million dollars to blow for a thirty-second spot during the Super Bowl. As it is, they're not, and CBS quite within their rights told MoveOn.org to, well, move on.

So, just to summarize: According to Andrew Orlowski's leftist-ranting bullshit, Apple, CBS, Pepsi and the RIAA are all part of some "pigopoly" that seeks to poison us, take our money, and "reduce [our] personal freedoms."

I wish I could pay attention, but I'm too busy staring at Janet Jackson's breast to worry. Say, do we have any more Diet Pepsi in the fridge? Oh, look what just came in the e-mail: My receipt for that copy of Arepa 3000 by Los Amigos Invisibles I bought on the iTunes Music Store yesterday.

You know what they say, Andrew: As long as you're on the side of the fascists, it's the best kind of government to live under.

Posted by flargh at 08:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

FCC to Examine Super Bowl Halftime Show.

I think the comments of everyone involved in this issue speak volumes more than I could. Seems like there's no shortage of righteous indignation any time a tit gets shown on broadcast television in the United States. We're just sooo progressive.

Posted by flargh at 08:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (7)