Apple Lied, People Died (Well, maybe not)

To confirm my editorial spin on a story from a few weeks back, Google has released documents essentially confirming that Apple's weasel words are just that - they're lying about not rejecting Google Voice.

Eh, I'll get another fifteen minutes of fame in a couple of months. . .

I posted a semi-sly bit of editorial imaging onto Reddit about five hours ago, and came back after some Father's Day stuff to find it the top link on Reddit and on the front page of Digg, submitted by another user. It took me about a day to think of asking Alan Schaaf, the creator of Imgur, to include a watermark with my blog address in the image. He was familiar with it and glad to help.

EDIT: It was, in fact, the #1 link on both Reddit and Digg for the day.

Direct link: http://imgur.com/gQouk.jpg

Or click the image to view in fullscreen below:


Funny how Photoshopped borders and twenty minutes can get this kind of response.

Oh, and the attentive among you may notice that I've edited the image here. Frankly that particular word, however hilarious, isn't in my normal vernacular. Imgur doesn't allow you to edit submitted images so I'm stuck with it. (Ignore my explanation here if you don't care in the slightest.)

Just Say "NO!" To Comp-u-brains!

While calling Apple Computer's support line, and later while arranging a pickup with DHL Shipping, I encountered a strange, obnoxious system in place. I've long been familiar with the insidious recent trend for corporate phonelines which requires you to say the option that you would like rather than pushing buttons on the phone as a voice reads your options. The only purpose that this can achieve is to make you feel like a Grade-A dork saying things like "tell me more" out loud in public places, between long silences.

But these menu systems were even worse. You see - they tried to make the computer sound like a human. Apparently unfamiliar with the concept of the uncanny valley, the developers of this phone support service apparently thought it a good idea for the computer to give human-like answers and self-deprecating comments that do not apply to computers in any real sense.

Here are some of the most offensive comments from the two support sessions. Keep in mind that all of these statements were prerecorded by humans trying to inflect like normal humans:

After I gave my address: "I'm sorry. I don't think I got that. Could you please repeat what you just said?"

After I indicated that the number on file was wrong: "My mistake. Can I get the new number?"

When I asked to speak to a representative: "Okay. I just checked and you might have to wait about five minutes. Is that okay?"

ARGH! Perhaps when listed these don't seem so ridiculous, but having to speak into a phone rather than quickly navigating menus, all the while listening to unapplicable usages of human conversation made me uncomfortable if not actually angry. As far as I'm concerned, a computer saying "my mistake" is inexcusable; how about "I'm sorry. Your squeaky nerd voice and my voice-recognition software appear to be at odds. Please try again, meatbag."

After all, the entire reason why we have this type of technology is to eliminate ambiguity, but all they've done is to add an inefficient layer of "pretend to be human" and voice recognition over the already perfectly good support system. I miss the old days, when the humans who prerecorded their voices for phone support lines sounded like robots.

By the way, there's a secret unlisted option that you can use with these systems to make modifications to the voice chip and behavior of the system. Here it is:

"Listen, you mothergrabbing electronic bastidge, give me a real human or pulse-based menu system before I find your Silicon Valley CPU and feed it to a goat."

I was this close to using it.

Repagination: View Multiple Pages In One Window

I just downloaded a great Firefox Extension called Repagination, which allows you to get around the obnoxious recent trend of websites which split articles into multiple pages. It's pretty non-obtrusive: just right-click on the page's "Next" button and indicate how many pages you would like to add on to your existing window.

Now, it adds the entire page, meaning that ads and banners will be duplicated, but it's still far better than tabbing a hundred windows with the clickwheel button or waiting for sites to load. I highly recommend this plug-in for webcomics and blogs with long archives. You can even set the browser to cycle through pages automatically. Crash somebody's computer by loading "All" in a Google search window with 1,500,000 views! The utility of the program goes on and on.

Download Repagination

NOTE: It seems that the extension tops out at one hundred pages, meaning that attempting to load the totality of Google onto your friend's computer won't crash the thing. (I searched for the word "the" and it took up about 85MB of RAM before stopping.) Might I suggest a page full of autoplaying video clips instead?

More Neat Computer Tricks

I find this stuff endlessly fascinating. One of my new favorite blogs, Lifehacker, reports that you can simulate a "No To All" command in Windows when copying many files, by holding Shift as you click "No." Previously I'd clicked about as many fast as a hummingbird's heartbeat trying to keep my precious files from being copied earlier.

This is timely - those blasted "thumbs.db" files prolonged an extended copy of mine by three hours earlier today. Just try to leave your Compy unattended for a minute. . .

Put Some Anti-Establishment Into Your USB Drive

You might not consider anarchic art and mainstream computer culture particularly friendly bedfellows (they're not - they're really not), but nobody would blame you for trying out one of these nifty sawed-off USB drives. The thing looks like a safety hazard (there I go again), but there's no actual current flowing through those jagged, torn wires so rest easy. Go over to Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories and make one for yourself!

via Lifehack.org

Google "Custom Time"

Google's new service for tricking people into thinking that you remembered important things has got me intrigued. The prospect of sending an e-mail dated in the past (for example, before that important anniversary, birthday or deadline) sounds useful, but allowing Gmail users to send e-mails to others that have already been marked read, even before they have been read . . . that's just devious and wonderful. Deviously wonderful.

Anyway, you only get 10 per year, lest message receivers "lose faith in the accuracy of time, thus rendering the feature useless." Great stuff.

EDIT: OK - technically it was April Fool's day, considering that I read the sucker at 1:30 in the morning. Still, I'm not ashamed that I got taken in - it was part of the March 31 sleep cycle, after all. Now it's time to create some demand so they'll actually go out and create this.

Suing Best Buy

Washington, D.C. resident Raelyn Campbell is suing Best Buy for $54 million connected to the loss of her laptop. The computer had been in for repairs for quite some time and she got fed up.

It's interesting to note that, while this may sound like another case of judicial vigilantism gone wrong, her grounding philosophy is seductively compelling. Her blog, the alliteratively-titled "BestBuyBadBuyBoycott.Blogspot" details her side:

I have filed a lawsuit against Best Buy and launched this blog in an effort to bring attention to the reprehensible state of consumer property and privacy protection practices at America's largest consumer electronics retailer, with the hope that it might motivate Best Buy to effect changes and spare future consumers the experience I have been subjected to -- or worse. The short story is that Best Buy and its representatives: 1) allowed my computer to be stolen from the Best Buy store in Tenleytown Washington, DC, 2) fabricated records and tried to cover up the theft, 3) lied to me for weeks about the repair status of the stolen computer, 4) responded to repeated requests for a theft investigation and compensation with indifference and insults, and 5) demonstrated a company-wide disregard for legal obligations to immediately disclose the theft and notify me of potential exposure to identity theft over the course of the ordeal. Relevant documents and details follow the below timeline. [All emphasis, italics, underlines etc. in original document.]

Best Buy has "compensated" her for the cost of the laptop, including a $500 gift certificate, which she donated to charity (they made these decisions without her knowledge and without indication after repeated requests for an investigation). Had they responded immediately and honestly with this information and paid the rebate upon the theft of the laptop, I think most rational people would take a "these things happen" approach, recommend that the woman take her money and be satisfied. That's not how things went down, though. After months of stalling, outright fabrications and neglect, she finally filed a lawsuit against the company.

Campbell freely acknowledges that $54 million is a "ridiculous" sum of money, but she has a point to make. I'm interested. I think that the actual amount awarded, assuming that she wins, should be less (a million at most for actual damages), but if the company is forced to acknowledge the systematic inconsistencies in their system, she'll have "won" anyway. Besides, this thing is going to get a lot more press with a $54 million lawsuit than a small claims lawsuit. What do you think?

The Future From 1979

By way of The Pointless Museum comes an excellent treat - full color scans of every page of The Usborne Book of the Future, written by Ken Gatland and David Jefferis and first published in 1979. As a dated representation of a possible future it's remarkably compelling - the visual design and illustrative quality of the book is topnotch. I used to have books like these. (Thanks once again to boingboing for the heads-up.)

The Usborne Book of the Future

Microsoft: New Internet Explorer Better Than Ever, Downloading Firefox Made Easier

REDMOND, WASHINGTON - A press release from Microsoft headquarters released this morning celebrates the new features available in Microsoft's new Internet Explorer 7, designed to make the process of finding and downloading Mozilla Firefox simpler than ever.

"Our new interface and 'tab' system allows the user to locate and download the newest version of Mozilla Firefox far, far more conveniently than previous versions of Internet Explorer", Microsoft Spokesman Pauline Hardy comments in the press release dated Dec 20: "The new download manager handles the small download easily, allowing the user to begin quality browsing with Firefox sooner than ever."

The new minimalist interface and lack of visible menus makes an unambiguous, daring statement: Microsoft has taken off the kid gloves. "Microsoft is absolutely committed to our customers", says Hardy. "Security, speed and reliability are all central tenets of our corporate philosophy, and this is why the user's ability to acquire and run Firefox quickly and immediately is a top concern."

An Internet Explorer user running the browser for the first (and last) time.

The Original Zombie Infection Simulator

I'm currently studying the code of the Zombie Infection Simulator by Kevan Davis for my java programming class, and I realized that many of you may not have seen this wonder for yourselves. To experience the joy of watching a panic-stricken city of little pixel people fight off a full-scale zombie invasion just follow the link:

The Original Zombie Infection Simulator

This Apple is Going Bad

Now Apple's done it. In an effort to shackle consumers to iTunes downloads and services (not to mention iTunes itself), Apple has rewritten the iPod database to remove compatibility with alternate players. The sentence from the ipodminusitunes article says it all:

"So, it's finally happened. Unhappy with other media players being better than iTunes, Apple have apparently decided to stop them from working with the new range of iPods."

I do not use iTunes on my computer. I use a program called Anapod Explorer, which makes the file transfer process simple and easy. Changing tags and labels of songs (for example to save all audio files to a given album) is easy and, above all, it doesn't force me to synchronize my music or download DRM copy-protected tracks (not a track on my iPod is copy-protected and I won't download from any site that puts such cuffs on their music). In short: iTunes is inconvenient to use. Not as bad as anything in Windows Vista, but far from great.

This makes me sick to my stomach. Reducing freedom and reducing compatibility is not the way to go. In a good few years, when it comes time for me to buy a new audio player, it won't be an iPod. Not a chance, unless something changes. (I'm aware that people will still reverse-engineer the code and make it possible to use other programs, but this is a matter of principle.

Sorry. No jokes today. I'm trying to earn the "Spittin' Nails" tag on this post.

iPod Woes (Well, Sort Of)

I never thought that I'd turn obsolete in one month.



Thirty-two days after my happy transition into the digital music world with my new black 30GB iPod Video, Apple makes my iPod obsolete and, as is their wont, introduces a newer, huger model - the inevitable new specs object for the tech-crazed blogosphere this Christmas season.

The New iPod Classic - and a New Price For an Old One

My 30GB cost $250 when I ordered it. Now the 30GB has been replaced with the 80GB at the same price point. Had I waited I would have gotten about two and two-thirds times the storage space for the same price. The 80GB's old spot has been taken by the absolutely brobdingnagian new 160GB iPod classic. "Forty thousand songs!" the advertisement reads.

One hundred sixty thousand minutes, assuming four minutes per song.

One hundred eleven days of continuous playback (by my experience, something like two hundred battery charge cycles, though Apple's inflated battery life estimates would put it closer to 66 cycles).

But I'm absolutely satisfied with what I have now (slight twinge of buyer's remorse at passing up the 160GB model notwithstanding). To give a little context, my existing iPod offers a mere twenty days of playback. I've already got 3,200 songs and something like five hours of video on the sucker (and a hearty 14GB of space remaining) and haven't even gotten close to listening to it all. So, I'll stick with what I've got for now - at least, until the inevitable moment when Apple unveils the new 3TB iPod Classic* with a Pez dispenser and flashlight (still no FM tuner, of course).



*How long can Apple keep using that word "Classic" until we realize they're lying? Let's all get on the same page: the only "classic" iPod is the first one - the one shaped like a first-generation GameBoy and a mechanical scroll wheel. A mechanical scroll wheel, for crying out loud.

Terrifying PS3 Scream . . . . Uh, Screen

Everybody check out this custom PS3 screen. Kotaku apparently doesn't like it very much, but I think this is awesome and should be part of the regular line. Phenomenal cosmic power . . . itty-bitty living space:
What I want to know is: is somebody going to be paying Pink Floyd for the royalties?

Driven Ever Closer to Machinicide

My computer has been doing things to me lately. Unpredictable, irrational things that make me contemplate all sorts of machine torture. I'm sure many of you will be familiar with things like this:

1) Closing my browser with no problem and no explanation. It all starts when you get that dreaded "Send Report" window. Though your browser works fine under the error message it all gets closed. Internet Explorer, the only browser currently working on my computer, has no "session recover" function like Firefox, so I must reload all pages manually. Having a "recover" function or a "browser doesn't crash for no reason" function would require giving a care. It's not as bad as it used to be. Remember the days when your whole computer would freeze when there was some pitiful problem in Minesweeper or MSWorks? Being able to isolate the problem to individual programs on the computer has made Microsoft lazy on individual programs.

2) Internet Explorer starts out with a fast download speed, then slowly, slowly crashes like a drug addict on my front lawn. Why on earth does my download manager FlashGet recover from a performance dip, but Internet Explorer, the most popular web browser in the world, hasn't figured out how to recover. Did Microsoft think that nobody downloads large files?

3) That infernal search function in Windows XP consistently throws me off. Why is it so wordy? Why can't you just type the name of the file that you're looking for and find it? Sure, you can turn off that braindead dog and change the abysmal default settings to approximate older versions of Windows, but why does MS think the word "Preferences" should be replaced by the far-less-intuitive "change the way windows searches for files and folders?" As the future dawns will users not be allowed to work quickly at the computer anymore? Is everything going to turn into some obnoxious troubleshooting wizard? (Actually I think the wizards in Windows were modelled after Lestor, Merlin's disabled brother.)

4) Thank you, Windows, for reminding me for the umpteenth time that modifying or deleting files in my hard drive could damage the computer? Do you think that I clicked there by accident? That I'm some palsied Cro-Magnon troglodyte attempting to chew on the keyboard? Trust me with my own computer or give me an alternative who does.

I have a hundred more, but here's the crux of the problem: Microsoft seems to think that friendly and intuitive are the same thing. If icons are larger, have a cute animation when you click them, and furry animals help me to search, very well. Until I've used the computer for more than a week and want to use the stupid thing myself without all the hand-holding. I hear that the new Windows Vista is even worse.

It won't be too long until life mirrors the classic "Dilbert" comic:

Computer Salesperson: "Our computer only has one button. And we press it before it leaves the factory."

Fear for the human race.