Category: observations

CNN.com – Authorities await Jackson’s surrender – Nov. 20, 2003

Authorities are awaiting the surrender of pop star Michael Jackson and say they plan to charge him with multiple counts of child molestation.
Continue reading “of talent wasted”

stevenberlinjohnson.com: Apple On Speed

I’d been thinking a little recently about Apple and speed, though not speed in the sense of window redrawing, but speed in the sense of upgrade cycles. It seems to me that Apple has managed to release a prodigious amount of new software in the past two years: two significant upgrades to OS X, each with hundreds of new features (along with the performance increases.) But also think of all the new applications. Start with the iLife package — major upgrades to iTunes including the Apple Music Store; upgrades to iMovie and iDVD; entirely new applications in iPhoto and iChat AV. And then somehow they’ve managed to produce what basically amounts to a complete productivity suite, built from scratch: iCal, Address Book, Mail, Keynote, iSync. And on top of that, in a year they’ve managed to assemble what a lot of people seem to think is the best browser on the market — Safari.

Am I missing something, or is this a significantly faster development cycle than Microsoft’s?

What makes Steve run? I commented on the above-referenced post, so I won’t repeat it here. I think the rest of the post is worth reading, as well.

Daring Fireball: Siracusa on Panther

It’s gotten to the point where I don’t know what I look forward to more: Apple’s annual Mac OS X update, or Siracusa’s review of it.

I read the Jaguar review and thought it was reasonable: I’m sure this one is, too. But what really matters to me is that it’s better than what I was using, and I am satisfied with that so far.

I should go read it to see how he feels about Safari, which I have found disappointing so far: I’m using Firebird more and more . . . .

Listening to the coverage of King George’s state visit to London, I keep finding my teeth on edge as I hear the commentators use Britain and England interchangeably. Britain is a shorthand expression for Great Britain which is, in my view, outmoded, a reference to the days of Empire, when the sun never set on it . . . . historically, it includes Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, not all of which would have extended that invitation.

He is in *England*, of which London is the capitol.

My new iBook’s trackpad was still acting up today, so I resorted to reading the instructions.

I was looking through the manual and it showed how to add memory or an Airport card by removing the keyboard. I didn’t need to do it, but hey, why not? Then I found I couldn’t get it back on, and realized the Airport card wasn’t seated properly. It was warping the keyboard when I tried to reinstall it. Since the keyboard hadn’t been warped before, I can only assume that the stress was being felt by the trackpad assembly, and since I’ve seen no further recurrence, I think I’ve fixed it.

Educated Guesswork: November 2003 Archives

Why should the record companies go along with this? A number of reasons. First, it isolates them from risk. If people are buying in bulk without regard to the details of the collections that they’re getting then the record companies don’t have to worry so much about whether a particular album succeeds or fails. Second, it gives them an opportunity to extract more money. The record companies had revenues of about $12 billion in 2002. That’s an average of only about $50/consumer.

So why do consumers have to do all the work here? This doesn’t do much to overturn the stereotypical image of expensively dressed, ponytail wearing blockheads as representatives of the music industry . . . .

MoveOn.org: Democracy in Action

A recent analysis by the Merkle foundation, (working with data from a software company that received venture capital from a CIA-sponsored firm) demonstrates this point in a startling way:

· “In late August 2001, Nawaq Alhamzi and Khalid Al-Midhar bought tickets to fly on American Airlines Flight 77 (which was flown into the Pentagon). They bought the tickets using their real names. Both names were then on a State Department/INS watch list called TIPOFF. Both men were sought by the FBI and CIA as suspected terrorists, in part because they had been observed at a terrorist meeting in Malaysia.

· These two passenger names would have been exact matches when checked against the TIPOFF list. But that would only have been the first step. Further data checks could then have begun.

· Checking for common addresses (address information is widely available, including on the internet), analysts would have discovered that Salem Al-Hazmi (who also bought a seat on American 77) used the same address as Nawaq Alhazmi. More importantly, they could have discovered that Mohamed Atta (American 11, North Tower of the World Trade Center) and Marwan Al-Shehhi (United 175, South Tower of the World Trade Center) used the same address as Khalid Al-Midhar.

· Checking for identical frequent flier numbers, analysts would have discovered that Majed Moqed (American 77) used the same number as Al-Midhar.

· With Mohamed Atta now also identified as a possible associate of the wanted terrorist, Al-Midhar, analysts could have added Atta’s phone numbers (also publicly available information) to their checklist. By doing so they would have identified five other hijackers (Fayez Ahmed, Mohand Alshehri, Wail Alsheri, and Abdulaziz Alomari).

· Closer to September 11, a further check of passenger lists against a more innocuous INS watch list (for expired visas) would have identified Ahmed Alghandi. Through him, the same sort of relatively simple correlations could have led to identifying the remaining hijackers, who boarded United 93 (which crashed in Pennsylvania).”

In addition, Al-Midhar and Nawaf Alhamzi, the two who were on the terrorist watch list, rented an apartment in San Diego under their own names and were listed, again under their own names, in the San Diego phone book while the FBI was searching for them.

It’s instructive but painful to read these things . . . .

Where’s the outrage? Is the economy so bad we’re not able to see what’s happening in the larger world?

Not to put too fine a point on it, but what is needed is better and more timely analysis.

I would restate this as more clear direction and better communication at the field level. We heard all about this problem after the attacks, as field agents in one office were unsuccessful at making the connections that could have prevented the attacks. It reflects a top-down management style that I thought the Vietnam war had sufficiently discredited.

Perhaps this exists but I have found it not . . . . .

I would like to enable alerts of updated comments to a post to prior posters. For example, if Post 99 is commented on by Posters Aloysius, Beatrice and Carlyle, I would like each poster to be alerted, similarly to the way the weblog owner is, as new comments are added.

So when Deirdre adds her 2 cents, Aloysius, Beatrice, and Carlyle can come back and add theirs, and likewise when Elihu adds his . . . .

How to install Windows XP in 5 hours or less [dive into mark]

My Windows XP installation has reached its half-life. (You do know that Windows has a half-life, don’t you? Every installation of Windows naturally degrades along a logarithmic curve until it becomes annoying, then unbearable, then unusable. Each successive revision of Windows has featured a slightly longer half-life. Back in the day, Windows 95 would last me about 3 months, while my copy of Windows XP has lasted me almost 9. I’m not bitter; when you realize that you’re measuring on a logarithmic scale, a factor of 3 improvement is really quite impressive.)

A long article and a still longer thread of comments.

I’m struck by two things: 1. how Mark’s experience was similar to my own of earlier this year with WIN2k, and 2. how few people understood what he was trying to do.

To be fair, he could have been more precise: he wasn’t just installing Windows XP, but doing a lot of post-installation work to make it useable. That said, nothing should be that difficult, and the fanboys’ reaction is typical. They’re most likely gamers to whom reformatting costs them nothing since their scores are stored on a server, or minimally skilled users of a couple of applications (like IE and the various pr0n viewing utilities they need).

Albums in MP3 Format (Sat Nov 15 21:54:25 2003)

[My] Albums in MP3 Format

This is a nice little thing, even if it does rub my nose in the sad state of my ID3 tags (I swear they were OK on the machine this collection used to live on: I guess more than just the track counts got lost in the two moves this wad of material has been through lately).

<UPDATE>I spent some time poring over ID3 tags and re-ran the script: it looks better now, but it does point out some inconsistencies in how CDs get ripped. I specified 192 kbits and too many of them are 128 or 160.

It seems we’re one step closer to this idea. At the very least, if lots of people generate these lists, Google will help locate like-minded music fans, but what about something more, well, lazy?