Reminder to self, in the

Reminder to self, in the "Things to do someday" category: Jim Russell Racing Drivers School has a Highway Survival Course in Sonoma at Sears Point Raceway.

While I'm sitting at the

While I'm sitting at the kitchen table, our son is watching Saturday morning cartoons. Or, called by their true names, "toy tie-in delivery media." Mostly it's deeply crappy pseudo-anime like Digimon. Cheap, incompetently animated (usually, only the mouths move), hardly any story beyond "Bad monster, must destroy!" And LOUD. All shouting, all the time.

I would like to wish

I would like to wish a Good Bear Day to everyone, and the happiest of birthdays just to Tom.

Fit and finish really makes

Fit and finish really makes the difference between products, even operating systems. I was watching TechTV's Call For Help today, because they've been doing stuff on Windows XP all week, and I reckon I'll need to know about it sooner or later. Today's topic was doing a clean install of XP. I couldn't help but compare and contrast with doing a clean install of Mac OS X. When you boot from the Mac OS X CD, you get a great-looking installer program with the new Aqua interface that steps you through the installation process with a minimum of technical choices (the hardest thing that it asks is the info you need to set up your e-mail account).

Booting from the XP Install CD gets you none of the nice new look and feel of XP; instead, you get blocky white text on a blue background. It has that old familiar DOS feel; no mouse control, just the keyboard. Press F8 to accept the EULA. Pick from a variety of confusing choices about NTFS or FAT32. Decide your partitioning scheme. Best of all, a clean install evidently wipes out the whole target partition, so you better have backed up anything you want to keep. To be fair, when you're upgrading from a previous Windows version, you do get a good installer, but it's pretty clear that despite the immense amount of XP hype, when it comes to providing a better out-of-the-box experience, Apple still has it all over Windows.

More about Apple's iPod: I

More about Apple's iPod: I have to confess that I ordered one today, after figuring out how to use it in my car. The Sony car player I have doesn't have a cassette player, just an audio CD player, so I can't use a cassette adaptor for an MP3 player. I've been burning audio CDs from my MP3's, but it's kind of cumbersome. The iPod would be great in the car, if I could get the sound into the car stereo. I looked into having a friend who's an electronics whiz tear the thing apart and hack an audio input into the player, but he came up with a better solution. Today, I ordered an FM modulator, which will accept the audio from the iPod's headphone jack and transmit it on an unused FM frequency, which will then be played through the radio.

But something else caught my attention when I reading more about the iPod today. Reportedly, it has an OS that Apple licensed from Pixo, which makes embedded operating systems for devices like mobile phones. Two thoughts: Does this mean that the iPod's current feature set is likely to expand as time goes by? And I can only think of one other occasion when Apple licensed someone else's operating system for an Apple-branded product. That was AIX, for the Apple Network Servers. I wonder if this means that Apple has lost their Not Invented Here syndrome for their products in the consumer electronics space, of which iPod is obviously only the first. It's tea-leaf reading, but it could mean some interesting and tasty tea.

Ever since my older brother

Ever since my older brother told me he reads this blog occasionally, I've sometimes wondered if I should post stuff that I wouldn't necessarily want a family member to read. My final decision: screw that. But, I do think that he should know that I do think about him visiting here; in fact, this link is just for him. (via Outside Counsel)

I was looking at one

I was looking at one of the Mac rumor sites the other day that was hilariously and pathetically wrong with their "inside information" from "sources" about the Apple iPod. I turned to Dori and said, "Sometimes I can't even believe this BS. Someone needs to call these dopes on their crap." Her eyes lit up, and a quick check of the Whois registry later, an offhand comment has spawned a new blog or bloglike site.

Introducing MacBullshit.Com.

We are currently soliciting contributors for this site. Got something you want to say about something that annoys or offends you? Want to say it with feeling? Want to say it anonymously (or not)? We're there for you. If you're smart enough to be reading this, you're smart enough to contact us. We're looking for both contributing editors and occasional contributors.

Who says all of the good domain names were taken?

BTW, this is not (given what we do, after all) a Mac-bashing site; just a place to deflate those who need it. That could be Apple, its cheerleaders, or its detractors.

Flutterby has plenty of snarky

Flutterby has plenty of snarky links and comments welcoming Windows XP shipping, but I couldn't resist one more:

• 1995: Windows 95 shipped in August
  
• 1996: Jennifer Katherine Gates born, approx. 9 months later
  
• 1998: Windows 98 shipped in June
  
• 1999: Rory John Gates born, approx. 9 months later
  
• 2001: Windows XP shipped in October

I'm starting the betting pool now.

Via Obscure Store: Woman 'cooks'

Via Obscure Store: Woman 'cooks' mail in microwave to get rid of imagined anthrax contamination. She burned her mail to a crisp, and destroyed the microwave. Her name is being withheld as part of the local fire department's program to protect the moronic.

Damn, they missed me again.

Damn, they missed me again.

Welcome, Ian!

Welcome, Ian!

I've got a somewhat different

I've got a somewhat different take on what Dori said about the iPod below. First, there's no reason that the other MP3 device manufacturers should stop supporting the Mac, because iTunes and the forthcoming iTunes 2 support their players now, and will continue to do so. Companies like Creative and SonicBlue bundle software from third parties; they don't make it themselves. I imagine that they're happy that they don't have to work out a bundling deal.

Second, the iPod would solve two low-level problems that I have: One, my aging Rio 500's limited storage capacity really isn't enough; I'd been thinking of maybe something else. Two, I'd been considering getting an external FireWire hard disk for those times when I need to transport data. Since the iPod's 5 Gb hard drive can also double as a storage device in FireWire disk mode, that would give me one device that would cure both problems. Sure, 5 Gb is small these days, but I usually only need to carry a few hundred megabytes of data with me, at the most. If I think of it as a new portable audio player and as a portable FireWire drive, that $400 price tag seems more reasonable.

Okay, I've seen the iPod

Okay, I've seen the iPod and I've watched the commercial. And all I can say is, "Snore."

When Jobs first came back to Apple, he did a great job of getting rid of all the stupid stuff that Apple was doing (some would say too good a job). One of the things that he got rid of was all the consumer products like scanners and printers, because other companies can do them cheaper and better.

The iPod is just another consumer device; one that's already been done better and cheaper by others. As just one example, the Creative Nomad Jukebox is $250 vs. the iPod's $400. It even has a larger hard drive: 6 Gb vs. the iPod's 5 Gb. And for another $20 ($270 total), you can get the Creative Nomad Jukebox C, which can also record.

If you think that the Jukebox is too big or too heavy, there's also the Rio 800, which doesn't hold as much music, but only weighs 2.4 ounces vs. iPod's 6.5. And again, it's only $250. Just to be fair, the iPod is a better deal than the Rio 800 Extreme, which only holds 384 Mb for $460.

But keep in mind: all of these support the Mac market. And if Apple starts competing against them, what's their motivation to continue to support the Mac?

I think that Apple made the right decision to kill consumer products originally. I think that Apple could have come out with something new and compelling in this field that bridged the gap between the consumer market and the computer. But I think that the iPod ain't it.

No news is still no

No news is still no news, but there is an update, and thanks for asking. More info next week (she says, once again ).

Reminder: we're going to be

Reminder: we're going to be talking to the NBMA Developer's SIG Tuesday night in San Rafael. See you there?

Reasonable security measures for flying

Reasonable security measures for flying may be inconvenient, but are nothing to worry about. But when security employees keep someone from flying because of his reading material, there's obviously something seriously wrong.

I had no idea that

I had no idea that Windows XP couldn't rip MP3's, or play DVDs (!) without extra-cost add-ons from third parties ($20, if you want both capabilities). But don't worry, be happy! You can still make copies of music in the proprietary, Windows-only WMA format. Details in the News.com article Microsoft's music pitch a little off-key.

From Salon, here's a screamingly

From Salon, here's a screamingly funny account of the Michael Jackson-headlined benefit concert Sunday in D.C. One small highlight:

The waits [between sets, due to rampant technical problems] continued, the show seemingly lasting forever. Most of the performers have to enroll their kids in the D.C. school system. Rod Stewart is now a naturalized U.S. citizen. Whomever you came with you're now legally married to. DMV employees in the audience have gotten impatient and left.

Pipedreams and daydreams is a

Pipedreams and daydreams is a clear-thinking article by a Pakistani commentator about the widespread conspiracy theories being bandied about in the Muslim world (did you know that the WTC attacks were carried out by either the Israelis or the US Government?), and the tragic consequences that the lack of reason is bringing to Islam. This column seems to be updated frequently, so you might need to use the Archives link (many of the other articles there are good, too). It's valuable to read stuff that isn't mediated by the US media, I think. Via my old friend Paul Music.

I've been reading that there

I've been reading that there are actually people out there who are taking Cipro with no idea if they've been exposed to anthrax or any other agent, "just as a precaution." It makes me wonder -- aw hell, it confirms my longtime suspicions -- that some people are just too stupid to get up in the morning.

I was treated with Cipro when I had pneumonia. It's a jet-propelled antibiotic that first made me nauseous and feverish, and then the diarrhea hit like a nuclear attack. Cipro cured the pneumonia, but it was nasty enough that I refused it when another doctor wanted to prescribe it for another, lesser ailment a couple of years later. Besides the immediate discomfort, taking antibiotics when you don't need them is a great way to make sure that they won't work for you when you do need them.