I've owned a bunch of Apple laptops: a Duo 210, a PowerBook 5300c, an iBook 500MHz & and iBook 800MHz. The only one that did not need repair at some point was the 500MHz iBook, and I only kept that for a year and a half.
There was a problem with the Duos where the keyboard was excessively mushy. Apple created some sort of repair extension program for that, and I got it taken care of for free when I brought the Duo in to a dealer to have a modem installed. That Duo ran like a champ until I sold it.
The 5300 series, everyone knows what crap they were. I had screen hinge problems and bezel separation problems, all kinds of crap. Apple instituted a 7 year repair extension program for those. Toward the end of it they did a trade-in offer for remaining 5300 owners to get a discount on a G3 Powerbook. I had sold my 5300c on eBay long before that, though, because I didn't need a laptop any longer.
In June 2001 I bought the 500MHz iBook, it ran problem-free for the 18 months I had it and went everywhere with me in my backpack when I was working. Sold it a year ago on eBay for only $200 less than I paid for it.
A year ago I bought an 800MHz iBook. About a month ago, I ran into the display problem everyone's bitching and moaning about, but I had not heard of this being a frequent problem back then. My iBook was still within warranty by a few weeks. I called the support line without a chip on my shoulder about it. The guy on the other end was friendly and professional. He also spoke intelligible English, because he was American-- a major plus after dealing with Dell support for one of my clients. He walked me through some tests, agreed that the unit was hosed, and dispatched a box. I got my iBook back a week later, good as new. I also bought AppleCare while I was on the phone with him. Like I said, I wasn't aware of the frequency of this problem at the time-- but I figured that if I sold this iBook to upgrade to a newer Apple laptop, the extended warranty would be a nice selling point. Likewise, if I kept it for 3 more years and something went wrong, I'd be covered.
To sum up, in my experience, when Apple has a widespread defect like this, they eventually do the right thing. The best example is their program to do free repairs on the PowerBook 5300 defects for an extraordinary seven years from the date the model was discontinued, followed by trade-in offers for a discount on new equipment.
As for these iPod battery whiners, though, I say tough shit. It's a *battery*. Batteries will eventually cease to do their job and need to be replaced. Most will last as long as their manufacturer (who is NOT Apple, BTW) intended. Some will go well beyond that. Some will fail right away, within your warranty, and some will die sooner than manufacturer spec but after your iPod warranty. Them's the breaks.
This isn't for YOU, it's for your neighbor. Or your uncle, your Mom, or anyone else who DOESN'T have a closet full of overclocked Celeron 366 motherboards, and a working knowledge of Linux.
This is targeted at people who likely paid $400 (grudgingly) for their whole computer. They're going to take one look at this thing, see it doesn't include a keyboard or monitor (ignoring the fact that they're not needed) and dismiss it as too expensive.
There is no future for a device where its target market is too cheap to purchase it.
for some reason they're immune to this barrage of RTFM and instead it is Microsoft who gets the blame.
Because Microsoft's marketing blows sunshine up people's asses. People believe they are buying a simple system that will just run, never need maintenance, and protect them from messing it up. In reality Windows is a complex system that needs a fair bit of maintenance, or at least care on the part of the user to not do something that will cause problems (like open any old e-mail attachment in their inbox, no matter who the sender, or download any old file from Kazaa, or install Bonzi or other stupid shit like that).
When you try to explain to people that they need to run Software Update and virus scans and do other system maintenance once in a while, they don't want to hear it. "You mean I paid all this money (read: $399) for this computer and it doesn't do all that stuff for me? Forget it!"
From the article: In the event, there was no military action. The oil embargo faltered and was ended a few months later. Israel and Egypt went on to sign a peace agreement.
Wow, imagine the embargo not faltering on its own, and the U.S. rolling in to take some oil fields. That would have made life more interesting back then, especially if we went into Kuwait and the Soviets goaded the Iraqis into trying to throw us out. A variant of the Gulf War being fought in 1973, with the U.S. as aggressor and Iraq as pseudo-defender. Definite alternate-history novel fodder here.
I remember seeing MD-DATA drives in a few MacWarehouse catalogs back in the early-to-mid 90's. All I remember about them is they were horrendously expensive.
The much cheaper Zip appeared not long after and singlehandedly destroyed any chance the MD-DATA drive had for a floppy-like degree of acceptance in the market, technically superior or not.
And back when they were first introduced, the Zip drives were of good quality. I ordered mine five minutes after opening the first MacWarehouse catalog where they were offered (March of 1995, IIRC). That drive saw regular use until less than a year ago when I 'decommisioned' it upon getting a SCSI-less G4. I still have it, and have no reason to believe it wouldn't work fine if I hooked it up to one of my older Macs. I think the first time I even heard the term "click of death" was in 1997 or 1998.
I'll never forget it. I was at my cousin's house, and he had a C64 and a 300 baud modem. Right before my eyes, he dialed up some pirate BBS, downloaded a cracked copy of Out Run, and we started playing.
That was the "first one's free!" experience that set me on the long road to internet addiction. And that was also the day I began to dislike the woefully un-modemed Tandy 1000 my parents had gotten me.
Back in '91, I was in my freshman year at Drexel. I quickly discovered BBSing and before I bought my own modem at home I was using the four Mac SE/30s with dial-out capability they had in the computer center for hours at a time, basically doing nothing but downloading software. Often I would turn down the brightness on the screens all the way, so people wouldn't notice what was going on-- then I'd go to class, and return to load up the box of blank floppies in my backpack with the now-downloaded warez. Those machines didn't get used very much by anyone else for some reason-- I think only once did someone complain about me hogging all of them all the time. Long distance charges were never a problem, the Philadelphia area had a ton of cool boards that were only local calls.... Land of Oz, Ferrari's Shop, ARB-1... <sniffle>
The eMate was a success in its market, but it was killed by Jobs upon his return because it was the progeny of his arch-nemesis, John Sculley. Likewise the Newton 2x00 series machines, which at the time of their discontinuation were getting good reviews and finally throwing off the reputation of the original MessagePad. IMHO, Palm devices did not catch up to the Newton 2x00's capabilities until mid-2000.
It's a silicon-based solid with a porous, sponge-like structure in which 99.8 percent of the volume is empty space. By comparison, aerogel is 1,000 times less dense than glass.
Not counting Office macro viruses, there are less than fifty viruses for the 'classic' Mac OS. If you download an old copy of Disinfectant, you can read about all of them and what they do. Very few were malicious. I don't know if there even were any Office macro viruses that were malicious when activated on a Mac-- IME, the Mac was always just a carrier of them.
There are still no known viruses specific to Mac OS X. Most Mac users I know don't even bother with antivirus software, and the ones who do do it just as a courtesy, so they don't pass along any infected stuff sent to them by a Windows user.
Trust me, if there was an OS X virus, you'd hear about it-- CNet, ZDNet, and the rest of the Wintel-centric computing press would be tripping over their schadenfreude in their rush to get the story out. If you don't believe me, then you missed this article.
Um, NeXT machines were not personal computers, they were high-end workstations that cost about $10K. Also, only about 50,000 were ever made between 1988 and 1993, so they weren't going to be sitting on the shelves in your local SoftWarehouse (which is what CompUSA was called before they were called CompUSA). NeXT machines were quite popular in universities and government agencies in the late 80's and early 90's. Lots of used NeXT hardware comes still emblazoned with stickers stating things such as "Top Secret," "CIA" or "NASA." No joke.
And NeXT did go somewhere-- into the computer on which I'm typing this post, and those of anyone reading it on a machine running OS X.
~Philly
PS- Now you know TWO people who own a NeXTStation. I bought one in 1999 for my collection of interesting computers from the past.
IMHO, it's hard to call Go a legitimate "flop"-- they were killed mostly by deliberate acts of Microsoft, who (at the time) developed and marketed Pen Windows for little reason other than to prevent Go from getting a foothold in a market where Microsoft had no competing product. Microsoft also used their old tricks of OEM and ISV intimidation to keep companies from working with Go, and used their infamous per-processor licensing to stick a Microsoft-imposed tax on the PenPoint OS.
Granted, Go Corp was victim of a few bad decisions by its own management, but more than one of those was made with the specter of Microsoft in mind, or after MS already had them on the ropes.
Some Macintosh models have clocks that reset to August 27, 1956 (and to a time other than midnight, I believe). This is the birthdate (and time) of Ray Montagne, the Apple engineer and programmer who designed the chip that controlled the PRAM on those models.
As for January 1, 1904, this date was selected because the original Mac's clock (which counts in seconds) can encompass a period of about 136 years. Selecting 1904 as the start date means that the 136-year period covered by the clock (1904-2040) includes the birthdate of nearly every Mac user, and extends well past the expected lifetime of the Mac OS. It also means that the simplest rule for leap-years can be used (every fourth year has an extra day), which simplifies day and date calculations. They didn't choose the year 1900 because it was not a leap year.
Macs may have been the first that could be bought with an integrated CDROM (I can't say either way)
I can. External SCSI CD drives were around for the Mac for a while (I can remember the first one was 1x, and how big a deal it was when the 2x models came out), but the Mac IIvx circa 1992 was the first personal computer to ship with an internal CD-ROM drive (in at least one of the 'stock' configurations, anyway). That's about the only truly notable thing about that computer, because it was a piece of crap. Within three or four months of its introduction, Apple also introduced the Centris 650, a machine that was much more capable and cheaper, pissing off many IIvx buyers.
Why not break up a block of late-night "paid programming," and broadcast some of the more enticing ads within that time so TiVo can pick them up separately.
Stick a line on the Now Showing screen labelled "Check out the ads THEY don't want you to see!" or something like that.
If the ads are compelling enough to straddle the advertisement/entertainment line, people will watch. I watched those BMW commercials that ran in the same slot a while back-- didn't make me run out and buy one, but they were entertaining.
...because since January I've gotten 12 junk faxes from some fly-by-night mortgage company in the Philly burbs. I held onto them all, and after reading about what a slam-dunk these TCPA cases are, I've been tossing around the idea of pursuing them since the summer (you can sue for up to 4 years from the receipt of the junk fax).
Tonight I noticed that a law firm local to me posted their info on the junk fax attorney registry since the last time I browsed the site, so I just fired off an e-mail to them for more details on pursuing it with their assistance.
I'd love for these fax-spamming bastards to foot the bill for my new G5 in the spring. If I decide to pull the trigger on this, I'll write about it in my journal-- if things go well, maybe others will be encouraged to do it.
Why? What does my toaster have to say to my lamp? What does my microwave have to say to my toaster?"
Probably nothing. But in plenty of cases it would be nice for appliances and even some storage areas to be able to talk to a central server in your home.
-I'd like my fridge to tell that server exactly what's in it and what I've used up and need to replace. -I'd like my medicine cabinet to tell that server that the box of DayQuil in it is expired, in case I don't notice the next time I get the sniffles and reach in there. -I'd like my bathroom closet to tell that server that I've only got 3 sticks of deodorant left so I might want to replenish the supply soon.*
I can already control my lighting, A/V equipment, and thermostat from any web browser thanks to X10 and some clever programming. I'd love to let my server worry about even more stuff so I don't have to-- spit out a shopping list when I run out of enough stuff to justify the run to the market, and that'll be the extent of my involvement in maintaining the consumables inventory in the house.
~Philly
* I hate shopping, so I buy unusually large quantities of non-perishable consumable items. If civilization ever falls, about four months afterward you'll be able to pick me out. I'll be the clean-smelling, clean-shaven guy with fresh breath.
I want a computer in my house to know exactly what food I've got in my fridge, and whereever I store that stuff. I want it to know what I need to buy, and what is about to get too old to be eaten. Why should I spend my time looking after these things, when it could be done well by a computerized system?
Hear, hear! This is something I could use as well, and right now it means building a system and having to remember to scan the UPC code of everything that enters or leaves a cabinet or the fridge.
Currently I just write the purchase date on most groceries with a Sharpie as I put them away, and play it by ear. I'd love to be able to have my home automation server pop up a message telling me I should go out and buy milk because I won't have enough for my cereal in the morning if I don't. Or that it might be a good idea to use that [$food_item] because it is past expiration date in another few days. Or how about: These three items will soon go bad-- here's a recipe that will let you use them all up, you just need to pick up some butter to make it.
Hell, this doesn't just need to be in the kitchen-- there are consumables all over the house. Soap, shaving cream, deodorant, razor blades, laundry detergent, toilet paper, batteries-- all kinds of stuff could be tracked, and as long as that data goes NOWHERE but to the in-home server to assemble your shopping list for you, I'd be happy to put such a beast in my home.
What will probably happen, though, is that the device will be priced ridiculously high-- or only $49, if you submit to have your purchasing habits tracked and reported, or some shit like that. And since I pay cash and refuse the discount cards the supermarket keeps trying to push on me so The Man doesn't know my grocery buying habits, I'll just have to buy an extra box of Sharpies and keep doing it the old-fashioned way.
Microsoft developed something like this years ago. IIRC they called the protocol "Homer"-- the jokes just kinda write themselves, don't they? I believe they dropped it because it wouldn't instantly make them a few billion dollars richer, so they went off to kill Netscape or something. (It's been a while since I read "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates*," which is the book that talks about Homer.)
Personally, I hope this is one arena Microsoft stays the fuck out of. With other companies developing it, there's a chance the protocol will be an open standard and I'll be able to tie it into my exisiting Mac-based home automation setup. If Microsoft does it it will only run on Windows machines.
~Philly
* This book also contains an excellent account of how Pen Windows was originally developed for no reason other than to kill Go Corp.
There'll not be an absolute hijacker-proof security policy in the US airports. Ever.
And at this point, they should stop trying. After 9/11, people will never take the "be cool and let The People In Charge negotiate with these guys when we land" route ever again.
From now on, the passengers will be tripping over each other to kick the shit out of and subdue any bastard who stands up and says "This is a hijacking" on any flight, anywhere in the world. Look at what happened to Cosmo Kramer the Shoe Bomber.
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I've owned a bunch of Apple laptops: a Duo 210, a PowerBook 5300c, an iBook 500MHz & and iBook 800MHz. The only one that did not need repair at some point was the 500MHz iBook, and I only kept that for a year and a half.
There was a problem with the Duos where the keyboard was excessively mushy. Apple created some sort of repair extension program for that, and I got it taken care of for free when I brought the Duo in to a dealer to have a modem installed. That Duo ran like a champ until I sold it.
The 5300 series, everyone knows what crap they were. I had screen hinge problems and bezel separation problems, all kinds of crap. Apple instituted a 7 year repair extension program for those. Toward the end of it they did a trade-in offer for remaining 5300 owners to get a discount on a G3 Powerbook. I had sold my 5300c on eBay long before that, though, because I didn't need a laptop any longer.
In June 2001 I bought the 500MHz iBook, it ran problem-free for the 18 months I had it and went everywhere with me in my backpack when I was working. Sold it a year ago on eBay for only $200 less than I paid for it.
A year ago I bought an 800MHz iBook. About a month ago, I ran into the display problem everyone's bitching and moaning about, but I had not heard of this being a frequent problem back then. My iBook was still within warranty by a few weeks. I called the support line without a chip on my shoulder about it. The guy on the other end was friendly and professional. He also spoke intelligible English, because he was American-- a major plus after dealing with Dell support for one of my clients. He walked me through some tests, agreed that the unit was hosed, and dispatched a box. I got my iBook back a week later, good as new. I also bought AppleCare while I was on the phone with him. Like I said, I wasn't aware of the frequency of this problem at the time-- but I figured that if I sold this iBook to upgrade to a newer Apple laptop, the extended warranty would be a nice selling point. Likewise, if I kept it for 3 more years and something went wrong, I'd be covered.
To sum up, in my experience, when Apple has a widespread defect like this, they eventually do the right thing. The best example is their program to do free repairs on the PowerBook 5300 defects for an extraordinary seven years from the date the model was discontinued, followed by trade-in offers for a discount on new equipment.
As for these iPod battery whiners, though, I say tough shit. It's a *battery*. Batteries will eventually cease to do their job and need to be replaced. Most will last as long as their manufacturer (who is NOT Apple, BTW) intended. Some will go well beyond that. Some will fail right away, within your warranty, and some will die sooner than manufacturer spec but after your iPod warranty. Them's the breaks.
~Philly
This isn't for YOU, it's for your neighbor. Or your uncle, your Mom, or anyone else who DOESN'T have a closet full of overclocked Celeron 366 motherboards, and a working knowledge of Linux.
This is targeted at people who likely paid $400 (grudgingly) for their whole computer. They're going to take one look at this thing, see it doesn't include a keyboard or monitor (ignoring the fact that they're not needed) and dismiss it as too expensive.
There is no future for a device where its target market is too cheap to purchase it.
~Philly
for some reason they're immune to this barrage of RTFM and instead it is Microsoft who gets the blame.
Because Microsoft's marketing blows sunshine up people's asses. People believe they are buying a simple system that will just run, never need maintenance, and protect them from messing it up. In reality Windows is a complex system that needs a fair bit of maintenance, or at least care on the part of the user to not do something that will cause problems (like open any old e-mail attachment in their inbox, no matter who the sender, or download any old file from Kazaa, or install Bonzi or other stupid shit like that).
When you try to explain to people that they need to run Software Update and virus scans and do other system maintenance once in a while, they don't want to hear it. "You mean I paid all this money (read: $399) for this computer and it doesn't do all that stuff for me? Forget it!"
~Philly
From the article:
In the event, there was no military action. The oil embargo faltered and was ended a few months later. Israel and Egypt went on to sign a peace agreement.
Wow, imagine the embargo not faltering on its own, and the U.S. rolling in to take some oil fields. That would have made life more interesting back then, especially if we went into Kuwait and the Soviets goaded the Iraqis into trying to throw us out. A variant of the Gulf War being fought in 1973, with the U.S. as aggressor and Iraq as pseudo-defender. Definite alternate-history novel fodder here.
~Philly
I remember seeing MD-DATA drives in a few MacWarehouse catalogs back in the early-to-mid 90's. All I remember about them is they were horrendously expensive.
The much cheaper Zip appeared not long after and singlehandedly destroyed any chance the MD-DATA drive had for a floppy-like degree of acceptance in the market, technically superior or not.
And back when they were first introduced, the Zip drives were of good quality. I ordered mine five minutes after opening the first MacWarehouse catalog where they were offered (March of 1995, IIRC). That drive saw regular use until less than a year ago when I 'decommisioned' it upon getting a SCSI-less G4. I still have it, and have no reason to believe it wouldn't work fine if I hooked it up to one of my older Macs. I think the first time I even heard the term "click of death" was in 1997 or 1998.
~Philly
I'll never forget it. I was at my cousin's house, and he had a C64 and a 300 baud modem. Right before my eyes, he dialed up some pirate BBS, downloaded a cracked copy of Out Run, and we started playing.
That was the "first one's free!" experience that set me on the long road to internet addiction. And that was also the day I began to dislike the woefully un-modemed Tandy 1000 my parents had gotten me.
~Philly
Now, THAT was funny!
Back in '91, I was in my freshman year at Drexel. I quickly discovered BBSing and before I bought my own modem at home I was using the four Mac SE/30s with dial-out capability they had in the computer center for hours at a time, basically doing nothing but downloading software. Often I would turn down the brightness on the screens all the way, so people wouldn't notice what was going on-- then I'd go to class, and return to load up the box of blank floppies in my backpack with the now-downloaded warez. Those machines didn't get used very much by anyone else for some reason-- I think only once did someone complain about me hogging all of them all the time. Long distance charges were never a problem, the Philadelphia area had a ton of cool boards that were only local calls.... Land of Oz, Ferrari's Shop, ARB-1... <sniffle>
~Philly
The eMate was a success in its market, but it was killed by Jobs upon his return because it was the progeny of his arch-nemesis, John Sculley. Likewise the Newton 2x00 series machines, which at the time of their discontinuation were getting good reviews and finally throwing off the reputation of the original MessagePad. IMHO, Palm devices did not catch up to the Newton 2x00's capabilities until mid-2000.
Now, the Apple III-- yeah, that one was a turd.
~Philly
It's a silicon-based solid with a porous, sponge-like structure in which 99.8 percent of the volume is empty space. By comparison, aerogel is 1,000 times less dense than glass.
The above line, and more, are available here
And yeah, I'd like to play around with some of this stuff as well. The picture of someone holding a 'brick' of it looks like a bad Photoshop job.
Not counting Office macro viruses, there are less than fifty viruses for the 'classic' Mac OS. If you download an old copy of Disinfectant, you can read about all of them and what they do. Very few were malicious. I don't know if there even were any Office macro viruses that were malicious when activated on a Mac-- IME, the Mac was always just a carrier of them.
There are still no known viruses specific to Mac OS X. Most Mac users I know don't even bother with antivirus software, and the ones who do do it just as a courtesy, so they don't pass along any infected stuff sent to them by a Windows user.
Trust me, if there was an OS X virus, you'd hear about it-- CNet, ZDNet, and the rest of the Wintel-centric computing press would be tripping over their schadenfreude in their rush to get the story out. If you don't believe me, then you missed this article.
~Philly
Um, NeXT machines were not personal computers, they were high-end workstations that cost about $10K. Also, only about 50,000 were ever made between 1988 and 1993, so they weren't going to be sitting on the shelves in your local SoftWarehouse (which is what CompUSA was called before they were called CompUSA). NeXT machines were quite popular in universities and government agencies in the late 80's and early 90's. Lots of used NeXT hardware comes still emblazoned with stickers stating things such as "Top Secret," "CIA" or "NASA." No joke.
And NeXT did go somewhere-- into the computer on which I'm typing this post, and those of anyone reading it on a machine running OS X.
~Philly
PS- Now you know TWO people who own a NeXTStation. I bought one in 1999 for my collection of interesting computers from the past.
I've read both Startup, former Go CEO Jerry Kaplan's book, and Barbarians Led by Bill Gates, by ex-Microsoftie Marlin Eller.
IMHO, it's hard to call Go a legitimate "flop"-- they were killed mostly by deliberate acts of Microsoft, who (at the time) developed and marketed Pen Windows for little reason other than to prevent Go from getting a foothold in a market where Microsoft had no competing product. Microsoft also used their old tricks of OEM and ISV intimidation to keep companies from working with Go, and used their infamous per-processor licensing to stick a Microsoft-imposed tax on the PenPoint OS.
Granted, Go Corp was victim of a few bad decisions by its own management, but more than one of those was made with the specter of Microsoft in mind, or after MS already had them on the ropes.
~Philly
Some Macintosh models have clocks that reset to August 27, 1956 (and to a time other than midnight, I believe). This is the birthdate (and time) of Ray Montagne, the Apple engineer and programmer who designed the chip that controlled the PRAM on those models.
As for January 1, 1904, this date was selected because the original Mac's clock (which counts in seconds) can encompass a period of about 136 years. Selecting 1904 as the start date means that the 136-year period covered by the clock (1904-2040) includes the birthdate of nearly every Mac user, and extends well past the expected lifetime of the Mac OS. It also means that the simplest rule for leap-years can be used (every fourth year has an extra day), which simplifies day and date calculations. They didn't choose the year 1900 because it was not a leap year.
~Philly
have struggled to try and convince people that it's far more in depth than just cars going around in circles.
Yes. Sometimes, the cars also crash.
~Philly
Long live InDesign! Death to Quark and their double-priced, half-assed crapola!
~Philly
It will speed up the selection for birds that are smart enough to avoid wind turbines.
I, for one, welcome our new smarter, wind-turbine-avoiding bird overlords!
~Philly
Macs may have been the first that could be bought with an integrated CDROM (I can't say either way)
I can. External SCSI CD drives were around for the Mac for a while (I can remember the first one was 1x, and how big a deal it was when the 2x models came out), but the Mac IIvx circa 1992 was the first personal computer to ship with an internal CD-ROM drive (in at least one of the 'stock' configurations, anyway). That's about the only truly notable thing about that computer, because it was a piece of crap. Within three or four months of its introduction, Apple also introduced the Centris 650, a machine that was much more capable and cheaper, pissing off many IIvx buyers.
~Philly
...your competition is selling your products.
:-)
Now, Dell may not be selling iPods anymore since they've debuted their metoo!Pod-- but Dell is, astonishingly, selling a variety of Macs to the NYC school system. Talk about a bunch of whores who will do anything for a buck, huh?
~Philly
Why not break up a block of late-night "paid programming," and broadcast some of the more enticing ads within that time so TiVo can pick them up separately.
Stick a line on the Now Showing screen labelled "Check out the ads THEY don't want you to see!" or something like that.
If the ads are compelling enough to straddle the advertisement/entertainment line, people will watch. I watched those BMW commercials that ran in the same slot a while back-- didn't make me run out and buy one, but they were entertaining.
~Philly
...because since January I've gotten 12 junk faxes from some fly-by-night mortgage company in the Philly burbs. I held onto them all, and after reading about what a slam-dunk these TCPA cases are, I've been tossing around the idea of pursuing them since the summer (you can sue for up to 4 years from the receipt of the junk fax).
Tonight I noticed that a law firm local to me posted their info on the junk fax attorney registry since the last time I browsed the site, so I just fired off an e-mail to them for more details on pursuing it with their assistance.
I'd love for these fax-spamming bastards to foot the bill for my new G5 in the spring. If I decide to pull the trigger on this, I'll write about it in my journal-- if things go well, maybe others will be encouraged to do it.
~Philly
Why? What does my toaster have to say to my lamp? What does my microwave have to say to my toaster?"
Probably nothing. But in plenty of cases it would be nice for appliances and even some storage areas to be able to talk to a central server in your home.
-I'd like my fridge to tell that server exactly what's in it and what I've used up and need to replace.
-I'd like my medicine cabinet to tell that server that the box of DayQuil in it is expired, in case I don't notice the next time I get the sniffles and reach in there.
-I'd like my bathroom closet to tell that server that I've only got 3 sticks of deodorant left so I might want to replenish the supply soon.*
I can already control my lighting, A/V equipment, and thermostat from any web browser thanks to X10 and some clever programming. I'd love to let my server worry about even more stuff so I don't have to-- spit out a shopping list when I run out of enough stuff to justify the run to the market, and that'll be the extent of my involvement in maintaining the consumables inventory in the house.
~Philly
* I hate shopping, so I buy unusually large quantities of non-perishable consumable items. If civilization ever falls, about four months afterward you'll be able to pick me out. I'll be the clean-smelling, clean-shaven guy with fresh breath.
I want a computer in my house to know exactly what food I've got in my fridge, and whereever I store that stuff. I want it to know what I need to buy, and what is about to get too old to be eaten. Why should I spend my time looking after these things, when it could be done well by a computerized system?
Hear, hear! This is something I could use as well, and right now it means building a system and having to remember to scan the UPC code of everything that enters or leaves a cabinet or the fridge.
Currently I just write the purchase date on most groceries with a Sharpie as I put them away, and play it by ear. I'd love to be able to have my home automation server pop up a message telling me I should go out and buy milk because I won't have enough for my cereal in the morning if I don't. Or that it might be a good idea to use that [$food_item] because it is past expiration date in another few days. Or how about: These three items will soon go bad-- here's a recipe that will let you use them all up, you just need to pick up some butter to make it.
Hell, this doesn't just need to be in the kitchen-- there are consumables all over the house. Soap, shaving cream, deodorant, razor blades, laundry detergent, toilet paper, batteries-- all kinds of stuff could be tracked, and as long as that data goes NOWHERE but to the in-home server to assemble your shopping list for you, I'd be happy to put such a beast in my home.
What will probably happen, though, is that the device will be priced ridiculously high-- or only $49, if you submit to have your purchasing habits tracked and reported, or some shit like that. And since I pay cash and refuse the discount cards the supermarket keeps trying to push on me so The Man doesn't know my grocery buying habits, I'll just have to buy an extra box of Sharpies and keep doing it the old-fashioned way.
~Philly
Microsoft developed something like this years ago. IIRC they called the protocol "Homer"-- the jokes just kinda write themselves, don't they? I believe they dropped it because it wouldn't instantly make them a few billion dollars richer, so they went off to kill Netscape or something. (It's been a while since I read "Barbarians Led by Bill Gates*," which is the book that talks about Homer.)
Personally, I hope this is one arena Microsoft stays the fuck out of. With other companies developing it, there's a chance the protocol will be an open standard and I'll be able to tie it into my exisiting Mac-based home automation setup. If Microsoft does it it will only run on Windows machines.
~Philly
* This book also contains an excellent account of how Pen Windows was originally developed for no reason other than to kill Go Corp.
There'll not be an absolute hijacker-proof security policy in the US airports. Ever.
And at this point, they should stop trying. After 9/11, people will never take the "be cool and let The People In Charge negotiate with these guys when we land" route ever again.
From now on, the passengers will be tripping over each other to kick the shit out of and subdue any bastard who stands up and says "This is a hijacking" on any flight, anywhere in the world. Look at what happened to Cosmo Kramer the Shoe Bomber.
~Philly
...of simply crossing their fingers and hoping everything works out for the best.
~Philly