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| Thursday, January 24, 2002 |
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Very high slash/dot ratio 
| | Weinberger, an NPR commentator and the publisher of JOHO (Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization) understands hyperlinks and their stunning impact. It isn't as if his observations are wrong. The things he sees are new, interesting and significant. |
| | But his book also reminds us that this age of Cybertheorizing began to die with the demise of the original Wired. This is bad news for over-heated tech writers and academics feasting on cyber-culture courses. In case Weinberger hasn't noticed -- and he hasn't, if the book is any indication -- the Web these days is mostly about sex, free news, entertainment and retailing. For better or worse, we remain the same people we were. |
| | In other words, thinking about the Web ("cybertheorizing") is unfashionable, so don't do it. Why care about anything when it won't make a difference anyway? |
| | Did the right to think deeply about the Web expire with the Old Wired and Jon's job there, which was cybertheorizing out the wazoo? Isn't this the same guy who wrote Birth of a Digital Nation and called open source The New Jerusalem just last year in Slashdot? Should the rest of us yield our residual optimism now that Jon's gone all cynical about the Web? |
| | What really sucks is that Small Pieces won't be out until April. Which means the book won't be in a position yet to defend itself for another 2.5 months. |
| | David responded to Slashdot here, and on his blog here. He shows remarkable restraint for a guy who just got blindsided pretty damn hard. |
| | By the way, I have a pre-release copy of the book, and it's terrific. It's wise, thoughtful, original and funny. It deserved a great launch. Not this. |
Duh
| | A kind reader just pointed me to the Startup Disk control panel, which I never had occasion to use before. I selected the OS X folder, and restarted. It's coming up in X. Cool. |
Downtime, 10 hours
| | Talk about a flattery jinx. |
| | After I wrote the post below, I agreed with Software Update to download some new drivers, which required a restart. Which the machine did. In OS 9.2. So I restarted again, this time holding down the option key to bring up the screen that gives me a choice of 9.2 and OS X. It brought up a blue screen with a picture of a hard drive in an embossed square, with two buttons. One pointed in a circle at its own tail and the other pionted right. That was the outlined one. Clicking on neither did anything because the hands of the little watch kept spinning. |
| | So I forced a restart with cntrl-cmd-start, and encountered the same problem. Then I unplugged everything. Same problem. Then I did it again. This time I got a pointer arrow. So I clicked on arrow pointing to the right. It started in OS 9.2. I restarted again. Now the little watch hands are spinning on the blue screen. That's where I am now. Minutes pass. I hate this. |
| | Now the pointer is back. I just clicked on the circular arrow. The watch came up, then turned back into a pointer. Nothing happened. I just tried it again while holding down the option key. Nothing. Then holding down the option key while mashing the straight arrow button. It started in OS 9.2. |
| | And here I am (writing this on another machine). Any answers? |
The Aqua Screen of Life
| | The killer app for OS X is a standard Unix terminal command called "uptime." Open a terminal shell in any Unix, type "uptime," hit return and you get an answer like this one: 12:04AM up 8 days, 5:37. That's how long it's been since I restarted this Titanium, after installing OS X's latest update. |
| | And it's not like I'm not testing its limits. Here's what I have hooked up to it right now: |
| | 21" SVGA monitor; USB mouse, USB keyboard, USB printer, FireWire 30 Mb external drive, speakers, power, Ethernet. |
| | If I want to use the thing on my lap over a WiFi link while I watch TV, here's what I do: |
| | Soft-eject the hard drive, shut the lid, unplug everything, go to the living room, open the lid, and carry on. |
| | When I shut the lid, it goes to sleep in about a second. When I open the lid, it wakes immediately. When I return to my desk, I just plug everything back in, lift the lid, and watch it regain its bearings. This takes less time than it does for the monitor to reach full brightness. Say, about three seconds. I don't have to change any network settings, monitor settings, or anything else. |
| | Marc Andreessen famously insulted Microsoft a few years back by calling an operating system "just a device driver." |
| | With that in mind, I think it is fair to say Apple is pushing out the device driving envelope with OS X. Doing any of this with the classic MacOS would have been sure disaster. I hate the term "user experience." It's so marketing-y. But I gotta say I'm having an outstanding one with OS X — mostly because, for the first time in my long experience with laptops, everything works, and keeps working, with no downtime, and no surprises. I am, for the first time in my life, expecting it to keep working. |
| | Jeff Raskin said, "Imagine if every Thursday your shoes exploded if you tied them the usual way. This happens to us all the time with computers, and nobody thinks of complaining." With OS X, that shit is over. |
| | Curious: can you do this kind of stuff with the same level of confidence (or at all) with WindowsXP? Just wondering. |
Whoa
| | I'm just impressed that Amazon actually sells $1.2 billion worth of anything. In a quarter. |
Yeah, they still suck, but hey
| | Here's another one: for all I've knocked those subjects, doing each and all of them was some of the most fun I've ever had with my clothes on. And, in some cases, off. |
Bald face blogging
| | Seth is responsible for promulgating the ideas of permission and viral marketing. Nothing more viral that what we're up to here, so let's welcome the dude. |
| | Not speaking of which, Marek is first among Mareks on Google. Seth is not so blessed. Yet. |
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