Toast442.org

Well, Apple has finally put the rumors to rest: no G5 PowerBooks. As expected. But they have delivered some updated G4 series machines that look pretty nice. On tap are slightly faster processors, 8x DVD RW+/-, drop protection (auto hard drive parking), the ability to drive a 30″ Apple display (woo hoo!), and Bluetooth 2.0. They’ve also dropped the prices by, it appears, $100 across the board.

I’m still waiting for my G5. But my battery is slowly becoming useless and those extra 670Mhz are looking mighty fine right about now. Can I hold out? I don’t know - it isn’t looking good.

Anyone who has read nearly any of Neal Stephenson’s works will know that he must spend countless hours hunched over books in the library. The Diamond Age, where he recreated Victorian society in a future world; The Sumerian mythology in Snow Crash; and now, the ridiculously complicated Baroque Cycle, of which The System of the World is the last of the three books.

The Baroque Cycle aspires to nothing less than a history of the modern economic system, the end of Alchemy as a respected profession, the final years of the British slave system, the rebuilding of London after the Great Fire of 1666, the invention of the calculus, and the founding of modern scientific thought; all of this through the accounts of fictional, semi-fictional, and historical personages, the sheer numbers of which will give most people a headache.

Less science fiction that historical fiction, Stephenson somehow manages to conjure up the the things that I like about his “regular” stories: great tech (for the day anyhow,) novelty of ideas, great character backgrounds, and long explanations of should-be-tedious-but-somehow-aren’t points. The construction of the Logic Mill is a particularly well thought out invention, and he even makes complicated financial transactions somehow - well - exciting. Really.

Stephenson also seems to avoid the thing that plagues most of his other works: the horrible, horrible, ending. For those who don’t know, lots of his books Just End, with so many loose ends and unexplained things, it drives some people nuts. Though the first two individual books in this series have this fault, the third wraps up most of the important things neatly. Yes, there are loose ends, but no more so than any other 2700 page books.

Loved it. Looking forward to anything new from Neal. Hopefully he’s not totally beat from hacking out these bludgeon-capable (but eminently readable!) phone books.

MacRumors.com has posted an update to the G5 PowerBook rumor. I’d previously dismissed this as completely unfounded - that it was just a simple typo on a web bug. But according to this update, the French page for the Apple 17″ Studio Display shows the PowerBook G5 with DVI connector as a requirement for use.

Could be another typo. Could be the real deal. Previous rumors have placed G4 PowerBook updates sometime next week. Could we be really surprised? I still am not holding my breath. But still…

Ok - I so need one of these. As shown on Gizmodo, the Quattro, a multi-function clock-radio-alarm built into a slab of translucent plastic, has some unique functions: based on it’s orientation, it runs as a radio, clock or alarm. That it, you turn it on it’s side to change the function of the device. Very cool. It has no visible buttons or display - everything glows through the surface of the plastic. And as your fingers get close, the touchable button areas of it’s surface light up. Even cooler. But the best part is that it has a wireless teddy bear that functions as a huggable snooze button. That’s right, just squeeze it to cancel the alarm and give you nine more minutes of blissful sleep.

This thing is a prototype, but I’d easily pay $100 for one right now. My alarm clock sucks, and this one looks very cool.

Link to more information

Oh, please let this be true. I’ve been waiting for new revisions before replacing my aging (but still going strong!) G4…

Link to some Slashdot commenting.

Update: As someone on Slashdot has pointed out, this was probably just a typo - the fact that there was a web bug with the name g5_powerbook on the view-tracking site doesn’t mean much: any URL will do, it always just returns a 1×1 GIF for tracking purposes. So someone, when updating the Apple site probably just fat-fingered the name. Oh well - I’m still hoping for some sort of update - even if it’s just a faster G4.

According to this story on Boing Boing, this guy tries to go and make a donation to British Telecom’s (BT) tsunami relief fund using Lynx. IT guys at BT see the funny log entries (Lynx! WTF?) and immediately think that this is a hack attempt, and send the police crashing through the guy’s door and resulting in his arrest and confiscation of his equipment. Way not cool.

However, Boing Boing links to an article on BBC’s website that just claims that someone was arrested for hacking into the relief fund site - no mention of Lynx or anything else, and certainly none of the breathless details of the Boing Boing story. What’s going on here? Boing Boing have inside information? Are they on crack? Is someone putting them on?

Update, January 27, 2005: The Boing Boing information has got to be wrong here - all day, and not a single confirming link anywhere. Just the original story from the BBC that doesn’t mention anything odd except the hacking attempt. I’m calling shenanigans.

Update, January 28, 2005: The BoingBoing article now has this stuck at the bottom of it:

Update:: The source that told me about this has corroborated it with more detail in private email, but is leery of going public. I hope that more publicly available details appear soon, and will post them when I have them.

OK - I’m holding my breath.

Lynx is a popular (ok - maybe not popular, but the most widely used) text mode web browser. It’s commonly used by people running over slow terminal-only connections, the blind, or those minimalists that just want the text and nothing more. I’ve used it tons of times to access systems when my only connection was a SSH link over GPRS. Anyhow…

According to this story on Boing Boing, this guy tries to go and make a donation to British Telecom’s (BT) tsunami relief fund using Lynx. IT guys at BT see the funny log entries (Lynx! WTF?) and immediately think that this is a hack attempt, and send the police crashing through the guy’s door and resulting in his arrest and confiscation of his equipment. Way not cool.

However, Boing Boing links to an article on BBC’s website that just claims that someone was arrested for hacking into the relief fund site - no mention of Lynx or anything else, and certainly none of the breathless details of the Boing Boing story. What’s going on here? Boing Boing have inside information? Are they on crack? Is someone putting them on?

Update, January 27, 2005: The Boing Boing information has got to be wrong here - all day, and not a single confirming link anywhere. Just the original story from the BBC that doesn’t mention anything odd except the hacking attempt. I’m calling shenanigans.

Update, January 28, 2005: The BoingBoing article now has this stuck at the bottom of it:

Update:: The source that told me about this has corroborated it with more detail in private email, but is leery of going public. I hope that more publicly available details appear soon, and will post them when I have them.

OK - I’m holding my breath.

It’s finally hit the news big time - existing stem cell lines are contaminated and are probably unsuitable for treating diseases in humans. The first mention of this that I remember was way back in November in a New Scientist article. Though I understand that this had been known for a couple of years. I guess it’s been confirmed, then, as there has been articles just about everywhere: CNN, Slashdot, and Wired.

Best part, though, is a quote from White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan: “the president is satisfied those existing lines are “adequate” for the basic research that needs to be done.” (from WAFF.com) As if that idiot knows what he’s talking about. I’m sure he’s read all the relevant literature and has thought long and hard about this.

Dutch scientist turned author artist Theo Jansen has spent the last 17 years creating wind powered walking beasts that prowl the beaches. These machines are basically pushed by the wind setting in motion the mechanically-driven walking sequences. The beasts themselves are made of cheap plastic tubing and cable ties, yet can reach gargantuan proportions: one of them weighs close to two tons. Wired has a good article (and some video) about the man and machines (though short on technical details.) You can also check out Jansen’s website that has tons of great pictures.

He goes into a bit of wishful thinking about how he wants to make them self-reproduce, selecting the best parts of “genetic code” (lengths of plastic tubing) in contests on the beach. A little nutty sounding, but hey - I wouldn’t have thought two ton walking plastic monsters were possible either.

Why is it so hard to be removed from even reputable company’s mailing lists? I’ve bought a number of Dell computers over the years. In general, I’ve been pretty pleased with their hardware. However, I’ve gotten signed up by default to their marketing mailing lists, and receive email constantly from them. During my recent crusade to remove myself from all these “legitimate” emails, I attempted to unsubscribe from Dell’s lists.

Like Microsoft, when you click on the convenient unsubscribe link in the email, you’re taken to a form, the first half of which is offering to send you less email: “We know how you feel about too many e-mails. All the same, we’d hate to lose you. So we want to offer you the chance to remain a subscriber, while receiving our updates less frequently.” No offense here guys, but I requested to unsubscribe from your lists. That should be the first thing on the form. They even want you to chose how many times per month you want contacted: once, twice, or three times. At least there should be a “No More Emails” option there and it should be checked by default. That is what I wanted to do in the first place after all.

The second half of the “Dell Subscription Center” form lists the email address you want to unsubscribe, and has two options: “Manage My Subscriptions” and “Take Survey and Manage My subscriptions.” There is no “Just Freaking Unsubscribe Me, Please” option listed. In my case, not wanting to waste my time with a survey, I clicked the Manage button. This takes you to yet another form, where again, unsubscribing isn’t the focus.

The first part of the this form is asking for more information so that you can - get this - subscribe to the many wonderful newsletters they have on offer. Didn’t I want to unsubscribe? Damn it - unsubscribe me? Down below they have (with not nearly so large a title as the subscription section) a little form for you to enter your email address. Wait a second - didn’t they just list my email on the previous page? I have to type it again? So I enter it and notice that again there are two links, one to unsubscribe and one to “Change my subscriptions.” Again with the stupid choices. I WANT TO UNSUBSCRIBE YOU IDIOTS. I clicked the unsubscribe button. And get a “Sever Error in ‘/Subscription Center’ Application”

So why do seemingly reputable companies put you through hell like this? Obviously this is all inclined towards keeping you subscribing to their marketing materials. This doesn’t make much sense, however. It’s far easier to just hit delete on the emails than dragging myself through a bunch of forms so I only get email once or twice a month. So why provide it as an option? I’m here at these forms because I don’t want the emails. Period. So just let me opt out of them. It’s not like I’m going to stop buying Dell machines because I don’t get their email any longer. I buy them when I need them (which is quite frequently.)

So in the end, I’m still subscribed to their emails. The form is still broken. I’m still screwed.