I just love the “Imported from Detroit” line. Says as much about an industry trying to rebuild and reinvent itself as any tagline I’ve ever seen.

What with the passing of Richard “Mr.” Blackwell a couple years ago and the loss of his worst-dressed list, the time is ripe for you to step up with a New Year’s list of the Fools You Pity.

Just think of all the hilarity you could give to the World every year with a list of those you pity the most.  Actors, wannabe actors, politicians, public figures, people who died in strange ways like that cave guy, The Queen…really, you’ve got limitless material there.

If you need help writing it, I can be available.  But please, whatever you do, do this.

Cheers,
Daryl

This e-mail and its attachments are confidential and intended for use by the above named recipient(s) only. If you are not the intended recipient, please note that any use, modification, dissemination, edition or reproduction (either in whole or partially) of this e-mail and/or its attachments, or of the information contained herein, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this e-mail by mistake, please notify the sender immediately, and immediately delete this e-mail with its attachments and any copy of it from your computer system.

Now, IANAL, but it seems to me that if I receive something from someone that was unsolicited…I can do whatever I want with it.  I can modify it, disseminate it, edit it or reproduce it in any form that my little heart desires.

Indeed, that’s the law.  The real law.  And no lawyer can write anything that breaks the law.

Strictly prohibited?  Funny stuff.

I would think that the only possible grey area would be that if I had received an email that was not actually addressed to me – but that really doesn’t happen any more (if it indeed ever really did) – so big deal.

What goads me the most about this “legal” warning is that the original writer of it was obviously relying on the gullibility of the masses to protect…something…should it manage to slip out. Big, fancy, legalese to confuse and dumbfound us mere mortals.  Kind of like getting a DMCA takedown notice for something that you wrote, but that somebody else might not like.

Anyway, I just wish that people would grow up and get rid of that silly, silly warning.  Maybe replace it with:

If you have happened to get this message by mistake, we would appreciate it if you could let us know so that we can fix the problem on our end.  We’d also like to ask that you then delete this message.  Thank you very much, your friends at Company X.

Now go and get that done.

If you do not meet that requirement, you cannot be a member.

If you do meet the requirement, you now have a very nice reason to believe that you’re better than everyone else out there because they aren’t as smart as you are.

I don’t really want to get into the whole “IQ isn’t intelligence” argument here.  I think we can all agree that although IQ tests are not empirical scientific tools, they do show abilities and aptitudes that would serve you well in life.  That, and people who score low on such tests are usually very different than those who score high.

What this does is bring together a group of people who are joined by their common belief that they are better than the average person.  By gathering together, they validate and reinforce each other.

Back in 2000 or so, I sat the Mensa test.  There were 2 tests; the Wonderlic and the SCAT.  I did very well on the Wonderlic but not quite good enough…the SCAT I apparently did very well on, so I was invited to join.

Join I did, and then I went to a couple of meetings.

And that’s when it fell off the rails for me – right there.  Here I sit, surrounded by people who are obviously very much in their element.  There were some in the room that obviously believed they were superior to everyone, and others that believed they were only superior to people not in the club.

The problem is that the single requirement for entry is a high IQ.  This gives everyone the very false belief that they are better than other people, and I just don’t like the smell of that.

All of the other clubs, groups, societies and such that I have been a member of over the years have only your interest as a requirement.  People gathering to share in a common interest is always a good thing, and you can make real friends this way because at least you have somewhere to start.

A club that founds itself on its members being in some way better than all others is unjust.

What the thing is is irrelevant to what I want to say, but safe to say it’s a flat panel LCD with several HDMI inputs on the back.

We had the cable people come out and give us a new HD cable box.  It’s got all manner of outputs on the back of it – cable, composite, s-video, component and HDMI.  I elected to go HDMI because I know it’s the only digital signal of the bunch and I thought it surely must allow the best picture quality.So I trip myself over to a local big-box to find myself an HDMI cable to do the job.

For starters, all of the prominently displayed cables were from two companies; Rocketfish and Monster.

For Rocketfish, the cheapest cable they had was about $46.00.  For Monster, it was $150.00.

Come on now…$150 for a 3 foot cable?  Are you shitting me?

So I ask this guy, “Hey, there must be something cheaper, but where are they?” and he proceeds to fetch a 6-foot Recoton cable that’s $25.00.

Then he says, “So, what’cha going to hook up?”

I say that I’m hooking up my cable box and that I’m buying the “cheap” cable expressly because I can’t see the sense in spending major dollars on a short cable.

He comes back at me and says that I might likely “get away” with this cheapo for my cable box, but if I were to buy a Blu-Ray or something similar I’d be wise to get a “premium cable”.

My only response to that was, “HDMI is digital.  As long as the dits and dots get to the other end of the cable without running together or fading out, there’s nothing to be gained from pricey cables.  And I really don’t think that one meter or six feet or whatever is worth throwing that money on…and I don’t know what the difference might be.”

To this, the response was, “Oh, there’s a difference.”

At this, we parted ways.  I went home, hooked up my el-cheapo cable and the quality of the picture on my TV is perfect.  And to think I saved more than $125 by not buying snake oil!

Just as an aside, I know there was a time – and there may still be – when you really did need the premium cables to pinch the most out of your HiFi.

Over short distances, it doesn’t really matter in any case, but certainly for shorter distances with a digital signal it matters less.

Selling a $20 one-meter cable for $150 should be illegal.

The object of fighting any War is to gain security. In this regard, I did and still do believe that we have done the right thing in Afghanistan. The right thing is not always the easy thing, but to deprive Al-Qaeda of their Taliban protectors and to attempt to return Afghanistan to the community of nations is a noble effort. We harbour no doubts that Afghanistan was the staging ground for numerous attacks, including those of September 11, 2001.

I also believe that the USA had to hit back after those attacks. To sit idle or to engage in protracted diplomacy would have sent the wrong message to those who would wish harm to the USA and its allies.

But Iraq, well, that’s an entirely different kettle of fish.

When I saw Colin Powell, a man for whom I had nothing but the greatest of respect, give his speech at the UN Security Council on the eve of the Iraq War, I was in awe. Not only was the man whom many would consider one of the USA’s foremost statesmen of the day putting himself in the spotlight to relay to us what the American Administration knew about Saddam Hussein and Iraq, but over his right shoulder sat George Tenet – then director of the CIA. Well, I thought, if he’s got Tenet sitting behind him – by extension, putting his own reputation on the line – then that must mean that the very best intelligence available has been brought to bear on this. And they must be telling the truth.

A few short years later, we know that the evidence that Powell presented was entirely fabricated. Why, we’re not sure, but Saddam did try to kill Dubya’s daddy and Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz, et. al. wanted to finish the job that Bush Senior did not. I refuse to believe that a man of Powell’s unimpeachable reputation knew that he was being hoodwinked, and I believe it had a lot to do with his departure from the State Department.

But, pulling back from the whys and hows, let’s focus on what the United States might have been done with this $1,600,000,000,000.00 …other than going to War.

Dependence on Oil

Let’s see. I remember reading something – perhaps in Scientific American or Wired – that said it would take roughly $100 Billion of government investment over 10 years to develop the remaining bits and pieces that are holding back widespread adoption of Hydrogen as a fuel for vehicles. Things like more efficient ways to make it, and especially a safer storage tank to put into cars to hold the stuff. There is no doubt that these things are within the technology that we have now or could develop if given enough resources (money) to pursue them.

Imagine that we didn’t care about Oil any more. Just imagine what it would be like to live in a World where North America stood at the cutting edge of the Hydrogen Millennium. We wouldn’t have to worry about emissions targets any longer, and the export of technology to other countries wanting to catch up would reap trillions in trade. Certainly we would all benefit.

So, $100,000,000,000.00 later, we have a Hydrogen Economy and we’re all non-polluting. Sheer genius, and all for 1/16th the cost of the wars up to now.

Now what do we do with the other $1,500,000,000,000.00? A lot, to be sure.

Cure the Sick

How about we throw $100 Billion at Cancer research and another $100 Billion at AIDS? If it’s enough money to convert us all to Hydrogen, it must be able to do some good against these killers. Of course, the cleaner air we’d all have from the Hydrogen power might well get us a head start, but I would think that if $200,000,000,000.00 couldn’t cure AIDS or Cancer it would surely give us a very great number of advances and other things we could use.

So now we’re down to $1,300,000,000,000.00. That money sure goes fast when you’re doing good work. Think how many guns, trucks and tanks didn’t get made while we were making the World a better place for everyone.

Speaking of which…

Making the World a Better Place

I think that if the World is ever going to really be a better place we need to better educate the people that inhabit it. And that means seriously reaching out to developing nations and giving – yep, giving – them what they need to educate their children.

A good start to that might be the OLPC project. Negroponte’s done an amazing thing here: He’s given the World the ability to put a computer in the hands of every kid on the planet. The only thing that holds it back is the cost.

So let’s order a Billion of them. If the project is ever to reach that $100.00 per unit cost that was originally touted, it will be when we’re building a billion of ’em. So the straight-up cost would be $100,000,000,000.00 for the laptops. Let’s double that to allow for bribing all the politicians and dictators in the World that don’t want this for their people, and then let’s triple it to allow for distribution, repairs and contingency.

So that’s $300,000,000,000.00. Not a small amount, but can you really put a value on educating the entire planet?

And we’re down to an even $1,000,000,000,000.00. That’s a nice round number, isn’t it? And in the process we’ve developed a Hydrogen Economy, very likely cured AIDS, Cancer and who knows what else, and we’ve given every kid on the planet a computer with which to propel themselves from poverty and enrich themselves, their families, and their nations.

And to think we could have been killing people the whole time!

Conquer World Hunger

There will be people out there that will say that spending 300 billion dollars on computers is the wrong thing to do in a World that’s so hungry. Well, I’m not going to get into the whole “There is enough food for everyone” argument, so let’s just toss another 300 billion at that.

Not all the billion kids we’d give laptops to are going hungry to begin with, and 300 billion would feed (at $24 per month) 1,041,666,666 kids for a year. Or 520,833,333 kids for 2 years, or 260,416,666 kids for three years, and so forth. However you slice it, it would feed a lot of kids for a long time.

So now we’re down to $700 billion dollars. I’m starting to feel a little poor, aren’t you?

Really Make the World Safer

Let’s pick the top 10 most distressed countries on the face of the Earth and offer $100 for every firearm turned in. Let’s spend 10 billion per country, meaning about $7.5 billion for buyback and $2.5 billion for administration, bribes and destruction. For $100 billion dollars we could rid the World of 750,000,000 guns.

I think that ought to be a lot of them, and we’re still left with 600 billion dollars.

So let’s get a little crazy!

Fusion Power

For all this Hydrogen fuel and everything else, we need massive sources of safe, cheap power. And fusion is the way.

Unlike Nuclear Fission, which all current power-producing reactors use, Nuclear Fusion does not produce harmful wastes. The problem with Fusion is the immense amounts of power that are needed just to start the process and contain it. Another problem is the fantastic amount of money that a real power-producing fusion reactor is going to cost to build.

The current pinnacle of fusion research is ITER. It’s supposed to cost about $7.6 billion to build and operate, and I think we should put $200 billion toward building two full-size reactors once we learn our lessons from ITER.

And that puts us down to $400 billion.

Finally…

Climate Remediation

We’ve messed up the planet pretty badly. We’ve pumped trillions of tons of CO2 back into the atmosphere that Gaia herself took hundreds of billions of years to sequester, and we’ve done it all in less than a couple of hundred years.

There are some very smart people out there that have come up with methods of atmospheric CO2 capture. I say we give them what money we have left and see how far it takes us toward cleaning up our own mess.

I don’t really think $400 billion will be enough to do the whole job, but it should at least get the ball rolling in a major way. Perhaps these programs could be sustained through taxes on countries and companies that still emit CO2, but that’s a political decision…and I’m not a politician.

Let me know what you think

What would you do differently? Have I missed something obvious?

Warning: Coarse language and hilarious sexual references.

This is from a show in the USA called Robot Chicken.

Though that Mac 512 had a small Black&White screen, it was far superior to anything else then available…at least outside NASA. The dot-matrix ImageWriter printer with it could produce the best text I’d yet seen, and in all manner of faces, sizes and styles. What you saw on the screen was exactly what would print, and though WYSIWYG as a term has now fallen from use as it’s everywhere, at the time it was absolutely revolutionary.

But what really did it for the Macintosh was the introduction of the LaserWriter, made possible by the PostScript page description language. I really don’t think any single invention has done more for what you could do with a computer than the PostScript laser printer. Before these, you either had a dot-matrix that – while not horrid – didn’t really make nice looking text, or you had a daisy-wheel printer or something similar that worked like a typewriter.

But having a laser printer suddenly let you print all sorts of different typefaces without needing special wheels, at different sizes, pitches, leadings and anything else you might want to do with a bit of type. And suddenly you had this new thing called Desktop Publishing.

Suddenly, anyone with a Macintosh could design complete documents. Anything from books to brochures and advertising and so on. There was no other system out there that had anywhere near the same power anywhere near the cost of a Mac. And you can forget PC’s, those were still for the spreadsheet set back then. Back when an “Amber” monitor was a novelty and Print Shop was the coolest thing you could get on a PC.

What held the Mac back form big-time mass acceptance was it’s price. When you can buy 3 or 4 PC’s for the same cost as a Mac, then if all you need is WordPerfect then you can’t justify the cost. For people that really wanted (or needed) what the Mac could offer didn’t think twice about buying fleets of them, because it was what they wanted.

Consider that while I was doing slide presentations for a living in the late 80’s I could use PixelPaint and PhotoShop on my Mac, and on my PC I had Harvard Graphics and Zenographics Mirage. Harvard Graphics was the standard for making slides on a PC, and Mirage was a high-end app for doing the same thing. And they were both absolutely troglodytic when compared to even the simplest thing you could do in PixelPaint. Heck, even MacPaint could do more. Not many of you will remember PixelPaint (or PixelPaint Pro), but it was really, really good. And when PhotoShop came along it absolutely killed PixelPaint – that is how much better it was. At that time, it was absolutely impossible to do anything that even could be compared on a PC.

Have PC’s come a long way? Oh, yes, they certainly have. But they haven’t come far enough.

I’ve heard (and read) the argument that a newly purchased PC these days runs just as easily out of the box as a Mac. To a fair extent, that is true. It’s also true that PC’s are much more upgradeable than Macs – but most people never upgrade their PC’s. People that do upgrade their PC’s, or build their own (like me) tend to know just a bit more than the average bear about how these things work. And we’re also willing to put up with a bit of downtime now and then when some driver or something carks it.

And I’ll cry shenanigans on anyone that says they’ve been using PC’s for more than, oh, let’s say a year, and never had a problem. I suppose you might find someone that just reads the news in IE and nothing else, but that’s not typical. Endless strings of patches to protect us from endless strings of vulnerabilities, having to run so much anti-virus and anti-spyware software that doesn’t work anyway, bogging down your machine and adding to your headaches. Is this good? Seriously, is it *good* that I’m running an OS that is inherently insecure?

Well, let’s look at Mac OS X. It’s based on BSD Unix. Unix is inherently much safer than Windows, just because of the way it works. Noone has managed to write, not even as a project, a succesful virus for OS X. Not one! Maybe if everyone used it there might be more pressure…but don’t you think some Uni student should have whipped out a virus for OS X by now?

To be fair, there have been vulnerabilities spotted in OS X, and these could have been used to compromise machines. But – still being fair – these have been few and far-between, and usually are patched quite quickly. Certainly, they are patched as quickly as they need to be.

While millions of Windows boxen are zombie spam farms completely unbeknownst to their owners, the MacOS is spotless.

So, you’ve got all of that. And then, you’ve got how MacOS looks, and how it works. There are lots of Windows users out there that run docks (myself included) just to get a taste of the interface goodness that is the Mac. Noone that has used it for more than 5 minutes will tell you they don’t like it.

Finally, we come down to software. Well, you can get Office for Mac if you really want it. Apart from that, there are apps available for just about anything you want to do. And if you want to run Windows, you can do that too – dual boot, or in a window – and you can also minimise the window it’s running in while you’re not using it, so it doesn’t clutter your view. Want to play a game? Just boot into Windows and you’re away. And I read that people are working on that stuff, anyway.

And what about the design of the machines? Have you seen a 17″ MacBook Pro? There’s only one word for the thing, and that’s “Awesome”. Why is it that nobody else can make something like that, or invent a magnetic power plug so your lappy doesn’t do the spins when someone trips on the cord? They don’t because the PC market is focused completely on the margin, because all PC makers, with perhaps a few exceptions, operate on very tight margins.

I bought a PowerMac G4 a few years ago and got the 17″ tube monitor with it, as panels were still very pricey. I remember looking in the box – in vain – for the power cord for the monitor. I was sure that it had not been packed, and then I found out that the monitor didn’t need one…it got all the power it needed from the main system through the single monitor connection cord…even USB connections went through it! That the one cord do do everything for me was just amazing, but it also made complete sense. You can’t do that with a PC, because that’s not the standard that everyone has settled on…cords for everything.

Sure, a MacBook Pro costs more than a Dell, but can there really be any comparison? It’s like a 17″ iPod, all sleek and shiny, and the performance is nothing to sneeze at, either.

If what you want is a no-hassles computer that works as well as it looks, you should look no further than a Mac.