The Angry Drunk

Christina Warren on the iMac vs. Mac Pro Decision

2010-07-28T20:46:29Z

Christina concludes that the 27″ iMac is still one of the best computers you can buy. I think that the ever-decreasing gap between the iMac and the Mac Pro indicates that Apple no longer views the Mac Pro as a “consumer” machine. In Apple’s view, the iMac is the consumer desktop and the Mac Pro is a professional workstation. I don’t think that they worry about one cannibalizing sales of the other at all.

Suck It Honkeys

2010-07-28T17:58:14Z

WARNING: Political Content Ahead!

MSNBC (amongst others) is reporting that, pretty much as expected, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton has issued an injunction blocking the most heinous and constitutionally bogus provisions of Arizona SB 1070. While this is good news from the perspective of justice, we need to be clear on a few things. First, this is only a temporary injunction until the final court decisions are made.

Secondly, don’t think for a second that this is any sort of blow to the racist crackers who populate the Arizona Republican Party. While the honkey-on-the-street will be understandably upset by this injunction (and the ultimate decision finding that most of this turd fails to pass constitutional muster) the actual players in the AZ GOP are probably jizzing themselves dry at this news. Expect the Arizona airwaves to be saturated in the coming days with campaign advertisements from Brewer, McCain, Hayworth, Arpaio and the rest of these scumbags decrying “Obama” and the rest of the evil Washington insiders for preventing Arizonans from practicing their lilly-white-god-given right to hunt darkies.

As for myself, I do agree with the AZ GOP on one thing. It’s a shame that this state has been invaded by foreigners, we should probably send them back from whence they came.

Glenn Fleishman on the DMCA Jailbreaking Exemption

2010-07-27T21:37:04Z

One of the most comprehensive, accurate and most of all, sane write-ups about the ruling by the Librarian of Congress exempting jailbreaking from the “circumvention” provisions of the DMCA. If you’re going to read one article about this, make it this one.

Gin Time: Tonic Water Tasting

2010-07-27T02:07:34Z

In an effort to pep up my gin and tonics I’ve decided to sample some “premium” tonic waters. There’s really no point in shelling out for top–shelf hooch if you’re going to mix it with swill. Tonight was Fentiman’s Tonic Water (warning, hideous website ahoy).

The verdict: A fuck-sight better than Canada Dry or Schweppes.

Winer’s Line in the Sand

2010-07-26T19:38:32Z

Taking a page from the playbook of John “mother of all tools” Dowdell, Dave Winer has declared that he will no longer tolerate off-topic discussion and mindless Apple fanboyism on his precious blog. Of course, in Dave’s world “off-topic” means “doesn’t agree with my sage wisdom” and “mindless Apple fanboyism” means “in any way approving of Apple.”

Look Dave, we get it, people disagreeing with you irritates you. I mean, good gods people, don’t you know who this is? This is Dave Winer. The “proto-blogger!” Having your narcissistic and ill-thought-out bullshit pointed out to you must be agonizing. I’d suggest dispensing with comments entirely, but then how would you get your fix of sycophantic cock-sucking? A man can’t live by his achievements alone for fuck’s sake!

Flighty Whitey

2010-07-23T15:36:31Z

If you haven’t heard the news, Apple has delayed the white iPhone yet again; this time to “later this year” which, as we all know is Apple-talk for December 31′st.

All joking aside, if the media is looking for a story to play up the “Apple is run by incompetent designtards” there you go. Announcing a product and not being able to ship it for upwards of six months is pathetic. Where’s my press conference mother-fuckers?

I’m going to buy a Droid X out of spite.

How to Tell a Journalist From a Blogger

2010-07-22T07:18:39Z

And, for completeness sake, the piece that led me to the last link. Read this and pay attention blogtards…you in particular Jizzmodo.

For the record, I’m in no way, shape or form a journalist — just an asshole with a blog.

Not All Bloggers Are Journalists

2010-07-22T07:21:00Z

An extremely insightful piece on the historic and current role of the Fourth Estate.

The money quote:

In fact, I have to apologize on behalf of my entire profession for how you have been treated by a few bloggers, whom I’ll have the tact to not name here. There are bloggers who know and care nothing about real journalism, who see this profession as an opportunity for short-term gain at anyone’s expense, who find no joy in it and who dream only of fame in the now and a lucrative exit thereafter. These people are not journalists; they are self-serving scum. And they’ve royally fucked up how a lot of people see my profession.

This right here is why there is a “media” category on this blog, and a large part of why I participate in the Angry Mac Bastards.

H/T to Shawn King for pointing to the article that led to this one.

Dunning-Kruger and the New Media Douchebag

2010-07-22T07:04:50Z

I haven’t taken New Media Douchebag Anil Dash to task here yet, but I ran across a blog post by Anil that I couldn’t pass up. Not necessarily because the article was particularly bad (although it is) but because it’s emblematic of something that I see constantly amongst the New Media Douchebag collective. In fact, this trait may well be one of the core defining aspects of the quintessential New Media Douchebag. Specifically, it’s the utter and complete inability of the New Media Douchebag to realize that they are pontificating about a subject that the are woefully ill-prepared to discuss.

We’ve seen this time and again. It seems that New Media Douchebags are willing to play pundit on any subject ranging from economics, to politics, to race relations — usually with hilariously horrific results. I’ve thought long and hard on this phenomenon, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it results from a unique combination of the innate narcissism that fuels the average New Media Douchebag coupled with a specific form of the Dunning–Kruger effect. For the unaware, the Dunning-Kruger effect is the state where a person doesn’t possess the skill-set to make a good decision, and also doesn’t possess the ability to recognize that they lack that skill. Basically, the more incompetent someone is, the more likely they are to believe that they are more competent than the average person.

I say that New Media Douchebags exhibit a specific form of the Dunning-Kruger effect because I don’t think that the standard definition applies here. In most cases New Media Douchebags have been somewhat successful at something in their careers. Whether it be the invention of XML, the mass adoption of RSS, or whatever the fuck Scoble’s claim to fame is; most New Media Douchebags have done something right at least once in their life.

Unfortunately, in the case of New Media Douchebags, it seems that this singular success combines with their innate narcissism to cause them to think that they are equally astute in all areas of thought. Perhaps it’s the binary folly that many engineers and software developers are prone to. Whatever the reason, it has led to a spate of fucktards who have had one good idea in their life feeling confident dispensing advice in areas far outside their core competency.

Which leads us, inexorably, to Anil Dash’s blog post that triggered this one. In The “Yes, And…” Culture Anil attempts to solve the world’s problems with the magic of improvisational theater.

Let’s start off with the first few paragraphs of Mr. Dash’s missive:

In improvisational theater and comedy, one of the first rules of participation is allowing co-creation. Basically, instead of saying “No, wait!” you respond to your collaborators with “Yes, and…” to continue the conversation and start to create something great together.

That principle of collaborative and cumulative creation is a fundamental aspect of modern culture in general. Remixing, rebooting, remaking and re-imagining culture require a “Yes, and…” aesthetic. When a moment of online inspiration blossoms into a full-fledged meme, communities from 4Chan to YouTube are demonstrating their embrace of improvisational culture.

But this doesn’t just apply to goofy web memes. This could be an interesting, even important aspect of how society and policy evolve as well.

Here we go, right off the bat we have the inappropriate application of a specific discipline to the world in general. And as a bonus it’s chock-a-block full of hipster douchebag condescension. “You see, in improvisational theater we…” Blah, I can hear the italics from here. But let’s wait and see the specific examples that Anil has in mind:

Take, for example, the recent Citizens United case at the Supreme Court. The ruling states, in effect, that companies can now spend an unlimited amount of their funds on political campaign ads for various candidates. People who prefer humans to corporations are, naturally, concerned about the pending completion of the corporate takeover of elections.

Yes, let’s look at Citizens United an egregious case of the Supreme Court giving away the rights of real people in favor of fictitious corporate “persons.” What does Anil suggest we do to reclaim our rights as citizens? Does he suggest that we speak out in protest. Does he suggest that we join the various movements in the United States aimed at revoking “corporate personhood.”

Oh hell no. We who would roll back the excesses of the Roberts Court are getting “…into the usual long, expensive, unproductive cultural-battle-masquerading-as-political-battle that makes so many of us get turned off by politics.” Well forgive fucking me Anil. I’m sorry that my desire to protect our rights is “turning you off.”

So, what does Anil propose?

What could it look like in a “Yes, and….” culture, though? What if, while acknowledging that spending is not speech, we decide to forgo trying to roll back the law, and instead roll it forward? Yes, corporations can buy political advertisements, but what if any employee of the corporation could submit the content of the advertisement? The last video in before a TV station’s programming deadline would be the one that went on the air, privileging those who are nimble with media, instead of just corporate officers.

Lords of Kobol is Anil serious? Yes, we the people will overpower the financial might of the corporation by being the advertising version of eBay snipers! Like most nerds, Anil seems completely oblivious to the fact that mathematical laws have poor record of mapping to human behavior. A=B and B=C therefore A=C may work in a proof. But when the equation is megacorp = person and Joe Fucktard = person the answer sure as fuck isn’t megacorp = Joe Fucktard.

Does Anil seriously believe that any corporation that was going to bother financing a political advertisement would take the slightest chance that some random cunt like me would get a chance at the microphone. It’s ludicrous.

Moreover, Anil displays the usual Silly Valley narcissistic callousness toward the average worker. Anil may be able to say whatever he wants with impunity, but some of us work in places where the price of agitation is a quick trip to the bread line.

But Anil doesn’t stop there.

Or if we struggle with Arizona’s new law which allows police to detain suspected undocumented immigrants, instead of merely fighting to repeal the policy, we should extend it. Any legal resident or citizen of the United States who is wrongly detained by the police should get a free gun, perhaps one of those confiscated by the police. In that way, when we abridge the Fourth Amendment rights of someone, we make it up to them by supporting their Second Amendment rights. You want to protect the rights of Americans? Yes, and… we do too.

God’s balls! Even if you assume that Anil is being facetious here these are still some of the stupidest words committed to digital storage.

The bottom line is that Anil Dash displays an utter and complete lack of understanding of the issues that he’s babbling about. His solutions are facile at best, and dangerous at the worst. The most obnoxious thing is that there are people who think that this clod is insightful.

Why Steve Jobs Is (Legitimately) Pissed at the Media

2010-07-20T02:16:07Z

I wasn’t present at Friday’s special iPhone 4 Press Conference held by Apple at their Cupertino Campus, but I followed the excellent live coverage from Jason Snell at Macworld. Ignoring the specifics of the announcements (spoiler: there is no fucking recall you fucktards), one thing jumped out at me: Steve Jobs was palpably angry with the media.

In the process of providing actual hard data regarding the impact of the antenna issues (hint, not fucking much) Steve called out no less than three separate organizations for their shoddy coverage. First, of course, was the douche collective over at Jizzmodo. The less said about those felonious fuckwits the better, so I’ll leave it at that. In addition, during the Q&A portion of the event, Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall denied anonymously sourced reports by BusinessWeek and the New York Times regarding the issue calling them “bullshit” and patently false” respectively.

In addition to those specific examples Steve had some choice comments about the press in general. Here’s Jason Snell’s report of what Steve Said:

In search of eyeballs for websites, people don’t care what they leave in their wake. So I look at this whole thing and say, wow. Apple’s been around for 34 years. Haven’t we earned the credibility and trust from some of the press to give us a little bit of the benefit of the doubt, of our motivations, the fact that we’re confident and will solve these problems. I think we have that trust from our users, but I didn’t see that in the press. This thing was blown so far out of proportion. But I’m not going to say we’re not at fault. We didn’t educate enough.

Now to be clear here, unlike some others in the Twitterverse I don’t think that Steve is asking for a free pass from the press here. I think that he’s expressing his dismay over how the press, in the complete absence of any actual hard evidence, blew this issue completely out of proportion to the point where a camera-hog Senator felt compelled to get in on the action.

And let’s be clear here. This story was blown out of proportion. Does the iPhone 4 have a spot that, when blocked, causes signal attenuation? Yes, as do all modern smartphones. Is this situation acerbated by the fact that the iPhone 4′s antenna is placed outside of the casing? Yes, but that decision demonstrably improves reception in the vast majority of situations. The bottom line is, this was a “debacle” almost entirely created by the press.

As I was driving to get lunch after the press conference it came to me why I so identify with Steve Jobs’ reaction: I’ve been in the same position.

More than once in my career I’ve been in a situation where something has gone wrong, sometimes catastrophically wrong. During situations like that, when every available hand is on deck trying to fix the problem, the most enraging thing in the world is a chorus of people who have no data, no real understanding of the issue, or even an understanding of the principles involved with the issue demanding answers NOW!

That’s the role that the press has taken during this debacle. Unquestioningly repeating the claims of anyone who was willing to make a comment, speculating about technical issues that they were patently unqualified to comment on, and demanding that Apple act NOW NOW NOW to resolve the issue. And speaking of just horrible reporting; the less said of Consumer Reports embarrassing flip-flopping the better.

In a situation like this there comes a time when someone has to stand up and say “enough.” Again, I’ve been there. I’ve had to stand in the middle of an engineering bullpen and tell the CEO of my company that every minute I spend answering panicked emails and attending blamestorming conference calls was a minute that I wasn’t spending fixing the fucking problem.

That’s basically what Steve Jobs did on Friday. He got up on stage, explained that this issue wasn’t as bad as it was being made out to be, told the people that mattered how it would be resolved, and told the harpies to shut the fuck up. I’m glad he finally got pissed off enough to do it.