So over the weekend the desperate Clinton campaign began circulating this photo of Barry Obama in an attempt, I guess, to make him seem scary. Drudge has the story here. Turns out Barry was on a tour of Africa when the photo was taken. But I guess we're supposed to believe that maybe he's some secret Al Qaeda operative and the photo was taken at his graduation from terrorist training school. Hoo boy.
Apparently the coded Clintstone message goes something like this:
Gosh, folks, guess what? This Barack Hussein Obama fellow comes from Africa! He may even be related to some Muslims! Does that outfit look familiar? Maybe remind you a little bit of this guy? Folks, he's not one of us! Does he really share our values? Can we trust him? Do you really want to elect a big scary dark-skinned foreigner who wants to destroy our nation and give away all our jobs to the special interests and leave all our children behind and not give health care to everyone?
Mother of God. This from Democrats? This is the kind of stuff you'd expect from Karl Rove. First the bogus plagiarism charge. Now this. What's next? Pictures of Willie Horton? (He's the dude in the photo at right and for those of you who are too young to remember the very ugly 1988 presidential race, check out the link to the Wikipedia page. In that case it was Bush Sr. and the nasty Repubes smearing Mike Dukakis, a somewhat swarthy son of Greek immigrants, and the coded message was that the Duke wasn't truly American and didn't share our values and gosh he let this big scary black man out of prison.)
Now the Clintons are dragging out the old tried-and-true "find a scary black man and attach him to your opponent" trick. Goddamn this makes my blood boil. Good news, I think, is that this time I believe the tactic will backfire on the Clintons and make them look like the craven, ugly, power-hungry creeps they truly are. Turning whites against blacks, turning one religion against another -- that's the crap we're all sick of and that's exactly why people are going crazy for Obama. So go for it, Clintstones. Show your true colors. You know what? I'm betting American people are better and smarter and a lot less bigoted than the Clintons give them credit for. I'm betting a lot of Americans feel really good about a dude who can travel to Africa and the rest of the world and reach out to them and respect them and earn their respect in return. Just a hunch.
The new book reading initiative
Well, okay. I got a few pages into Foucault's Pendulum yesterday but then I kind of dozed off. And then Jony came over to show me this new Aston Martin that he just picked up and then he stayed for a beer and dinner and then the Oscars were on and somehow the day just slipped away from me.
Key thing is that Jony says he totally empathizes with my situation on the book reading thing. Same thing happens to him, apparently, in his old art school circles. He says unless you're like starving in an apartment someplace making weird art that nobody buys, then you're totally shunned by the artsy crowd. God forbid you should go work in industry and actually make money -- do that and you're instantly branded a philistine. Which is weird, Jony says, because honestly San Francisco and the Bay Area are like the most intellectually alive and cosmopolitan places in the whole world. London, Paris, New York -- they get all the attention but honestly the Bay Area is so much more intellectually alive but people don't take it seriously because of the good weather.
"You know where else is cool," Jony says. "Barcelona. A lot like here, actually."
I was like, Yeah, um, that's in the south of Spain, right?
He says, "No, it's in the north."
I'm like, "Yeah, right. Barcelona, right. Very cool. Yeah. Very intellectual."
Then we started talking about that really famous restaurant near Barcelona, this place called El Bulli where the food is like a work of art and you have to wait like a year to get reservations and somehow Jony managed to get a table in April and he wants me to go and I was like yeah that sounds so amazing and I really don't get why people think we're a bunch of spoiled vapid non-reading people out here because see we do so many really cool artistic things like flying my Gulfstream halfway around the world to get dinner.
I tried to read a little more of FP before bed but I ended up checking email instead. Tonight, I swear, I'm going to get at it. I've cleared some free time on iCal and will devote it to reading the book. I mean it.
Sunday, February 24, 2008
Crunchy takes iPhone to wilderness, praises self for not using it
See this story from Outdoor Photographer magazine. This guy took his iPhone on a camping trip but didn't use it to make any calls or check email for a whole day. Wow! Cool, right? Give the man a badge. This after much hand-wringing and the following quote: "Am I using technology or is it using me? Who’s in control here, anyway?"
Good news is that by nightfall he broke down and watched a movie in his tent on his iPhone. But that's cool too. Because he chose it. He was totally in control of the technology.
Whatever dude. You've got an iPhone. We're all happy for you. Now get over yourself.
My eyes! My eyes! Aaaaarggggh!!!
Sorry to do this to you on a Monday morning. But can someone please tell me what the hell this is all about? I mean I'm glad that people care about our brand. But Buddha be praised! There must be limits! The original is here.
Bootleg iPhones around the world
We're driving more than 2% of Internet traffic in Equatorial Guinea, according to the chart that goes with this story in BusinessWeek. Money quote: "Apple could successfully take the iPhone international in an unlocked form, and bypass the difficulties of negotiating exclusive carrier relationships, and simply charge more for the phone. Clearly it will still sell. Clearly the gray market in iPhones is rather healthy."
Negroponte in 1993: "High-definition television is clearly irrelevant."
I'm not making this up. That's what he wrote. See here. I'm not sure about this because I don't ever visit actual retail locations other than our own, but I get the sense that many of the so-called "big box" stores now do indeed sell and promote a wide range of high-definition television sets.
If anyone knows of any other really hugely wrong Negroponte predictions, please send them in. I'm told there are dozens and dozens of them.
Bill Lerach is working out like a bastard
Just heard this rumor that's going around in the Valley. Apparently Bill Lerach is suddenly all freaked out about going to prison, and has realized that providing newspapers is not going to be enough to save his ass, as he seemed to think recently. So he's been working out like a madman at the gym and bulking up. Supposedly he's getting a big set of scary tats too. I'm trying to imagine what he would look like with those gang tats around his neck. Any ideas?
Total n00b just discovering that Apple stores rock
See here. This guy just walked into an Apple store for the first time and discovers that our furniture is great, our geniuses are smart and cool, and black clothing is cool. And then he bought a Mac. Nice to see we're still winning converts.
Caption contest
Frankly I think this one is begging for PhotoCrank treatment. And Photoshop treatment. Have fun, people.
Linux dudes love Macs. Who knew?
See here. Money quote: "Conventional wisdom — suggesting that open source advocates are cheap geeks who don’t want to pay for technology — is just plain wrong. On the contrary, it seems as if the open source movement is more about quality than price. And Apple’s commitment to quality, it seems, is enough for open source folks to overlook Steve Jobs’ penchant for building closed, proprietary systems."
I love you too, open source dudes. I just feel bad for poor old Dell. They totally fell for that petition thing and started making pre-loaded Linux machines. Then you guys all keep buying MacBooks. Hilarious!
My birthday resolution -- I'm going to read Foucault's Pendulum
Many thanks to the thousands of Apple faithful who have been sending me greetings on this, the holiest day in our Apple calendar, the Apple equivalent of Christmas -- yes, it's my birthday. Fifty-three years ago today a savior came into this world, born not in a manger but in a Bay Area hospital, which to be honest in 1955 was pretty much the same thing. San Francisco wasn't always the nicest place in the world. That happened later, when the gays started moving in.
Anyhoo, as you know, I live in Palo Alto. And one thing about living in a university town is there are lots of snobby intellectualoids running around looking for any excuse to pretend they're better than everyone around them. Recently I stepped right into this when I said that Amazon's Kindle thing was a dumb idea because nobody reads anymore. This really picked up steam a few days ago when some guy at the New York Times bashed me and painted me basically as some kind of anti-intellectual greedhead who doesn't read books and just wants to shove crappo movies down people's throats and force them to buy overpriced spiritually dead consumer electronics instead of worthwhile meaningful literature. Here in Palo Alto they're call this "Kindlegate" and putting up posters with my picture and the words, "WANTED FOR CRIMES AGAINST LITERATURE."
Well, see, in places like Palo Alto people actually believe what they read in the New York Times and on posters taped to cafe windows. And now everywhere I go I'm getting catcalls. "Hey, book-hater!" Or they recreate that that scene in Being John Malkovich where some guy throws a can at Malkovich and says, "Hey Malkovich -- think fast!" Only in my case it was some some drunk grad students and they threw a hardcover copy of the new Pevear and Volokhonsky "War and Peace" translation at me and said, "Hey Jobs -- it's a book. Have you heard of it?"
Of course I've heard of "War and Peace." I've even read substantial parts of it. The rest I had read for me by one of my assistants at Pixar who worked up a treatment for me and then recorded himself reading the treatment so I could listen to it on my iPod.
Anyway. The thing is, I really am an intellectual. Have you seen the way I dress? And I really resent this anti-intellectual treatment I'm getting. So here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to start reading all the big brainiac books that I've never read, and then I'll be making sure I drop references to them into every conversation I have. And I'm starting with the one book that I'm convinced no one has ever actually read even though every big brain poser owns a copy -- "Foucault's Pendulum" by Umberto Eco. It's super huge, like 600 and something pages, and really intense, and extremely hard to understand. I've picked out a rare signed first-edition hardcover because that's all I ever read. It just feels more authentic to me to read a book that costs a few thousand dollars rather than some random paperback that anyone could just buy in a store.
As soon as I'm done with the Eco book I'm going to start mentioning it all the time and then saying, "It's this really amazing book -- have you read it? You really should." After that I'm on to the complete works of Harry Mulisch, starting with "The Discovery of Heaven." And I'll mention that all the time too. After that, Lacan and Derrida. Trust me, I'm going to be friggin unbearable.
Happy birthday to me. Now I must go up to my Jobs Pod and get to work. I've got a big day of reading ahead of me. Peace out.
Saturday, February 23, 2008
At last we find out how the Borg steals from us
Turns out they just tape pu Leopard screen shots in hallways, with Post-It notes so MicroTards can comment. Very high tech. See this blog post from a Borg developer named Brandon. Top part is about how much he loves his Mac. But the key bit comes at the end: "One day a friend of mine on the team printed off a couple dozen screenshots of Leopard, showing off various tasks the user can do in OS X, and hung them on one of our hallways. Across from it are pictures of the same tasks in that incredibly well-kept secret of a project that we’re working on. There are post-it notes and markers next to each wall where passersby leave comments/questions. I wonder if any hallways in Cupertino have something like that?"
In fact, Brandon, the answer is yes. We have people who do something like that. They're called lawyers. Watch your back, punk.
We thought we would have to kill RIM. Turns out they're doing it for us.
See here. Gist is these outages at RIM are starting to hurt the BlackBerry's "iconic status." No kidding. By the way, I swear on a stack of Bibles that these outages were not the work of Moshe and his team.
Friday, February 22, 2008
Little tip: Don't put the newspaper next to your MacBook. Duh.
So this guy in New York says he's got a MacBook that keeps trying to burn his house down. He's even written to me directly, because as everyone knows that's also part of my job, fielding tech support calls. Right. Like when I'm not driving the delivery truck and running out to pick up coffee and donuts for everybody back at the office.
But here's the kicker. The guy just outright admits that these fires keep happening because he puts the New York Times next to the MacBook and the sparks from the MacBook hit the newspaper.
Um, buddy? Simple solution here. See the headline above. Man oh man. I love these "user error" problems. It's like when Dave Winer huffed and puffed and marched into a retail store demanding service -- only to be told about the little button on the side of his iPhone.
BTW, firebug dude? Stop writing to me.
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