Technovia

Blogging light

Posting will be light again this week, as I'll be away on family business.

Bye, Dad

As some of you will know, my Dad died on Tuesday after a short illness.

He'd been ill with pulmonary fibrosis for a few months, and although he'd been in and out of hospital he'd been able to have a pretty good quality of life up until the last week or two, when his condition deteriorated quickly. But he didn't suffer, and you can't ask for too much more.

He was 79 years old, and had had a good life - just over 20 years of happy retirement in which he saw his three kids and three grandkids grow up and make lives for themselves. We'll all miss him so much.

Sydney Betteridge, 1928-2007

Blatant plug

Alex has a marvelous picture of his Moo Christmas cards. If you haven't ordered yours already, do so immediately. Plus! There's the People Powered Holiday Card Store too, if you don't have any suitable images of your own.

Pretty Moo Stickers

You know you want to buy some stickers.

Presenting the Mac market's very own Dvorak

Several months ago, everyone's favourite pundit John C Dvorak admitted - as if anyone couldn't guess - that every now and then he trolled Mac users, baiting them with outrageous and outlandish claims about their platform or the superiority of Windows. Better yet, John outlined his three-step method of Mac user-baiting:

Dvorak's formula
• Find something critical to say about the Mac that may or may not be true.
• Personal attacks and hate mail then ensue. This gives me “free column number two.”
• Apologize for being wrong and then all the Mac crazies really go nuts since they all feel so vindicated.

The great thing about this forumula is that it's applicable well beyond Mac fans: you can do this with any audience. So it's perhaps unsurprising that one Mac “pundit”, Roughly Drafted's owner/publisher/editor/tea maker Daniel Eran, has decided to apply it with a “pro-Mac” slant.

Yesterday, Eran produced what can only be described as a flame-baiting beauty of a column, claiming to “prove” that over a seven year period, Windows cost five times as much as a Mac. His method was to factor in the cost of OS upgrades, then add - for Windows only - a premium for anti-virus and spyware removal. So far, so good: there's no doubt that you do indeed pay a tax on top of the cost of Windows for keeping yourself clean of malware, although you can - if you shop around - get both anti-spyware and AV software for nothing.

Where Daniel went off the rails, though, was in his costings. To determine the cost of spyware removal, he added in $200 per year for professional servicing. As a million people on Digg and in his comments pointed out, this was mad: it's like claiming that every car driver must pay thousands per month for fuel just because some people have gas-guzzlers. Or, as I put it, it's like saying every Mac users must have ProCare if they want their Macs kept up to date, as one of the benefits of ProCare is updating your Apple software.

That's column number one. Today, Daniel has posted a second column, called “Bloggers in Blind Rage Over Digg”, which is basically one long “shock” piece at how he's been criticised, while attacking those who criticised him - including me, of course. When I posted comments that were critical of his argument, Daniel threatened to ban me from his comments, and then trumped all my points with a one liner: “Haha Ian, you are such a tool”. Oh, to be wounded by such wit.

Does this method sound familiar to you? Yes, of course: It's steps one and two direct from what should be called “The Dvorak School of Column Writing”. I'm expecting step three within a week, once Daniel's trolling has stopped having the desired effect. It'll probably take the classic “they all misread me, I don't know what the problem was” form.

Daniel has been trying to stir up this kind of stuff for some time. His first effort that came to my attention was an attempt to show that, in fact, Apple's market share was effectively double it's usually-cited level - a figure he achieved by lumping together OS software and hardware, giving Microsoft a 48% share of the PC market. Why he didn't add in printers, scanners, monitors, and everything else I don't know. Thankfully, most people didn't take the bait: perhaps because his argument was so jaw-droppingly specious that few could do anything but laugh at it.

There's a second way in which Daniel reminds me of John: His gift for self-promotion. However, while for John self-promotion is mostly a face-to-face thing, Daniel's chosen forum is Digg, and boy does he do it well. Being told off by some Digg users for the practice of submitting his own stories (referring to himself in the third person while doing so) hasn't stemmed the tide of Roughly Drafted stories being submitted to Digg.

Instead, the baton has been picked up by an “Andrew Levi Black”, who since registering on June 21st, has submitted a grand total of 25 stories, all from Roughly Drafted. Oddly, many of the submissions follow the same style (“Daniel Eran of RoughlyDrafted Magazine has a phat list...”) as Daniel's own submissions (“Daniel Eran of RoughlyDrafted Magazine Introduces the Apple XServe mini...”). Also oddly, doing a search for “Andrew Levi Black” on Google returns only his Digg profile: as far as the rest of the internet outside Digg is concerned, there is no Andrew Levi Black.

But whether “Andrew Levi Black ” is a real person who just happens to sound like Daniel, a helpful friend of Daniel's or a good old-fashioned sock puppet, there's no doubt that Daniel knows how to use Digg to maximise his traffic. And it all adds up to a pretty impressive package: Dvorak-style trolling, Dvorak-style writing, and Dvorak-style self-promotion. Fellow Mac users, we have our very own Dvorak.

Technorati Tags: danieleran, dvorak, macs, roughlydrafted

Advent Calendar

Mr friend Leslie is doing an Advent Calendar. It's a beautiful thing, full of little delights, and including some "Guest Memories" of Christmas from various folk.

One of which is from my favourite girl, and whenever I read it it make me want to cry, because it's so sweet and reminds me exactly why I love her. Like I need much reminding :)

Sad

It's very very sad that when I saw the headline Logging threat to Amazon much greater than thought, I immediately thought it related to Amazon.com.

The Greatest Philosopher

The fabulous (and podcasted!) “In Our Time” is running a poll to find the greatest philosopher of all time. Vote for Kant, or I’m likely to get all Categorical Imperative on your ass.

Finding Myself In Caesar's Bath

Sometimes I think I’m a sucker for Internet memes, especially when they involve slightly navel gazing tendencies. Hence, here’s my contribution to the Caesar’s Bath postings.
For those who don’t know what it’s all about (which I didn’t until Kim posted) the idea is to list five things that your circle of friends or peer group are wild about, but that you just don’t get, along, of course, with a suitably naval gazing explanation. So here are mine.

Thing The First: Star Wars
In the summer of 1977, I was 10 years old and thoroughly obsessed with science fiction of all kinds. I’d made my mother take me to a rare showing of 2001: A Space Odyssey (complete with a second feature of 1958’s From The Earth To The Moon as it was the days when you got two films for the price of one). I’d read Heinlein until my eyes bled and I believed in military service for all (OK, I grew out of that one). I’d bought everything Arthur C. Clarke wrote, and memorised the lot.
But Star Wars left me nonplussed. Even then, it made no sense: how come they could make computers smart enough to power intelligent robots, but couldn’t make a targeting computer for the X-Wing that could shoot better than Luke? If the force was so cool, how come the funny guys with white uniforms didn’t use it too? And how could the Empire hold itself together when it’s Stormtroopers were the worst shots in the history of the universe?
Ever sense then, I’ve been left vaguely puzzled by the whole adoration of Star Wars that seems endemic in everyone my age. It’s an OK film, one that I’d watch and enjoy on a rainy Sunday afternoon, but the level of fan worship revolving around it is crazy. But perhaps it’s actually something to do with the second of my Caesar’s Baths…

Thing The Second: New Ageness. Vague waffly hand waving and other Anti-Rationalisms
As I type this, in the background on TV is a show called Have I Been Here Before?, in which a variety of B-List celebrities get hypnotized and “regress to previous lives”, accompanied by (of all people) Philip Schofield. Leaving aside for a second that the last person in the world you’d want to find in a previous life is Philip Schofield, it’s a prime example of the kind of anti-rationalism that’s gradually crept into television and culture – especially things like daytime TV, the Daily Mail and Hello! Magazine, which appeal to the notion that intuition is valued more than reason. To its credit, the programme does at least have psychologists and the like explaining that there’s no evidence that any of it is other than bunk, but the fact that it’s on at all – and that the majority of screen time is spent gently suggesting that the sceptics are wrong – is enough to make the blood boil.
Some people would suggest that this isn’t actually anything to be concerned about, that it’s confined largely to a small minority of people (such as those lovely people who come here and post pleas to David Blaine to intercede in their lives, just as once they would have done pleas to saints). But in fact, it’s incredibly wide spread – especially among the educated middle classes, who flock to Feng Shui, Reiki, Crystal Healing and every other minor brand of craziness like it was the saviour of mankind.
Guess what everyone: It’s all bunk. You’re being conned, and paying for the privilege.

Thing The Third: Food Allergies
When I was a teenager, doctors found out that the reason I’d been coughing my guts up (literally) wasn’t due to the bronchitis they thought I’d had. In fact, I’d developed an allergy to house dust, one of the more common ones, which in me had led to a fairly severe reaction. They promptly put me on a course of injections to boost my system’s resistance to house dust, by exposing me to it. It made me feel woozy for a day or so after each injection, but it worked and I haven’t been troubled since.
This taught me a simple fact: Exposure to something you’re allergic to makes you less allergic to it. Your body gets used to it, and you stop getting the violent reaction. When I was a kid, my Gran had a cat and so I was constantly exposed to cat hair, with no problem. A couple of years after I left home, moving away from the cat, I got scratched by one – and promptly ended up spending a day in bed, feeling like someone had hit me with a bowling ball. Yes, I’m allergic to cat hair too – yet because I’d been constantly exposed to it, I’d built up a level of immunity that let me be around any time I liked. Only when that exposure decreased did the allergy assert itself.
The same is surely true of that most common of complaints, a “food allergy”. Food allergies have only become commonly noted in the past ten or so years, although severe ones have been around a lot longer. Now, it seems, half the people I know seem to be allergic to something, from peanuts to whey. So what’s going on?
There’s only two real options. The first is that the food’s changed, which is something I doubt. Every kid I knew at school scoffed peanuts, for example, like there was no tomorrow without falling over dead. Yet do that now and, if you believe the hype, half of them would come out in hives. Peanuts haven’t changed (they’re still yummy) so it has to be the kids.
My bet – and this isn’t science – is that we look out for allergic reactions earlier, and remove them from kid’s diets. This has the effect of preventing them from building up resistance, making their “allergic” reactions more severe.
Or of course there’s the third option: We’re all turning into puny human weaklings. And, for the Futurama fans, we all know what Morbo does to puny human weaklings.

Thing The Fourth: Thou Must Breed, Immediately
I like kids. Kids are fun. They climb trees, do stupid things, and generally act like you’d secretly want to when you’re really 38.
However, the parents of kids usually aren’t fun, especially when they’ve bred for the first time in their 30’s. Suddenly, all conversation not revolving around children stops. Simply because you have fulfilled your biological imperative doesn’t mean your life is over, but that’s what some parent’s behaviour would lead you believe.
No, I do not want to hear about the brand of Vegan nappy you found. No, I don’t want to know about the fact that you’ve laid out little Tarquin’s room in strict accordance with a Feng Shui mystic’s rules. And no, I don’t want to know about how you found out that he had an allergy to potatoes because he spit some out the other day.
And most especially, I don’t want to see that look of vague pity in your eyes because I don’t have kids. I don’t want to hear about how no one who isn’t a parent could possibly understand about how life-affirming and changing the whole experience is. Yes, it is life-changing: if you’re not careful, it can turn you into the kind of selfish, short-sighted idiot who drives their brats a mile to school “because it’s safer” while complaining about rising levels of asthma caused by increased pollution.
You want perspective? Stop thinking that you’re the first person in the world to have a child. And stop thinking that something is OK if it protects your child, even if it damages the lives of others.

Thing The Fifth: Ali G
So there’s this middle class Jewish comedian pretending to be an Asian kid obsessed with American black urban culture. Sorry, run that by me again?
Simply because it’s post-modern and self-referentially ironic doesn’t make it anything other than the 21st Century equivalent of the Black and White Minstrel Show.

Five things you may not have noticed about France

1. French culture is low, not high.

Think of France and you think of fine wines, museums, art, culture, right? That's Culture with a capital C - the high stuff. Not the low everyday things. If you think this, you'd be wrong. French culture is all about the low-end: food, drink, the stuff of everyday living and making it all a pleasure. The food is better not because it's cooked incredibly well (often, it isn't), but because the French won't tolerate rubbish ingredients. Compare the vegetable section of a French supermarket to an English one, and you'll instantly see the difference: the produce is seasonal, it's French, and it's not ripened super-fast under glass. Even in the worst supermarkets, the only time I saw a non-French vegetable was some Israeli avocado's - which weren't selling well.

2. French? Fashion? Not in my lifetime.

Mention the French, and you instantly think of fashion - but you'd be wrong. What the French are good at is style, rather than fashion - which is actually something that the British are much, much better at. In France, most of the young people look like slightly less grubby versions of the old people, wearing slightly more colourful versions of the same clothes. They look great. They know how to accessorise like no nation on Earth. But that's as far as it goes. When British youth is inventive, bold and fearless about what it wears, French youth is conservative and (dare I say it?) somewhat dull. Personally, I'm of an age where dressing like the French has started to appeal more, but then I make no pretense of being fashionable.

3. French TV. Oh God, the horror.

It’s not just that French TV is in French (which is a handicap for me, but probably not for the natives). It’s that it rivals Australian soap operas for awfulness. Even a high-culture version of Ben Jonson’s Volpone starring Gerard Depardieu looked like a BBC2 play from 1976. And as for the rest of it…

4. French pop music ended in 1965.

OK, now this is a severe generalisation, but the French appear to have decided en masse that pop music post-mid 60’s serves no purpose. Everything - even the upbeat psuedo-techno – sounds like it's filtered through Elvis and Le Beatles. Star Academy, the French version of those awful search-for-a-star shows, is a case in point, with - I kid you not - a group song called Au revoir Le Professeur that  resembled something that the Kids from Fame would have rejected as too chi chi. The two finalists of Star Academy - Gregory and Lucie - made Will Young look leading edge. While in the UK, mainstream pop stars like Holly Valance and Sugababes produce songs that at least sound like they've made an effort to be different, French pop stars all want to be Jonny Halliday. And that's the worst thing: why do the French love ancient, leathery "rock and rollers" Halliday (107 years old and still bleaching his hair) and Michel Sardou? Sardou was on the final of Star Academy doing a duet with Lucie, who, the poor love, was valiantly attempting to strike up chemistry with a man old enough to be her grandfather. And all the while, her body language spoke of how much she wanted to be anywhere other than being embraced in a suspiciously vigorous fashion on live TV by the leathery crooner. Oh, and French is the worst language in the world to rap in - even Italian is better (see Jovanotti for details).

5. I love the place.

Despite their terrible music and oldworld clothes, I love the French to bits. They know how to live, even if they only know how to rock. I'm glad to be back, but I can't wait to go again.