Everybody lets you down, in the end

Firefox, O Firefox.
You used to be so awesome, setting the world free from IE.
But now you suck a lot of balls.
I can't use that new address bar because it is stupid and people who are not stupid can not use it.
And I am not stupid.

Except sometimes when I am.

But you cannot create an address bar that is smarter than me, so you shouldn't even try.
Just give me my sweet, sweet autocomplete
Don't try to search my bookmarks and titles of visited URLs like a moron.
And don't match URLs in the middle, because I never try to type a URL in from the middle.
But the firefox developers won't do that.
Because they suck.
A lot of balls.
Along with probably some other things.

And so now I will use maxthon.
Even though maxthon is really IE.
Or maybe because it is really IE.

Fuck you dead with a Christmas tree, firefox.

The H equation

I'm always reminded in early spring of a fundamental law of nature:

V_s = Φ_D ⁄ (Q_s * T)

Where:
V_s = volume of stereo
Φ_D = angle of displacement from vertical of driver's upper body
Q_s = quality of speakers
T = driver's taste in music

iWho?

In a comment to a previous post I acknowledged my intention to be assimilated by the iVil empire. But in a fortuitous spasm of serendipity I happened to catch, out of the crease of my eye, my loyal old Sharp Zaurus, sitting forlornly on its unplugged charger. It'll never compete on storage space, but I reckon a 1GB SD card will be plenty 'nough for my needs. And my old 802.11 CF card was right where I left it, so I have net connectivity - in fact I'm posting this entry from the Z. Got no real need for tunes nor tubery, so I'm pretty much set.

Bite me, hippies.

Something bias

I was reading up on Ruby's bitwise operators, and I came across an interesting post on some kind of Usenet-looking forum.

It seems to be a bug with >> operator:

4653896912 >> 13 should be 43814 like it is in java or php, but not 568102.

Oh dear. Looks bad for Ruby. Man, to mess up the bitwise right shift operator like that... How mortifying.

But wait! Some other guy does a quick fact check and finds out it's actually java and php that are wrong; Ruby gives the right value.

I think there's a term for this kind of error - some kind of bias. We tend to believe the first thing we hear on a subject and require a disproportionate amount of contrary evidence to change our minds. Java gives us an answer and we trust it without thinking - java wouldn't lie. I guess getting the same value from php is some reason to doubt Ruby; 2 > 1, after all.

But shouldn't your first instinct be to check it for yourself? I mean, how hard is it to calculate 4653896912/(2^13)? Even if it's something trickier, we should at least maintain uncertainty until we get more evidence rather than confidently asserting "[It] should be 43814 like it is in java...". Not trying to call out Mr. Lazu; it's the kind of mistake anyone is likely to make, but which we probably ought to be making more effort to avoid.

Language puzzle

A simple language puzzle:

What common English noun has an adjectival form formed by inserting a single letter in its interior? There may be more than one solution.

NOooooooooooooooooooooooo

Oh cap'n my cap'n . . .

Wait, what?

Aereo-plain is out of print. How can Aereo-plain be out of print?

I went to buy a copy as a gift, and saw that the cheapest you could get a new one from a spamazon seller for was like 270 bucks. Two hundred. And seventy bucks. How could this have happened? This is like the Bible being out of print. Or Dark Side of the Moon.

This is the disc, of course, which really fired up my appreciation for Americana music. I'd been a casual fan of bluegrass in the past, and one day found myself scrounging through the slim pickings at a Borders and Noble music section. As I flipped through one of the meager stacks, the scruffy, begoggled visage of Hartford suddenly beamed out at me, and my path was set. I popped that disc in to listen on my way home, not knowing what to expect - wound up carrying it from car to house to car to office and back again for a solid week, not even wanting to pause to make separate copies for each location.

I lack the vocabulary to describe music - I have no ear, nor any understanding of how or why music has the effect it does on us - but if I had to choose ten CDs to take to a desert island, seven of them would be Aereo-plain. I mean, what if a monkey dropped a coconut on one? Or you wore the bits off of several playing them? It just wouldn't do not to have backups.

The 2002 collection of unreleased material and alternate takes from the sessions is still available, and it's superb, but it ain't the original.

I reckon I've got enough CDs at the aerie to make a couple dozen backups - just in case - then put the original back in its shrine, never to be touched again.

You rotten, ipod-totin' hippies.

Suck it up, hippies - Part III

So you see, you chose to part with your $499 in exchange for your 4GB iPhone, so - ahhhhh, screw it.

Suck it up, Hippies - part II

I hesitate to revisit this topic since I don't want to (re-)offend my good friends in the hippie early adopter community, but this guy reaches levels of confusion that render me incapable of refraining from comment. The original quote is apparently on an Apple discussion site that requires registration even to view, but Gina Hughes reproduces it in her column:

Much of the resentment is about the way the iPhone depreciated in value in less than 67 days. Jeremy Riga says, "I am NOT angry at the $200 price drop. I'm angry that Apple has decided NOT to keep the VALUE in the iPhone (or that it wasn't there to begin with). Because as a savvy consumer I understand the difference between buying something of value, and something that is overpriced. I bought the iPhone because I was sold, at $600, on the VALUE. Now today I am finding that I was wrong - it was NOT worth $600 - it was worth $400, perhaps even less. Thus, it was overpriced and I was over-sold by someone I have trusted to sell me worthwhile, and valuable products in the past. Steve Jobs."

Henh?!? "...as a savvy consumer"?!?!? What a moron. I don't even know where to begin unraveling this maelstrom of stupidity.

Isn't it obvious that value is - can only ever be - whatever is perceived by the consumer? This guy seems to be somehow asserting that value is driven by the producer. Steve Jobs says the iPhone is worth $600 so this dude slavishly goes out and spends that amount on the thing? Jobs should have said it was worth $60,000.

The amount someone is willing to pay for an item - i.e., that item's value to that someone - is roughly equal to the utility that individual perceives he will gain from possessing the item. And value, naturally, cannot be divorced from the valuer. To those who bought at $600 the iPhone indisputably was worth at least $600, almost by definition. That's why they bought it. To say "it was worth $400, perhaps even less" is false on its face.

Suppose Apple - for whatever reason - started selling the iPhone for 25 cents. Would you then say it was only worth a quarter? Well, you might, if you were a moron (or if you actually had no use for the thing). Of course it would be worth more - it'd be worth (to you) the highest amount of money you'd be willing to part with in exchange for one.

The producer puts a price tag on products in order to signal to you what he is willing to part with it for. That there are apparently people out there who believe that price drives value - rather than the other way around - makes me regret ever having doubted the effectiveness of obviously manipulative marketing techniques.

"Because as a savvy consumer I understand the difference between buying something of value, and something that is overpriced." Err, no, dude, your entire rant just proved that you don't.

Now come buy this used pair of socks for $600. They're valuable.

On hiatus

FJU is on hiatus until certain issues are worked out. Probably at least a couple weeks.

Treachery

So while we were conquering el Gigante, Ted had to sneak out early to prepare for the 7:30 show at DSI. Trusting soul that I am, I hardly suspected that that wasn't all he was preparing.

Keijiro and I had yet to finish eating our burritos, so I naively took as encouragement Ted's parting cry of "I expect to see you all wearing your t-shirts at the show!" - referencing the free shirt Bandido's grants you for making it from one end of el Gigante to the other. When we arrived at the theater, I didn't hear him nudging Dave: "dude, why aren't you wearing your shirt?", or I might have been tipped off from the start.

As it was, it wasn't until I was in my seat and the show was starting that I got the first inkling of my fate. The "ComedySportz Show" is something like Whose Line is it Anyway? - two teams, semi-random scoring, general anarchic zaniness. It was when I noted that one of the teams - the red team, as I recall - was dubbed the "Tijuana el Gigantes" that I started to get the first cold, uncertain tendrils of fear gnawing into my gut.

But I could hardly have escaped if I wanted to. El Gigante had me cemented fast to my seat, on the far side from the aisle. I'd stepped in it, and I had the feeling I was going to have to walk all the way through it.

Sure enough, there came a point some 45 minutes into the show where a bit involving audience participation arose. The "referee" made a beeline for the row where Dave, Keijiro, and I were sitting, and in a flash I saw the whole shady picture - Ted, hunched over, rubbing his hands together and cackling conspiratorially: "There'll be these three guys with 'I conquered el Gigante' shirts, shee? And one of them will be this short-haired, bespectacled guy, shee? That's Ray, shee? Twist the knife in 'im."

I briefly considered just keeping my seat and queering the deal. I'm sure they have some procedure for shaming those who decline participation, but it could hardly be worse than the humiliation of taking the stage. But I'd had time to half-prepare myself for that reality that I had hoped was just paranoia, and after a half hearted appeal to overMexication - "I can't move" - allowed myself to be dragged up into the glare of the spotlights.

I won't go into the details of my performance, but there is some photographic evidence. I was half-seriously considering just collapsing with mock terminal indigestion in a corner of the stage, then lying there throughout the whole game. But I convinced myself to man up and play along. And frankly, although I didn't cover myself in glory, I think I did a half-decent job given the circumstances.

I could've done without Dave and Ted trying to salvage my ego later, though: "You were funny! Really! You did a good job!" Yeah, unintentionally doesn't count, guys. Nor did Ted help much when he later told me "I've seen five-year-olds do better". I mean, I'm sure he's right, but man - insult to injury.

More money than sense

Trevor Wood apparently has puzzles for sale. I say "apparently" because it has . . . uh, apparently been some time since his site was updated. And furthermore, he eschews orders in favor of a "wish list" - you give him your contact information and he tells you when he has something he might deign to sell you.

For fans of the "secret box" style of puzzle, however, Wood's work is worth giving up a little dignity for. Puzzles like Takashima's Tantalizing Temple and R.I.P. are extraordinary examples of the genre.

There is actually a rare instance of the former up for auction now. The current bid as of this writing is a meager $750. Frankly, if I could get it for that price I'd jump on it, even without a thought to resale value. But based on what past Wood pieces have gone for, the "estimated value" of $2000 will be eclipsed in short order.

In fact, I'd be surprised if the piece stays south of ten grand. A tad too rich for this collector. Even the slightly more common, but still desirable, Kamei boxes will probably end up out of my range. Maybe there'll be a scrap or two left over - panels all warped, mechanism all locked up. Feh. Ilkley taste on a Costa Rica budget.

No spamware for me, please

Long, long ago I installed Quicktime on a Windeauxs box I was using. It promptly associated itself with every conceivable type of media file extension (as well as probably several hundred that were not yet in use - just in case), installed a crapload of spyware, launched a bunch of recursive popup ads, set my browser start page to apple.com, set a photo of Steve Jobs as my desktop image, and billed my credit card for three iMacs and an (pre-order) iPod nano.

Took me some time to straighten that mess out, after which I vowed never to install any software from Apple again.

These days they seem to be a little more sensitive about alienating the moderately savvy user with overbearing strongarm tactics, so that vow is now queued for deprecation. Fortunately, however, I don't need to install anything in order to watch media in pretty much any format I want.

The beauty that is mplayer just takes whatever is fed to it and trucks right along. I did have to hack around installing some audio codecs in order to get sounds working in the iPod Touch "guided tour" video (You can see it merrily playing along after the fold), but using gentoo that was as easy as:

ray@localhost ~ $ emerge faad2
ray@localhost ~ $ emerge faac

Well, OK, I also had to recompile mplayer with AAC support:

localhost ray # echo "media-video/mplayer mad aac" >> /etc/portage/package.use
localhost ray # emerge mplayer

But still. Beats that little rush of terror I get every time I launch something called "install.exe".

[Read more of this post]

Congratulations

Congratulations! You have been selected to receive a one year subscription to FJU at 50% off the regular price.

What's with this marketing gimmick? I got a package today from . . . eh . . . a "major online retailer", and there was the usual passel of advertising crud in it. For some reason I actually looked at one of the sheets, and was informed I had been "selected" to get 250 "premium" business cards at 75% off. Congratulations!

I suppose the idea is to make me feel special. I, I alone, have been selected for this sweet deal! Go me.
But is it really possible that anyone reads these ads and doesn't think "Bite me, you patronizing marketdrone. If you think I'm stupid enough to believe I've been 'selected' by any other criteria than that it was possible for you to spam me with your junk flier, then I really don't see any reason to do business with you, VistaPrint."

Even the URL for their "deal" is insulting: "~/congrats75"

Mencken was, of course, right, but it's a lesson I have to re-learn anew each day. Stop doing business with smug, patronizing douchebags, you insufferable morons.

Oh, and stop clicking on popunder ads while you're at it.

Suck it up, hippies

The most lucid comment I've seen regarding the recent ululations of certain cuckolded early adopters:

They bought it because they felt it was worth $600. If they didn't feel it was worth $600, they shouldn't have bought it. I don't see where the anger should come in here. Clearly, Apple sold an iPhone to everyone who felt it was worth $600, and now they're going to sell one to everyone who thinks it's worth $400.

I might change "shouldn't have" to "wouldn't have", but otherwise this is exactly right. It's so right it makes me mellow.

I can't find it now, but there was this one photo of some hippy strutting out of the Apple store on release day, prize in hand, cocked back on one leg, pumping his fist in the air, mouth all rounded in an iGasmic "Hoo-hoo-hoo!", a huge line of hippies cheering him on. Dude looked like he was ready to toss Steve Jobs' salad for the privilege of dropping six hundred bucks on - admittedly - an extraordinarily cool gadget. Now he's going to cry because some folks are getting it a little cheaper?

It wouldn't matter if Apple now had bikini models strewing 8GB models wrapped in hundred dollar bills out the backs of trains. Clearly you value your toy - and, for some perhaps, the concomitant cachet among the ponytail set - at more than $600, or you wouldn't have laid those bills down. Some envy, I guess, is natural when someone gets a better deal than you did, but it's not like you didn't know the price was going to drop.

Don't hate the player, hate the game.