09:37 – Our friends Mary and Paul dropped by for a visit yesterday evening. I asked them if they were attending the sunrise service this morning. They both use iPhones and iPods, you see, and this morning is the third day. Steve is risen.
Paul has drunk the Kool-Aid more than Mary, I think. He commented that he liked his iPhone, but he really liked his iPod. Where else, he asked, could one get a pocket-size music player? Barbara and I pointed out that she had one connected to her car audio system right now, a Sansa model. Yes, he said, but where can you get music to load on it? Barbara pointed out that she had several thousand tracks converted to MP3 that she’d ripped from her CDs, about a thousand of which were on her Sansa player at the moment. I added that if he wanted to buy music on-line he could visit Amazon, which has a huge selection with often better prices, and has never had copy protection.
I really don’t understand all the eulogizing. Not only did Jobs never do anything to help the advance of personal technology; much of what he did hurt it. He went from selling overpriced, underpowered PCs to selling overpriced music players and tracks to selling overpriced cellphones. Everything he ever did was aimed at pillaging his customers’ wallets and locking them into his “walled garden”. And, no, I haven’t forgotten the Apple ][, which deserves at best an asterisk in PC history.
Laundry this morning, with work interspersed on the biology lab book. Right now, I’m working on the chapter on cells and unicellular organisms. I’m just starting a session on making culturing media and filling Petri dishes and slant tubes with agar gel medium and test tubes with broth medium. We’ll use the Petri dishes in the following session to culture bacteria, after which we’ll isolate selected species and grow pure cultures of them in slant tubes and eventually broth tubes. We’ll then flood Petri dishes with broth culture to grow bacterial “lawns”, which can then be used for antibiotic sensitivity testing.
I’ve thought seriously about recommending that readers avoid culturing environmental bacteria and instead purchase pure cultures of known-harmless bacteria from Carolina Biological Supply or wherever. The issue is that there are a lot of pathogenic bacteria floating around in the wild. Ordinarily, they’re harmless, because our bodies defenses can deal with small numbers of them. But culturing them produces large numbers of them, so one must take care to avoid being exposed to them. With proper technique, the danger is nearly non-existent, but some danger does still exist. We’ll minimize that by using a simple beef or chicken broth and sucrose nutrient mixture and culturing at room temperature rather than body temperature. Those factors favor growth of bacteria that prefer the lower temperature, which is to say not most pathogens.
Of course, we’ll subsequently be using forced selection to breed antibiotic-resistant bacteria from those original cultures, and if you don’t want wild pathogens floating around the room, you really don’t want drug-resistant wild pathogens floating free. Of course, we could temper that risk by using antibiotics that are not usually used in humans, such as neomycin, sulfadimethoxine, and so on. We can also take steps to minimize exposure risk, including wearing an N100 mask, misting the area with Lysol spray and so on. On balance, I think I’ll do the lab with environmental bacteria, but warn readers that for complete safety they should purchase a known-harmless culture as their starting point.
Colin is still very much a puppy. Barbara had dinner out yesterday, so I made myself a bowl of tuna shock. Except that I didn’t have any tuna or any shock, so I just put a can of olives (less the can and lid) and a can of Costco chicken chunks (less the can and lid) in a big bowl and then added a large glop of mayonnaise. I’d eaten about a third of it when the doorbell rang. I got up to answer it, first warning Colin not to touch my food. When I got back a moment later, he had his snout in my bowl. Fortunately, he hadn’t eaten much of it, so I finished the rest.
What is “tuna shock,” pray tell?
Don’t worry; the Jobs worship services will be ending soon and the media can back to speculating on the new guy and how crappy the new products are, in between covering other mindless crap and more celeb adulation. Maybe Amanda Knox will become a stripper or something, and O’Bozo will start assassinating right-wing American bloggers.
Somebody head out to Kalifornia and check if the tomb is empty…
I agree that my Sansa Fuze player is a great device and does all that I want of it with one exception. Each night I load it with several GBs of rap and hip-hop and by the next morning they have all leaked out or something…………..
Slim, that’s a feature, not a bug.
That he’ll eat food his dog’s snout has been in?
Tuna shock is tuna, olives, garlic, and mayonnaise. Marcia Bilbrey had the recipe up on her site at one time, but recipes.dutchgirl.net is no longer responding.
Bill, are you saying that you wouldn’t share with your dog? I thought you were a dog lover. And, as my culturing lab session will establish, dogs’ mouths are much cleaner than human mouths. Much cleaner. Biologically, it’s much safer to share a meal with your dog, alternating bites, than it is to kiss a girl. Of course, that’s true on so many levels…
A Surprising Secret to Netflix’s Runaway Success
A little uncertainty can go a long way
http://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/index.php/Kellogg/article/a_surprising_secret_to_netflixs_runaway_success/
Interesting article, but I thought all of the points it makes were intuitively obvious. Incidentally, they’re wrong about the releasing-this-week page. Netflix didn’t eliminate it; they simply removed all links to it. It’s still live at
http://www.netflix.com/AllNewReleases?lnkctr=NavAllNewReleases
However, for the last several months it’s been only partially maintained. That is, until around the first of this year, that page did in fact list all new DVDs that Netflix would have in the coming week. Since then, they’ve gradually degraded the page. It still lists some of the new DVDs, but by no means all.
Another comment regarding the Apple cogniscenti. I have been participating in the DeLorme forums for several years now and have seen much lamenting that their primary mapping software application is Windows only. Recently, they have introduced a new communication device which works with Android phones and excludes iPhones, to much further disappointment.
http://blog.delorme.com/2011/06/03/delorme-inreach-two-way-satellite-communication/
The company does not comment on the “why not”, but I suspect that it is due to the onerous conditions that Apple mandates (and I recall the 30% surcharge that they are now requiring of Amazon’s ebooks to be read on iSomethings).
Robert is right, again, on the cleanliness of dog mouths, compared with us filthy primates. OTOH, one sees, after a few decades of observation, where many dogs put their snouts and one like myself, for instance, would understandably hesitate to share a meal with a canine companion in such manner. As opposed to, for instance, frenching Raquel Welch or Ellen Barkin.
OK, I have had made and enjoyed the tuna shock, but never heard it called as such. I jack up the mayo with some cumin and Frank’s Hot Sauce and a dash of lemon juice, and may add chopped hard-boiled eggs and diced plum tomatoes. Dumping on a bed of lettuce is optional.
And the day one of our idiot mutts puts his snout in that dish is the day his head will be mounted on a wall.
I share, but it’s a one way street. And while the factoid about dog’s mouths being cleaner is certainly and empirically true, I must say I much prefer kissing girls. 😀
“I really don’t understand all the eulogizing. Not only did Jobs never do anything to help the advance of personal technology; much of what he did hurt it. He went from selling overpriced, underpowered PCs to selling overpriced music players and tracks to selling overpriced cellphones. Everything he ever did was aimed at pillaging his customers’ wallets and locking them into his “walled garden”. And, no, I haven’t forgotten the Apple ][, which deserves at best an asterisk in PC history.”
Well, I guess that we (you, I and everyone else here) don’t understand. I thought long and hard about getting an Apple ][ way back in the stone age, and 10 years later I thought long and hard about getting a Mac IIci. I didn’t buy either, and price was part of the reason, but they were better than the M$ compatible crap available at the time.
If people want to buy Apple’s overpriced gear and enter the “walled garden” that’s their choice. I’ve made a deliberate choice not to, but smarter people than me love it. Go figure. I’m also not interested in slagging Steve as some have done. The hagiography his fanboys have put together says that he rescued Apple in the late 90s and I haven’t seen anyone deny that.
“I share, but it’s a one way street. And while the factoid about dog’s mouths being cleaner is certainly and empirically true, I must say I much prefer kissing girls. :D”
Yeah, but a dog will *always* kiss you, not sure about the girls… 🙂
Me neither! 🙁
Hey, you can have a fair degree of confidence where a dog’s nose has been, and what they’ve had in their mouths. With a girl, the questions are somewhat more open; and the answers less certain.
“Biologically, it’s much safer to share a meal with your dog, alternating bites, than it is to kiss a girl. Of course, that’s true on so many levels…”
Hey, John Doucette is not only a dog-owner, but he’s a newly-minted New Zealander. Maybe we should ask him if the same is true of sheep. I know he’s been in training so he’ll be able to run them down. There’s probably not a sheep on North, South or Stewart Islands that would be able to get away from him now.
I thought it was the Aussies who had close personal relationships with their sheep.
“Hey! McLeod! Get offa my ewe!”
Seems to me that the only real difference is a dog’s ability to lick their own genitalia…
Which gives rise to the question “Is a dog’s genitalia cleaner than the average human’s”? Bob, have you done any testing on that?
Actually, Bob, we don’t wanna know.
The Jobs management style:
“You’ve tarnished Apple’s reputation,” he told them. “You should hate each other for having let each other down.”
What a peach.
More here:
http://gawker.com/5847344/what-everyone-is-too-polite-to-say-about-steve-jobs
I saw Mad Max eating Dinky-Di dog food.
“I thought it was the Aussies who had close personal relationships with their sheep.
“Hey! McLeod! Get offa my ewe!””
That’s what the Kiwis say, trying to deflect attention from their own questionable practices.
Why do you think so many bonza Kiwi chicks come over here? It’s because they can’t get laid in NZ, unless they get a guy drunk, dress up in sheepskin, join the flock and hope for the best.
“Seems to me that the only real difference is a dog’s ability to lick their own genitalia…
Which gives rise to the question “Is a dog’s genitalia cleaner than the average human’s”? Bob, have you done any testing on that?”
Seems likely, as they spend so much time licking their equipment clean…
Hehehe. Our old terrier never learned to leave our food alone. If ever I found her eating something of mine, I’d blow at her ears, which caused her to whimper and run away.
Wow. Where to start. My dog nearly always had breath bad enough that I did not want her mouth anywhere near my nose. And she ate her own excrement from time to time. I loved her anyway, but she never got a kiss from me. or ate from the same plate as me, unless I was done with it.
Jobs was the quintessential salesman–except for the jeans. Wozniak has noted many times that Jobs was a wheeler-dealer, selling electronic parts even before Woz came up with a box to sell. I was only tempted by the original Macs for a short time, principally because they were built as graphic machines, and that was my business at the time. Fortunately, the company put them on our desktops, and that cured me quite quickly. Frequent crashes, and massive shutdowns of the whole department for hours, along with everyone in the department often losing unsaved work, drove me to never even be inquisitive about Macs again.
Why do some people love them so much? Look at the people who use them. A friend and I have found that they are people who are not very technically ept. Furthermore, the only thing those people do on their Macs is email and Web surfing. The Mac does those very, very well. Somehow, GUI methods employed by Macs, are very understandable to people who have no technical savvy. However, it almost always involves moving files several times to different places, in order to get it somewhere else on the network. Intuitive to them, maybe, but not to me, when I can do a download or transfer directly to wherever I want with a PC.
My iPod FAR surpasses the SanDisk MP3 player. Buttons pop off the Sansa, the buttons are made for tiny midget hands and fingers, dust has covered the inside of the screen making it almost unreadable, and the unit is not user openable (nor is the iPod for that matter, but it’s screen is crystal clear on the inside, and I have owned both for the same amount of time). Rockbox allows me to do anything with either, but more features work on the iPod than the Sansa. For instance, a short click while playing on the iPod, brings up the “playing” folder with the file playing being highlighted. In the Sansa, it brings up the right folder, but the file highlighted is purely random.
The touch sensitivity on the iPod controls are perfect, and work perfectly through the iridescent pink cover I have on it. That pink cover is ugly and belonged to my daughter, but everybody else believes it is super-ugly, too; thus I worry a lot less about it being stolen. As far as price, my daughter managed to break that model iPod several times, and they replaced it for free, until it was out of warranty. Then the cost was $150 to replace it, and she did not want to spend that much on it. That is still $350 less than she originally paid for it, so my iPod cost me only about a quarter of the retail price.
Speaking of iPods, Jobs did not come up with the idea. They had planned to manufacture something that was cancelled at the last minute, and had lots of excess parts. They hired some consultants to tell them how to handle that excess inventory, and the iPod was suggested by the consultants. But Jobs got the credit for it. Like the Walkman making Sony the rich company it is, it is the iPod that is responsible for Apple’s wealth. And there are far, far more iPods in the world than there were cassette Walkmans. And nearly everyone but me paid dearly for them. But they really are vastly superior to any other MP3 player I have ever laid my hands on.
Jobs didn’t invent anything, nor did he even initiate discussions that led to inventions.
He was a genius at taking people’s money. In another time he would have been a lawyer.
“He was a genius at taking people’s money. In another time he would have been a lawyer.”
Boy, you’re really sinking the boot in now.
In a far previous time he would have been the same character but he would have pissed somebody off once too often and gotten clobbered and dragged to a spit for roasting.
Likewise the thief Gates.
This country was founded on principles that were aimed at preventing unfairness that was prevalent at the time, and insuring individual freedom. Over successive generations, corporations and their CEO’s have lobbied lawmakers with money to reverse and annul antitrust laws that inconveniently got in their way.
Nowadays, you can hardly buy anything (and that includes seed grain for farmers). You only license it, and the license can be revoked after the “purchase”, for whatever reason they deem appropriate. Both Gates and Jobs have conspired in this fraud to remake society with their values–not the values of fairness that founded this nation and made it great. Just because you can get away with it, does not mean it advances life, society, or the nation. Gates and Jobs have both sent this country on a path of significantly limiting personal freedom; not of protecting and enhancing it. And until we have lawmakers who have the backbone to stand up to their money, we are in no better shape than the citizens of China.
Bravo, Chuck! Couldn’t have said it any better.
While we’re at it, let’s make sure we also indict Microslop and….Google…for going out of their way to assist totalitarian foreign governments LIKE Red China to further repress and punish their own citizens.
And at the rate we’re going, we will soon end up being de facto citizens of Red China ourselves. Once that happens, statements like Chuck’s, mine and others’ here will result in us getting shut down, shut up and shut away.
Actually that might happen well before then.
There are moves to sanctify Jobs as the introducer of PCs.
“PCs have revolutionised the world, and we would never have had them without Steve Jobs and Apple”.
It seems that the Devil’s Advocates want to sanctify Bill Gates instead, and point out that Microsoft systems and the software they support have been far more populous and diverse than Apple ever was.
Fact is, we would have got the same place by different paths without either of them.
CP/M was out there anyway, and it grew into CP/M-86, Concurrent CP/M, Concurrent DOS, DR-DOS, and supported the GEM graphical user interface – all of which were superior to the similar Microsoft and Apple products of that era. Gary Kildall and Digital Research Incorporated didn’t lack technical merit – they lacked a predator (or perhaps scavenger) instinct and the commercial luck that Jobs and Gates stumbled into.
I was dealing with computerised spreadsheets and word-processing on mainframes and then mini-computers; and with networks of bank and retail systems based on proprietary processors at first, then on Intel 8080s; long before CP/M came along. Minicomputers were filling commercial roles in businesses, and being further miniaturised to the size and shape of PCs. We’ve probably most of us seen or heard of desk-top PDP-11s and IBM-370s. I was working at one stage on commercial systems based on the PDP-8, and with the benefit of large-scale integrated circuits it shrank from a full-on mini with attached keyboards and printers to a desktop system incorporated in a VDT.
We probably didn’t even need CP/M, although it enabled the PC market to grow fast. We might have ended up better off without it. Unix was out there, Xenix was coming, and there were a number of excellent proprietary Operating Systems which were were involved in synergistic interchange of concepts with the academic world and Unix. Xerox Palo Alto Research Center was out there too, developing many things, including the concepts for GUIs and WIMPs that Apple, MS, and DRI all used. I was massively impressed, although not favourably, when Apple sued MS for using the concepts that both Jobs and Gates had taken from Xerox PARC.
I may go as far back as Don; I started out with DEC PDP-11 and VAX/VMS 3.5 and also had CP/M-86 and MS-DOS on a DEC Rainbow in 1984. Used the Rainbow as a terminal for remote sys admin for another five years when I actually worked at DEC.
DEC was huge here in New England back in the day, with HQ at the old Assabet Woolen Mills buildings in Maynard, as was Data General, where I also worked as a wave solder machine operator and PCB fabrication guy, and Prime, all gone now.
To be fair, I don’t get the eulogizing of Jobs, either. It seems fairly silly.
However, “he” sold me several products I really like, enjoy and did not find too expensive or restrictive. Why I’d have animosity toward the guy just because I could have saved a few bucks by putting my own unit together, cobbling together my own music and having the pride of not joining in on a popular product I don’t get either. What I was asking Bob was, where can I get something that pretty much works out of the box, doesn’t require much more than a few keystrokes on my end and is extremely durable and reliable. In talking to people, including Bob, the iPod describes that better than any of its competitive products. It doesn’t, necessarily, apply to all Apple products. This is a similar argument to PC use. In the main, I don’t want to have to expend time, energy and effort making the system work. I want to use the system to do work I care about. I want, as much as possible, not to have to even think about the system I’m using. I am smart enough to do so, but I’d rather spend my time on other matters and I’m willing to pay a little extra to make that happen.
Anyway, no Kool-Aid has been drunk. I like my iPod and iPhone and think I got a fair deal. I also like my car but I’m not going to mourn the death of the Volvo chairman if he/she dies (anymore than I mourn the death of any human I don’t personally know). It seems pretty simple: he was a businessman with a product to sell. I’m a consumer with a desire and some cash. We made a deal. Neither of us feel cheated. End of story.
I was just giving you a hard time. I know you’re not a Kool-Aid drinker.
However (and I’ve confirmed this with Barbara, who had the same reaction I did) when you commented about the iPod, it really did sound like you thought the iPod was the only option available, literally, and that iTunes was the only source for downloadable music.
Oh, no, not at all. I’ve seen lots of folks with iPod-lites. No one I’ve spoken with besides you and Barbara seem all that satisfied with them.
There are also lots of other smartphones. Many of which are probably as good, if not better, than iPhones. But they’re not cheaper and they also suffer from all the socio/political problems Chuck identifies.