Screw Goldberg. Any other nerds around here following the Macword keynote?
We need to start a group blog dedicated to nothing but a careful dissection of every one of Goldberg's claims. This is an important book that not enough people are paying attention to.
1- From NYT:
First product announcement: Time Capsule.
Mr. Jobs introduces a wireless backup hard disk. It lets you back up your computer content wirelessly.
"We want people backing up their content," Mr. Jobs says. For 500 gigabytes it's $299, and one terabyte is $499.
I might buy that- I have a 200GB external drive but I never bother getting it out to do a backup because I need to dedicate a time to run it. If it just did it in the background when I'm not using the laptop it would be much easier.
Adressing the substantive claims of Goldberg's book is an error because the effort implies that there actually are coherent substantive claims made. Unrelenting ridicule is best here.
MacBook Air is real. All you people who wanted a small macbook had better sit down. It's unbelievably thin.
3: they just announced that superlight, superthin notebook everybody wanted.
Yeah, the backup thing is cool. I'm pissed that they want $20 to add new apps to the fucking ipod touch I acquired less than a month ago, though. Assholes.
Assholes.
The new accounting laws require this sort of thing.
But as we suspected: 64 GB SSD, relatively low-end CPU, no optical drive. The thing is gorgeous, but I'm not sure I want to replace my 12-inch PowerBook with one.
Depending on the cost, though, it--or something like it in a year or two--might mean that we can go back to more durable desktops, and use the little thin laptop as a supplement rather than as the main computer.
Holy shit that's awesome. And 11 is right.
Man. I'm not gadgety, generally, but as I posted last week, I'm totally in the market for a light little laptop. While I was thinking of giving up screen and memory and everything, if this looks good I may really want it.
But as we suspected: 64 GB SSD, relatively low-end CPU, no optical drive.
The 64GB ssd is an option. 80gb hdd is default. I couldn't care less about no dvd. As for the low-end cpu, that comes with the territory across all ultralights.
Pictures here:
It looks pretty cool.
$1799 for base model. Ships in 2 weeks.
Yeah, I'm quickly talking myself into it. I can always pack an external hard disk or a separate optical drive. And it's so pretty.
$1799 gets you 2gb ram, 80gb hd, 13.3" display, backlit keyboard, multi-touch trackpad, iSight camera, 1.6ghz core2 duo, fast wifi, bluetooth, weighs 3.0lbs, ranges from 0.16" to 0.76" thick. Crikey.
Okay, WANT.
People who know more than I do -- this is a new Apple product. I understand that I have to wait some period of time before buying one, because the first generation is going to be inexplicably broken in some regard. How long do I have to wait? Six months?
They've gotten better (cf iPhone), but doesn't hurt to wait.
11: Yeah, the laptop as main computer thing was always a pretty bad idea, I thought. Mostly driven by numbers hype in the cheap PC laptop segment, I think (look, if we can make it just a little bigger, we can put a desktop chipset in and sell a faster computer for $500 less)
I want to see Jobs crack it in half over his knee.
It's not so much that it'll be broken as that they'll come out with some tweak in six months to a year that'll correct the one or two little problems the thing has, and suddenly you'll be pissed that you didn't wait a bit. Like they'll add a bigger hd, or let it play dvds or something.
(The not playing dvds thing I really don't get, except in terms of size--after all, one of the nice things about laptops is that you can use them to watch movies on the plane/train/etc.)
20: Yeah, I think they tend to update the laptops about every six months.
the first generation is going to be inexplicably broken in some regard
Not necessarily, but you might want to wait until refurbs start showing up on the Apple site. Same product, same warranty, less money. It usually takes a couple of months.
This is the best thread about Goldberg's book I've seen so far.
22: Yeah, whereas for us Mac people it's driven by the fact that I can't afford a desktop *and* a laptop and, well, portability.
The wireless backup drive seems cool but I do wonder a bit about security.
19: jebus that's pretty thin. looks like it might make an ibook replacement for me after all. light, small, 5 hours battery life. nice.
The not playing dvds thing I really don't get, except in terms of size--after all, one of the nice things
Size is the main selling point. Plus, they just announced iTunes movie rentals from all the major studios today as well. $3.99 for new movies, $2.99 for library titles, 30 days to start watching it, 24 hours to view (as often as you like) once you start watching, and you can transfer the movie between your computer, iPhone or iPod touch during the rental period. Who needs a dvd player?
On the 'not playing DVDs' front -- there's no reason I couldn't have a USB DVD drive sitting on my desk, and, like, unplug it when I wanted to carry the computer around, right?
20: oh, just give in and buy the thing. Everybody said "wait for version three of the iPhone", and now look at them, not having iPhones.
Apple's been making laptops a hell of a long time. I'm sure it'll be swell.
24: the Apple argument would be that you can now buy or rent movies in iTunes. You could also rip DVDs using another computer's drive, and bring them thataway.
unplug it when I wanted to carry the computer around, right?
right.
31: Right, but why would you watch DVDs at your desk rather than on your tv, if you're going to just be sitting at home anyway? (I assume you don't watch DVDs at work.)
there's no reason I couldn't have a USB DVD drive sitting on my desk, and, like, unplug it when I wanted to carry the computer around, right?
It looks like Apple will sell an external DVD drive for $99.
31: better than that, you can "borrow" the DVD of any desktop that happens to be in wireless range.
I suspect the external DVD they're going to sell will be wireless, but I guess we'll see.
36: exactly. I don't see this as a real problem for most, unless they're looking at this as their only computer. Which really probably isn't the target market.
30: but that's potentially more expensive than Netflix, and will the library immediately have all the things Netflix does? (Lots of foreign films, TV shows, etc...?) I don't care so much, for the most part, about new movies from major studios.
Is it really six months between laptop releases? For some reason I thought it was closer to a year, but I haven't really been keeping track. If I wait until September I can spend research funds on this instead of my own money, but on the other hand, I want one now.
I've been telling myself I like this big clunky-ass laptop for it's enormous screen, and that, as a poor student, I shouldn't buy another laptop for another four or five years. Hmph.
34: In my case, I don't even have a TV so that problem solves itself.
some tweak in six months to a year that'll correct the one or two little problems
More that in six months, they'll significantly bump the processor speed and hard drive and add some new amazing bells and whistles at the same price point.
I'm still waiting to buy an iPhone, but you iPhone-having motherfuckers at UnfoggeDCon made the waiting much harder.
If they had given the new laptop WiMax, that might have put me over the edge, however.
But that's just because I'm trapped in the Sprint network, and am hoping against hope that they won't fuck WiMax up.
43 is true, and a tendency to leapfrog the pro and consumer lines, which leads to *something* happening every 6 months or so.
OK. WANT. And even though two days ago I was whinging about not being able to live with an 80gb hard drive, I am now wondering if, with the Time Capsule, and a portable drive, I could live with the 64gb SSD.
Also: I am made of Euros!
44: Buy an iTouch. If you desperately want the phone capability, mod it to use Skype (which you can do).
48: I've pretty much moved to a model of only keeping currently-working-on stuff on the laptop, and everything else on a (backed up) 500gb drive. It works pretty well for me.
Also, I have the 160gb AppleTV whose purchase was sort of silly. (I did get it for the price of the 80gb, though.) I must say that I am *thrilled* that the "New AppleTV" is in fact a software upgrade.
46: Wow, I missed that 0.16". I want to hold one. Curse you, Apple, for inflaming my materialist desire.
Apple's been making laptops a hell of a long time. I'm sure it'll be swell.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Goldberg has made it in the big time when a lot of better people haven't. We don't have to take his writings seriously, but the Goldberg phenomenon is very serious.
Goldberg and Kristol are territory markers. Second-rate mouthpieces were put in key places in the media not because they are effective spokesmen for their causes, but just to let people know that the movement Republicans control media turf. Kristol demanded that the Times be prosecuted, and now they've hired him. It's like a dog marking its territory with excretions. The smellier the excretion, the more effectively marked the territory is.
Goldberg's writings (and Kristol's) can be laughed at, but I find the Goldberg-Kristol phenomenon chilling. The message I get is that the media are permanently lost. Starting with the Clinton impeachment and continuing through the Gore election and the runup to the Iraq War, the media (especially the Times and the Post) disgraced themselves. There have been no significant attempts to deal with the media's deficiencies during that period; all the evidence is that they'll carry on as before.
We're really not part of the dialogue any more. We can laugh among ourselves, but Goldberg is the guy on TV and at the LA Times, and Kristol is the elder statesman and fount of wisdom at the Times. That's America.
oh, a 1Tb NAS too. That's kind of handy. Shame I just bought another 500gb usb.
49: Or, you know, just buy a Nokia, which gives you everything the iTouch gives you, and which already has VOIP (including Skype) support built in.
Plus, at least on my E70, the screen's better than on the iPhone/iTouch. Not quite as big, but the resolution's substantially better.
Eh. For me, the important things in an lightweight are weight, screen size, battery life. Thinness doesn't really do it for me, and we've seen basically this set of the features I care about before, I think. Maybe not in a Mac, though (I dunno).
John, you're just not getting it. We're talking about laptops here. You wouldn't understand, because you're hostile to technology. If you could, you'd demand that we ban technology from our lives.
54: Stop trying to threadjack. Don't you know this is the drooling-over-consumer-goods thread?
55: Is the new Airport Extreme actually a full-blown NAS? Based on what I've seen so far, it only works for backups; if you can use it as a real NAS (i.e., as mp3 storage), that's a whole different story.
It has the footprint I didn't want (awkward for my stubby arms and scrawny lap!) but oh well. Now I can be not so besotten that I cannot wait for generation two or three, at least.
60: Yeah, I'm wondering about that too. That would be pretty awesome.
60: the sense I got is that it is.
60: Ah, I'll have to look into that. Not much good to me if I can't. Nicely priced though, if it can.
57: It's the wieght/size/battery that do it for me, too. I can't be bothered to screw around with windows anymore, so I need something that'll run unix and macs are acceptable. My ibook is pretty good for that (light, 12", 4hrs) but getting very creaky, so this could do the trick.
54 is right in that the person of J.G. isn't important, but the phenomena is. When 2nd and 3rd rate poo-slingers are given key opinion-making slots, what does that say?
The 64GB ssd is an option.
That costs $1300 extra, it seems. About as ridiculous as them charging early iTouch buyers $20 for basic iPhone software (Notes! for God's sake).
In fact, at $500, if the 1Tb *is* a proper NAS, I'll buy one even though I just bough a 500Gb drive for roughly the same purpose.
That costs $1300 extra, it seems.
Christ. Really? That's a no-can-do then. I didn't want it anyway!
66: that seems to be the case. From the store page: "...also works great as a wireless hard drive whether you have a Mac or PC. It sets up in a snap, giving you a networked hard drive you can use for storing and sharing any kinds of files."
I'm cripplingly ignorant, but what does 'ssd' stand for?
771: Social Security Derangement. It's what McManus has.
Or arguably "Solid State Drive".
64GB Solid State Drive [Add $999]
SSDs are just expensive. Someday!
SSD = Society System Decontrol.
Losers.
bastards. they're probably not going to get my money for a laptop this term, so they had to throw that NAS out there to catch me. Ah well, at least I bought a (sadly small amount) of their stock when it was worth approximately a couple of happy meals, so I'm still net gain with apple.
That costs $1300 extra, it seems. About as ridiculous as them charging early iTouch buyers $20 for basic iPhone software (Notes! for God's sake).
That's actually a pretty reasonable price, based on some googling. Those guys are just really, really expensive now.
46, 52: It's wedge-shaped -- the 0.16" is at the pointy front end. It's a chunky 0.76" at the fat end.
LB, wait a couple months and see if there are any major lemonic issues with it. Yes, Apple's gotten very good at laptop hardware, but this is a leap forward, and it's possible they've screwed the pooch. In a couple months, see what people are complaining about, then either buy first-gen or wait for revision.
Stupid Boston hardcore. SST > SSD. Bad Brains and Husker Du take Slapshot and Ten Yard Fight.
About as ridiculous as them charging early iTouch buyers $20 for basic iPhone software (Notes! for God's sake).
Oh come on. You bought the iTouch knowing what it had and didn't have. Early adopters *always* get screwed.
Hmmmm. I was going to get a laptop when I head to London this May. This thing appears to be perfect.
Christ, that's tiny.
Huzzah huzzah! 30 is exactly what I want.
Now if only they could make a better music interface for that thing.
Not tiny, just really really flat!
82: I know, right! Hooray for the software upgrade!
80: Uh huh. "You knew what you were getting into!" Are they raising the prices on the new ones? No? Then there's no reason not to make it a free upgrade.
I bought the itouch *despite* its not having a couple of those things, because the device that did have them--the phone--cost twice as fucking much.
(Or rather I didn't buy it---I said, ooh, want, and Mr. B. gave it to me for Xmas.)
79: My hardcore allegiances are in Chicago. AOF and BB FTW.
I want to hear the Randy Newman song.
Are they raising the prices on the new ones? No? Then there's no reason not to make it a free upgrade.
Like I said, early adopters always get screwed. New Macs come with Leopard pre-installed and don't come any more expensive than older Macs; should Apple make Leopard freely available to all owners of older machines?
Ah, balls. I bet the iTunes store rentals will show up distorted on my 4:3 screen. Ahwell, back to sharing.
90: Answer: Yes. Steve Jobs should personally come to Bitch PhD's home and install Notes on her iPod Touch.
You bought the iTouch knowing what it had and didn't have.
I did, and I expected them to sell the iPhone programs (I feel silly calling Notes that) to me with the other SDK programs. To make them part of the regular iTouch package, except for the early adopters, is lame.
What's sad is, I'm still going to shell out the $20, because my jailbroken iTouch has been too unstable.
early adopters always get screwed.
Yes, and getting screwed is worth complaining about.
In re. Leopard, I'm pretty sure they still do that thing where if you bought your new laptop with the old OS on it within the last month or so, you get a free upgrade, do they not?
Oh, I shelled out the $20 already, but I felt grumpy while I was doing it.
96: Have you tried out the Wi-Fi triangulation yet?
95: Nah, early adopters aren't being screwed, they're paying to have whatever thing they're adopting early before other people by taking a somewhat inferior product.
98 is exactly right. That's essentially what early adopter means.
Bitch, the new software is already released? Where do you find it on the iTunes store?
98 & 99: It's the magic of markets!
98 makes it sound as if there was a decent technological reason for leaving out these applications. There wasn't. Apple didn't want the iTouch to be as competitive with the iPhone; now that the iPhone is selling marvelously, they no longer fear that competition.
I've never been an early adopter for things, except for my TiVo. One of my coworkers was cackling about getting it for $150 cheaper a little over a year later and I had a small twinge of early adopter regret before I thought of it as "was this 18 months of awesomeness worth $150? hell yes."
Meanwhile, everybody is desperately trying to get the update for their iPhone, meaning I can't get at it. Quit it, everybody!
102: Technological reasons are often (usually?) secondary in things like this. I agree that apple could have just offered these updates to existing iTouch owners; I even believe it probably would have been a better policy.
However, there is absolutely nothing unusual about this sort of marketing policy, in fact it's the rule for many companies to artificially maintain market separation.
getting screwed is worth complaining about
Sounds like somebody needs a new boyfriend.
Then there's no reason not to make it a free upgrade.
Because Apple wanted to make more money and knew that there was enough demand for their product that a good number of people would buy it without the software and pay more for the software later.
a decent technological reason
A technological reason shouldn't be the only acceptable kind. In particular, some economic reasons are also acceptable.
On preview, what 106 said.
The Time Capsule consists of just one disk, which doesn't exactly seem like industrial-strength backup.
I knew there had to be an Apple thread here somewhere! I should've realized it would be in the post with the really dull topic (sorry, Labs).
110: Yeah, but who wants to install tape drives at home?
100: It was a pain to find. Go to apple.com, then click on the "ipod" thingy at the bottom of the main page, then click on "get the update," and it'll take you to the correct page in itunes.
Then you'll have to update your freaking itunes first, and repeat the process all over again. Stupid apple.
IN re. "that's what being an early adopter means," there is nothing more annoying and rude than saying to someone who is complaining about something "that's just the way things are." I hate you all.
(Especially because it's not really an "upgrade"--it's more like "okay, here's the shit we held back for no good reason, sucker.")
The thingy snark linked in the other apple thread at least had multiple disks and some redundancy. Maybe that's not actually industrial-strength either, but still.
IN re. "that's what being an early adopter means," there is nothing more annoying and rude than saying to someone who is complaining about something "that's just the way things are."
That too is a part of lifejust the way things are.
113: Thanks. Yeah, it was a pain to find it, and then have to upgrade iTunes, and then accept a new TOS, and then buy it again, and blarg.
Oh, and then apparently syncing your ipod *won't* insall the stupid software, so you'll have to try again.
RAID doesn't actually provide you as much redundancy as you'd think, particularly if you've got a big RAID 5 array.
Even if you have a RAID array, you should be doing backups from that on a regular basis. See here.
117: Too bad we didn't have this exchange before I posted the Tuesday hate.
Oudemia, did it actually install the goddamn software for you?
You know that the Nazis were early adopters of IBM cardpunch/sorting technology. So this is all very on topic.
What the hell? I have to connect to Apple's software server to restore my iPod?
I do have a RAID array from which I have never once made backups! And another disk which isn't even protected that much!
The doohickey in question made much of its not using RAID, though it doesn't say what it does use.
IBM itself was apparently very involved in setting up the Nazis' innovative, cutting-edge computerized untermensch inventory/management system. Not a bright point in the company's history.
They're just out to make money but the iPhone cost around a gazillion dollars and they're willing to bet that people who spent a gazillion dollars will cough up another $20. They seem to be right. We're not talking basic necessities here.
We're not talking basic necessities here.
BAH. Just wait until next time you complain about your dissertation.
We're not talking basic necessities here.
BAH. Just wait until next time you complain about your dissertation.
yes, the purpose of RAID isn't backup.
Industrial-strength or not, the Time Capsule will almost certainly accompany purchase of the Pro that will come at some professionally-determined point in the future. Time Machine is already super-awesome, but having the central backup for all 3 computers is just awesome-sounding.
In an ideal world, it would have an audio output so it could act like the Airport Express and digitize our home stereo. But since I'm not buying it for months at the least, I'll wait to learn whether or not this is the best of all possible worlds.
125: Tell me you don't imagine the RAID means you don't need backups, and are just being lazy.
RAID isn't just one thing, anyway. For the most part it isn't that relevant for home users (certain streaming needs etc. excepted)
Apple has a history of randomly charging for shit. See "Quicktime Pro", where you had to pay $40 to be able to watch movies full-screen. Of course, with that you could just take a cell phone pic of the license code on one of the computers in the Apple Store and punch that into yours; but I'm sure if you wait a week you'll be able to do something equivalent for the iPod Touch.
Here's the Randy Newman tune. A year old.
Apple The tech sector has a history of randomly charging for shit.
There, fixed that for you.
126: you joke, but IBM calculators were a big part of the success of the Manhattan Project.
122: Bitch, yes! But not at first. It was tricksy. You need to buy it and then click on your ipod and update the software to 1.1.3 and *then* it will install both new things. It didn't explain this well and freaked me out a bit.
Not that it isn't annoying, mind.
139: 126 wasn't a joke, I think.
140: Oh. Okay, let me try that before I send them a nastygram.
140: Oh. Okay, let me try that before I send them a nastygram.
Ah, there we go. Of course, the first THREE TIMES I clicked on software upgrade I got a fucking "can't connect!" message. Stupid, stupid apple.
142: b-b-but computers didn't exist until 1946. Did they implement the program in Argentina, secretly?
143: Finally, someone understands me.
B, what it is about this case of price discrimination that you think is unfair?
randomly?
149: pseudo-randomly; it's completely deterministic and makes sense if you understand the algorithm. looks random to some outside observers.
147: Punch cards, silly. I just read about this.
I love Apple but I'd need more money to buy them.
I maintain that 126 was being silly.
149: The fact that I acquired the stupid thing 20 days ago and that generally they have a shortish grandfather clause when they come up with software upgrades. Hello? Didn't I basically say this already?
I just installed 1.1.3, but I can't make the icons wiggle, which is 60% of what I wanted. What gives?
126 wasn't a joke, although I should have said 'electronic punch card reader' based rather than computerized.
(We think my grandfather worked on the Manhattan Project. He was a guy who punched numbers into an adding machine for an insurance company -- during the war his department got handed over to punching numbers into adding machines for some mysterious gov't project. While I don't remember the details, the timing seemed to work out for it being the Manhattan Project, although he never actually knew what it was.)
Computer =/= Turing Machine in 142, I presume.
In this case, the computers were mechanical calculators, I think.
(One can make a case that computers in the stricter sense date to 1937 -- Alan Turing can be seen as an emulator for a Turing Machine. I didn't say it was a very good case, OK?)
156: Mine wiggle. In fact, I am typing and they are on the couch wiggling by themselves. WTF?
You need to push on an icon with your finger for like a full second and then drag.
And I had to hit the home button again to get them to stop wiggling.
||
"imagining more vividly imagined." One day I'm a terse robot, the next day I'm channeling bad translations of Cicero.
|>
152: I'm imagining a black comedy where someone drops a box of punch cards and saves a village from the Nazis, vividly imagined.
Buck's an IBM-focused journalist, and got started working for a guy who'd been an IBM-focused journalist since the early 70's or so, and knows company history backwards and forwards. I'm taking their word that the linked book is respectably accurate.
and then drag
I'm in the middle of re-syncing so I can't try, but that was probably it.
In this case, the computers were mechanical calculators, I think.
"Computer" originally meant an individual responsible for doing sums.
I learned that from reading the biography of John Nash.
163: The chicks at Blechley Park were called computers, too.
"Computer" originally meant an individual responsible for doing sums.
But it doesn't anymore.
I do remember reading some golden age sci-fi where the rocket's computer was, you know, that dude there.
155: I asked what you thought they were doing wrong rather than posting the below comment because it seemed less rude to do so. Since I didn't ask what they did, but rather what was wrong with what they did (which I'm taking to be that you feel they deceived you, though you haven't said this).
there is nothing more annoying and rude than saying to someone who is complaining about something "that's just the way things are."
I guess that would be annoying, since it's non-responsive. One would just say in turn, I know that's how things are, but I think there's something wrong with that.
But I haven't been saying that. I've been saying (and I think soup too, though can't be sure) that Apple isn't doing anything wrong, changing their price or changing what options you get for a given price entirely in response to facts about demand for the product isn't wrongful (at least in this case), though I am sympathetic to the fact that it nevertheless annoyed you.
"Typewriter" also used to be the person rather than the machine.
147, 154: No, as late as 1937, Thomas Watson accepted a medal from Adolf himself. Here is a link to a review of a book on the subject. Sorting and classifying, baby, sorting and classifying.
oops pwned on preview by LB. i have read the book and though it is somewhat histrionic and pushes its conclusions beyond where it should there is a lot of solid documentary evidence.
161: wow. I knew they were evil!
166: And you will notice that what I originally wrote said "IBM cardpunch/sorting technology"—they didn't need no stinking computers.
Mine wiggle. Finally.
The people who sought your bra advice are suddenly alarmed.
172: I did originally say 'computerized' when I shouldn'ta, which is what I think Tweety was commenting on. And that was a real error, not a typo -- I was remembering the book, and IBM, and forgetting the, like, actual history of computing and how it fit into the dates.
Yep. I understand now. The punch cards have fallen from my eyes.
What on earth makes you think computers must be pretty and solid state? Oh, right, ads.
Google "Jacquard", "Konrad Zuse", and "electromechanical telephone exchange".
Meanwhile, have just installed new BIOS on 'pooter so the Linux acpi support now works.
I am typing and they are on the couch wiggling by themselves. WTF?
You get them to stop by pressing the home button. I think.
167: Oh, I gotcha. What's "wrong" with it is that it's different than their standard policy. That and it's crappy nickel-and-diming. And *yes* I know that that's how it works, and blah blah they know I'll pay for it (the demand argument), obviously, since I already did, but it's nonetheless shitty because it's not really an "upgrade," it's just putting stuff on there that they kept off before, it's not stuff that is in any way changing the cost of the device, and it irritates customers. Like me.
Resolved: IBM is the Devil!!
Someone should run up to the front of the room and through a hammer through a screen or something.
Woo, 1.1.3 is rad! Now it's even easier to check unfogged from my phone: soooo useful.
178: through a hammer
OT Cute Kid Story:
Sally, doing her homework: "Doubt... why is there a 'b' in 'doubt'? Shouldn't it be a 'gh'?"
And screwy English orthography warps another mind.
Low hanging fruit, eh, SB?
If you say so. It's your fruit.
179: Is that comment bilaterally symmetric? Or are we talking apples and oranges.
Alex, did you ever read the Arthur C Clarke story about the telephone exchanges taking over the world?
Quite similar to the Stross Eschaton, except more 1950s/60s.
The weather thingy is neat. On the email, oh iPhone users, do I have to actually delete everything I'm "saving" in my inbox if I don't want to have to deal with it on the ipod? Or is there a way to set the darn thing to "new messages only"?
181: Fuck me. Not even an actual homophone typo. Unfogged is too fast.
184: Dial F for Frankenstein. Last line: "Babies break things."
A very nicely spooky story.
181 is cute.
Do you know what's funny/pathetic is, I stopped using a pda ages ago, and now I'm *so thrilled* that I have calendar on my ipod.
180: what's the diff? Seems the same to me.
188: Because now you can have a calendar on a device that is helping to fight the Man.
No, more b/c now I'm like, oh, I can just write it down when I make the appointment. Which is completely stupid, b/c I could do that in my paper calendar, but really I've gone back to calendar.01, i.e., I use the wall calendar posted on the fridge like every parent since the dawn of time.
180, 189: Doesn't seem to have speeded up Sifu answering this damn question.
I noticed that one of the accessories included with the Air is a "Display polishing cloth." This makes me suspect that the Air might have the same problems the earlier powerbooks had, where the closed display is so tight against the keys that skin oil is transferred in a keyboard-shaped pattern to the screen.
When I saw all the comments on this thread, I wondered how you had all managed to go on about Goldberg for so long. It seems like it would be such rough sledding. Now, I know that you didn't. So wise.
185: Fucking around with the mail program I managed to empty everything from my gmail account onto my ipod. DO NOT WANT. I restored the trash and then deleted the account from the pod. I can't find a way to make it simply download the new messages, but leave everything else alone.
Gmail stays on web.
On the iPhone, at least, you can set it up to only download the 50 most recent messages using IMAP. Word on the street is also that the new Google iPhone software is pretty pimp.
193: I thought it wasn't the oil, but that the keys themselves pressed into the keyboard. Surely they're not doing that again.
195, 196: Yeah, it downloads the recent 50, but then you start deleting, and it seems to start digging back into the damn pile......
All that said, I might very well just spend an afternoon cleaning up my fucking inbox so I can use it. Or not.
Ah. If you leave the messages in the inbox of your mail account, is there any reason they can't sit in the inbox on your iPod?
197: That's exactly what happened to me. I kept hitting delete and it kept giving me more, more, more! Until I finally had to stop the madness. The annoying bit is that I deleted messages that I wanted, just not on my ipod. Luckily they were all snug in my on-line gmail trash and I restored them.
198: The screen is smaller, and it's more fucking clutter to wade through.
198: My gmail account is the only one I do that with. In fact, I shoot things over there from other accounts in order to do that. But I don't need all of it junking up my ipod. But it's fine, really, because I've set up my other mail accts and I don't mine the iphone/touch-optimized Google webpage.
189, 192: you can add safari bookmarks to the home screen. I now have an unfoogged icon waiting for me at all times.
I think if you tell your Gmail account to place all read messages in the All Mail folder, the problem should go away.
I've started (nothing to do with iphone) keeping my gmail inbox empty at the end of a day. It's nice.
I just talked myself into believing that Apple will never, ever make another computer with my beloved PB 12" length and width, on the theory that there is now no way to do it as part of anything that they could present as an exciting innovation. :( Oh well.
202 seems like a bad idea, somehow.
who am I fooling, I'd do the same thing.
147: But Feynman mentions iterative calculations being done automatically at (pre-bomb) Los Alamos via programmed machines. Computer?
208: No. They didn't have RAM. The actual iteration was handled manually, by passing cards through a series of machines.
What I want to know is, when is apple going to release an update for iKid? Because the bugs in the current version are starting to get on my last nerve.
Adressing the substantive claims of Goldberg's book is an error because the effort implies that there actually are coherent substantive claims made. Unrelenting ridicule is best here.
Not sure that's true. Incredibly, the thing is selling well and getting mainstream press attention. This is driving me crazy -- that you can publish a pack of propaganda lies and everyone just sedately takes it and it becomes part of the mainstream discussion. For my own personal mental health, somebody needs to start a website devoted to debunking every page of this piece of crap (although I realize the books central argument is so incoherent and illogical that factual debunking is not necessarily the way to go).
Unfortunately, I cannot do this myself since A) I have a job, B) more than 15 minutes spent thinking about this book drives me into an apoplectic rage that is also damaging to my health.
The error was for Yglesias to write more than just his last paragraph. It took four Ann Coulter books before we realized that her nonsense was strictly a marketing gimmick. This is the same gimmick exactly. And the insinuation that Goldberg himself is so dumb he doesn't realize it's all a marketing gimmick is also appropriate.
210: You can just wipe it and start over with a clean install.
212: Coulter is now recognized for the clown she is. No major paper gives her op-ed space. Not even the National Review publishes her. If Jonah was as thoroughly trashed as Coulter, then I could be at peace. But he does get respectful media space in lots of mainstream outlets. What you don't seem to get is, JONAH IS WINNING. That doesn't drive you crazy?
It is the end times.
That's what I was trying to say.
214: Well, I'm still both aghast and unsurprised at the mildness of the NYTimes review.
He's speaking right now or something in DC, right? I hope our contingent there is visiting with him.
What I want to know is, when is apple going to release an update for iKid? Because the bugs in the current version are starting to get on my last nerve.
Haircut 2.1 will be out January 27 and Discipline 1.0 on February 13.
He's at 6:30. I'm in DC but I can't stand to go. I'd just start screaming or something.
218: Go! Go! It is your patriotic duty to get bounced from a Borders!
The time for pie-throwing is imminent, PerGodDel.
Actually, what I'd like to see is someone stand up in the middle of the reading and ask for a show of hands: "How many of you are just here to make fun of Jonah? Almost everyone, right?"
I learned that from reading the biography of John Nash.
I learned that he turned down a position at Chicago because of a counteroffer to be the emperor of Antartica.
Honestly? I'd go to that thing in part for the surreality, in part to inject some reality. And so on. PGD, if I lived in DC, I'd have made an appointment to do this with you. Bear witness!
Oh crap, the reading starts in 10 minutes. I meant to go to that. Whoops.
If I had gone with other Unfoggedites then it would have been better. Should have invited you, Parsimon. But you are going to come to my Super Tuesday party, right?
Trolling question, PGD:
In 1933, the Nazi regime formally banned books by over 400 authors, including all of the well-known German liberals and socialists of the day. Are you familiar with any right-wing or conservative authors subject whose works were similarly banned or burned by the Nazis? Does this permit any conclusions about the Nazis' own views on their intellectual kinship?
PGD is right. Goldberg is winning. He's permanent at the LA Times, he gets on network TV. His book is incoherent, wrong on alost all of the facts, and slanderous, but it's part of the dialogue in the way we aren't. He's got a leg up on Yglesias so far, for example, and Matt may never catch up with him. That's the kind of country we live in.
When especially incompetent and malicious authors like Goldberg and Kristol are awarded major media space, that's a message telling us who's in charge. we're not in charge, and no one who'd ever talk to us is. They are in charge -- the people who think that Goldberg has made an interesting case.
We can laugh as much as we want to, but we can't laugh him off TV or the LA Times editorial page, and as long as he's there he can do real harm.
God damn it, Emerson, I don't want to believe that you are right, but fuck me, I think you are.
But you are going to come to my Super Tuesday party, right?
Uh, Feb. 5th? My main problem with DC activities into the night is getting back home here. Pls to email me about it.
He's got a leg up on Yglesias so far, for example, and Matt may never catch up with him.
This kills me.
It's too late, it's 6:30. Also, as a good Fascist I'm in the office doing actual work that may be helpful to the progressive cause in some small way (well, actually procrastinating such work at the moment, but less so than I would be if I went to Borders).
But what good does it do to perhaps increase the chance of adequate Medicaid funding during any upcoming recession by .00001% as long as truly ghastly characters like Jonah run free? That's what drives me truly crazy -- that this book is a test case on why trying to affect the public discourse through reason is pointless, and I spend time trying to do that. But I guess I already knew that, or should have known.
I tell the smart young progressives I know to go to Wall Street, make a boatload of money, and then just buy media outlets or politicians directly if you want to have an impact.
we can't laugh him off
Can't we? Not individually -- obviously we the Unfogged commenters can't do jack shit influencing the national discourse-wise. But move up a couple of ranks, to the bloggers that people in the national media actually read some of, sometimes, and doesn't pointing out the absolute ridiculousness have some effect? It hasn't kept Goldberg from getting as far as he has, but I've got to think that this book is going to end his career as anyone who can be taken seriously. (I can't remember where I saw this today -- Sausagely's comments, maybe? But someone described JG as "A dog who thinks he's people." He really doesn't seem to get how dumb his thesis is.)
228 is absolutely correct, and my disagreements with John about whether the slow rightward drift of the Overton window for media visibility is due to maliciousness or incompetence is really beside the point.
228.3 We can laugh as much as we want to, but we can't laugh him off TV or the LA Times editorial page
Remember the war against Franco Jonah?
The kind where the difference is stark.
Though he may have had all the airtime,
We had all the good snark.
... and we had bitchin' hi-tech gizmos.
but I've got to think that this book is going to end his career as anyone who can be taken seriously.
No it won't. It's a numbers game, and the conservatives just don't have a very deep bench. They have to keep promoting him. And insofar as there are people in power who are conservative, he'll be treated seriously.
233: Here's what sucks: properly mocking the Jonahs of the world, who are venal and cynical as well as stupid, gets fed into the "libruls think yer dumb" schtick that they peddle to people who are Republican based on tribal affiliation.
Honestly, this whole Goldberg business inspires in me more hate for my country than Guantanamo Bay ever did. I think that probably says something bad about me, but there you have it. I'm too disgusted even to talk about it. I just want to punch people.
There's a happier way to think about this: I'd rather stupid enemies than smart ones.
233: LB, as far as Goldberg has never, ever, done anything that would suggest anyone should take him seriously. And yet, his career has progressed, as JE notes. This book isn't an aberration --- it's the sort of thing that is his core competence. The stunning thing isn't that Goldberg wrote it. It's that it was published, and having been published was taken seriously by places like the NYT. That's how broken the discourse is in this country. It's flat out dysfunctional.
239: Stupid enemies isn't such a warm fuzzy feeling when they're winning. And they've been winning, mostly, for decades now.
240 gets it exactly right.
But has he done stuff that was that seriously stupid before? Stupid blogging, sure, but the formal stuff I've seen him write has been conventionally idiotic, not over-the-top loony. This is over-the-top loony, and it's a lot easier propping up an empty suit than a raving lunatic.
Coulter had a pretty long run, but it was explicitly as a bombthrower, not as someone doing straightforward legitimate punditry. I have to think this is going to kill his career as a legit pundit, if people keep hammering on the mockery.
Reporting from the event: Jonah is both stupider and more offensive in person than on the page. I guess I couldn't picture anyone spouting this crap with a straight face; now I've seen it.
He's complaining now about Ygls et al. not doing enough research!
I've got to think that this book is going to end his career as anyone who can be taken seriously.
Let's hope so. But if that doesn't happen, we should understand what it means. Anyone who wants to, including fascists, can call us fascists and be regarded as reasonable and knowledgable.
Goldberg's advantage over Coulter is that he's learned to talk NPR talk. People who aren't paying close ttention can think that he has a case, and if anyone loses their temper at him Goldberg wins. Those are the NPR rules. Coulter's problem (which hasn't kept her from making lots of manoey, but which has limited her success) is that she was still on the old Rush Limbaugh model.
A guy named Bloix at DeLong gave me a piece of the newspaper puzzle: When Murdoch bought the WSJ, his goal was to supercede the NYT entirely as the preferred newspaper of the superrich, and the Times has to compete with the Journal for that Demographic. He argued (plausible) that most of the superrich are very, very right wing. We know of famous exceptions, but they're really exceptions (and often enough, only weakly liberal overall).
Most of the media now, including publishing, are owned by superrich individuals or by business groups controlled by the superrich. So what Bloix says covers more than just the Times.
What's really foetid about Jonah is that he was forced into our consciousness by his gruesome mother via the Lewinsky scandal. Mama Goldberg had the Linda Tripp tapes and twenty-something idiot Jonah was the only one with access. He was the gatekeeper. Hence Goldberg's byline in, say, the New Yorker.
Noted intellectual historian Vox Day gets quoted on the book' praise page .
Research! This is from the same guy who recently stated:
"the only reason [Mussolini] got dubbed a fascist and therefore a right-winger is because he supported World War I."
and then admitted he hadn't read the book where Mussolini invented the term Fascism!
Somebody should call him on that.
246: Wow. I didn't know that, and now I hate this country more. Let's drum up Yglesias a scandal.
Being able to repeat nonsense with a straight face is one of Goldberg's core competencies. He can do it because people have his back -- whoever it is he works for back what he's saying, and no one in the major media is going to confront him. (OK, exceptions: Krugman, Olbermann, Stewart, Colbert.... there are a few more. (Irony, like the NYT review, doesn't count; it's not vigorous enough).
I have to think this is going to kill his career as a legit pundit, if people keep hammering on the mockery.
Name one right-wing pundit for whom this strategy has worked. I'd love to believe it, but I don't see the evidence. And I'm not sure that the distinction you're drawing between conventionally idiotic and over the top loony really works. Isn't the over the top looniness of the book just what you end up with when you string together enough conventional Jonah idiocies to get to book length?
243: what do you mean by "kill his career as a legit pundit"? You think he'll be fired by LAT? You think he'll stop being an invited to speak on network tv? You think he'll stop earning a respectable living spouting horsehit? I seriously doubt any of the above. If you just mean that "respectable" people won't take him seriously anymore, I don't think he had much ground to lose there anyway.
You should all count yourselves lucky this message isn't delivered in all caps.
251: Michelle Malkin doesn't find herself on too much legit tv these days. She was even canned by Fox, I believe (some kind of fight with Geraldo?). NBC canned her, I think, after she showed up on Matthew's show claiming that Kerry injured himself on purpose for his Silver Star. Matthews basically told her to stop talking. BUT -- none of this is due to mockery, but rather batshittery.
246: He was the gatekeeper
Surely you mean the keymaster.
A good general rule, especially applicable to the right wing, is that when things get worse that means they are not getting better.
The Coulter exception (is she really off TV?) is interesting, though.
Malkin is batshit crazy. She did a silly little skit in a cheerleader uniform and put it the Youtubes.
Goldberg will last longer than Coulter and Malkin because he's learned to avoid the cheesiest, most undignified weirdness.
254: Yeah, but guess what, Howard Kurtz did a fawning review of her and her blog about a year ago. I really, truly do not know what is precisely wrong for there to be lunacy on the scale shown by the national media but it is deeply, deeply crazed at the moment.
It does give me a certain energy to keep on living though. In the words of Hunter S Thompson re: Nixon, I want to gnaw on their skulls. I want to be part of cementing their legacies as the pampered, spoiled enemies of democracy that they are. 200 years from now I want kids going to bed saying "Tell me again about how we almost lost our country dad, tell me the one again about Cokie and Fox News and Tim Russert and the faux populism ".
I want "pulling a broder" to mean failing miserably after a promising start. Ohio State sure pulled a broder against LSU. I want the editors and publishers and producers to be identified and ridiculed so badly that their children change their names, I want Murdoch and Sulzberger reduced to rags. Because there will always be deranged opportunists and mountebanks among us, but it takes a "media empire" to put them in front of millions of people.
Now I think I'll go take a shower.
245: Goldberg's advantage over Coulter is that he's learned to talk NPR talk.
This is exactly right. Except for a couple cheap shots at Yglesias ("He felt compelled to read my book; I'm sure I won't feel compelled to read his. Must mean mine's more important!"), he looked and sounded (in tone I mean, not content, obvs) entirely sane. Gah.
And not at all doughy, by the way.
248: I think he kind of expected that gaffe (from the Salon interview you mean, where he couldn't remember what Mussolini said in la dottrina?) to be brought up, and went on the offensive with some nonsense about how when Mussolini said he was against the left, he was talking about 'classical liberals'; and when Mussolini said he was with the right, he was referring--I am not making this up--Bukharin and (!) Trotsky.
Trotsky's the right? Wow. That really is Newspeak.
Well, he meant w/in the spectrum of the communist party, but still. Yeah.
This, to flesh out teh stupid, was part of the following equation: Mussolini was against 'classical liberalism', and against 'traditionalism'. Modern conservatism=classical liberalism + traditionalism. Ergo, Republicans aren't fascists. Liberals are.
Also: fascism and lefty statism apparently have something to do with the fact that, on the veldt, we had clans.
I'm over my head here, but I thought that Trotskyites (less sure about Trotsky himself) were thought of as left socialists, with the Communist Party to their right. No?
That may be the brilliance of it Cala.
But that's still just wrong -- Trotsky was the Left Opposition, and then part of the Joint Opposition, before his exile, at which point (I think) he still went after Stalin from the Left.
There's no way that Mussolini could ever have thought of Trotsky as being on the Right -- I could buy an Anarchist, or what have you saying Trotsky was on the Right, but not Mussolini.
Goldberg assertion that Trotsky was `on the Right' within the Party is still just wrong, I mean.
Ah, and because lefties are trying to return us to our clannish essence through statism, they are the true 'reactionaries'.
Apparently draining the word 'fascism' of any useful distinction-making power was not enough.
Keir, the beauty of the sort of thing J.G. is doing, from an authors perspective, is that historicality, logical argument, factual events --- all these become irrelevant.
It saves an awful lot of work.
The Goldberg Device -- saving authors everywhere from the trouble of research. The greatest writerly labour saving mechanism since Cassie Edwards discovered reference books!
Gaddis recounted this on being award the National Book Award for A Frolic of His Own:
One the other hand, my second novel got this review by aman who shall be nameless for the moment, who wrote, "Recently a group of avant-garde critics have put forward the idea that a book should be made unreadable. This movement has manifest advantages. Being unreadable, a text repels reviewers, critics, anthologists, academic literati, and other parasitical forms of life." And then, on the notion that anybody can write a book, he says, "What then of the truly unreadable book? This surely must be in every man's reach, yet again, the answer is no. To produce an unreadable text, to sustain this foxy purpose over 726 pages, demands rare powers. Mr. Gaddis has them.Something similar, perhaps, can be said of Jonah.
He also had a nice set piece he launched into (in response to a no-doubt expected question basically asking what, if everyone from Jesus to Nixon is a fascist, the fuck the word is supposed to signify) that part of his 'project' was to rehabilitate the word fascist, which (because of insult-throwing liberals, and people like Hannah Arendt) has unfairly become synonymous with evil. When in fact socialism is more evil than fascism, because an order of magnitude more people were murdered in the name of socialism than in the name of fascism.
Oh, so fascism is just a subset of liberalism, and maybe the only redeemable facet of liberalism.
271: That, is scary. This was more fun when we were talking about pretty computers.
Maybe the point is that "liberalism" = "fascism" = "social organization of any kind, really." In short, anything other than a complete absence of regulation or rules of any kind is Bad.
I could buy an Anarchist, or what have you saying Trotsky was on the Right
That the Left & Right can meet (except for the property/means of production stuff) at the farthest reaches in forms of anarchism should lead everyone to re-examine The Argument Never Made Before.
I subscribed to a Distributist Catholic blog a couple weeks ago. Lots of commenters.
I know! I know! Goldberg's book is *really* just a roundabout way to prepare us for Unity '08, McCain/Lieberman!
258: Yeah, but guess what, Howard Kurtz did a fawning review of her and her blog about a year ago. I really, truly do not know what is precisely wrong for there to be lunacy on the scale shown by the national media but it is deeply, deeply crazed at the moment.
Howard Kurtz is a dependable enabler of the right-wing blogosphere. Whether or not he views it this way himself, he clearly fills the job of push the Overton Window of acceptable discourse consistently away from people who think Social Security is a positive thing in America and towards people who think that John Kerry shot himself to earn a Purple Heart and betray America. It says a lot that a dude like that -- and one whose wife is some sort of Republican operative in California -- gets to be the media critic at the Post.
The Overton window is a concept in political theory, named after the former vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Joe Overton, who developed the model. It describes a "window" in the range of public reactions to ideas in public discourse, in a spectrum of all possible options on an issue. Overton described a method for moving that window, thereby including previously excluded ideas, while excluding previously acceptable ideas. The technique relies on people promoting ideas even less acceptable than the previous "outer fringe" ideas.
277: Yeah Kurtz made it into my trio of top meta-wankers in the media. This recent column from Eric Boehlert on Kurtz's bias is quite comprehensive. (Overton Window in action—Kurtz media critic for leading newspaper in the US capital, Boehlert on the fringes.) My other two were Mark Halperin and Brit Hume. Halperin was the insider's insider at ABC's The Note and now is at Time. He is one of the main conduits of Repub talking points into the mainstream narrative. This pathetic episode with Hugh Hewitt via Greenwald provides a good look at his character. And finally Hume, not a media critic, but this deeply dishonest man is one of the slender reeds on which FOX News hangs its credibility due to his utterly undeserved reputation as playing it straight.
Jonah Goldberg is another kind of Holocaust denier and therefore should not be argued with.
Pride cometh before a fall; my KDE won't start, or rather it starts but ksmserver fails to attach to the X server. This is seriously annoying.
part of his 'project' was to rehabilitate the word fascist....in fact socialism is more evil than fascism, because an order of magnitude more people were murdered in the name of socialism than in the name of fascism.
When I first heard this right wing talking point introduced way back when I knew it was preparing us for this moment. Not only is this contention false, but it was a central part of Hitler's own justification for his massacres and wars. The battle against communism was always the justification for fascism.
Jonah Goldberg on The Daily Show, tonight. The interview is happening right now.
Waiting to see what Jon Stewart does to him.
Interview's very very heavily edited.
Stewart: So you don't like seeing how people are throwing around the word 'fascist'?
Goldberg: That's one of the things I don't like, yes.
Stewart: So what you've done is...
and from there it really just turns into Stewart making fun of Goldberg and goading him into trying to justify calling organic food fascist, etc.
Yay!
