GeekBox

Photoshop 8.0^h^h^hCS is Announced

DPReview has the press release already. The latest version of Photoshop will be called CS not 8.0. It adds more built-in support for RAW files from digital cameras and 16-bit files...

Friendster Exposed

This is something that I originally wrote and posted on Friendster about the first Friendster Exposed party which was held in San Francisco, June 5, 2003. I just ran across it again and thought that it was worth sharing...

Well, as could be expected the party was tame and laborious. I went hoping that there might be a bunch of people that I would know, who could, in turn, introduce me to the people there that I didn't know. Instead, I didn't really know anyone and I reflected back on the orientation week that I went through as a freshman in college. Thankfully that painful concept passed out of my mind, but the party still wasn't exactly what I hoped for, even in my least wild dreams.

The only people that I recognized were:

1. Jonathan Abrams (the guy that started Friendster)
2. A friend of a friend whom I recognized from his Friendster picture.
3. That guy Frank Chu that walks around the city with the "Impeach..." sign all the time.
4. The doorman who I guess is one of the Friendster employees (Steve is his name).

The club (Cloud 9) is a nice medium sized space. It has three floors: ground, mezzanine, and a basement. Each has a bar, and the main floor and the basement have their own separate sound systems. The music wasn't terrible, but it wasn't overtly good either.

There was some sort of camera crew walking around with professional video and sound equipment recording this event for posterity. I avoided the business end of the camera.

Some random woman walked up to me and said that she and her friends were playing this game, called the "rejection game" where you're supposed to walk up to as many people as possible and see if you can get rejected. It was a clever idea for a pick-up technique, but she was going about it all wrong. She didn't even try to ask me anything that I could reject until I prompted her. I said that assuming this was some sort of reverse psychology idea, wouldn't she at least want to ask for whatever she wanted in case I actually accepted? She then asked me if I wanted to dance - nobody was dancing on that floor and it seemed really out of place. So I rejected her. Maybe this is what she really wanted. I really don't know.

It is rare that a woman hits on me in such an overt fashion (assuming that was what happened). Usually when it happens there is some element that is oddly out of place. In this case, while she was probably older than me, she had braces on her teeth.

The only useful thing that I learned is that I remember people's names much much better when I see a name and a face together. When someone introduces themselves their name usually goes in one ear and out the other.

Putting your name and picture up on Friendster could almost be like this guy Scott that goes around with a name tag on all the time. Maybe there is something to that idea...

New Powerbook Design Details

If you aren't an Apple/design geek, you can ignore this post...

I was just at CompUSA looking at the new 15" Powerbooks. I have a TiBook that is starting to look like shit because some moron(s) thought that A) paint would stick to magnesium and B) magnesium could be epoxied to titanium. I've tried to be very very careful with my TiBook, and I've only had it a little over a year. Unless you never touch your TiBook, the paint flakes off very easily, and the bottom cover can separate from its subframe. After that debacle, Apple has chosen to go with anodized aluminum. I like the new finish very much. Of course the machines are faster, better, have bigger hard drives, etc., but what about the little details?

Well, sometimes I get paid to be anal about stuff like this, so I thought I might go over the new design details. (Most, if not all of these little changes appeared already on the 12 and 17 inch Powerbooks, but I hadn't really looked at those units this carefully.) One of the first things that struck me is that the trackpad has a rougher surface than my TiBook. My finger glides very smoothly on my Powerbook but it felt weird on the new trackpad. I suspect that this is something that one gets used to. After all I didn't like the old trackpad much when I first got it, but now it feels fairly natural.

In general the aluminum case feels rougher than the painted titanium and magnesium parts on the TiBook. It looks like they bead-blast the aluminum first before anodizing. I like the finish at first glance, but I wonder how it will last. Anodizing makes the surface pretty hard, but it is still possible to scratch it in normal use. Straight scratches will contrast with the random finish of the bead blasting, but they won't look as stupid as scratches look on the mirror finish on the back of an iPod. Thankfully scratches will also be self-colored because there is no paint. As far as I could tell the inner surfaces of the body and the display halves were also the same aluminum finish, and not some plastic with matched paint. Even the trackpad button seemed to be aluminum.

The new hinge design (which first showed up on the iBooks) looks to be a big improvement over the TiBook. The TiBook's cantilevered hinges look beautiful when new, but they're very vulnerable to dings and apparently many people have trouble with them losing their tension. The newer hinge design brings the pivot within the body of the computer - when the Powerbook is closed there is nothing exposed to break and I suspect there is more room to have the clutches/springs that help the LCD spring open and stay in position. One thing that seemed rather odd about the particular Powerbook that I was playing with was that when it was closed, the LCD actually floated away from the other half of the clamshell by about 2mm. I don't know if that catch was out of tolerance or damaged, but it made the unit seem cheap. The rubber screen bumpers that used to live on the body at the corners are now on the LCD side and there are two more right next to the catch. I suspect that this is because the precise bead-blast/anodized finish would wear against itself in an unsightly way if it wasn't held apart. I tried to see if the keyboard was going to hit the LCD glass itself and leave grease marks and scratches the way that it does on the TiBook, but it was difficult to see how close the keys are.

With this update all of the ports have all migrated to the sides. The older design hid most of them behind a door on the back. While there are practical advantages to either configuration which one could argue for, it is interesting to note some of the less obvious changes. Now that they are exposed, Apple has added tiny plastic bezels to each connector. They finish off the transition between the connectors and case in a very tight fashion not usually seen on a product with this many connectors. I'd love to know how they managed this. Typically it is hard to keep the tolerances on the PCB, the case, and the placement of the connectors on the PCB tight enough to have the connectors so tight and even in their openings. It looks great. I'm also curious if the plastic bezel is one custom part for a set of connectors (i.e. one per side), or if each connector is custom with an individual bezel.

The PCMCIA (PC Card) slot has been updated. The TiBook has a thin perforated metal door which is spring loaded. The eject button was lathed aluminum and came out of a separate round hole. The new slot has no perf on the door and it seems a little stiffer, and the button is now a D shaped aluminum block which is integrated into the opening for the door. I like the new design better - it seems a little less fussy.

The keyboard is all new. The biggest changes are that the keys are mostly opaque silvery plastic and sculpted in a subtly swoopy "pillowy" shape. Of course, if you get the higher end 15" machine, you get the backlit keyboard. Unfortunately they don't exactly provide a dark room at CompUSA to experience this eye candy, but I'll take people's word that it works. Less immediately obvious: the keyboard is no longer user-removable, so there are no little dead spaces between the function keys. In fact there is a new key - a separate eject button. Consequently the function key row is now oddly spaced. Even more odd: the caps lock and num lock keys have dedicated LEDs, but the caps lock has a window and the num lock doesn't. Depending on the ambient light, you might not even see the LED for num lock. I assume that this probably came up more than once during the design process and was intentional (although still questionable in my mind), but I have to wonder if it was just an oversight?

Details around the keys have evolved. The speaker grills now have a larger area, with smaller holes on a hexagonal grid instead of a square one. I have no idea how they sound, but they look better. The power button is larger - almost out of proportion. One of the shapes on the TiBook that I really liked was the bevel around the keyboard. Most of that is gone now, with just a ramp on the front edge. Unfortunately this ramp is a separate part, so it doesn't have the same smooth radius to rest your thumbs.

Similarly there is no recessed frame around the trackpad. Unlike the keyboard, I think that the loss of this detail is an improvement - the design is even more minimal. While the CD slot and case latch buttons are in about the same location as before, Apple has also done away with the details around both of them. The case latch has a new feature though: the sleep LED is now integrated into one end of it instead of being located in the center of the screen hinge. This makes some sense but I don't like that it is off center now.

If you've gotten this far, you will may tolerate my biggest design gripe with the new machines: the external screws. Apple has always tried to use the best of everything. A long time ago, they looked into screws and discovered that Torx screws are easier to drive (they transmit more torque to the screw from the driver) and they look cool. Early on it may have also been a hint to consumers that they weren't supposed to open the original Macs themselves, especially since those required extra-long Torx drivers which were even more rare then than now. For some reason Apple has switched to mostly Phillips screws and 4 hex head screws near the hinges. To me, this just looks wrong. I don't mind carefully placed external screws. Sometimes they are the best solution to assembly (certainly much better than epoxy was on the TiBooks). However, I can't help but think that someone wanted to save a few cents by going with non-Torx screws. Torx screws look precise and expensive, but Phillips just looks pedestrian. I could have tolerated them on the bottom of the unit, but unfortunately they're on the sides, along with the highly precise connectors. It just doesn't go together visually. It's possible that it would have been difficult to source off-the-shelf flat head Torx screws that small, but Apple has custom screws manufactured all the time. Of all the details to skimp on, why the screws?

Airlines cancel fights on Sept. 11

A Freudian slip? Salon.com Technology | Airlines cancel fights on Sept. 11

[I wonder if they'll fix this by the time you read it?]
[Yep, it was fixed. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted]

More on Shirky

I'm sure that I must have come across Clay Shirky a few times in the past, but I've suddenly realized in a big way that he understands the growth and death of communities on the net better than most people. Well actually he just understands people and technology, period, better than most people. I recently wrote an entry here about an essay by Tom Coates called (Weblogs and) The Mass Amateurisation of (Nearly) Everything.... Looking back I see that he was playing off on an earlier essay by Shirky called Weblogs and the Mass Amateurization of Publishing.

After having read a dozen or so more of Shirky's essays, I have to say that this man gets it more than most people ever will. He simply looks at what has happened and reasons what will happen from that. Not what should happen. History repeats itself over and over. Human nature is surprisingly consistent. If you pay attention to it, you will notice patterns and be able to predict what will happen. The problem comes from people predicting what they want to happen, which often flies in the face of human nature.

His opinions on VoIP, grid computing, the music industry, and the size of communities are all very worthwhile. Actually everything of his that I've read so far clicks with this sort of sense of something that you've understood intuitively but maybe haven't put into words. At worst, some of it merely seems well reasoned, but not necessarily earth-shattering.

Highly recommended.

A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy

I'm not even done reading this, but if you have any interest in on line communities, go read this article: Shirky: A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy.

Wired News: Ecstasy Study Botched, Retracted

A few choice quotes from Wired News: Ecstasy Study Botched, Retracted

A researcher who a year ago published startling research showing that the drug commonly known as ecstasy can cause Parkinson's-like brain damage has retracted his study.

George Ricaurte, the Johns Hopkins Medical School researcher who performed the research, said his lab did not administer ecstasy, or MDMA, but methamphetamine, to the primates in the study.

Ooops.

NYTimes Swallows RIAA's Load

The NYTimes has become more of a shill for the RIAA and conservatives in the government. In an article called Aiming at Pornography to Hit Music Piracy they actually printed this as credible information:

A study in March by the General Accounting Office found that KaZaA would be effective for someone looking for child pornography. The agency searched for 12 terms associated with child pornography, such as "incest" and "underage." It did not actually download the files it found, but it determined that 42 percent of them had titles or descriptions associated with pornographic images of children.

They go on to present the opposing side of the issue, but it doesn't really refute the meme of massive amounts of child porn on the net:

The GAO study vastly overstates the likelihood that children searching for popular music will in fact find pornography, according to studies by Public Knowledge, an advocacy group on intellectual property issues.

By even lending any credence to a study that did not actually download the files the NYTimes is showing how easily they can be used.

A little clue here folks, these descriptions are what's commonly referred to as false advertising. 99% of that "42 percent" will not contain child porn. At most you'll get some badly dubbed European movie from the 80's where some 30 year old woman is wearing pony tails and trying to act coy. Those sorts of mile-long filenames with every sex search term you could think of are leftovers from files that have been passed around for years on services like Hotline where you either pay or upload other files in trade to download pirated porn or software.

These file names are just like the stupid search engine spamming where porn sites used to put as many porn words in their meta tags and white-on-white body text to get to the top of the results. Someone sharing on Hotline wanted to generate as much traffic as possible to their server. Then in order to download this forbidden fruit, you had to upload more warez or pr0n or pay them, thus increasing the size of the server owners collection and/or wallet.

Later in the article they (correctly) pick up on another reality of P2P porn: a lot of it is now just advertising for pay sites. Now let's see... do you think that the porn site operators name the files that they share in a way that clearly shows that you're going to download an ad? Well, no they also use the same sorts of filenames with every graphic description that you could imagine - which often doesn't have much to do with the actual contents.

If the RIAA members had half a brain, they'd stop pouring money into getting songs on the radio and MTV and just load up all the good singles and videos onto KaZaA. Then they'd all take a few clues from Apple and UMG and make it easier and cheaper to get the albums electronically or on CD. Oh, but wait, they've stopped making good albums.

Maybe this is a bad example, but I really can't comprehend the school of thought in journalism where you just report the statements of opposing sides of an issue with equal weight and little personal analysis. In this particular case it would be very dangerous for a reporter themselves to download potential child porn. If they actually found some they would be committing a serious crime.

The real problem here is that I read far too many articles by journalists who are generalists. They are taught that there is this universal approach to researching and writing stories and they can apply it to any subject - which is complete bullshit. Sure you can start learning from a general standpoint, but journalism should be about trying to present the facts as they are. That requires an understanding of the subject matter, which requires some expertise and experience.

Unless this particular article was completely watered down and edited to death, I get the impression that the reporter has never actually downloaded porn through a P2P service.

Salon.com Misses the Point

I was about to link to a new article in Salon about how American movie audiences are treated like babies when it comes to sex on screen. It sums up much of my own opinions about how Americans seem to want the state/industry to act in loco parentis to make movies "safe" for children. Along of course with the hypocrisy of slasher films getting an R while any real showing of sex has to get an NC-17 or X - both death to mainstream movie distribution.

Unfortunately, while the article itself is thoughtful, Salon's editorial management is not. They placed the article not in the Arts & Entertainment section, nor the Opinion or Tech & Business, or - heavens no - not the Life section (formerly Mothers Who Think - often about parenting). No, they put it in the Sex section, which just reinforces the exact opposite point of the article.

By placing it in the Sex section they are helping to label the content as something appealing to the prurient interest rather than a reasoned statement about the pitiful state of American media and culture with respect to the depiction of "adult" situations in movies. Yes, "adult" is a code word for sex, but I'm trying to point out that by putting this discussion in the same section as the nudie picture book excerpts and articles about "What do Women Want?" they are just acting like sex or nudity in movies always equals titillation. If anything that is the whole problem with the ratings boards that apparently put an R rating on Six Degrees of Separation because of a shot of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (which has Adam's genitalia hanging out).

I then remember that I live in the country where the Attorney General covers up the Spirit of Justice because her boobs are hanging out and doesn't see the irony in that.

Jessica Grace Wing

I've started to write this entry multiple times and I can't quite figure out how to handle all the things that I could say, all the things that should be said, and all the things that can't begin to be explained. Instead I must just stick to the facts and report the news.

On July 19, myself and a vast number of friends and family around the country lost a great friend and great artist - Jessica Grace Wing. On July 24th I helped put together a gathering of friends from the bay area to celebrate what would have been her 32 birthday. You can read about that and more of her San Francisco history in Katharine's last article for the SF Bay Guardian. Being the amazing person that she was, she moved to NYC and got involved with the theater there. So involved and so amazing that her obituary was in the NYTimes, (although you can't read it now without paying their extortion fees). Soon after there was another story on the cover of the arts section. You can also read the extended remix version that appeared in the Tuscon Citizen.

Now I was just sent a link to a piece that appeared on the Today show which compares her to the composer of the musical Rent, Jonathan Larson who also died right before the premier of a show that started at the Fringe festival in NYC. There's even a tiny snippet of a song that a friend and I remixed for her in there. Many of the still photos shown on TV were ones that also were shown for her friends and family at gatherings in NY and SF. I had them playing in a slide show on my laptop. Some people might consider that weird or too geeky, but for someone who had a vanity domain early on and wrote for Wired and Boing Boing before the internet boom, it seemed very normal. What doesn't seem normal is to see them on the Today show.

I can't begin to explain how odd this all feels. I wish it was all some bad dream. I started this blog after her death and I haven't quite known how to handle it here. I've lost other very important people in my life: my mother when I was 9, and my aunt and my grandmother in the last few years. However this is the first time that anyone that I would consider a peer and friend has died. I first met Jessica while she was still a student at Stanford in 1992. She was both a very outgoing active person and a very private person. It could just be that I'm getting old and this is just the beginning of my friends dying off, but Jessica was too young, and more full of life and energy than a little kid. She accomplished more than most people do in twice as many years. I suppose that you could say "the light that burns twice as bright lasts half as long," but did she need to die so soon?