Aaron Adams’s Lame-ass Blog

From New Jersey Gov. Corzine Leaves Hospital After Being Seriously Injured in Car Crash:

CAMDEN, N.J. — An emotional Gov. Jon S. Corzine was discharged from a hospital Monday and begged forgiveness for not wearing a seat belt during a crash 18 days earlier in which he sustained critical injuries.

“I understand that I set a very poor example for a lot of young people, a lot of people in general,” a teary-eyed Corzine said.

“I certainly hope the state will forgive me. And I’ll work very hard to set the right kind of example,” Corzine said from his wheelchair outside the hospital.

“I’m sorry officer. Please forgive me for not wearing my seat belt! I know I’m setting a poor example for my kids in the back seat and other people on the highway. I’ll do better in the future, I promise!”

Would that get you or I out of a ticket? Hell no. There would be consequences for us, and there should be consequences for him.

OK, this was just too good to pass up. I used to write more rebuttals to articles of this stripe, but I got sick of going round and round, writing the same things to rebut the same illogical rantings over and over. However, Fake Steve Jobs and The Macalope don’t have any qualms about tearing these nitwits up, so what the hell, I’ll join ‘em.

This gem is entitled “IT Confidential: 10 Indications Apple Is Headed For A Fall”. Oh the drama! The hyperbole! Apple is doomed, I tell ya! DOOOOOOMED!!

The author’s points are as follows:

10) The same reason the Dow won’t stay at 13,000–gravity. Last week, Apple reported eye-popping second-quarter financials: a 21% increase in revenue and a whopping 88% increase in profits. Apple attributed the results in part to continuing strength in the sale of its personal computers. That’s called being on a roll. You’ve been on a roll, right? And what happened?

Yes, I’ve been on a roll before, and what happened was that at some point I wasn’t anymore. Things gradually rolled from a fast pace to a normal pace. Hardly a “fall”, as I’m still alive and gainfully employed and writing my own thoughts for those who care to read them.

This guy’s logic is, um, not logic. “Something very good happened, therefore, something very bad must happen.” This kind of thought process dominates our gloom-and-doom media in real news as well as computer news. You, the reader, must be kept in a state of constant apprehension and near-panic, or else the writer’s story just isn’t all that interesting. If this guy has any facts to back up his assertion that Apple is headed for a fall because they just had the most profitable quarter in their history, let him present them. Otherwise, his woman’s intuition simply isn’t justification.

9) Just about everyone who might possibly want an iPod has one. I can’t get on an airplane or enter a mall without half the population sporting earbuds. Yet, according to its recent financial results, Apple sold 10.5 million iPods last quarter. It makes me think of the rumor about how the Church of Scientology kept L. Ron Hubbard’s book, Dianetics, on best-seller lists month after month: by buying hundreds of copies itself and burning them in the basement.

If anecdotal evidence of what I see is considered proof of what portion of Americans own an iPod, then I’ll counter his assertion with my own: Apple has plenty of room to sell more iPods. Here in middle America, there are certainly iPods to be seen, but not nearly as many as what this guy is describing. And among people I know who have iPods, almost every one of them currently owns, or has purchased, more than one, myself included.

Anecdotes != data, either mine or his. If this guy has hard evidence that iPod sales are about to take a “fall”, present it. Otherwise, again, his gut feeling that “Everybody has one!” and prediction of doom is meaningless.

Oh, and your reference to freaky religious cults is recognized, not appreciated, and thoroughly unoriginal.

8 ) Apple hasn’t refreshed its computer line in a few years. Take a lesson from Detroit: Upgrade.

What the hell is this guy talking about? Now we know for sure he’s pulling all of this out of thin air. It’s obvious he knows nothing about the company or its products.

For the love of all that is holy, I can’t figure out what this guy is talking about. In fact, Apple’s transition to Intel processors isn’t even two years old yet, and every Mac model listed in that table has been drastically revised in the last “few years”. To borrow a quote from Charles Babbage, I cannot rightly comprehend the confusion of ideas that would prompt such a stupid statement.

7) When an online impersonator of the CEO is more interesting than the CEO himself, that’s not a good sign. If you haven’t read The Secret Diary Of Steve Jobs (fakesteve.blogspot.com), you should. It’s not only funny but more than a little insightful on Apple’s internal politics.

Fake Steve is good. Real good. But - let me see if I understand this - because someone who is not involved Apple is able to freely speculate about the company’s internal workings in a very creative way, and the actual CEO of the company, who has a responsibility to employees and shareholders, cannot publicly be as witty or open about company events, the company is headed for a “fall”.

6) Apple opened seven stores last quarter, for a total of 177 worldwide, and a third store is planned for Manhattan. Are there enough thin, cool, good-looking young people in the world to staff them?

Sounds like fat old guy is a little jealous of Apple Store employees. And that’s no wonder, considering that he has some obvious insecurities, as demonstrated by this article he’s written proclaiming the “fall” of an obviously successful company, based on nothing more than his gut and whatever psychosis compels him to dislike a company he obviously knows nothing about.

And not everyone who works at an Apple store is thin, cool, good-looking, young, or any combination of the above. Same goes for their advertising.

5) Everyone is getting tired of those “I’m a Mac … And I’m a PC” commercials. The Mac dude comes across as smug while the PC guy, who not coincidentally bears a striking resemblance to Bill Gates, elicits sympathy. And if the public starts feeling sorry for Bill Gates, you’ve lost.

I can’t speak to this, as I haven’t been able to watch an Apple ad for about five years. (I find it hard to believe that anyone could have sympathy for Bill Gates, but that’s just my gut, and I’m not ready to declare the “fall” of Microsoft because of it.) But I can say that advertising doesn’t necessarily reflect the product, and hating something because of the ads is just as irrational as every other point this guy has attempted to make.

Allow me to present an example outside the realm of computing. I love the show House. It may be the only scheduled thing I look forward to every week. Fox’s promotions for the show, however, suck ass. They’re out of context and overly dramatic and they do a real disservice to the quality of the show. In my mind, a more accurate portrayal of the show, and less hype, could only be helpful. As bad as the promos are, the show is still excellent and I make a point to watch every week because the show itself is great. Advertising does not make the product.

4) There’s increasing speculation the iPhone will flop. And it’s not like Apple hasn’t had flops before–remember the Newton?

What tech company hasn’t had a flop? You forgot the Cube and the Pippin and the Apple III and a few other things, all of which were much worse than the Newton. I’m not personally excited about the iPhone, but if it flops, Apple won’t collapse because of it, as evidenced by the record quarter Apple just posted (which this guy says is all bad) without any iPhone sales whatsoever.

Current speculation + past flops != “fall”. Again, that’s some piss poor logic. There’s increasing speculation that dinosaurs will once again rule the Earth. They’ve ruled before. Run for your lives!

3) Windows Vista is better than it’s getting credit for. Conventional wisdom says Apple gains market share as Microsoft loses because of a backlash against Vista. But Vista hasn’t been given a fair trial, and Microsoft has been known to pull products out of the fire. And beware the backlash against the backlash (see No. 5).

Yes, we all know how credible conventional wisdom is. And beware of the backlash against the backlash against the backlash!

Apple is a hardware company. I reject the premise of Microsoft and Apple being involved in some zero-sum game. Apple’s more direct competition is Dell, and both Dell and Microsoft are encountering some rough water right now.

Apple just posted a record quarter. They’re growing much faster than the computer market as a whole (and gaining meaningless market share) while making a crap ton of money. Meanwhile, Dell has started offering Windows XP again because of customer demand. As good as Vista may or may not be, customers are making their preferences known. They prefer Mac OS X and Windows XP over Vista. Additionally, Dell is about to move away from its online-only sales model because their strategy of out-cheaping the competition isn’t working anymore.

Tell me, which of these companies is most likely headed for a “fall”?

2) That pesky stock options backdating thing won’t go away. Last week, Apple’s former CFO said Jobs knew the regulatory implications of backdating and agreed to it anyway. The company’s board of directors issued a statement of confidence in Jobs, including board member and former Vice President Al Gore. When Al Gore’s your backup plan, it’s time to reassess.

I’m no fan of Algore, but the fact that his name is on the board’s statement means squat to anyone. What does matter is that the board supports the guy, period. Admittedly I don’t understand the stock options mess enough to get into it here, but if this guy did, or if he knew of something factual to indicate a “fall” was coming because of it, he should state it here. He didn’t. Instead, he invokes Algore’s name as some kind measure of desperation.

And finally…

1) I just bought an Apple iMac, which carries with it my personal version of the Sports Illustrated cover curse. The last PC I owned was a Sony Vaio, and look at what happened to that company. Before that, I owned a Micron PC. You didn’t know that Micron, the microprocessor company, made PCs? It did, and good ones, back in the 1990s. In 2001, Micron sold its ailing PC business to an investment firm, which subsequently changed the name of the company to MPC. Sorry, Apple–I didn’t mean to throw the hoodoo down on you.

So you personally are the kiss of death? I don’t know wether to pity you because of your self esteem problem, or to feel contempt for you because you believe your personal bad luck extends to others, either by virtue of your power or your all-permeating insipidness.

The only “fall” here should be your writing off the pages of InformationWeek.

A page from a book called Auf der Wacht from 1941, chapter 6, page 174:

This article caught my attention today: Some Schools Ban iPods to Stop Cheating.

MERIDIAN, Idaho — Banning baseball caps during tests was obvious — students were writing the answers under the brim. Then, schools started banning cell phones, realizing students could text message the answers to each other.

Now, schools across the country are targeting digital media players as a potential cheating device. Devices including iPods and Zunes can be hidden under clothing, with just an earbud and a wire snaking behind an ear and into a shirt collar to give them away, school officials say.
…
Mountain View recently enacted a ban on digital media players after school officials realized some students were downloading formulas and other material onto the players.
…
Using the devices to cheat is hardly a new phenomenon, said Shana Kemp, spokeswoman for the National Association of Secondary School Principals.

I spent probably the most harrowing 18 months of my professional life working at a high school. I took care of several labs of about 150 Windows machines , give or take a few. Each student that sat at each machine during each period of the day saw that machine as completely their own, to do whatever they wished, including destroying the thing so as to make it unusable until I was able to fix it, which was almost always an ordeal. Usually the quickest way to restore the machine to working order was to reimage it, and the images were stored on a Netware server behind a chain of 10mbit hubs, which served all the other machines in the labs. Figure 150 machines * 6 periods per day * 5 days per week, and that’s 4500 hours per week students had to lay waste to machines, versus my 40 hours to clean them up. Even if my week had been 80 hours, I’d still be behind. And then two sets of bosses giving me directly conflicting orders almost constantly… Talk about a test of patience. But I digress.

Anyway, one thing that was true almost a decade ago was that the students didn’t need portable gadgets of any kind to cheat. They used the computers themselves to cheat. There were ways to lock the computers down, but that required equipment the school wouldn’t buy; or it required inconvenience to the students, which they would in turn exaggerate into crisis for the teachers; or it required inconvenience for the teachers, which in turn would become issues for school administrators. The teachers didn’t know much about computers and didn’t want to - that’s why I was there, in their estimation, and their hands were full managing hormoned adolescents all day. I can’t say I disagreed with them. Nobody had an easy job.

And one day it just dawned on a very young me that cheating isn’t a technological problem, it’s a behavioral problem. From the article:

“You can just thread the earbud up your sleeve and then hold it to your ear like you’re resting your head on your hand,” Nelson said. “I think you should still be able to use iPods. People who are going to cheat are still going to cheat, with or without them.”

Banning the popular gadget of the moment isn’t going to stop cheating in school. These kids cheat because of bad parents. You’ve raised your narcissistic, spoiled, lazy, entitlement queen children to accept cheating as a matter-of-fact occurrence without any accompanying guilt or thought of consequences. It’s going to be done, so might as well do it, is their thought. Technology isn’t to blame, parents and the nasty children they’ve raised are to blame.

In the end, the teachers at the school I worked at accepted the fact that eyeball patrol was the only way to catch cheaters, and the students kept cheating. I got frustrated with the job (and the shitty pay) and left. But it was certainly a learning experience and what I’ve come to realize about school, teachers, and parents could fill a volume. The ultimate lesson of that volume, I think, would be that most problems at school start at home, and ultimately, the quality of parenting is directly reflected in the child. No teacher or school can change that. Parents, the wet cement that is your child will eventually dry, so start giving a damn and take time to shape that wet cement into an actual human being that will be an asset to society rather than a liability.

Sometimes simple astrophotography can yield cool results. The moon and Venus were somewhat close tonight, so I put my camera on the tripod and shot a bunch of pictures. As I took the pictures, I thought, what the hell, I’ll make a movie.

Each picture has an exposure time of 10 seconds at f/2.2 taken with my Sony DSC-F828. I used Quicktime Pro to open the image sequence and compress the pictures into a 640×480 H.264 movie. It lasts about 6 seconds, but took me a little over an hour to shoot, with an exposure every minute.

The Moon and Venus setting in the west, H.264 Quicktime movie, 212k, :06

The bright object on top is the moon. It was actually a crescent, but because of the 10 second exposure time, it appears overexposed. Below and slightly to the right is Venus.