Lessons Learned from Horror Flicks

I run. Like sub 6 min. miles when I choose. As I went up in pace I learned e hard way that for most of us, we're not going to run 12 miles at the same pace that we run a 5k. Not a few of us go out way too fast and get caught somewhere along the race by someone else who we "left in the dust" at the beginning of the race. Which brings me to Jason.

Those of you familiar with the Halloween series knows that Jason, perhaps the slowest moving serial killer in movie history almost always manages to catch his prey. Jason paces himself. After all he can't be all out of breath and passed out when he finally catches his victim. No, Jason knows that most amateurs will bolt from the start line, or in his case, the very sight of him. He knows that most people cannot keep that initial pace up for very long and once winded will slow to a pace that is much slower than a faster pace they could have sustained for a longer period of time. It is at that point that even at a slower pace, Jason can catch up and decapitate his victim.

So the lesson is: run your race and keep your pace. It's the best way to survive.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

New Kindle for the Web Beta

Works on my Nokia N800 in the Tear Browser. The full screen mode is the best bet. Only fits a few lines of text on screen though. How about that for an "ancient" piece of hardware?

Elin is Pookie

A threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere -MLK Jr.

Stop ya eye rollin' over that quote and read on.

When Arizona passed their "immigration enforcement" law, SB 1040, people went nuts. They called the law legalized racial profiling. One would have thought that somehow prior to the passage of that bill that actual legalized racial profiling hadn't already been standard op in the country. I had long pointed out that hundreds of thousands of people in NYC, particularly black men are stopped and frisked when they have committed no crimes which is a blatant violation of their 4th Amendment rights. This has been going on for years but it was not seen as a big issue, Why? In my opinion it's the general idea that niggas are criminal and so it's OK. Well having allowed that precedent to go unchallenged we now have Arizona. Hence the reason for the quote regarding a threat to justice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

So those of us who understand that when an injustice happens to someone "way over there" or "who can afford it", it poses a danger to the rest of us. Thus we have before us the Tiger Woods divorce fiasco.

Black and Bougie posted a piece in regards to "Pookies" that contained this gem:

Yesterday, @CarolynEdgar started discussing Elin Woods' alleged request for $750MM in a divorce from Le Tigre. This sent a bunch of men into apoplectic fits of Twitter rage. Then it was pointed out that for most of them… this wasn't going to be an issue. It was further pointed out that in this day and age when professional women outnumber and out earn men (amongst the African American ranks) chances were that in a lot of divorces, the woman would end up paying the man anyway. This segued into her hilarious rant on why it's a not always a great for an upwardly mobile chick to date Pookie or Ray-Ray:

Apoplectic fits of Twitter rage? really? I love (sarcasm) how certain females love to misstate what men are thinking or doing. Love it. The author trots out the tired line of "well that's not going to apply to them". Really? I refer the reader back to the above discussion of Arizona. The supposedly small and insignificant decision "over there" will in fact affect them should they get married and unfortunately get divorced. And, ahem, that goes for women as well.

Mind you, the piece goes into an excellent discussion of why Pookie is best left alone or at least why he ought to be carefully watched. However; This isn't about defending Pookie, or Woods for that matter. This is about, shall we say, equality.

I was reading the Twitter discussion about Pookies and "Mr Fix it". The discussion could be summed up like this:

Beware of men who have little to offer by way of income or other assets, because after you pull them up and set them up, you may end up divorced in which case you, the high net worth female, will find yourself out of a house or other "marital property" and paying for a man who didn't do much for you. Except perhaps warm the sheets.

Honestly I can't disagree with this statement. But it cuts both ways. Which brings us to the soon to be ex Woods.

It is reported that Elin Wood's is asking, straight faced, for $750 million.

Yes. $3/4 billion. Pause and let that amount sink in for a bit.

These same females who are correctly objecting to Pookie getting a free ride off their hard work actually AGREE that Elin Wood's deserves $3/4 billion.

Sheer hypocracy.

Let's run down Elin's history shall we. She met Tiger Wood's in 2001. At which time Mr. Woods was already winning major tournaments. In fact by the time Wood's married Elin, he was on a record winning streak. What was Elin doing in 2001? She was a Nanny.

A Nanny.

In three years Elin goes from Nanny to the wife of the greatest golfer in the world. That's like Pookie going from parking cars to Oprah's mansion. OK?

And let me ask. What exactly did Elin do to enable Mr. Woods to earn his money? Was she his trainer? Nope. Would anyone argue that Tiger Wood's trainer is perhaps the one person other than Mr. Woods who has had a direct impact on Mr. Woods ability to earn? Has that trainer (or trainers) been paid $750 million for their services? If not, could we not argue straight faced that if anyone actually invested in Tiger Woods in such a manner that actually produced income that it would be Woods' trainers?

Lets be clear here. Elin Woods was not your typical wife. Unlike those women I see everyday. She was not working a full time job to help ends meet. She didn't leave the job to come home and take care of the kids and cook dinner and clean the house like so many women do. No. Lets be honest here. The Woods had a maid or two or three. They likely had in house chefs. They hired grounds keepers to take care of the lawn. Neither Woods probably ever had to worry about a car note or even owned a vehicle long enough for it to break down.

Elin didn't have to clean shit. Elin didn't have to cook shit. Elin didn't have to get up early in the morning to go to some job not paying her what the dude in the next cubicle with less qualifications than her was earning. No, Elin Woods went from Nanny to Escalade, beach front property, 1st class air travel, Shopping at stores I don't even bother looking in the window of. First class all the way. All Elin had to do for all that was show up at tournaments and cock her legs to the side on occasion.

Elin is Pookie. You can't argue that Pookie ought to be avoided cause he'll use your shit and then try to claim more at the divorce hearing and then say that Elin deserves $750 million (greater than the GDP of some nations) when she brought absolutely NOTHING to Wood's earning potential other than white skin and blond hair.

Some will argue that the $750 includes child support. Look, maids and nanny's would have been taking care of Woods' kids anyway. If the judge is so concerned about them being taken care of then that judge ought to award custody to Woods.

Now some idiot will misconstrue this as defending Tiger Woods. I could care less about what Tiger Woods does. What I do care about is the precedent that is set when someone can lay claim to someone's hard earned income, when they had a negligible part in the earning of that income and I don't care what gender they are. Such a precedent is a danger to everyone.


Does Elin deserve a payout? Absolutely. Mr. Woods stepped out on his marriage contract. He should not have. I have no problem with even a multi-million dollar payout for that. Personally I'd cap that at $50 million which I still think is excessive for someone who brought next to nothing to the marriage. I would not agree to her not being able to speak on her relationship. Woods cheated. That's just one of the fallouts. But if she did agree to such a gag, then I would up the award due to the fact that such a gag would impact her earning potential.

So lets be fair. Elin has shown that she is a gold digger period. She knows she hasn't done anything warranting $3/4 billion but she's asking for it anyway. We, well actually the women supporting this bid ought to recognize that she is no different to Pookie and stop defending that demand.

The Problem With Statutory Rape Laws

The recent arrest of LT over his alleged statutory rape of a 16 year old has gotten me to thinking about the issue of statutory rape. For those not familiar with the term, statutory rape is when a minor engages in sexual intercourse. Period. Under the law a minor cannot consent to sexual intercourse. It is an odd law when you really think about it. In fact the law is so odd that in many states (if not all) there are various exceptions. These exceptions generally surround sexual intercourse between minors of similar age. But those exceptions highlight the serious constitutional problem with statutory rape laws. Let me highlight a few of them:

1) Rape by definition requires intent. No one "accidentally" rapes a person. A rapist explicitly does not inquire, care or regard the wishes of his or her victim. A rapist can never say that he or she "didn't know" that the person did not consent. Even in the case of a person who has sex with a person who is knocked out drunk cannot claim ignorance. A passed out person cannot give consent simply because they are physically unable to do so.

Statutory rape, being defined as rape defies this logic because statutory rape laws do not require any intent on the part of the person charged with this crime. which leads us to problem two:


2) Unlike the vast majority of laws (if not all, I'm not a lawyer so I can't make an authoritative statement on that), statutory rape is a charge with no defense. It is the only law I know of that completely bypasses a person's ability to defend his or herself. All the government has to show is that the victim is in fact a minor. That is all. Think about this for a minute is there any other felony that one cannot argue a defense for?

Lets make up an hypothetical situation. You are a baggage handler. A co-worker who is a terrorist hands you a bag full of explosives set to go off while the plane is in the air. You put the bag on the plane. Plane blows up. Hundreds of people die. The bag is identified and video is presented that shows that you put the bag on the plane. Case is closed.

You, the hypothetical baggage handler would immediately argue that:

1) You had no idea the bag was a bomb. If you had known you would not have put the bag in the plane. However if the law was written the way the statutory rape laws are, that would not be a valid defense. The fact that you put the bag on the plane meant that you committed a terrorist act. End of story.

Or

2) The person who handed you the bag represented himself (clothes, demeanor, etc) as an authorized and trusted airport personnel whom you had reasonable expectations to not be trying to get you to commit a crime. Again if the law was written the way the statutory rape laws are, that would also not be a valid defense. That you did not know that the person was not a criminal with criminal intent would not absolve you from the fact that you put the bag on the plane. Furthermore, that you did not inquire, on the spot, for paperwork proving that said co-worker was not a criminal and that you did not open this bag and check it for explosives, would also not a viable defense because again, you put the bag on the plane and therefore you committed a terrorist act.

Clearly no reasonable person would accept such a legal prosecution. Clearly the baggage handler was duped into aiding an actual criminal into committing a crime the handler had no intentions of committing. No prosecutor in his or her right mind would prosecute the baggage handler even though 100's of people are dead.

In reality the baggage handler would be arrested and interrogated. They would tell their story, the person who gave them the bag would be identified, etc. etc. and that person would be sent home. Why would this happen? Because the law has to recognize that people are sometimes duped into abetting or committing criminal offenses they would not have committed. When this is done by law enforcement it is called entrapment. When done by civilians it is referred to as blackmail, fraud, extortion, etc.

This brings us back to LT. According to news reports LT's position was that he asked this girl her age. She told him she was 19 when in fact she was 16. I haven't seen her. Nor do I know how she was dressed, whether she had makeup on, the lighting in the room, etc. I do know that 16 year olds can in fact be mistook for 18-19 year olds and some 18-19 year olds can be mistook for minors.

A lot of people want to make the argument that a "grown man" like LT ought not be fooling around with 19 YO. Maybe so. But that's not illegal. Our personal morality on the matter isn't legally relevant. What is relevant is that in NYS if a minor gives a false statement of his or her age to a would be statutory rapist that is the basis of a valid defense (well if you have a decent lawyer). In LT's case the "victim" made an official statement that she told LT she was 19.

What is bothersome about many of the statements made by people about the case purporting that 16 year olds are incapable of decision making is that if a 16 yo commits murder, the state demands justice. While that 16 yo is tried in juvenile court, there is still an expectation of responsibility on the part of this minor.
Such a thing shows a two facedness about statutory rape laws. How can a 16 year old minor be so unable to consent to sexual intercourse, but can be held responsible for committing a rape themselves or stealing, killing, committing assault, etc.

Some say that we can't expect a 16 year old to tell the truth. That argument doesn't make sense either. 16 year olds can get on the stand and be expected to testify truthfully. They are expected to be truthful and pick out their attackers in a lineup. How then do we suddenly say that in reference to sexual behavior and telling their age they suddenly lack the capacity to tell the truth? Fact is that 16 year olds make decisions about who they will or will not have sex with all the time. They know full well that they can get an STD. They know they can get pregnant. There is little mystery in regards to sex with a 16 year old unless that minor has been locked up in a place with no access to TV, radio or internet.


Let's be honest about what statutory rape laws are for. They are for teachers who start sexual relationships with their students. They are for baby sitters or other adults who know full well the age of their victims but still initiate or accept an invitation for a sexual relationship. They are for pedophiles who are online and seek out minors. They are for pedophiles who stalk school yards and other places where persons known to be minors are in regular attendance. They are for persons who carry out long term relationships with an adult in order to have access to their children. In short statutory rape laws exist to prosecute those who knowingly and willingly engage in sexual intercourse with a known minor. When the law does not take into account that there are a minority of cases where the supposed "rapist" does not know the true age of the victim and it is reasonable that said perpetrator could think that the person is in fact "legal" then that law is very faulty. I dare say that such a law is unconstitutional. Remember that the founders were of the opinion that it is better to let a 100 guilty people go free than to let 1 innocent "man" lose his liberty.

Why does this matter? It matters because once a law is on the books that takes away a defendants right to show that he or she had no intention of participating in a crime, then the door is open for more laws to be written that prosecute people without any viable defense. And we know this has already happened.

Text manipulation on the iPad

I complained about it in earlier posts and I'm not the only one:

I find highlighting text, copying and pasting, and other forms of text manipulation to be infuriating on the iPad. It isn’t that it's a bad system—it’s probably as good as it can be, given that the device relies entirely on touch. An external keyboard would make the application better, but at that point you're practically carrying around a laptop wherever you go. The iPad, a keyboard, and Pages could make a decent word processor for a kid, but with the abundance of cheap laptops, desktops, and older machines that can do the same thing for cheaper, it’s hard to justify the cost.

Arstechnica

I absolutely dread having to go an manipulate text I've entered on the iPad. As I indicated before, you're in for a "warm" time if you have to place the cursor within a word or God forbid a URL. Zooming helps a bit but still this needs to be addressed.

Another iPad Suggestion

Reading about the 256MB RAM and the lack of swapping on the iPad/iPhone OS, I'm thinking that Apple ought to take a page from Nokia Maemo (soon Meego). On my ancient N800 (you note I keep mentioning that it is ancient), I can assign memory swap to one of the SD cards. That enables more apps to run concurrently before they enter a sleep mode (a little "zzz' on the application icon).

I see no reason why an iPad (or iPhone for that matter) could not have it's memory extended to the built in 16,32 or 64 GB of solid state RAM sitting in the iPad. Is it slower than the main 256MB? Probably. Is it as slow as a spinning disk? Absolutely not. Maybe we'll see something like that in the 4.0 OS (or 4.1) particularly for the iPad. But really Safari ought not have to reload tabbed pages. That just needs to stop.

More iPad issues

And so last night after unsuccessfully scoring a decent iPad case/stand combo I perched the thing on a laptop angled stand and attempted a blog entry. Now on my laptop I have the option of using a stand alone weblog editor or blogger's online tool. On the iPad I had no such choice (though I suppose I could have used the notepad). Therefore I loaded up the blogger editor in Safari and went to work. Part way through the blog post I needed to cut and paste text from another website so I went and called up the website which refreshed. That can be bad but it wasn't. This time. I copied the text and went back to the blogger page to find that Safari had to reload the page. It "reloaded" a brand new blank blog post page. That was not cool at all. Fortunately blogger auto-saves your work so I was able to get back to it from the saved draft. God forbid someone is writing in an online tool that does not auto-save, they are one "let me check that last tab" click away from a world of hurt.

Then I needed to style the text I use custom CSS for blockquotes and bold items so I always add them in manually. DO you know how many keystrokes it takes to get a bracket? What is worse is that Safari believes that < blockquote > should be < block quote > and will GLADLY auto-correct for you.

So I will definitely be in need of a stand alone blogging tool for the iPad. Typing on it with a prop is not that bad at all (noted quibbles aside). Multi-tasking cannot come soon enough for this purpose. It is sad that my ancient N800, 3 years old @ 400 Mhz and 128MB RAM can out-blog this new kit.

If anyone knows a decent iPad weblog app drop me a note.

[update]
Some people may ask why I don't get the iPad dock and a wireless keyboard. Let me answer that right quick.

The iPad dock allows for portrait only orientation. As much as I can appreciate the throwback to manual typewriters I'd prefer landscape for that. Secondly I don't believe that the iPad ought to need a physical keyboard to write at length. As I indicated, once I got the iPad on a stand I was satisfied with the speed at which I could type on the onscreen keyboard in landscape mode.

I currently have an Addesso flexible USB keyboard for use with my N800. I don't like BT keyboards because that is yet another set of batteries I have to think about. If there was a iPad connector that would allow a keyboad to be connected to the iPad sans dock I would purchase it without delay. Still though I would prefer for the iPad to be fully functional without such attachments.

[Update 2]

Seems that the BlogPress app may fill my wants here. Too bad I can't try before I buy.

More iPad woes

I just tweeted about the inanity that is attempting to place the cursor somewhere in a word and the apparent inability to copy just the text of a link rather than the whole URL. But the following is an example of just how bad some things on the iPad is. As any iPad owner knows, there is no viewable filesystem or a means of filesharing. Yes there's a SMB client, but it does not allow two way sharing. anyway here's another example of the truely sorry state of file access on the iPad:

it gets worse. There is no way to share the same document with more than one iPad app. For example, a Word document imported to Pages cannot be accessed by any other iPad app, even other apps that can open Word documents. The only work-around is to import the document twice, once for each app. Further, if you ever delete an app from your iPad, any documents stored with that app are deleted as well. Thus, to make sure your documents are preserved, copy them to your Mac before deleting the relevant iPad app. Shared files are included in a Sync backup of your iPad (at least that what this Apple support article claims), but they are not accessible for a restore of specific files.

Just wow.

iPad

having my iPad for a week now (and accidentally leaving it at home attached to the charger) there are few thoughts I want to share about it.

As others have pointed out the iPad is really a gateway. It is whatever app you're running on it. It gets out the way and really going from it to my desktop or laptop is pretty jarring. the "Oh I have to grab this thing over here to point and click on something over there" paradigm really looks old.

I can really see getting work done on it. The key being to stop thinking that it should work like your desktop. But as it stands there are definitely some things that need addressing.

I did not get the stand. Big mistake. I will be rectifying that mistake this weekend. You simply cannot type at any length without a stand. Some people are using bluetooth keyboards with it. I'm not quite ready to go there yet. But I am a semi-touch typist, so I expect some kind of slowdown. Once I have the stand though I'm going to attempt to go the week without the laptop.

Multi-tasking. Yeah this needs to happen. Particularly for things like Twitter and IM. I wanted to download an IM program but I was not going to pay to have an IM program that can't be run in the background. No, I will not. My Nokia Internet Tablet N800 with less available RAM and a 400 MHz old school armel processor can multi-task. The A4 should as well. Yes I know OS 4.x will address that on the iPad "later" but really, this needs to ship sooner rather than later.

File access: It is clear that the original idea for this thing is to consume media not create or share it. That view is Myopic. I have already created documents on this thing that I needed to send to another computer. Lack of networking reared it's head in the most unholy way. Of course if I had multi-tasking I could have done what I wanted on the 'Pad without involving my laptop but well, that's point number two.

Worse though is that I cannot access my NAS. Well I could if I install an app that would access it via SMB. But then, as far as I've read I would have no means of saving it back to the NAS. That's just nasty. This lack of AFP access to volumes is a huge deal. the iPad is certainly capable of more than what it has by default. It is certainly more capable of being a media consumption device. I certainly can see doing a LOT on it that previously was done on my laptop.

Bluetooth: What is with this bluetooth module? I tried to connect my Nokia to it to act as an input device and it failed because it didn't recognize it as a keyboard. It simply ignored my bluetooth GPS module. Why? I can't tether it to my cell phone to get internet access. Why? Oh that's that ATT thing right? I don't want to go the Jailbreak route but it's pretty inexcusable to not be able to pair with a bluetooth GPS on something that has maps. It's not cool to not be able to tether either. I MIGHT get one of those MIFI devices but I shouldn't have to.

That's it for now.

About that Cali Prius

I don't know what to think about this. On the one hand it entirely possible that an electronic fault occurred in such a manner that this fellow could go 30 miles without being able to stop his car. It's possible. A computer can have a process go haywire while the rest of the system keeps going fine.

I don't know enough about the systems on the Prius but I have a few questions:

1) What were the conditions of this fellow's brakes prior to this incident? I work on cars as a hobby and have many discussions with my mechanic about how people run their brakes down to the back plate and do irrepairable damage to their rotors. And front brakes, which the reports say were the most worn, are the first to go due to weight shifts to the front of the vehicle upon braking.

2)Was the brake regenerative system working? My understanding is that when the brakes are applied, there are magnets at the wheels that take the rotational energy of the wheels and converts that to electrical energy to charge the batteries. I understand that the Tesla roadster's system is so aggressive that merely taking one's foot off the gas causes that system to kick in to the extent that Tesla has the brake lights come on anytime the accelerator is depressed. So does the Prius operate this way and if so, is there any record of that system being active? If so I would think that 30 miles of brake riding would have given the battery a nice charge.

3) How did the officer at the scene know that the driver was 'standing on the brakes"? I don't know about you but I cannot see the feet of the driver in the car next to me. We only have the man's word that he was in fact ONLY pressing the brakes. I have driven behind people who have locked their brakes, it is not a pleasant smell and being a convertible owner I can tell you that I can smell brake lock at least a half mile away from the vehicle that is experiencing it. Speaking of brake lock even if the front brakes failed, the rear brakes are supposed to be able to stop a vehicle as per federal regulations. Yes it will take longer, but they are supposed to do so as per fed reg. So that leads to my next question.

4) What's up with the hydraulics? My understanding of all these computerized cars is that even if an electronic part fails, the hydraulic system is supposed to work as a fail safe. Is braking on these vehicles at a point now where braking is no longer done by the driver? Why not? It is one thing for a computer to be able to actuate the brakes in case of emergencies such as loss of traction or the like, but complete decoupling of brakes from the foot sounds like a serious liability issue to me. Think about it. If you are not physically responsible for actuating the brakes, then brake failure can be attributed to the vehicle with no liability on the owner. This case underscores it. Can Toyota prove that it's system worked at the time of the incident beyond reasonable doubt? Absolutely not. In a foot activated hydraulic system it can be demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt that a driver used or did not use the brake. It can be proven beyond reasonable doubt that the hydraulics were to spec or not.

5) About those electric motors. If I read the schematics correctly, the Prius has electric motors that drive the wheels directly. Is it entirely possible that the engine itself was deactivated but the electric motors, which are designed to run even if the IC engine is not, kept running? My understanding is that the electric motors on these things produce 268ft/lbs maximum torque at low rpm ( for comparison my 1997 Z3 with a 2.8 liter engine has 190 hp/ 206 lb/ft torque. My 318i with a 1.8 liter 4 cylinder has 138 hp and 129 lb/ft torque.)

So combined the electric motor and the IC on a Prius could top 350 lb/ft which is sports car territory and shoddy brakes could possibly be overcome by a runaway drive train though for 30 miles at 90 mph? I doubt it.

In this case all the driver has to do is point to the Toyota recalls and stand his ground. At this point I see nothing that can be proven in court that points to his negligence or fraud because no one can prove that his computer wasn't working at THAT moment in time.

Adobe isn't in the Flash business

From John Nack.

Reminds me of a conversation I had with my mother on Sunday in regards to the company she works for. I've been telling her that she should be telling them to stop thinking of themselves as a "magazine producer" and think of themselves as information peddlers. They used to use magazines as means of peddling information but that mode of delivery is clearly on the wane. I was saying that they need to get on the iPad wagon but quick.

I was also referencing Honda. I recalled a video I saw where Honda was discussing it's newest human "enhancement" of legs that attach to your legs. Why would Honda be doing that? They are a transportation company. Not a car company. Not a bike company. A transportation company.

The iPad is going to make people re-evaluate WHAT they are doing and realize that the "how" they were doing it was merely incidental.

Ignore the Naysaying "Nerds"

I want people to remember a few things. When the Mac came out with it's GUI it was dismissed as a toy. Later the entire publishing industry was changed. Music production changed. and PC's went from DOS to windows.

The Wii was derided as being underpowered. No way could it compete with the XBox and Playstation 3 that had all the technological bells and whistles. Ahem. How many Wii's have been sold to date? How many homes is the Wii in. And most importantly how many homes is a Wii in that previously never had or even considered a game console?

When the iPod came out. Oh it's too expensive. Oh no one is going to pay for all that when they can get a (insert now bankrupt or dead last place company name here). Yeah OK.

When the iPhone came out. How many people dismissed it? Oh it can't do this. it can't do that. It doesn't have this. It doesn't have that. And how many iPhones have been sold. And how many businesses write special apps for it? And....

I look at some of these "intelligent" critics and think of the housing market bubble. Most of the experts didn't see it coming. Oh there were a few of us who sounded the alarm. Who refused to put our money into what we knew were inflated homes. Yeah. experts who get paid way more than I to make predictions on simple shit like should home prices be going up 50% every two years missed the boat.

They are missing the boat here. Like I said in my previous post, this device and the multiple others that will come along is going to challenge people to reconsider how they compute. Do they use a laptop because it is in fact the best device for the job at hand, or because it's simply the only device available or used to. Change is coming folks the iPad is the first (to market) device to spark the change. Catch the wave. This is change you can believe in.

iPad

I am excited about the iPad. I am excited about the iPad in a way I was not excited by the iPod Touch or iPhone. I'm a long time Mac user that uses a Nokia Internet Tablet (N800) and while many of my peers in the Internet Tablet scene are skewering the iPad, I am very excited about this product. Let me explain why.

When I was a kid, I used to come home from school and watch Inspector Gadget. I was supposed to be doing homework but, there I was. And while Mr. Gadget was amusing with his umbrellas and long arms and feet. I wanted Penny's Computer Book.

I wanted it bad.

I wanted it so badly that I set out to make my own. I was an inventive kid. I made a computer book from a cassette tape case, a solar powered calculator and a set of headphone speakers. Since I didn't want to see wires all over, I used aluminum foil to trace leads along the cassette case. I was proud of my work. I also got odd looks from people when I whipped it out in public.

Going further I took a quiz-wiz and made a larger model of my Computer Book with a better calculator and better speakers.

Then I discovered Star Trek the next Generation. I wanted one of those pads. I wanted to touch a screen and make shit happen. I didn't want to flip open something. I didn't want to type at a keyboard. I didn't want a little scroll ball. I didn't to find somewhere to perch a mouse. I wanted to tap a screen and have shit happen. The iPad is my Star Trek pad.

It is the future of casual computing and all the people moaning about what it doesn't have and can't do are missing the point entirely. This is not about having a terminal (though I'm sure there will be an app for that). It is not about what low level file IO you can do. It's not about installing every codec known to exist.

This is about doing away with what we commonly think of as The GUI Experience. It is the removal of unnecessary tool bars and mice pointers. It's about making your program act intuitively so that menus, when needed only show up for the task at hand. It is about the OS getting out the way so you can do stuff. Think about it. It is a computer where you never have to say to yourself: Where's the mouse pointer?

So do I need to flip out a laptop to check the news websites? Do I need to log into a computer and load up a desktop to check Facebook? When I'm on my couch do I really want to flop open, and make space for my laptop being careful to not block the vents? No.

You know what blew me away? When I saw the presentation on Google Maps and they jumped to street view. That blew me away. It was my Penny's computer book experience. Yes, I can access street view on my Nokia N800. Painfully. It's probably faster on the N900. But it's nowhere near as polished.

Nowhere as polished.

The other things that got my attention was the Brushes application. Again I have an app on my Nokia that does the same thing. But to have that on a 9.7 inch screen? All touch? Again this is the WACOM tablet a lot of artists have been waiting on.
I foresee drum machines and the like. All touch interfaced and polished.

And that is the point. This is not a point and click, use the stylus, crammed down desktop OS. I did that when I installed KDE on my N800. You know what? I got really tired of trying to hit miniature menus and menu-items. I got tired of menus and preference panes that literally fell off the screen. I'm sure some people like it. And they can feel free to not buy an iPad.

Are there problems with the iPad. Certainly. I noticed that the special event presentation excluded any mention of iChat. Makes sense since the iPad is not a primarily typing device but we all know that iChat can do video. So the lack of a front facing camera is a problem. It should be there and in my opinion should have been there from launch.

Another thing is that I'd take GPS built in. If I'm traveling I'd love to have the tablet show me where I am. I use my N800 as my Travel GPS device.

I don't want another data plan to pay for. I have a phone that can tether. I want tethering on the device. I know Apple is playing nice with ATT (for what good reason I don't know) but iPad owners ought to be able to tether with any phone capable of doing so and reach the internet. I do this with my 2007 Internet Tablet. It's 2010, enough with the "do not tether" and the extra tethering fees.

Really.

I'm going to get the 16GB WIFI version not just because I'm cheap but because I don't intend to move all my music to it. I'll keep using my 20GB iPod for that (yes I still have and use it regularly). I don't intend to do much video or gaming on it (prefer my DS and consoles for that). I do intend for it to do the things I generally lug my laptop around for: calendar, e-mail, books and internet reference material all the things Steve Jobs mentioned at the beginning of the presentation. At the cost of the 16GB model (roughly the same as a Mini) That is a bargain. I'll do my video editing and other development stuff on my larger and more appropriate machines just like they do in Star Trek.

I'm very excited about this product. I think there are a lot of people who simply do not get it. Many of these individuals are very bright but are too wedded to the current relatively complex means of computing. There will be laptops and desktops for them. And they can sit and bask about what new trick they did on their device while at their day jobs. The rest of us will be using the new paradigm and making paid applications to run on it and content to show on it and the ones that will surely come after.

Ultimately you'll know if an iPad is the device for you when you evaluate what you do with your current computer that absolutely needs a KB and mouse.

Then you'll look at what absolutely needs a KB and consider the accessory KB.

Then you will understand.