Monday, October 16, 2006

News.com: "Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia, says he will launch a spinoff of the free site, called Citizendium. It will include user registration and editorial controls to govern user-submitted articles, unlike the free-for-all submission process that reigns on Wikipedia." 

Scott McNulty had the same random shutdown problem with his MacBook, but instead of 19 days to turn the problem around, Apple took 2 hours. I got my Mac today, after calling the Emeryville store repeatedly, it turns out it was fixed last week, and available to be picked up, when I was in the store on Friday. They claim they called me last week, but there was no message. They should send emails, by default. I also pay for a .Mac account, so they know at least one of my mail addresses (they spam me with iTunes offers all the time). In general people who work in Apple Stores have great attitudes, to the point of being a little saccharine, but today I saw something new, a counter person mocking a customer (not me). Anyway, I have the MacBook back now, I'll let you know if the shutdown problem is solved (I refuse to call it by the initials most people are using).  

I played hookie this afternoon and saw The Departed, which may be the best movie ever made. A long film, the story and the acting hold your interest without letting up for one second. Beautifully edited, an incredible cast, always surprising, often moving. A bit on the violent side, but not without preparing you for it.  

Patrick Phillips: "The editor of Business 2.0 is asking every journalist at his magazine to create a blog. And in a possible first for a major publisher, the participating bloggers at the Time Inc. title will be paid based on their traffic." 

Speaking of big companies, my MacBook hasn't worked for almost two months now. I had to wait a couple of weeks while they shipped a part to the Apple store (after claiming they didn't know about the problem, already widely reported on the net), and then brought it in when they called (same day, I didn't make them wait) for a 4-5 day repair. That was nine days ago. I tried to go down to the store last week to find out when it would be ready (I was shopping in the area). They wouldn't talk to me if I didn't have an appointment. There's no record of the repair when I enter the number on the website. So I thought I'd call the store today to find out what's up with the repair. There was no way to find a human being through their voice navigation system. Now I'm on hold hearing "all our representatives are still busy, please hold for the next available representative." That message comes on every 20 seconds, interrupting music playing behind it. While I'm going through this wait, I figure I've already put in a few hundred dollars of my life into fixing the defective machine, and everything in their system is designed to keep me from finding anything out, or getting my machine back (with thousands of dollars of my data on it, btw). While going through this psychic reaming, I'm thinking that while 1984 might not have been like 1984, 2006 surely is. 

After waiting for a half hour, I gave up. They still have my computer, I have no idea when it'll be ready, and I have no way, short of making an appointment and driving down there (next available slot -- 4PM) of finding out if and when I'll get the computer back. I don't understand why people love this company, I prefer their computers, but it's the most user-hostile company I've ever had to deal with.  

BTW, my first trip to the Apple store with this problem was on Sept 27. At that point, they knew what the problem was. So it's been an outage of 19 days. What if this were my primary machine? Geez.  

Colin Faulkingham: "I had a similar experience with Apple." 

When a big company puts up a "blog" it's a mistake to believe that it's actually some kind of blog. That's the take-away from Wal-Mart's supposed blog.  

12/9/05: "Anyone who thinks they know what the blogosphere is about is as right as someone who thinks they know the meaning of life, and potentially as dangerous (in a not-nice way) because maybe they'll try to force you to see it their way." 

Sean Coon: "Would it be any wonder if Iraqi's started their own War On Terror?"