Entries from April 2006The Posts You Asked For

Electronics giant NEC found that Chinese pirates were not only faking products, but had created a pirate version of the entire company.
Evidence seized in raids on 18 factories and warehouses in China and Taiwan over the past year showed that the counterfeiters had set up what amounted to a parallel NEC brand with links to [...]

» Click to read... «

I was searching for local dog breeders for a story. See what I got:

» Click to read... «

Seriously. It’s a three-minute video, in Chinese, but the language isn’t important. It’s completely visual, and — if you ever use Band-Aids — will leave your jaw agape saying, “Why didn’t I think of it?”
Alternate link.

» Click to read... «

Retraction (4/25): As Paul Glover points out in the commentary, there’s good reason to think this list isn’t accurate. (I’m not saying it isn’t; I’m saying it very well may not be.) Stupid me for not researching it further. My apologies.
I’ve always assumed, thanks to the media (among others), that Windows was a much more [...]

» Click to read... «

In court filings in San Jose, Apple said that bloggers are not “legitimate members of the press” and should not enjoy the kinds of protections that newspaper, television, and radio reporters do.
Declan McCullagh has more.

» Click to read... «

This is going to be a pat-myself-and-my-paper-on-the-back entry, in case you don’t like those sorts of things.
You’ve probably seen the news yesterday about a study that came out of Virginia Tech that shows how dangerous distracted drivers are.
I got the embargoed press release the day before the announcement and read through the results. Then I [...]

» Click to read... «

I was thinking about population — overpopulation, that is. I’ve long believed that the problem isn’t that there are too many people on Earth, but that they’re distributed poorly.
People in cities tend to think the world is crowded. People outside cities know better.
So I finally decided to do some math to figure out how [...]

» Click to read... «

Every now and then my friend Eric posts a list of some of the phrases people are searching on that bring them to his site. I thought I’d try the same.
Some are just odd:

if you do something once get away do it again till caught
how do i make my 12 yr old cousin let [...]

» Click to read... «

Digg is a cool site, but the folks at Forever Geek have found a big problem with it.
The concept behind Digg, for those of you who don’t know, is this: People find Web pages that interest them (blog entries, cool sites, whatever), and “digg” them — that means, essentially, telling other Digg users “I think [...]

» Click to read... «

I’m starting to migrate the site to a slightly new look and a CSS-based structure. (For those of you who have no clue what I mean, don’t worry. It’s just a more efficient site design.)
The big change will be the look of the individual stories and blog entries. The blog entries are already done; click [...]

» Click to read... «

Our stuff from OfficeMax was supposed to be delivered Friday. No luck. Monday we called and the OfficeMax customer service rep said he couldn’t help us — we had to talk to the shipping company. (It was a local firm called Yellow Freight.)
The local shipper said he would try to get it to us Tuesday. [...]

» Click to read... «

So Karen ordered two filing cabinets and a telephone from OfficeMax to equip her new office. Because the order was expensive enough, she got free next-day delivery.
Except that OfficeMax apparently has a different idea of “next day” than we do. Further, OfficeMax’s customer-service system seems to be several years behind the times.
When the delivery didn’t [...]

» Click to read... «

Oh, what the heck. Jason Snell’s Macworld editorial has been making the rounds, and people have asked if I’m going to reply. Might as well.
First of all, like so many people, he equates snideness with intelligence. But I’m used to seeing that. So let’s take apart what he has to say, focusing on the facts [...]

» Click to read... «

At the end of last summer, we got rid of the 15-year-old window air conditioner that cooled the downstairs of the house. (There’s central air upstairs.) It was a 10,000-BTU unit, noisy as all get out, but it did a reasonable job.
But moving the thing was incredible. I mean, it weighed a ton. It took [...]

» Click to read... «

Ah, and now we have this gem posted:
With the truth being told (without all the flaming), his remark about your wife is right on, she is pretty unattractive. Not being mean, just truthful.
Not just a personal attack on me, but on my wife because, once more, of what I said about a piece of Apple [...]

» Click to read... «

“cunninghamcanada@yahoo.ca” wrote me a little gem that included this:
Obviously you’ve never actually used OSX or touched a Mac. Bill Gates is to busy paying you or sucking your limp cock.
But rest assured, YOU ARE DEAD, along with that fat ugly wife of yours, and that fucking rat you call a kid — a kid you [...]

» Click to read... «

I gotta share this, in case you missed it in the comments. One Mac user wrote the following and posted it over and over in the comment areas.
(Remember, all this nonsense is in response to a column about Boot Camp. A piece of software. These people, especially the yokels over at Mac Daily News, [...]

» Click to read... «

So get this — the conspiracy theorists at Mac Daily News wrote that I had praised something called “Microsoft Max,” but then removed it from my blog once I heard that Apple had something better.
When I called them on it — I never wrote such a thing, much less removed it — suddenly they edited [...]

» Click to read... «

This is funny. Cyrus Farivar of MacUser wrote a piece in which he purported to “take down” my argument about Boot Camp.
Sadly, he didn’t do that — in fact, he agreed with me for the most part. Yet he crows sarcastically at the end of the piece, “Some know-it-all, this Kantor, no?”
Here’s a perfect example [...]

» Click to read... «

Just got this lovely note from a Mac user:

From: myarea51@mac.com [mailto:myarea51@mac.com]
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2006 1:39 PM
To: andrew @kantor. com
Subject: Mac/Windows
You are a boob and know nothing about tech. You will be
exposed as the turd you are when the Mac increases in market
share versus the sewage pond that is Windoze. Maybe if you
knew what the [...]

» Click to read... «