...more recent posts
Cam has an interesting thought on the possibilities for anti-spam services. But what about a service that gives you an email address - very cheap but not free. Then anybody with an email account on that system also gets a central email address where they can redirect any spam they do get. These spams are then used to create a master profile. Every incoming email for every different account passes through the filter created by aggregating all the spams received by everyone on the system. Any incoming mail that matches anything in the central deposit is thrown out. You'd still get spam, but if the system grew large I would think it would be very infrequent. With enough people it would almost always be the case that someone else would have gotten that spam first. My guess is this might be very good to perfect at not producing false positives, while still being pretty good at stopping spam. And the real problem with spam filters is that you don't want false positives (you don't want even one in a hundred real messages deleted before you see it.)
Whoa.
TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan's Minolta Co Ltd said on Wednesday it had halted new product development for APS (advanced photo system) cameras and would focus its resources on the fast-growing market for digital cameras.I guess that whole worse than 35mm film quality thing wasn't such a good idea after all. I assmue they're not halting production on those more traditional film cameras as well.
Got my new memory. I'll be curious to see what kind of performance difference there is in OSX with 512megs instead of 128megs. I'll report back. (And I'll repeat my plea: memory is cheap, cheap, cheap. Buy more. If you don't have at least 256megs of RAM you should definitely buy more. 256megs for an iMac costs around $60 and will make your computer much faster.)
No new PowerMac towers? They've got to come soon because that top of the line iMac makes the present towers look a little underpowered and expensive.
But I think the iMac is a homerun. $1299? Sure that's expensive for the entry level model - but that thing is powerful. Really powerful. Hopefully I can convince my friends Virginia and Steven to buy one.
The biggest surprise for me was the new top of the line 14 inch iBook. I definitely didn't see that one coming. $1799. Makes it kind of hard to justify the TiBook. This is just like the iMac/PowerMac problem. The consumer machines are so rocking that they will take a bite out of the professional lines. So I think it won't be very long (way before MWNY in July) that those machines get bumped up too.
I was really expecting a "one more thing..." release for the towers. I thought they'd be 1.2 Ghz, 1.4Ghz, dual 1.4Ghz G4s. The fact that this didn't happen makes me think that the G5 is coming, but wasn't quite ready. Look for a special event by the end of the month, or maybe a MacWorld Tokyo release. I had made H. wait to buy her new tower, and she's a little disappointed, but what could I do? It might have happened today. Soon hopefully.
So while it wasn't "way beyond" the rumor sites - frankly it wasn't anywhere near what some people were expecting - I think the iMac is right on. Priced well. Beautiful. And sure to be a big seller.
Lots of dreams last night. At one point I was hanging by both hands from a cable stretched between two high points over a river far below. I was way out in the middle and very unsure I could make it to either side. I kept thinking 'this can't be right... how do I get out of this?' And then I went through the whole 'maybe I'm dreaming?' thought process, and determined that, indeed, I was dreaming. But I don't think I woke up. The dream just switched to something else. So, again, I'm close to what I understand to be lucid dreaming, but it doesn't work out quite like I expect. I only gain a little bit of control, like I can nudge events one way or the other. But I can't just decide to fly around, or talk to old friends, or... um... anything else.
Later - and yes, I know it's ridiculous to dream about such things, but it has been on my mind - I was dreaming about Steve Jobs' keynote speech at MacWorld. This actually happens in a little over an hour, but I saw it last night. There was a big image of a chip and I kept looking at it and at first it said G5 and then I looked again it said G4, and then back to G5. That's the sort of clue - text that keeps changing when you look away and then back again - that is supposed to remind me that I'm dreaming, but I missed it. Seems like I can realize I'm dreaming much easier if I'm in a tight spot and the realization will serve to get me out of it. Anyway, then it changed and I saw a very tiny Mac that was somehow hooked up to a Nintendo GameCube. Or it was a Nintendo Gamecube. Yes, I know, my life is fascinating.
And then later I was hanging out with my friend Sarah who is still away out West. I miss her. When are you coming home Sarah?
Bare Bones Software has a special deal on BBEdit 6.5 from now until Jan. 11. $85, or $44 if you registered any past copy (even the old bundled ones that came with Dreamweaver.) Nice.
Alex took a beautiful picture of the midtown skyline from Central Park to go with his epiphany post.