Raw Benderly is holding forth again over on TG Daily. Illustrating the time-honored adage that wise men speak when they have something to say; fools speak when they have to say something.
He asks the rhetorical question “Steve Jobs’ Biography: World Changing or Sugared Water.” Then he goes on to discuss the various different forms a biography appear in: tell all, random facts, glowing fiction, or lessons from life.
After that he advises His Steveness on which form would be best for him.
To wrap it all up, he offers a comment forum where readers may join him in mental masturbation by telling what they think the biography should be. Then they can all have a big, happy circle jerk of a flame war which will have less bearing on The Master’s Biography than Raw Benderly’s last BM.
Sadly, Mr. Benderly can’t even seem to generate a flame war anymore. Mostly, folks don’t even care enough about his writing to comment.
I put the link in because it seems like the charitable thing to do.
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Beginning today, everybody who uses the term “cloud computing” should be jabbed repeatedly with a freshly sharpened number two pencil until they say, “internet-based computing.”
Unless the muttonhead also says, “i[something]Killer.” In that case sharpen up a few pencils and jab at will until the idiot is silent or leaves the building.
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Remember last night I was talking about the Rolling Stone thing? I went to rollingstone.com to read their list of the 100 greatest guitar players of all time. Kurt Cobain made the list. Django Rheinhardt and Alex Lifeson did not. Roy Clark and Wes Montgomery were left out. Neil Young was on there. Jerry Reed? Nope. It’s absurd. It’s total crap.
It will probably be another long time before I read the RS. I can only imagine how out of touch it will be by then.
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Apparently, if you want to be an Apple supplier you have to toe the line or it’s your ass.
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The Academy Awards Show is this Sunday.
Here are my predictions:
Best Actor: I don’t give a damn.
Best Actress: Who cares?
Best Movie: One that didn’t get nominated.
What I’ll be doing: Not watching the Oscars.
What a waste of bandwidth.
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Avatar is going to get piles of press. The trailers are cool. It looks like one fancy cartoon. I’ll never see it.
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All this talk about guitar players has worn me out. How about a drummer….
I know. Fuck Rolling Stone. I usually agree with that assessment.
This one is a collector’s edition, though. There’s an interview with Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. The two of them. Together.
It’s written well enough that most of the meaning of the interview is between the lines.
As far as I’m concerned there are no two guitarists more worthy of note than Clapton and Beck in the last thirty years. Slash is coming along. Johnny A is excellent. Stevie Ray Vaughaan was magnificent, and might have stolen the march. Sadly, he died when he was far too young.
Living rock guitar icons don’t live that are greater than Beck and Clapton. If you’re unfamiliar with Jeff Beck, download the album Blow by Blow for a starter kit. Then download Wired. The go find anything at all by the Jeff Beck Group. The Jeff Beck Group used to have this singer named Rod Stewart. He was pretty good.
Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton also used to play in a little band called “The Yardbirds.” Not at the same time, of course.
Anyway, if you give half a shit about rock and roll music, you should buy and read the new Rolling Stone.
On the off chance you think one or the other of Clapton and Beck are overrated, fuck you.
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In the world of Apple, Steve Jobs is being accused of bad things. To see if you’re in the know, take our simple quiz.
Steve Jobs is committing the unspeakable crime of:
a. Using child labor to construct iPods
b. Beating employees for leaking secrets
c. Eating a double cheeseburger at a company picnic
Not a heck of a lot going on. Forbes says that Warren Buffet is no Steve Jobs. Thank the maker we have Forbes to keep us abreast of this breaking news. Of course, as you’d expect the article discusses Buffet in terms of Jobs.
Besides being very wealthy male bipeds, Steve Jobs and Warren Buffet are fundamentally dissimilar.
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iPad killer. We have reached that stage of the cycle. The term is in use on the innertubes. It’s almost original to be that unoriginal.
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Hawaii did not catch a tsunami.
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Once again, Apple gets no bonus for walking the walk. Other tech companies get up on their back legs and honk about their commitment to fair labor and environmentalism – talking the talk.
Apple fires companies that don’t toe the line.
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It’s possible not to like this track – but only statistically possible.
Most people don’t understand that Steve Jobs’ negative comments on Flash only touch the tip of the ice cream sundae.
Flash may be an industry standard, but there have been many industry standards that have fallen to the onslaught of improved technology. Just to cite one example, the automatic transmission completely displaced the whippletree. Whippletrees today are only used to display historical scenarios that practically no one finds themselves in today. Weddings in Central Park, for example.
Another example is in the field of video display. The Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) used to be the display of choice for most home theater systems. Now, almost every CRT on the continent of North America is connected to a Dell computer.
There are a number of other problems with Flash that people aren’t talking about.
Flash exposes young children to pornography.
Flash shows Freddy Mercury wearing nothing but a neck kerchief and white hotpants.
Flash shows cigarette ads featuring Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble.
Flash causes early childbirth, low IQs, converts ordinary polycarbonates into weapons grade plutonium, and causes eyestrain in women.
Flash contains monosodium glutamate, polychlorinated biphenyls, and aspartame.
Flash has been linked to shingles, gout, post-nasal drip, heartburn, gas, that burning sensation, and halitosis.
Flash lied about having sex with Monica Lewinsky.
Flash will stain your carpet.
Pull my finger.
Flash knows where Amelia Earhart and Jimmy Hoffa are.
Flash was designed specifically to fuck up your personal day. It knows who you are, and it’s going to get you.
Flash is made with genetically modified tree fruit harvested by immigrants for less than minimum wage.
Flash screwed your mother.
We have to stop Flash before it blocks an aisle in Wal*Mart or turns left against a light.
Dammit.
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The rest of the innertubes are crawling with news that you can match Apple by learning how to run the Apple hype machine. This proves that stupidity is still pretty popular.
Hype is a good way to draw attention to your product. If your product is a piece of shit, hype highlights that fact and your product dies the same way it would have died without hype, except more people notice. The Zune is a good example of this. The Microsoft Surface got lots of air time recently. Have you touched one?
Me too.
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Hey, nineteen that’s Aretha Franklin. She don’t remember the queen of soul. It’s hard times befallen the soul survivors. She thinks I’m crazy, but I’m just growing old.
Yup. Tim Cook made it official today in his keynote address to a bunch of tech punditbots.
Some excerpts from Tim’s question and answer session with the n00bs:
We don’t ever use the term “market share” at 1 Infinite Loop except when we’re answering questions from idiots.
Pull my finger.
The Apple TV is a hobby.
Apple is a mobile device company.
We are both partners and competitors with lots of companies. The tech business is far more complex than many of you are equipped to understand.
Apple says no to good ideas every day.
Your shoe’s untied. Made you look.
The word ‘complete’ is not in our dictionary. We’re innovators. Which means many times we end up obsoleting ourselves. We’d obsolete you, but there’s sport in toying with your feeble minds.
On his way out of the auditorium he gave two punditbots wedgies and a third a dutch rub.
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I’m having a hard time finding a good site with the questions and answers clearly written, but as near as I can tell the questions were inane and the answers were patient.
If you read between the lines, you can tell he wanted to say:
Market share is a stupid metric. The only time I discuss it is when slack-jawed drooling idiots ask about it.
We continue to make Apple TV because we’re making money with it. Zip up your pants.
We aren’t out to kill anyone or anything. We’re in business to make money. Not only are you not equipped to understand the complexities of the tech business, most of you would lose a battle of wits with a ripe canteloupe.
Our partnership with AT&T is not based on them buying Steve flowers or Valentines Day cards. It isn’t based on their cutesy little globe logo. It isn’t based on any ‘cachet’ that doing business with them might bring us. It’s based on MONEY. As long as we’re making money, it’s good. When we stop making money, that’s bad. Then we’ll change something.
We don’t consider M&A a sport for your entertainment.
The iPad is about to change the world. The fact that you don’t get it is not an indicator of anything except your inability to get it, which has already been well established.
Everybody in enterprise is a consumer. Every consumer is not in enterprise. Enterprise is a subset of the set ‘consumer.’ Hello? Is this thing on?
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Silicone Alley Inside ‘er has presumed, based on their expertise at running a $40,000,000,000.00 company, to explain to Apple what features they must (MUST) include in iPhone OS 4.0.
They missed several important features that I think are vital.
A stain remover
Eliza
The Complete Works of Da Vinci’s Notebook
Multifinder
Cyberdog
Grammar checking
Beta, gamma, and alpha detection with 50 keV resolution, and no beta-alpha crosstalk.
Shufflepuck Cafe
It never ceases to amaze me that pundittards feel the need to tell Apple what they must do.
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I guess I should explain what Tim Cook made official today:
