In short: I have taken an immediate disliking to this iPad.

It’s expensive, considering how little it does — $499 for the cheapest version, which is only 16GB. You can get up to 64GB, but that costs $699. And then there’s all the extra Apple-exclusive crap that they will nickel-and-dime you for: apps, iBooks, etc.

You can’t multitask with it, since it’s not running OSX, but only the stripped down iPhone OS. So you want to run iWorks and do anything else? Sorry, out of luck.

It’s an ebook reader, yes — but only if you purchase the books through the iBookstore. So if you have other DRM-free or PDF ebooks, you’re screwed.

Boing-Boing has a short summary of the iPad’s major features that is pretty good, though I disagree with them on the theory that it will kill the netbook, if simply because of the keyboard issue.

The iPad has a full on-screen QWERTY keyboard, similar to the iPhone, which is fine for typing in a quick Internet search or sending a short message, but as far as doing any real typing? No, no one who has to do any serious amount of typing is going to want to use an on-screen keyboard. The tactile dichotomy between a virtual keyboard and a physical keyboard is just too awkward for any extended use.

There’s more that I could go on about, but I think that’s good for starters. And as a small note: this post isn’t coming from some hatred of all things Apple. While admittedly I am a PC person, I do own an iPod (sadly, Microsoft’s Zune is a flawed product) and wouldn’t complain if a MacBook magically showed up on my doorstep one day.

My issue is with the annoying fervor of the hype and speculation that has been going on for the last six months regarding the announcement of the iPad, not to mention the perception of Apple in the general public.

Like I told my sister earlier: It’s not that I hate Apple; I just think that they sell overpriced products which uninformed people automatically “know” are better, simply because they cost a lot more and are shiny. People who have no idea how a computer actually works will go on and on about how their PC is slow and has nineteen hundred viruses on it, which is certainly not because they’re an idiot and click on malware links or have 900 programs running or still download music from Limewire, but because “PCs suck.” They think owning a Mac will suddenly make their computing life so much better.

So Apple: I already own two computers — a desktop and a notebook — and I like my books analog. Tell me why I need this product?

I used GeoCities for my first two web sites: “Elephantitic Monkey” and “Stranded on the Edge of Infinity.” I made Elephantitic Monkey when I was still in high school, and Stranded the year after I graduated. They were awful looking sites, as you might expect, but they were badass at the time.

GeoCities’ PageBuilder was a drag-and-drop, WYSIWYG application that was a bitch to work with to build a web page, and an even bigger pain to update. Because I knew nothing coding at the time, anytime I updated the sidebar — where the navigation choices would be listed — I had to update every single page that had been previously made. After a couple months’ worth of content, this became a teeth-grindingly tedious and frustrating process. Eventually I had a friend who actually knew the back-end processes write up some HTML code for frames, which made the updating much, much simpler. I watched him come up with it in about five minutes, and it may as well have been in Cyrillic for all that I actually understood it. Of course, then a few months later, I abandoned Stranded in favor of the first incarnation of this here web site.

I didn’t archive either Elephantitic Monkey or Stranded, and I kind of wish I had, just so I could be nostalgic and mildly offended at the same time. A quick Google search doesn’t reveal any archived version of them, either. (Though it did bring up a result for a book entitled STRANDED: STORIES FROM THE EDGE OF INFINITY — how random is that?)

BUT — since I do keep copies of all the actual files of everything that was on those pages, I was able to go back and read some of the stuff that was on Stranded. I forgot how collaborative a site it really was. There were seven people contributing columns at one point, four or five people contributing short stories and poetry, and several people turning in photos and artwork. That’s pretty fucking cool, actually.

Part of me thinks that it would be intriguing to put together a similar community like that again. If I could come up with an easy enough way to design and maintain it — and find enough people willing to contribute to make it a worthwhile endeavor — I would. It’s certainly something to think about.

On Tuesday morning, researchers will unveil a 47-million-year-old fossil they say could revolutionize the understanding of human evolution at a ceremony at the American Museum of Natural History.

But the event, which will coincide with the publishing of a peer-reviewed article about the find, is the first stop in a coordinated, branded media event, orchestrated by the scientists and the History Channel, including a film detailing the secretive two-year study of the fossil, a book release, an exclusive arrangement with ABC News and an elaborate Web site.

“Any pop band is doing the same thing,” said Jorn H. Hurum, a scientist at the University of Oslo who acquired the fossil and assembled the team of scientists that studied it. “Any athlete is doing the same thing. We have to start thinking the same way in science.”

What intrigues me most about the story is, not the marketing of the fossil, or even the significance of the find itself, but how the fossil was discovered. In what I’ve read so far, this point has been relatively glossed over, usually just briefly touched upon as a a small plot point in the larger story of how this Jorn Hurum character acquired the fossil.

According to The Guardian, an amateur fossil hunter found it in 1983 at a well-known fossil site in Germany, then proceeded not to tell anyone about it for over 20 years before selling it to a dealer, who in turn sold it to Hurum. The New York Times goes on to mention that the fossil had sat in the collector’s drawer for the intervening years.

What I want to know is, why would a collector keep a potentially huge — and profitable — find to himself for 20 years? Was he stymied on what to do with it? Maybe he didn’t realize the scope of what he’d found, though if he was an “amateur fossil hunter,” one would think he would at least be rudimentarily versed enough in the field to recognize the significance of what he’d find. If that is the case, then perhaps being a collector, he kept it for himself because he enjoyed admiring it to satisfy his own pleasure, like one of those rich old men one occasionally hears whispered rumors about, who buy stolen, priceless paintings merely for the gratification of knowing that they possess them and no one else does.

Of course the most likely and reasonable theory is that the guy stumbled over the fossil, thought, “Hey — shiny,” took it home, shoved it in a desk in his collectibles and curiosities room — in between his Phantom memorabilia and Tarzan first editions — and promptly forgot about it for 20+ years. Until one day, when he begins cleaning out the room, because his wife’s been bitching about how there’s too much goddamn crap in his “man cave,” and it was either organize the room already or kill his wife, and he got the feeling that if he did kill her, she would just haunt him till he died, because that’s just the kind of harpy she is. And so as he’s going through things, he opens this desk, and BAM — there’s this old fossil he found back in the day, and he realizes that maybe he can sell it for some serious coin. Enough to possibly build an extra room to house his many other treasures, thus negating his wife’s bitching — or maybe just to hire someone to kill his wife.

I’m sure my carefully thought-out theories will be proved wrong in the coming days as more about the find is announced, but in the meantime feel free to regard them as the truth, which as we all know, does not have to have any basis in fact.

It’s a Toshiba Satellite M115-S3094. Cost me 600 bucks, 150 cheaper than at the regular price. I got to Best Buy this morning right as they opened, and felt sort of numb: About fifty people were lined up outside. I thought to myself, Shit, and glumly strode up to the entrance. People were going in, though. People other than those in line. Turned out my neighborhood electronics superstore had just gotten in a batch of Wiis, and that’s why people were lined up. Several long, tense moments later (There were a few people in front of me, also purchasing laptops; I thought I might have to murder a very nice lady who was torn between the laptop I was after and a different, cheaper Compaq) I strolled out, a brand new piece of hardware I didn’t really need clutched under one arm and a shit-eating grin on my face. Good times.

For those who care, here are some of the basic specs:

- Intel® Core™ Duo processor T2050
- DL DVD±RW/CD-RW drive
- 14.1″ widescreen
- 80GB hard drive
- 512MB PC4200 DDR2 SDRAM
- 5-in-1 bridge media adapter

Since this isn’t my primary computer, I didn’t really want a 15″ screen. I wanted something a little smaller, a little more portable. I missed this one on sale a few weeks back, and was fucking excited to see it in today’s ad. What amazes me is, compared to my other, four-year-old lappytop, just how much goddamn lighter this one is. I love it.

JAB

I usually rent most of my movies from the book depository (i.e., the library), where one has pretty fair bility to reserve DVDs, and is free of charge. Two reasons, however, finally convinced me to sign up for Netflix:

1) Limited Selection – the library is great for popular and recent titles (though it can take a while to receive these DVDs, which I suppose is another reason altogether), but some of the older and/or more obscure titles are harder to find. Like Trancers 6 — it’s not at the library nor any of the other local DVD shops. Netflix, however, has it.

2) Stargate SG-1 – this fucking show, which I have quickly come to love, cannot be found on DVD at any of the Blockbusters and Family Videos around here. The library some of the seaons, but certain disks they have no holdings for. So I can rent the second seasons, I just won’t get the first disk. Jason lent me the first season of SG-1, but that cheap bastard hasn’t bought any of the later seasons yet. And I certainly don’t want to pony up the money on seven seasons of it, each fifty dollars-plus, especially after having recently done so on a combined total of twelve seasons of Buffy and Angel. Fortunately, Netflix has all seven seasons of SG-1, and I’m slated to receive the first disk this Friday. Not a bad turn-around time at all, in my opinion.

In addition tocomparing and contrasting Netflix and Blockbuster’s online service — and I might add, I ultimately went with the former because I hate Blockbuster — I spent a number of hours researching LCD monitors. I fancy myself quite the expert on them now, and will probably purchase this bad boy in the next few days.

The reason why I’ve been quietly working on my new desktop computer, and why I’m gung-ho about buying a new monitor — aside from the fact that they’re fucking sweet — is that my laptop is in serious need of a complete memory wipe. Forgetting the fact that it’s been attacked and infected with an abundance of viruses and ad ware, it also has so much shit on it that it’s always getting bogged down doing the most complex of tasks, like opening Firefox and Microsoft Word. To quote Nick: “What shit.”

JAB

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. – Inventor Ray Kurzweil takes 250 nutritional supplements a day in his quest to live long enough to reap the benefits he expects from biotechnology. He says he’s trying to reprogram his body, as he would his computer.

— snip —

Kurzweil, a well-regarded scientist who invented the flatbed scanner and a reading machine for the blind, claimed his pills appear to be helping: Biological tests conducted at a clinic in Denver found his body resembles that of a man in his early forties, he claimed, rather than his true age of 56.

At MIT last week, Kurzweil described a future in which he’s convinced immortality — or a drastically longer life span — will be possible thanks to emerging technologies. His new book, which will hit stores in a few weeks, outlines a special “longevity program” of diet, exercise and nutritional supplements aimed at slowing the aging process.

— snip —

He described three stages or “bridges” on the purported road to immortality. First is his healthy living program designed to correct “metabolic imbalances” and keep people alive long enough to benefit from the second stage. In stage two, a decade or so away, he contends biotechnology advances will block diseases and slow aging, because the decoding of our genome is already leading to tissue-engineering techniques for regrowing cells and organs, and to the creation of genetically targeted drugs and gene therapies.
These techniques, he said, should help some people reach the third stage — about 30 years away — when nanotechnology will allow humans to radically rebuild and extend their bodies with help from “nanobots,” itsy-bitsy robots smaller than human blood cells that will slip into our bloodstreams to fix DNA errors, fight pathogens and expand intelligence.

At that point, he declared, humans may be able to live forever.

Dr. Kurzweil sure is going through a lot of work to live forever. I mean, I wanna live forever and see the future too, but you don’t see me stuffing myself full of 250 pills a day. I just sent these guys ten bucks and then sat back, content to enjoy my first life here and now and then eventually enjoy my second life eons in the future.

Hmm… Maybe I should put Dr. Kurzweil in touch with Alex Chiu, the maker of the Eternal Life Rings. Then he can more easily live forever and look fashionable.

JAB

One of the more interesting things I saw was a guy giving a demonstration on a little video camera to an enraptured crowed. He was very convincing, friendly polite, and dressed in a long white lab coat, like the ones I wear at work, to appear “knowledgeable.” He spouted terms like “removable hard drive” instead of memory card and said his little camera could take pictures, act as a voice recorder, and play mp3s. It really wasn’t that bad of a camera at two-hundred dollars. If I didn’t work in a photo lab and deal with this shit every day, I might have been willing to plunk down the money for one.

The other really cool thing — which I wish I’d known about earlier — was that one big room was devoted solely to LAN gaming. I peeked into the room and I saw an assload of people sitting at computers playing things like City of Heroes, Warcraft 3, some form of Unreal Tournament, and even the classic Starcraft. I talked to one of the dudes and he said the gaming had been going on and would continue through the night for 48 hours. I neglected to ask how much doing so costs, but I’d be willing to pay quite a bit to get in on some of that. I think next spring, when the next convention occurs, if they have the LAN gaming again, I’m gonna see if Nate wants to go with me and we can play Starcraft — or Warcraft 3, since I suspect I’ll really be into that game by spring — for hours on end. It certainly sounds like it’d be a blast.

JAB