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Linked List: February 18, 2008

Monday, 18 February 2008

California Judge Orders DNS Entry Removed for Wikileaks ★

The web site is still up, but only accessible by IP address. (Via Boing Boing.)

Now that Think Secret is gone, let’s enjoy some schadenfreude from April last year, the day after Apple announced that Leopard was behind schedule and wouldn’t ship until October.

Jackass of the Week: Douglas A. McIntyre ★

Douglas A. McIntyre’s advice on how Apple could raise its stock price back to $200:

The next thing the company needs to do is set the date for a release of the 3G version of the iPhone. Citigroup’s research analyst covering Apple says to look for that announcement in the next two quarters. But, Apple almost certainly already knows the timetable. If the iPhone has an Achilles heel it is that it runs on a slow data network which handicaps users. A 3G version which would run on AT&T’s high-speed network would almost certainly lift iPhone sales and get people who currently own the handset to upgrade.

Sure, a 3G-capable iPhone with significantly faster data transfer would be good for sales: when it goes on fucking sale. What exactly does McIntyre think will happen to sales of current iPhones today in the wake of such an announcement? Apple has done really, really well for the past ten years with a general strategy of not talking about products until they’re ready to sell. The pre-announcement of the original iPhone is an obvious exception, but that didn’t eat into the sales of Apple’s own phones because they weren’t selling phones yet. Jiminy.

Andy Ihnatko on Drobo and DroboShare ★

Andy Ihnatko:

Cartoon characters have it so much easier than we do. Laws of cartoon physics say that if you run out of space on your hard drive, you can just jam a funnel into the top, dump in a few more drive mechanisms from a big metal bucket, and then you’re right back in business. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I present the Drobo storage system. This $499 USB storage device is made by Data Robotics, Inc. (Drobo.com), but I’m pretty sure that DRI is actually a wholly-owned subsidiary of the ACME Corporation.

John Gruber: A Mix of the Technical, the Artful, the Thoughtful, and the Absurd ★

Thoughtful interview with yours truly, mostly about the thinking behind Daring Fireball and writing in general. I enjoyed the interview, and I enjoyed re-reading it just now.

New York Times Story on Gray Market iPhones in China ★

David Barboza, reporting from Shanghai:

Factories here churn out iPhones that are exported to the United States and Europe. Then thousands of them are smuggled right back into China. […] An iPhone purchased in Shanghai or Beijing typically costs about $555. To unlock the phone and add Chinese language software costs an additional $25.

Web Designer Gig ★

My friend Jason Perkins — one of the coders behind the just-launched Pixish — is looking for a crackerjack web designer for a small new project.

Wil Shipley’s MacBook Air Impressions ★

Wil Shipley on his MacBook Air:

I love how the port door on the right opens and closes; it’s a very solid-feeling mechanism, and very natural. Also, I feel like I’m in Star Trek (the new one).

InfoWorld’s ‘Save Windows XP’ Campaign ★

InfoWorld:

Microsoft plans to end most sales of Windows XP on June 30, despite a deep reluctance by many business and individuals about moving to Vista. InfoWorld believes such an expensive, time-consuming shift with problematic benefits should not be forced on Windows users, so we have decided to rally XP users to demand that XP be kept available.

I can see two possible explanations for the backlash against Vista: (a) Vista really does suck; and/or (b) the mainstream PC industry has gotten so conservative that anything new and different from XP was bound to be rejected.

Six Principles for Making New Things ★

Paul Graham:

Here it is: I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly.

The Cube’s Fatal Flaw ★

Bill Bumgarner on the G4 Cube:

Near the end of the cube’s manufacturing lifecycle, Cubes were on closeout and my company picked up 10 or so to use as general purpose workstations. None of them had noticeable cracking or mold lines.

However, the very design of the cube was fatally flawed.