faildogs.com is the site I was talking about at the picnic today.  Here’s an example:

Encodable.com has a great new writeup (ahem) on how to avoid viruses, spyware, and other malware on your PC.  I posted it on the tech blog but wanted to specifically mention it here too, since it’s a topic of general interest.

When spam subject lines go from annoying to insulting:

You look stupid in this video anthony!

These Slowsky commercials are the best.

This is getting out of hand.  Gruber links to Kottke who has live-blogged a Mythbusters episode about the plane on a conveyor belt riddle.  (Mythbusters must be running out of myths to bust.)  There are nearly 300 raging comments on Kottke’s original post alone, with other forums similarly ablaze.

The thing is, this is SO easy once you recognize that it’s just a trick question; the whole point of this riddle is that it’s a trick question.  The riddle says that there’s a plane on a giant conveyor belt runway, and the conveyor belt has a control system which keeps the belt moving backwards at the same speed that the plane itself is moving forward.  The question is: will the plane take off?

The Simple 4-Sentence Solution:

The bit about the belt moving backwards at the same speed is supposed to make you think that the plane isn’t moving relative to the real ground and the earth.  If that were the case, then of course the plane would not take off.  However, the force generated by the belt does not translate to backwards force on the plane, because a plane’s wheels are free-spinning: as the belt moves, the plane’s wheels spin, rather than remaining stationary so the plane itself can move backwards.

There would be some small amount of backwards force on the plane itself due to friction on the axles of the wheels, but that has virtually no effect on the plane’s forward motion because it’s such a tiny force relative to the forward-thrust of the plane’s engines.

The comments on these other sites are full of debates about airfoils and Bernoulli’s Principle and what really makes a plane fly; all of those people have missed the trick in this riddle (the free-spinning wheels) and so are over-complicating the problem.

I just got a hit from a visitor who found my site by searching for:

does Jack Bauer get overtime

I think it’s a safe bet.

My hatred of Verizon started sometime in 2004, when I started hearing horror stories from Kim about the despicable, greedy, and just plain evil things that Verizon did in the course of providing her cell phone service.  And I don’t mean 1 or 2 small issues; it was 5 or 6 or 7 totally unbelievable instances in which they either intentionally or through gross incompetence tried to defraud her of vast sums of money.  I wish I would have written them down.

As an aside, it’s funny to read posts by iPhone haters saying that it’s doomed because it’s tied to the evil AT&T, and if only they could get it with service from Verizon instead, then they would get an iPhone.  I’ve had zero problems with AT&T in the 6 months that I’ve had my iPhone, and their coverage is far better than Nextel’s ever was, and I’m pretty sure that their $20/mo for unlimited data is the best data deal going.  But the fact is, all of these giant telecom companies pretty much just suck if you give them enough time.

Anyway, back to Verizon: the only reason I have a landline at all is for my business.  When I signed up for this business line, we ended up moving a couple months later.  And despite the fact that now you’re supposed to be able to transfer your phone number to a different provider, Verizon couldn’t even let me keep my number while still using Verizon service at the new house.

As if that weren’t bad enough, they also told me they couldn’t provide me with voice-mail at the new house, which makes no sense whatsoever because it’s not like the voice-mail is stored at my house -- it’s stored on Verizon’s servers anyway!  So I actually had to use something called an answering machine -- a physical device used by primitive peoples before the invention of fire or dirt -- to get my messages for the past few months.

Verizon’s website is as terrible as such a terrible company’s website should be.  Literally every time I log in to my account, it displays the following 2 messages:

We are temporarily unable to retrieve information for this phone number. Please try again later.

We are temporarily unable to retrieve current billing information for this phone number. Please try again later.

And most unbelievable and frustrating of all, when you try to call Verizon for support, they don’t put you on hold like a decent company would; instead, you get a recording that says "all representatives are busy; please try again later" and then THEY HANG UP ON YOU.

Now to the bill: it was nominally $30 or $40 per month, but virtually all calls are "local long distance" or regular long distance, so it always ended up being $70 or $80, even though I hardly used this phone line (for outgoing calls) at all.

Of course, Verizon is the local monopolist, so as much as I would have liked to tell them to go take a long walk off a short pier while I switch to another provider, the fact is that there is no other provider that I could use.

Well, I finally found a way to escape Verizon’s evil clutches: I switched to Vonage.  Vonage is a VoIP phone service provider, which means your service comes in over the internet instead of through a phone line.  But it sounds and acts just like a regular phone line: you can plug any normal phone into it, you get the normal dial tone, etc.  They provide all the standard stuff like voice mail, and unlike Verizon, they let me keep my existing number no problem.  They also have some cool and innovative features like sending copies of your voice mails to your email account.  But here’s the best part: Vonage costs just $25 per month and that includes unlimited local and long distance.  There was a setup fee of about $40, but the first month is free, so there’s effectively no setup charge.

But here’s the real best part: Vonage calls your existing phone provider and takes care of the cancellation and transfer and everything, so you don’t have to do any of that.  But once that happened, Verizon called me (of course I didn’t answer) and left a message crying about the fact that I was leaving, and "we’d really like to keep your business" and "we have some very competitive plans that we’d like to discuss with you."  Yeah, like you really have anything competitive with $25/mo with free everything, you scumbags.  And then, a couple days later, I got a "DHL EXPRESS EXTREMELY URGENT" package in the mail, containing a letter from Verizon still begging me to stay.  No wonder their service is so expensive when they’re wasting money on overnight shipping instead of working on, oh, I don’t know, VOICE MAIL SERVICE maybe?

The other day I got a hit from a visitor who had searched for this:

HOW DO I FIX THE SHIFT KEY ON MY KEYBOARD TO STOP PRINTING CAPITAL LETTER

This is an update to a previous post of Anthony’s: If today is Christmas while you are viewing this post, click the following link:

(One day only:  Is it Christmas?)

This might actually beat HomestarRunner as the best use of Flash on the internet.

Be sure to turn your sound on, and listen for at least a minute.

Hey Anthony.  I’m looking into getting a tablet pc or 2 for work.  Our software just came out with an interactive program which would make it  possible to complete alot of work on-site which is normally written and then entered later, including a sketcher.  Do you know any thing about these? I’m hoping to spend about $2,000 or less but I need speed, size, and may even want to consider mobile broadband, if I can offer same day turn around from the field I can charge more and interest more potential clients. Send me an e-mail if you have any wisdom to spew...(on this subject only!!)
Thanks

isitchristmas.com has the latest.

Apple announced their new iPods today, including the iPod Touch, which is basically the iPhone without the phone: same form factor with huge touch-screen, wifi internet, and web browsing.  They also announced the ability to download songs and ringtones over-the-air from the iTunes store to the iPod/iPhone.

But the REALLY big news is the unexpected and unusual price drop on the iPhone: the 8 GB model that I bought for $600 a couple of months ago is now just $400.  The smaller 4 GB model which had been $500 is now discontinued, but while supplies last, you can get one for just $300.  Don’t expect those supplies to last very long.

How do you improve on one of the greatest songs of all time?  Well, you put it into the pilot episode of Miami Vice, for one thing.  But what if it’s 2007?  Then you make a video of a freakin’ gorilla playing the drums for the song.  (If anyone can figure out how to actually download a copy of that video, let me know.)

In other audio-related news, the August 4th 2007 episode of Car Talk is hilarious.  I mean generally this show is really funny, but this episode is especially good.

And what would be a post on NoDivisions without a comment about the iPhone?  Let me just say that one of my favorite things about the iPhone is that, thanks to iTunes’ podcast support, I always have the 5 latest episodes of all my favorite radio shows with me -- Security Now, Car Talk, The Radio Factor, Science Friday...  Sadly, those last 2 are only previews, not the full shows, which is just dumb.

Also dumb is that NPR won’t make a podcast of All Things Considered.  What’s the point of that?  First of all, it’s free to listen to on the radio every day.  Second, it’s free to stream from the NPR website every day.  Third, it’s "National Public Radio," which prides itself on being all free and open.  So what are they so afraid of when it comes to making a podcast of it?  It’s just another example of a clueless dinosaur media outfit paralyzed by FUD when it comes to the internet and technology -- which is especially pathetic in the case of NPR which is supposed to be all liberal and progressive and forward-thinking.

On Sunday, Kim and I went down to the Apple store in King of Prussia and I got an iPhone.  Despite people lining up outside the stores for hours and even days before the 6 PM Friday launch (including Philly’s mayor John Street), most Apple stores were still well-stocked with iPhones by Sunday, and I had no problem getting mine.  We walked into the store and it was a mob scene: there must have been 100 people in the tiny ~1500 square foot store.  If I had wanted to check out the iPhones that were on display, I would have had to wait for quite a while, because people were three-deep around those displays.

Fortunately, I had been getting psyched about the iPhone for at least the past six months, so I didn’t need to play with one to know that I wanted to buy it.  I just walked up to an Apple store employee and asked, "Do you still have 8 GB iPhones in stock?"  He said he thought they did, and sent someone into the back to check; he came out with my iPhone, and I was out of the store in under 5 minutes.

No one knew for sure how many iPhones Apple was going to have available at launch, hence the thousands of people lining up 6-12 hours in advance across the country to make sure they got one.  It turned out that there were plenty of iPhones, at least at most Apple stores.  It was a different story at AT&T stores -- the only other place that iPhones are available -- with most of them selling out the first night.  All told, the estimates are that Apple and AT&T sold over half a million units during the launch weekend.

I’m not sure why I didn’t go out on Friday night to try and get an iPhone.  I guess I wasn’t 100% sure that I was going to get one right away, plus the word was that it was a hassle at AT&T stores, and the closest Apple store is an hour away from us.  But then as I read various bloggers saying that it did indeed live up to most of the hype, I caved.

One of the ways that Apple is redefining the cell phone business is that the account activation process is handled by each user individually, at home, over the internet, using iTunes.  You don’t need to spend an hour in the store with some clueless salesman getting stuff set up.  There were reports that some people who were already AT&T customers initially had trouble with the activation process, but for most people it was quick and easy: it took less than 10 minutes in my case.

Apple also managed to get AT&T to offer a plan that’s actually reasonable: $60 per month for 450 minutes, with free nights & weekends (and including rollover minutes), and unlimited internet access.  Many (most?) other smartphone data plans are $80-$100 per month, often with only limited internet access, and severe overage charges.

The iPhone itself is amazing.  It’s so thin, so solid, so industrial, the screen is huge and gorgeous, and the interface is so simple and useable it’s like a dream.  The decade-long nightmare of horrible cell phones is finally over.

For me, the combination of the real internet, email, and Google Maps in a portable device is just priceless.  The fact that it’s also got a cell phone, a camera, and an iPod, plus that it’s gorgeous, only make it more compelling.

The screen is about twice the resolution of most standard computer screens, which means that text as small as 5-6 pt is crisp and totally readable.  When browsing the web, though, you only need to double-tap on the portion of a page that you want to read (for example the main content column) and the iPhone automatically pans and zooms that area to be full-screen, with nice large text.  Scrolling up or down, and panning left or right, is as simple as dragging your finger across the screen.

There are a few things that need fixing: there’s no way to select/copy/paste text; you can’t save images (or any files) from websites; you can’t upload files to websites (the Browse/ChooseFile element is grayed out); the Google Maps app lacks the little scale image in the lower-left corner; the on-screen keyboard doesn’t always rotate into wide-screen mode, sometimes forcing you to use the narrower version of it.  But all of those are software issues, and since the iPhone is a computer running Mac OS X, Apple can (and will) simply issue automatic updates via iTunes to fix them.

I could go on and on, but suffice it to say that the iPhone is probably the coolest product I’ve ever purchased.  I can’t put it down, and when I finally do, Kim picks it up and can’t stop playing with it.

Here are some iPhone photos including side-by-side comparisons with a couple of my old phones.

I’m #9 for the first one and #12 for the second, just behind a page titled "Cameron Diaz Sweaty Armpit."

The past couple of Daily Dilbert comics have been near and dear to my heart:

May 7th:

May 8th:

Well it’s out with the old and in with the new here at nodivisions.  The previous layout was up for 15 months, which may be the record for this site.

The new layout is mostly gray, which seems to be my favorite color, but I may try to add some more color here and there.  The tagline "shenanigans and tomfoolery" is from this Apple UK ad.  And on that topic: the naughty step is always serious.

Kim just sent me this one.  Go to Google Maps, click on the "Get Directions" tab, and get directions from New York City to Paris.  In the resulting directions, check out step #23.

Gotta love Google.  The one about the moon was great too.

Google has this message at the bottom of their front page:

Watch your favorite Super Bowl ad on YouTube.

Not having watched the game yesterday, I was thinking how I would have liked to have seen the commercials.  Looks like Google is betting a few people feel the same way.  At the moment it looks like ads from yesterday haven’t been posted yet (though there are lots of older ads) but no doubt they will be soon.

Here’s a couple of good ones that people have used to find me recently:

What Is a the Neutered Chicken Called? why did thomas jefferson hated factorial system?

Hmm, yes... inquiring minds want to know.

(And notice how I refrained from titling this "Stupid Internet Searches" despite the flagrant abuses of capitalization and the past tense.)

You know those obnoxious forwarded chain-letter emails that you get sometimes all the friggin’ time?  The ones that always end with some kind of totally realistic and believable warning, like this:

If you dont forward this message to 10 people in the next 10 minutes your face will fall off and your head asplode!!1!

I think a good policy would be to reply to those emails with this message:

Thanks for the warning!  Now, if you don’t delete my address from your address book in the next 10 seconds, the internets will burn down and you’ll never have email again!1!!

They have done it.  Apple today unveiled the iPhone, which is actually the fulfillment of two long-running Apple rumors: it is the "true video iPod" because the ~entire face of it is a screen, and it is the iPod + cell phone as well.  It also has a 2 megapixel digital camera built in.  On top of all that, it actually runs Mac OS X and includes the Safari browser and an email client supporting POP and IMAP, and it runs on cell networks as well as wifi connections.  This thing is a huge dream come true for many, many geeks and Apple fans alike.

Some of the coolest features:

-multi-touch screen allowing you to operate the iPhone using 2 fingers at a time, so you can pinch/stretch items like photos and windows to zoom them

-orientation sensor so when you turn it sideways, the display automatically shifts

-location awareness built into the integrated Google Maps application

-ambient light sensor to save power by adjusting display brightness; proximity sensor to automatically shut off the display when you move the phone to your ear

...and many more.

Of course they would have gotten abysmal battery life (and would have had to make the thing too thick) if they put a hard drive in it, so it’s all flash-memory based.  This is better anyway, but the cost of flash memory means that for now the iPhone is only available in 4GB abd 8GB models, for $499 and $599 respectively, assuming a 2-year contract with Cingular.  In a year or two when there is a ~40GB model available, I will be all over this.

Oh, and Apple: please, please release a Linux version of iTunes!

Google Maps now supports intermediate destinations when mapping routes, or "multi-point directions" as they call it.  This is really cool; now they just need to add the ability to specify a point/destination by simply clicking a spot on the map.

Now I just need somewhere to go...

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 in October, and started pushing it out via Automatic Update in November.  But this is a phased push, i.e. not everyone will get it at the same time, and some estimates say that it will take months before everyone gets it.  (Of course you can avoid the wait and just get it manually if you want to.)

Here are the percentages of my visitors who’ve upgraded to IE7 (and those who’ve upgraded to Firefox 2, which was also released in October), broken down by week:

Encodable.com:

20061008-20061014: IE6 34%, IE7 04%, FF1.5 40%, FF2 03%
20061015-20061021: IE6 32%, IE7 04%, FF1.5 40%, FF2 04%
20061022-20061028: IE6 34%, IE7 05%, FF1.5 26%, FF2 16%
20061029-20061104: IE6 35%, IE7 07%, FF1.5 23%, FF2 19%
20061105-20061111: IE6 34%, IE7 05%, FF1.5 23%, FF2 21%
20061112-20061118: IE6 33%, IE7 06%, FF1.5 22%, FF2 25%
20061119-20061125: IE6 35%, IE7 08%, FF1.5 17%, FF2 22%
20061126-20061202: IE6 32%, IE7 09%, FF1.5 19%, FF2 25%
20061203-20061209: IE6 30%, IE7 10%, FF1.5 18%, FF2 26%
Updates:
20061210-20061216: IE6 30%, IE7 11%, FF1.5 15%, FF2 27%
20061217-20061223: IE6 27%, IE7 13%, FF1.5 16%, FF2 27%
20061224-20061230: IE6 28%, IE7 11%, FF1.5 15%, FF2 29%
20061231-20070106: IE6 27%, IE7 13%, FF1.5 14%, FF2 28%
20070107-20070113: IE6 25%, IE7 14%, FF1.5 14%, FF2 29%
20070114-20070120: IE6 25%, IE7 13%, FF1.5 14%, FF2 31%
20070121-20070127: IE6 24%, IE7 13%, FF1.5 14%, FF2 30%
20070128-20070203: IE6 27%, IE7 13%, FF1.5 13%, FF2 29%
20070204-20070210: IE6 26%, IE7 17%, FF1.5 12%, FF2 29%
20070211-20070217: IE6 26%, IE7 16%, FF1.5 10%, FF2 33%
20070218-20070224: IE6 28%, IE7 16%, FF1.5 09%, FF2 30%
20070225-20070303: IE6 25%, IE7 17%, FF1.5 10%, FF2 32%
20070304-20070310: IE6 27%, IE7 15%, FF1.5 09%, FF2 32%
20070311-20070317: IE6 26%, IE7 17%, FF1.5 09%, FF2 33%
20070318-20070324: IE6 25%, IE7 17%, FF1.5 08%, FF2 35%
20070325-20070331: IE6 26%, IE7 17%, FF1.5 08%, FF2 32%

NoDivisions.com:

20061008-20061014: IE6 44%, IE7 01%, FF1.5 15%, FF2 00%
20061015-20061021: IE6 48%, IE7 01%, FF1.5 14%, FF2 01%
20061022-20061028: IE6 53%, IE7 02%, FF1.5 13%, FF2 02%
20061029-20061104: IE6 49%, IE7 02%, FF1.5 10%, FF2 05%
20061105-20061111: IE6 43%, IE7 03%, FF1.5 09%, FF2 07%
20061112-20061118: IE6 43%, IE7 04%, FF1.5 11%, FF2 08%
20061119-20061125: IE6 41%, IE7 05%, FF1.5 08%, FF2 08%
20061126-20061202: IE6 38%, IE7 06%, FF1.5 09%, FF2 09%
20061203-20061209: IE6 40%, IE7 06%, FF1.5 08%, FF2 11%
Updates:
20061210-20061216: IE6 39%, IE7 09%, FF1.5 08%, FF2 12%
20061217-20061223: IE6 34%, IE7 11%, FF1.5 08%, FF2 10%
20061224-20061230: IE6 34%, IE7 08%, FF1.5 08%, FF2 12%
20061231-20070106: IE6 35%, IE7 09%, FF1.5 09%, FF2 13%
20070107-20070113: IE6 35%, IE7 10%, FF1.5 07%, FF2 13%
20070114-20070120: IE6 34%, IE7 08%, FF1.5 06%, FF2 13%
20070121-20070127: IE6 28%, IE7 14%, FF1.5 07%, FF2 14%
20070128-20070203: IE6 30%, IE7 10%, FF1.5 07%, FF2 14%
20070204-20070210: IE6 31%, IE7 13%, FF1.5 07%, FF2 13%
20070211-20070217: IE6 33%, IE7 14%, FF1.5 07%, FF2 15%
20070218-20070224: IE6 36%, IE7 13%, FF1.5 06%, FF2 14%
20070225-20070303: IE6 34%, IE7 13%, FF1.5 06%, FF2 14%
20070304-20070310: IE6 36%, IE7 10%, FF1.5 06%, FF2 14%
20070311-20070317: IE6 34%, IE7 11%, FF1.5 05%, FF2 15%
20070318-20070324: IE6 29%, IE7 13%, FF1.5 06%, FF2 17%
20070325-20070331: IE6 34%, IE7 11%, FF1.5 05%, FF2 13%

Relatively slow uptake thus far; or maybe it just seems that way to me, because the world can’t be rid of IE6 soon enough for me.

In other visitor-related news, earlier this week NoDivisions passed 200,000 visitors and Encodable passed 150,000.  They’ve been averaging ~200/day (ND) and ~600/day (Enc).