stevenf:

I’m weary of this notion (even when presented as satire) that anyone who can’t master a computer must clearly be mentally retarded.  The personal computer of 2010 is hard to understand for novices and people who struggle with abstract concepts. Macs, PCs, all of them.  Folks, it’s us, the freaks who understand drive partitioning, regular expressions, virtual disk images, task switching, and shell scripting — we’re the exception.

Count me in among those who can’t stand the vitriol about how dumbed-down the iPad is. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, of course, but the Internet sometimes feels like that “SportsShouting” gag on 30 Rock: everyone has something to say that he/she has clearly thought little about, or that shows how little empathy goes around for people who don’t connect to a DTrace probe whenever they want to know how something works.

It’s ok to want a netbook because you think the control you get is enough to muscle down the wilfull machine. An iPad would probably make you join the flock of all the people who just want to enjoy their experiences and think for once there’s not a lot of setting up and managing minuntiae and worrying about perfect taxonomy. But dismissing something new because it’s different is just incongruent with the openness most smart people claim to have.

Let it be clear that I get why people want to hate it: what the iPad will actually be in the hands of its users is yet to be known. But for all the talk about how tinkering is dead, I personally think it may finally be the computer for those of us that are familiar with the innards of the machine but want to choose how much complexity we wish to deal with at a given time. I don’t want to go down to my Terminal more than I need to (even though I do more than I should), and if Apple’s new thing provides that balance in the long run, it may be the device for me.

Unsurprisingly, almost no scrobbling since the death of the iPhone.

Design Ignites Change (frogers)

03 (Alex Grazioli)

Frozen lake (wil_freeborn)

Merlin Mann, where are you now?

I can’t stand suffering from hyperlinking syndrome anymore, good golly. If an idea pops up in my head, instead of going for broke I keep trying to refine the tech used to implement it, the words to describe it, the target demographic.

Guess what? All my lovely thoughts remain stillborn. I know a shitload about lots of unimportant stuff, but accumulating knowledge is not getting any closer to achievement. It has GOT to stop.

If you're a lusophone and like books, check out "52 livros", one of my projects for this year. →

From Now let’s fly’s stream, found via ffffl*ckr, a perfect site to make your afternoons vanish.

“Katerina”, by 1+1=1

For over a year the blogosphere has been going insane with the prospect of a new Apple device. The expectation of one life-changing gadget every two years makes everyone fidgety with anticipation, and no one can escape the fires ignited by credible sources.

Not one to be left out of a party, I’ve been gathering my thoughts on what exactly this tablet thing will do for us. Will it be a souped-up e-reader? A super sleek media player to impress your friends with your ability to be socially distant in style? Something to cuddle with when your wife leaves you because of your addiction to Orbital Slate?

Here are my predictions of what you’ll be able to do with your new magic box:

• Conjure an army of angels to do your bidding with its special “God’s whistle” feature (let it be noted that actions that break Commandments or violate plausible actions in a Disneyfied-universe will be ignored. It’s Apple, after all).
• Repel zombies.
• Learn every single Lady Gaga song (“Bad Romance” Gaga hologram to discipline your children and pets optional).
• Cure writer’s block and get out of debt (see section 7.1 in the contract, “Partnership between Apple and eBay”).
• Avoid stress by seeing your Internet access disappear just as its biosensors catch a rise in your ire when none of your Tumblr favorites has liked your insightful post about the new Apple tablet.

While I wait for January 27th, filling my Siracusa bingo cards and thinking about just how enlightened I’ll be after my credit card company has cleared my purchase are the only things left to do. And you? How do you think you’ll change after Jesus in product form arrives in its beautiful packaging?