So there’s a new player in the Mac backup business, Decimus. Their product is called Synk Backup.

So when your synk backs up, your office is decimused. No doubt they’ve outsourced their tech support to Plumbr.

Quite some time ago, a friend at Apple had a small object quickly waved in front of him, and was told “this is going to be the coolest thing ever”. I believe the person responsible for this tiny little leak was fired. Later, when the rumors started leaking out about an Apple PDA, I realized why Dashboard had been released unfinished as a major feature in Tiger, with UI guidelines that flew in the face of every aspect of Mac app design: it was really intended for making fullscreen tools for a small-form-factor device, and they wanted people tinkering with it early. What that device would be, I wasn’t sure. Like many, I keep hoping for a new Newton, but that’s just not likely.

Will I buy an iPhone? Definitely not at launch; not only do you run the usual risks of 1.0 hardware from Apple, you also add a bunch of cutting-edge technology that may not survive outside the lab (anyone remember another Jobs favorite, the single-sided optical drive that shipped with the NeXT cube?), and all of the friction and finger-pointing of a partner product.

Doubts? The first thing that jumped out at me watching the mocked-up demo videos is that I’ve never seen a handheld computer with such fluid animation and quick response to user input. Yes, we all know that all of the Internet and carrier stuff will have delays, but I’ll be quite surprised if the photo, music, and video browsers are as quick as shown, or as smooth about transitioning between portrait and landscape modes. It has to be that smooth to work well with no tactile feedback, which means that whatever custom version of OS X it’s running must have real-time features that are missing on Macs.

What was most conspicuously missing? Any mention of .Mac mail, .Mac sync, iDisk sync, etc. Why? Because .Mac is currently a mess, and its sync is unreliable. It’s been that way all through the Tiger release, despite Apple’s push to get developers to add the sync API into their applications. I’ve heard that things are a lot better in Leopard, but who knows what will be in the final release.

Luxor Steakhouse: not what it was a few years ago. The meat isn’t as good, and with the loss of their pastry chef, dessert has descended to the ordinary.

Nobu: just say “omakase, traditional”, and you will be rewarded with something wonderful. The nigori sake was also quite tasty. Cover your ears when the American employees attempt to shout “irasshaimase”.

Mandalay Bay: the cocktail waitresses are now in dresses. If this is progress, I want no part of it.

Wynn: it seems there’s a second tier of cocktail-waitress outfit, reserved for special places and exceptionally well-formed employees. I enjoyed the brief exposure I received, but on a future trip, I’ll have to find out where they keep them. Perhaps the next time they send me a cheap room offer, they won’t have filled up by the time I’m able to accept it.

Other than that, the free suite room was nice, the scenery was reasonable, and I remain only lightly bound by the laws of probability.

On the way out, we once again were pleased to find the middle-of-nowhere bonsai dealer on highway 58. Sadly, he wasn’t there on the way back, possibly due to the ridiculous winds between hither and yon, so we didn’t buy any.

Also, in a moment of pure serendipity, we discovered that there’s a Jersey Mike’s on Paradise. Jersey native Dave was stunned by this, especially since he’d just finished saying “is there any chain that doesn’t have a restaurant around here?”. A quick check of the phone book dug the knife in even deeper: this place that is home to mysterious delights peculiar to the Jersey shore, and which cannot be found within 100 miles of the Bay Area, has six locations around Vegas.

This morning I found myself with the urge to search for two of the best stories about the early days of WebTV. Everyone involved has long since moved on to greener pastures, so I was sure at least one person would have spilled the beans.

No. Google searches for both “webtv reindeer games” and “webtv launch day fuck” return nothing relevant. Perhaps it’s time for Rory to update his blog with a tale of The Good Old Days.

An in-depth, carefully researched exposé of a company fraudulently marketing a product at outrageous prices.

I suspect the answer is that the reporter actually knew something about the subject, and thus smelled the bullshit.

It’s been a while since someone was stupid enough to go to the trouble of coming up with a script for spamming my comments. Stupid not just because I’m small-fry who can’t significantly affect his client’s page-rank, but also because my comment pages are not indexed by any search engine.

So, a quick delete from comments where author is like “%phenter%” or author is like “%roulet%” combined with a quick pfctl -t badlife -T add 58.142.103.165 68.184.254.247 68.184.254.247 213.115.205.82 202.78.170.3 209.212.20.250, and the problem goes away again.

If I get another attack in the next week, I’ll change the comment URL and add the current one to the insta-ban trap in robots.txt. That’s the most I’ve ever had to do to maintain several months of trouble-free open commenting.

[Update: sigh, add “%viag%” and “%ltram%” to the expression list, and 62.3.244.166 to the banned IP list. Time for a new disguise, I suppose; I’d hate to go off to Vegas and let some moron think he’s accomplished something clever.]

Just search for it on Google and Youtube. It’s terrifying, in a “do I really need a Japanese Xbox 360 right now” kind of way. If you find yourself downloading the 720p version of the trailer from that German torrent site, all hope is lost.

[Update: this site seems to have the best set of screenshots showing the gameplay. I like the dialogue in this one:

]

[Update: holy crap, that qj.net page is a giant cesspit of Javascript, weighing in at nearly 240K of code, and maybe 2K of actual HTML content. I was initially curious how much overhead the trendy-annoying JS image display code was adding (72K if it’s the only thing prototype.js is used for, 21K otherwise, plus the overhead of actually calling it, which makes the HTML basically unreadable), but now I’m wondering just how painful this site is for anyone with low bandwidth and an older browser.]

I think the Iranian president’s got JC’s number here. He’d totally go jihadi on the UN leadership and rulers of most Middle-East states, as well as their loyal followers:

If Jesus Christ (peace be upon Him) was present today, he would order an encounter against those who would propagate corruption, obscenity and perversion, and try to nullify and exterminate the merits and the rights of women and diminish their position – a position that virgin Mary (peace be upon Her) – is their role model and sample.

Oh, wait; perhaps he’s using different definitions of “corruption”, “obscenity”, “perversion”, and “rights of women”. My mistake.