Another post to the Whatever, in which I modestly propose to change the way the entire freelance writing market operates.

My first post on the Whatever is up, wherein I discuss how to be an unsuccessful writer.

I was somewhat horrified this evening to see a Metro train pulling into the Woodley Park station, its entire exterior “wrapped” in a floor-to-ceiling advertisement for McDonald’s Fruit and Walnut Salad. Call this a bit of Washingtoniana that I didn’t realize was sacred until someone messed with it—it doesn’t rise to the level of the Washington Monument (no pun intended), but the brown exterior is as much a part of the DC experience as the Metro’s hexagonal tiles and Das Blinken Lights to tell us a train is coming.

So WMATA, hands off the trains. I know you’re hurting for cash and the Congress isn’t helping, but you’re the stewards of something important here. So I’m instituting a personal boycott on any company who advertises in this fashion. It’s not like I’m a regular Big Mac person, but this means I’ll be ending my three burrito-a-week habit at Chipotle for a while.

(Photo adapted from Wikipedia entry.)

Public service announcements from Hell. I’m especially amused by the We’re Right Project.

Best. Weekly World News Cover. Ever.

In addition to my essaying duties here in Portentia, I’m going to play Jay Leno to John Scalzi’s Johnny Carson over on the Whatever for the month of July. My contract assigns me to post there on Saturdays, and I’ll put up a link here when I’m writing over there.

It was beautiful, but now it’s over. For over five years, products from Sony Ericsson have been my constant companions, through thick and thin, in fair weather and… okay, only in fair weather. But I think our time together is coming to an end.

I’ve always been a serious sucker for handheld gadgetry. I was one of those kids in high school with a calculator/alarm/data watch. I had a Sharp Wizard in college when most people had barely heard of PDA devices. I tried really hard to make my Newton useful. I owned a Pilot before they were called Palms, and had progressed to a ludicrously expensive Palm VII by the time I took a serious look at the first generation of GSM phones available in the US.

The T68i was, and is, a brilliant gadget. I bought one because I was intrigued by international roaming—which, at a dollar a minute, was never quite the boon I thought it might be. The features I ended up using the most were the ones I thought would be frivolous. Who would have thought that PDA functionality on a 120×75 screen could be worthwhile? But add in Bluetooth wireless synchronization, make storing data on the phone nearly painless, and it turns out that having your schedule on your hip can be quite useful.

When the P900 was announced, I was hooked from the first day I read the website. The idea of the convenience I’d had with the T68i, plus full PDA functionality, blinded me to the ridiculously high cost and the near-total lack of support I’d get in the US. I held out for a few months, but when a buddy of mine was selling his, and said buddy joined me on a particularly good night playing video poker in Atlantic City, that was all she wrote.

So I found myself with a new hiptop computer, running its own quirky operating system, with a built-in phone to boot. Sure, no one else I knew was running Symbian. That’s okay—I was a Mac user when John Sculley was CEO. I managed. I played movies on my phone, just because I could. It was my iPod, my Palm, my link to the outside world on those rare times I couldn’t pull out a laptop. And it was the main reason I switched to T-Mobile and its all-you-can-eat GPRS Internet. Can’t have an Internet-ready phone when I’m counting the measly bytes that AT&T was willing to ship me.

Sure, there were a few problems. I had a phone that talked to my Mac flawlessly, but if I wanted to upgrade its firmware, I needed to switch to Windows. I had a phone that could host a web server, but it was difficult to peel back the closed OS to actually get to the computer underneath. This is not a comfortable position when you’ve gotten used to running Unix.

But what’s caused the love affair to end has nothing to do with the phone, but rather with corporate idiocy at Sony Ericsson. First came the rumors that my P900 is crippled so it won’t work with the larger-capacity, higher-speed memory cards that Sony makes. I’d be quite happy to drop the cash on a 1 gig chip, but SE wants me to buy a P910 to use it.

The big problem arose when my stereo headset died. Phone calls aren’t so important to get in stereo—but since my expensive little friend was sold to me as a multimedia device, this was an issue. The aftermarket is not quite flooded with 2.5mm headsets with microphones and cell phone integration, so I thought it would be a simple matter to call Sony Ericsson and buy a new one.

Rude surprise. They still make my headset and ship one with every P910. They just won’t sell me a new one. Goodbye, iPod and movie functionality; for the want of a nail the kingdom was lost.

I’ve now owned four Sony Ericsson phones, total cost somewhere in the $1,500 range, and there was once a time when I was as solid a booster of their hardware as I am of Macs. They burned up all of that goodwill when they wouldn’t let me buy a headset from them.

(For that matter, T-Mobile has gone down the same path. It used to be nearly impossible to call in and reach someone who was clueless. Now, it’s par for the course that I have to talk to four people to reach the fifth guy who I know will help me. I know I need to talk to Tier 3 Data, people. Why are you wasting your time and mine? And I’m tired of watching the competition—including my former supplier—roll out Internet connections that smoke the one you’re selling.)

So I think that my current Sony Ericsson is going to be my last. And it’s quite possible I’ll be jumping ship on my provider sometime soon. Current game plan:

1. It’s time to head back to the Palm to see what it’s been up to over the years. I have some really useful software that won’t talk to my P900 at gunpoint, which chats happily with Palm devices.
2. If that works out nicely, then I’m not quite enough of a geek to carry around two separate PDA devices—and as I mentioned, the T68i is still a really sweet phone. So the old warhorse will be pressed back into service, and my beloved P900 is going to find itself sitting on the eBay shelves.
3. And someday soon, I’ll probably find myself looking at a phone with EVDO (really, all that’s stopping me now is that word “Verizon” stamped on the cover). GPRS is nice, but I still have to hoof it over to Starbucks when I want to get any work done. Real cellular broadband, that’d be a kick.

But I’ll admit—there’s some irrational sentimentality at work here. I’d like to stick with the gadgets I use daily, and the companies I know. I’m hoping they come up with something better (which in some cases just means a better attitude). But I’m not holding my breath.

From a friend of mine in Japan, an ad from a placemat.

One more reason this Sunday why my head is going to explode. The Post tells me that there is one possible Rehnquist replacement who will alienate Bush’s conservative base. One man who is seen as too moderate. One man who is the “easy confirmation” that will sail through the Senate.

And that man? Attorney General Alberto “torture memo” Gonzales. He’s the moderate who Democrats won’t be blocking.

Some days, I keep expecting Rod Serling to step out from behind the door.

Some wonderful nuggets of information can be read between the lines of this story on military recruiting in high schools. For instance, did you know that:

A little-noticed clause in the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act requires high schools to hand over students’ names, addresses and telephone numbers to military recruiters as a condition of receiving federal aid.

No child left behind… when we need them armed in Iraq, I suppose.

More interesting is this quote about the logistics of military recruiting:

An average of 10 telephone calls is required to produce a single “contact” with a prospective recruit. Five or six contacts are needed to gain an “appointment.” It takes two or three appointments to set up an “interview,” a three-hour session that tests the persuasive powers of the recruiter. One in five interviews results in a “contract,” or a commitment to join the Marine Corps.

So that means you need between 500 and 900 kids on your marketing list to get a contract. And the target for the year is 40,000 contracts.

So your marketing list has to be between 20,000,000 and 36,000,000 high school kids. Which raises a problem because there are only 17,000,000 of them. No wonder handing over ready-made marketing lists has been written into law. No wonder the article documents a Marine sergeant intimidating a student peace activist. And no wonder a Marine recruiter is quoted as saying, “Getting a list from a high school makes our life a little easier. But whether or not they give us a list, we will get the information one way or another.”

Your government at work. Resistance is futile.

The Washington Post does a good job today of showing what’s wrong with American journalism in its story on a campaign for eating whale meat in Japan.

In this story, we hear from: 1) the Japanese government, which wants to hunt whales for the local food supply; 2) the Japanese pro-whale (i.e., pro-hunting and killing thereof) community, who point to a few thousand years of doing so; and 3) the environmentalists, who say that increased whaling will harm the species.

So—who haven’t we heard from? Yes, you in the back. That’s right, we haven’t heard from anyone who has any actual facts on whether whales are actually endangered by more whaling. Which, I presume, is what makes this news in the first place. Last I heard, whale populations were not doing at all well—but as the story points out, most nations have stopped the wholesale slaughter that got them into that situation. So that leaves us with little information as to whether the Japanese should whale.

This is a science story. Why is the science left out of it?

It appears that the smoking ban is on its way to the nation’s capital.

Let’s cut through the bull, okay? This isn’t a civil rights issue. I don’t have a Constitutional right to light up over a bacon cheeseburger. On the side of the smokers, this is about convenience, and a preference to not go stand outside in the snow for our regular fix. If you think that I don’t think about that when I’m deciding where to go pay $10 for that burger, you are seriously in denial.

It’s the side of the nonsmokers that bothers me, though. They want to tell you what they stand for in this debate, but that’s the real bull that has to be cut through.

First, enough with the crocodile tears about the health of those poor waitresses who have to work in smoky environments. If you really cared about their well-being, then where the hell were you when we were talking about national health care? Oh, I see, doctors aren’t important to your theory.

And let’s set aside your concerns about clean air. I’m having a smoke right now at my local Starbucks on the outside patio, and your cars are passing me at about a rate of 200 a minute. You, the majority voter, have kept your mouths shut 95% of the time when legislation came up to make cars less polluting, or to restrict driver’s rights to make the air healthier for all of us.

I once resolved to actually measure the pollution impact of a single smoker, pumping out toxins with his tar-encrusted, weakened lungs, versus the impact of a single driver, pumping out toxins with his Detroit engine. But then I realized I didn’t have to. As I said to a friend of mine once, “If I spend all night smoking in your garage, the only health impact is that tomorrow your wife will kill me. But if you leave your car idling overnight, everyone in the house will die.”

So, please, you nonsmokers, stop pretending this is about your health. You drive your cars, sometimes at 90 miles per hour, sometimes after just one beer. You have Big Macs and fudge ripple ice cream. You skydive and rollerblade and climb mountains. In other words, you risk your health ten times a day—and if you don’t, you’re hopelessly neurotic and you’re not in the majority.

So what, then, is this about? And to me, it’s pretty damn clear that it comes down to your convenience. You don’t want to sit in stinky air. Fair enough. So where are the laws mandating that everyone must shower daily, or the civil legislation requiring people who fart in elevators to carry around an anal cork?

Silly, huh? But why are these laws silly? Because we haven’t yet attached those concepts to public morality, at which time we are then allowed to get away with believing anything.

And that’s where we’re going here. Once the morals of the American public are on the legislative agenda, then we get into all sorts of silliness. Explain to me with a straight face, if you can, why it’s legal for an eighteen-year-old to vote, die for his country, or smoke, but not yet responsible enough to drink, gamble, or buy a Playboy.

I’ll tell you why. It’s because a loud minority percentage of this country still goes around asking itself on a daily basis, “What would Cotton Mather do?” And if you haven’t noticed, old CM wasn’t too thrilled about a number of other activities that most Americans take for granted and even engage in from time to time.

And that’s the crux of it. Americans have a history of going through useless spasms where we try to legislate morality. We tried Prohibition. We tried outlawing premarital and all forms of non-missionary man-and-woman sexual activity. These things didn’t take, at least in part because the enforcement of these laws always managed to look the other way when the people involved were members of a privileged class.

Heck, take gambling. For a century, it was buried under thousands of federal, state, and local laws. Now some form of gambling is legal everywhere but Utah—which, in proof that Moroni has a sense of humor, is right next door to Nevada. But even Utahans can get together a poker minyon these days if they have an Internet connection.

Now, I’m sure that the latter-day Matherites will move on to gambling as soon as they can. They run into a bit of a hurdle there because of the sweet, sweet revenue stream that most governments enjoy by running lotteries that return fifty cents on the dollar. But thanks to the dangers of second-hand smoke, the redball target is my cancer stick.

I’m not saying that second-hand smoke isn’t dangerous (although some people do). I’m saying that if danger is your real concern, you’re mathematically illiterate. And for most of you, stinky is your real concern.

But there’s one thing you’re missing in all this. See, you might not have heard, but there’s a substance called “nicotine” in cigarettes, and it’s addictive. Therefore, most people who smoke are addicts. If you want to know the feeling of being addicted, abstain from food for a few days. It’s like that.

Actually, if you want to know the feeling of being addicted, get a close personal friend whom you don’t want to talk to, ever again, and have him hide your car keys for a week. Because what you’ve got there is a social addiction. I can tell that every time I see the look on the face of someone who hears me say, “I’ve never gotten a driver’s license.” Remember your car? That machine that pumps out carbon monoxide into the ambient air of everyone but you? I thought you did.

Addicts are unlikely to give up their addictions easily. When my mother was dying, which as you might expect was a stressful time, I took frequent breaks 30 feet from the hospital’s front door to get away for a few minutes. I shared that space, in that December winter, with smoking patients. Some of them in hospital gowns and no coats. Some of them wheeling along their IVs. One of them who memorably threw up in the snow every time she took a puff. But she always took another.

If you truly cared about the health of these people, you’d do the sensible thing and stick a smoking area in a hospital.

Or airports, for that matter. When I’m about to get on a transpacific non-smoking flight, what am I going to do? You guessed it, I’m going to go through security three times during my layover. If you want to speed up airport security and prevent them from eyeballing the smokers repeatedly, stick a smoking area there as well. Give us the old, ratty furniture—we won’t care.

So pass your laws in DC and elsewhere. You’ll drive the smokers out on the street, where the second-hand smoke will be blown at anyone who is passing by. On a busy night, prepare to walk in traffic when the sidewalks are too crowded. Let the smokers, about whose welfare you are so concerned, continue to go out in inclement weather. You know we will.

And then when Cotton Mather comes for your favorite vices, as you know they will after they’re emboldened by a victory, then let’s see how much sympathy you enjoy from the majority of right-thinking Americans around you.

Over in Portentia, I predicted that Mac OS X for non-Macintosh Intel hardware would be available within weeks after the new Macs were released.

I was wrong. Turns out, it’s available now.

First, you should take a look at the unfortunate results when an overheating coal train stops for repairs on a wooden bridge.

My question is for that guy in the yellow pants, and everyone else nearby (including the guy behind the camera whose photos we saw). Okay, so you’ve got a train on a burning bridge. Don’t see that every day. Worth stopping and taking a look.

And then thinking, “hey, that’s a freight train. Freight. As in ‘unknown cargo’. There are some cargos that explode. Others that are toxic when burning. Maybe my life is worth more than a few minutes of interesting DV.”

Of course, maybe it’s not. Up to you to decide. But I suspect it didn’t quite get so far as a conscious thought process, there.

Now that we’ve had a week to let this sink in, it’s time to go to the phantom mailbag and answer all the big questions that no one has been emailing me.

If I’m reading your last essay correctly, you’re saying that for most current Mac users this won’t make a difference at all.

Yes, that’s right.

So why is the Mac community filled with so much gnashing of teeth over this?

John Siracusa put it better than I can. If you’re not technically inclined, just read his conclusion. If you like the gory details, read the whole thing. I’m nervous about the switch, but for reasons that have nothing to do with the Macs themselves.

So why are you nervous?

I’ll get back to that in a bit.

I’ve got a Mac that I’m thinking of upgrading, but now I’m considering waiting for the Intel Macintoshes. Should I?

I have a question for you. Are you insane?

As it stands, you have the option of buying hardware that was perfectly decent a week ago (and hence is still perfectly decent), or waiting 12-18 months to buy the first generation of the new hardware that will replace it. Let me repeat that: first generation.

Now, as it happens, my last two Macintoshes were both first-gen equipment. Apple does a better job than most companies of not releasing lemons that have to be fixed in the next release. But it’s always true that the first model of a new family of computers will simply have problems that won’t be discovered until a million people take a whack at ’em. In the case of the 17″ PowerBook, I didn’t get burned—this is still a damn fine computer. But my Titanium 15″ did get bitten by several bugs that don’t exist in the newer models. So I tell my non-technically inclined clients to be a bit gunshy about version 1.0 of any hardware, and I’ll be making that same recommendation next year.

If you need a new Mac, you need a new Mac today, not next year. If you want a new Mac because you want a new toy, you probably don’t want to wait around for that long. The sole exception is if you’re considering a top-of-the-line dual G5 tower; in that case, you might want to consider tiding yourself over with something less expensive and saving the rest of the money for later.

I’m thinking of switching to the Mac. Are you going to call me insane for thinking of waiting until I can run Mac OS on my existing computer?

Probably. My prediction that Mac OS X will eventually be a sanctioned option for your computer is pure speculation, and using a shoehorn hack might be far more trouble than it’s worth. If you’re only vaguely curious about Mac OS and you’re willing to wait until 2008 or so, then sure, be my guest. Otherwise, pick up an iMac or a Mac mini and join the party whenever you like.

What about next year, when the Intel computers are nearly ready?

Well, that depends. Really, it doesn’t matter what I say, Apple’s going to see a hit on their sales here. But Steve promised us all a bunch of new PowerPC equipment between now and then, and I can’t imagine that Apple will be happy resting on their laurels for another year. If the new pre-Intel computers rock, buy one. If you’re less than excited by them, hang back.

For what it’s worth, my workhorse computer is a first-generation PowerBook 17″, circa 2003. It’s showing its age and I could use more horsepower, so my plan is to pick up an iMac G5—which would be the first desktop computer I’ve bought since 1996. The laptop does what I need on the go, and I’ve got the geek skills to offload my heavy CPU needs to the home office no matter where I am. That plan is still green since last week, because I know I’m not willing to wait another year. But if it were May 2006, I’d be looking things over first.

I run my business on Macs. What should I do?

As above, if you need upgrades, then upgrade as needed. In fact, there are two reasons why you might want to deliberately upgrade to the last PowerPC models:

• You have a bunch of computers you’re using in a small space. Early word I’m hearing is that Intel architectures run hotter than Macs, and so I have some lingering concerns that the first generation of Intel Macs might show the same problems. (Of course, once Apple Engineering gets a crack at it, maybe this problem will go away.)
• You’re running custom software that you paid an arm and a leg for. If this was done within an application program that will be upgraded (i.e., a FileMaker Pro 7 database), you’ve got nothing to worry about. But if you paid for an app to be built from scratch, you might have to either buy it again, or have it running under the Rosetta PowerPC emulator. A small subset of people in this category are going to be in a rough place over this—delay the pain by getting the best PowerPCs you can buy.

You still haven’t said why you’re nervous.

It comes down to the guy I was talking to, the guy running a Mac business. He’s got one more problem he probably hasn’t considered.

See, I’ve been consulting for twelve years, and I’ve worked in various fields in the industry. And one thing I’ve seen is that niche markets tend to attract a certain baseline of quality. Translation: I’ve never met an incompetent Macintosh consultant, although of course there are variations in skill.

But in wider markets, where there are lots of job openings and anyone can teach themselves something in two weeks, that falls to pieces. When I meet a Windows consultant, a web designer, or a PHP programmer, I assume he’s an idiot until I see his work. It’s just law of averages—I’ve met too many Windows consultants who should have restraining orders placed against them so they can’t touch an ATM. Too many web designers for whom usability and accessibility are foreign concepts. And I’m thinking that starting next year, I might have to say the same thing about my newest colleagues.

Just look at the market. More of you are coming to the Mac. We’ve already seen one wave of converts from the Unix crowd, but they at least showed up in both the end-user and the professional services areas with serious geek cred. But that green line isn’t all tech weenies, and as consultants decide to shift into new markets, they’re going to follow the money. If, as I expect, there’s going to be a continued shift to Mac OS, then you’ll also see a shift in professionals catering to sell you services.

And do you think they’re going to tell you they started using Mac OS last Tuesday? Hardly. They’ll resort to the standard marketing obfuscation and tell you that their shop has been Mac-expert for years—which means that there’s one guy with a beeper in the home office who gets called when the field guys are stumped.

A year after that, and existing Mac experts will have the same problem I now see in web design. Many of you will have spent lots of money for incompetent consultants and solutions that don’t solve a thing. So when you call us (by sheer random chance—remember, it’s difficult for the client to judge who’s good and who’s not), you’ll have been once-burned and twice-shy, and it will be that much harder for us to set up the pleasant win-win consulting arrangement that we try to shoot for.

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution: hire me now. Or one of my colleagues. That is, start digging your well before the rest of the world gets thirsty, and line up the professional talent that you might need next year right now. Speaking for myself, I’m glad to talk to people who don’t have business today, on the premise that it makes next years’ prospecting cycle that much easier. So find yourself an expert, get comfortable that he really does have the expertise you need (and good consultants should tell you when they don’t), and have him in your Rolodex for when you need it. Because in a year or two, that job’s going to get a heck of a lot more expensive. Incompetent people usually know enough to bill by the hour, and the only way to determine incompetence is with N hours invested. That’s your money we’re talking about.

Obviously, I’m thrilled at the idea of Macs with 20% or 30% market share. I’ll believe it when I see it, but I’m thrilled with the idea. More users mean more potential clients, more money for developers, and better experiences for everyone. But there have been real professional benefits for both my colleagues and clients to being part of an outsider crowd, and I’ll be sorry to see those go.

[This essay is part of The Red and the Blue discussion: Apple Switches to Intel.]

It will come as little surprise to anyone that I’m disturbed by the Minnesota ruling that having encryption software can be an aggravating factor in determining guilt. The Shout opines that this is an over-reductive statement, and that it was the encryption software in conjunction with research into penal law that triggered the ruling.

Call me less than mollified. I’m not sure how one can call it a free society if there is anything negative attached to researching the laws that govern us. I’ve done extensive research into kiddie porn law myself, first as a grad student in Communications (where a friend was looking into doing his thesis on it; he decided that another topic would be healthier), then as a civil liberties advocate.

Oh, and I have encryption software on my computer. So do you, if you bought your computer recently. Perhaps you don’t use it (I do), but it’s there, and with Mac OS X you can use it without even being much aware of it.

We’re not talking here about “not having anything to hide”. We’re talking here about your right to have something to hide, for your own purposes, for whatever reasons. You can go your entire life without having anything you want to hide, but without abdicating that right. It makes a huge difference to our freedom if we lose the ability to choose to hide something.