Electronics giant NEC found that Chinese pirates were not only faking products, but had created a pirate version of the entire company.

Evidence seized in raids on 18 factories and warehouses in China and Taiwan over the past year showed that the counterfeiters had set up what amounted to a parallel NEC brand with links to a network of more than 50 electronics factories in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

I was searching for local dog breeders for a story. See what I got:

Seriously. It’s a three-minute video, in Chinese, but the language isn’t important. It’s completely visual, and — if you ever use Band-Aids — will leave your jaw agape saying, “Why didn’t I think of it?”

Alternate link.

Retraction (4/25): As Paul Glover points out in the commentary, there’s good reason to think this list isn’t accurate. (I’m not saying it isn’t; I’m saying it very well may not be.) Stupid me for not researching it further. My apologies.

I’ve always assumed, thanks to the media (among others), that Windows was a much more vulnerable operating system than Unix-based ones (e.g., Mac OS X, Linux flavors, etc.). Of course, I argued that it’s fairly simple to protect your system; there’s plenty of good and free anti-virus and anti-Trojan and anti-whatever software.

Translation: Don’t believe everything you hear.

In court filings in San Jose, Apple said that bloggers are not “legitimate members of the press” and should not enjoy the kinds of protections that newspaper, television, and radio reporters do.

Declan McCullagh has more.

This is going to be a pat-myself-and-my-paper-on-the-back entry, in case you don’t like those sorts of things.

You’ve probably seen the news yesterday about a study that came out of Virginia Tech that shows how dangerous distracted drivers are.

I got the embargoed press release the day before the announcement and read through the results. Then I went to the press conference.

I walked out thinking two things: 1) The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration just spent $4.1 million to discover what we already know, and 2) That every TV newscast is going to report it like it’s big news.

I refused to do that. I wanted to smack people on the head and say, “But we already know this!”

So I wrote my story. The lede I played around with was, “In a shocking development, researchers from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, working with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, discovered that distracted and sleepy drivers have more accidents.”

But that would never fly, and sarcasm doesn’t carry well in print.

So I settled for:

If you’re distracted or drowsy while driving, you’re more likely to be in an accident than are people who pay attention to the road.

Researchers from the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute, working with the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration, just spent $4.1 million over a 13-month period to discover that.

(The copy desk tweaked the second part a little.)

I decided that it would be inappropriate to be overtly sarcastic. I settled for playing it straight and letting people make up their own minds. For example:

“The biggest surprise was the prevalence of drowsiness during daylight hours,” said Tom Dingus, VTTI’s director. Researchers did not expect people to be sleepy during their morning commute, he explained.

As expected, all the TV news stations ran their versions of the story as if this was shocking revelation, rather than “New study confirms what anyone with common sense already knows.” The AP story, too, treated this as if it was true news. Even the Washington Post got excited. Also as expected, the folks at Fark gave the story its well-deserved “Obvious” tag.

But, thanks to an editor who trusted me, I was not only able to write a story that I thought more accurately portrayed the study, but also add a sidebar about a Popular Science story, “Science Confirms the Obvious.” Even the copy desk got into it. The caption for one photo begins, “A new government study has a high ‘Duh’ factor…”

I was thinking about population — overpopulation, that is. I’ve long believed that the problem isn’t that there are too many people on Earth, but that they’re distributed poorly.

People in cities tend to think the world is crowded. People outside cities know better.

So I finally decided to do some math to figure out how much space we humans take up.

Imagine each person on Earth (there are 6.6 billion of us) stood in a square three feet on a side. Not comfortable, but not as tight as a busy elevator.

That’s 9 square feet for 6.6 billion people, or about 60 billion square feet. Sounds like a lot.

I don’t know about you, but I can’t visualize 60 billion anything. So let’s convert.

60 billion square feet is a bit more than 2,152 square miles. Still sounds big.

But it isn’t — 2,152 square miles is a box about 46 miles on a side.

So you could fit the entire population of the planet Earth, standing together (but not crammed) into a space 46 miles square. That’s smaller than the state of Delaware. You could drive around it in less than three hours.

(For comparison’s sake, about one-eighth of the Earth’s land surface is considered habitable — i.e., it isn’t Antarctica or a mountaintop or Death Valley. That’s about 58 million square miles, or a box more than 7600 miles on a side. Pretty big. )

What does it mean? Nothing at all. I just was in the mood to play with math.

Every now and then my friend Eric posts a list of some of the phrases people are searching on that bring them to his site. I thought I’d try the same.

Some are just odd:

• if you do something once get away do it again till caught
• how do i make my 12 yr old cousin let me touch her privates
• stevie nicks voice mails
• jennifer aniston and invitro fertilization
• what is the prognosis for advanced prostate cancer with boney secondaries
• bill nye waco moon
• mein kampf dvd cover
• george pompidou european hospital
• the headless cat

Some I like to see, because there’s a good chance they found what they were looking for:

• childrens songs over in the meadow
• is it legal to post pictures of someone else on a personal website
• program toyota from valet key
• j. orlin grabbe
• by rocket to the moon
• anything to oil
• april fools game toy

And some are simply funny:

• doom 3 xbox fucking annoying and impossible
• andrew kantor is an idiot
• smurf porn
• marmot or beaver
• hellish porn portal (two people searched on that!)
• argh

Digg is a cool site, but the folks at Forever Geek have found a big problem with it.

The concept behind Digg, for those of you who don’t know, is this: People find Web pages that interest them (blog entries, cool sites, whatever), and “digg” them — that means, essentially, telling other Digg users “I think this is interesting.”

Other users then check it out, and the more people who “digg” a story, the higher it moves on the Digg site. It’s kind of like a “most-read stories” for the entire Web.

The important thing is that Digg is entirely user driven. There aren’t supposed to be editors choosing the most popular stories; it’s all about the number of votes they get.

But that turns out not to be the case. This Think Geek entry explains in detail how apparently the Digg editors are not only promoting some stories themselves, but also banning the digging of any story critical of Digg.

In fact, apparently “digging” the Forever Geek story I’ve linked to got at least one user banned from Digg. If you try to submit it now, you get a message, “This URL has been reported by users and cannot be submitted at this time.”

As Forever Geek pointed out, it’s the Digg owners’ site and they can make whatever rules they want to. No problem with that. But it seems a bit disingenuous to claim “With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do,” when in fact that’s not entirely the case.

I’m starting to migrate the site to a slightly new look and a CSS-based structure. (For those of you who have no clue what I mean, don’t worry. It’s just a more efficient site design.)

The big change will be the look of the individual stories and blog entries. The blog entries are already done; click any “Permalink” tag to see one, or just click here.

A better example of the new look I’m playing with is in this test article.

In case you care, I do all my coding by hand; I’ve never been comfortable with an HTML editor or a full-fledged tool like DreamWeaver or FrontPage. So I use Notepad, although I’ve installed HomeSite to see if I like it any better.

Anyway, any thoughts or suggestions are more than welcome.

Our stuff from OfficeMax was supposed to be delivered Friday. No luck. Monday we called and the OfficeMax customer service rep said he couldn’t help us — we had to talk to the shipping company. (It was a local firm called Yellow Freight.)

The local shipper said he would try to get it to us Tuesday. Huh? This was supposed to be delivered the next day! Fine, fine.

So today, only four days late, we received our OfficeMax delivery. And one of the file cabinets was badly dented.

So, 15 minutes after we received the late OfficeMax delivery, I was on the phone to them to arrange for them to pick up their file cabinets. A minute after that, I placed an order with Staples. Twenty bucks more, and worth every penny.

So Karen ordered two filing cabinets and a telephone from OfficeMax to equip her new office. Because the order was expensive enough, she got free next-day delivery.

Except that OfficeMax apparently has a different idea of “next day” than we do. Further, OfficeMax’s customer-service system seems to be several years behind the times.

When the delivery didn’t come on Friday, when it was supposed to, Karen called OfficeMax customer service. The rep could not tell her what happened. He did not know where the stuff was, and said he had no way to track it. It would probably arrive Monday, he said. But he wasn’t sure. He had no way to tell us where our order was.

Today is Monday, and still no OfficeMax truck. And still no way for the company to find our stuff. It’s out in the ether, and OfficeMax doesn’t have the systems to track it.

I can track a UPS, FedEx, or USPS package in seconds through the Web. Other stores offer real-time inventory checks — you can see if something you want is in stock. Shipping companies use cell phones and GPS to track their trucks all across the country; a flower distributor near us can follow an order of roses from Florida to his loading dock.

But OfficeMax can’t tell us where our delivery is or when it will arrive — nor can they cancel it. (Our only option is to refuse delivery… if someone’s home when it comes.)

Wow.

Note: Shockingly, comments not related to this entry will be taken down.

Oh, what the heck. Jason Snell’s Macworld editorial has been making the rounds, and people have asked if I’m going to reply. Might as well.

First of all, like so many people, he equates snideness with intelligence. But I’m used to seeing that. So let’s take apart what he has to say, focusing on the facts he puts forth, not his tone of voice.

I said that I didn’t think Boot Camp would get businesses to buy Macs in favor of PCs, something I’ve heard said.

One of Snell’s repeated arguments is that such an idea is stupid, and not one put forth by Mac users. He calls it a straw man:

But is anyone really saying that, now that Mac hardware can run windows, businesses are going to run out and start buying Macs so that they can run Windows? Maybe “some people” are, but those sound like pretty dumb people.

Then again, I’ve found that mentioning stupid arguments in a column — whether they’re real or made-up — is a great way to prove my point. It’s a rhetorical device called the straw man.

In fact, the idea that Mac sales will pick up thanks to Boot Camp isn’t mine — it is one put forth by Mac users. For example, from the good folks at Mac Daily News:

Our checks indicate that Mac sales (MacBook Pro, iMac, Mac mini) have picked up significantly since the Boot Camp debut and corresponding press coverage.

But even better, we have this piece from this past Thursday in Snell’s own Macworld, entitled, “Apple could double market share on Microsoft defections.”

So it’s clear Snell’s straw man argument has no weight.

Onward.

I wrote that Boot Camp will “be terrific for Mac fans not wanting to give up their machine of choice but find more and more they need to use Windows. But Boot Camp doesn’t offer any kind of compelling argument for PC users to buy Mac hardware.”

Snell replied, rather oddly:

It’s foolish to suggest that just because Mac users can run Windows on their systems as well, that they’ll need to use Windows “more and more.”

Huh? I read my passage over and over, and nowhere do I suggest that Mac users will need to run Windows because they can run Windows. I have no clue where Snell is getting this. But, as we’ll see in a moment, making up things I said is par for his course.

Next, Snell writes something that shows a shocking lack of understanding of the business world:

One might also argue that Mac OS X’s superiority when it comes to its safety, security, and usability — not to mention its excellent collection of bundled software — makes it a “compelling argument” for PC users who are tired of adware, spyware, and viruses, not to mention wrestling with Windows, when all they really want to do is e-mail, surf the web, and manage their digital photos.

First off, Snell obviously has to get in the old Mac-users’ refrain about adware, spyware, and viruses on the PC. Oh the horrors… for people who don’t have anti-virus software. Most of us install it and forget about it; it updates itself automatically.

Anyway, about his lack of business acumen.

Part one: the idea that all computer users want to do “is e-mail, surf the web, and manage their digital photos.” Really? Sure, that’s all my 80-year-old father wants to do, but that statement certainly doesn’t apply to the majority of people, especially business people.

In the business world, computers are used for more than e-mail, surfing the Web, and managing digital photos. If that’s all people needed, we could all stick with computers (PC or Mac) built in the mid-’90s. So saying that people don’t need more is pretty ignorant.

Part two comes from Snell’s response to my comment that the vast majority of software won’t run on Macs. His response:

He’s got us here. The vast majority of software won’t run on Macs. Those custom-built enterprise applications? Not compatible. IE-only ActiveX web controls? Not compatible. DentistOffice 2000? Not compatible.

Snell is more interested in being cute than in being realistic by creating (shockingly) a straw man of his own with the “DentistOffice 2000″ comment.

People and businesses do use a lot of specialty applications, whether it’s the accounting system, the content-management system, the analysis system, or any of a host of other things that aren’t part of Snell’s world of e-mailing, surfing the Web, and managing photos.

Working at a magazine, he may be able to get by using only Mac-based apps — a word processor, Photoshop, and Quark or InDesign. But so many businesses use so much software that goes beyond that — it’s a shame Snell doesn’t realize it.

Lessee… oh, yes. Next he goes back to that straw man argument I already debunked above:

Yes, businesspeople who are buying Macs in order to just run Windows are wasting their money. Of course, the only person who ever claimed that such a thing would happen was a fellow we’ve already mentioned — Mr. Straw Man.

Let’s keep going.

I pointed out that the argument that Macs do graphics better than Windows was old hat and incorrect. I used Photoshop as an example; it’s identical on the two platforms.

Why do so many Photoshop users use the Mac? The answer doesn’t have to do with Photoshop. It has to do with everything outside of Photoshop. The Mac interface. File management. The Finder. Reliability.

Actually, and I suspect Snell knows this, the reason so many Photoshop users (at least the professional ones) use the Mac is because, years ago, Macs’ graphics were far superior. So graphics pros used the platform that was the obvious choice — and now they continue to do so. Like many people, they got comfortable with their operating system of choice and prefer to stick with it.

But saying “People are using it because they’re used to using it” doesn’t make a good argument for the Mac being better. After all, many people who use Windows do so simply because they’ve gotten used to it, and Snell obviously believes Windows is the inferior OS.

Snell then raises his favorite non-straw man again a couple of times. I’ll file that under “asked and answered.” Let’s go to his next item:

And now we approach the climax, Dear Reader. You see, being a Mac user is being a member of a cult. Mac users are all nutty people who can’t be bothered to do the sensible thing and use Windows.

[shrug] I didn’t write The Cult of Mac. But if you want to see why I said this, read the comments on the entries on this site. I was called “an idiot douche” and “a racist ignoramus who hates the environment” (huh?). Via e-mail I was called a “boob” and a “turd,” and a lot worse, including a child molester. My wife was called ugly, and I received a bomb threat.

All that because of what I had to say about a piece of beta software. Maybe in Snell’s world, rational people have that kind of reaction. In mine, they don’t.

When I wrote about the supercomputer at Virginia Tech, I was called similar names. It wasn’t because I said anything bad about the Mac, but because I didn’t play up its role enough.

And when I praised — praised! — the iPod nano I was similarly inundated with screaming, curse-filled letters from Mac users because, amazingly, I didn’t praise it enough.

So maybe it’s not a cult. Maybe there’s another word for the kind of people who turn into screaming six year olds when someone doesn’t praise their computer of choice enough. But “cult” will do for me.

Then Snell decides that it’s time to start putting words in my mouth.

How can Andrew Kantor write an article as ridiculous as this? Because he thinks that the only reason you’d use a Mac is because you’re mentally ill, or stupid, or confused, or hypnotized.

The fact that I never said that means nothing. Snell can read my mind!

He does it again, responding to my saying that some people use Macs out of simple preference:

And simple preference — a polite way of saying, “I’m a crazy cultist! Praise be unto Jobs!”

Again, if you can’t argue with what I say, make something up!

Finally, Snell has to be sure to put in a personal attack — no good argument without one… if you’re 10. My bio on USA Today reads in part, “Andrew Kantor is a technology writer, pundit, and know-it-all…” Snell’s comment:

I can think of a few other items to add to that list, but what do I know?

If you got this far, I applaud you. Reading this kind of back and forth sniping is no fun. And the fact is, we all know that no matter what I write, right or wrong, the Mac users will continue to attack, continue to scream, continue to call names, and on and on. I don’t expect any of them to be converted by this, or even to give my point of view the time of day. And it’s really no big deal.

At the end of last summer, we got rid of the 15-year-old window air conditioner that cooled the downstairs of the house. (There’s central air upstairs.) It was a 10,000-BTU unit, noisy as all get out, but it did a reasonable job.

But moving the thing was incredible. I mean, it weighed a ton. It took both of us to put it in, and both of us to take it out.

We got rid of it through Freecycle, and I’m sure it’s in a good home.

Today I got a replacement: A brand-new Frigidaire unit (one Consumer Reports liked a lot) that’s 12,000 BTUs. It uses a lot less energy (no shock there) and has more cooling power.

But what struck me was the size: The thing’s got some weight, but it’s a fraction of the size of the old one. I easily carried it myself from the store to my car and from the car into the house. The old machine took up the entire width of the window; this one has plenty of room on either side.

The basic principle of the air conditioner hasn’t changed much since Willis Carrier invented it in 1902. Yet in the last decade or so they’ve shrunk considerably.

Maybe it’s the coolant used today; maybe it doesn’t take as big a condenser to process it. I don’t know. But it’s nice to see that it’s more than computers that are getting smaller.

Ah, and now we have this gem posted:

With the truth being told (without all the flaming), his remark about your wife is right on, she is pretty unattractive. Not being mean, just truthful.

Not just a personal attack on me, but on my wife because, once more, of what I said about a piece of Apple software. Holy moly.

There’s something wrong with that — there really is. There’s just something wrong with people who get that upset, that angry, that nasty about comments about a piece of software.

You can call Windows users stupid, but compared to what I’ve seen come from the mouths and keyboards of Mac users, at least Windows folks have class.

And don’t try to tell me, “I’ve seen plenty of childish flames like that from people that prefer Windows,” as one person wrote. If I wrote that I didn’t like something about Windows, I’d get silence. If I said I preferred Toyota to Honda, silence. If I said Iiked chocolate instead of vanilla, silence.

But when I merely suggest that there are other good music players besides the iPod, the typical and predictable Mac fanboys’ fifth-grade flaming starts. It’s pathetic.

I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating because skulls seem kind of thick around here: If you wonder why the Mac gets second shrift in the press (yeah, yeah, Mossberg this, Mossberg that), maybe it’s because so few people are willing to put up with this fanboy bullshit.

It’s a computer. Get a life.

(And we all know what’s next: “USA Today writer tells Mac users to get a life!!!”)

“cunninghamcanada@yahoo.ca” wrote me a little gem that included this:

Obviously you’ve never actually used OSX or touched a Mac. Bill Gates is to busy paying you or sucking your limp cock.

But rest assured, YOU ARE DEAD, along with that fat ugly wife of yours, and that fucking rat you call a kid — a kid you are known to molest. The neighbours and right wing Virginia must hear the screams at night from that thing, “Daddy, daddy, don’t touch me like that.” Shameful. Especially since you are not the father, since you are known as impotent. So, did Bill Gates give you V.D. or E.D.?

And I’m supposed to have respect for people like this?

Once again, I’m getting stuff like this because of what I wrote about a piece of software.

Mac users insist they’re not part of a cult. And yet, look at the comment areas of the entries on this site. Look at the long, repetitive arguments. Look at the name calling. All because of what I said about a piece of free beta software.

It’s incredible. It’s sad.

As of 4/16, comments are closed. Make ‘em over in the Boot Camp entry.

I gotta share this, in case you missed it in the comments. One Mac user wrote the following and posted it over and over in the comment areas.

(Remember, all this nonsense is in response to a column about Boot Camp. A piece of software. These people, especially the yokels over at Mac Daily News, are getting themselves tied up in knots over my comments about a piece of software.)

your an idiot douche. inflammatory? yes! necessary? yes! people as dumb as you should be sent to primary school, where you can learn under the no child left behind program brought to you by your savior President Bush.. p.s. a lot of liberals use macs - people in affluent gay areas like San Francisco, so given the percentage of mac users, and the percentage of voters for President Bush… the majority of PC users are republicans and I say shame on you. You are a racist ignoramus who hates the environment and who wishes he could have more sex with his sister… shame on you. Dumb argument? Yep - and I did it just for fun. Doesn’t reflect well on me? I could care less.

I hear that a bunch of Mac users are planning to start burning Danish flags because a newspaper there published a cartoon of Steve Jobs (PBUH)…

As of 4/16, comments are closed. Make ‘em over in the Boot Camp entry.

So get this — the conspiracy theorists at Mac Daily News wrote that I had praised something called “Microsoft Max,” but then removed it from my blog once I heard that Apple had something better.

When I called them on it — I never wrote such a thing, much less removed it — suddenly they edited their story. Oh, it was Microsoft Photo Story, not “Microsoft Max.” The edit, oddly, didn’t mention that they had falsely accused me of removing a blog entry.

Convenient way to argue: Accuse someone of something they didn’t do by making up some facts, then, when called to the carpet, simply rewrite it.

What’s even funnier is that, typical for MDN, they then turn the discussion about my current USA Today column into one on a months-old commentary I made about Photo Story. Holy non-sequitor, Batman!

Next up from the geniuses at Mac Daily News: “In 11th grade, Kantor wrote that daisies are nicer than roses! Well, roses are better and that proves he’s a jerk! Nyah!”

Oh, and note this: When you visit MDN, you get the joy of closing all the popup windows the site opens up in your browser.

As of 4/16, comments are closed. Make ‘em over in the Boot Camp entry.

This is funny. Cyrus Farivar of MacUser wrote a piece in which he purported to “take down” my argument about Boot Camp.

Sadly, he didn’t do that — in fact, he agreed with me for the most part. Yet he crows sarcastically at the end of the piece, “Some know-it-all, this Kantor, no?”

Here’s a perfect example of his “arguments.”

I wrote: The Macs that can currently run Boot Camp are the Mac Mini, the iMac, and the MacBook Pro notebook. Price-wise, they can’t compete with PCs.

He replied: Duh, we’ve known this for years. But you can’t easily run MacOS onto a generic PC — so again, if you wanted to buy the cheapest computer, you’d get a PC. Or a Linux box.

In other words, he’s agreeing with me.

Oh, here’s another one:

I wrote: By the way, I certainly hope you haven’t bought into the argument “graphics are better on the Mac.” Yeah, in 1992. Go to a bookstore and grab a book on using Photoshop; you’ll see that the Mac and Windows versions are identical. In fact, Photoshop isn’t yet optimized to take advantage of the Mac’s Intel processors.

He replied: Um, dude? Go to any photography/design studio. Go check out the design department of all major magazines and newspapers. I’d bet that they use Macs. You say there’s no difference? Ask them why there is.

That’s funny for a couple of reasons. First, he completely ignores my point — that the Mac and Windows versions of Photoshop are virtually identical. (Some keystrokes are different.) Then he proceeds to say that popularity should tell me something.

Apple fans have used that same argument about the iPod: It’s so incredibly popular it must be the best.

Yet they just hate it when you point out that, following their own logic, Windows (with 95+ percent of the desktop market) must be that much better than the Mac.

Hmm.

Combine this with Mac Daily News simply making stuff up (claiming I wrote things that I didn’t), and you begin to see a pattern in terms of their arguments’ validity.

As of 4/16, comments are closed. Make ‘em over in the Boot Camp entry.

Just got this lovely note from a Mac user:

From: myarea51@mac.com [mailto:myarea51@mac.com]
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2006 1:39 PM
To: andrew @kantor. com
Subject: Mac/Windows

You are a boob and know nothing about tech. You will be
exposed as the turd you are when the Mac increases in market
share versus the sewage pond that is Windoze. Maybe if you
knew what the h3ll you were talking about, you would be
writing for a real journal instead of the tabloid that is USA
Today. Case in point, Walt Mossberg. He is the Einstein and
you are the village idiot.

First off, I should note that I’ve also received a lot of polite notes as well. This is just more fun to share.

Second, as to the conspiracy theories that Mac Daily News believes, note that this guy’s address is “myarea51@mac.com.” Hmm.

Finally, Walt Mossberg is the tech writer for the Wall Street Journal, and a complete Macintosh fan — as far as he’s concerned, Apple can do nothing wrong. Hence, he’s Einstein. Anyone who doesn’t believe that Steve Jobs (PBUH) does no wrong is an idiot. Period.

I think that makes things pretty clear.