His teacher said, “No, the Black Belt means you are finally ready to begin learning karate.”

I’ve remembered that story for decades, now, but I never really understood it until I was learning to program computers. I’m a “self-taught” programmer; I never took classes, but I read books, studied programs printed in magazines, and talked to a more knowledgeable friend when I got stuck. I started with the BASIC programming language, but eventually I learned assembly language, which is much closer to the native ones and zeros that are the computer’s true native language.

With assembly language, I could create routines that worked ten, a hundred, or even a thousand times faster than similar code written in BASIC. That’s a good way to impress a BASIC programmer.

If you don’t know how to do it, assembly language programming is a dark and mysterious art, and the people who can do it look like wizards. When I set out to learn it, I thought it would make a pretty lofty capstone to my education in programming. But when I’d learned it, and used it for a while, I realized assembly language wasn’t a destination; it was a starting point. Everything I’d learned formed only a foundation on which to build a real education. Assembly language was a Black Belt; it meant “Now you are ready to begin.”

I’ll bet it’s the same way in many other fields, as well: the apparent goal is only the starting point. I’d guess that, even if you attain the top rank beyond Black Belt in karate, you look at what you’ve learned and say, “Oh, now I see how to begin.”

It doesn’t end.

“Those who really understand what we do here at Apple are going to love this new product,” Schiller continued. “Unless, you know, they happen to be totally lame.”

When you’re using something this advanced, some people look at you as if you were crazy, which just shows that they don’t “get it.” I feel sorry for those people.

Apple doesn’t wait for someone else to knock one of their hit products off its throne or slowly run it into the ground (cf. the Motorola Razr) — they do it themselves. For six years pundits have been declaring that competitors would “soon” catch up to the iPod, but the iPod has never been a static target — over the same six years Apple has released significant new iPods every year.

But it is frustrating, buying the latest best-of-breed product in order to have bragging rights over all the poor saps who don’t have the latest, coolest thing, and then seeing it made less cool when the same company releases something even cooler only a few months later.

Caution: May induce self-inflicted eye gouging and/or eardrum piercing.

So you see, even the biggest companies have horrible, horrible internal videos.

I wonder if it’s possible to die of embarrassment.

The computer magazines of the time kept reminding me that I was a pioneer, but I sure didn’t feel like a pioneer.

You want pioneers? How about the people responsible for this 5-megabyte IBM hard drive from 1956?

Thrilling Wonder has more.

The iPhone may look like a scaled-down version of the Macintosh, but Apple says we will not be allowed to write programs or install third-party software on the iPhone. Customers will also be unable to select their cellular carrier — iPhone buyers are locked into a two-year contract with Cingular.

Today, Apple delayed the promised spring release of the next version of Mac OS X until October because of iPhone:

Apple on Thursday released a statement noting that Mac OS X v10.5 “Leopard” won’t be released until October. The cause of the delay? The iPhone.

“iPhone has already passed several of its required certification tests and is on schedule to ship in late June as planned. We can’t wait until customers get their hands (and fingers) on it and experience what a revolutionary and magical product it is,” reads a statement published by the company.

Getting the iPhone ready for its June launch has had an unintended consequence, however: QA and “some key software engineering” resources allocated to Mac OS X needed to be diverted from their work to finish the iPhone. As a result, Apple won’t release Leopard at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) in June, as it had first planned.

Shades of Microsoft’s oft-delayed “Longhorn,” now finally shipping as Windows Vista.

I’m guessing that as October approaches, Leopard will be delayed until 2008.

Hany Farid, a computer scientist at Dartmouth College … has created mathematical tools to determine whether a digital photograph was altered after being taken. His methods work so well that the Associated Press now asks him to scrutinize any photo that seems fishy.

“We’ve developed a bag of tricks,” Farid says. “Every time somebody tampers with a photograph, we try to understand what they did and how to detect it.”

…

[One] way to doctor an image is to piece together two separate photographs. For example, during the 2004 presidential campaign, an image surfaced on the Web showing John Kerry speaking with Jane Fonda at an anti-war demonstration in the 1960s, complete with an Associated Press insignia. Some veterans of the Vietnam War reacted with rage at seeing the presidential candidate sharing a stage with the controversial actress and anti-war activist. But the picture, it turned out, was a fake.

With computer software exposing faked photos, how will dishonest politicians stand a chance in future elections?

“Even after it was determined that it was a fake, people were still talking about Kerry at a war rally,” says Farid. “The power of the images stays with us.”

Oh. Guess the important thing is to get the image out there, and it doesn’t matter whether it’s real or fake. You can hear the Swift Boat crowd breathing a sigh of relief.

The sign says, “Do not touch any of these wires.”

You know, I don’t feel quite so bad about the tangle of wires under my own desk right now. And yet — maybe I should just tidy that up a little bit.

Computerworld has tracked down what they’re calling the top 10 funniest tech videos on YouTube. I don’t agree with every decision, but they’ve found some good stuff. Here’s their video #1:

You might not understand video #2 unless you watched the iPhone’s introduction at January’s Macworld Expo. (Apple customers are real fans.) Video #5, with comedian Wes Borg explaining tech support, is waaaay more true than you’d like to believe. The pranksters in video #7, messing with the demo machines at a trade show, may be just a little too proud of themselves.

Check them out.

We’re gonna do a little perl script using the Windows Vista software recognition to show you how easy it is.

(Warning: strong language.)

In fairness, the speech recognition seems to work really well. Programming may not be the best use of this technology, and this guy probably needs to learn a few new techniques to meet the computer half way… well, two-thirds of the way.

One of the chaps doing the handiwork in that video is Jeff Han, famous for his demonstration of a (somewhat smaller) multi-touch setup at TED a year or so ago. This video shows work by Jeff’s new company Perceptive Pixel. And that’s the progress over just one year…

The music isn’t ominous enough. Didn’t these people see Minority Report? Can Future Crime be far behind?