I recently got something odd in my email. No, not a spam offering to help me get rich by investing in penny stocks (that’s not odd; I get those every day). What I received was an offer from Microsoft to join the Windows One Care “perpetual beta.” The offer was apparently sent to some participants in the One Care beta, and amounts to a free subscription to a service that will cost everyone else $50 a year. Now, I’m not complaining about the offer. Free is good, right? But is it really a good idea for Microsoft to refer to this as a “perpetual beta?” After all, what does it say about a product’s reliability if it’s always in beta? Even Google, known for betas that stretch for years, eventually removes the tag. And, though One Care beta participants will get early access to new features, the bulk of the program will be the same one that other customers will be paying $50 for. Of course, there are those who would argue that Microsoft—and other software companies—have been charging consumers to beta test their products for years, and it’s a good thing that they’re finally coming clean about it. Still, from a marketing perspective, Microsoft would probably be better off calling this “Extended Feature Testing” or something similar, lest the wags have a field day with it. In perpetuity.

One of my favorite moments in “2001” is HAL’s rendition of “Daisy” as Dave shuts him down. For me, it captures HAL’s vulnerability in an incredibly poignant way. HAL isn’t just a malevolent AI; he’s a child who’s grown up too quickly and can’t cope with the challenges of the adult world (the same, of course, can be said of the film’s humans, who are forced to make evolutionary strides—sometimes with tragic results—by the monolith). I’ve even managed to reference “Daisy” a couple of times in Engadget posts about robots. But I never knew where the song came from. Now, Jason Kotke has posted the answer: It’s from a 1962 Bell Labs demo, where an IBM computer was programmed to sing the song. There’s even an MP3 of it available online. It’s wild—and, of course, impossible to listen to without thinking about HAL’s sad fate 39 years later.

I didn’t get to see the 30-foot robot elephant inspired by the works of Jules Verne when it was paraded through the streets of Nantes, France, last year. And I’m going to miss it again next week, since its next appearance will be in London. Oh, well. Maybe it’ll make it across the Atlantic at some point.

What can I say? I did a post for Engadget on overclocking the MacBook Pro’s GPU, and it just seemed like a natural fit.

Jason has started a great new meme with his “Web 0.0 Test” about O’Reilly’s Global Network Navigator, one of the first web portals (though, of course the site had come and gone before that term was ever applied to a gateway like GNN). And now that Jason’s gone and started this, I can’t resist adding my own, though I’ll skip the test part. My Web 0.0 pick: gopher.wired.com, which launched in November, 2003. Yes, I know that the Wired gopher server wasn’t even a web site—but if that’s not Web 0.0, I don’t know what is. My reason for picking it is simple: it’s the site that showed me the potential of the internet for real content. Remember: as the web was in its infancy, the gopher protocol was nearing its zenith, and for a brief period was actually capable of doing more than the nascent web. So, when Wired started what may well have been the first, last and only commercial gopher, it was really a groundbreaking moment—and it convinced me (and probably countless others) that maybe we could use the net for something more dynamic than FTP servers and newsgroups. Of course, within months, it was clear that the web was going to dominate, and that the gopher would end up back in a little hole. By early 1995, amid plummeting traffic, the Wired gopher was replaced by the magazine’s web site. But it was the gopher that lit the fuse, back in the 0.0 era. (Oh, and recalling all this doesn’t make me feel at all 1337—though it does make me feel just a little bit old!)

A few hours ago, I had no idea who William Ross AIken was. Now, thanks to this post on Make, he’s my new hero. Well, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration. But I do have a soft spot for unsung pioneers of tech, and Aiken is nothing if not an unsung pioneer. It turns out that Aiken invented a practical flat CRT —less than 3 inches thick—in the 1950s, but couldn’t find anyone to manufacture it. RCA, the leading TV-maker at the time, had already sunk a ton of cash into other tech, and didn’t want to spook shareholders by doing a 180 to roll out sets based on Aiken’s plans. And no other manufacturer would risk taking on RCA by marketing something incompatible with its sets. So, Aiken’s tech—which could have resulted in flat CRT sets in the early 60s instead of the early 2000s—went nowhere, and the guy ended up working for a signage company that went nowhere and writing manuals for WordStar. This profile from 1958 is like a time capsule from an alternate reality, showing a tantalizing glimpse of what might have been, and this 1996 IEEE interview lays out the whole sad story of corporate bureaucracy standing in the way of what could have been one of the most innovative inventions in the history of broadcasting.

The feeds at the right are now powered by FeedYes, which is able to both parse a web page and turn it into RSS, and then turn that into Javascript for posting on a site. Unfortunately, it looks like there are still glitches, since, as of now, my Engadget feed isn’t showing up. FeedYes seems fairly reliable, so hopefully this is just a temporary glitch.

An Engadget reader from Kuala Lumpur sent this in. It’s apparently an electronics shop set up in a KL mall. Readers debated its provenance, with some convinced it was Photoshopped. But several Malaysian readers actually trekked to the mall themselves to confirm its authenticity. Such is the reach of Engadget: not only does a store in Asia “borrow” the site’s name, but Engadget’s readers are willing to take time out on a Sunday to check the store out!

One thing I’ve got to say for my old boss Sondhi Limthongkul: he’s not afraid to take risks. Back when I was working for him in the early 90s, he launched an Asian business magazine (Asia Inc), a regional English-language daily newspaper (Asia Times) and was poised to launch a satellite when the Asian boom ended in mid-decade. So, it shouldn’t be a huge surprise that Sondhi’s latest effort was a high-stakes attempt to bring down Thailand’s prime minister, his former pal Thanksin Shinawatra. Unlike Asia Inc and Asia Times, however, this time his plan resulted in complete success. Despite “winning” an election forced on him by Sondhi and other members of the anti-Thaksin movement, Thaksin today announced that he’s “taking a break” from politics and will step down from his post (the election was complicated by a boycott by opposition parties that leaves many parliamentary seats empty, making it difficult for Thaksin to form a government). So, where does this leave Sondhi? Back from a brief trip to China—which rivals say was meant to avoid arrest on charges of defaming Thailand’s king, and which Sondhi said was for his health—he’s planning on suing his accusers. Given Thaksin’s situation, I’ll be surprised if the charges aren’t dropped; you don’t exactly mess with someone who has shown that he can bring down a popular elected official. Sondhi’s situation is a good reminder that you shouldn’t underestimate a determined entrepreneur with an agenda. Sondhi knows how to get what he wants, and if he wants to be the next Thai PM (or just a behind-the-scenes power broker, which I suspect is more likely), it’ll happen.

While the rest of the blogosphere was off celebrating April Fool’s Day yesterday, we took the opportunity to commemorate Apple’s 30th birthday (even if Apple itself chose to ignore the holiday). Our feature on Apple’s “good, bad and ugly” products struck, I think, a good balance. We didn’t indulge in fanboy exuberance (well, at least I don’t think we did), and treated the company pretty fairly. And I got a chance to do a writeup of the Lisa, which, to this day, remains one of my favorite computers ever. At some point I really do have to drag my Lisa up from the basement and hook it up to see if it still works. There’s no reason it shouldn’t, despite being over 20 years old. Of course, it won’t run any modern software, but I can always turn it into a web server with a little effort!