Happy Independence Day
Today is the fourth of July, not the Fourth of July. That is not the holiday we celebrate in the United States today. Today we celebrate our Independence Day (Crikey, did I just quote a mediocre alien invasion movie?), when our Founding Fathers declared finished the document that would become our Declaration of Independence from England. So wish your fellow Americans a Happy Independence Day when you see them, and thank God for the blessing of having been born in--or having the privilege of becoming a naturalized citizen of--the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.
"Proclaim liberty throughout the land unto all the inhabitants thereof." --Inscription on the Liberty Bell "I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not." --John Adams (1776) "[T]he flames kindled on the 4 of July 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them. ... The Declaration of Independence...[is the] declaratory charter of our rights, and the rights of man." --Thomas Jefferson (1821) Happy 229th Birthday, America!
Fiber line laid
This past Wednesday, a pair of Verizon FiOS line crews were at the house, physically laying the line from the switch at the street up to a new connection box they installed on the garage side of the house. The guys in the crew were super-nice, answering my questions and indulging my curiosity. I got a "tour" of the street-side box from the tech who was knee-deep in it, so my inner geek was satisfied. They did an above-average job on keeping the disturbance to my yard to a minimum. We should go live with our new fiber optic connection on the 7th!
ATPM 11.07
The July issue of About This Particular Macintosh is now available. The issue kicks off with some amusing, original artwork from former staffer Grant Osborne. I need to pester him for some high-resolution copies to use as desktop pictures. Crikey, but did we get a lot of reader e-mail last month. Keep those e-mails coming, folks. We love interacting with our readers! This issue marks a milestone, as we move from what has been our traditional publishing method for many years to a new system. Michael explains it all in a fascinating look back at our old publishing methods, and the transition to the new one. Having had a front seat to the development process, looking at alpha and beta publications over the course of a couple of weeks, I can tell you that Mr. Tsai poured a lot of effort in to our new publishing system, which should allow ATPM more flexibility for the future. On behalf of the entire staff, thank you, Michael! I agree with Ellyn's take on the Apple-to-use-Intel brouhaha, and wish her well on her upcoming Jeopardy appearance! Ellyn also notes a worthwhile project wherein you can "adopt" a serviceman: Books for Soldiers. My personal favorite program is Adopt a Sniper; snipers have different equipment needs than most other soldiers, beyond simply the difference in arms. Yet the inflexibility of the military's purchasing process precludes snipers from getting a lot of this more flexible and specialized equipment before they are deployed. Kudos to the individual citizens who have banded together to help provide what the most cost-effective warriors in our services require. (One shot, one kill.) And thanks to Ellyn for pointing out another program supporting our soldiers I was unaware of. I've got some books winging their way to the Middle East very soon. Sorry for that tangent; let's veer back on track. Angus Wong delivers an introspective look at the Mac's history and current market, in light of the recent move-to-Intel announcement. Paul Blakeman offers up his iBook love story. We welcome David Blumenstein as a full-time ATPM staffer, and he reciprocates the love with a look at podcasting. Charles Ross has a great FileMaker database How To, and Marcus J. Albers goes Dashboard widget hunting. We are pleased to offer desktop pictures from ATPM reader Mark Montgomery. Thanks for the guitars, Mark! My favorites are the Dobro and the Rickenbacker. Cortland's parents come for a visit, and Frisky's freeware pick this month is MacMAME. Chris Lawson has a pair of speaker reviews, and Matthew Glidden explore's graphic design aid Curio. Paul Fatula gets to know Wacom's Graphire Bluetooth edition, while David Zatz compares headphones from Pro Tech Communications and Sennheiser. Finally, Andrew Kator details vSpace Master 2.0, a 3D/VR presentation system.
A Founding Father on property
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." --John Adams I've said it once, and I'll say it again: the prescience exhibited by the Founding Fathers never ceases to amaze me.
Blinded with the Bush-hatred
The conclusion is as heart-breaking as it is unavoidable: There are people out there —- reporters, pundits, Senators and Congressmen —- who hate the President and the Republican Party so deeply and with such passion that they would rather see the United States defeated and Iraq collapsed into a failed state than support what they see as George W. Bush’s war. I don't quite share Jeff's pessimism regarding tonight's speech, unless that pessimism means the expectation that the President will simply remind the American people that he has said all along that this war wouldn't be finished overnight, that it was a long-haul project, that we should remember there are still people out there who want to hurt and kill us, but right now we are winning. The President has been consistent with regard to the prosecution of the war against terror in general, and in Iraq specifically. There is no timetable for withdrawal, because we have not yet achieved total victory. Which is something the left, and increasingly the Democratic Party specifically, cannot allow.
Are they reading the same Constitution as the rest of us?
Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm too simple-minded to get it. Perhaps because I didn't go to law school, spend years on a judicial bench, and have half a dozen clerks doing all of my research for me, I just don't understand the intricacies and nuances of the Constitution of the United States of America. Or maybe there simply aren't the intricacies and nuances the Supreme Court would have us believe there are. Amendment I of the Bill of Rights says, in part: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion..." Now, I challenge any legal scholar on the planet to explain how a monument to the Ten Commandments, or the posting of the Ten Commandments on the wall of a courtroom, is Congress establishing a state religion. Or even a state government establishing a state religion. Religious aspects aside, the Ten Commandments are an important legal document, important to the legal history of Western civilization. Again, with religious aspects aside, the Ten Commandments contain some pretty healthy codes of conduct for everyone, believers and non-believers. What's wrong with suggesting that people do not steal from one another? Amendment V of the Bill of Rights states, in part: "...nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." Kelo vs. New London is not about "public use." Public use is a road, a school. Public use is not a new shopping mall, new condos, new office space. I have to disagree with Jeff on this decision; both sides of the Court are not right in their opinions. Simply because there is precedent leading up to the decision in Kelo doesn't make the decision proper. It simply means that all of the precedent is itself unconstitutional. If the Court has, in the past, rejected the "narrow interpretation of the public use requirement," then the Court was wrong. The Court was negligent in its duty to uphold the Constitution, and it was negligent in Kelo. If the town of New London can't come up with enough tax revenue without confiscating people's legally-purchased private property, then perhaps the town should dissolve its charter and let the county take over basic services.
Tiger snuggles up to OfficeJet
Thanks to a tip from a MacInTouch reader, my PowerBook, running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.1, is successfully printing to my HP OfficeJet d145 again. It was quite simple. First, in the Hewlett-Packard folder that would be installed in your Applications folder, run the HP Uninstaller application. When it's done, restart your Mac. Next, make sure you have the latest HP driver software for your OfficeJet, in my case the d145 on Mac OS X. After mounting the disk image, quit all other running applications. Or just run the HP All-in-One Installer, as it is going to ask to do this for you. Let the installer run as normal, and run through the Setup Assistant stuff at the end. The Setup Assistant saw my OfficeJet sitting on its assigned IP on the internal network. After that was done, I launched TextEdit, typed in a line, made several copies of said line, and sent it to the printer. Voila! Happy days are here again in the Phisch Bowl™. Your mileage may vary, but this is what worked for me. I have not tested any other functions, such as faxing or scanning, from the HP Director software, since I didn't really use those functions before.
<i>The Last Disciple</i>
Hank Hanegraaff, of the "Bible Answer Man" radio show, and author Sigmund Brouwer have teamed up to write The Last Disciple, a novel about first-century Christians, and the people they come in to contact with, undergoing the Great Tribulation under the reign of Nero. Hanegraaff and Brouwer operate from a different view of biblical translation and interpretation than Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins do in the Left Behind series. As they state in the Afterword, they seek not to divide the Church over this issue, but rather encourage debate and study of the book of Revelation. Simply put, Hanegraaff and Brouwer believe that many of the prophecies the apostle John was witness to, and transcribed in to what we know as Revelation, have already been fulfilled, as they were written to the early Christian church. You can read more on their take at the book's Web site. The Last Disciple features several characters, including the wicked Nero, but follows mostly the path of Gallus Sergius Vitas, one of Nero's inner circle. Vitas, a former military commander and from a Roman founding family, has grown tired of Nero's persecution of Christians. He doesn't care for the Christians because they are followers of Christ who refuse to bow to Nero, but rather he is tired of bloodshed in general, having seen too much of it when he was fighting in Britannia, and lost his wife and son, natives of the isle. In the course of his trying to subtly subvert Nero, Vitas discovers an old friend has accepted Christ, and Vitas falls in love with a former slave, also a Christian. In the mean time, Vitas's brother Damien, in an attempt to recapture the honor he has cost the family name, becomes a fearsome slave hunter. Damien is hired by another of Nero's inner circle, this time to find the writer of Revelation, the letter Nero fears and hates. Damien is hired to hunt down John, the last disciple of Christ. Hanegraaff and Brouwer craft a good read, taking you through the workings and machinations of Nero's inner circle, the duplicitous politics, the last moments of a Christian on the arena floor, and the feelings of a man who walked and talked with the Creator and Savior of the universe.
Mobile CD Lookup
Jon has provided a great way to look up CD info on Amazon. I've already got it bookmarked in my mobile.
Netflix freaking
The Phisch Bowl™ is now a Netflix-renting household. Friends of the Phisch should send us invitations to be added to their Friends lists. We have already watched Sideways and The Terminal, with In Good Company on the way.
Fiber + phone = July 7
It is confirmed: a Verizon technician will be out on the afternoon of Thursday, the 7th of July, to install the required components for high-speed, fiber optic, broadband usage. We are going with the 15Mbps down/2Mbps up package, and we are cutting the cord with the regional ILEC, switching our local phone coverage to Verizon as well. We get to keep the same number, and will save a few bucks. I know some people will wonder why we're even keeping local, wired phone service, and the answer is simple: TiVo/DirecTV. It's the only way to currently get service updates, etc., sent to the box. That, and our families still seem to call us at home, rather than on our mobiles, where a lot of the time, the calls would be free for either one or both parties. Go figure.
DropDMG 2.6.1
Michael announces the release of DropDMG 2.6.1. This update of the easy-to-use disk image creation tool adds support for bzip2-compressed disk images, for those of you in to that sort of thing. The usual assortment of bug fixes and tweaks abound. Go. Download. Register. Help an independent software developer out by buying his worthy product. The usual disclaimer: I have no vested interest in C-Command and its products other than I like seeing my friends happy and sane, and when you reward their hard work, that's what they are.
When editing goes wrong
One of the local semi-independent stations is showing Ronin this evening. Now, being one of my favorite action movies, because it is a thinking-man's action movie and not a mindless blood and gore fest, I figured I would keep it on while I languished away the hours working on my wife's XP box. (Bad, XP, bad!) Those of you who haven't seen the movie can skip the rest, because I'm going to talk about a specific plot point, and it contains kinda-sorta spoiler info. I realize there's a lot of editing that has to go in to a film like this, to put it on non-cable television during "family hours" on the weekend. In addition to filtering out the curse words, and especially bloody scenes, the broadcasters have to be concerned with a time factor as well, mostly so they can get enough advertising in to cover the cost of showing the movie. I can appreciate all of this. But then they go and cut what I consider a central tenant of the movie. Maybe it's because I am a fan of this film, and have seen it a few times. Maybe persons who have never seen it before won't miss the scene because they don't know to miss it. The scene I'm referring to is at Jean-Pierre's, where Vincent (Jean Reno) takes Sam (Robert De Niro) after the latter has been shot. While recovering, Sam watches as Jean-Pierre paints miniature samurai warriors for a diorama he has created. His hobby, as he explains to Sam. We see Jean-Pierre put the latest dry figure on to the diorama, and we cut to the next scene. They completely cut out the rest of the scene with Jean-Pierre, who explains to Sam about the 47 Ronin, and what ronin were: masterless samurai. The 47 Ronin were despondent over failing their master, who was killed by a rival warlord. So, in time, they gave their lives in an attempt to kill the rival. The term ronin in the case of the movie is supposed to refer to agents who have left the fold of their respective agency, like Sam. I always thought this scene was rather important, as it goes a long way toward explaining the title of the film, even if not directly. It's a shame it was cut for the television broadcast.
Rumor sites still costing Apple money
Matt D. and I don't see eye-to-eye on a lot of things outside the realm of technology. But when it comes to an intense loathing of the rumor sites, which continue to cost Apple money, Matt and I are blood brothers:
Any writer who believed that rumor sites were "cowed" into not reporting items that might adversely affect Apple should have checked the news from Friday, 2005.06.03 - the stuff everyone forgot that same night when CNet broke the Intel story as a done deal. The previous day, AppleInsider reported that Apple was "seemingly overstocked on most iPod models with about a month remaining in its third fiscal quarter." Attributing the information only to "one source" and "reliable sources of information," the rumor site said Apple's sales "appear flat or declining" because none of Apple's products appears constrained. Yes, read it for yourself - the site said that not having a shortage was, in itself, a sign of weak sales.
Despite both the flimsy sourcing and the site's complete unawareness of the impending Intel transition, the market acted. To quote Reuters, "Shares of Apple Computer Inc. fell 5% Friday [2005.06.03], fueled by an Internet report of swelling inventory of its iPod digital music players." When a rumor site can cost Apple's shareholders 5% of their value in one day by printing an unsourced report based on specious inventory logic, it's hard to call that being "cowed into silence," and it just doesn't have the same ring to say the rumor sites have been "cowed into incompetence." (If your stock in trade is "inside" or "secret" information, and you have no sources on the biggest Apple-related story of the next two years before the mainstream media does, you're losing your touch.) A subscription to MDJ or MWJ isn't cheap, but it's the best money you'll spend on Apple and Macintosh-related news you won't get any where else. I'm not affiliated with MacJournals, just a happy subscriber.
Making health care more competitive, and cheaper
Prices are advertised everywhere. From newspapers to billboards to websites, we are forever being told how much things cost. Want to buy contact lenses? A cruise to Alaska? A pedicure? The price of almost any product or service is readily available, and vendors vie for business by keeping their prices competitive.
But not when it comes to health care. In this second part of his look at health care, the first part of which I noted on Thursday, Jacoby argues that by de-linking health care from employment, through tax reform, prices will be driven down. The tax reform in question is to make health care coverage one purchases oneself tax deductible; it currently is not. Here's the kicker: Based on RAND Corporation research, they estimate that making medical expenses deductible would reduce health care spending by $40 billion -- all without forcing a single benefit cut on anyone. [Emphasis added. --R]
Happy Fathers' Day
To fellow dads out there, my best wishes for a happy Fathers' Day. There are two men I need to specifically mention: Bucky, thank you for raising the daughter that grew in to the incredible woman who is my wife, and mother of our child. I am so glad she had a strong father to look up to. Dad, just in case you ever worry, yes, everything you ever tried to teach me did get through. It's my own fault if I don't use the wisdom and experience you passed on, and continue to pass on. Thank you for always being around, and available. I love you.
Mac hacking
A dual reading selection today, mostly because both are sitting next to me, waiting to ship up New England way to my friend Rich, and both deal with the same topic. Mac OS X Hacks, by Rael Dornfest and Kevin Hemenway, was one of the early--if not the first--books in O'Reilly's Hacks series. The authors, along with numerous contributors, take the reader through many different aspects of the Mac OS X operating system. The book was published in 2003, and covered OS X up through the Jaguar edition. The second title, Mac OS X Panther Hacks, is the follow-up to the aforementioned book, and will soon be supplanted, I'm sure, by Mac OS X Tiger Hacks. Credit must be given to Rael and co-author James Duncan Davidson for not regurgitating hacks from the first book, but rather, again with the help of contributors, introducing one hundred new ways to make using OS X easier, more efficient, and more fun. Both tomes are highly recommended for those who want to get under the hood of Apple's great operating system.
Now I just need to find money to give to a broker
There are many reasons why I read Jeff's blog as often as possible. Brother, I need to buy you a beer some time.
Does that mean that Apple will never go after the commercial-computing market? No, I don’t think so. I think that as Apple continues to own the creative-professional market, reasserts its dominance over the mobile-user market, gains momentum among home users and makes incremental moves into sci-tech, demand in the commercial-computing market will grow all on its own. Sooner or later, folks are going to start asking why salesmen or accountants or factory managers aren’t using Macs. And when that happens, Apple will be there, ready to make small advances with sure footing, working its way into the commercial market a little at a time.
But you know what? Maybe that’ll never happen. Maybe by 2010, Apple will own as much as 25 or 30 percent of the computer market, but still show no sign of making a move into commercial computing. Would that be seen as success or failure? I guess it depends on who you ask. Which brings us back to the three blind guys with the elephant. The guy who looks at the computer industry and sees only commercial computing would see an Apple that doesn’t compete in the commercial space as being a failure. Somebody who sees only the home market would see an Apple that dominates that space as a shining success.
Me? I just sit back and think about what it would be like for Apple to own thirty percent of a multi-billion-dollar global industry. And then I consider calling my broker.
<i>State of the Union</i>
Brad Thor delivers another Scot Harvath adventure in State of the Union, as the former Navy SEAL and ex-Secret Service agent is pitted against a Cold War enemy bent on the domination of the United States. Thor sets a good pace, and lets the reader inside Harvath's head. I found at times that Thor was trying too hard to be Clancy-esque in his descriptions of weapons systems and other equipment, but otherwise, this is a decent thriller.
Retrophisch Read
I started a static list of books I had read on my old blog. As the list grew, I thought about starting a separate blog just for the books, even going so far as to setting the foundations within Movable Type. Finally, I've decided to simply incorporate these book entries in to this blog, with a few new categories to help along the way. These books will be presented both as I come across them in my memory, and as I read them from this point forward.