There, there, that's a good little multiculturalist commie...
Impeachable Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader-Ginsburg was singing the praises of doing what the rest of the world thinks, rather than abiding by our nation's Constitution, at a liberal laywers convention on Saturday. The Klinton appointee was quoted as saying, "Our island or lone ranger mentality is beginning to change," and that justices "are becoming more open to comparative and international law perspectives." Um, how about just saying "Yes, that's permissable under the Constitution," or, "No, I'm afraid that's not permissable under the Constitution." The oath you took, Comrade Ginsburg, says nothing of "comparative and international law perspectives." It says nothing about you interpreting the Constitution as a "living document," or imposing your social agenda on the rest of the nation. Being a Supreme Court justice should be a fairly black and white kind of gig, since the Constitution is a fairly black and white document...
Good riddance, Herr Fritz
Senator Ernest "Fritz" Hollings, D-South Carolina, has announced he will not seek re-election next year. Glory, glory, hallelujah. Herr Fritz has never been a friend of the law-abiding American firearms owner, seeking on numerous occasions to restrict the free and unfettered ownership of firearms by perfectly innocent citizens. Too bad his announcement comes thirty-three years too late...
Animated Star Wars
My gorgeous bride pointed me to this story about a series of two- to three-minute cartoon shorts that the Cartoon Network will be doing in the Star Wars universe. Star Wars: Clone Wars is set to debut on 9 November. For those of you who may be a mite confused, think Animatrix for the Star Wars set.
ATPM 9.08
The August issue of About This Particular Macintosh is out, and available online or in three dreamy flavors. Some good stuff here: Matt Coates uncovers a software gem; Andrew Kator continues his excellent series on graphic design; Eric Blair gives a nod to departed software publisher Casady & Greene, as well as reviewing the the 30 GB iPod; and yours truly delivers a review on a product no Mac portable user should be without.
Doing the browser shuffle?
What is it about Safari all of a sudden? It's taking forever to pull up web pages. I've cleared the cache. I've quit and restarted Safari. The only thing I haven't done is totally restart the system, and that's because the exact same pages load like lightning in Camino. Is some weird Safari behavior going to cause me to flip-flop from it to Camino? Or Camino's kissing cousin, Firebird? Safari is normally faster than the others, and I like its bookmarking technology to boot. I'd rather not do the bookmark export-import shuffle yet again... What are you guys consistently using and why? Are you shuffling between browsers? How are you keeping your bookmarks straight? Third-party bookmark managers? Sound off in the comments, please. UPDATE, 4:00 PM: It seems a certain web site was at the root of my recent problems. Something is taking forever to load on that page, and subsequently is causing any other pages to load very slowly. It took a bit of time to load in Camino, too, though not nearly as long as in Safari. Care to take a look at that, Cory?
Gee, who does this sound like?
bq. "Republics are created by the virtue, public spirit, and intelligence of the citizens. They fall, when the wise are banished from the public councils, because they dare to be honest, and the profligate are rewarded, because they flatter the people, in order to betray them." --Joseph Story Memo to President Bush: stop flattering the seasoned citizens of this country over Social Security, Medicare, prescription drug benefits, and other unconstitutional drivel. Stop trying to appease your opponents across the aisle by vetoing unconstitutional legislation, like the education funding and campaign finance reform bills you inked your signature on. Be honest, like you have in the war on terror, and those that put you in to office will continue to support you.
Quote of the moment
bq. "Life can be a do-it-yourself project, or life can be built by your Father in Heaven. The choice is yours to make freely. Personally, I rely on the Carpenter of the cosmos to step in when I forget to 'measure twice, cut once.'" --your humble host (Feel free to use, just with proper attribution, i.e., Christopher Turner, or retrophisch, and if applicable, the permalink.)
TypePad going live
Ben and Mena's latest venture is in the growing pain of going live, with a "Preview Release Launch" later tonight. Jon's been a beta tester, as has Raena. The features are impressive, and the pricing is really, really good. It's going to kick LiveJournal's butt, and, unfortunately, may steal business from friends. I have to agree with Raena in that I won't be moving my blog over to the service, comfortable in rolling my own, and looking forward to MovableType Pro. I have a sysadmin at my beck and call (pretty much) who owns and runs the server my site is hosted on. If I get in to any kind of Unix-ey or web server-related trouble, Jim's the man on getting it all fixed. Not to mention that we now have a nightly backup system in place, and Jim's 'net connection is a heckuva lot more stable, not to mention faster on the upload, than mine. Our "new" server went online over the weekend, and all of us type-A control freaks are happy with having the nuts and bolts so close. So lots of luck to the Trotts & Co., and all you TypePadders present and future!
Raena rocks!
One of the great things about working on a publication like ATPM is that the diverse staff we have. Raena and I are on opposite sides of the political spectrum, but we're friends because of our common interests in things Mac, blogging, and the Internet and technology in general. Some time ago I was lamenting how IE6/Win wasn't rendering the site properly when compared to browsers on the Mac. Raena speculated that the issues lay in my CSS, and offered to help. Earlier today, I took her up on her offer. I'm pleased to report that the font and sidescroll issues have been fixed, and the site now looks the same (albeit without the pleasing antialiasing one gets from OS X) on IE6/Win as it does on Safari or Camino on the Mac. For those keeping score, it appears there are no more font issues with Firebird, either. I haven't tried OmniWeb, Opera, or iCab yet. Best of all, the CSS validates. So mucho gracias, Raena-Raena-bo-baena. If you make it to the States, and Dallas, I owe you a brew.
Remembering Bob Hope
When I arrived at work today, the flags--American, Texas, Verizon--were all at half-staff, and I thought to myself, "What the...?" I totally missed the President's directive to fly flags at half-staff on the day of Hope's burial. That put my mind at ease. (For a brief moment, I thought some VZ employee had died, and this had been ordered by the corporate bigwigs; a big no-no when it comes to proper flag decorum. In an instance such as that, the only flag that should be lowered would be the Verizon flag.) Born in 1970, I have no memories of Bob Hope's vaudeville and radio work, though I have heard excerpts here and there. My greatest memories of him were of the television comedy specials he did, as well as the numerous USO shows he performed throughout the 1970s and '80s. To me, the latter was the great thing about Bob Hope: not that he was a tremendous entertainer, which he was, having worked in every medium of the time--stage, radio, television, and feature film. Rather, he never forgot those who put their lives on the line to defend our nation, the nation that gave him the freedom to do what he did. Bob Hope gave back. He gave those who needed it the thing his last name stood for. That is a legacy worth remembering, and one all in the entertainment business should recall and work toward. (Thanks to Rick for the clarification and link.) UPDATE, 5:15 PM: I felt the President's words were worth sharing: bq. "Bob Hope made us laugh. He lifted our spirits. Bob Hope served our nation. We will mourn the loss of a good man. Bob Hope served our nation when he went to battlefields to entertain thousands of troops from different generations. We extend our prayers to his family. God bless his soul." --President George W. Bush
Convert from Islam and die
From the "Religion of Peace" department... The Barnabas Fund is reporting that a Palestinian Muslim who converted to Christianity was butchered and his body returned in four pieces to his family. The Fund channels aid to suffering Christians in more than 40 nations, where they face anything from simple discrimination to wholesale genocide. The latter, consequently, is usually by members of the "Religion of Peace."
Nemo #1
In the ongoing smackdown of animated feature films, Pixar's Finding Nemo has moved past distributor Disney's The Lion King as the top-grossing animated film of all time.
The spunky G-rated underwater adventure reeled in $4.39 million over the weekend, bringing its total North American take to $313.1 million, surpassing The Lion King's $312.9 million in domestic ticket sales generated when that film was released in 1994.
[...]
Swimming into theaters May 30, the computer-animated fish flick netted $70 million its opening weekend, the best ever debut for a 'toon. Nemo's been packing 'em in like sardines and drowning rivals ever since. I was shocked, and delighted, to see how packed the theater was when we finally got around to seeing Nemo just two weeks ago. Now the fun will begin: this was supposed to be the last picture by Pixar Disney was going to distribute, at least as far as Pixar is concerned. The contract called for five films, and Pixar has delivered: Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo. Disney, however, contends that sequels don't count in the deal, and the two companies could find their way in to court to resolve the matter. Disney must be quaking in their boots; since The Lion King, they haven't released any animated film worth squat that they produced themselves. If Pixar jumps ship to, say, oh, Dreamworks, Disney's biggest competitor in animated films, they're sunk. Eh, forget all that. I just realized that Pixar's next flick, The Incredibles, is going to be released by Disney. So they must have resolved that whole contract thing after all, in Disney's favor. Or the two companies signed a new one...
Finder musings
So I'm wondering... In the Finder found in the WWDC beta release of 10.3 Panther, will there be a way to take the iDisk out of the Places sidebar? After 8 October, I will no longer have a .Mac account, and therefore, no need for an iDisk. Just a thought about cleaning the new Finder window up.
Regarding the redistribution of your income...
Amazing that our Founding Fathers had the foresight of government-funded social programs: bq. "...[T]he government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." --James Madison Charity begins at home, and should not be forced on any one of us by those we elect to govern.
The Newspaper of Rhetoric
Bob Kohn writes on the New York Times' ongoing distortion of the news in how they present facts in stories, specifically those dealing with politics and government.
BuyMusic.com fall down, go boom
USA Today reports that BuyMusic.com's first week in business has not been a bed of roses, as "early customers have found they can't transfer the tunes they buy on BuyMusic.com to digital portables." Whoops!
The problem: Unlike MP3 music tracks plucked from the Net from pirate sites such as Kazaa, music on BuyMusic is encoded in Microsoft's Windows Media Audio format. The "digital rights management" coding limits what can be done with the files. The files will be recoded to allow for transfers, Blum says. Well, there you go, yet another reason to avoid WMA. I know the AAC format Apple is using is somewhat proprietary, but it is based on the MP4 industry standard, available to all. Not to mention that I've yet to hear a WMA file that sounded as good as a straight MP3. Say, BuyMusic.com, how's the first week of sales been? Apple has sold 6.5 million songs since April; BuyMusic won't release figures, but "it's not millions," Blum says. Everyone remember that Apple sold a million tunes the first week its iTunes Music Store was open? And that's to what, 3% of the computer-using public? Less, really, since not every Mac user has upgraded to OS X, which iTunes 4 requires. (The iTunes Music Store requires iTunes 4 for access.) Blum & Co. had 97% of the industry to pull from. Finally, Ric Ford is reporting on Macintouch today the experience of musician Jody Whitesides (and I hope Ric doesn't mind the copy/paste since he doesn't have permalinks): My name is Jody Whitesides, I'm an artist that is about to be brought to the Apple iTunes Music Store. Of course I recently heard about BuyMusic so I decided to point my Mac browser at it (with Javascript turned off you can see the site).
I did a search for one of my old CDs that will be going onto iTunes and it turns out my CD was there on BuyMusic.com, as were the CDs of several other bands that I'm friends with - all of whom were not contacted about being placed for sale there.
Here's what I've deduced... BuyMusic.com (which I will refer to as BM) got their "vast" music library of 300,000 plus songs from a company called The Orchard. The Orchard is a distribution company that has consistently shafted artists
[...]
So, without the express consent of what is likely lots of The Orchard's catalog, BM has put it up for sale at the bargain price of $.79 a song.
So, now they can tout they're selling tracks at $.79, and they can say they have a library of music of over 300,000 songs. But what they don't tell you is that it comes from musicians/bands who were not asked for permission, and who will likely not see a penny of any sale made through BM.
[...]
I'm currently looking into legal means to have my music removed from their site and strongly encourage users to not browse BM's site nor purchase from it. So: crappy file format, downloads that don't work, and screwing artists out of royalties. Better luck with BuyMusic.com v2.0, hosers. (via MacMinute)
<i>Critical Space</i>
This is the first of Greg Rucka's Atticus Kodiak novels I've read, even though it's the fifth in the series, but Critical Space had me hooked and reeled in. Saturday night, maybe a dozen pages were read. Sunday, however, Sunday was a different story. I zoomed through over 450 pages; the story is just that good. Finished it off this morning, and went to my local Barnes & Noble to pick up the first in the series, Keeper. Started reading that during lunch, and can't wait to get home tonight after baby CPR class. (Though I promise, sweetheart, that I won't be up as late as last night!) Definitely a Retrophisch Recommends Read™!
Kill the album
Steven offers Frank discussion on why some "artists" don't want to participate in the iTunes Music Store.
Is the demise of the album format, if it even happens, a bad thing? What about the good things might pop up in its place? What advantages come from embracing the tides of change?
[...]
Or maybe, as the market shifts towards being merit-based, there will be a renewed interest in actually making higher quality individual tracks rather than a lot of filler. Wouldn't that be awful? Maybe songs would have melodies again, or musicians might learn how to play more than one instrument. It's even possible that lyrics might stray from the tried-and-true "man, my middle-class white male life here in America sure sucks". It would be catastrophic.
For you, I mean. Not us, the consumers.
One less key to push
So you're using Safari. You've enabled tabbed browsing (who wouldn't?). You have a two-button, scroll-wheel, wireless Microsoft optical mouse. Using the Microsoft Intellipoint mouse software for OS X, you turn the clickable scroll wheel's command function from Autoscroll (the default) to Command-Click. Now you don't have to hold down the Command key while clicking links in Safari to get them to open in new tabs...