I miss when being an Apple fan was more Empire than Jedi.

I honestly think the last time that was true they didn't sell Macs.

The type of weirdos who had their small business running on Quandras in the early 1990s were reminiscent of a marginalized political fringe rather than the guys in charge. Not Empire or Jedi - more like the kind of constantly broken thing Luke's uncle might have used to run moisture collectors while rambling incoherently about how "its more secure."

I also kinda think it's true now.

They sell expensive computers that look nice in your driveway but aren't necessarily reliable. Lots of people wish they could afford them because they are pretty, but they have Acers instead. They hang out in the coffee shop and they envy those sleek macs. When that envy turns to disgust, Apple will become the official computer for people who drive BMWs. The real revolutionaries will be running linux on their cheap netbooks.

Apple is the Empire.

Jobs The Hutt : diesel sweeties robot webcomic & geeky t-shirts

If you click the little disclosure triangle at the top right, you can save the current data for future reference. Keep saving snapshots at regular intervals, and you’ll be able to see at a glance how your battery is slowly degrading. Because that’s what happens, folks: over time, everso slowly and gradually, the battery in your Air or your Pro or your plain old MacBook is going to decline. As time goes on, its capacity to hold charge will decrease until the time comes to replace it. This is inevitable, I’m afraid, just like the death of your hard disk. It’s one of those things you need to plan for; and Coconut Battery is one of those apps that helps with that.

50 Mac Essentials #19: Coconut Battery | Cult of Mac

Exploit Development cheat sheet.

corelan_wallpaper_dark.jpg (JPEG Image, 1440x900 pixels)

Jasper Rees:

Known to its creators and participating artists as the Underbelly Project, the space, where all the show's artworks remain, defies every norm of the gallery scene. Collectors can't buy the art. The public can't see it. And the only people with a chance of stumbling across it are the urban explorers who prowl the city's hidden infrastructure or employees of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

That's because the exhibition has been mounted, illegally, in a long-abandoned subway station.

Steven Johnson:

When you share a civic culture with millions of people, good ideas have a tendency to flow from mind to mind, even when their creators try to keep them secret.

The Ministry:

Dear citizen, according to received information, you have been influenced by the destabilizing propaganda which the media affiliated with foreign countries have been disseminating.

Anonymous Official:

It's essential to remember that given the will and the relevant orders, WikiLeaks can be made inaccessible forever.

danah boyd:

Carmen is engaging in social steganography. She's hiding information in plain sight, creating a message that can be read in one way by those who aren't in the know and read differently by those who are.

Marlo Stanfield:

You want it to be one way. But it's the other way.

A Tendency To Flow The Other Way

The Internet - Apple still doesn't "get it."

People say it's a consumption device more than a communication device, so once I start to use it that way I might think differently.

And really, how wrong can the rest of the world be?

People around the office all said I would soon adjust, which is Apple's (AAPL) take, too.

How about a new term for people who think the Internet is for consuming rather than communicating - iPotatoes.

Why I hate my new iPad - Fortune Tech

Some early Macbook Air adopters have reported seeing video anomalies and kernel panics on the new 11-inch and 13-inch models of the Macbook Air which may be related to sleep/wake issues.

The ipad - well, I just don't want to travel around with a computer that I can't code on. The new macbook seemed like a possibility - and then it happened. I got the bug. I desired it. Its pretty, its much less of a hassel on airplanes, but its full of bugs. It doesn't actually work. I went through the hell of having a G3 iBook - replacing the logic board every year sucked. I'm not spending a fortune so I can go through that again. So I gotta let it go. Such a shame...

Video Problems & Kernel Panics Reported By Early MacBook Air Adopters | Cult of Mac

Whatever the final results of this election night, nothing will be more shocking or sad for Public Knowledge and me personally then the defeat of Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va), the current Chair of the House Subcommittee on Communications, Technology & the Internet. Rep. Boucher, widely recognized as one of the most tech-savvy and intelligent members of Congress, has long been an advocate for consumers on a wide variety of communications and intellectual property issues.

Another key ally has fallen...

Gigi Sohn: Boucher Defeat a Loss for Tech Policy World

Civil liberties advocates lost a Senate stalwart Tuesday night when Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wisconsin) was defeated by Ron Johnson, a little-known plastics manufacturer whose shibboleths against health care reform and government spending tapped into populist anger.

This is very bad. Feingold's voice has been repeatedly important in the defense of individual rights and civil liberties. No one could replace it. It doesn't matter who Johnson is. It doesn't help that he appears to be a vampid hack, but it doesn't matter. Feingold loosing is another major blow to individual rights and civil liberties in this country, and that would be the case no matter who replaced him.

Incidentally, the "libertarians" are out showing their true colors on the Reason blog, talking about how it's "almost" a shame and ignorantly overemphasizing Citizen's United in favor of the countless times Feingold has stood for individual rights - likely because none of those people actually cares about individual rights enough to have ever followed a Congressional debate on that subject closely enough to recognize his name or understand his actual position.

No one in the modern "libertarian" movement gives a damn about individual rights and freedoms. They are all died in the wool Republican partisans who think "Libertarian" sounds cooler - more oppositional - less mainstream.

The political influence of people who actually believe in real individual rights and freedoms in this country is rapidly dissolving.

Civil Liberties Watchdog Feingold Loses Senate Seat | Threat Level | Wired.com

... Atlanta really is just as hosed as Munich.

Conventional wisdom among legal scholars is that contractual restrictions on employee mobility affect turnover and led to the overtaking of Massachusetts Route 128 by Silicon Valley.

It is particularly curious that our legislature would pass a law of this nature given the current state of the economy.

One thing to watch out for as budgets get tight is renewed aggressiveness from people who take money through coercion.

In other news, Georgia Supreme Court Justice David Nahmias narrowly beat challenger Tammy Adkins.

State Supreme Court Justice David Nahmias appeared headed toward a runoff against Lawrenceville attorney Tamela Adkins for a six-year term on the state's top court.

This is interesting because Adkins didn't campaign.

Tamela Adkins also is challenging Nahmias, but she's something of a mystery.

She's not campaigning and recently changed her name to Tammy Lynn Adkins.

GPB made several attempts to speak to her, but she did not return phone calls.

Her primary advantage? Perhaps the alphabet: her name appears first on the ballet. The other challenger who did campaign only got 17% of the vote.

Its official, with the passage of Georgia Amendment One (2010)...

I've been contemplating the fact that in most states the state legislatures are part time. Which means that legislators have to get a real job - in other words - they are often literally employed by the special interests they represent.

Googling around about this brought up a number of efforts in the 4 states that do have full time legislatures to end that practice. The basis? Rampant corruption, and evidence abounds. A bored legislator is indeed a grave threat to freedom.

Basically, no one has figured out how to make a state legislature that isn't corrupt, and so there is no clarity on whether full time or part time is the right ingredient.

The tea party - incidentally - wants to repeal the 17th amendment, which allowed for the direct election of Senators. The 17th amendment was passed in the early 1900's because state legislatures, which previously selected Senators, were corrupted by corporate interests. The tea party would return us to this structure - continuing to uphold the bizarre preference of "states rights" over individual rights for which so many marched off and died in the civil war, rationalizing that they were fighting for freedom from federal tyranny. Wrapping my head around that confusion is the hardest thing about understanding the civil war. Its much easier to think of the whole logical rats nest as a thin rationalization for slavery, but most people didn't own slaves - I imagine most of the soldiers didn't. They were simply fooled into dying for their particular aristocracy by a set of lies that continues to work to this day.

State legislatures are still corrupted by corporate interests. The county is run by diverting your attention to the national government instead.

Its much easier to throw ones hands up in frustration than to figure out what steps can be taken to address a problem like this.

With that in mind I offer a link to a rambling (and repetitive) anarchist rant against the tradition of voting. Some interesting and entertaining observations are made. I'll pull a few choice quotes:

Why should essentially powerless people want to engage in a humiliating farce designed to demonstrate the legitimacy of those who wield power?”
 
- Dmitri Orlov

...
 
Under representative pseudo-democracy, voting is just robo-voting, stamping a meaningless, pre-written sheet thrust in front of you, regarding which you have, by design, no knowledge, no input, no reason or even basis for hope or desire, no basis even for understanding. Your role is nothing than to robotically sign the affidavit, certifying your formal ratification of a passel of crimes beyond your ken. And if the gangsters ever run into any trouble, they simply roll out the fraudulent papers bearing your name and proclaim it as ratification of their legitimacy.

...

“Voting”, both in reality and symbolically, is the alienation of our own sovereignty and power.... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

The Cult of Voting « Volatility