Apple death spiral watch.

] The story sounds eerily familiar.
]
] The iPod cannot play songs from most other stores, and
] Apple's iTunes store won't sell songs for other players.
] Mr. Gates argues that consumers ultimately will want more
] choices.
]
] Mr. Jobs rejects the comparison between the music players
] and computers. The Macintosh had an uphill battle, Apple
] says, because so many corporate customers already had
] applications based on Microsoft's operating system that
] they didn't want to abandon. By contrast, Apple's iTunes
] Music Store sells pretty much the same songs that the
] others do, but they cannot be moved onto non-Apple
] portable devices.
]
] What happens next Christmas and beyond, however, is a
] matter of considerable debate. Microsoft fans say that
] other music players will begin to match Apple's features
] and styling, and with lower prices. They suggest that
] consumers, meanwhile, will want to buy music from stores
] other than iTunes.
]
] "Over time, proprietary standards always lose because
] industry standards always win because you get more for
] less," said Michael A. George, the general manager of
] Dell's consumer business.
]
] BUT Geoff Moore, who articulated the platform strategy in
] his 1999 book "Crossing the Chasm," argues that Apple is
] the rare company that should not follow his advice. Mr.
] Jobs, he said, has built the company around
] idiosyncratic, premium-priced products that gain appeal
] in part from their splendid isolation.

Geoff Moore just lost a lot of credibility for me. Apple is fucked. If you buy a Macintosh computer you will only be able to buy an ipod. If you buy an ipod you will not be able to use subscription music services. The end result will be that you simply cannot listen to the music that you want to listen to. Period. Because you bought a mac. I'm already starting to regret making the switch. Buying a mac will limit your choices for music as it did for video games in the 80s. That will absolutely kill OSX. Apple will be right back where it was in 1998 in 2008.

The New York Times : Music Wars - Apple vs. MS

] Californians will soon see advertisements urging them to
] help give Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and other
] foreign-born citizens the chance to run for president.

Push begins to allow foreigners to be President

A quick, entertaining piece. What M.C. Escher would do with flash.

The Zoom Quilt: A collaborative art project

] Either maximize the cheese (make your application compelling), or minimize
] the shock (make your application easy to use).

A simple truth in software design.

Coding Horror: You'll never have enough cheese

] Federal judges are jeopardizing national security by
] issuing rulings contradictory to President Bush's
] decisions on America's obligations under international
] treaties and agreements, Attorney General John Ashcroft
] said Friday.

Yahoo! News - Ashcroft Condemns Judges Who Question Bush

Elonka wrote:
] I'm continuing to read about Gonzales and haven't made up my
] own mind about him yet, but so far he seems to be a relatively
] moderate choice, with critics and supporters on both sides of
] the political spectrum.

Thats true. The specific use of the word "quaint" is being spun by the left to an unreasonable degree. The other memo that I posted, which Gonzales did not write, but apparently signed off on, is a much greater concern with respect to the torture question. Gonzales is not the source of the torture culture, but then he didn't stand up to fight it either.

I think its likely that he will be approved.

Having said that, I'm not at all comfortable with this memo, for a tangental reason.

Ryan recently reminded me that back when Bush was a Governor in Texas he executed several people who were foreign nationals who were not provided access to their consulate. I'm sure his rationale was murder is murder and these people are murderers, so who cares what happens to them. The problem is that Bush's Texas moral values and our deliberative system of justice do not exist in other parts of the world, and should I be arrested in another part of the world I want access to the US consulate. The only thing that provides it to me is our agreement to do the same. Bush put my life at risk by shunning an long standing international agreement about consulate access for foreign nationals charged with a crime.

This wasn't an anomaly. It's a pattern. Its a pattern of tossing out legal constrictions on the power of the government that exist for very good reasons. As these checks continue to be eroded the abuse they were intended to prevent will break out, even if we don't mean for it to happen that way. In some circumstances a case may be made that these constrictions are obsolete, but the problem is that we don't seek to mend them. We simply toss them away and forget about it. Its a pattern that I feel is reckless.

Its a pattern that repeated itself in the use of material witness warrants and enemy combatant designations to detain American citizens on US soil without access to counsel and without charges.

Its a pattern that repeated itself in the use of patriot act capabilities outside of the scope of anti-terror investigations.

Its a pattern that repeated itself in terms of the standards used to justify our invasion of Iraq, which were a significant break from previously understood international law.

Its a pattern that repeated itself when we declared the U.N. obsolete.

Its a pattern that repeated itself when we removed the ABA from the judicial nomination process.

Its a pattern that repeats itself in the open hostility that the Republicans have for the Constitutional review of legislation.

Its a pattern that repeats itself today in the Republican effort to remove the fillibuster rule for judicial nominations.

Its a pattern that repea... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

RE: Gonzales Memo

] Josef Stalin once claimed that a single death is a
] tragedy, but a million deaths a mere statistic. Such
] cynicism should not be allowed to prevail, especially in
] a conflict in which many more lives are at stake. Iraq
] seems to be a case where more statistics are sorely
] needed.

The Economist takes a look at the 100,000 Iraqi deaths study.

Economist.com | 100,000 Iraqi deaths

Here is the torture memo, or rather the sections of it that were declassified. Elonka asked for this. Prepare for a lot of reading.

Portions of Pentagon Working Group March 2003 Draft Report on Interrogation Methods

] As a member of the court, Gonzales ruled with the
] majority that some teenage girls should not be required
] to get parental permission for an abortion.
]
] In his opinion on the ruling, Gonzales wrote, "While the
] ramifications of such a law may be personally troubling
] to me as a parent, it is my obligation as a judge to
] impartially apply the laws of this state without imposing
] my moral view on the decisions of the legislature."

I posted a story about this earlier, which I've deleted. This one is better. Earlier I said that "the radical right doesn't trust him either." More to a point, the radical right doesn't trust him because he was not an activist judge.

CNN.com - Gonzales nomination angers abortion foes - Nov 11, 2004

] The scientific consensus is quite firm that abortion does
] not cause breast cancer. If reporters want to take
] science and its conclusions seriously, their reporting
] should reflect this reality - no matter what
] anti-abortionists say.
]
] But what happened next illustrates one reason journalists
] have such a hard time calling it like they see it on
] science issues. In an internal memo exposed by the Web
] site LAobserved.com, the Times's editor, John
] Carroll, singled out Gold's story for harsh
] criticism, claiming it vindicated critics who accuse the
] paper of liberal bias.

Reality has a "liberal bias."

CJR November/December 2004: Blinded by Science