Remember how we believed that the horrific national tragedy of twenty little children being slaughtered with an assault rifle, especially after so many other shootings like the Aurora theater massacre, would lead to an assault weapons ban, or at least a law to limit the number of bullets in a cartridge?

Apparently not.

While the public may have been sufficiently aghast at such tragedies to pull the switch, Congress seems to feel differently. A majority appear to be saying, “No, we think more than two dozen first-graders need to be shot to bloody pieces before we act. Let’s wait and see.”

Not that an assault weapons ban would lead to an immediate halt to such slaughters, but the later you act, the longer they go on. So, good work, senators. You just proved that the NRA is not as weak and ineffective a lobby as some had started to believe.

But hey, at least we can all agree on universal background checks, right? Background checks, even in their currently weak form, have proven effective at stopping two million gun sales, over one million of those to felons, over the past few decades. Obama’s plan for shoring up their weaknesses so that criminals and the mentally ill will have a hurdle in their way before they can acquire a major arsenal is the most milquetoast, sensible, non—

Other gun control efforts like universal background checks on people buying guns are also struggling in Congress, despite public anger at the Connecticut shooting and other massacres.

<facepalm>

It is, after all, what, three months since we saw those children gunned down. So, who cares any more?

Publishers, in our modern, internationalized world, have established market segmentation: pricing their product separately in every country or region based on the maximum profit they believe they can derive from each market. Sometimes this is enforced by software and hardware restrictions; for example, you buy a DVD in America, that DVD will not work in a DVD player sold in Japan, Europe, Africa, or China, due to region encoding. Even without that restriction, language/subtitle segmentation allows for discrimination. As a result, a DVD/Blu-Ray set which sells for $20 in the U.S. (like Skyfall, for instance), sells for ¥3,045 ($32) in Japan (and it used to be $38 before the yen took a recent dive).

This might not affect you like it does me; living in Japan, I have a hard time getting media priced like it is in America. Market segmentation also makes my TV viewing options suck; if a TV show gets here at all, it is usually 2-3 years late. Hulu Japan at least allows me to watch whenever I want, but has the same terrible selection and late acquisition of titles.

However, there has been an issue in contention for a while regarding first-sale doctrine. This is the legal principle that once you buy a material item, it is yours to do with as you please. You buy an orange, for example, it belongs to you; you can slice it, peel it, juice it, resell it, or throw it out the window—and the seller of the orange has no say in what you do. This applies to physical copies of copyrighted work as well, allowing you to sell that book you bought to a used bookstore, or to someone on eBay.

Publishers have been trying to eradicate this in order to bolster their sales. The fact that electronic media can be licensed had given them the idea that anything can be licensed. Sony has put labels on their CDs which they try to make enforceable as a contract: break the seal and you accept the terms. Physical packages of software come with license agreements which forbid resale. Even when they have no legal force on their side, publishers attempt to claim various rights, like when they claim it’s illegal for you to put a CD into your computer and import the songs into iTunes. (At least I am pretty sure that’s legal; the music industry has been going full-blast in attempts, often successful, to have laws rewritten to their profit.) If the law does not go their way, they pour money into massive (and usually successful) lobbying efforts to change it, or else manipulate the laws to serve them.

This came to the forefront when Costco realized that watchmaker Omega watches were much cheaper on the gray market. Costco bought up the lower-priced versions, and sold them at a discount in the U.S. Realizing that first-sale laws did not support them, Omega tried a trick: they printed a copyrighted image on the back of the watches and tried to use copyright laws to restrict sales that defeat market segmentation; they also argued that the watches were not made in the U.S., and therefore, first-sale doctrine did not apply. They won in the Ninth Circuit; they would have lost in the Supreme Court, but Kagan, who would have ruled against them, recused herself and the court was split.

While a lower court slapped Omega down for illicitly using copyright law to defeat first-sale doctrine, the circuit court ruled that first sale doctrine only applies to goods manufactured in the U.S. In other words, if you manufacture something outside the U.S., you can get around first-sale and put restrictions on material goods as you wish.

This just got reversed in another case, Kirtsaeng v. John Wiley & Sons, Inc. In this case, a Thai student in New York paid his way through college by importing textbooks sold cheaply in Thailand and selling them in the U.S. He was sued by a publisher, and just now won in a 6-3 Supreme Court Decision. In the decision, the justices ruled that first-sale does not apply only to goods made in the U.S., and that:

…nongeographical interpretation would make it difficult for publishers to divide foreign and domestic markets, but there is no principle of copyright law that suggests that publishers are entitled to such rights.

This has good and bad implications. The bad implications include the possibility that publishers will hike up prices for books sold in countries where poor students will not be able to afford them:

[T]he likely outcome of this decision is that Wiley and all other publishers will now raise prices in countries that now get cheaper prices. These tend to be developing countries, so essentially poorer students abroad will be suffering the consequences. Some will no longer be able to afford the books at all, even though the marginal cost of one more book to a publisher who has already made the investment for the American market is essentially zero. As a result, it would not be surprising if we see students in these countries substituting with piracy.

I do not agree. The publishers will simply do a little more work to differentiate the texts so international versions will not be usable in U.S. schools, or they will find another trick to allow them to price as they please.

And let’s not forget, the bulk of market segmentation is not to give badly needed resources to needy students; most segmentation is about raw greed, the ability to charge whatever the market will bear to greater precision, ergo I have to pay almost twice as much for music and movies here in Japan.

In the end, we have an immediately significant win in an otherwise losing battle to maintain consumer rights and prevent corporations from using extreme means to shake every last penny from your pockets as they use lobbying efforts and legal manipulation to hold you upside down. Alas, those efforts will probably soon make decisions like this one moot.

This just out:

Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, a rising national star in the Republican Party, announced on Friday that he has a gay son and could no longer justify his opposition to same-sex marriage.

Mr. Portman’s revelation makes him the only sitting Republican senator to publicly support giving gay men and lesbians the right to marry, and one of the most prominent so far of a growing number of Republicans to publicly oppose their party on the issue.

Think: Nancy Reagan and stem-cell research.

This is one of the few ways that conservatives make progress: someone they know and love is involved, so they “get it” and switch sides to join liberals. And sometimes not even then.

This makes me wonder if there is an emotional component to the conservative political makeup: some variation on the inability to understand another person’s point of view in the abstract.

This would help explain the self-centered, self-important, intolerant and uncompassionate views held by many conservatives. The Randian hatred of social support systems, the “screw you I’ve got mine” mindset. Not only the lack of tolerance and sensitivity, but the sometimes stunning tone-deafness displayed by conservatives. The “I’m better than you” state of mind displayed in memes such as non-urban areas being the “Real America,” or of the concept of “American Exceptionalism,” deserved or not. The easy bigotry accompanied by the sense that one is not at all bigoted but that’s just “the way things are.”

Having an impaired ability to empathize with others, to see things from their perspective, could tie in to so much that we see in conservatism.

Thoughts?

OK, the Galaxy S IV has been announced.

Among the useful features:

• Micro-SD expansion slot (Apple should have done this from the start but is way too controlling)
• 13-megapixel rear-facing camera (nice, but we’re kind of reaching limits on micro-camera usability—not to mention costs in file size)
• Samsung’s HomeSync 1TB data cloud (nice, but everyone has a cloud now, and there are private solutions if you need more space)
• 5" 441 PPI Full HD Super AMOLED screen (hard to go wrong with a hi-def screen of that size)
• An upgrade to its S-Voice digital assistant (could be good, if it’s done right)
• IR blaster (can use as remote control for other devices)
• S Health: health tracker (good for many people, not for all)
• 2600mAh battery

That last point is a question mark; Samsung poured so many new things that could eat up battery life that a better battery may not be able to compensate for.

However, when you review the list, one fact kind of pops out: most of this is like before but only more so. Better screen, better camera, better battery. As Henry Ford once said, “a faster horse.” Some people might adore some features, but nothing seems to be a game-changer.

Samsung also touted a slew of new features which are less obvious as crowd-pleasers:

• Add audio to photos: actually, I seem to recall having this feature on a digital camera I had years ago. I found it pretty useless.
• dual-camera view to take photos with both of the front- and rear-facing cameras at the same time: ummm, why? That’s nice for video calls, though that feature has been around for a while. As for photos and movies, do you really want your own mug in a frame stuck into the photo or movie? What for?
• “Eraser,” to cut people or things out of photos: perfect tool for the jilted girlfriend! Seriously, this might be useful at times (if it works well and is not too hard to use), but I cannot image using it often. I can imagine it leaving obvious artifacts which scream “photo alteration” though.
• S Translator, which translates messages in nine languages, including French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish: Meh. I live in Japan, and probably wouldn’t use it too much. Not to mention, Western-to-Asian translation is usually so terrible as to be useless.

Then there are highly touted features that could present more problems than solutions:

• “Smart Scroll”: tilt it up or down to scroll
• “Air Gestures”: hover fingers above the handset to scroll
• “Air View”: finger hover to see additional information
• “Smart Pause”: pauses video if it realizes that the user is no longer watching what is currently playing on screen

These sound cool, but I have the feeling most people will eventually turn them off, or will want to before very long. “Smart Scroll” seems like something I would forever be cursing, like the iPhone’s “shake to undo.” “Air Gestures” is probably only useful if you have greasy fingers and don’t want to wipe them before touching the phone. Otherwise, actually using the touchscreen will afford greater control and precision. The potential for accidental scrolling seems way too high, and people who have used it report both oversensitivity and under-sensitivity.

“Air View” sounds like something that will mostly happen when you don’t want it to. And as for “Smart Pause,” there is, of course, the potential for it to work when you don’t want it to, or to not work when you do want it to. But more important is the question, do you want the feature at all? We do not often think about what our eyes are doing while a video is playing, but I’m willing to bet we look away more than we imagine, and do not want the video to stop when we do that.

So while there are some nifty features, nothing really jumps out and grabs you, and some things could even be a step backwards. I am reminded of the Japanese cell phones before the iPhone, which had tons of features… which you mostly could not or did not want to use. There would be cool-sounding bells and whistles which might make you buy the phone, but you would use them so infrequently that you would forget they were there, or be frustrated by having to learn the feature all over again when you want to use it.

The real question is, did Samsung look at the context of the whole user experience? That’s what Apple does: it tries (usually too hard) to create a smooth, seamless experience which makes everything feel natural and obvious. This often leaves the more controlling and techy amongst us to feel like we’re in a straitjacket, but for most users, it’s a good thing: just use it, be pleased with it, and otherwise forget it. With Samsung’s new features, it seems like so many things have the potential to get in the way of the user that one would have to carefully tune and adjust the thing to get it to work just so, and never perfectly.

That seems to be the consensus amongst reviewers. Gizmodo:

There has been a ton of hype and build-up to this device, and ultimately, it left us feeling cold. The S IV feels uninspired. There are small spec bumps from the previous generation and there’s a ton of software which will largely sit unused. There’s just no wow-factor here.

And ABC News:

The list of user interface innovations goes on, but they don’t amount to a coherent new way of interacting with the phone. Nor do they turn the phone into something that’s intelligently aware of what goes on around it. It’s more like Samsung is throwing a bunch of technologies into the phone to see what sticks. Sometimes, that’s how progress works, but consumers might not appreciate being guinea pigs.

We’ll see what the buying public thinks. My guess: Android users will mostly be happy with a new handset with some new features—exactly like iPhone users would be. But it probably will not make anyone who prefers an iPhone to suddenly start loving Samsung’s offerings.

There’s a lot of excitement:

Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony cheered the selection of Jorge Mario Bergoglio of Argentina as the new pope.

“This is unimaginable,” Mahony told KCBS-TV Channel 2 anchor Sylvia Lopez in an interview in Rome. “The impact this is going to have have. Particularly, of course, in Latin America. It’s the first time we ever had a Southern Hemisphere pope. It’s just extraordinary.”

“Unimaginable.” “Extraordinary.”

It’s hard to think of another example of anyone being so excited at their symbolically overcoming their own bigotry to such a minor degree.

That a non-European Pope be elected for the first time in 1,200 years (some of the early popes were born in the Middle East or Roman Africa) is more a sign of how the church disrespects and disregards the rest of the world, where the great bulk of their believers reside.

It is only symbolic, however, to a minor degree, because Jorge Mario Bergoglio is not even part Indie; he is of full Italian descent, the child of immigrants.

So, it’s just his nationality that has people excited.

God forbid they select someone of non-European ethnicity. Or, some day, not male.

In the meantime, they elected yet another white European-descent male who is vigorously anti-gay. But he lived in South America! Wheee! What a breakthrough!

If doing that is “unimaginable” for the church leadership, then this church is decidedly backwards.

There is also excitement that this man chose to live in a modest apartment among the poor rather than to move into a luxurious, stately church residence.

Um, let’s see, this church is supposed focus on Christ, yes? And we’re supposed to be impressed by the fact that, for the first time in a very long time, the leader of that church actually respected the core teachings of their savior in his own lifestyle? Before moving into the most extravagant opulence, of course.

A step in the right direction, perhaps. But “extraordinary”? Wow.

Apple’s walled-garden approach puts an inordinate number of limitations on what you can and cannot do with a non-jailbroken device. It’s supposed to be all about security and functionality: get apps from anywhere you want, and you’ll soon get clobbered by malware; ignore Apple’s limitations, and your machine will slow down or crash.

However, many of Apple’s limitations are not really about making things better for the user, but rather about forcing a specific aesthetic on the user. As if Steve Jobs decided what would look best, and in order to keep users from modding their Apple devices to look they way they preferred, they locked these features down.

In other words, it’s less about helping you than it is about forcing your to maintain an appearance that Apple wants you to present when carrying their device. This, to me, is as bad as any license agreement which tries to extend control beyond the point of sale: it’s your goddamned device, you can do whatever the hell you want with it.

Jailbreaks open the doors to these modifications, allowing you control over things that you may not need but really want. Apple, predictably, continues to shut down jailbreak efforts, patching cracks in the garden wall as the jailbreaks lead users out. Many users are pissed off by this, wanting Apple to let them have the freedom they desire. It is a certainty that Apple will disregard these wishes, if for no other reason that it threatens Apple’s absolute lock on the marketplace. (Hell, I’m surprised Apple lets you upload your own books to read in iBooks, and hasn’t shut down the option to rip your own music from CDs.)

I think Apple is being dumb about this. They should defeat the whole jailbreak thing by allowing users, who agree to a very specific license agreement (e.g., you get no support from Apple if you go beyond this point), to access packages that will modify their systems. They could still collect their 30% cut from sales of such packages, they could still monitor them for malware, and they could let the users have the fun they want. Sure, Apple would still block some things (e.g., apps that break legal requirements like sound volume levels), but most things that are blocked now would be accessible.

For the time being—until the next update, that is—we still have a jailbreak, and that means a bit less organization in terms of knowing what’s best to get once you’ve jailbroken your device. That task is left mostly to web sites; beyond that, the user must trust Cydia’s recommendations, or else scan the massive lists of items in the repositories—web sites which host the jailbreak apps, tweaks, themes, and so forth.

Most Cydia “best” lists tend to be about the iPhone and not the iPad. They also tend to assume things, like that you love the Notifications Center, or that you don’t mind doing four swipes instead of just one.

Here is a list of tweaks which I think are good; you may or may not agree. I am putting up thirteen tweaks because that’s how many I find useful—none of this padding-the-list-to-come-to-a-round-number crap.

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Activator (free)
Activator allows you to assign gestures to nearly everything you can imagine, in various contexts. Want a 4-fingered pinch to take a screenshot? Or a 3-fingered tap to open your Maps app? Use taps, swipes, pinches, spreads, buttons, and device-shaking to open apps, change settings, and control music.

Barrel ($2.99)
Bored of your icons simply sliding left and right when you swipe to a new set of icons? Barrel provides 20 cool animations for when you switch between icon screens, from 3-D cubes and zooms to various intricate pattern swirls and dances. Apple missed the boat in not making this a standard feature—really, it’s got a definite cool factor working for it.

EUUnlimited (free)
Did you ever have trouble getting your iOS device to be loud enough? I used to be frustrated by being unable to hear music or movies on the train, plane, or in other places with a fair amount of background noise, even though I was using headphones at full volume. Turns out there’s a reason: the EU prohibits devices from playing sounds beyond a certain volume. This tweak turns off that limitation.

Gridlock ($4.99)
I am not a fan of the normal way Apple has icons arrange themselves—from left to right, top to bottom. Gridlock makes it possible to put icons anywhere on the screen (within the confined of a grid), ignoring that ordering. Arrange your icons however you like, in a T-shape, around the periphery of the screen, all crowded in the center, wherever.

Iconoclasm ($3.00)
This tweak also breaks you out of Apple’s monotonous icon drudgery, except this time it’s about how icons are spaced. Apple lets you have twenty icons per screen, no more. Why? Because they say so, dammit! Who knows, maybe people with stubby fingers make too many errors if the icons are closer together. Most people, however, have no problem dealing with and 8 x 6 screen with 48 icons on it—or even more bunched even closer together.

Infinidock ($1.99)
Why no more than six icons in the dock? And why can’t the dock scroll? Infinidock fixes that oversight, allowing you to cram as many as ten icons into the visible dock—and then extends that by allowing you to scroll the dock back and forth so as to accommodate more. Yes, I know, scrolling kind of works against the purpose of the dock (to have certain icons always visible and accessible), but so long as you don’t go overboard, you can have all the apps you want more readily accessible than scrolling four screens to the right.

Mark Read ($1.99)
Apple failed to allow for multiple or all emails to be marked read in one action. Problem solved.

MultiIcon Mover (free)
A really stupid design decision by Apple was to make it so you have to drag individual icons across multiple screens, in what often feels like an endurance trial to see if you can keep your finger on the screen whilst trying to manipulate screen scrolling. MultiIcon Mover is what Apple obviously should have done: tap any number of icons on one screen, scroll to another screen, and hit the Home button. Presto: all selected icons move at once.

NoCamSound (free)
Sorry, but I hate that snapshot sound. Yes, I know pervs will use this to take inappropriate photos. I prefer not being treated like some sex offender while taking innocent photos in public. This replaces the shutter sound with a sound file of nothing.

Quickshoot (free)
You know how sometimes you tap your camera app and it takes ten seconds to open, making you completely miss the shot you wanted to take? Yeah, I hate that too. Quickshoot allows you to just double-tap the Camera app icon and it’ll take a photo without opening the app’s interface. I know, again, a tool for pervs. This one also has legitimate uses though.

SBSettings (free)
SBSettings gives you control over a number of system processes. With a simply-called control palette, you can control brightness, toggle Bluetooth, Wifi, Data, and Location services, power off or reboot/respring the device, quit any open apps and free up memory. Plus, it allows you to customize what appears in the Status Bar, including IP Addresses and date & time options. Considered a must-have on almost tweak-list.

Springtomize 2 ($2.99)
Another must-have. Cydia has truckloads of themes, but if you would like to make many of the customizations some themes offer without all the extra baggage, Springtomize is a good way to do it. You can change animation speeds, app-to-app animation direction, and adjust screen colors; you can change the number of icons in the docks and turn on or off various dock graphic elements, like the shadow or tray; change the lockscreen; change icon properties such as jittering, badges, spacing, and sizing, as well as hiding things you don’t want (like the Newsstand); change how folders work; change how the App Switcher works; change what appears in the status bar; hide paging dots or remove limits on how many pages you can have; change icon label fonts and icon opacity; and change how the Notification Center works. Some of these could potentially replace other tweaks (like Iconoclasm or InfiniDock), or could be used in concert with them. In short, it does a lot.

Swipebright (free)
For some reason, I could not find a way in Activator to directly change brightness with a single gesture. Usually you have to double-click the Home button to activate the App Switcher, then swipe left to get music, sound, and brightness controls, swipe to change the brightness, and then dismiss the App Switcher. I use my iPad at night a lot, and need a way to quickly change the brightness; this adds that feature to Activator.

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With all of these tweaks for $18, I am able to do a lot more that I could before. Some are purely aesthetic (but let’s face it, the iPad is an aesthetic device), a lot are quite functional. The true test is, how much do you miss these things when you lose them? The answer for me: a lot. I will keep using 6.1.2 until a new jailbreak comes out (and dammit, of course 6.1.3 is when Apple updates Japanese maps.)

There are some other tweaks I like, but many are iPhone only, like Unfold, which provides a really cool way to open the lockscreen. There’s an App Switcher mod called Auxo ($1.99) which is usually lauded, but it’s for the iPhone only—not to mention, the screenshots it uses instead of icons are usually worthless, I prefer just the icons better. There’s a fantastic camera app called CameraTweak for just a dollar, but it’s iPhone only as well. NES solutions allow you to play classic arcade games like Donkey Kong.

A lot of people rave about BiteSMS (free). I have no idea why. My current SMS is fine; BiteSMS was just pissing me off. iFile is nice if you have a need for it, but I don’t. I tried another free app called f.lux, but it was too jarring and made Swipebright not work.

If you know of any other good iPad tweaks, let me know!

A computer industry analyst talks about why:

There were certain decisions that Microsoft made that were in retrospect flawed. Notably not allowing people to boot into desktop mode and taking away the start button. Those two things have come up consistently. We’ve done some research and people miss that.

“In retrospect”? Really? They didn’t see that coming?

Before the official release of Windows 8, I noted:

Windows 8 will be released very soon, and when it comes out, we’ll see if Microsoft is completely stupid or not.

The test: whether or not Microsoft has added a tutorial to Windows 8. One which pops up immediately and tells people how things have changed, and how to get around the OS.

With Windows 8, the Start Menu is gone, cannot be brought back, and has been replaced with the now-infamous start screen. Going from one place to another now requires new actions which are not apparent because they are not visible on the screen. It is anything but intuitive to figure out that moving your cursor to a corner will bring up a screen you are looking for.

When I first downloaded Windows 8 Consumer Preview, I was hopelessly confused. I could not figure out how to get around—and I’m no n00b to Windows, either. There are bound to be lots of people who will be stymied when they see Windows 8, and who will hate the transition. “What?! I can’t bring back the Start menu? Why not?!?”

This was posted well after the beta release, but that’s just when I blogged about it. As I note above, when I downloaded the OS and installed Windows 8—on the very first day of the public beta—I immediately decided that Microsoft was insane to have removed the start menu and Desktop bootup, not to mention having new gestures be required without giving any tutorial, even a hint, as to what those were.

It wasn’t just an opinion: it was obvious. Clear as hell. I remember shaking my head and wondering what the hell Microsoft was thinking.

When I ask people who are using it, the basic response is, with a tablet, it’s pretty good. With anything else, it’s terrible.

How long before we can start calling this “Vista 8”?

A lot of people are making a deal about Obama mixing up Star Trek and Star Wars when he referenced a “Jedi Mind Meld.”

First, if you hear him say the words, you realize he was searching for the right words and failed before he had to finish the sentence. Had he tacked the word “whatever” onto the end of the sentence, it would have worked perfectly.

Second, what he messed up was not his central point or a planned statement.

And third, at least he knows about the Jedi mind trick and the Vulcan mind meld; he gets points for knowing the cultural references, even if he did mix them up.

Making that specific error was a concatenation, a merging of two ideas in the mind at once. You know that he was thinking of both and trying to work out, off the cuff, which to say, and they got mixed up. Nor was this the first time it has happened; he once mentioned visiting “fifty seven states, one left to go”; from the context, it was clear that he was mixing together “fifty states” and the “continental forty-eight states.”

This is a fairly pedestrian slip-up.

Tell me, would you rather have a president who can’t get simple grammar straight, or botches entire narratives?

There’s an old saying in Tennessee—I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee—that says, ‘Fool me once, shame on…shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again!’“

”Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream.“

”Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.“

”Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?“

There’s lots more where that came from, including how he immortalized ”The Google“ and ”The Internets.“ Look, he made lots of goofs that can easily be forgiven, however hilarious they sounded—mixing up OPEC for APEC, getting prepositions wrong, even using poor phrasing from time to time, but really… next to Dubya, Obama’s errors look smart.

I presume that, at some time, The Wall Street Journal actually did perform some respectable journalism. However—and this might coincide with Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of the institution—it seems that whenever I look at what they write nowadays, it’s a piece of politically slanted excrement.

Take, for example, this ludicrous article from 2008, in which columnist and WSJ Deputy Editorial Page Director Daniel Henninger tries to deny that regulation shortfalls caused the subprime mortgage crisis by instead blaming secularization, literally suggesting that the more-inclusive “Happy Holidays” occasionally replacing “Merry Christmas” caused those in the financial industry to lose their religious-based principles and thus fell into avarice and depravity. Seriously, read the article.

This seems to be a recurring theme: if a well-reasoned and accepted explanation of an important issue rankles them politically, they try to say it just ain’t so—and use any risibly asinine bullshit they can think of to deny it.

Last year, it was the role of government in supporting businesses and the people in general, which conservatives found a new opportunity to attack with Obama’s “you didn’t build that” statement. Gordon Crovitz at the WSJ wrote an article that set the tone from the very first sentence when he, like so many other conservatives, quotes Obama out of context. But he then focused on one other statement Obama made: “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet.”

He then presented his thesis statement: “It’s an urban legend that the government launched the Internet.”

Really.

His argument, of course, is total BS. To make it seem like he’s disproving something with fact, he weaved in a red herring, the contention that the Internet was developed to maintain communications after a nuclear strike, which he easily dismissed—giving the impression that he just disproved government involvement when he in fact was speaking to an assertion which was not really relevant.

Sometimes his bullshit runs so thick that you trip over outrageous falsehoods and errors in virtually every sentence. Take this segment:

If the government didn’t invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet’s backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.

But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.

One gags on the sheer volume of error. Let’s go through this a bit. “Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol”? Not by himself; with Robert Kahn, he deserves much of the credit, but did not do it single-handedly.

“Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks”? Holy crap, that could not be more wrong. Hyperlinks were in use long before Lee made use of them. Lee developed HTML and HTTP, essentially the World Wide Web (not the Internet); the credit for hyperlinks goes to Ted Nelson for the concept (begun when Lee was 5 years old!) and Douglas Engelbart for implementation less than a decade later.

“Full credit goes to Xerox”? Sure, and Lee Iacocca invented the car. This is the specific version of the aforementioned thesis, and it’s wrong. Xerox was involved, but far from responsible. Crovitz seemed to conflate the development of Ethernet with the development of the Internet.

“Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto)”? Really? The Alto was the first PC? No. Not even close. The Alto was an early, cutting-edge precursor of modern machines for its use of the GUI a decade before the Macintosh, but it cost $32,000 in 1973 (well over $100,000 in current dollars) and was never commercially produced. The Xerox Star, which followed in 1981, was a business computer.

“…and the graphical user interface”? Not really. Douglas Engelbart gets most of the credit for creating the GUI. Xerox was the first to apply it to manufactured computers, but to say they “developed” it is overstating it.

Crovitz then goes on to base his central thesis on a secondhand quote from a book about Xerox, in which one Xerox researcher is quoted as saying, “We have more networks than they [the government] do,” noting government bureaucracy as an impediment.

That’s pretty much it. Xerox had some internal networks in 1973. Therefore they created the Internet. Okaaayyy…

He then segues off into more red herrings like Steve Jobs negotiating with Xerox for access to the Alto, another side issue.

He then concludes:

It’s important to understand the history of the Internet because it’s too often wrongly cited to justify big government. It’s also important to recognize that building great technology businesses requires both innovation and the skills to bring innovations to market. As the contrast between Xerox and Apple shows, few business leaders succeed in this challenge. Those who do—not the government—deserve the credit for making it happen.

Thus he “establishes” a “fact” which will be widely but just as vaguely cited by conservatives everywhere, based on horse manure like so many of their claims, but distant enough that they can get away with it and not suffer too much from any scrutiny that may be applied.

Vinton Cerf, one of the men most responsible for developing the Internet, was interviewed in response to this. Cerf explains in detail how the Internet was created, and when asked directly about Crovitz’s argument, he replied simply:

I would happily fertilize my tomatoes with Crovitz’ assertion.

I really wonder sometimes how the WSJ can maintain its reputation when disseminating opinions that are of Fox-News quality—specifically, full of crap.

Andrew Sullivan is revisiting his mistaken support for the Iraq War a decade ago:

This month, the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War, I’ve decided to re-publish some of my posts from March 2003. Call it masochism or basic journalistic accountability or the Internet’s revenge. But I was wrong. I was wrong in good faith. But I was wrong.

He is among some right-leaners to outright right-wing war hawks who are looking back. What comes across is not just that they feel they were wrong for the right reasons, but that the anti-war side was hysterical and completely without reason. Ta-Nehisi Coates ruminates:

It seemed, back then, that every “sensible” and “serious” person you knew — left or right — was for the war. And they were all wrong. Never forget that they were all wrong. And never forget that the radicals with their drum circles and their wild hair were right.

But, Coates expresses, not sensibly enough. Rod Dreher concurs:

I covered a big antiwar march in Manhattan in the spring of 2002, and the radicals were a disgusting bunch. “Bush = Hitler” signs, and so forth. As foul as it was, the event was a pleasant thing to see, in a way, because it made me feel more secure in the rightness of the war the US was about to undertake. And it shouldn’t be forgotten in those days that some antiwar people were nasty and hysterical, and impossible to talk to.

For all that … they were right about the only question that counted — Should the US launch a war on Iraq? — and my side was wrong. I was wrong. I had allowed myself to be swayed by emotion, even as I spited the emotional hysteria of the antiwar crowd.

From the linked-to 2003 article:

I’ve tried to think through my pro-war position carefully, and if I’m wrong in my facts or analysis, I want to know. But in my (deeply unpleasant) experience, there’s simply no point in talking to most antiwar people, left and right, because they’re lost in a fever swamp of emotionalism.

If it’s not leftists obsessing about “blood for oil,” corporate plots and Iraqi children, it’s rightists going off about imperialism, Israel and Jewish conspiracies. Now, I don’t think it’s unfair to discuss the role, if any, corporate interests, Israeli government policy, the potential suffering of Iraqi civilians, or a number of other issues have in the development of U.S. policy towards Iraq. It’s just that so many people concerned with these things have given themselves over to the kind of hysteria that makes rational debate impossible.

So I have to wonder: did I sound hysterical back then? Because I wasn’t the only one citing arguments such as my own. The opinions I forwarded were actually fairly prominent in the anti-war crowd.

These apparently repentant former hawks remember things differently, almost using the radical hysteria they cite as an excuse for the wrong decisions they made. They give the clear impression that the anti-war side had no reasonable-sounding arguments.

---

I still have my original “blog” posts, back before I found Movable Type and WordPress, where I made the pages one by one with a web page editor. I was just so upset about the impending war that I had to express myself.

At the time, I had the motivations for war at least partly incorrect: I felt the major impetus for Bush was to hold on to the fantastic surge in popularity he enjoyed after 9/11, and the resulting political capital it gave him. Bush was unusual because for the most part of his presidency his popularity sank with almost machine-like regularity, buoyed only by major events (9/11, the beginning of the Iraq War, and the capture of Saddam). Driving up popular support and translating that into political capital was indeed one element of the drive for war, but certainly not the main one, which now appears to have been geopolitical, to assert control over a major oil-producing region, as well as dynastic, in the sense that the Cold War was over and the military industry needed new fuel and the pols a new foe.

My main screed against the war was in this post from August 2002, however. So let’s see how hysterical I was.

I was right and wrong on a central issue:

The arguments for getting Saddam out of power are easy: he’s a dangerous madman, and we could overwhelm the Iraqi military. But the question is not should Saddam go, or could we win in a limited conflict: the question is, how can we do this without bringing about catastrophe? Imagine that rats have infested your home. There is no question that they must go; but do you exterminate them by taking a flamethrower to the building? Method is crucial.

I was wrong in that I felt Saddam had to go. He was a tin-pot dictator, and those are a dime a dozen. After the first Gulf War, he was beaten down and contained. His utility in holding the different sects within Iraq relatively stable probably outweighed any risk he presented.

Otherwise, I was very much correct: from the beginning of my writing, I centered in on what would become the central issue of the war: method and management.

I stepped back and made these general points in the argument against going to war:

• There was not enough international support
• The cost would be prohibitive
• We would take a body blow to our reputation
• We would violate our long-held no-first-strike policy
• The war could escalate and set fire to the region

I was right on the first one; the “Coalition of the Willing” was a joke. It was the U.S. and the U.K. with a few scattered allies. We denigrated the nations that refused to go along (remember how Congress idiotically banished french fries?), which didn’t help things much.

I was also right on the second one, but to an embarrassingly modest degree. I cited an $80 billion cost.

I was right that it damaged our reputation; though the costs are not outwardly apparent, it’s pretty obvious that while respecting our power, the world has far less respect today for our judgment.

I was right about violating our policies against instigating war… and no one still seems to give a damn. A new age.

I was wrong on the escalation; while the war did inflame Iraq and set off a civil war, it did not come close to the conflagration I warned was likely. Glad to be wrong on that, but was I hysterical on that point? I could probably appear that way, especially if you focused on that and ignored the rest.

The rest included my next series of points, on reasons not to believe the hype:

• I stated that Cheney was lying about Iraq’s nuclear program and there was no evidence that Iraq was any nuclear threat at all; I noted similar false claims from the first Gulf War.
• I noted that Bush needed Congressional approval. (They later gave it, making this point moot.)
• I noted that the claims linking Hussein to terrorists were false.

While the second point became moot, I was perfectly accurate on the first and last. Cheney was lying, and there was no link to al Qaeda.

Finally, I made my closing argument:

And then we come to the end game: what is the exit strategy? How long will it take? How many of our troops will die? How many Iraqis (whom the Bush Jr. administration claims to be acting to benefit) will we end up killing? How long will our troops be there? How deeply will we become involved in rooting out everyone there who violently disagrees with our occupation? And how will the nation-building succeed? What guarantees do we have that the moment we extract ourselves, another Saddam Hussein won’t pop up again and bring us back to square one? As far as I can determine, not a single one of these questions has been answered.

If that’s not enough still, then ask yourself: in the Gulf War, why did we not follow through and get Saddam then? What stopped us? There are many answers to that question, but hardly a one of them is less valid today than it was a decade ago. What stopped us then will not stop us any less today.

Tell me how hysterical I was. How I was not “sensible” or “serious.” How I was incapable of “rational debate.” Go ahead.

I predicted the lack of an exit strategy and asked how long our troops would be there: spot on. The war lasted a decade.

I predicted the toll on the soldiery. 4488 died.

I predicted the cost in civilian lives. The documented number is 110,000 to 120,000, and the real number is likely far higher.

I predicted the futility of nation-building: does anyone feel that Iraq is now rock-solid? It took us a decade to feel confident enough to leave, but we leave hardly confident in the long-term stability of the government.

In short, these two paragraphs, my focus on method, planning, and outcomes, could hardly have been more prescient unless I had somehow magically predicted the specific blunders committed by the Bush administration.

Alas, I then conclude with my three errors: that Bush was only seeking a boost in the polls, that Saddam had to go, and that it could lead to even a nuclear conflict in the Middle East.

---

Did I, and the many people making similar arguments, sound hysterical? Only if you carefully choose which specific arguments to note, or which voices of protest to even listen to. If you only singled out the easiest points to disagree with, or if you only paid attention to the conspiracy theorists, then you could feel there was a case for how the other side was not reasonable. This, however, is dishonest; the greater part of the movement against the war made sound, salient points, and correctly tried to warn against the grave errors we were about to commit.

There was great doubt about the motives for going to war; that was correct and reasonable. There were many voices doubting the “facts” we were being presented; that was more correct than even we knew at the time. There was the argument that it would cost too much; again, we were more right than we could have guessed. There were concerns about quagmire and drawn-out conflicts; we could not have been more right.

To reduce the anti-war movement from that time to “drum circles with wild hair” who were “nasty and hysterical, and impossible to talk to” is revealing not of the anti-war movement but of the pro-war movement. Even today, when supposedly recalcitrant, they completely omit the presence of rational people, in great numbers, who made sensible arguments that proved true over time, and instead contrast their former positions with the extremists only.

…every “sensible” and “serious” person you knew — left or right — was for the war.

It’s easy to say that when you shallowly dismiss anyone opposed to your point of view as not being sensible or serious, instead lumping them all together with the extremists.

As foul as it was, the event was a pleasant thing to see, in a way, because it made me feel more secure in the rightness of the war the US was about to undertake.

This sums up the righteous smugness of the pro-war crowd: I can dismiss all who disagree with me instead of confronting and answering the grave and serious challenges forwarded by reasonable people.

Yes, there were lots of people shouting “No War for Oil.” You know what? Oil did have something to do with it. Obviously. Yes, there were conspiracy theorists. You know what? They were in the minority.

Sorry, but you can’t be repentant by half-blaming your bad decisions on straw men.

You know what would be a genuine expression of regret? Citing the people that warned correctly, noting how and why you chose to dismiss their arguments, explaining how and why you believed the falsehoods and validated the liars, and making a sincere statement about not dismissing such warnings or believing the hype in the future. Write that essay, and I will feel that you will be less likely to err again in the future.

Instead, these people gloss over the details of their errors and instead continue to focus on how unreasonable the other side was. They admit to gross errors, but remain blind to the mechanism that led to them.

The word “hysteria” is often used to describe the anti-war movement. There was hysteria enough to go around to be sure, but very little was coming from the rational crowd against the war. The real hysteria, one these now-penitent hawks seem still blind to, was the quiet hysteria of fear, pride, and patriotism that allowed them to abandon reason and believe the obvious lies that were being served to them. “Hysteria” is defined as “exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement” in a group of people. That perfectly describes what drove the pro-war movement.

It’s just that so many people concerned with these things have given themselves over to the kind of hysteria that makes rational debate impossible.

Funny. That was my impression of the pro-war crowd. We were talking about the lack of convincing evidence, while you guys were buying patently false evidence and demanding immediate action; we were talking about how Hussein was not seriously armed while you guys were claiming Hussein obviously had WMD because he threw out the inspectors (which he didn’t); we were asking about cost in dollars and lives while you guys were saying it would be a cakewalk and that Iraqi oil would pay for the negligible bill; we were asking about exit strategies while you guys were glibly insisting that Iraqis would throw flowers at our soldier’s feet.

And, after time has proven us right and you wrong, you have the utter gall to claim that we were emotionally hysterical, impossible to talk to, and incapable of rational debate?

Go frack yourself. You were the hysterical ones—and that was what truly drove us to war. The fear of terrorism after 9/11, and the atmosphere that dominated in which one had to be gung-ho or else you were “not with us” and therefore “against us.”

There were many, many voices of reason who were very much right about the reasons not to go to war. I don’t give a crap about what Clinton said at times. Pols will speak to what’s popular and easy; the politicians were not, for the most part, the heart of the anti-war movement. Nor was the anti-war movement marked by the crazies, rather the crazies were used to denigrate the reasoned and reasonable opposition. We were all treated as blind idiots or dangerous traitors, impossible to reason with.

And even after all that has happened, the people who were so clearly wrong in foresight and in hindsight still make the same false claims about those they disagreed with, still use them as a false foil to assuage their guilt and remorse.

From an article in the AP’s “Big Story”:

For 2013, families with incomes in the top 20 percent of the nation will pay an average of 27.2 percent of their income in federal taxes, according to projections by the Tax Policy Center, a research organization based in Washington. The top 1 percent of households, those with incomes averaging $1.4 million, will pay an average of 35.5 percent.

Those tax rates, which include income, payroll, corporate and estate taxes, are among the highest since 1979.

The average family in the bottom 20 percent of households won’t pay any federal taxes. Instead, many families in this group will get payments from the federal government by claiming more in credits than they owe in taxes, including payroll taxes. That will give them a negative tax rate.

“My sense is that high-income people feel abused by being targeted always for more taxes,” Roberton Williams, a fellow at the Tax Policy Center, said. “You can understand why they feel that way.”

No, actually, I can’t. It’s more an issue of why these people don’t understand how well-off they are. If they want to gripe about how good the bottom 20% have it, then they should offer someone from the bottom 20% to switch places.

No? Then quit whining and shut the frack up.

The top 20% make a minimum of $92,000 a year with a marginal tax rate on their highest dollar ranging from 28% ($87,851 to $183,250) to 39.6% ($400,001 and up), meaning that with deductions, they probably don’t even enter that bracket at all. People throughout the top 20% often pay an effective rate of no more than 20%. Plus, they often get benefits like health insurance which is not reported as income.

And the bottom 20%? A shmoe breaking his back working 50 hours a week all year round, no vacation time at all, at minimum wage, will earn $18,850—putting him just barely above the top of the bottom 20%, which earns at most $18,500 a year. Give the guy one week off a year (the lazy moocher!) and he is right at about the top of the bottom-20% heap.

Now, if you can get by on that much, especially with a family to feed, and pay for minimal health care, and claim you still deserve to pay federal income taxes on top of your social security tax, Medicare tax, sales tax, state and local taxes, and all the other taxes you have… then congratulations, you’re Mother Freakin’ Theresa.

The article is slanted and just wrong in several places. Aside from the obvious falsehood of quoting marginal rates rather than effective rates, it makes the old and tired “the poor pay no federal taxes” error (the bottom 20% pay around an average 2% effective rate on federal taxes, mostly payroll), and ignores local taxes, especially the most regressive tax, the sales tax. The “many” families who get more credits than taxes are not enumerated or specified (nor are the special breaks for the top 20%, for the same reason—it would go against the false argument being made), and the “average” family in the bottom 20% makes almost no money at all, so forgive the destitute for getting food stamps so their children only starve just so much. Not to mention the fact that the article fails to mention that the wealthy in America enjoy lower tax rates than about two-thirds of industrialized countries. Sure, taxes in Korea, Belgium, and New Zealand are a bit better, but try living in France, Germany, or Belgium where personal tax rates hover around 50% and sales/VAT taxes can be as high as 20%.

And then consider that even our bottom 20% looks pretty damn good to the majority of people living in the world—who probably spend way less time whining about their lot in life than our top 20% do. When Sachi and I get big tax bills to pay, that’s how we see it: we’re way better off than most people are in the world, and we’re grateful to be there.

So if you’re in the top 20%: stop being a selfish goddamn crybaby, pay your damn share, and be grateful you have it so well.

Many companies use focus groups, and give you what you say you want.

Apple forgoes focus groups, and gives you what you want but didn’t know you wanted.

Time-Warner Cable makes up their own facts, and tells you what you don’t want, even if you are sure you want it.

And what it says you don’t want is good service.

It should come as no surprise that TWC ignores popular demand and instead insists that no one wants Gigabit Internet:

Speaking at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference, Time Warner Cable’s Chief Financial Officer Irene Esteves seemed dismissive of the impact Google Fiber is having on consumers. “We’re in the business of delivering what consumers want, and to stay a little ahead of what we think they will want,” she said when asked about the breakneck internet speeds delivered by Google’s young Kansas City network. “We just don’t see the need of delivering that to consumers.” Esteves seems to think business customers are more likely to need that level of throughput, and notes that Time Warner Cable is already competitive .

In case you didn’t notice the stench, that’s all a pile of something well-digested and fetid.

Wired nails it on the head:

Experts believe that this reluctance has less to do with a lack of customer demand and more to do with protecting high margin broadband businesses. Companies like Time Warner Cable make around a 97 percent profit on existing services, Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffet told the MIT Technology Review this month. But Verizon is more interested in wireless broadband, on which it can make an “absolute killing,” by charging per gigabyte for usage, broadband industry watcher and DSL Reports editor Karl Bode told Wired earlier this year.

In other words, rather than spending money on high-speed networks due to customer demand, telecoms are instead cashing in on the least they can offer while charging ahead on technologies which offer the highest profit margins—and since they move in lockstep with little or no real competition, customers get no say in the matter.

Telecoms are like any other corporation: get as much money by any means necessary. In the early 1990’s, a variety of telecoms successfully lobbied states to get them to drop regulation limiting their profits on services that were, effectively, monopolies. In exchange, the telecoms promised delivery of near-universal 45 Mbps fiber-optic broadband throughout these states by deadlines ranging from the 90’s to 2015. Most states agreed, leading to hundreds of billions in extra profits for the telecoms—who soon after this killed most of their fiber-optic programs. The extra profits the telecoms have made over the past 20 years from the rate hikes they were allowed could have paid for nationwide broadband.

Do we have that? Not even close. And now these same companies are saying it won’t come because we don’t want it. Specifically, “We just don’t see the need of delivering that to consumers.”

Of course not. If they can charge $100 a month for 15 or even 5 Mbps in so many locations, who would want to spend all that gravy on new networks instead of simply running off with the cash?

These same profit-rich corporations are instead whining about how they don’t get to invalidate Net Neutrality and charge even more, once again claiming that they need to charge more so they’ll be able to invest in broadband—the exact same shell game they played on us before.

Meanwhile, they reveal that they have no intention of truly improving their networks to the extent people want and need.

No, consumers don’t want Steam to be able to deliver HD games quickly. They don’t want high quality video conferencing. But most importantly, consumers do not want, under any circumstances, Apple or Hulu or Netflix or Amazon to deliver 1080p video over Internet.

Because that would threaten the cable contracts many of the ISPs enjoy with millions of American households, leading to a la carte video services that could be cheaper and more convenient than the crap delivered now. No, consumers don’t want that.

Comcast in California does offer 105 Mbps speeds in major cities… for $110 a month, if you commit to long-term service ($200 a month if not). If you don’t live in a major city in most states, you could pay that much for 30 Mbps.

Here in Tokyo, KDDI offers Gigabit Internet for $60 a month. I know it’s not as expensive to wire up Japan as it is America, but you would think that at least in major Californian cities it would not be double the price for 1/10th the speed… essentially 20 times more expensive for equivalent services… after 20 years of overcharging for enough to pay for it all and then some.

I have to say, I am really getting tired of the quality of “news” and other “informative” content on the web. I know that this is the Internet, but when major sites regularly have headlines that just scream “I’m too lazy to work on it,” or “I want to jazz this up by saying something patently false,” it gets kind of pathetic. When you read an article and the reasoning is something I would give a “D” grade for in a freshman college writing class, it makes you wonder what kind of quality control these “major” sites have.

Two examples today. The first is from SlashGear. The headline: Microsoft secretly increases the price of Mac Office.

Um, how do you “secretly” change an open retail price? The support within the article: “not a lot of people noticed.” </facepalm>

The second is more involved, and comes from a much bigger fish: CNN. The headline: How Samsung is out-innovating Apple. CNN’s “Business Insider” writer claims that after copying the crap out of Apple’s mobile devices, Samsung is “now leapfrogging it with bunch of useful features you can’t find on iPhones and iPads.” And yes, they left out the article before the word “bunch.” That’s another thing, proofreading seems to be a bit of a lost art. I make mistakes now and then, but I’m a part-time blogger with a day job.

The article then promises to lay out how “The evidence is everywhere, but it’s most apparent in products made by Apple’s biggest mobile rival, Samsung.” OK, let’s see the devastating evidence.

First: they have a huge marketing budget. Um. “…but you can’t ignore the fact that the company has innovated a lot by creating popular new product categories that Apple is wary to try.” Start off an article with a huge piece of evidence that Samsung is successful for other reasons than innovation? OK, it’s a contrast, but it means that the writer has to have even stronger evidence following.

Second: Samsung had an unexpected hit with a larger, thicker form factor with a stylus.

This is innovative? Make things larger? Add something that’s been around forever? These are not innovative. The iPad was not innovative because of its size, it was innovative because it redefined what a tablet was, nailing the look and feel but more so the natural usability for such a device. Somehow I don’t think millions of people were so impressed by a big, thick design or an almost retro stylus. iPads don’t come with a stylus, but you can get one. Maybe they were drawn in by a big screen, but that’s not innovative unless there’s a new purpose behind it.

The writer’s take: “Samsung created a new category of smartphone that people didn’t even know they wanted, much like Apple did when it released the first iPhone.”

Not evidenced—and if so, why? Could it possibly have something to do with pricing, marketing, and niche?

Third: Samsung “tout[s] its cool factor,” making fun of Apple fanboys. This is innovation? No, that’s marketing. It supports the point contrary to the thesis. And the article makes no mention of how Samsung products, thick and stylus-wielding, are “cool.”

Fourth, the article offers what may be the only “innovation” in the entire article: “the ability to run two apps at once in a split screen or separate window.” But then the article points out that this is only available for a handful of apps… failing to show how this allows them to “leapfrog Apple” and sell millions of units.

Fifth: software updates from Android. Yes, that’s very innovative of Samsung.

Sixth: Samsung “takes user and reviewer feedback into account when preparing to deliver new software updates.” Focus groups! Focus groups are innovative! Not. That’s the opposite of innovative, you idjit. It’s how you get results like “bring back the stylus” and “make things bigger.”

Last: Microsoft has advantages over Apple with Windows 8. Wait, how does this have anything to do with Samsung?

Then the writer sums up: “Based on all this evidence, Apple feels behind.”

Really? Based on the fact that Samsung has a big marketing budget, sells tablets with thick form factors, big screens and styluses, touts its “cool factor” in ads, has an extremely limited split-screen function, uses focus groups, and runs software from Android and Microsoft… that’s how Apple falls behind?

The writer then explains:

Take a look at its newest fourth-generation iPad. It has a killer processor and other great hardware features, but the operating system doesn’t take advantage of any of that. The home screen is still just a grid of static icons that launch apps.

Double-facepalm. Yes, it’s all about leveraging the speed of the device to make the operating system perform new tricks. Not about what software it can run and how it performs. Got it. Grid of icons are boring, yes, unless you realize that the icons are apps and you can open them and do more interesting things. Are you kidding me?

Apple also isn’t nearly as versatile at adding new software features to its devices. Apple usually makes users wait a year or more for a new version of iOS, and even then some older devices can’t access all the latest and greatest features.

Um, not that must faster, and the updates are slower than iOS to reach hardware. And, I am not certain on this—do all of Android’s and Microsoft’s most recent OS versions run on all past devices? If so, great—but again, not innovative.

Long story short: when will “journalists” learn to write again? I’d love to see that.

On Bill Maher this weekend, Jamie Weinstein of the Daily Caller made the outright claim that raising the minimum wage would increase unemployment.

As you can see, the others recognize this as outright absurdity, but Weinstein maintains his assertion—despite the fact that it has been thoroughly disproven as a concept. Higher minimum wages pump money right back into an economy; the money does not disappear, it goes out and comes right back in.

Unlike giving more money to rich people—which conservatives claim is a job-creating act. Precisely the opposite also of what is true.

Tax cuts for the rich are the least stimulative thing you can do.

In contrast, food stamps—another thing conservatives hate (because feeding poor people is so Communist)—is one of the most economically stimulative things you can do.

It’s as if conservatives set out to find all the things that help the economy most and destroy them, and then find the things that are worst for the economy and embrace them.

Of course, it was deliberate, but not for those reasons. Instead, it is simply, purely self-interest at work. Greed. Screw the nation, screw the people. I’m getting mine, and you can go to hell.

Or, in other words, American Exceptionalism!

Confronting prejudice seems to be a matter of not just social norms, but of visibility, psychology, and choice.

On visibility, race and gender cannot be hidden, so they were confronted much earlier.

Homosexuality is easier to conceal, but hardly easy altogether; it came next.

Belief, however, can be the easiest thing to conceal, making it less necessary to confront.

Then there is how these prejudices tie into our psychology. Race was perhaps the easiest to confront on the grounds that it was justified partly a false scientific claim (that we are significantly different physiologically and psychologically), which was not too difficult to debunk, leading to the exposure of the fact that we are simply xenophobic. Our shared similarities across groups and differences within them helped to cancel much of this out.

Gender is more difficult to confront not just because there are physiological and psychological differences, but also because of the sharp duality most people see, not to mention historical and traditional roles and assumptions—many accepted or even embraced by many women themselves—making it harder to break through.

Homosexuality is tied to any number of sexual mores and bugaboos we still wade neck-deep in, and like gender, is tied to issues of control and self-identity, thus making it more difficult for some to break through.

Atheism, however, confronts some of our deepest fears: that of meaning, purpose—and oblivion. This connects to levels of suppressed horror and despair for some, which, even if subconscious (especially if subconscious!) are most difficult to confront.

Race, gender, and sexual orientation do have something in common, however, which sets them apart from atheism: choice. This is one thing that also delayed acceptance of homosexuality, that it was seen as a lifestyle rather than a permanent, set state of being. This still persists as a way for people to discriminate, because when it comes down to it, one of the best ways to justify a difference in human society is to demonstrate that the difference cannot be chosen or avoided, and thus demands equality on the basis of humanity.

Atheism, however, is in fact, a choice—mostly. Here, it is possible for one to truly convert as one cannot with race, gender, or orientation. I say “mostly,” however, because it is not always easy or even possible to change one’s convictions. For some, it is, but for others, it is so deeply tied to their self-identity that it is pretty much impossible.

All of these reasons explain why outright prejudice against atheists is still accepted.

Think about it: if Newt Gingrich had come out and said he would not accept non-whites in his cabinet, there would have been an outrage. Same for if he had said he would exclude women. Both may have been acceptable—or perhaps, politically survivable—statements more than half a century ago, but are utterly unacceptable today.

Had Newt Gingrich said he would not have any gays serving in government, there would also be public outcry against him. We still hear things like this, but they are now socially unacceptable; as gays come out of the closet, homophobes go in, to join racists and sexists.

But Gingrich did not say any of these things. He said, instead, that he would not accept any atheists serving in his administration.

Nobody even seemed to notice that he had said anything wrong.

And here, Gingrich even noted how it is easier to discriminate against atheists than it is to reject members of other religions:

Now, I happen to think that none of us should rush in judgment of others in the way in which they approach God. And I think that all of us up here I believe would agree. But I think all of us would also agree that there’s a very central part of your faith in how you approach public life. And I, frankly, would be really worried if somebody assured me that nothing in their faith would affect their judgments, because then I’d wonder, where’s your judgment—how can you have judgment if you have no faith? And how can I trust you with power if you don’t pray? Who you pray to, how you pray, how you come close to God is between you and God. But the notion that you’re endowed by your creator sets a certain boundary on what we mean by America.

In short, I can accept you if you’re a Mormon (he was speaking to Mitt Romney’s religion, ironically defining himself as tolerant), or if you’re Jewish, and even potentially if you’re a Hindu or a Muslim (though he would very likely escort such people quietly out the back door).

But if you’re an atheist? You’re damaged goods and have no place in our society. If you think I exaggerate, go back and read what he said again.

Following is a snippet of a discussion on this topic, which prompted this post.

In case you were wondering why “Top 10” and “Top 20” lists are so popular right now, it’s the same reason why regular articles which are not that long are broken up into four parts, or why sites like the Christian Science Monitor offer so many “fun” quizzes and tests: to get money.

It’s all about the ad count. The more times you can make a reader visit a new page, the more ads they are exposed to. Numbered lists are perfect for this: each item gets its own page. Make it interesting, and you get 10 or 20 times the number of ads you can reasonably get away with on a page.

Quizzes (can you pass a citizenship test?) are even bigger traps: users are drawn into finishing these as they get no payback until the very end; this is abused when the number of questions is not initially revealed and the test goes on and on and on…. Alternately, sites can double the ad views by giving a page to each answer as well as to each question.

However, any quiz or numbered-item article should be approached with caution; they are the go-to gimmick these days, and are made not because they have anything interesting to forward, but simply because it’s time for a new one.

I understand that sites have to find a way to pay for everything, but there comes a point when it goes a bit too far.

You know what would probably pull in more money from ads? Stop making them distracting. I’d love to see an ad service that guarantees no ads will move, jump, cycle, or otherwise distract from the primary focus of the page. If they did that, I would switch off my ad blocker (as would perhaps millions of others) and, if the ads were designed right, I would probably start clicking on them.

But if Top 100 lists draw in enough yokels and lets those with ad blockers sail serenely past… well, so be it.

This is an article from 2006, and I stand by it just as much if not more than I did seven years ago. I feel it is important to reach out and find extraterrestrial life, and the recent discovery of so many exoplanets is an exciting step in this direction. However, for the reasons given below, I don’t think it’ll be accomplished using radio frequencies.

To me, that smacks of assumptions that are almost childlike: we are in our technological infancy, barely just discovered how to use electricity a century or so ago, and we presume that this is the ultimate communications medium that everyone is using. Seen in proper context, we kind of look like a six-year-old working with string tied between tin cans. Not that the technology can’t work, but rather than there are probably several generations of communications technology that are currently beyond our understanding.

A commenter in 2007 added another point: we presume that evolution necessarily leads to intelligence, in particular an inquiring or social intelligence, when that may not be the norm.

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I am very much a fan of science, as well as science fiction. I am pretty certain that other life and civilizations exist out there, and am quite keen on the concept of contacting that life.

That said, I don’t think SETI will ever accomplish anything. Here’s why.

Imagine there is a tribe of primitive people on a remote and small archipelago in the south Pacific (where these imaginary tribesmen are usually located), who have never encountered anyone else in the world. They are way off of sea and air traffic lanes, so they have never even seen any evidence of others living on Earth. They do know the Earth is curved (they see boats going to their most distant island disappear over the horizon) and vast, and they wonder: are there any other people, any other tribes out there?

So they send their smartest people off to try to contact others using the most sophisticated communications technology they possess. These big brains climb the tallest mountain in the island chain, start a fire, and begin sending up smoke signals. The communications team figures that if anyone exists out beyond that horizon, surely they will see the signals, and if they do, they will reply in kind. The intrepid team spends weeks up on the mountain, sending signals and keeping a keen and vigilant watch on all horizons for any reply.

Eventually, after receiving no answers to their many signals, they decide to pack it in. Either there is no one else out there, or they aren’t watching for smoke signals, or they aren’t advanced enough to understand or send them, or they just don’t care to reply. Regardless of which is true, they cannot find any evidence of life out there.

And as they walk down the mountain in resignation, they are completely unaware that at that instant, countless radio signals from dozens of highly advanced civilizations on Earth are coursing through the very space they occupy.

In this analogy, we are the tribesmen.

It has always surprised me that this probable truth is never discussed, that I have encountered at least, in public discourse about the search for intelligent life in the universe. No one seems to consider or at least speak aloud the most likely case that alien signals abound around us–but we simply don’t have the technology to pick them up.

Think of the scientific arrogance: we are supposed to assume that the long-range communications technology we possess–electromagnetic radiation signaling–is somehow the ultimate in scientific achievement. Here we are, just beginning our scientific development, still without a unified theory on how the universe works, and yet the technology we developed just a hundred years ago–the blink of an eye by cosmological standards, and just the very beginning of what is likely a long technological evolution–is the end-all-be-all of cosmic telephony. I find the idea highly unlikely. You might say that there is no better conceivable technology than radio to communicate–but I’m sure that what was thought of the last best way to talk before radio technology was developed.

I have little doubt that decades, centuries, or even millennia in the future, we will discover if not one, then many more advanced stages of communications technology, and when that time comes, we’ll discover why things seem so silent in the universe when we listen just with radio telescopes.

So, you buy Office 2013—except now the purchase has changed. Instead of paying, say, $125 for a Home & Student version, which you can use for as many years as you like, you will pay a subscription for Office 2013, $100 a year. So, if you use it for just three years (I have been using my Office 2008 for 5 years now), you would pay $300. Deal, right?

It gets better. With Office 2010, you can transfer the software to a new computer. Your old computer gets too slow, so you buy a new one. Just delete Office from your old PC, reinstall it on the new one, and you get more years of use.

Not so with Microsoft’s new setup. Here, the suite is tied to a single machine. You get a new computer, you pay all over again. Even if your old computer is stolen or breaks down.

I know some people—not many, but some—who still use Office 2003. They may have paid $125 or $150 ten years ago, and still have a usable app. Microsoft’s new arrangement means that in order to do the same thing, they have to shell out $1000. Sure, you (presumably) get the upgrades over time, but people still using 2003 obviously don’t need them. And yes, you can still get the non-subscription apps—but Microsoft is clearly signaling a sea change here; you can expect the future to be by subscription.

They try to sweeten the deal, like with 60 free Skype minutes (Microsoft bought up Skype, making changes I hate, like the “home” screen you are unable to escape), and 20GB of SkyDrive space.

A lot of people feel compelled to get Microsoft’s office suite. Because it’s what everyone uses. Because they believe that only Microsoft’s product can create or open Microsoft files. Because they don’t know that any alternatives even exist.

Well, they do. There are cheap and free alternatives. If you use a Mac, Apple sells their suite for $20 an app (Microsoft sells theirs at $110 a pop as standalones), or the whole suite for $60, no subscription. Outlook sells for $110 also, while Apple’s Mail is free.

But even better are the freebies. You could use Open Office (if you feel like you want to use an Office 2003 clone), or even better, just use GMail. It will open and save MS Word docs, so there’s no problem with compatibility.

Just create a free GMail account and get 10GB of storage (my school account gives me 25GB). Get Google Drive and have synced folders on your computers. Go into your account and click on the “Drive” link at the top, and you see all the files that are saved in that folder, from any computer you choose. You also get an Office Suite, not as powerful as Microsoft’s now-even-more-pricey version, but with all the features you are likely to use. Available on any computer you sign into GMail with—ultimately portable.

Go into the word processor, and use an interface not unlike Word’s. Use any of Google’s 600+ online fonts, or just the standards. Do text formatting, indents, margins, alignment, line spacing, the works. Keyboard shortcuts work much as they would on a regular app. Headers and footers with automatic page numbering. An equation editor. Comments. Insert images, create shapes, make tables. Open any document, save it to your Google account, or export it to your desktop as MS Word, PDF, Open Office, RTF, or plain text.

Printing will save the file to your computer as a PDF, preserving the fonts (though you can download and install any or all of them if you want).

Same goes for spreadsheets instead of Excel, presentations instead of PowerPoint. There’s a drawing program and a form builder. And then you can add from a long list of extra apps, including code editors, QR code generators, Mail Merge, photo cataloging and editing apps, chart and diagram builders, as well as more alternatives for text editing and presentation building. More than 100 add-on apps.

OK, so there’s no “Smart Art” or “Word Art.” How often do you really use those, anyway? If you need advanced features, then you’re out of luck—but probably 95% of all Word users don’t. And I have not checked all the add-on apps; it’s possible that some have the missing features you might need, like Mail Merge.

Don’t like where Microsoft is going? Don’t use it. Just get free GMail. Save a cool grand over a decade.

Pretty amazing…

Of course, it remains to be seen if this stuff is for real. Does it wear out after three days? Does it really perform like the demo, or is it rigged in some way?

Infomercial in three, two….

Ann Coulter said yesterday, “Universal background check means universal registration, universal registration means universal confiscation, universal extermination. That is how it goes in history.”

Oh, and my dog crapped this morning.