Falwell says Hillary would spark base
The Rev. Jerry Falwell says a White House run by Sen.Nice to know he has his priorities straight.
Hillary Rodham Clinton would energize his base of religious conservatives even more than if the devil were the Democratic nominee.
'I certainly hope that Hillary is the candidate,' Falwell told a private prayer breakfast. 'Because nothing will energize my (constituency) like
Hillary Clinton.'
It looks like my earlier rant was a bit premature. PVRWire reports that the Zune will go for $249 or less, not the $299 that had been reported elsewhere. This will make the device much more competitive.
But I still think the "Plays For Sure" debacle remains a major turn-off. Why shove yet another DRM scheme down consumers' throats and abandon everyone who bought WMP tracks through MSN Music, Urge, Napster, Musicmatch and Yahoo?
Update: Looks like the final price will be even less - $230.
Because sometimes the government is wrong. This is just reprehensible:
Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.
...
Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan -- where he never has been -- and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.
Bush and torture apologists will argue that the U.S. was only following up on some bad information -- blame Canada! But again, this is the perfect example of why a fair trial is so important. What happened to Arar shouldn't happen to anyone. (For the record, he's a Canadian citizen, but was kidnapped on U.S. soil.)
A refresher:
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense.
- Amendment VI, U.S. Constitution
Microsoft's new iPod killer will be priced at $284 at Wal-Mart -- $55 more than a 30 gig iPod -- and won't play Windows Media DRM-protected files.
First, the price: I realize Zune has a bigger screen and more features than the iPod. But if Microsoft really wants to stop iPod's steamroller momentum, the device will have to sell at a lower price -- not a similar price and definitely not at a higher price. The iTunes has a far bigger ecosystem, which makes it a much safer bet for the consumer. Microsoft should appreciate better than anyone and price accordingly.
Now about the DRM: Basically, if you've thrown in your lot with Microsoft and bought music at one of the partner sites, you're out of luck. I'm not sure how Redmond is going to convince anyone to trust Microsoft again with yet another DRM scheme.
Or maybe this is just a clever ploy by Microsoft to convince everyone that digital-rights management technology is hopelessly broken.
U.S. war prisons legal vacuum for 14,000: "Seventy to 90 percent of the Iraq detentions in 2003 were 'mistakes,' U.S. officers once told the international Red Cross."
Suspects are only suspects until they're convicted in a fair trial. Because sometimes -- indeed, with this administration, most of the time -- the government is wrong.
A former Microsoftie chides Apple for blatantly copying its Media Center interface. I've criticized Apple for the same thing, though in this case, it seems especially egregious.
In most cases, Apple at least improves the technology -- sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Not this time.
Nice rant against Amazon's new video download service. I tried it, too, but the software was so buggy I uninstalled it about five minutes later. Cory Doctorow's complaint is much more specific, but he absolutely right.
New York Times' David Pogue blogs today about cultural artifacts of obsolete technology, specifically, cartoon sound effects:
What about the needle-scratching-across-the-vinyl-record sound? It’s still used everywhere, in cartoons, movies and so on, to represent a rude awakening, an abrupt interruption of a scene’s mood or the main character’s reverie. But today’s children have never even seen a record player. Isn’t the record-scratch sound totally lost on them?
And what about “ka-CHING!”? Cash registers don’t go ka-CHING anymore–they go beep!
I'd add to that the whole notion of "dialing" someone's phone number on your cell phone.
"Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be to think that if we pulled out, the terrorists would leave us alone," Bush said in an Oval Office address.
Again, completely missing the point. Not a single person has suggested leaving Iraq so the "terrorists would leave us alone." No, critics suggested not invading in the first place because Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11 and has become a major, intractable distraction in the war on terrorism. Is the president intellectually dishonest or just an idiot?
Cheney: Govt did "helluva job" since Sept 11 - Yahoo! News: "The government has done 'a helluva job' guarding America, Vice President Dick Cheney said on Sunday, as President George W. Bush prepared to visit Ground Zero amid an election-year debate on whether the country is safer five years after the September 11 attacks.Yes, even after Katrina, the administration is still tone deaf.
It's actually an online version of her portfolio, so if you'd like to see how talented she is, check it out.
Well, it's getting there. The formatting is slowly getting fixed, though new-and-improved commenting system is still whacked out. So everyone just shut up for a minute and let me think.
I'm performing a long-needed redesign of the site to make it a little fresher and less cluttered. So far, so good, I think. I need to fill up the left side and fix a few nagging style and coding issues, though.
If all goes well, I should have the update done before Andrea gets back tomorrow night.
I was wrong. Rumsfeld's outrageous, insane -- dare I say fascist? -- rhetoric does deserve a response. And MSNBC's Keith Olbermann delivers a doozy:
Mr. Rumsfeld’s remarkable speech to the American Legion yesterday demands the deep analysis—and the sober contemplation—of every American.
For it did not merely serve to impugn the morality or intelligence -- indeed, the loyalty -- of the majority of Americans who oppose the transient occupants of the highest offices in the land. Worse still, it credits those same transient occupants -- our employees -- with a total omniscience; a total omniscience which neither common sense, nor this administration’s track record at home or abroad, suggests they deserve.
Dissent and disagreement with government is the life’s blood of human freedom; and not merely because it is the first roadblock against the kind of tyranny the men Mr. Rumsfeld likes to think of as “his” troops still fight, this very evening, in Iraq.
It is also essential. Because just every once in awhile it is right, and the power to which it speaks is wrong.
Of course, Olbermann is understating his case. This administration hasn't been occasionally wrong. It's been consistently, spectacularly, tragically wrong.
In unusually explicit terms, Rumsfeld portrayed the administration’s critics as suffering from “moral or intellectual confusion” about what threatens the nation’s security and accused them of lacking the courage to fight back.
In remarks to several thousand veterans at the American Legion’s national convention, Rumsfeld recited what he called the lessons of history, including the failed efforts to appease the Adolf Hitler regime in the 1930s.
This sort of rhetoric kind of speaks for itself.
This has been in the works for a little while, but I can finally talk about it openly now that it's official. I've been named assistant tech editor here at IBD, which basically means I get a little more money for a lot more work.
It also means I'll be stuck in the office most of the day rather than out doing interviews. I do, however, get a window cubicle. So I have that going for me.
