Photosynth now available in Firefox!

Trust me, it's cool. 

Link

What part of "shall not be suspended" does he not understand?

Just when you think you've heard everything from this administration, it finds another way to demonstrate its utter contempt for the U.S. Constitution. And these people have the nerve to label Iraq war opponents traitors.

One of the Bush administration's most far-reaching assertions of government power was revealed quietly last week when Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testified that habeas corpus -- the right to go to federal court and challenge one's imprisonment -- is not protected by the Constitution.

"The Constitution doesn't say every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right of habeas,'' Gonzales told Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Jan. 17.

Gonzales acknowledged that the Constitution declares "habeas corpus shall not be suspended unless ... in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.'' But he insisted that "there is no express grant of habeas in the Constitution."

Chilling.

So much for McCain the reformer

McCain Flip-Flops On Lobbying Reform, Caves To Pressure From Religious Right

The question is, why is the religious right against campaign finance disclosure? I understand why it would oppose finance caps, but disclosure? Aren't these people supposed to be pro-truth? Or has power become more important than principle?

The Computer With a TV, and a Family's Virtual Bulletin Board

 The NY Times' take a look at the HP touch-screen computer I mentioned earlier.

Link

iPhone & LG KE850: separated at birth?

Apple innovates yet again!

Engadget has the story

A lunchtime chat with Bill Gates at CES

No, not with me. But Engadget has an interesting inteview with Bill Gates about the future of the Xbox, which in case you haven't heard, will become a cable-like set-top box with Microsoft and its partners roll out IPTV services late this year. This is in addition to the high-def movies Microsoft already sells through the Xbox Line marketplace.

As Gates puts in in the interview: "The reason we got into Xbox at the beginning was not just gaming. It was very, very important."

Link

So THAT's why it's so addictive...

 Xbox designers explain the strange appeal of the system's Achievement Points system...

It's so clever," he says. "I mean, it's just a score. You may say it can't be used for anything, but gamers use them for pride. They're pride points! You can compare it to the feeling you get when you pull up to a restaurant in a Lamborghini. People go, 'Oooo, he must be somebody.' In the virtual world of gaming, points create that same sense of rank and envy, and that's why gamers have latched onto them. I read that people are picking up the Burger King Xbox games just so they can score additional points. If that doesn't prove how well this program is working, nothing does."

Not that I would ever resort to playing something as lame as, say Uno, for the easy gamer points..

Link

Happy New Year, from Microsoft

I and hundreds of other Windows Vista beta testers awoke Jan. 1 to discover that the operating system's Media Center functionality stopped working with nary a warning, even though the Vista beta (release candidate 1) isn't set to expire until this summer.

That wouldn't be so bad if the final version of Vista were available to purchase. Looks like Andrea and I are set to miss a whole month of Heroes and Ugly Betty.

Mouse and keyboard on the Xbox 360?

Everyone knows that first-person shooters were meant for the mouse and keyboard -- the mouse to aim and shoot and keyboard to run and perform complicated tasks. That's why I've never liked playing them on consoles. I even hated the much-vaunted Goldeneye.

With that in mind, you can imagine my excitement at the thought of hooking up this adapter to my Xbox 360 and dominating Gears of War.

Alas, it is not to be. As this review, explains, it's great in theory, but just doesn't work that well in real life. Sigh.

Possible contender for my next laptop?

I have my heart set on the nice-but-pricey Lenovo X60 tablet, but this HP tx1000 looks interesting.

I was holding off on the big upgrade until I see what Apple announces in January, but now, I'll have to wait to see the exact price, weight and keyboard size of this HP model.

TabletPCReview has the scoop.

Link

Reporters and Parrots

Google's research director, Peter Norvig, has an issue with journalists.

1. Parroting: The reporter's job is to do research to find the facts. But too often they seem to parrot back whatever is fed to them by press releases, politicians, or other news reports. My friend Joe C. calls this the stenographic approach to reporting.
2. Deception: Public figures lie (Marth Stewart, Kenneth Lay), and reporters do not know who to trust. Reporters lie, either to advance their career (Jayson Blair) or to serve the interests of their corporate sponsors. Sometimes the deception is self-deception: reporters (and others) believe what they want to believe.
3. Innumeracy: Prof. John McCarthy has touted the slogan He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense. Perhaps the budding reporters with an ability for arithmetic end up in other fields (like me), but it does seem that reporters repeatedly show they are not capable of simple multiplication and division.
4. Equal Time: Perhaps influenced by the sports pages, reporters tend to see issues as a competition with two sides, which must both be covered. Sometimes this is true, but sometimes one side is right and the other is objectively wrong. Reporters should do enough research to determine who is right and say so. They are too easily manipulated by those who have no facts on their side, but get equal press time anyways just by talking loudly.

Link

O Christmas Tree

Andrea's first multimedia project is up at the Mercury News site.

I'm person of the year!

But my accomplishment is somewhat diluted by the fact that you also have been named Time Magazine's person of the year.

Hypocrisy can be funny

From This Modern World.

Backstory here.

Sorry about the ads and popups

I had my debit card replaced and forgot to update my billing info with Tripod. It should be fixed by tomorrow.

Paul Krugman on the Great Wealth Transfer

 A well-reasoned piece in Rolling Stone magazine -- yes, Rolling Stone -- about why Bush isn't getting credit for a recovering economy.

The economic pie is getting bigger -- how can it be true that most Americans are getting smaller slices? The answer, of course, is that a few people are getting much, much bigger slices. Although wages have stagnated since Bush took office, corporate profits have doubled. The gap between the nation's CEOs and average workers is now ten times greater than it was a generation ago. And while Bush's tax cuts shaved only a few hundred dollars off the tax bills of most Americans, they saved the richest one percent more than $44,000 on average. In fact, once all of Bush's tax cuts take effect, it is estimated that those with incomes of more than $200,000 a year -- the richest five percent of the population -- will pocket almost half of the money. Those who make less than $75,000 a year -- eighty percent of America -- will receive barely a quarter of the cuts. In the Bush era, economic inequality is on the rise.

Some would argue that economic inequality shouldn't be cause for alarm, so long as everyone's standard of living is improving. But money equals power, and most would agree that concentrated power -- whether from a communist government, fascist dictator or capitalist oligarchy -- is a bad thing.

Andrea survives another round of layoffs

She didn't get the dreaded call this morning, so it looks like she's safe, at least for another six months. But this business had better figure out how to make money online, and fast.

HP's cool new Media Center PC

HP has been putting a a lot more emphasis on design lately, as evidenced by its soon-to-launch Vista showcase PC.

Among other features, it sports integrated FM and HDTV tuners, built-in camera and a touch-screen interface with this at-a-glance calendar and info center. It looks like it'll cost about $1,800.

Very cool. Expensive, but cool.

Engadget has the scoop.

A Brief History of Game Console Warfare

From BusinessWeek. Interesting graphic, though a bit inaccurate in places -- "Microsoft's Xbox marked the software company's debut in producing hardware of any kind." Really, BusinessWeek? Are you sure about that?

I have a really cool book, Digital Retro, that talks about the history of personal computers and mentions several of the game consoles. Naturally, it goes into a bit more depth than BusinessWeek could with its graphic and features lots of nice, big pictures. I would love to see the author tackle the game console business in a follow-up volume.

Link

Gears Of War trailer

Here's that game I wrote about earlier.