Worst… commercial… ever…

This is that stupid Visa commercial where everyone is moving smoothly, like the little cogs in the capatalist machine that they are, getting their food pellets and paying using their track-your-purchases-sell-your-data-while-opening-you-to -identity-theft-and-making-your-our-debt-slave-Visa card. Then some free thinker uses cash to pay and it gums up the whole thing. Anarchy is introduced until he moves along…

Beyond the whole socio-political bent above, the thing that actual bugs me is that it is complete bullshit. Paying with a card? You might as well pay with pennies and count them out. Everytime I’m getting coffee or a sandwich or something and someone pulls out a credit card for a $1.75 item, it makes me crazy while I sit and watch them run it through, wait for the stupid thing to print out, find a pen and then sign it. Meanwhile, everyone else in the line has their cash in hand, ready to pay, and the cashier can make change much, much faster.

One of the weirdest things about getting older

is that I’m finding myself sympathising more with the parents in the teen movies. When Larry Miller say “You’re 18, you don’t know what you want. And you won’t know what you want ’til you’re 45, and even if you get it, you’ll be too old to use it.” in 10 things I hate about you, I’m thinking exactly the same thing. About the 18 part. The 45 year old part, that line is strictly for the kids.

Live from Macworld 2007: Steve Jobs keynote – Engadget

Live from Macworld 2007: Steve Jobs keynote – Engadget

Engadget always has my favorite Apple keynote coverage.

So, Apple TV has a hard drive. Ok, cool. $299, decent

So the iPhone is official! widescreen, touchscreen, 4 or 8GB of RAM, runs OS X, lives on Cingular. Do I want one? Absolutely. At $499 will I buy one? extremely doubtful

Where is the new iPod and new iLife? Where is the One more thing? Don’t hold out on us now!

Oh, so much to love about January

CES, Mac Expo and NAMM. A tech and gear geek’s favorite month of the year!

Belkin iPod mixer thing
Guess what? I’m not going to any of them (got some big deadlines coming up), but I am following all the action, ya know, remotely.

So here’s what I’ve found so far:

you have no privacy: part 1,000,000

The Seattle Times: Bush says feds can open mail without warrant

Despite George Bush’s desire to be compared favorably to Harry Truman, he is acting a lot more like Joseph Stalin.

related:
Caught with his hand in the civil rights cookie jar AGAIN
King Bush
Ben Franklin kicking it on the current spying debate tip
The end of civil liberties
The President is spying on us

(man, I gotta move all those posts over here)

Why we won’t see an Apple Tablet next week

What Jobs told me on the iPhone | Technology | Guardian Unlimited Technology


David Sobotta writes a blog that is about as close to mini-MSFT for apple that I’ve seen. He doesn’t dish the dirt the way that Mini does, but he does shed light into the murky corridors of power on the infinite loop. Of course, I know from my Apple buddies that it is crazier there than you could possibly know, especially around secrecy. I think that secrecy is probably the reason why we don’t see a mini-APPL. No one who works there has any idea about what is going on…

Google Apps

Computing | Work-life balance | Economist.com

interesting article on companies adopting Google apps for their needs. One quote did stand out however:
“I have a staff of about 30 people dedicated to security,” says Mr Sannier. “Google has an army; all of their business fails if they are unable to preserve security and privacy.” Google’s Mr Girouard says a similar evolution in trust occurred when people reluctantly accepted that their money was safer in a bank than under a mattress.

There is a fundamental thing wrong with this argument. As Google aggregates more and more user data, it become more of a target for hackers. And as we’ve already seen, Google may have an army, but they aren’t perfect.

Part of the reason that people started to trust banks was that the FDIC insured their accounts. If your bank was robbed or it went under, you’d still have your money. If someone steals your identity (or any digital part thereof), Google can’t (and won’t) help you.