Geek Chic

As a caveat to this morning’s post — I’m really getting sick people making the case that Palin has more relevant experience to be Commander in Chief than Obama does.  Like being mayor of a small town is more relevant than being in the Senate.  Or even his state Senate.

Calling the fact that she’s been in Alaska all her life her ‘Foreign Relations Experience’ — because Alaska is next to Canada and Russia — is unbelievably laughable.

My friend Beth just sent me this.  Wait for the part when she asks Tucker to name one decision Palin actually made in office:

It’s nice to see the media being this tough on the Republicans for a change.

I’m really trying to keep my cool after watching Sarah Palin’s speech last night.  And the aftermath during which everyone seemed to think she really knocked one out of the park.

My favorite parts of her speech included:

• The standing ovation she got when she talked about how her opponent was wrong to have detainees at Guantanamo read their rights.  Boo constitution!  Yay police state!
• Her continual references to how Obama will raise taxes.  Neglecting to mention that these taxes would be those of the richest 5% of Americans.
• Her repeated references to how her opponent doesn’t want offshore drilling (incorrect!).
• The premise that offshore drilling alone will lead to energy independence.  As if the only reason why we keep importing oil from the Middle East is because we don’t want to waste our own vast reserves.  As if we have vast reserves.  As if it’s not all going to run out in our lifetimes.
• The repeated cut-aways to her pregnant daughter and ‘special needs child’
• The complete lack of any content.

The only thing that made me feel any better last night was watching the Daily Show.  John Stewart was on fire last night.  I really wish CNN would run stories like this.  Anderson Cooper is a smart guy too, right?  Why is it I feel like the only news source I can trus these days is Comedy Central?  <sigh>

Anyway, here’s Jonny:

Finally: apologies.  I try to keep this blog away from personal politics.  But I see a real danger in Sarah Palin — the fact that she’s being positioned as an untouchable martyr by the right makes her the perfect attack dog.  I really hope the Dems grow some teeth.  I can’t bear the thought of another 4 years of Reganomics.

I’m sure you’ve heard by now.  Google released a new web browser.  Chrome.

My first reaction to this is one of dismay.  Another freaking web browser?  What do I need that for?  I’m still having to check for bugs in IE6 — a browser that should’ve died years ago.

My second is one of anger at Google.  I like Firefox.  I think Mozilla has a good heart in addition to having a great browser.  If Chrome is going to steal market share, it’s most likely going to steal from Firefox — not IE.  Most of the people who use IE are either enterprise (and can’t download another browser) or not tech-savvy (don’t know how to download another browser).  If they haven’t downloaded a browser besides IE6 (like Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc — they have plenty of choices and they’ve had plenty of time), it’s unlikely they’d download Chrome.

So great.  Google steals from FF’s market share.  And Google paid up on their Mozilla contract till 2011 to keep their bases covered, but if Chrome catches on, I bet you Google will kill that contract.  Leaving Mozilla broke with about half of it’s market share poached.

Great.

What’s even better is Google’s terms of service with Chrome.  Check this out:

By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any content which you submit, post or display on or through, the services. This license is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the services and may be revoked for certain services as defined in the additional terms of those services.

What?  I know I’m no lawyer, but what that says to me is if ANYONE displays a website in Chrome (ANY website), then Google then has the right to distribute that website, in part or in whole, worldwide.  What?  How can they claim to have that right?  If you’re looking at this site in Chrome now, does that mean Google thinks it’s their right to adapt, modify, publish, display, ‘publicly perform’, etc?

My favorite little logical twist is that technically, if you ‘submit’ your credit card # via Chrome, since you’ve agreed to their terms of service, they then have a right to ‘distribute’ it.  Now that’s a business model.  Stealing credit card numbers on a massive scale and then moving to Switzerland.

AND the real kicker is this: Chrome is distributed under the BSD license — which is a particularly open open-source contract.  You could logically say that if you submit your credit card number via Chrome that then EVERYONE owns it.  Resulting in something less like Switzerland and more like the end of Fight Club.

But really, what the BSD license means is that, if you don’t like Google’s terms for Chrome you can download the code in its entirety, take out their logo, recompile it under your own terms and use it however you want.

So, kids.  It’s time to get those compilers chugging.  Who wants to to follow Google’s rules when they can so easily walk right around them.

Google looks more and more like Microsoft every day.  Throw a few class actions lawsuits at them and the two would be virtually indistinguishable.

Soo… hopefully you got a chance to peruse the Times article this morning about some of the recent developments in the McCain camp’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate.  I did. Hilarious.

I’m sure by now we all know that her 17 year old unmarried daughter is preggers (you probably caught that yesterday when CNN dropped its coverage of Hurricaine Gustav and began a full court press on Bristol.  Seems like a bit of an unfair match to me, but what the hell.)  And that Palin’s involved in a lawsuit over the wrongful dismissal of a public safety official who refused to fire her sister’s ex-husband.

But more fun facts came out today!  Like the fact that she has a DUI on her record (although that didn’t stop Bush from getting elected) and that she was once a member of Alaska’s Independence Party — one of whose purposes was to drive Alaskans to vote for secession from the Union ( although once again, Bush’s home state of Texas threatens that all the time).

I have to say the best part of it (imho) is the fact that the McCain people did not even ARRIVE in Alaska to BEGIN their vetting process until last Thursday.  As you know, McCain announced her as his running mate on Friday. So they had less than a day to find all of the dirt on Palin.

Since you can’t find all the dirt there is on a person in less than 24 hours, she now gets to be vetted in real time.  By everyone, including the Democrats, CNN, NYT, AP… you get the idea.

What a delicious mess.

Perhaps the Republicans should do a little bit of catch up on SP by taking the time to read her blog, PalinDrome (actually a clever work of fiction, but then there’s already a lot of that in McCain’s campaign so I’m not sure anyone would notice the difference.  Take, for example, their preemptive edits of her Wikipedia page).

All ranting asside, you should check out PalinDrome if you get a chance.  It’s really funny.

Thanks for the link, VSL.  You’re my cocaine.

I just took a bit of time to jailbreak my iPhone today… and it’s totally and completely awesome.  There are so many applications out there!

To figure out how to do this yourself, read these instructions and get the tools you need from the iPhone Dev Team.

Is this safe? Probably.  I’m sure it violates some terms of some contract I signed somewhere.  But I have to say — given the seemingly unlimited possibilities for application development that are realized in the jailbroken world — the folks at Apple are being incredibly lame in their furious protection of the iPhone App world.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look around to see what applications you can get when your iPhone has been jailbroken.  Like Snapture — that makes the camera acually useful.

I know Apple wants to be careful.  Yes.  If they didn’t have rules for what could and could not make it into the App Store the whole thing would have the potential to turn into the wild west.  But there’s got to be a middle ground.  Right now I’d say about 95% of the applications in iTunes are TOTALLY WORTHLESS.  Who on earth needs another version of Sudoku?  Some of the thigns there don’t even work (I’m looking at you AOL Instant Messenger!).

And I’m sure Apple has reasons behind what they reject from the App Store.  And they have rules for software development that some of these people are bending.  But I wish they’d loosen their grip a little.  Some of the things 3rd party developers are dreaming up are so much more innovative and useful than anything a developer could make given their current SDK rules.

Chill out, Apple.  You’re totally going to win and you know it.  Relax.  And maybe think about letting some of the big kids play in the playground too.

Ok.  So because the 2nd Gen iPhones were so ‘affordable’ some developer out there made a completely frivolous show-off app called I Am Rich.  It costs the maximum application cost in the iTunes store ($999.99) and it’s only purpose is to let people know you have money to burn (when you start the application all it does is display a cheap looking glowing ruby).

I Am so totally Rich

Now it’s time for you to decide which is more ridiculous:

1. 8 people purchased this application — 6 from the US, 1 from France and 1 from Germany.

2. Apple was so offended by the application that they removed it from the store, even though it didn’t technically violate any terms of the iPhone Developer contract.

I’m still trying to decide myself.

Anyway, it’s gone now.  So all of you fat cats out there will have to sling your money at something else.  Too bad you didn’t get a change to download it in time.

And you thought you lost out when Apple pulled down the NetShare tethering app.

Read the full story on I Am Rich on the LA Times

I know we’ve all heard the audio clip from our dearly indicted Senator Ted Stevens where he refers to the Internet as a series of tubes.  But until today I hadn’t heard the entire clip.

Wow.

First of all, I have absolutely no idea what point he’s trying to argue — his thesis is totally lost in all of his elderly technophobic blubbering.  Maybe it’s some anti-spam Senate bill?  Dunno.

It’s similar to what I imagine would happen if I sat my grandparents down and said to them ‘explain to me how you think the internet works and what you think you can do with it.’

This is who runs the federal government. A bunch of rich white guys who are too busy having their decks rebuilt by oil companies to take time to figure out how the internet works.

Good to know that, in the true spirit of America, it’s much more important to have a strong opinion when it comes to technology rahther than have any facts.