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Wed, 18 Nov 2009 19:09:13 -0500

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"Wal-Mart posted a short message on the Web site of its movie download service saying that operation..."

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:30:26 -0500

“Wal-Mart posted a short message on the Web site of its movie download service saying that operation had closed as of Dec. 21. The move went largely unnoticed for a week, an unmistakable sign that the service had not caught on with consumers. Gizmodo.com, an equipment review site, was one of the first to point it out Thursday with a headline: Wal-Mart Kills Video Download Store Before Christmas, No One Notices”

- Wal-Mart Pulls Plug on Movies via the Web - New York Times

"Now, some music executives are privately backing the idea of dropping the [digital rights..."

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 21:28:00 -0500

“Now, some music executives are privately backing the idea of dropping the [digital rights management] software from music sold through virtually every service except iTunes, in order to strengthen Apple’s rivals and potentially diminish Mr. Jobs’s advantage. The major labels have been upset with Apple’s inflexibility on music pricing, among other issues.”

- Amazon to Sell Warner Music Minus Copy Protection - New York Times

Jim Donaldson: Belichick made the right call, it just didn’t work out

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:12:00 -0500

Jim Donaldson: Belichick made the right call, it just didn’t work out:

“The game is on the line,” said Faulk, “so you have to be able to go and get it done. It doesn’t matter what decision Bill’s making. We’ve got to execute the play. I thought I had it. The officials made the call.”

Brady thought Belichick made the right call by going for it on fourth down.

“We had an opportunity to win the game,” he said. “All you can really ask for as an offense is to take a chance there on third-and-2, and then again on fourth-and-2.

“You punt it to them, and they showed on the drive before that they can go down pretty quickly and score. We’d worked on that play for a long time. It just came up a half-yard short. Coach was being aggressive. I love that about him. He gave us a chance to make the play. We just didn’t do it.”

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : Re: our patent application for an evil advertising scheme

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 21:26:00 -0500

The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs : Re: our patent application for an evil advertising scheme

Why You Can't Use Personal Technology at the Office - WSJ.com

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:57:49 -0500

Why You Can't Use Personal Technology at the Office - WSJ.com:

At the office, you’ve got a sluggish computer running aging software, and the email system routinely badgers you to delete messages after you blow through the storage limits set by your IT department. Searching your company’s internal Web site feels like being teleported back to the pre-Google era of irrelevant search results.

At home, though, you zip into the 21st century. You’ve got a slick, late-model computer and an email account with seemingly inexhaustible storage space. And while Web search engines don’t always figure out exactly what you’re looking for, they’re practically clairvoyant compared with your company intranet.

This is the double life many people lead: yesterday’s technology for work, today’s technology for everything else. The past decade has brought awesome innovations to the marketplace—Internet search, the iPhone, Twitter and so on—but consumers, not companies, embrace them first and with the most gusto.

Boxee Blog » a Boxee Box is coming!

Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:22:55 -0500

Boxee Blog » a Boxee Box is coming!:

Cannot wait for this. Boxee on AppleTV is just not cutting it.

"Apple made $1.6 billion in operating profit off of the iPhone in Q3. Nokia, meanwhile, made $1.1..."

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:44:00 -0500

“

Apple made $1.6 billion in operating profit off of the iPhone in Q3. Nokia, meanwhile, made $1.1 billion. Let’s put this in perspective. Recent numbers suggest Nokia controls roughly 35% of the worldwide handset market. Apple? About 2.5%.

Not 25%. Two point five percent.

”

- While Rivals Jockey For Market Share, Apple Bathes In Profits

Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless - NYTimes.com

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:22:00 -0500

Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless - NYTimes.com:

ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through walls, underwater or even from airplanes three miles high. The device works on “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction,” ATSC says.

To detect materials, the operator puts an array of plastic-coated cardboard cards with bar codes into a holder connected to the wand by a cable. “It would be laughable, except someone down the street from you is counting on this to keep bombs off the streets,” Colonel Bidlack said.

Proponents of the wand often argue that errors stem from the human operator, who they say must be rested, with a steady pulse and body temperature, before using the device.

Then the operator must walk in place a few moments to “charge” the device, since it has no battery or other power source, and walk with the wand at right angles to the body. If there are explosives or drugs to the operator’s left, the wand is supposed to swivel to the operator’s left and point at them.

If, as often happens, no explosives or weapons are found, the police may blame a false positive on other things found in the car, like perfume, air fresheners or gold fillings in the driver’s teeth.

Confirmed: iTunes 9.0.2 Script Menu App Bundle Bug

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 11:06:54 -0400

Confirmed: iTunes 9.0.2 Script Menu App Bundle Bug:

iTunes 9.0.2 will not display AppleScript Application Bundles in its Script menu. The apps are still where they are supposed to be, ~/Library/iTunes/Scripts/ or /Library/iTunes/Scripts/, and they…

Interesting iTunes 9.0.2 Mystery

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:12:26 -0400

Interesting iTunes 9.0.2 Mystery:

A Correspondent alerted me to an unusual behavior with iTunes 9.0.2 and the script application Needle Drop: it doesn’t appear in iTunes’ Script menu, under Leopard or Snow Leopard. I don’t know…

Apps Not Displaying

Fri, 30 Oct 2009 14:12:25 -0400

Apps Not Displaying:

On further investigation, it appears that AppleScript applications with bundles are not displaying in the iTunes 9.0.2 Script menu. This means that any app written under 10.6 will not appear since…

U.S. Continues Quagmire-Building Effort In Afghanistan | The Onion - America's Finest News Source

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:43:03 -0400

U.S. Continues Quagmire-Building Effort In Afghanistan | The Onion - America's Finest News Source:

According to sources at the Pentagon, American quagmire-building efforts continued apace in Afghanistan this week, as the geographically rugged, politically unstable region remained ungovernable, death tolls continued to rise, and the grim military campaign persisted as hopelessly as ever.

In fact, many government officials now believe that the United States and its allies could be as little as six months away from their ultimate goal: the total quagmirification of Afghanistan.

iTunes 9.0.2 is Released

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:06:06 -0400

iTunes 9.0.2 is Released:

iTunes 9.0.2 has been released. “iTunes 9.0.2 adds support for Apple TV software version 3.0, adds an option for a dark background for Grid View, and improves support for accessibility.” Meaning…

What the Tech Media doesn't get: The iPhone is a Platform!

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 22:02:09 -0400

What the Tech Media doesn't get: The iPhone is a Platform!

NEW: Music Folder Files Not Added v2.0

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 11:23:30 -0400

NEW: Music Folder Files Not Added v2.0:

Well, depending on your point of view, perhaps this is an update. Music Folder Files Not Added v2.0 is a Snow Leopard-only application (MFFNA v1.1 is still posted and will run on Tiger and…

Spooky.

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:34:41 -0400

Spooky.

What Obama’s Doing With Fox News « Whatever

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:28:15 -0400

What Obama’s Doing With Fox News « Whatever:

“…at the end of the day, Fox News’ nightly audience in the third quarter of this year was 2.25 million viewers in primetime. For perspective this means that it has roughly the same audience as your average Dollhouse episode, which was just yanked by Fox (the broadcast network, not the cable news network), so that its ratings wouldn’t stink up November Sweeps. Even with Fox News’ ratings going through the roof because of its little war with Obama, the actual number of viewers is minuscule. Or to put it otherwise, 2.5 million Americans watch Fox News, which means that 297.5 million Americans don’t.”

Apple only PC maker growing phone business | Electronista

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 11:28:17 -0400

Apple only PC maker growing phone business | Electronista:

“The analyst group [Gartner] believes that ‘all’ major PC firms will have signaled their intentions to build smartphones by the end of 2009 but that none of these will have more than two percent outside of the iPhone maker, even by 2012. Instead, most of the non-Apple growth will be left to traditional phone designers.”

A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades | The Awl

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 23:53:18 -0400

A Graphic History of Newspaper Circulation Over the Last Two Decades | The Awl:

Some unsurprising trends: the Los Angeles Times is an absolute horrorshow. Not shown: the Boston Globe disappearing off the bottom of this chart, in a two decade decline from 521,000 in 1990 to 264,105 this year.