I'll give you a pass on that one, even though it's completely wrong, but here's one he can't wriggle out of by blaming Bush: ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

All he has to do is sign an executive order. That's it. Nothing else. Doesn't need Congress's approval, doesn't need the help of anyone else in the Executive branch. He just needs to write the order and sign it.

He's going to do that, but as a courtesy to the commanding officers in the armed services, he agreed to let the results of a study be published first. You know, sometimes before signing executive orders that make huge HR changes to a large organization, it's a good idea to do some thoughtful analysis and gather data on the impacts of your executive order.

But I guess you'd rather have Bush, the "decider" who acts first and then doesn't bother to think.

It's funny to hear people blame Obama for not fixing the country in only the 18 months he's been in office. As if January 21st, 2009, he should have solved world peace, world hunger, and finished every campaign promise he made.

He's focusing on the big problems first:

- Healthcare - done.
- Financial reform - almost done, although a little too toothless. They had to make too many compromises because of the Republicans.

The smaller stuff we can wait for. Let's get the big problems fixed first.

Ok, now you got me curious- you better link to said forum posts... :-)

Ultimately I think i've rationalized them into two separate non-competing categories, where the Cowon S9 is the superior media device (well, it is!)

You just keep telling yourself that enough times and you'll believe it! Actually you make a very good point. We all do this: "I purchased brand X car so it must be the best available on the market." In any case, it takes a cold, logical person to separate all emotion from purchasing decisions.

(Especially since Apple received a taxpayer bailout - they stole that money IMHO.)

Excuse me what? Did you say Apple got a taxpayer bailout? You should probably back that up with some facts or other data first because I've never heard of it. They have so much cash they do not need any kind of bailout.

Unfortunately, Netflix still doesn't support closed captioning. If it weren't for this one feature, I would say Netflix would easily beat Hulu. Don't underestimate the appeal of closed captioning for the millions of viewers that speak English as their second language.

65 bugs that I won't get patches for in my 1st Generation Ipod Touch. What is the point of paying a premium for hardware, when the control-freak sole arbiter of software patches renders it functionally obsolete long before its useful life has expired?

Yeah, after 3 years you no longer get updates because your hardware is obsolete. Name one other smartphone/media player vendor that still releases updates for their hardware after it's 3 years old.

He was right that the government basically telling BP "Start coughing up without a being found guilty because we said so or we'll might start fining you/killing your licenses" should be illegal. Due process exists, and it should be followed. That's extortion.

Due process my ass. You seriously want to tell thousands of gulf fishermen that they need to hire lawyers, initiate a lawsuit, and fight for their lost wages? With what money are these fishermen going to hire said lawyers? BP has enough lawyers they could tie the lawsuits up for years while these guys starve.

Sometimes extraordinary measures are called for, and frankly I'm glad that the US had the balls to stand up to BP and tell them to cough up money immediately. When someone's livelihood is being irreparably harmed, you don't just tell him to hire an attorney and spend a few years in court.

Gotcha, yeah you're right, I wrote that comment fairly quickly. You should re-encrypt at the proxy to SSL to keep the security intact and keep it from breaking if Google forces SSL.

The N900 has a special "cursor mode" that, when enabled, changes the dragging from scrolling to moving a virtual cursor that allows sending drag events to the browser (flash or javascript). I'd guess android could have something similar added if it doesn't have it already.

They probably could, but it would suck. Smartphones are not designed to be used with a mouse/pointer interface. This is the same type of fail that Steve Jobs talks about when he says "if they have to use a stylus, you know they failed." Having to use a stylus or similar pointing device means the developer couldn't be bothered to change a computer based interface which required a mouse to point at pixel-level precision to a touch interface which only requires a finger to point at much lower precision.

This is what other smartphone makers and tablet makers never understood. If you force your users to use what is clearly a desktop interface in a mobile device, you will fail. Period, end of story. People do not want to have to whip out a stylus just to dial a phone number or watch a video.

I dunno. Seems to me that a smartphone should let you dial pretty much anything that looks like a phone number from pretty much anywhere. It's just text, right? Add some ability to select it and automatically copy/paste the digits into the dialing interface. Doesn't seem that hard to me.

Actually, the iPhone has had this feature since version 1.0 three years ago. Pretty much any number in an email message, web page, or SMS/text message can be tapped on and will dial automatically in the Phone application. This was long before cut/paste.

Apple haters like to bitch about any shortcomings in iOS, whether real or imaginary, but the simple fact of the matter is that even iOS 1.0 didn't really need cut/paste because most use cases were already handled by the software elegantly. I could tap a link in any email message and it would open in Safari automatically. I could tap a phone number anywhere and it would dial. I could email a link to my current page to anyone directly from Safari. I could email photos from the photo viewer app. These use-cases covered 99% of the possible reasons anyone would need cut/paste.

For phones: My girlfriend updated her iPhone 3GS to the new OS last night. I see that she now has a phone that still can't compare to my HTC Desire with Android 2.1. (2.2 upgrade due within 2 weeks)

I think you're full of it, because iOS 4 wasn't available until today. But, on the odd chance that you aren't trolling, what specific features in iOS 4 are missing that you have in Android 2.1?

I hate to tell these schools how to turn into a police state, but if they really want to monitor Google SSL traffic, this is the right way to do it:

1. Install a trusted root certificate in all client browsers (they do control their client computers, right?)
2. Man in the middle all SSL traffic through a transparent proxy, which masquerades as Google SSL traffic and redirects from https://www.google.com/ to http://www.google.com./

Don't just block all SSL traffic. If you truly have a legitimate reason to monitor users search queries and application traffic, then you already control their client PCs (right?) and can do this in a semi-legitimate way. If not, don't bother blocking it because your users will be up in arms with pitchforks and torches.

I do understand that the new hardware has more RAM and a faster CPU and GPU, however some of the things that Apple and I could both really benefit from is for example the iBooks application. It would allow me to use my iPod touch as a portable PDF reader (great for datasheets) and it would allow publishers and writers to have a larger userbase of potential buyers.

I didn't know that iBooks wouldn't be available for iOS 3. That's too bad because it seems like it could definitely work with only 128MB of RAM.

Contrast that to being shot. A well placed rifle bullet will kill you before you hit the ground. No need to sit and watch as they try to find a vein. No danger of them missing a vein and setting your arm on fire with muscular injections of the drug cocktail.

Except that the Utah method does not shoot the prisoner in the head, where he would die quickly and most likely painlessly. They shoot him in the heart which means he has to die slowly, in excruciating pain, for several minutes until his brain runs out of oxygen and he becomes unconscious. This sounds like a pretty barbaric way to die, but I guess shooting someone in the head would be too gruesome for the spectators to watch. It's really nice to watch the state prioritize the spectators distaste for exploding brain matter over a man's pain and suffering during his death.

You mean the thousands and thousands of pages of public records and court documents that accompanied his multiple prosecutions and appeals over the years? Do you mean like the years the murderer himself had to talk about himself and his fate to a wide audience, despite having cut short other innocent people's chances to ever do that? Do you mean the public procedings in his most recent hearings, which go on page after page?

If you'd rather not give a murderer a public soapbox with dramatic death row trial hearings, here's a solution for you: eliminate the death penalty. Just lock him up for life without the possibility of parole and save us all the expense and dramatic court room appeals process. We know it costs less to imprison a man for life than to execute them, and yet we still insist on this barbaric process of killing human beings to prove that killing is wrong.