The President does not have power under the Constitution to unilaterally authorize a military attack in a situation that does not involve stopping an actual or imminent threat to the nation.
DealBook: How the iPhone Led to the Sale of T-Mobile USA
Until Apple introduced its highly popular touchscreen device in 2007, which went on to become the world’s leading smartphone, Deutsche Telekom had been generating decent sales from its American operation, with growth in some years surpassing that achieved in Germany.
But after the iPhone went on sale, sold exclusively at first by AT&T in the United States, T-Mobile USA began to lose its most lucrative customers, those on fixed monthly plans, who defected to its larger American rivals — AT&T and Verizon Wireless, which began selling the iPhone in February.
So we’ve all heard by now that the New York Times has begun the rollout of their paywall, starting with those Canadians, because we can’t trust them.
I agree with the responses of Koi Vihn and John Gruber – I think the choices and process for this new paywall defy logic and are way too confusing for the average user.
I’ve heard people say ‘hell no’ to paying for news access on websites. Some of these people are also the ones against advertising or use Adblock in their browser. I’m not against paying for the news, in whatever form it comes in, as long as it’s reasonable and provides real value.
We all gotten very used to most things being free on the web for many years now, but not everything has to live under advertising-subsidized-free-model. There’s room for other business models.
If you asked someone 30 years ago if they’d be willing to pay for bottled water, they’d laugh. I see the same thing happening now with pay model for web news.
Paying for news and water shouldn’t concern us. What should concern is us is when the only way to get quality news (and water) is to pay for it.
Popular Science: Shockwave-Generating Wave Discs Could Replace Internal Combustion Engines
Michigan researchers have built a prototype of a new auto motor that does away with pistons, crankshafts and valves, replacing the old internal combustion engine with a disc-shaped shock wave generator. It could slash the weight of hybrid cars and reduce auto emissions by 90 percent.
I’m not against replacing the combustion chamber, but you better damn well have an equally kick-ass name for this new component.
Shockwave-generating-disc ain’t gonna cut it.
via PSFK
ScreenRant: No Word Yet On ‘Mad Men’ Season 5 Says Christina Hendricks
The word around Hollywood seems to indicate that a fifth season of Mad Men is inevitable. What’s keeping the renewal from happening are two different agreements that have yet to be made: show creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner hasn’t renewed with Lionsgate TV, and Lionsgate hasn’t renewed with AMC. Though there’s no official word from either party, it’s reasonable to assume that money is the prime negotiating point.
Booooooooooooooo.
In my Inbox yesterday:
Hello, and thanks again for ordering a copy of this year’s
Annual Report.The bulk of the printing was completed yesterday, now the press
sheets need to dry for a few days before the covers are foil
stamped. Finally the pages will be collated and bound. I
anticipate that I will begin shipping orders within 2 weeks.I have posted a few photos of an unfinished report to my flickr
account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/feltron/Cheers, Nicholas.
Hell yes.
My good friend Bryan has been writing a column on his site, Missile Test, called ‘Shitty Movie Sundays‘. He’s spent a solid amount of time and effort both viewing shitty movies and writing reviews on them, but I was never interested in deliberately watching any shitty movies (insane, right?). That is, until last week when I rented Trancers from my Apple TV after reading his review of it. I won’t give you a review here (Bryan’s is far more entertaining), but I will say this – it’s really bad.
OK, it’s shitty, but it’s Good Shitty, if you can understand that. It’s hysterically bad and when I say ‘hysterically’ I mean I laughed more than once while watching it. If I laughed, it counts for something in my book.
As I’m sure Bryan will back me up on, there’s a spectrum of shitty the same way there’s a spectrum of anything else. There’s Pointless Shitty, like The A-Team (I had to stop it 30 minutes in). There’s Boring Shitty, Half-Assed Shitty, Over-Produced Shitty. And like Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream, you can have a crazy combinations of shitty, like Way Too Many Fake Backdrops Shitty with a scoop of Inconsistent Script Shitty. Get the idea?
I think it’s important to balance things out and see a shitty movie every now and then. It gives you perspective. It’s makes your appreciation for the great films all the more clear.
I won’t say it isn’t dangerous. Be careful what you watch. You won’t get that 1.5-2 hours of your life back.
*you’re not going to understand the title of this post unless you watch at least 30 minutes of Trancers
NYTimes: Owsley Stanley, Artisan of Acid, Is Dead at 76
In short, Mr. Stanley lent the ’60s a great deal of its color — like White Lightning, Monterey Purple and Blue Cheer, the varieties of his LSD that were among the most popular. (He did not, contrary to popular lore, release a product called Purple Haze; in interviews, he sounded quite miffed that anything emerging from his laboratory could be thought to cause haziness rather than the crystalline clarity for which he personally vouched.)
Link tip Missile Test
A great interview with Seth Godin by GiANT Impact:
Via someone I follow on Twitter, I can’t remember!
Steve Jobs killed the music business, according to Jon Bon Jovi:
“Kids today have missed the whole experience of putting the headphones on, turning it up to 10, holding the jacket, closing their eyes and getting lost in an album,” he said. “And the beauty of taking your allowance money and making a decision based on the jacket, not knowing what the record sounded like, and looking at a couple of still pictures and imagining it… I hate to sound like an old man now, but I am, and you mark my words, in a generation from now people are going to say: ‘What happened?’ Steve Jobs is personally responsible for killing the music business.”
Easy there Jon, it’s sounding like the grumpy-old-man-phase is starting with you. I find Jovi’s choice of words interesting. He didn’t say Jobs killed music, he said he killed the music business.
By the looks of the comments on that article, it looks as though the kids are alright, Jon.
If we can leave ComplainerVille for a moment and visit CanDoVille, we find Jack White setting up mobile record store at South By Southwest:
Third Man Records’ latest innovation is not another new-fangled type of vinyl like the Triple Decker Record. Instead, it’s the Third Man Rolling Record Store, a mobile record shop which can travel around the country, equipped with for-sale vinyl, a turntable, microphone, and a state-of-the-art sound system for a live music experience at shows and festival. The fully converted delivery ‘record truck’ intends to resemble the look and feel of the label’s Nashville location, and is set to roll into this year’s SXSW on March 16th. Among its offerings are a full menu of Third Man merchandise along with performances, guest DJs, giveaways and ultra-limited records, entirely exclusive to the Rolling Record Store.
I’m the first to admit we’ve lost some things in the world of digital media – fidelity, physicality, album art – but I wouldn’t say the situation is dire. Are kids still discovering music? Absolutely. Is it how Bon Jovi discovered it? No.
The Telegraph: Why is there no looting in Japan? :
This is quite unusual among human cultures, and it’s unlikely it would be the case in Britain. During the 2007 floods in the West Country abandoned cars were broken into and free packs of bottled water were stolen. There was looting in Chile after the earthquake last year – so much so that troops were sent in; in New Orleans, Hurricane Katrina saw looting on a shocking scale.
Why do some cultures react to disaster by reverting to everyone for himself, but others – especially the Japanese – display altruism even in adversity?
From The Register:
Apple’s iOS mobile operating system runs web applications at significantly slower speeds when they’re launched from the iPhone or iPad home screen as opposed to in the Apple Safari browser, and at the same time, the operating system hampers the performance of these apps in other ways, according to tests from multiple developers and The Register.
Yesterday I came across a new Kickstarter project for a virtual letterpress application for the iPad.
Hmm.
I temporarily reserved judgement and played the ‘pitch’ video. What I found out was the team behind the project is spending a lot of time creating a beautifully detailed and ‘realistic’ application that lets anyone “create authentic-looking letterpress designs and prints.” The application recreates the whole letterpress process – from setting type to inking type, to rolling a paper-covered drum.
While I love seeing creative people creating great products, is this the best use of multitouch tablets? Recreating all the things we knew and loved in our analogue world (but didn’t realize at the time)?
What’s next, bringing back the rotary phone dial?
I’m confident to say this is just a phase in the trajectory of computer interfaces. It’s inevitable the touch screens of tomorrow will be more responsive and reactive to the user, that is until we no longer have visible interfaces. We’re seeing this happen right now with Microsoft’s Kinect and the subsequent hacks people have made for it.
The lesson here is to find new ways to solve problems, don’t port old processes into new paradigms.