Pwinnteresting

I’m not sure I see the problems as starkly as Federico Viticci does, but I differ only on the urgency. I think he hits the details exactly right. Maybe not in iOS 6, but at some point the primary user interface for iOS will need to change somewhat dramatically. It has been overloaded nearly to the breaking point.

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IRC Perfection in OS X

I still haven’t found what I’m looking for, but that could be because I’m not sure what it is.

I think my first IRC client for OSX was Colloquy. At some point Adium gained IRC-ability, and so I switched to that, using it for IRC and chat both. Then I switched again, to Textual for IRC and a short while later, iChat for chat.

I really like Textual, but it has a few bugs. Since I, like most people, don’t appreciate what I have (a really nice IRC client) as much as I’m bothered by what I don’t (a perfect IRC client), I’m on the hunt again.

I’ve searched the interwebs for a popular IRC client for OSX, and what I’ve found is that there really doesn’t seem to be a clear leader. Or even multiple clear leaders. Except for maybe Colloquy. Now I don’t remember: why did I abandon Colloquy?

There are other clients, of course, though most of them aren’t in active development. I found LimeChat, which I’ll try. I found Xirc, which hasn’t been updated in more than five years. I found Snak, which seems more recent. X-Chat Aqua is less than a year out of date, which seems promising. Conversation is also on my list to check out. If I want to spend some real money, there’s Linkinus. I live in IRC all day, so while $30 is steepish, it’s not completely unreasonable.

Ultimately, though, Colloquy seems to be the most popular. I wish I could remember why I abandoned it! Perhaps I was just lured in by the idea of combining my IRC and IM windows. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Update: Foolishly, I didn’t think to check the Mac App Store. This is especially foolish given that I’m running Textual, which I purchased from there. When I did check, I discovered links to Textual for $5, Mango IRC for $2, Linkinus for only $10, and LimeChat for free. That’s one additional client, and better links and prices for three others.

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I’m going to make a raw political statement here. A guy like Romney is a good guy, he’s a decent honorable man, and I admire his family, but what he doesn’t understand is that we look at the foreclosure rate in the country like somebody going to bed tonight. They stare at the ceiling wondering if they’re going to be in that house a month from now, and what can we do to help? They look at it from a purely economic standpoint. The best thing to get the housing market back up is to let the foreclosures occur, let the bottom fall out, start to clean up. It’s sort of Darwinian, survival of the fittest out there, and they are right. It would be the quickest way to do it, but what they don’t understand is there are tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people, who, through no fault of their own, are in that spot. I think in those circumstances, the government has a responsibility to give these people a leg up.

“

—

Vice President Joe Biden talks Mitt Romney and the Republican way of thinking. (via politicore)

From the Republican perspective, It might even be the only way to do it — not just the quickest. If the Republicans are right, then the Democrats efforts to avoid the inevitable will just make things worse. But at least folks like Vice President Biden can congratulate themselves on having tried to do something.

I don’t think the Republicans are right, but it seemed only fair to point out that they’re not just aiming for efficiency.

(Source: kileyrae)

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True story: I bought one of these at DisneyWorld last year. It’s delightful.

thedailywhat:

Things That Are Real of the Day: An official, Disney-approved, Joy Division-inspired, Mickey Mouse-themed Waves tee “for Adults.”

From the description:

Inspired by the iconic sleeve of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures album, this Waves Mickey Mouse Tee incorporates Mickey’s image within the graphic of the pulse of a star. That’s appropriate given few stars have made bigger waves than Mickey!

Ian Curtis is rolling around in his noose.

[pitchfork / bwe.]

Apple’s Massive Numbers And Some Context »

I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around the quarterly numbers from Apple today. Before the press release went out, I had pulled up bookmarks of the highest predictions I could find. I still had them in my browser when I read the actual numbers. The predictions all fell short. Every. Single. One.

Siegler rounds up some of the comparisons that help put the big numbers in context, but ultimately, there’s no precedent for anything like this. Apple just posted the fourth-highest quarterly earnings ever, even accounting for inflation, and the scariest part is that there’s no good reason they couldn’t jump well past the top of the list this time next year. They’re selling just about everything they build just about as fast as they can build it. It’s… insane.

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Candidly, those who count on quote ‘Hollywood’ for support need to understand that this industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake

“

—

Chris Dodd Warns Of Hollywood Backlash Against Obama Over Anti-piracy Bill

In an interview with Fox News, the head of the MPAA had a “warning” for the President and members of Congress up for reelection in 2012. “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.” Of course, the head of the MPAA is Chris Dodd, who was a U.S. Senator last year and is therefore forbidden from lobbying Congress or the White House for a few more years. Nevertheless, this “warning” sounds like crude blackmail, a blustering threat from a mob boss whose time is passing.

I imaging any more honesty might have resulted in this: “You were supposed to stay bought! We paid good money and you didn’t do what we demanded! That’s not how blackmail is supposed to go! When I was a Senator, politicians knew how to stay bought!”

Dodd went on to say that Avatar was “stolen by online pirates” 21 million times, a specious claim on many level.

“Stolen” is the wrong word. To steal something form you is to deprive you of that thing. Put simply, if you have two DVDs, and I steal one, you now have only one. Whatever it is that people do online, it is not “stealing.” This may seem like splitting hairs, but the analogy between stealing and whatever-this-is is imperfect, and the use of the word “stealing” to describe it hides those differences, to ill end.
“Pirates” is the wrong word. There are real pirates in the world today, and they kill people. This word may have been chosen by the “pirates” themselves, in an effort to romanticize their exploits, but again, it’s the wrong word.
21 million times? Avatar grossed $2,782,275,172 in theaters alone. That’s $2.8 Billion. It’s the highest-grossing movie ever, beating #2 Titanic by nearly a billion dollars. This is Dodd’s example of acts which threaten to decimate his industry?

I don’t “pirate” movies, not ever. I am, however, more and more open to the research demonstrating that illegal downloading may actually help sales rather than hurting them.

I note that claims like “21 million downloads” miss quite a few interesting details.

How many of those originated in the U.S.? SOPA/PIPA were designed to stop people within the U.S. from being able to find sources of illegal downloads on overseas sites, which apparently is less than 7.5% of total movie downloading.

How many of those people who illegally downloaded the film also saw it in theaters? How many also bought it on DVD? The assumptions seem to be that those who download only download, but I can see people downloading and still making the trek to the local cinema, or downloading to watch at home before the film is available on DVD or Blu-ray, but then snapping it up once it is available for sale.

It would be nice to know what’s going on inside the brain of someone who uses the most successful movie in history to demonstrate that the industry is being destroyed by illegal downloads.

It would be nicer if Senator Dodd were in prison for his clumsy attempts to circumvent the law and threaten our representatives in Washington, D.C.

(ht: BoingBoing)

Everybody loves ice cream! (Taken with Instagram at Cold Stone Creamery)

We Don't Need SOPA Because DMCA Is Already Broken Enough »

I remember when the DMCA came out. It sounded terrible! Over the years, many sites have been delighted by its “Safe Harbor” provisions, protecting them from extra legal trouble so long as they jumped through some appropriate hoops. The truth is, DMCA is still as bad as it was 13 years ago.

It seems like what’s most needed is indeed what this article suggests: penalties for false accusations. The DMCA is too-heavily weighted toward a presumption of guilt.

As it is now, there is no real cost for filing a false DMCA takedown notice. It’s “all win.” If it’s valid, you win! If it’s invalid, you don’t lose! Filing a DMCA takedown notice is disruptive to the site owners. If they’ve been hosting something without any rights to do so, the disruption is necessary and fine. The filer is the wronged party, so disruption for the site owner isn’t our primary concern. HOWEVER, If the site owners have been hosting something perfectly legally, and the DMCA takedown notice causes a disruption, this can be catastrophic. It can severely impact their income, and for no good reason. In those cases, their ought to be some recourse for the wronged party, the legal users whose material was removed.

Instead, it’s all one-sided. The law is built to deal with legitimate uses of the DMCA, and has no real provision for the idea that any DMCA takedown notice might be invalid. There’s a counter-claim provisions that might be seen as dealing with mistakes, but it’s weak, and many of the abuses of the DMCA aren’t mistakes at all; they’re deliberate.

Post Office day again already? (Taken with instagram)

The Rise of Developeronomics »

It’s probably a sign of how insular my world is that I believe this article to be essentially true. I wonder, if one is not reading an article telling one how awesome one is, does it feel true to you as well?

Also, the “-10x” folks? I’ve worked with one. It’s every bit as bad as he says. Maybe worse.