Quick!

Only 14 hours left in 2005, and I need to get this thing wrapped up before the end of the year for tax reasons.

So I'll ask again: who wants to join my John Secada fan club?

Happy New Year!

Part time Jobs

Cute.

The strike

There are serious, complex, and subtle issues on both sides of the MTA/TWU disagreement. I can see valid and emotional cases to be made for both perspectives.

But there is one fact that I think is important to consider: the collective loss to New York, and all of its citizens and businesses, that is resulting from the strike is greater than the individual loss the TWU would suffer by accepting the MTA's latest offer.

The amount of harm the TWU is inflicting on all of New York is greater than the harm they are looking to avoid facing themselves.

A380 update

Here's the current status of Airbus's A380 flight testing.

How to record a Podcast

Here's a great tutorial (Mac-centric) that details a (relatively) straight-forward way to record a live, conversation-based Podcast. There are a lot of components involved in getting this to work, and this article seems to detail every step nicely.

I will let you know how this works after I've had the opportunity to test it out.

Stay tuned.

Bush's speech

I've got to say, I'm really impressed. I thought tonight's speech was right on the money. As much as I angrily disagree with our president and many (most) of his policies, I felt that he looked me in the eye and more or less leveled with me.

More or less.

That's what he needed to do tonight, and he did it. I've got to give credit where credit is due.

Death Penalty

Now that California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has denied Staley Tookie Williams' request for clemency (how's that for a phrase?!), the lethal injection is set to go ahead at 12:01 tomorrow (Tuesday) morning.

I'm not very familiar with the particulars of this case, but I know that like many death penalty cases, there have been a lot of very legitimate concerns raised in the decades, years, months, days, and hours leading up to the event. Regardless of the merit of the arguments on both sides, we are left to face a self-imposed tragedy.

The death penalty forces us into situations like these that we should not as a society have to deal with. We do not need to kill murderers to maintain moral order in our society- I would argue that doing so muddles our morality.

From a purely practical perspective, there have been enough legitimate arguments that the death penalty is not even carried out "fairly" to justify immediately halting the practice and taking a serious look at our justice system and its attitude toward minorities and people without money or status.

But even if we could determine that an innocent person could never possibly be executed, and that racial and social factors would never enter into the equation for deciding when to apply the death penalty, I just don't think society should go there.

As a society, the greatest power we should give our government should be the ability to remove people from our society. Those whose actions pose a serious threat to our ability to live together should be pulled out and stripped of all of society's privileges. But they should not be destroyed completely.

I have no doubt that there are emotional arguments that can be made in favor of the death penalty. I hope never to be in a situation where I can relate to them. But the practical and philosophical case for abolishing the death penalty is crystal clear.

The difference between a government that can detain you forever and a government that can kill you is profound. By letting go of government-sanctioned killing, we embrace a higher and more just form of liberty for all.

Iraq

Republicans got us into this mess, but Democrats are setting themselves up to suffer the political consequences. The extent of the Democratic Party's collective political incompetence is astounding.

America's strategy in Iraq is deeply flawed. We shouldn't have gone in, and once in, we should have fought the war differently. But the answer to how we move forward is not to call the whole thing off and come home ASAP. Doing so would leave Iraq a festering source of terrorism; it would give Bin Laden and co. a massive PR victory; and domestically, it would put the consequences of those developments on Democratic shoulders.

Instead of advocating for an exit strategy and a way to bring our troops home as soon as possible, Democrats should be arguing for a strategy to win the war as quickly as possible. Instead of coming across as the weaker party- the party of retreat- Democrats need to put Republicans on the defensive.

What does this mean tactically? I don't know the specifics, but the gist would sound something like this if given in a speech:

"Americans may disagree about the path the War on Terror has taken, but let no one mistake America's resolve to win this war. The time is now for America to win the Battle of Iraq. Over the past three years, we have achieved remarkable progress in this battle. We have removed Saddam Hussein from power and have given Iraqis a democratic voice. But we will not have won the Battle of Iraq until the American military can leave the country and know that the situation there will continue to improve. And this is not yet the case.

"In 2006, America will dramatically increase the number of soldiers we have deployed in Iraq. We will be redeploying soldiers from posts around the world to participate in this expansion. Our intent is to increase security in Iraq so that the business of democratic life can proceed with minimal interruption from terrorists, and to increase our ability to train Iraqis to take over the responsibility for their own security.

"This expansion will be a demonstration of American willpower and our determination to make difficult decisions when we know we have to. Our enemies will point to our expansion as proof that we intend to remain in that country forever, but their voices will be drowned out by those of a strengthening Iraq.

"We will make it clear that while our soldiers will be a more visible presence in the country, our intention to remove them as soon as possible remains, and only by having the proper number of soldiers to accomplish our mission will we be able to achieve this. The issue of troop levels is delicate and fluid over time, but it is clear that we are at a moment when the military needs as much strength as possible to ensure noticeable progress on the ground.

"In 2006, America will dramatically increase the amount of funding that is being given to our military to fight this war. The financial burden will not be easy for our nation to bear, but victory in Iraq requires sacrifice from all Americans, and our military deserves the very best funding possible. We will not spend indiscriminately, but we will spare no expense. We will likely have to raise taxes to support this spending alongside the other important spending priorities our country maintains, and we have no doubt that America will rise to the challenge.

"In 2006, America will remind the world that we view our compassion and humanity as our most powerful weapons. We will make clear our denunciation of torture under any circumstances, and renew our commitment to all of the treaties and agreements that all civilized nations agree are non-negotiable. We will give no man, woman, or child in any country a reason to compare America's actions in the War on Terror with those of civilization's most bitter enemies.

"In 2006, America will rise as a nation to our great challenge in this battle in the War on Terror. Our Iraqi friends, and our terrorist enemies, will have no doubt that the full might of America is being called upon. Victory is in Iraq's future, and our efforts next year will ensure that we achieve that victory far sooner than the Bush Administration's plan to stay a course that is not leading there fast enough."

More content coming to Apple

The trickle of video content available to Apple is growing.

Mac backup

There are a million ways to back stuff up, but only one really simple and comprehensive one: the bootable clone. A clone of your system is a mirror image of your hard drive that contains everything, and can be used to boot up your computer if and when your primary hard drive fails.

Having an updated bootable clone ensures that when trouble strikes, you'll have everything you need and will not need to worry about whether or not a certain file or application was backed up, or how to restore the backup. Just boot the clone, and you're up and running. When you get your crashed drive fixed (or replaced), just clone the backup back to your new drive, and you're golden.

The one problem with clones is that they require a lot of storage space, and they typically take a lot of time to make, since you've got to literally copy every single file from your primary drive to the clone.

Get a FireWire hard drive that's at least as large as your primary drive, and use that as your clone. FireWire drives are relatively cheap and are the only practical option for storing large amounts of data on an external bootable devices (don't use a USB connection- Macs can't boot from USB devices).

For software, I now recommend Shirt Pocket's Super Duper!. It allows you to make bootable clones for free, and the $27.95 registration fee enables the Smart Update feature- which eliminates the "lot of time to make" drawback, since it quickly scans your primary drive and then only updates the cloned drive as needed to bring the two into sync. My initial clone with Super Duper! took about an hour. Subsequent Smart Updates take about 15 minutes.

Over the years, I've used other backup programs (such as Silverkeeper and Carbon Copy Cloner- both freeware), but Super Duper! is the slickest I've seen, and it reliably creates full bootable clones of Mac OS X 10.4, which some of the other programs were unable to do.

I highly recommend it.

K9

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/4497212.stm

Interlude

How about it's time for a little music? (I love sentences like that.)

This is an unusually beautiful pop song that is really well produced. Worth listening to a few times with headphones. Some nice subtleties throughout, and a really- dare I say it- moving beginning and ending.

This is one of Clara's favorite songs. And- beyond her own self-selection- it is pretty much the best musical representation of her that I've ever heard.

And here's my response.

2006 is going to do to video what 2003 did to music

Think Secret has an interesting speculative report on an imminent push by Apple into a new phase of digital content delivery.

In 2003, Apple introduced the iTunes Music Store, which legitimized the online music sales industry. A few months back, they released a video capable iPod and a small assortment of video content available for sale on the iTMS- but that move was nothing as bold video-wise as the iTMS was for music back in 2003.

Apple news and rumor sites have pegged January's Macworld Expo as the setting and timeframe for Apple to introduce their true next generation digital entertainment delivery solution. From the reports, this is going to include "real" video content (including feature films and much wider partner participation) and a new way of delivering it- more of a VOD type of solution where purchased content is streamed to users' systems, as opposed to downloaded and "owned" as individual files.

In addition, Apple is rumored to be integrating this solution with their (again, rumored) next generation, Intel-based Mac Minis, which will be positioned as home entertainment systems.

What actually happens in January is anybody's guess and will likely, in Apple fashion, end up being what nobody guessed. But I would not be surprised to see Apple use the Intel transition not just as a processor swap, but as an evolution of the entire concept of the Mac platform into a true 21st century on-demand entertainment solution.

In other words, the Intel Macs won't just be Intel-based Macs. The Mac itself is going to change, starting with the very first system to use Intel processors, and entertainment will be the key focus.

People have been debating how Apple's transition to Intel processors is going to increase competition with Windows. I think an Intel-based Mac is certainly a better competitor to Windows than a PowerPC-based Mac, but Apple's true intent is to redefine the very definition of home computer and completely remove Windows from the equation.

With the iPod, Apple has had to broaden their platform support to offer Windows users full access to the iPod experience, which was key to them being able to grow the iPod's market share as large as they have.

I think their media push will be different. It's going to be all about their new Mac/Intel/content platform, Windows (more or less) be damned.

Peter Jackson's "King Kong" is going to be HUGE

Get ready for a lot of puns- "King Kong" is shaping up to be a massive blockbuster. The combination of a classic, legendary story and a newly-legendary director have apparently created a "jaw-droppingly brilliant" movie.

That is not surprising. But I think "King Kong" has very serious potential to become a phenomenon that directly challenges "Titanic's" $600 million domestic gross.

Here's the US all-time top 50 (unadjusted for inflation). "Titanic's" $140 million ahead of second-place "Star Wars," which shows just how much of a phenomenon "Titanic" was.

Beating "Titanic" would require a perfect storm of factors to converge, and I'm getting that feeling about this film.

Cool blog

Raymond Chen is one of the guys at Microsoft that deals with compatibility in Windows. He's been working on Windows since back in the Windows 95 days (if not earlier), and has some great insight into some of system's odds and ends and why certain things behave the way they do.