I love glaciers. Taking a helicopter up to hike around the glaciers in New Zealand was one of the greatest things I've ever done.

Forget about “right” and “wrong” and your hippy ideals of “open” this and “free love” that for a minute. Do the goddamn math...

...should we get all up in arms and boycott the iPhone over this apparent customer-screwing move like a bunch of irate schoolchildren who just threatened to stop playing kickball until the rules are to our liking? Hell no. AT&T is a business you communist fool. They ain’t no charity. Randall Stephenson isn’t the CEO for his health. They have executives and a Board of Directors responsible to their shareholders in both the short and long-term. They are not about to voluntarily give up billions of dollars of margin and screw their shareholders over just because you think Apple and AT&T are capricious in their App Store approval process. News flash: It’s their multi-billion dollar 3G network, so we’re playing by their rules. It’s their kickball and their field.

Apple doesn't care [as much] about blocking Google Voice, they still make money on the hardware. It's AT&T that loses here. People would be using their network in ways AT&T never planned for.

You should follow @tomloverro on Twitter. He actually has great opinions on things, instead of just going along with what everyone else is thinking.

That short window of time without service is used for essential nightly track maintenance.  Unlike some public transit systems with multiple sets of tracks on the same routes, BART doesn't have the duplication that would allow us to run trains on one set while performing maintenance on another. Third-rail power has to be shut down for maintenance crews to be able to operate safely and do the work that keeps the system safe and reliable. And the trains can’t run when the power is down.

It's really too bad the BART doesn't run later than midnight, but at least there's a good reason why it can't.

Surprising that a transit system built in the 70s wouldn't have been designed for 24/7 use.

I love Audi

Defenders of San Francisco, often ex-San Franciscans recently relocated to New York and brimming with a new-found elitist generosity, say that San Francisco is a wonderful place to live, just in your later 30s, once you're married and somehow "settled", which is an endorsement so specific in scope that it essentially functions as a sweeping theological renunciation. San Francisco is great, the implication is, once everything interesting in life is over. It's like saying Rwanda is a fabulous vacation spot, so long as you've reached the point in your existence where you want to contract HIV.

You really have to read the whole thing. Thanks, @tkane

“We do no market research. We don’t hire consultants. The only consultants I’ve ever hired in my 10 years is one firm to analyze Gateway’s retail strategy so I would not make some of the same mistakes they made [when launching Apple's retail stores]. But we never hire consultants, per se. We just want to make great products.”

Jobs elaborates on how Apple designs for themselves. (I wrote about the same idea here.)

“It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.”

Totally agree. I don't want to hire consultants, I won't outsource, and I only want to design/build for myself. You will never build a better product than the one you personally need.

...it claims to be the "greatest ever GR image quality." It wouldn't be much of a step forward if that wasn't the case, but let's see what else the Japanese company hopes to tempt us with. The wide-angle 28 mm/F1.9 GR Lens is all new, while the high-sensitivity 10-megapixel CCD and the GR Engine III image processor are likely evolutionary steps from the previous generation. Collectively, they promise improvements in all the areas you'd expect: faster focus, less noise and better low light images. There's also a 3-inch 920,000-dot VGA display, video recording at 640 x 480 / 30 fps, SDHC expandability and a complete lack of optical zoom.

 

I've always thought it would be cool to have an ultra small, fixed focal length, fast camera to take around when I don't want to lug the big camera. Most compact cameras focus on megapixels and stupid features, instead of high quality.

This camera seems pretty ideal. f1.9 lens and a larger than average (for a compact) sensor means it should do pretty well in low light. And it's less than 6 ounces.

But it's way overpriced. Too bad

According to the Financial Times, Apple is racing to launch the fabled Apple tablet in September, along with new iPods. They claim Apple is working with record labels and book publishers on new iTunes features created for the new device:

The talks come as Apple is separately racing to offer a portable, full-featured, tablet-sized computer in time for the Christmas shopping season, in what the entertainment industry hopes will be a new revolution. The device could be launched alongside the new content deals, including those aimed at stimulating sales of CD-length music, according to people briefed on the project.

Apple is working with EMI, SonyMusic, Warner Music and Universal Music Group, on a project the company has codenamed "Cocktail", according to four people familiar with the situation.

The Financial Times' sources point out that the device will have a 10-inch touchscreen and run iPhone OS. The tablet will be able to connect to the Internet using Wi-Fi like the iPod touch, and—according to publishers—it will also have a book marketplace. Yes, that's Jeff Bezos' worse nightmare.

ok, i know i'm an apple fanboy and I'll basically love anything Steve Jobs puts out. But this would be totally sweet. I've never been a fan of the kindle, seems too limited in what it does for the price.

But a full tablet that does ebooks and much more, now that's interesting. If this thing has 3G built in, i'm sold.