Monthly Archives: January 2009

Macworld Expo 2009 Recap

Posted on January 6, 2009 | Leave a comment

The SchillerNote is now over, and while there was some pretty exciting, interesting things announced, I didn’t get the one thing I wanted: an iMac update. See, our iMac has a video card problem (that sits on the mainboard, unfortunately) that makes the display difficult to work with. Possible, but difficult. We have the money saved up, and I’m ready to click the Buy button. Again, unfortunately, the current iMac revision is about 9 months old, and is due for an upgrade. So, the wait is not over. Come on, Cupertino!

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Posted in Technology

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Why Is It…?

Posted on January 5, 2009 | Leave a comment

I just wrote a check for a year’s subscription for my wife’s Food & Wine magazine. The invoice portion that you send back says that I owe $19.95 for 12 issues. That’s the only option. And yet, right next to the “$19.95″, there’s also a place for me to fill in how much I’m sending them. Hmm. What would happen if I sent them $10? $30? I guess chalk it up to another long obsolete — or never useful — thing in the world. 

I love finding this little weirdisms in life.

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Next Week: Macworld Expo

Posted on January 2, 2009 | Leave a comment

Next week the largest non-Apple sponsored Mac conference gets underway and runs through the week. A couple things of note before it even begins: Steve Jobs isn’t giving a keynote (bummer) and Apple isn’t planning a presence at any Macworld Expo after this one (bummer again). Still, it’s almost certain that Apple will be releasing some new goodies for the faithful next week. This is what I’m hoping for:

  1. A nice upgrade for the iMac, and more that just a processor speed bump. I’m planning on buying (my current iMac is dying slowly due to video problems), and I want this purchase to last through the tough economic times we’re entering.
  2. Some sort of a media storage server, allowing me to hook my Drobo up to it and stream content directly to my Apple TV. Right now I need to run iTunes on my iMac to stream from my Drobo, which hangs off of my Airport. It’s clunky as all get out. This needs to be affordable, but I bet it won’t be.
  3. Something — anything — that is not expected and is cool. I love surprises, especially techie ones.

Amazon’s End User blog does a good job of breaking down other predictions. Now, the wait. *tap* *tap* *tap*

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“Proportionate Response”

Posted on January 1, 2009 | Leave a comment

I’ve written about this before, but I have to speak up again about this. Terrorists in Gaza lob thousands of rockets into civilian Israeli areas, hoping to kill any Jew they can hit. Israel attacks back at the terrorists, using their actual military instead of indiscriminately lobbing explosives. Diplomats in the international community complain that Israel is using a “disproportionate response”. 

Now, both Michael Totten and Donald Sensing have  both gone into fairly detailed take downs of this view point. What I’ve said in the past still holds as my biggest problem with it, though: most wars end because one side wins. One side usually wins by using more force (or more effective force) than the opponent. Equal responses would usually end up with a war with no end. In the long run, this would — usually — result in a lot more pain and suffering.

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Posted in Politics

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