2 Great Articles on Barack Obama

Two ... audacious ... articles on Obama:

• The Audacity of Hopelessness by Frank Rich
  contrasts Clinton's and Obama's thinking (hint: one of them is positive, the other one is negative) and points out that judging by how well Obama organized his election campaign, he would do just fine as a president. In contrast, Clinton, who has criticized Obama for his lack of experience, has had major organizational gaffes in her campaign.
• The Audacity of Data by Noam Scheiber
  shows that Obama's philosophy is very pragmatic and un-ideological, he is not really out to change the status quo, but rather to improve it. While I think that in some areas, one should at least explore more unorthodox ideas, this philosophy might be exactly what the US needs right now. At any rate, Obama is thinking outside the box and I really like it. And you have to love the idea that the IRS does your taxes for you (hmm, I wonder what group of people will heavily oppose this).
  

Is the war on terrorism bogus?

The Guardian has published an article (by a former British environment minister, no less) that sheds light on some of the motivations behind the United States' invasion of Iraq. Oil seems to have played a huge role (as has been alleged before). It is interesting that when it comes to oil supplies, the US government chose a military solution where there would have been an engineering solution: Funding a research program for non-oil energy sources would have produced none of the negative effects of a war (which at the time of the decision were very obvious risks), while still strengthening the US position globally (in a purely positive way).

[source: doggdot.us]

How will mobile communication evolve?

My guess is that most people will soon find out that constantly being interrupted by one's cell phone makes it hard to relax or concentrate. On the other hand, it is convenient if someone is easily reachable. So, is there a way to reconcile the opposing goals of not being interrupted and being connected? Well, asynchronous communication such as email and SMS goes a long way (if one doesn't check for updates too often). But what if you need synchronous communication? Then you can use a message to set up a time interval during which to get in touch directly. This limits the time when you have to be easily reachable. Complementary to this approach is the idea to let people know your current status: Do you want to be contacted, are you busy etc. This idea of a publicly broadcasted status originated in instant messaging and has been further developed by the Twitter service to also work with SMS, web sites etc. Expect this kind of service to be more popular in the future (e.g. one can imagine it being better integrated with cell phones), as we grow more sensitive about being always available.

MacBook Air (early 2008): pros and cons

Update: Notes on the MacBook Air late 2010



It is quite an exciting machine. The good:

• Light and compact


• Full-size screen and keyboard


• Battery lasts 5 hours


• Built-in microphone, headphone jack and camera (nice for Skype...).
  

Acceptable compromises:

• Built-in battery: Makes the MacBook Air much more compact. I don't have an external battery for my current MacBook, so I would not feel the need to swap batteries.
  


• No optical disc drive: Leaving it out shaves off a lot of weight. Using another machine's drive via WLAN is a good alternative to plugging in a USB2 drive. I wonder how they handle installations where one needs to boot. Apple says this can be done on the website, but how can you choose a WLAN drive before booting?


• Only one USB port. This is the least acceptable compromise, but a USB hub should work where this is an issue. Note that I consider this a different issue from there only being USB ("give us more USB ports" versus "give us Ethernet/Firewire etc.").
  

Problematic: USB limits the MacBook Air compared to other Apple Notebooks (even very old ones...).

• Speed: Data transfer into and out of the machine is limited by USB2's maximum speed. Many kinds of adapters are going to be hampered by this. Already the Ethernet adapter is 10/100BASE-T, not Gigabit Ethernet. A good solution would be to have a Firewire800 port in addition to USB2. The former is almost twice as fast as the latter and could be used for adapters (such as the Ethernet adapter), freeing up the USB2 port for normal use. To put the speed into perspective (source: Wikipedia):




• Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR: 3 Mbit/s
  


• 802.11n (wireless LAN): 248 Mbit/s


• Firewire400: 393.216 Mbit/s


• USB2: 480 Mbit/s


• Firewire800: 786.432 Mbit/s




• Target disk mode: Target disk mode (using a notebook as an external drive) only works with Firewire, not with USB.


• Networking: To do any kind of wired networking with USB, you will always need an adapter. Mac OS X and Windows XP (currently not Vista) directly support IP networking via Firewire, so there is no need for adapters.

Update: Another interesting alternative is Firewire S800T. It is a Gigabit Ethernet port that can also be used as a Firewire 800 port (with an adapter). Thus, using it for Ethernet is easy, while using it for Firewire is possible. So, choosing between S800T and 800 depends on whether one prefers Ethernet or Firewire.

DVD: Stranger than fiction (2006)

I just watched Stranger than fiction on DVD. Great movie. It does a lot with its fantastic premise without losing sight of character development. Will Farell is convincing enough in a "serious" role and Emma Tompson and Dustin Hoffman tone it down; so they don't distract from the movie too much.



Tip: I'm usually not too much of a sucker for extras, but this DVD's "deleted scenes" contain good improv material and scenes that actually give the movie more depth.

Paul McCartney on YouTube

I've recently found out that Paul McCartney even has an official YouTube presence. Among other things, it features two recent videos of his (see below). Impressive that after all those years, his music still feels fresh (compare this to Stevie Wonder or Prince, whose music has disappointed me for quite a while now).


"Dance tonight": Directed by Michael Gondry, stars Natalie Portman!


"Ever present past".

Still no Java 6 on Mac OS X

This is getting annoying. I don't mind waiting; what I don't understand is that Apple does not tell the outside world anything at all about their Java plans. If you are a Mac user and want Java 6, then you should read Henry Story's blog post about 2 ways we can do something about it.
Ah, I forgot: 13949712720901ForOSX