A problem I wouldn't mind having

(from Citizen Kane)

THATCHER
Tell me honestly, my boy. Don't you think it's rather unwise to continue this philanthropic enterprise, this Inquirer, that's costing you a million dollars a year?

KANE
You are right, Mr. Thatcher. I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year! You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in -- sixty years.

Malus

De duobus malis minus est semper eligendum.

The false idol of extended warranties

John Gruber says:

I once told a sales guy at Best Buy that extended warranties were against my religion, on the grounds that they’re like placing a wager that whatever it is you’re buying is going to break, and that my religious forbids gambling. That shut him up.

Oh, I do so plan on using that one.

(Daring Fireball)

Mighty?

Best review of the Apple Mighty Mouse yet (at mezzoblue.com)

I have had this one since I upgraded to my new machine thoth about a month ago. So far I have disabled the side squeeze buttons (because they kept getting in the way) and the right button (because the auto-detection of which button I'm trying to click requires a level of physical coordination from me that's never going to happen -- after decades of using mice, my brain is hard coded not to worry about whether I'm resting the wrong finger on the mouse while trying to click with the other one. Didn't anyone test this?)

So I'm down to a classic one button mouse, with a scroll button. The scroll button's working fine for me. I guess that's some consolation. But in general, if I have to disable almost all of the product's features before I can make it acceptable, I would call that product a flop.

This might just work

Name that movie

Dick Charleston: [hanging up telephone] Sounded as though somebody snipped the wire.
Dora Charleston: Really? What did it sound like?
Dick Charleston: Snip.

Sidney Wang: Very interesting theory, Mr. Charleston. However, leave out one important point.
Dick Charleston: What's that?
Sidney Wang: Is stupid. Is stupidest theory I ever heard.

It is hard to title this post...

... without being trite and calling it "Smell-o-vision". Oh well. "Smell-o-vision" it is then. (from Cronaca).

Why Steve Jobs is a success

He "gets it" in an intuitive way that committees of other people cannot.

I normally don't like to do such a direct ripoff of someone else's post, but in this case I can't add anything. From Newsweek, via Daring Fireball: Steve Jobs is asked if he's worried about the Zune.

“In a word, no. I’ve seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you’ve gone through all that, the girl’s got up and left! You’re much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you’re connected with about two feet of headphone cable.”

Peddling books for Stalin

From time to time I'll be peddling books here (either books that I'm selling through Red Chili Merchandise, my book-selling enterprise, or from some other source if it's a book I'm really interested in.) In the interests of full disclosure, I have a financial interest in this. So if you're not interested in having me get money from any books you buy through this site, don't buy them through this site :-)

I grew up in the world where we were still worried about Communism and the Cold War, and had heard vague condemnations of Stalin as the most evil communist leader anyone had ever heard of, but I never knew a lot of detail. "Stalin" by Edvard Radzinsky changed all that for me. I couldn't put it down. It really filled in a relatively blank spot in my historical knowledge. It is, I should warn, Mr. Radzinsky's interpretation, but it was pretty convincing to me. He was there. I wasn't.

Aha

This graphic indicates very clearly what happened when Cory Lidle's plane crashed in New York.

Disaster

This site shows disasters and emergencies throughout the world. I am just mesmerized by this.

A tree rat

I know this is from the Cute Overload site, but

This is not cute.

That is target practice.

RSS support

I don't know if I mentioned it earlier, but the Western Syndicate still has RSS support even after it moved over to Blogger. The new link is: http://beta.blogger.com/feeds/5378030372268226397/posts/full?alt=rss . To get an Atom feed, use the link at the bottom of the page.

What you might hear if you call my house

SorryWeAreNotInterestedInTakingPoliticalCallsGoodbye*CLICK*

This can't be good

Am I supposed to feel guilty if I go for several days without updating this site?

Coming to Safari

Safari remains my favorite web browser. Here is some new information about the new features that are coming in Safari 3.0, in Mac OS X Leopard early next year. (AppleInsider)