The Progression from Democrat to Republican

The Immigrants cry for soup kitchens and assistance in finding jobs so they can survive here in the new world.

Their children cry for government loans so they can attend college, get a better job, and move to the suburbs.

Their grandkids cry that taxes are too high and the over-bearing government spends too much money on those damned poor people in the inner city.

Not Everything is a Commodity

The Argument That Apple Cannot Keep Growing

John Moltz:

It seems to me that there is a group of people who believe that all markets eventually commoditize and everyone will be satisfied with sub-standard products as long as the prices are lower.

I'm sure all those people drink RC Cola, not Coke or Pepsi.

TV Is Broken

TV Is Broken by Patrick Rhone

“What’s a commercial?”, she asks.

”It is like little shows where they tell you about other shows and toys and snacks.”, I explain.

“Why?”

“Well the TV people think you might like to know about this stuff.”

“This is boring! I want to watch Shrek.”

This echos what I see with my own kids. They have become so accustomed to the DVR and AppleTV that they think of Live Television as something foreign.

Even at 5 years old, my daughter still struggles to understand why I can't just fast forward through all the commercials to get to the good stuff.

TV Broadcasters take note. The next generation has no patience for your 3 minute blocks of annoying commercials at ear-splitting volumes. Find a better solution now, or you'll be relegated to the scrap pile like the newspaper and radio industries.

Visual Studio to support iPhone?

Interesting rumors floating around in the past few days.

First, Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was rumored to appear during the Keynote at Apple's World Wide Developer's Conference alongside Steve Jobs.  The nerdgasm quickly dissipated as that rumor was debunked.

The reason for the alleged appearance is even more intriguing, however -- Support for the iPhone in Visual Studio 2010. Kaboom!

While this seems contrary to everything Apple has done in the past few months -- in particular, banishing 3rd party development tools -- the idea of Visual Studio pumping out iPhone apps is too enticing to ignore.

• Would this allow people to develop for the iPhone on Windows?  Right now you must have a Mac.
• Would Visual Studio 2010 support Objective-C?
• Could you write native iPhone apps using C# or VB.NET?

The mind spins with the possibilities.

In the end, I'd say this is a long shot.  While the cold war between Apple and Microsoft might be winding down in the face of a bigger threat -- Google -- I still can't see Steve Jobs endorsing Windows programmers writing VB.NET apps for his beloved iPad.  Then again, stranger things have happened...

Kindergarten student suspended for making gun with fingers

An Ionia, Michigan 6 year old was suspended from Kindergarten for making a pretend gun with his fingers.

Sadly, I'm not kidding.

Mason Jammer, a kindergarten student at Jefferson Elementary in Ionia, curled his fist into the shape of a gun Wednesday and pointed it at another student, school officials said it was no laughing matter.

They suspended Mason until Friday, saying the behavior made other students uncomfortable, said Erin Jammer, Mason’s mother.

School officials allege Mason had displayed this kind of behavior for several months, despite numerous warnings.

“I do think it’s too harsh for a six-year-old,” said Jammer, who was previously warned that if Mason continued the practice he would be suspended. “He’s six and he just likes to play.”

[The mother said,] “He’s only six and he doesn’t understand any of this.”

Full details at MLive.com

Come on people.

I have a kindergartner in school right now. She just turned 6 in January. Expecting her to understand the ramifications of shaping your hand like a pistol is moronic. She's a small child. She doesn't live in the same world that grown ups do.

Childhood is a time to try new things and learn from the experience -- good or bad. You can't crush the kid because they didn't know that gun violence in public schools is a growing problem.

You want a Zero Tolerance Policy? Fire the School Board, the Principal and the Teacher that Suspended this child. They're the ones who represent the most harm to the student body. Not a 6 year old child.

iPhone now has MMS, but not really

The big day has come and gone. September 25th marked the launch of MMS on the iPhone, and guess what? It doesn't work.

Here we are 3 days past the launch date, and many AT&T customers still can't send or receive an MMS message. All we see is the dreaded red ! fail badge.

Yet again we find that the weakest link in the iPhone experience has nothing to do with the Hardware, the Software or Apple itself. It's the network.

Get your act together, AT&T.

Authorize.net is down!

Bad news for a TON of online retailers out there -- payment gateway service Authorize.net is DOWN. No transactions are being processed, and their own web site will not even load.

Worse yet, any site displaying their badge will load incredibly slow.

Hundreds of thousands of web site must be affected by this, yet it has received ZERO coverage by the mainstream press.

Spread the word!

Updated: 10:45am EST - Conflicting reports on Twitter and Digg regarding what is happening.

• Some are saying that a power outage at a Data Center in Seattle is the cause of the problems.
  
• Others are saying it's an Earthquake in Utah that has cause a fire in a Data Center.
  
• Finally, there's word of a flood at a Data Center in Dallas.

By all accounts the outage is closing in on 8 hours now. Bad news for many retailers...