Posted 8:37 PM

Only interesting to Mac users...

Brian Tieman, the lucky dog, has a developer's release of Panther...he's planning to write a book about it.

So where did he install it? On his iPod!

My iPod gleamed at me from the corner of my desk. Of course!

I plugged the iPod into the G4 and enabled manual mode, and deleted all the songs from it. Then I unplugged it and fired up the iBook, and plugged it in. Tossed in the Panther disk; rebooted to begin installation. It booted almost instantly . It asked which disk to install it on; with a flourish and a doffing of my flowing black cape, I selected the iPod. And it installed quickly and smoothly, taking less than 45 minutes all told...

...Now I have a bootable copy of the OS in my pocket; I can take it to work and boot my iMac with it, so I can see the more video-intensive things like the hideously gratuitous (and therefore utterly delicious) Fast User Switching feature, and of course Exposé. I can take it to the park with my laptop, boot it into Panther, and explore the half-finished features and guess at what they'll eventually do....

Fast User Switching is not in itself a big deal--it's already on XP. But the Apple graphics...unbelievable. When you switch users, your screen, with all your windows and open applications, becomes the face of a cube, which rotates, bringing the next face, with all the stuff of the other user, around until it fills the screen.

Most people won't care of course, because the Appreciation-Of-Cool-Graphics Cortical Nexus never developed in their brains, due to a lack of Griffleblexin in the diet during infancy. Just as the tone-deaf hear no music, they will never giggle with delight over this, or this, or this...

Posted 8:31 AM

Isn't that what the reformers wanted?

Byron York writes:

Why aren't campaign-finance reformers happy with George W. Bush? As the president raises money for his reelection campaign, he's living the reformers' dream — collecting limited amounts of hard money from real people who want to be a part of the political process.

He's not having small, private dinners with fat cats who write $2 million checks. He's having big, public dinners with people who write $2,000 checks. Isn't that what the reformers wanted?

Bush's post-reform math is simple. Get 500 people to give $2,000, and you've got $1 million.Get 1,000 people, and you've got $2 million. Find one of those cavernous hotel ballrooms that can accommodate 2,000 people, and you've got $4 million. Do that for about a month and you've funded your campaign...

I wonder if the 'reformers" actually believed their own rhetoric, and imagined that Republican campaigns were financed by high-rollers who handed over million-dollar checks with a wink and a nudge? Anyway, they are now re-defining 'fat-cat" as someone who contributes $2,000 to a Republican...

Posted 2:20 PM

Bring 'em on ...

You remember, I'm sure, all those Leftiform Invertebrates who opposed the Battle of Iraq because they didn't believe the administration was interested in Nation Building? (It really seems unfair, they get to quote their "beliefs" as if they were facts or evidence.)

And you've noticed, I'm sure, that now that the Bush Administration is settling in for the long haul in Iraq, none of these people are apologizing (Andrew?) ...and many of them are denouncing the "quagmire" and suggesting we get out?

I would be very angry about this, except that I have a hunch bordering on a certainty that they are unwittingly serving our cause. David Warren says that our forces in Iraq are deliberately acting like flypaper for terrorists, draining them from the whole region and bringing them right where we happen to have lots of firepower and the excuse to use it.

Which means that the hand-wringing quagmirists are performing an essential task. I'm sure they are getting lots of headlines in doubtful parts of the world. Their predictions of disaster are being heard by all. So legions of terrorists are now scratching their heads and stroking their beards and saying, "Br'er Rabbit doesn't want to be thrown in the Briar Patch. He said so. Therefore, Brothers, it is the Will of Allah that we cast him into that Briar Patch!"

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Posted 8:58 AM

Let not the hope of the poor be taken away ...

Mickey Kaus mentioned this story, Teacher union fights to hold Sacramento High down :

Californians from all over the state ought to be watching the nasty fight playing out this summer in the Sacramento city schools. It shows what reform-minded administrators and a supportive community can do to try to turn around public education in low-income neighborhoods. It also demonstrates, unfortunately, how far the state teachers union will go to block such changes.

The district has been trying to re-invent Sacramento High School, a troubled school in the city's largely minority Oak Park neighborhood, a few miles south of the state Capitol. The campus was officially on the list of the state's "low-performing" schools and participated in a state program targeting new resources at such failures. But Sacramento High didn't improve, and faced a possible state takeover.

Instead, the district school board voted earlier this year to close the campus and hand the grounds to a nonprofit corporation headed by former NBA basketball star Kevin Johnson, who graduated from Sacramento High before going on to lead the Phoenix Suns as an all-star point guard. Johnson has returned to his childhood digs and is using his money and connections to try to spur an economic and spiritual resurgence in the area.

Under the leadership of Johnson's group, the new school is to be split into six small academies, in line with an emerging thesis that teenagers do better in more intimate surroundings than in the massive, impersonal environments that have come to characterize the modern American high school...

The unions have, among other things, obtained a court order against the school, which is being appealed.

The "teachers unions" are the biggest contributors to the Democratic Party. Almost every Democrat politician supports them in applying the Brezhnev Doctrine to the public schools. When you hear people huff and puff about Republicans having ties to "Big Business," remember that almost every Dem politician has ties to "Big Labor," and is working hard to blight and destroy the hopes of the poor and minorities by preventing reform of failing public schools. (Where they would never send their own children.) I don't think the Democrats are morally equivalent here, I think they are EVIL.