Bloggers: Forbes hates you

Dan Gillmor has a great commentary on an upcoming Forbes article on blogging. As is only too easy for MSM "crochety old folks" like Forbes, they totally lay into bloggers as the barbarians at the gate. Something tells me the author was once considered such a beast, only perhaps many years ago, before he could afford things like a new BMW.

So bloggers are the work of the devil. So says Forbes.

Happy Halloween!

Jack Thompson is an idiot

There Jack, want to try and send me to jail as well? I saw you on 60 Minutes. First off, 60 Minutes has (lately) been pretty lax in the old judgement department. More and more it's looking like a tabloid. They recently re-ran a story about some for-profit schools under investigation, but neglected to mention (even in postscript) that, as of NOW those schools (all but one) had been exonerated. That's just poor journalism and lazy network programming.

Who is this Jack Thompson, and why is it important to call him names? Well, he is going around running his mouth about violent video games, saying they're corrupting our youth, etc. Remember pool halls? Remember pinball? Remember death metal? Yeah, same song, second verse, could get better, but it's going to get worse. Much worse.

The folks over at Penny Arcade have been criticizing him, and he's been firing back. Today he called the cops to say they are harassing him. He has the balls to say HE was just exercising his 1st amendment rights, but THEY are harassing HIM. Oy. What a moron. That's what we call a logical fallacy Jack. You can't have it both ways.

The best part of the story, the one where Jack's cred goes down the toilet in a flaming bag of poop... Well that's where Jack T. offered to pay $10,000 to a charity if a developer creates a specifically vile and violent video game. Someone did, and Jack recanted. What, you're all tithed out this year, big boy? Very un-Christian of you, tsk tsk. So the Penny Arcade guys decided to pony up the dough to a worthwhile cause. Good for them.

Shame on Jack, a very dull boy indeed. Technology is neither good nor bad, but idiots make it so.

Another big Apple announcement

Some time today Apple is going to announce some new "pro innovations." So nothing with the letter "i" in front of it.

My bets:

1. A photo-related app, like iPhoto on steroids. BTW, I mentioned this in the comments of another blog (Leander Kahney's I believe) but I think I said it'd be more of a sorting tool. I agree with MacOSXrumors.com that it'll be a retouching tool... Just enough not to piss off Adobe. Although we can hear a general sigh from the Elements group no doubt.

2. PowerBooks will have iSights in them, like the iMac recently got. Probably support for DDR2 and PCI-X in the graphics subsystem. Maybe updated video cards too... Possibly something else. 802.11n? That'd be cool...

3. The PowerMacs will see some dual-core dual-processor action. Ye gods, that will be incredible. Might have to get one of those for the company. That would make an amazing machine to work on...

4. Probably some updates to other pro apps... Shake or Motion or Soundtrack. Oh how I wish Apple would make a 3D app...

5. And a Madonna Special Edition Shuffle. Ha.

Video iPod is my bet

I think some form of video ipod. Makes sense. DRM'ed all to hell, but there they will sit. Possibly with touch-screens and inkwell. Possibly with 802.11. And possibly with ARM processors.

Think about it. Steve said something about you sit in front of the computer with your mind on, in front of tv with the mind OFF. So you take your iPod with you to "tune out" right? Video is the same. Video out, sync with paid content (or iMovie, vCasts via iTMS, etc.-- Mark Cuban, you listening?).

Believe it!