waffle

I’m taking time out of my busy schedule of ignoring you (that’s code for me being on vacation) to post this nugget: a WebKit check-in reveals “the new ObjC 2 API” that’ll come in Leopard. The latest issue in our ongoing Garbage Collection tale? (Tons of thanks to Chris for mentioning.)

I’m still writing this on this old thing, but an order is placed already for an almost bottom-of-the-barrel MacBook. (1.83GHz, 1GB RAM (up 0.5 from standard), 80GB HD (up 20GB from standard).)

Things I’ll miss a bit, but not horrifyingly so:

• The SuperDrive DVD+-RW facilities.
• The backlit keyboard.
• The video ports.
• The built-in modem.

Things I won’t miss:

• The AC adapter connector.
• The gaps where things can actually get underneath the keyboard.

The old iBook was a joke. When Steve Jobs introduced the first white G3 iBook and called it the second fastest laptop in the world (second to the PowerBook only, of course), he wasn’t fooling anyone. iBooks have since gotten acceptable, but they have never truly left crippleware. The Intel-based tangent off of the old iBook plan would have been a Core Solo machine with a spongy keyboard, but the MacBook isn’t it. The MacBook is close enough to prime time that I can safely transition to it and still get insanely much more done, and I’m very happy for that.

First impressions will arrive as the white wonder itself does.

Tremendously thoughtful words from the Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan. (via one third of the team behind my text editor. I should add that I don’t think the World Cup is over-hyped - for an event that draws 32 teams in fierce competition around the world in the most popular sport there is, similar attention is to be expected.)

I wish I had seen this much sooner.

“Add it up and the record company has spent about $4.4 million. So their profit is $6.6 million; the band may as well be working at a 7-Eleven. [..] Worst of all, after all this, the band owns none of its work … they can pay the mortgage forever but they’ll never own the house.”

“Toni Braxton also declared bankruptcy in 1998. She sold $188 million worth of CDs, but she was broke because of a terrible recording contract that paid her less than 35 cents per album. Bankruptcy can be an artist’s only defense against a truly horrible deal and the RIAA wants to take it away.”

“Story after story gets told about artists — some of them in their 60s and 70s, some of them authors of huge successful songs that we all enjoy, use and sing — living in total poverty, never having been paid anything. Not even having access to a union or to basic health care. Artists who have generated billions of dollars for an industry die broke and un-cared for.

And they’re not actors or participators. They’re the rightful owners, originators and performers of original compositions.

This is piracy.”

So the next time someone tells you file sharing is shafting the artists, just look glum and cynical and retort: “No, that’s the work of the recording industry.”