A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat. - PJ O’Rourke

Why you gotta pick on me like that? :(

US Boarder Guards were just handed the authority to inspect, confiscate, and copy any electronic device they damn well please, for any period they feel like. That information can then be passed on to any number of government organizations. But don’t worry, if you weren’t ACTUALLY doing anything wrong, they’re supposed to delete that information (they just don’t give you a timeline for that, or any way to verify that it’s actually been done…).

What ISN’T mentioned in the article that I’d like to know about is whether or not they can compel you to unlock security on your system.

If I were a business traveler I’d have serious misgivings about going into the US nowadays - I might trust the IRS with my company’s financial records, but some idiot working the boarder? If the wrong info got out, it could sink a company.

What about a doctor? If Britney Spears’ doctor crossed through the boarder, you think that boarder guard wouldn’t be tempted to sell that information to the highest tabloid bidder?

Strong encryption is becoming more important every day. I know if I were crossing the boarder I’d lock my stuff down as much as possible.

Apparently Esquire Magazine will get an eInk cover page. The technology is similar to that used in the Kindle (that Ebook reader from Amazon). What makes digital ink so cool is that it’s readable in full sunlight and it only takes power to change the display - so long as it’s showing static text there’s no electricity cost.

I’m still trying to figure out if it’ll be hackable and upgradeable - apparently some eInk products aren’t “fully addressable”, so you can’t talk to specific pixels.

BoingBoing has a bit more information on it - the issue will be regularly-priced thanks to some Ford advertising.

I think this is a really cool idea - though some others disagree. “treehugger.com” thinks this is yet another horrible idea from a wasteful society (they actually used the title “Esquire eInk Abuse Exposed” - I figured they were going to show how the cover would have secret child porn or something…).

What really left me sputtering was when they said that Esquire had spent six figures developing a paper-thin battery. Then they asked, “And what else are paper-thin batteries good for?” - and they weren’t being sarcastic.

Paper thin batteries are the holy grail! The battery accounts for a HUGE chunk of the weight and bulk of every mobile device on the planet! Paper thin batteries ARE THE FUTURE of mobility - display, input, and power are the three things that make devices bulky, expensive, and at times difficult to use.

Make batteries smaller and displays more power-efficient and you’ve made a great leap in mobility.

“Treehugger” might know a lot about the art of romancing wood, but they seem to be uninformed about technology.

There is now a Halo corpse alphabet.

Woah.

(I was going to say “Wow” - but I figured the people most interested in a Halo corpse alphabet would’ve gotten that expression confused with an acronym for a game…)

I just received the Dropbox Beta invite I applied for months ago - glad I found the invite code in that news article…

BTW - Dropbox is still awesome :)

So I was browsing through my Control Panel one day, as we all often do, and what do I see?

Why, an icon nestled snugly between “mail” and “mouse” - “MobileMe Preferences”.

Now, I don’t have a MobileMe account, I will never have a MobileMe account, and I would have NEVER installed 43 MB worth of software in order to take advantage OF a MobileMe Account.

Where could this horrid thing have come from? Surely virus writers are out there, perhaps the same ones who steal credit card numbers and share child pornography, adding such horrible software to the desktops of poor, defenseless windows users.

Nope. A quick search confirms it. This little bag of horse shit was deposited into my system by Apple itself, when I made the mistake of deciding to run the most up-to-date version of iTunes.

Apparently even uninstalling iTunes won’t rid you of the crapfest that is MobileMe - instead you need to uninstall the cryptically-named “Apple Mobile Device Support” program.

Fuck you, Apple. “The company that’s different” is pulling stuff that no legitimate piece of software has done for years. Heck, nowadays most freeware even asks you for permission before filling your system up with junk adware.

First you want to “update safari” (which I never had installed in the first place), and now this? You’re burning through goodwill fast. The “superior iTunes experience” is starting to look a lot like a noose and vendor lock in.

EDIT: Wonderful. Now I can’t get my iPod to sync.

EDIT EDIT: Phew! Looks like (fingers crossed) things are back to OK now - I found the iPod listed in the device manager and told Windows to reinstall the drivers. So far so good. Is the problem related to me pulling out “MobileMe”? I dunno, but it seems like an awfully big coincidence otherwise…