I thought Disney bought Pixar to raise the level of quality for animation. This endless sequel brigade was a large part of the problem over there before Pixar came on board. The fight over whether or not there should be a Toy Story 3 was legendary. Now, not only do we get Toy Story 3, we get Cars 2 and Monsters, Inc. 2.

Don’t let the money go to your heads, guys. Pixar’s sequels so far have not been disappointing, but if you start making sequels just because it’s easy money, you’re going to eventually get that flop that everyone has been predicting for years.

> Sure, the short-term box office effect is undeniable. But what’s the long-term effect of this gouging? I can hear Hollywood crying already about no one going to the movies anymore in a few years. And they’ll blame piracy and even legitimate digital downloads for their lost box office receipts. But $15 3D tickets will be the real reason.

The general public might be sheep, but they’ll rebel eventually.

Didn’t anyone learn anything from the music industry over the last decade?

> We’ll never know for sure. But I suspect that I would have thought very hard and then gone with my first impulse: return the phone to Apple. If it’s been stolen, then Apple is the victim of a crime and the ethical answer is to side with the victim. > > (Given that this is a new smartphone and not a mechanism for electrocuting any iPhone user who attempts to jailbreak their device.) > > If I was told that this phone had been found in a bar…I would have *assumed* that it had been stolen from Apple. Same result. > > And if the “finder” wanted some sort of fee for this device, then I would have brought law enforcement into the discussion. That kind of situation is *so shady* that no journalist with an ounce of sense would come anywhere near it. Even if you could get past the professional ethical dilemma *and* your ethical dilemma as a human being…look, smart people aren’t confused about how to react when someone tries to hand them a knife wrapped in a torn and bloody UPS uniform and asks them to hide it for a couple of weeks. I don’t mind these problems that you have to discuss with your editor. But I try to avoid the sort of problems that result in a conversation with a criminal defense attorney. > > I highly encourage you to read this whole article. Andy has always been my favorite tech journalist, and articles like this one, posted on his personal blog, are the reason why.

I don’t always agree with the guy 100%, but the man just has class. And he’s got a much better gift for words than I do.

And on this issue of the stolen Apple prototype iPhone, I have to agree completely. Gizmodo and Engadget have almost certainly behaved unethically, and they should be made to explain themselves.

Note to John Gruber: This is how you politely criticize your peers in the tech press without sounding like an insecure, petty egomaniac. I like what you have to write most of the time, but the main thing keeping you from greatness on the level of Ihnatko is your tendency to let your pride get the better of you. You just got mentioned favorably by Andy, and deservedly so, for some good work on your coverage of this topic. Don’t let that go to your head. Try to remember it next time you are tempted to slam bloggers on other sites for no good reason, other than to prove to the world that you’re always right about everything.

**Update**: An old friend called me out on Facebook for my harsh words below. I’m going to leave them there, so everyone can read what I now believe was an overly harsh initial reaction to the article I’m quoting here from SFGate. I still believe my original conclusion, but I am not happy about how I explained my reasoning.

My updated, more thought out reasoning, was posted as a comment on Facebook, as well. I will add that to the end of this article, for your convenience, or you can visit it here:

http://www.facebook.com/joecieplinski?v=wall&story_fbid=112235358809466

Thanks, Dave, for making me rethink my argument. Maybe you still disagree with me, but I hope you at least can see I’m trying to explain myself a bit better.

**Pedal power: **In a true example of the squeaky wheel getting the grease, bicyclists are getting a major break over motorists when it comes to the tougher cell phone law making its way through the state Legislature.

The proposed law would increase the fine for texting or using a hand-held cell phone on the road to $50 for a first-time offender.

Adding in all the state’s court fees and surcharges, that really comes to about $255 for drivers. A second offense would come to $445 in most counties.

But thanks to some very effective lobbying by pedal pushers, cyclists won’t have to pay those extra charges. As a result, their fines will be hundreds of dollars less than those of drivers.

The logic is that distracted cyclists do less damage than someone in a car (of course, a car can do a fair amount of damage to a distracted cyclist), and besides, cyclists tend to be young and thus can’t afford the high fine.

As if anyone can.

Only in San Francisco. There’s absolutely no reasonable argument to be made defending bicyclists who ride while texting or talking on a cell phone. This behavior is absolutely as dangerous as driving a car while doing the same. It’s probably more dangerous, as steering and balancing a bike with one hand is far more difficult than driving a car one-handed.

The argument they try to make is that younger people are more likely to be riding bikes. Exactly. And younger people are far more likely to be texting and holding their phones while riding, too. These are exactly the people most likely to be committing this offense. What’s the point of a law that punishes the most likely offenders the least?

Bikes can still run stop signs and red lights. They can kill pedestrians. They can cause fatal car accidents quite easily.

But never mind that. When your Bicycle lobby is doing the corrupt deals at City Hall, maybe it’s time to rethink just how removed you are as a city from the rest of the country.

And now, my updated argument:

To clarify my post: I’m happy I live in a town with a powerful bike lobby, as opposed to a powerful gun or tobacco lobby. We’re never going to argue about whether or not we should be celebrating confederate history month here in SF.

Maybe the bike itself can’t kill me (I’d argue that it could, at least, kill someone small and frail enough), but the truck that swerves to avoid a bike ridden by a texting rider could very easily kill me. I don’t mean to suggest that the level of danger is equal. Just that degrees of danger in the theoretical shouldn’t lead to different fines for different vehicles. The fine amount should be determined by the level of danger in the actual circumstance of the offense. In other words, a law enforcement agent should be able to heighten or lower the fine based on what transpired, regardless of the vehicles that committed the offense. In a perfect world, a car that stops but then drives through a red light at 5 a.m. on an empty city street with clear visibility in all directions and no other cars or people within sight would still get a fine, but a lesser fine than someone zipping through a red light in the middle of the day with many other cars and pedestrians present. This is the same reason why I am against red light cameras at intersections. It takes human judgement away from a situation that desperately needs to be judged by a human. A bike is less likely to cause a dangerous accident, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t ever be the cause of a dangerous accident, or that similar behavior in a car is ALWAYS more dangerous. A city street is a very serious place. It needs to be treated with the appropriate level of respect by everyone on it. To me, not paying full attention to your driving or riding is one step below intentionally trying to cause harm. I just don’t think we should be backing off any opportunity to discourage this behavior, regardless of the vehicle. I’m not trying to pick on the bikers. I know good law-abiding riders get a lot of undeserved crap in this town. But making the fine cheaper for bikers is a clear message that the City doesn’t consider it as serious an offense. I personally think that’s a mistake.It also gives drivers more fuel for their “lazy” thinking. You won’t change their minds by giving yourselves what they will unfortunately only interpret as preferential treatment. (Then again, you might not change their minds, no matter what you do.) I think the best thing for bikers and drivers, and pedestrians, is if we give all vehicles on the street equal status and respect, which requires subjecting bikers to the same moving violation rules and consequences as drivers. At least on paper. Maybe I’m paranoid about this stuff. But I don’t even think people should be texting while walking. We’re just not that good as a species at doing these things simultaneously.I may not have heard of a bike killing someone recently, but I watch bikers blow through stop signs and red lights, ride on the sidewalk, go the wrong way up one way streets, or fail to signal turns on an almost daily basis. True, all those things are currently subject to the same fine as for a car. To me that’s all the more reason why distracted riding should not be an exception.