Court orders TSA to justify year-long defiance of the law | Ars Technica:

Requiring the TSA to follow the formal rule-making procedure is important, because one of the essential steps in that process is the solicitation of public feedback. American travelers will have the opportunity to voice their concerns about the TSA’s policy, and the agency will be required to respond to those concerns. Given that so many of the TSA’s policies are shrouded in secrecy, forcing the TSA to explain its policies will be a much-needed source of transparency. And if the rationale for using the machines is as flimsy as some critics charge, perhaps the exercise will cause the agency to re-consider the decision to use them.

(Via arstechnica.com)

I’d argue it’s also important because they were* given a court order*. If government agencies can simply ignore the Judicial Branch of the government, that’s the end of everything, folks. Game over. We’re living in a totalitarian state.

At least give us the illusion that we still have some control over what our government subjects us to, here. Play along for show. That’s what the TSA is best at, anyway, right?

What’s the worst that can happen? A bunch of lefty liberals write their objections in the formal procedure, and you ignore them and do what you want, anyway. No harm done, and it won’t even generate much bad press, because most Americans are too scared of their own shadow to think rationally about what does and doesn’t make them safer.

The fact that The TSA has simply ignored the order all this time demonstrates a level of arrogance that, frankly, is very frightening. If they don’t even have to pretend to follow the rule of law, what will they do next?

Playing in Gatekeeper’s sandbox:

While pundits often seem to divide the computer-using public into “developers” and “people who can’t find where they saved their files,” there’s a lot of ground between those two extremes, and a lot of people in that ground are going to keep wanting desktops and laptops for the foreseeable future. While I can’t absolutely rule out Apple turning its back on them, I haven’t seen anyone make a particularly good business case as to why Apple would. “Because they can” is not a particularly good business case.

(Via Coyote Tracks)

Well put. Marco Arment made a similar point on his podcast this week. We have to stop thinking that there are only two kinds of computer users—geeks and complete noobies. There’s a spectrum of knowledge, and everyone is somewhere along it. And many more are further down the geek side than we like to think.

So forget the conspiracy theories about Apple pushing out the geeks and just catering to the complete novices. The goal of OS X has always been to make computing easier for all of us. Apple doesn’t always succeed at this, of course, but if you look back at the intentions behind most of its decisions, and you look at the complaints from power users, it usually boils down to some degree of Apple being perfectly comfortable with throwing out old habits to try something simpler, and power users hating change of any kind. Occasional misstep aside, the overall progression for OS X has been to make it easier to do things, as long as you’re willing to adapt.

Watts’s later point about file sharing between apps, meanwhile, may be a good example of one of those missteps. Or maybe it’s just a temporary hiccup along the path to a better world. Who knows?

Google Delays Nexus Q Launch:

Google has just let us know that it is delaying the launch of the Nexus Q as it works to improve the device. The Nexus Q order page on Google Play has been taken down, and now simply leaves customers with a note that the device “is coming soon.”

(Via Daring Fireball)

Imagine for a half-second what would happen if Apple ever did this. Announce a brand new product at a huge venue, then a month later suddenly and mysteriously put it on hold, which essentially means they’re killing it before it ever gets released.

Anyone with a brain could see that this thing was a complete clunker, anyway. But how embarrassing for Google to continually announce and kill products, and how strange that no one ever seems to give them crap about it.

App Cubby Blog – The Sparrow Problem: “The gold rush is well and truly over.”

(Via. app cubby)

Yep.

I’ve been feeling that this was the case for a while now, but it’s good to see other indie devs acknowledging it. We did this to ourselves; by racing to drop our prices down to basically nothing, we’ve trained an entire generation of users to value our products at next to nothing. And then we act surprised when they complain about having to pay for anything. It happened with the web, and now it’s happened to the App Store.

I’ve long told people that as successful as Angry Birds was, if they had charged $2 instead of $1, it would have made almost twice as much money. People wouldn’t have balked at paying $2 for such an amazingly well thought out and executed game. But instead, the rest of the world saw that $1 price tag and assumed that the price was the cause of the success.

If more developers had been willing to take a stand on pricing, charge a fair price for a better experience, we may have stood a better chance of educating the public on this. Heck, $10 and $20 apps were still way cheaper than anything they had seen before on mobile, let alone the desktop. $10 would have looked extremely cheap in 2008. Now it’s way overpriced in the average consumer’s mind.

You know why lawyers get to charge $300 an hour? Because they’re lawyers. And that’s what lawyers cost. That’s what lawyers insist on charging. And no one questions it. They have a skill you don’t have, and they know what it’s worth.

Why should a developer feel any differently?

But now that everyone has 99-cents in his or her head, it’s going to be a lot harder. We have to fight an uphill battle, rather than a downward one. We have to counteract several years of poor training. And we have to do it while the scam artists and crapware vendors are still around polluting the store with nonsense.

Still, to be honest, I’m partially glad that devs are finally starting to realize that 99-cents is unsustainable. Hopefully, this will chase the get-rich-quick folks out of the Store and leave it to the rest of us who just want to bang out a decent living and are in it for the long haul. And maybe fewer people in bars will try to tell me their great idea for the next “million-dollar” app.

And maybe, must maybe, we can finally all start charging slightly higher prices. Sure, we’ll lose the cheapskates, but we don’t need them, anyway. They’re only going to give us support headaches and 1-star reviews, anyway.

No “Dark Knight” 3D – Salon.com: “Nolan is not a fan of digital 3-D, which essentially has turned a fleeting 1950s cinema gimmick into a multi-million-dollar value-added tax on fans who decide they want to put on the glasses and see a film with the illusion of depth.”

(Via. salon.com)

Thank you, Mr. Nolan. At least someone out there understands that 3D is a sham and has the guts to follow his convictions.

I love his later quote from this same article: “I never meet anybody who actually likes the format, and it’s always a source of great concern to me when you’re charging a higher price for something that nobody seems to really say they have any great love for.”

Meanwhile IMAX, which actually does provide a superior experience, is worth the extra couple of bucks. Provided you actually shoot with an iMAX camera, as is done in these films.

Is it a coincidence that Nolan’s Batman films are often considered the best in the genre?