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Saw this ad in the latest issue of Information Week. Only Microsoft could possibly see a big panel of buttons and think “this must be what our customers want”.

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When syncing ringtones created in iTunes, if more than eight ringtones are available, only the first eight ringtones listed will sync to the iPhone.

Apparently, Apple didn’t expect you to be stupid enough to buy more than 8 ringtones…

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Microsoft chief executive Steve Ballmer has warned users of Red Hat Linux that they will have to pay Microsoft for its intellectual property.

“People who use Red Hat, at least with respect to our intellectual property, in a sense have an obligation to compensate us,” Ballmer said last week at a company event in London discussing online services in the UK.

The IP laws require that when an IP owner notices an infringement they have an obligation to notify the infringer of the exact nature of the infringement in order to allow them to mitigate the damages by removing the infringement. Failure to do that will render any subsequent claims for damage moot. Microsoft has been at this game so long that any claim they now specify will be laughed out of court.

“Every time an Eolas comes to Microsoft and says: ‘Pay us,’ I expect they eventually would like to go to the open source world [as well],” said Ballmer.

Except they don’t, despite the fact that the source is there for inspection. Apparently, that must mean they aren’t infringing, Steve.

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Super Tuber is a great snack that uses one of my favorite vegetables: The Idaho Potato. Of course, I suppose any type of potato could be used, but I cannot guarantee that a Super Tuber made with anything but a true Idaho potato would taste as good. Sincerely, Larry E. Craig, United States Senator

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Wash and dry potato. Rub with shortening or butter. With an apple corer or small knife, core out the potato center (end to end). Push hot dog through the center.

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Those who recall the indignity of President Richard Nixon having to declare, in response to a question from the press, “I am not a crook,” must have winced yesterday when President George W. Bush, also talking to the press, was forced to avow, “This government does not torture people.”

That the questions had to be asked speaks volumes in itself. That the answers from both presidents were thoroughly unconvincing says just as much.

Or perhaps Bush was only suggesting that our military and our private contractors may torture people but “this government” does not.

In a dead giveaway, he added, “We stick to U.S. law and our international obligations.” This reference to “international obligations” rather than “international law” was a veiled admission that we have been violating the Geneva accords.

The latest “torture” revelations from The New York Times this week seemed to shock many in the media, which also says a lot. That the U.S. has been torturing prisoners has been known for years, producing only measured outrage from editorialists and pundits. Even in the news pages, reporters and editors have rarely used the ‘torture” word, caving to the administration’s insistence that these were merely “enhanced interrogation” measures (a term which could also have applied to, say, the time-honored cutting off of fingers).

If you want to believe that torture is justified in the war on terror, fine — but just call it what it is. Don’t make jokes about it, like David Brooks did on the PBS NewsHour last night, when he said listening to Fred Thompson on the stump might violate the Geneva Conventions.

Perhaps the most amazing statement of the week came from White House spokeswoman Dana Perino at a press briefing on Thursday, when she observed that six years after the 9/11 attacks “we are still having a debate to talk about how we should make sure that we treat people, and that we don’t torture them. That is quite a testament to this country.” So it’s a good thing that the country still has to debate whether or not we torture people?

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Take care. In reading this article, you may be in receipt of stolen goods. In fact, the organising committee for a certain upcoming sporting event has decided it would be “disproportionate” to prosecute the author of a book called Olympic Mind Games for breach of copy-right. But, under no less than two acts of parliament, it could if it wanted to.

When it discovered that Robert Ronson’s children’s science-fiction novel was to be published, the organising committee for the previously mentioned happening sent him an email asking that he should use neither the O-word nor the expressions “London 2012, or 2012 etc” in the title. The committee was able to do so under statutes passed in 1995 and 2006, which in effect turn all the elements of its title into a trademark.

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Abortion has long been illegal in Nicaragua but there had been exceptions for “therapeutic” reasons if three doctors agreed there was a risk to the woman’s life. Those exceptions were no longer necessary, said the Nicaraguan Pro-Life Association, because medical advances obviated the need to terminate pregnancies. “The conditions that justified therapeutic abortion now have medical solutions,” says a spokesman. Pope Benedict XVI welcomed the ban but added that women should not suffer or die as a result. “In this regard, it is essential to increase the assistance of the state and of society itself to women who have serious problems during pregnancy.”

The “assistance” the state offers is to let women die.

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iMac Flower Power and Dalmatian
Apple’s first iMacs were like a breath of fresh air to the computer-buying public. The bright, playful colors and rounded design of the all-in-one computers were in sharp contrast to PCs, which were still mostly beige blocks. Among the 2001 lineup of iMacs were two new color schemes, Flower Power and Dalmation (white with hazy blue spots). No doubt Steve Jobs felt that the softly colored hues would be considered soothing and tasteful, but frankly they were a bit more reminiscent of a cheap shower curtain. Even the Mac faithful agreed, and saved their oohs and aahs for the Indigo and Graphite models released at the same time.

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Microsoft Zune Player
When Microsoft launched its “iPod killer” in 2006, the company made sure to include many of the things that made Apple’s iconic players a runaway success, including great sound and an integrated music store/manager. Somewhere along the way, though, Microsoft forgot to include the iPod’s sexy design, opting instead for a boxy plastic casing and a spectacularly unflattering brown color. The Redmond giant has released Zunes in other, “limited edition” colors, and did manage to achieve its somewhat modest goal of selling a million Zunes in seven months. Still, it’s a bad sign when someone comes up with a Web site built entirely around the joke that no one would steal an iPod if it were hidden in a Zune casing–and people actually want to buy that casing.

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The iPhone/iTouch Dev guys have been hard at work for weeks and have finally managed to jailbreak 1.1.1. Right now, they’re nowhere near releasing a general-use tool but the first steps have been made. Congratulations to dinopio, asap18, netkas, Martyn, mjc, Niacin, BloomFilter, pytey, tE_gU, pumpkin, roxfan, sam, SmileyDude, NerveGas, Nate True, Arminius, DirectriX, Edgan, ixtli, kroo, xorl, and the rest of the team.

So what does this jailbreak mean?

• Third Party apps run. Kind of. We probably have to recompile many of them for the new frameworks because many of them crash.
• Springboard no longer recognizes DisplayOrder.plist. And the list of “whitelisted” apps (that is, the official Applications including Safari, Photos, Calendar, etc) seems to be hard-coded into Springboard.app
• The iPhone has been activated via third-party workarounds.
• The 1.1.1 binaries barely work with 1.0.2 — at least not well enough to run the music store without major hacking.
• The Mobile Terminal App works on 1.1.1.
• The entire bsd suite still works — as do standard command-line utilities compiled for ARM.
• 1.1.1 references both com.apple.mobile.radio and com.apple.mobile.nike.
• The jailbreak method is nowhere near ready for prime time. So please be patient.

That didn’t take too long.

The interesting thing here is the fact that the frameworks changed this much. It supports the rumors that the iPhone is very much “unfinished”. It also supports the rumors that the reason for the lack of an SDK is that the iPhone is based on OS X 10.5, Leopard, and any SDK will have to wait until Leopard is released, which other rumors say will happen the 26th. If all that is true, the 1.0.x firmware is likely based on a fairly early release of Leopard, say from april or may or so, and the 1.1.1 firmware is a far more recent one. If all the rumors are true, I would not be surprised with a 1.2 firmware release somewhere in November, together with an SDK release to “selected third parties”.