Barack Obama, July 16, 2008, as seen on CNN:

Throughout our history, America's confronted constantly evolving danger, from the oppression of an empire, to the lawlessness of the frontier, from the bomb that fell on Pearl Harbor, to the threat of nuclear annihilation. Americans have adapted to the threats posed by an ever-changing world.

I think Yuuko Nakazawa has a few issues with how you’re dressing her. If you see her approaching the wardrobe dungeon carrying some sort of long, vaguely cylindrical package, run.

Or, you know, don’t. I’m on her side.

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$20 says that the Neo FreeRunner, which you think will someday surpass the iPhone and all others, will be about as successful in the marketplace as the Hurd.

Precisely because the FreeRunner is, as you say, “supported by a worldwide community of people rather than a single greedy, dishonest and secretive entity.”

[Update: Ouch. Also, ouch. Second-rate hardware is acceptable on an early dev model that you don’t intend to actually sell to users, but when even the “improved” UI is crap, that “worldwide community” has a lot of focused, carefully directed, market-driven development and testing ahead of it. Oh, wait, that’s the boring work people want to get paid for. Never mind.]

I think I’ve figured out why the Creative Suite 3.3 Standard (upgrade version) installer insists that you exit every running application and not try to use your computer at all until it’s finished: you don’t want anyone to find out that the guy who wrote it doesn’t know how to manage memory.

I made the mistake of trying to open a file containing all my software licenses, so I could look up my CS2 keys if they were needed to validate my upgrade, and I couldn’t fork a process to do so.

What’s more, the act of opening a terminal window to look at the file caused the installer to fail on the current and pending pieces of the application. I had to stop, undo the partial install, clean up some other cruft, and do it all again.

Later, after I started using my computer again, I ran the updater, and since it looked like it was going to take forever, left it overnight. Sometime in the wee hours, the InDesign update noticed that Safari was running and aborted, throwing up a dialog box that blocked the rest of the updates as well.

Gosh, thanks. I just remembered why I hate upgrading your software: my time is worthless to you.

PS: remember when complicated expensive professional software came with documentation? Yeah, didn’t think so.

Birds of Prey, on DVD. This is worth it just to ogle Dina Meyer. The storyline was cheese, but considering the quality of the actresses involved, it was smoked cheese. Astonishing that it took this long to reach DVD; there was a time when the words “Mia Sara shower scene” would have been enough to justify an immediate extended unrated multi-angle director’s cut box set.

Please don’t send me the “complete your collection!” email for something when you haven’t yet shipped out the first items in the set. In particular, when I’m waiting for you to ship volumes 1 and 2 of a series, don’t send email about volumes 10 through 15.

Thank you for (still) not learning to make the carpet match the drapes.

I was idly scrolling through my junkmail folder this evening (looking for more entertaining Japanese spam…) and came across the following:

Subject: Cute dogs massacred in Texas

Alex Rodriguez hot steamy adulterous pics with Madonna
http://www.testforum.(removed).de/main.html

--
Using Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://(removed)

I understand trying to trick people into reading your message with a “newsworthy” subject line, but you really ought to try to make the body match, or you’ll lose that precious click-through (necessary to infect Windows boxes with your Russian botnet code).

By the way, thanks for sending out English-language spam encoded in KOI8-R; it’s a useful clue for anti-spam tools.

[Update: no, seriously, you’re killing me here. Subject: “Charred bodies found near White House”, Body: “Have a break, have a Kit Kat - free online chocolate bar giveaways”. Also, Subject: “Hilary Clinton vows revenge”, Body: “The best places to shag in the wild, all listed right here.” Do. Not. Want.

By the way, I see Charter Cable still isn’t blocking outgoing SMTP]

Please make the iPhone screen at least twice as large (4x6 good, 5x7.5 better), add a stylus, and come up with a name that doesn’t piss off Jobs by sounding too much like “tablet” or “Newton”. Maybe iSlab, iSurf, iCanHazTouchscreen, iFinallyhavethetechtomakethiswork; something like that.

Crank up the CPU a little, though, because I found Japanese text input rather sluggish on a friend’s original iPhone.