This post from TPM’s Election Central blog showcases the difference between Clinton and Obama more clearly than anything else I can think of. To wit: Clinton is putting forth the idea that it’s important for Democrats to say the magic words “universal health care”, because otherwise they’ll be left vulnerable to the GOP. Obama’s counter-argument is that his proposal is de facto universal health care (even if it’s not called by those specific words) and that uniting behind a common goal is the solution to thorny problems like the health care crisis.

Got all that? Clinton talking political tactics while Obama’s talking workable solutions. Hillary’s case for winning the Presidency is based around tactics: that only she can beat back whatever the Republicans will throw at her, because she and Bill did it so well when he was President. Obama’s message is focused on solving problems, not using those problems as political cudgels. That’s why I’m supporting him.

TUAW reports that AT&T’s EDGE data service is offline not just here in Chicago (which I could have told you after I couldn’t access m.twitter.com from the gym) but across the entire Midwest. And apparently AT&T says it could be back tonight, but also may be down until Fat Tuesday. Which is kinda like when my clients tell me the check’s in the mail today, but that it may not arrive for two weeks because it’s not really in the mail.

Say it with me now: epic fail. (Via John Gruber.)

A killer new version of The Iconfactory and ARTIS Software’s amazing on-screen measurement tool is out today. The coolest addition:

At the heart of version 2 is a brand new addition called Dimensions. This simple tool is like laser tape measure for the screen that projects a beam out from your cursor to instantly find the edges of images, margins and blocks of text. The days of taking screen grabs, opening them and measuring them by hand are over. The Dimensions tool will literally change the way you work, for the better.

New licenses are $26.95; upgrades from 1.x are just ten bucks. Ordered. I’ve already tried the Dimensions feature, and it’s already rocked my world.

BBC News:

Democrat John Edwards is leaving the race for the White House after failing to win any of the party nomination contests held so far, officials say. Mr Edwards, 54, is expected to publicly announce the end to his second White House bid on a visit to New Orleans.

He lost Iowa’s caucuses, came third in New Hampshire, admitted getting his “butt kicked” in Nevada, and came third in his native South Carolina.

So now the question is: where will his delegates and supporters go? My feeling has been Edwards support was a mix of labor (who’d likely shift to Hillary Clinton) and progressives (who’d shift to Obama if they don’t spend the rest of the year getting high and stumping for Ralph Nader to come back). If one of those groups is bigger than the other, or if Edwards chooses to endorse (cough cough Obama cough) one of his opponents, SuperUltraMegaPowerRanger Tuesday could get even more interesting.

Also, I just realized that next Tuesday — Super Tuesday — is also Fat Tuesday. It’s also the date of my next monthly GWOD weigh-in. Noted without comment.

The Beeb reports that MySpace is launching their own developer API next week. Because using MySpace wasn’t quite annoying enough without all the love quizzes, vampire invitations and Scrabble games they have over on Facebook.

Hoefler & Frere-Jones just announced their latest typographic creation: a slab serif called Archer which seems to combine the rotund friendliness of Clarendon or Paperback with the sharp elegance of Rockwell. Oh my am I tempted to buy this now and just find a project for it later.

M&M/Mars has begun selling a limited edition Snickers bar with taurine, B vitamins and a small coffee’s worth of caffeine. Because while Snickers has always really satisfied, apparently we’re just not happy with our candy bars until they can jack our heart rates for a night of hardcore clubbing. And on that score, at least it’s cheaper and less gym-sock-tasting than a Red Bull. Charge! (Via Serious Eats.)

This morning I was in Whole Foods and was surprised to be handed my breakfast, bottled water and Wired magazine (cover story: “Why Things Suck”) in a reusable handle bag made of recycled plastic bottles. Consumerist explains what’s going on: Whole Foods is getting rid of traditional plastic shopping bags this spring.

They’ll still have their excellent paper bags (which I hoard in my pantry for the coming zombie apocalypse), of course. But they’ll also be encouraging people to buy and bring back reusable totes like the ones they were giving out for free today. For which they will be offering a discount of “at least 5 cents per bag”. Which at a store where a salmon salad with no salmon in it costs $9 will probably just seem like a funny error on your receipt.

Fun fact: one year ago today I was doing my grocery shopping in freaking Paris, France where I bought the La Bon Marche shopping tote I use for my groceries to this day. Sure, those old ladies ahead of me in line may have brought a plastic bag they got at Harrod’s in 1972. But mine is cooler, and also I ride a bike and order carbon-neutral Chinese takeout, so I’m also like 4000% more green. Take that, granny!

Good news for those of us hoping to use AirPort Disks for magical wireless backups: it looks like AirPort Disks, and not just Time Capsules, will be supported in Mac OS X 10.5.2. Also, Apple is bowing to public pressure and adding the ability to disable Leopard’s most controversial UI “improvements,” the translucent menu bar and the new “Stacked” Dock folders.

Nickel and Dimed author Barbara Ehrenreich on Hillary Clinton, for the HuffPo:

“Change” is this year’s Democratic battle cry, but if you don’t know how it happens, you’re not likely to make it happen yourself. A case in point is Clinton’s 1993 “health reform” plan. She didn’t do any “listening tour” for that, no televised town meetings with heart-rending grassroots testimonies. Instead, she gathered up a cadre of wonks for months of closed-door meetings, some so secretive that the participants themselves were barred from bringing in pencils or pens. According to David Corn of The Nation, when Clinton was told that 70 percent of Americans polled favored a single-payer system at the time, she responded sarcastically with, “Now tell me something interesting.”

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Hillary’s “Ready On Day One” slogan, and whether that’s not actually a bad thing. “Ready on day one” implies that there are no 9/11s, Katrinas or subprime mortgage disasters lurking in the next four years that she isn’t ready to face — that the scope of the job is entirely understood, and the unthinkable has already been factored into her calculations. Which, of course, is total bullshit.

That said, I’m having to remind myself what an embarrassment of riches we have in this Democratic primary season. We’re going to have either our first female nominee or our first black nominee, either of whom has a decent shot at being elected President. And our token Southern white guy is a progressive populist. Rock on.

Tim O’Reilly responds to the announcement this morning that Sun Microsystems is acquiring MySQL AB, the for-profit company that maintains and supports the world’s dominant open source database server software:

The acquisition is also a great fit because Sun has staked its future on open source, releasing its formerly proprietary crown jewels, including Solaris, Java, and the Ultra-Sparc processor design. But even beyond those relatively recent moves, Sun was arguably the first great open source success story, co-founded by Bill Joy, who not only led the Berkeley Unix project but wrote the open source TCP/IP stack on which so much of the internet was built. And even leaving out other open source projects at the company such as openoffice.org and netbeans, Sun has long been the single largest corporate contributor to the open source ecosystem.

Yeah, which must be why Sun is making so much money these days, right? Why they’re a company that’s focused on software and the open source community, such that they wouldn’t consider getting in bed with Microsoft to sell Windows servers because their Solaris-powered server business isn’t doing so hot…right?

Bitching aside, I’m not predicting doomsday for MySQL. Sun is actually better at shepherding open source projects (like OpenSolaris or OpenOffice.org) than they are at making money, and if anything having a big, enterprisey step-parent like Sun will help MySQL compete with Oracle and SQL Server in the enterprise space

Wow, I’ve really got to think about cleaning out some of my old templates at some point.

I don’t know whether MT 3.3x allowed for this or not, but allegedly I can now post short posts that don’t necessarily have links. Let’s see if it works.

Update: Yep, it works. And while I’m here I should probably tell you I broke down and updated to Movable Type 4.0. I did it for the iPhone-optimized UI, which I’m using to update this entry. Between the iPhone and MarsEdit, it’s possible I’ll never have to use MT4’s ugly-ass web interface unless I’m redesigning.

One of the (surprisingly) coolest new features in today’s big iPhone software update is WebClip, which lets you add web bookmarks to your phone’s Home screen. And if, for whatever reason, you were to add this site or our businessy sister site to your iPhone menu, starting tonight you’ll get a custom icon. Here’s how to hook up the custom icon mojo for your own site.

The assholes at DreamHost basically billed all their customers for all of 2008 this morning, and per usual, wrote a jokey, irreverant blog post about it.

I’ll let you read the post to learn the details, but suffice to say while I used to find DreamHost annoying, I now hate this company and want them to fail and die with all deliberate speed. Yes, they’re refunding everyone’s money and making good on any blowback from the issue, and I appreciate them explaining the whole story and not just saying “due to a catastrophic yet unspecified issue…” or some such. Even so, this is not a joke. $400 is a lot of money to a lot of people.

Ars Technica has some discussion on why it costs $20 for current iPod touch owners to download the Mail, Maps, etc. apps from the iPhone. The comments thread is an especially fun repository of burned-feeling-ness:

yadda yadda yadda: I don’t see any justification for this. It’s a classic “evil” move by a corporation that’s greedy through and through. Apple’s products are great, but this is a terrible move all the way around. I’d love to see anyone even try to defend Apple on this one.

Anyone remember how last year Apple announced they had to charge $1.99 for the software update that made then-recent Macs compatible with 802.11n Wi-Fi? Under accounting guidelines established by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act here in the U.S., Apple cannot legally add features to products they’ve already sold, since to do so would increase the monetary value of the product after the revenues from the sale have been recorded.

iPhone owners can get free software updates for up to two years because iPhone revenues are accounted for on a two-year subscription basis: when you buy an iPhone, Apple spreads the revenue from your purchase over two years and simply factors the cost/value of any software updates during that time into their accounting. Apple TV updates work the same way, though apparently iPod Touch sales are handled as straight cash.

Keep an eye on my Twitter feed this morning, folks, for expert analysis of other people’s expert analysis of everyone else’s live blogging from the Apple Macworld Keynote OMFG Awesome Event. Steve, dude, I miss your live streaming video. You used to be cool, man. You used to be about the music.

Update: Except that Twitter is down. If you can get to my Twitter feed, there’ll be Macworld crap there. Otherwise, let’s just hope the outage has something to do with the iPhone getting a native Twitter app today, and not just Twitter sucking as usual.

Boing Boing’s Joel Johnson, aka the last sane gadget blogger, on why he’s not really covering the pre-Macworld hype:

…Sure, enormous fan. But I don’t like getting all caught up in the rumors and such here, because it just seems like so much wasted effort and worry. I hope they come out with a sub-notebook today just like most people, but posting up every little scrap of rumor isn’t going to make my wishes come true.

Following on the recent Voltron Reeboks insanity, Adidas has produced a series of Star Wars-inspired sneakers.

Because it wouldn’t be Macworld week without me linking to John Gruber at least once, here’s our favorite curmudgeon’s Macworld ‘08 predictions. I agree with all his predictions, for the most part. However:

• I don’t see Apple getting into the network storage business, and I really don’t think wireless Time Machine backups is a feature worthy of keynote time. I do think we’ll see it in a future Leopard update (like 10.5.2), but seriously — does this seem like keynote material to anyone but übernerds? (Or Gruber-nerds?)

• “MacBook Air” isn’t the dumbest product name I’ve ever heard (and certainly no worse than “iPod Shuffle”), but my gut tells me the product name of the sub-notebook will reflect its size (e.g., “MacBook Nano”) and not just any wireless networking feature it may or may not have.

  Why? Because if the thing exists, and it has EVDO/WiMax/etc., I can’t see Apple not adding the feature to the entire MacBook product line. I think the product story Apple wants to tell here is: MacBooks as a family are all powerful, portable and always, wirelessly online. The MacBook Nano is all of that, but so portable you forget you’re carrying a laptop in your bag.

Also, if they release an “Apple TV 2.0” without making the new features available to existing Apple TV owners via software update, I will switch to Windows Vista. Steve Jobs, you have been warned.

It’s happened again: America’s news media, faced with a difficult social problem, have chosen to blame scary new technology for the evil that folks do. To wit: CNN has decided cell phones are to blame for pedophilia because they make it easier for adults to carry on discreet relationships with kids.

The same cell phones that parents buy as safety devices for their children are the gadgets that pedophiles and predators use to prep kids for sexual encounters, experts and police say.

…

[Ted Thompson, executive director] of the National Association to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children, said that if parents hope to protect their children, they cannot limit discussions to cover only invasive acts.

“If you think your kids are protected because they know that … if somebody undresses in front of them or attempts to perform a sexual act that that is the only bad thing, then they are not going to be prepared for the subtle, the grooming piece,” Thompson said.

And there’s something else Thompson recommends. Limit a cell phone’s abilities. Allow it to make and accept calls to and from parents and 911 only.

“I know the societal pressure is for parents to get their kids the latest phone with all the gadgets that are out there,” Thompson said, “but more important than complying with all the societal pressures is protecting your child.

Of course, after every parent takes away or cripples their kids’ legit cell phones, then the enemy will be prepaid phones, because pedophiles could give them to their targets as “presents.”

I have a question: why aren’t the parents of these kids who are trading naked pictures with their middle school teachers looking at their kids’ phone bills and asking questions?

Ars Technica has some pictures of the first vague, teasing Apple banners going up at the Moscone Center for Macworld Expo ‘08, which kicks off with a Steve Jobs keynote on Tuesday morning. A couple of thoughts:

• The theory that “something in the air” refers to wireless sounds right on, but I don’t think this necessarily refers to an entirely new wireless product/service. After all, Mac laptops have been wireless for almost a decade now, and Apple’s hottest current product is (natch) a wireless phone.

• What is up with that font? Apple has used a bold-ish weight of Adobe’s Myriad as their primary identity font since 2002, but the typeface on these banners (while very similar) doesn’t look like Myriad. In fact, it looks a lot like the typeface Microsoft has been using on their newest Office and Windows products.

Speaking of MacWorld, I’ve been jotting on a predictions article for a couple of days but I really don’t feel like posting it. In brief, I expect an ultra-thin notebook (but not a tablet), movie rentals and iTunes-ready DVDs from Fox and Disney (but not in HD), and possibly a revamped Apple TV box (or even just a software update) with the ability to download content directly from one’s TV. I don’t expect any substantive changes to .Mac (sigh), nor do I expect to see new iPhones or any talk about third-party iPhone apps just yet.

All that being said, I really don’t see Steve Jobs following up last year’s iPhone keynote with only a new laptop and some content deals. So I think there’s got to be something huge nobody knows about yet, and it wouldn’t surprise me to see a story about such a thing break in the Wall Street Journal between now and Tuesday.

It’s done: the Illinois legislature has passed a measure that would provide long-term, sustainable funding for Chicago-area public transport via a marginal sales tax increase.

However, Governor Rod Blagojevich is suddenly refusing to sign the bill unless it includes a provision giving free rides to all seniors, to “ease the sting” of the tax hike on people with fixed incomes. Note that he doesn’t seem concerned about poor people under 65, nor does he acknowledge that the transit agencies already have reduced fare programs for people who meet certain income requirements. You know, like seniors living on fixed incomes.

It’s hard to see this as other than a ploy by the Governor to use the very real transit funding crisis to scare up some votes in the next election, which is funny because at this point I’m prepared to vote Republican to shitcan this joker.

Slate’s Explainer column explains something even I didn’t know: that because New Hampshire’s Democratic Party commits delegates to the national convention (and therefore votes toward the nomination) proportionally based on how many votes a candidate gets in the primary, and because Senators Clinton and Obama finished within 2% of each other on Tuesday, they both came out of New Hampshire with eight committed delegates each.

Iowa also commits delegates proportionally, and Obama’s stronger finish there gives him a projected 16 delegates to Hillary’s 15. So even though they’re even in terms of the number of primary/caucus victories, Obama still leads Clinton by at least one delegate.

That said, there are still a lot of primaries ahead. Not to mention the superdelegates, who are delegates to the national nominating convention who aren’t tied to any given state and act essentially as free agents. Some recent polling suggests that Clinton has a strong majority among superdelegates, but not so much so that a strong showing by Obama on Super Tuesday (the “national primary” on Feb. 5) wouldn’t cancel it out.

In short, no matter how much the media tries to craft a single narrative out of Iowa and New Hampshire, the battle for the Democratic nomination has only just begun.

Probably as good a short summary of the first four seasons of The Wire (aka The Best Television Series EVER) as you’ll find anywhere: “This guy Carcetti screws over the Mayor who screws over Burrell who screws over Rawls who screws over Colvin who legalizes drugs.”

Prompted by Zed Shaw’s offensive, self-aggrandizing rant about the Rails community last week, DreamHost co-founder/CTO Dallas Kashuba has decided to tell everyone all the ways he thinks Rails could be so, so much better. Or rather, how it could be so much better for shared hosting, which is sorta like complaining about how a Lamborghini doesn’t have enough cargo room, or asking why a $300 PC from Wal-Mart doesn’t get a killer frame rate on Doom 3.

Lest y’all think all Rails people greet this criticism with the same eye-rolling you’d see if you were in my office right now, Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson posted a response to his own blog, in which he suggests that if DreamHost is so interested in getting Rails to work well on their machines they should Please Do Investigate it themselves.

Which, truly, seems the way to go here unless one is just bent on treating the Rails core team like an unpaid vendor or, worse, like the PHP core team. I mean, if you’ve got some money to pay some folks to work on improving Ruby performance under Apache, it’s not like you need to wait for permission from anyone to do so. Come on, people.

Maybe I’m just getting jaded in my old age, but it seems to me this year’s MacHeist shareware bundle is a lot lamer than last year’s. Don’t get me wrong: CSSEdit and Snapz Pro X are both essential apps, and to get them both for $50 (if they get unlocked) would be a steal if I didn’t already own them both. But AppZapper? Cha-Ching? Pixelmator? Please.

For all you web nerds out there, Chris Wanstrath’s posted a short, sweet introduction to jQuery that just might make you think about cheating on YUI, Prototype or whatever it is you’re using.

What’s better than a scarf during these harsh winter months? Why, a scarf made to look like a giant piece of bacon!

OMFG — now you can get the temple escape from Raiders of the Lost Ark in LEGO form! If they have Indy LEGO magnets or keychains at the LEGO boutique downtown, I am so buying them.