NSLog();

Question: Do you like beer?

My Answer: Not particularly. I like mixed drinks more. If that makes me a girly-mon, so be it. Most beer is akin to carbonated Mexican piss (you can ask my friends Juan, Paco, and Carlos about that one) - the few that aren't include Guinness, Sam Adams Cherry Wheat, and Killian's Irish Red.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I plan to go to WWDC this year, but my ADC membership is up for renewal at the end of February. I wrote this letter to ADC today:

In years past, you've offered for $1500 a "WWDC + Select Renewal" deal. For the $1500, you got your Select Renewal, a hardware discount, a WWDC coupon, and the other little things.

You typically offer this promotion in March or so - but my renewal date is February 27. I do not want to miss out on this special if you will have it - as you have several years now - again this year. However, I also don't want to let my membership drop.

What can be done? If you're going to offer a WWDC special, I will probably take advantage of it. However, given my renewal date and the lack of such a package right now, I feel that I'm the one being taken advantage of slightly! 🙂

Please let me know what we can do. Thank you.

Here's to hoping something can be done. I've got about four weeks until my renewal is due, so there's a lot of time left on the clock.

Question: How much do you pay for a haircut?

My Answer: $15, and I tip $5 because my barber is a nice guy. He doesn't talk too much, he doesn't talk about annoying things, and he doesn't shove my head around like a, uhhh, better left unsaid. I could go to MasterCuts and pay $12, but I believe in supporting your local independent business. At least for haircuts. 🙂

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

I kid you not, from http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040123-2.html

Then you wake up at the high school level and find out that the illiteracy level of our children are appalling.

Ugh. Double ugh. Triple ugh. Quadruple ugh. Let's hope the ugh doesn't extend four more years.

Question: Should there be a legal "age of consent?" If so, what should it be? If not, why not?

My Answer: Without some age of consent, it would not be illegal for a 30 year-old to screw a ten year-old. That's wrong. This question comes on the heels of my question of the day about trying children as adults: when does a "child" become "an adult"? Clearly a person won't be submitted for psychological review before we decide if she's allowed to have sex with her 25 year-old boyfriend at the age of 16. Or 17. At 18, I suppose she's allowed to do as she pleases.

Aside from states with fairly creepy laws (24 year-olds in some states, IIRC, can have sex with 16 year-olds, etc.), I'm fairly "ok" with a basic law: over the age of 18 or both partners within 4 years of each other. That's about as much thought as I've given it.

A friend of mine is 30 and dating someone who is 18, but she's capable of making decisions and, for that matter, so is he. I have no problem with them screwing (it helps that he looks like he's still 18, I suppose), but I certainly question the emotional compatibility between 30 and 18. Best of luck to him, though. She may be the rare overly-mature 18 year-old (or maybe he's more immature than we previously thought? :-D).

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Recent Tunes 2.0 is ready for download. You can grab a copy - free as always - from the freeware page at Freshly Squeezed Software.

Recent Tunes 2.0 adds the abilities to post to your blog via SSH1, SSH2, FTP, or for those who like using databases, HTTP GET. Of course, you can turn that option off altogether and just use RT for its original purpose: giving you quick access to recently played tunes.

Question: What's the most you've ever lost gambling?

My Answer: $20 tonight. I lost the majority of it playing Acey-Deucy, a game which I contest has absolutely no skill and is purely luck. I want to play cards and people, dammit, not just lucky or unlucky cards! Especially when all I could get was 5-6 or A-K. Pffffft. 😛

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

Greg, of the Omni Group, is talking about OmniWeb 5 in a forum:

2) It is true that scrolling vertically is a lot more "comfortable" than scrolling horizontally, so while horizontal real estate is generally more available, you do want to make sure that you don't use up too much of it and force a horizontal scroller. Fortunately, the tab drawer isn't really very wide (although you can widen it if you want larger previews/titles). I have yet to see a page that doesn't fit well on a 1024x768 screen with the drawer open. So unless you've got an orange or blue toilet seat iBook, you'll be fine.

What Greg seems to fail to understand is that I'm willing to give up vertical space (Safari's tab bar is how tall, after all?), yet I'm not willing to give up horizontal space. Why? Because I arrange my application windows so that I can see things to the sides? The top is the menu, the bottom is the dock: those are set. But from left to right on my current screen I can see my email, my browsers, my chat windows, iTunes, a BBEdit window, and my desktop icons.

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One side of a phone support conversation:

press command-R… yes, no, the one beside the space bar
no, not in the Finder
no, the trackpad
the thing above the button
near the latch
you move your finger around on it
next to the space bar
it has an apple on it
no, not the Finder!
click
no, not with the trackpad
the thing near the latch above the button that you move your finger on
yes, that would be helpful, please turn on your computer and we'll continue

Yes, I made that up, but it's fairly representative of the majority of phone support calls.

I am so sick of morons (especially those named "Scoble"):

When you hear DRM think "lockin." So, when you buy music off of Napster or Apple's iTunes, you're locked into the DRM systems that those applications decided on. Really you are choosing between two competing lockin schemes.

But, not all lockin schemes are alike, I learned on Friday. First, there are two major systems. The first is Apple's AAC/Fairtunes based DRM. The second is Microsoft's WMA

Let's say it's 2006. You have 500 songs you've bought on iTunes for your iPod. But, you are about to buy a car with a digital music player built into it. Oh, but wait, Apple doesn't make a system that plays its AAC format in a car stereo. So, now you can't buy a real digital music player in your car.

That's hogwash.

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Question: Should people under the age of 18 be tried as adults?

My Answer: A six year old that commits murder may not know any better, but what about a sixteen year old? Where do you draw the line? I think the courts system does its best, but a black and white line may make things simpler for everyone, and I'd put that line at fifteen. Under = child, over = smart enough to know better.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

So much for getting anything done today…

Update @ 2pm: Toldja so.

Update @ 11pm: Wow, I'm finally done. And how appropriate that the last story I read ended with this paragraph:

Finally she came across a floral symbol that was used in Sweden to indicate an interesting feature or attraction in a campground. She rendered a 16 x 16 bitmap of the little symbol and showed it to the rest of the team, and everybody liked it. Twenty years later, even in OS X, the Macintosh still has a little bit of a Swedish campground in it.

Happy Birthday once again, twenty years later, and a big "wow" to folklore.org and everyone who has ever been involved in creating the Mac.

Question: How do you feel about open book tests?

My Answer: I despised them. 10% of what I learned in college came from books. They didn't encourage you to study - instead, the encouraged you to literally memorize what information can be found next to what pictures. The high grades went to the people that wrote the fastest and knew how best to use an index. How is that "getting an education?" It's true that open book tests usually had harder questions, but only because they were able to justify focusing on the minutae of any particular subject. The grand scheme of things? The major concepts? Who cares!

I always did better than most on open book tests, but I knew the tricks. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy them. I like tests that forced me down to a B. They resolved my will to study harder on the next one. Joke classes were just that - a joke. Open book tests were a joke too.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.

It's been a few days since we posted Rock StarBuild 11, but here now is build 12. Download it from the usual location (1.3 MB).

Check the longer entry for the list of changes, improvements, etc. Expected release date: February 10. Expected price: still not sure, but somewhere between $9 and $19 with an introductory pricing offer if it's the latter.

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Question: Now that the Mac has been around for 20 years, what do you think has been the most significant improvement since the first release way back in 1984?

My Answer: In one letter, word, and idea: X.

You are encouraged to answer the Question of the Day for yourself in the comments or on your blog.