…to post my favorite picture of the one of world’s great beauties.

Amazon takes on Apple with copy-protection-free music - Yahoo! News

Amazon’s (AMZN) MP3 store - which sells only songs without copy protection - has quietly become No. 2 in digital sales since opening nearly six months ago. That’s even though Apple (AAPL) dominates digital music with its iTunes Store (the second-largest music retailer in the world, after Wal-Mart) (WMT) and its hugely popular iPod.
[...]
Apple, which claims an 80% share of digital music sales, said consumers would be ecstatic about the EMI deal and that digital sales would greatly increase. CEO Steve Jobs predicted his iTunes catalog would be 50% DRM-free by the end of 2007. But that never happened.

I won’t spend a nickel at Bro. Jobs’ Musical Emporium. If I can’t order it from Amazon, I’ll buy it directly from the artist. Therefore, my music is my music. I get to do what I want with it. I know not everybody is as smart as me, but it still is amazing how much product that jackass moves.

Motorola hits redial on handset biz | Tech news blog - CNET News.com

On Wednesday, the company, whose cell phone business has been in a death spiral for several quarters, announced that after a two-month formal analysis, it has decided to split the company into two publicly traded entities.

One will handle handsets and accessories while the other will continue to concentrate on wireless broadband and enterprise communication products.

“Creating two industry-leading companies will provide improved flexibility, more tailored capital structures, and increased management focus–as well as more targeted investment opportunities for our shareholders,” CEO Greg Brown said in a release.

The Mobile Devices business will handle the designs, manufacturing, and sales of mobile handsets and accessories, and will license a portfolio of intellectual property. The Broadband & Mobility Solutions business will handle service voice and data communication solutions and wireless broadband networks for enterprises and governments. It will also handle IP video, cellular, and high-speed broadband network infrastructure, and cable set-top receivers.

No, wait…I actually do. One part of the company is going to design handbags for sale to rich ladies, and the other part is going to do things that make the world keep running.

The sad thing? The handbag people will probably get rich beyond their wildest dreams. Morlocks and Elois.

Cobb: The Last Word on Obama’s Character

I am convinced that Obama is pursuing a sort of liberal radical chic acceptance. That this half-black Harvard grad has gone all Patty Hearst on us. That he deliberately chose the most distressed blackfolks in his ambit to align himself with their desperate hopes in a paternalistic way in order to develop the kind of credibility and ‘authenticity’ he believes that he needs as a politician.

Both he and Michelle are very clueless as to what their privileges in America mean, and the fact that they keep bringing up the “He could have had a Wall Street job but instead came to work in the projects” is their story and they’re sticking to it, like missionaries in the jungle trying to convince themselves of the righteousness of their mission. They expect to be respected as long suffering souls who have made their sacrifices for the most noble of causes, and believe me they want the rest of us to sacrifice too - they’re after that tax.

That’s it in a nutshell. Barry is naught but a poser. And he’s a Chicago pol, too, from the same cess gene pool that emerged the Daleys and their pack of hacks for decades. That might be good enough for Chicago, and it might work up there, but it flat don’t fly in the rest of the world.

And I still stand by my prediction - he’ll be our next president. America has become like young women and fashion– whatever’s different from last year. Long skirts, short skirts, lacy tops, starched tops, pointy shoes, flats. More Idiocracy.

I had a very good friend tell me that he wanted so badly to believe in Barry. Not in those words, but that’s the bottom line. I don’t blame him. We all want to believe in The Savior. He’s done been here once, though, and we don’t know when he’s coming back, and I’m willing to bet that this cat ain’t Him (though he does have a lot of self-willed Jesus in him, that’s for sure.) I urged my young friend, though, to look to the men who founded this unique institution we call America for advice on Savioring. Those guys thought long and hard about this, and wrote a lot of it down. It’s well and truly worth reading.

I swing back and forth between salvageable and un-salvageable. Bottom line, my natural hope & faith in the good and the great make me go for salvageable, because this is the last chance we’ll ever have. But good gravy, it’s a hard slog, and now my head hurts.