iFrizz

Charles Jade of The Apple Blog looks into the seeming disappearance of the desktop Mac at Apple stores and discovers that customers have pretty much moved over to laptops.

Three things strike me about this graphic: first, it really comes as no surprise that most people have chosen portability over speed/power. This is why netbooks were all the rage for a while (are they still?), you can do just about everything you want with a laptop, and you can take it with you everywhere. Plus, throw in a second monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and you have a decent desktop rig. Unless you're doing intensive work (like watching full screen flash), the laptop is probably the better solution. I say this despite apparently being a part of a minority that has both a MacBook Pro and an iMac.

Second, this doesn't seem to be solely an Apple phenomenon. I would suspect that HP and Dell (on the consumer side) are seeing more laptop and less desktop sales. Except for gamers, most PC customers likely see little difference between the two. This definitely does not call the desktop into question, but rather shows just how far laptops have come in the past 5 years.

Finally, the addition of smart phones and tablets is going to further erode desktop sales. Four years ago I would have used my MacBook as a "sofa pc", but now I use an iPhone; next year I may be using The Tablet. Laptops are, in a very real way, becoming the new desktop.

A significant Pablo Picasso painting was damaged after a woman attending art class lost her balance, fell into "The Actor" and tore it, The Metropolitan Museum of Art said.

You break it, you buy it.

Fox News' Clayton Morris reports that Apple's 27 January event will not only feature The Tablet, but also iPhone 4 (does he mean OS 4.0 or the 4th generation iPhone?), and a new iLife suite. If true, that would be quite an eclectic event.

I spoke to a source at Apple this morning, before the invite hit my inbox, who said the event would likely focus on three projects: The tablet device, iPhone 4, and a new round of iLife 2010 software. While we won't see new iPhone hardware just yet, we will see the next-generation software

Free speech is a basic human right and is essential to creativity and innovation.  But every society places limits on this, particularly when it transgresses into “hate speech” – which disparages someone or some group on the basis of race, gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, and so on.  Calls to violence are tolerated even less.  These often lead to jail terms.

Interesting read: should the EFF distinguish between hate speech (which is protected) and what can be interpreted as a call to violence (which is not protected)? Also, make sure to read the comments; there are a lot of angry white Americans out there.

The Texas Board of Education will vote soon over social studies standards in public schools. This is an important vote, because Texas, as one of the largest public school markets, will definitely influence what is or is not included in textbooks that many districts will use in years to come. The biggest issues facing the Board are how to include minorities and religion in the teaching of American history.

On the former, of course, the more inclusive our textbooks are, the better. We cannot tell our children of the importance of diversity on the one hand, while denying diversity was important in the history of our nation. On the latter, however, I am of two minds. Despite how much Christians may want to believe this, the United States were never formally "Christian." Certainly we had (and continue to have) leaders who are openly Christian, but we know that many of our founders were not only thoroughly Deist, but also against the type of Christianity many in Texas follow. However, and I think this has not been stressed enough in Texas, history is what it is, and appealing to separation of church and state is not an adequate response. We cannot remove all religion from our past simply because we live in a more secular time when many dislike Christianity. The true story must be told, and neither side seems to want that.