From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Wed Oct 1 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 1 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 1, 2008 Message-ID: <20081001171501.82496.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Would Apple Really Shutter iTunes? Unlikely by Greg Sandoval, CNET.com.au Apple isn't going to throw that away, and the music industry isn't going to risk losing its largest distributor. **** Curio 5.1 Task Management App Adds Project Encryption by MacNN Zengobi has announced an updated version of its note taking, mind mapping, brainstorming, and task management software. **** Apple Shares Recover Some Of Monday's Losses by BusinessWeek See Also: Analyst: Apple's Market Beatdown Has No Effect On Its Bsienss , by Brian X. Chen, Wired. **** 'Little Guy' Claims Foul In Dispute With Apple by Don Descoteau, Victoria News A Saanich web design school is holding its ground, following a threat by Apple to take legal action if the local firm does not change a corporate logo it has used since 2005. /You can see the disputed corporate logo in question here . Personally — and I'm no lawyer — I think Apple has a strong case./ **** Apple's Digital Music Showdown by Devin Leonard, Fortune For five years, Apple's iTunes Music Store has been the internet's most successful music store. But as music publishers have sought a higher share of its proceeds, Apple has threatened to shutter iTunes. **** Regarding Apple's Direct Sales Of Unlocked, Contract-Free iPhones In Hong Kong by John Gruber, Daring Fireball Selling unlocked contract-free iPhones in Hong Kong is the optimal way to supply the mainland Chinese gray market. **** The iPhone Game Review Conundrum by Joe Kissell, TidBITS Why reviewing iPhone software - and casual games in particular - is problematic. **** Adobe Begs Apple To Allow Flash On iPhone, Again by David Chartier, Ars Technica At the Flash on the Beach 08 conference in Brighton, UK, senior director of Engineering at Adobe, Paul Betlem, took another public shot at sinking Adobe's claws further into Apple's mobile OS. **** WindowShade X Revisited by Dan Frakes, Macworld **** Apple And Where Credit Is Due by Christopher Breen, Macworld When I step back and take a look at some of the very cool things Apple has contributed to my multimedia life, I recall that the company is capable of amazing work. I'd like to recount some of that work now. **** AOL Releases AIM For Mac 1.0 Beta; World Asks, "Why?" by David Chartier, Ars Technica The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Will The Downturn Accelerate Cloud Computing? by Tom Sullivan, InfoWorld **** Hollywood Studios Sue To Stop Distribution Of DVD-Copying Software by Dawn C. Chmielewski, Los Angeles Times SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** 31 Demonstrations In 1St Month Of Relaxed Rules At Speakers' Corner by Imelda Saad, Channel NewsAsia Singapore's National Park Board said it received 31 registrations in September - of which 11 were indicated as public protests. **** Death Of Singapore Maverick by John Burton, Financial Times **** Grand Old Man Of Singaorean Politics Jeyaretnam Dies by Meera Vijayan, The Star Former Singapore opposition leader J.B. Jeyaretnam died without fulfilling his greatest dream of returning to parliament. **** Farewell, Great JBJ by Melvin Tan, The Online Citizen Mr JBJ may have had unfulfilled dreams like anyone else but, in my view, has achieved more than what he had originally set out to accomplish. **** Reform Party: Bleak Future? by Esther Ng and Ansley Ng, Today **** Busiensses In Marina Bay Took A Hit... by Tan Hui Leng, Today With massive road diversions and road closures in place about a week before the street race, businesses in the Marina Bay area generally suffered a decline in sales. **** Transport Vouchers May Run Out by Maria Almenoar, Straits Times The 130,000 transport vouchers meant as a cushion against the new public transport fares taing effect today may not be enough to go around. **** PM Lee, If You Are Unwilling To Write A Sincere Condolence Message, Why Bother To Write? by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net I find PM Lee's condolence letter insincere and unbefitting of his stature as head of government and the ruling party. **** The Day I Met JBJ by Ian Tan, Empty Vesel Now you don't have to agree with the man's beliefs and ideas, you can simply be in awe of his incredible stamina and his personal belief that he was doing the right thing for his fellow men. That's what PAP serously lacks - politicians who impress people with their verve. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Thu Oct 2 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 2 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 2, 2008 Message-ID: <20081002171501.43965.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple Dominates At Inaugural British Technology Awards by Stevie Smith, The Tech Herald **** Apple: A Product Plateau? by Arik Hesseldahl, BusinessWeek There are only so many world-changing products a company can create, but there's still plenty of room for Apple to extend established product lines. **** Three Reasons Why Apple Is Unlikely To Shutter iTunes by Kevin Allison, Financial Times Apple's market power means it still has an advantage in pricing talks. **** One Way To Turn A Mac Into A PC Just Got Better by Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal Fusion is now the better choice for running Windows on a Mac virtually. **** Glenda Adams: Porting Games To The Mac Is A Tricky Business by Alex McLarty, The Mac Gamer **** Will Steve Jobs Shoot Himself In The Foot By Disallowing Flash On The iPhone? by Dave Jeyes, Theregoesdave While a standalone Flash player for the iPhone could be useful, it doesn't solve the problem of being able to successfully navigate websites in Flash onto the iPhone. And even if Steve Jobs allows a plug-in, many web sites would still be hard to navigate on a phone. **** Virtual Publishing Releases FlatOut 2 Game by Peter Cohen, Macworld FlatOut2 puts you behind the wheel of a variety of different race cars as you take to courses in cities, in industrial parks, out in the country and elsewhere, competing in a no hodls barred contest for first place. **** Mac's Quick Keys by Garry Barker, Sydney Morning Herald Software has been improving life for all sorts of people for years, among them Robert Black, a Melbourne designer who spends 10 hours or more a day working at his Macintosh. **** LightSpeed 2.7 Adds QuickBooks Support, More by MacNN **** Apple Strikes Back Against Psystar, Asks For Counterclaim To Be Dismissed by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet.com **** Working With Acrobat 9 Pro by James Dempsey, Macworld Adobe has continued the PDF tradition of being the "universal file format" for many industries, not just content creation. But over the years the PDF format—and Acrobat itself—has gone through some major changes, some of which have been great and others that leave me wondering just where Acrobat is going. **** Clips 1.1 Brings Social Media Previews, Abbreviations by David Chartier, Ars Technica **** Apple: No Evidence Of Benzene In Mac Pros by Philip Michaels, Macworld Apple says it has not seen any evidence to back up a French newspaper's claim that Mac Pros are emitting toxic odors, including benzene. **** Apple Makes Two Great iPhone Moves by Jason Snell, Macworld In the past few days, Apple has shown that it's listening to the feedback it's been receiving and is willing to change its policies accordingly. That's an extremely encouraging sign for the iPhone platform. **** Apple Drops NDA For iPhone Developers by Dan Moren, Macworld Apple announced Wdnesday morning via a posting on the front page of its iPhone developer site that it has decided to discontinue the non-disclosure agreement preventing developers from discussing iPhone programming. Apple said it will issue a new agreement to developers covering released software that will not contain the NDA clauses. Software and features that Apple has not yet released, such as future versions of the iPhone Software Development Kit, will continue to be confidential until their release. **** Review: MediaImpression 1.2 by Lee Sherman, Macworld ArcSoft MediaImpression 2.1's do-it-all approach to media asset management is indeed impressive for such an inexpensive program. But despite a few neat tricks, Mac users wil be far better served with a combination of the Mac's built-in media browser and Apple's iLife suite for cataloging, editing, and creating multimedia presentations. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** 'Windows Cloud' To Descend This Month, Says Ballmer by Kelly Fiveash, The Register "We need a new operating system designed for the cloud and we will introduce one in about four weeks," said Steve Ballmer. **** Blogging For Dollars by Michael Agger, Slate How do bloggers make money? **** Can Chrome Lure Developers? by Michael Desmond, Redmond Developer News Google advances its JavaScript-centric web dev strategy. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Some Bookshops I Have Known by Alastair Harper, The Guardian I can't help the false romance. It's through different bookshops I've frequented that I can mark out the different moments of my upbringing. **** A Nation Of Conspiracy Theorists Can't Be Wrong by Louis Bayard, Salon >From miracle diets to creationism to rumors about the origins of 9/11, a new book traces our irrational love of misinformation. **** The End Of Art by Roger Kimball, First Things We behave as if art were something special, something important, something spiritually refreshing; but, when we canvas the roster of distinguished artists today, what we generally find is far from spiritual, and certainly far from refreshing. **** The Final Frontier by Stephen Hawking, Cosmos The human race has existed as a separate species for about two million years. Civilsation began about 10,000 years ago, and the rate of development has been steadily increasing. But, if the human race is to continue for another million years, we will have to go boldly go where no one has gone before. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** NSman Who Died Had Not Submitted Medical Certificate by Valarie Tan, Channel NewsAsia **** Blocked TV: Am I A Bad Programme? by Sam's Thoughts **** Condolence On Demise Of Civil Graciousness Of Lee Hsien Loong by Law Sin Ling, Sg Review Lee's vision of Singapore becoming a more gracious society will not be realised by one who delivers a condolence as a political and personal victory speech. **** Passing Of Lee Kuan Yew's Thorn: JB Jeyaretnam by Gobloking Conscience dictates that I must honor this humble, intriguing, /brave/ man who stood like a Giant Cactus in a pristine, over-pruned artificial garden of roses. **** A Gracious Singaporean? (JBJ Dies.) by Lee Siew Peng, Organic-Ally **** Diversity: What's Worked For Us by Ooi Giok Ling, Today Various differences in culture and economic means have been accommodated in Singapore, through best practices in planning that we should bear in mind as we continue to see the popular get more diverse with worker in-migration. **** Wheelchair Friendly - But Sorry, You Can't Board by Esther Ng, Today The message of the little blue sticker seems obvious: We're a wheelchair-friendly bus. But, as disabled commuters hve found out the hard way, it doesn't necessarily mean they're welcome aboard. **** Outpouring Of Love For JBJ by Kor Kian Beng, Straits Times Whether they knew him from afar or up close, many who went to the Mount Vernon funeral parlour yesterday to pay their last respects said they admired Mr Jeyaretnam for havig fought hard and tirelessly for his beliefs. **** Singaporeans Pay Last Respects To Mr JB Jeyaretnam by Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia Singaporeans from all walks of life attended Mr JB Jeyaretnam's wake on Wednesday. And online, several hundred people penned their thoughts on the veteran politician. **** Full-Time NSman Who Died Was Granted 3-Day Medical Leave By SGH by Lip Kwok Wai and Lynda Hong, Channel NewsAsia **** Blogtv's "Am I Gay?" Episode by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread How long do we have to wait before our media starts to ask some hard questions? **** The Lion Of Anson by Ned Stark, Winter Is Coming From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Oct 3 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 3 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 3, 2008 Message-ID: <20081003171501.53952.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Fake Rumors Of Steve Jobs Heart Attack Circulate by Arnold Kim, MacRumors.com **** Apple Wins BlackBerry Defectors With Business iPhones by Connie Gulielmo, Bloomberg After more than 30 years pitching first Macintosh computers and then iPod media players to consumers, Apple is using the iPhone to attract a new audience: business buyers. **** Review: StoryMill 3.1 by Tim Haddock, Macworld StoryMill 3.1 provides an impressive workflow approach and toolset that can't be replicated in your current word processor. If you're the sort who prefers plotting in a MacBook to jotting in a notebook, odds are StoryMill could prove a real asset in getting your 100,000-word opus onto the printed page. **** First Look: More CS4 App Previews by Macworld **** Apple Releases Apple TV 2.2 Update With Genius Playlists by Arnold Kim, MacRumors.com **** Widget Overload by Adam Turner, Sydney Morning Herald **** iTunes 8.0.1 Fixes HD Episode Deletion Issue And More by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica **** Ballmer Vs Jobs by Stuart Turton, PC Pro All that concerns me here, is the image put forth by the Mac community that Steve Jobs is some kind of incredible showman, able to stop time with a bat of his eyelids, and the world with a movement of his lips. It's a lie. He's just a very clever man in a polo neck. **** Apple's Deadline For iPhone Push Notification Passes by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com **** The Fear by John Gruber, Daring Fireball Rules you disagree with are frustrating. Rules you don't know about are /scary/. **** Royalty Rate Doesn't Change For Apple, Music Retailers by Greg Sandoval, CNET News.com The Copyright Royalty Board on Thursday froze the rate that digital-music stores, such as iTunes and RealNetworks' Rhapsody, must pay music publishers. **** Security Researcher Reveals iPhone Design Flaws by Jeremy Kirk, Macworld UK The first concerns the iPhone's email application, which automatically downloads images within an e-mail, said Aviv Raff, a security researcher. The second design flaw is how the iPhone's email application dsiplays URLs. **** A Touch Of Cocoa: Inside The iPhone SDK by John Timmer, Ars Technica Apple's SDK reveals far more about the device than any of the company's statements, and it provides some insight into what it took to cram OS X onto a mobile device. It also reveals a bit about how Apple, given what amounts to a redo on Cocoa, has aggressively pushed its software design philosophy onto its developers. **** Faulty iBook/PowerBook Power Adapter List Expanded by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica **** MercuryMover 2.0 by Dan Frakes, Macworld This useful OS X add-on lets you move and resize the active window using keyboard shortcuts. **** Clue Classic Released For Mac by Peter Cohen, Macworld Clue Classic is a new casual game based on the classic board game Clue. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** IT Security Hindering Innovation: IDC by Ross O. Storey, Reseller News Organizations are struggling to strike the right balance between driving new innovations to market and instituting effective IT security practices, according to new research by IDC. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Babble On, Say Researchers In 'Linguists' Documentary by Joel Garreau, Washington Post Doesn't your life seem like a daily adventure in linguistics? Americans today routinely encounter more languages from more continents than at any time in the past century. Whether you're getting a meal or a clean shirt or a cab, or visiting a university or a hospital or simply walking through the mall, it's easy to think you're living in the golden age of language diversity. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Dormitory Decision Upsets Some Serangoon Gardens Residents by Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia **** Six Historic Bridges In Singapore Gazetted For Conservation by Ryan Huang and Greta Georges, Channel NewsAsia For the first time, structures such as bridges, towers and pavillions will be conserved as part of Singapore's architectural heritage, and Anderson Bridge is one of six bridges named for conservation in 2008. **** Three Catch Dengue From Tainted Blood In Singapore by Melanie Lee, Reuters Three people contracted the dengue virus after receiving tainted blood from a donor in Singapore, a doctor wrote in a letter published in a medical journal on Thursday. **** Singapore Can't Force Banks To Compensate Investors by Reuters Singapore's central bank said it does not have the power to force banks to compensate retail investors who bought structured products linked to failed U.S. investment bank Lehman Brothers. **** MND Gives Go Ahead For Workers' Dormitory At Serangoon Gardens by Camie De-Souza, Channel NewsAsia The Ministry of National Development (MND) has decided to proceed with a dormitory development at the former school site at Serangoon Gardens for manufaturing and services workers. **** Aberdeen, Daiwa SB Abandon Singapore DOllar As Recession Looms by Lilian Karunungan, Bloomberg Daiwa SB Investment Ltd. and Aberdeen Asset Management Asia Ltd. are selling Singapore dollars on speculation the central bank will curb the currency's advance as the economy teeters on the brink of recession. **** Temasek Benefits In Crisis Even As Pitfalls Lie Ahead by John Burton and Paul Betts, Financial Times Plenty of potential pitfalls remain for Temasek. **** Why The Confusion Now? by Ow Chee Chung, Society for the Physically Disabled, and Leslie Teo, Handicaps Welfare Association, Today The use of the decal as a policy were discussed from the planning stage. It was then proposed that, to avoid confusion to the commuters, the decal will be displayed only after the service is declared as a wheelchair accessible bus (WAB) service. Thus we find the comments from SBS Transit and the LTA in the article confusing given the disregard to the original discussion and agreement. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sat Oct 4 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 4 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 4, 2008 Message-ID: <20081004171501.2657.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Judge Waives Apple, AT&T Objections To Antitrust Case Vs. iPhone by Aidan Malley, AppleInsider A US federal judge has shut down some attempts by Apple and AT&T to dismiss a class action lawsuit that accuses the two of violating antitrust law with their iPhone exclusivity agreement, pushing the complaint closer to a possible trial. **** SEC Investigating False Report On Steve Jobs Heart Attack by AppleInsider The Securities and Exchange Commission said Friday it's investigating whether a false report that Apple chief executive Steve Jobs suffered a heart attack was published in an effort to manipulate the company's stock price. **** AppleTV Update Adds An "Off" Switch by Lonnie Lazar, Cult Of Mac The biggest news may be that users will now be able to turn the device off from within the control panel. **** App Store Successful, But Shows Flaws by Ben Boychuk, Macworld Could Apple reliance on iTunes's musical legacy hinder further growth? **** Bugs And Fixes: Finding 10.5.5'S Bug Fixes by Ted Landau, Macworld **** VisualHub Developer Techspansion Shuts Down by Dan Moren, Macworld Company founder, Tyler Loch, said that he would be shutting down the company for "personal reasons." The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Sony Goes After Kindle With New, Touchscreen eBook Reader by John Timmer, Ars Technica **** Steve Jobs Had No Heart Attack... And Citizen Journalism Just Failed by Sarah Perez, ReadWriteWeb **** Bogus Jobs' Heart Attack Report Rattles Citizen Journalism by JR Raphael, PC World CNN's iReport website hosted a user-submitted story that claimed falsely that Steve Jobs had suffered a heart attack. The prank puts citizen journalism in the line of fire. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Ambition Of The Short Story by Steven Millhauser, New York Times The short story — how modest in bearing! SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** MP Meets Serangoon Gardens Residents On Dormitory Decision by Ryan Huang, Channel NewsAsia **** A Fighter To The End by Seah Chiang Nee, The Star J.B. Jeyaretnam's passing may have left a void in the political scene, but it could also be a rallying point for Singaporeans hankering for change. **** Over 1,000 People Turned Up At JB Jeyaretnam's Funeral by May Wong, Channel NewsAsia **** NTU Tells Why It Canned News Story by Alicia Wong, Today The university was concerned its student media platforms would be "inadvertently exploited." /This is such a cop-out. Either the platforms are exploited, or not exploited. Make a stand, and stop making excuses./ **** All Eligible To Get Transport Vouchers by Ng We Khoon, People's Association, Soffy Hariyanti, Ministry of Transport, Straits Times Families who need assistance can continue to apply at their local community centre or community club, and they will be given help if eligible. **** Goodbye, Dear Friend by Chee Soon Juan, Singapore Democratic Party You have fought the good fight and now you have been called home to rest. They cannot hurt you anymore. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sun Oct 5 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 5 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 5, 2008 Message-ID: <20081005171500.26600.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** My MacBook - One Year On by Marcus Beagley **** Thinking About Switching To A Mac? by Robert Jensen, IT Business Net I wanted out! I wanted simplicity back in my life. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Hidden, Joyful World Of Words by Katherine A. Powers, Boston Globe There's not a word in English that isn't furled-up history, resonating to some degree withits notorious unfairness and spin. **** Stories That Are Jeweled Windows Into Characters by Ann Harleman, Boston Globe The stories in "Yesterday's Weather" offer up surprise after surprise. They're quite short, as short stories go, yet they contain whole worlds inhabited by complex, contradictory characters. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** J B Jeyaretnam: The Iconography Begins by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread What was news — because it is not said everyday at eulogies — was the way Jeyaretnam's sons spoke of his political life. In its complete silence, the Straits Times once again abandoned its journalistic craft. And unknowingly underlined everything that Jeyaretnam had been pointing out about the state of democracy in Singapore. **** Singapore Students Protest University Censorship by Reuters About 60 people gathered at a park in central Singapore on Sunday to protest against a university's decision to censor news stories in the school media related to a prominent opposition politician. **** Singapore GIC's Key Man Sees Opportunities In Gloom by Saeed Azhar and Kevin Lim, Reuters **** Google Street View Car Spotted In Singapore by John Chan, CNET News.com **** Singaporeans Who Think Too Highly Of Themselves by PakMakJujat **** Who Is My Neighbour? by Joanna Png, Catholic News The negative perception that stems from stereotyping invariably instils an unfounded fear and suspicion of others. **** The Dialet Debate by Huzir Sulaiman, The Star As a Malaysian, it saddens me to note time and time again that Singapore does a much better job of giving voice to its ethnic minorities than we do. All the more reason, then, that it's strange to see that the ancestral voices of Singapore's ethnic Chinese immigrant communities are absent from the electronic mass media. You can hear Malay and Tamil voices but not Hokkien or Cantonese. It's all Mandarin. **** Fixing The Opposition - Even Beyond The Grave by Rachel Chung, Xtralicious **** Dissecting The ST Interview And The Journlist-Blogger Relationship by Rachel Chung, Xtralicious **** Hundreds Pay Final Respects To Singapore Opposition Leader by AFP People from different age groups, social backgrounds and races packed the steepled, English Gothic Saint Andrew's Cathedral in the business district for an Anglican church service. In a eulogy, Jeyaretnam's eldest son Kenneth compared his father to a raging bull who, despite the blows he received, remained "undefeated and unbowed." Another son, Philip, a prominent lawyer, said his father's principle of "giving voice to the silent" led him to enter politics. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Mon Oct 6 13:15:02 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 6 Oct 2008 17:15:02 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 6, 2008 Message-ID: <20081006171502.59911.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Not So Secret Apple by Nicholas Ciarelli, The Daily Beast Lately, there are signs that Apple—long the most secretive company in the tech world—has thrown in the towel on fighting leaks. **** Apple, A Fortress Of Secrecy? by Ron Lussier, Glassdoor.com I hope Apple will take their employee's comments seriously, and also treat developers more like partners than potential leaks. **** In The Background by John Gruber, Daring Fireball The only Cocoa Touch applications that run in the background are Phone, Mail, Safari, and iPod. **** How Lawyers Practice Law And Serve Clients With Macs - Really! by Ben Stevens, The Mac Lawyer **** iPhone Steals Lead Over Kindle by Andy Greenberg and James Erik Abels, Forbes Stanza, a book reading application offered in Apple's iPhone App Store since July, has been downloed more than 395,000 times and continues to be installed at an average rate of 5,000 copies a day, according to Lexcycle, the three-person start-up that created the reading software. **** Yet Another iPhone Emergency Call Security Bug by KarlKraft If the phone is placed in emergency call mode, any incoming SMS messages are previewed instead of presented as generic messages. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** The Joystick Of Sex by Tracy Clark-Flory, Salon >From the prostitutes of "Grand Theft Auto" to cutting-edge teledildonics, sex has fueled the gaming industry, as the author of "Porn & Pong" explains. **** Capitalism To The Rescue by Jon Gertner, New York Times MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Importing A Passion For Poetry by Sarah Maguire, The Guardian If we could read the poets that move huge audiences elsewhere in the world, would it wake up our own? **** Gold Boy, Emerald Girl by Yiyun Li, New Yorker He was raised by his mother alone, as she was by her father. She wondered if his mother, who had set up their date, had told him about that. **** Eclogue by Spencer Reece, New Yorker **** The Way by Albert Goldbarth, New Yorker SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** SingTel Increases Local Fixed Line Subscription And Call Rates by Channel NewsAsia SingTel is increasing its local fixed line subscription by S$10 a year from January 1, 2009. Local fixed line call charges will go up from 0.7 to 0.8 Singapore cents per 30-second block during peak hours or per 60-second block during off-peak hours. See Also: SingTel Sees Hit From Finance Crisis, To Cut Costs , by Jennifer Tan, Reuters. **** Singapore, Malaysia Expand Bilateral Air Services Agreement by Channel NewsAsia Singapore and Malaysia have agreed to expand a bilateral air services agreement that will allow Low Cost Carriers to operate between Singapore and three cities in East Malaysia. **** Singapore's Econ Slowdown To Last Several Quarters - Finance Minister by Reuters Singapore will see an economic slowdown that could last several quarters as the subprime mortgage meltdown has evolved into a global economic crisis, finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam said in remarks published on Monday. **** Kindness An Act Of Obligation? by Eugene Chew, In God We Trust Consumers should not be unnecessarily burdened with an initiative that is likely to only favour the management. **** Stupid Move By NTU by Hard Hitting In The Lion City In banning the broadcast... Chee Soon Juan now has more airplay than ever before. **** NTU Students Come Alive by Singapore Democratic Party **** Singapore Identity Under Oppression? by Lo Wei Liang Ian, Social Problems In A Global Context With the government so much influencing key areas, are we who we are because of who we really are or is it because of what the government want us to be so that they can remain where they are? **** Help With Electricity Hikes by Li Xueying, Straits Times Measures to help ease the impact of the 'rather large' hike in electricity tariffs could be introduced in next year's budget. Finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam hinted at it yesterday during a dialogue with residents of Toa Payoh East. **** Financial System Here Safe by Li Xueying, Straits Times Mr Tharman Shanmugaratnam assured that Singapore is 'not in the same situation as the US.' He said: "I can assure you our Singapore banks are well regulated and there is no risk and no reason whatsoever to have a run on our banks." **** NTU Students Protest At Speakers' Corner by Terence Lee, The Online Citizen About 80 people attended the "Stand Up for Media Freedom" protest held yesterday, which consisted mainly of students. **** Singapore: The Last Bastion Of Freedom by The Legal Janitor I'd rather pay our ministers and MPs tons of cash upfront, and have all that /transparency/ and /accountability/, rather than have them try to weasel up goodies off the books from supplicants trying to garner government favour. **** Good Start by Kimberly Spykerman, Straits Times Some improvements showing in clear-your-tray campaign. /Let's be cynical here for a moment: is this just a ploy to reduce the service level provided at food courts without a corresponding reduction of prices? Will stall owners be charged a lower rent and be able to choose to pass on the savings back to the customers?/ **** Cop Blames Himself by Straits Times "I am a murderer. If only I did not screen her on that day..." **** New Objections To Dorms by Lim Wei Chean, Straits Times More than 100 residents gathered at a local playground yesterday to voice their objections to a foreign worker dormitory planned for Serangoon Gardens. **** Fixing The Kidney Deficit, Fast by Salma Khalik, Straits Times Once it is accepted that doing nothing about the situation is morally wrong, as it condones exploitation, it follows that the faster regulations are in place, the better for all. **** Temasek To Target More Asian Investments by John Burton, Financial Times Temasek Holdings, the Singapore state investment company, plans to use the proceeds from the sale of an Indonesian bank last week to make more investments in the Asian financial sector. **** Becoming A World-Class University: NTU And Campus Media Freedom by Thaddeus Wee, The Online Citizen We need to let intellectual opinion and ideas flow in order to validate or invalidate them. To deny the possibility of another opinion would mean to assume the infallibility of one's own opinion. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Tue Oct 7 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 7 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 7, 2008 Message-ID: <20081007171501.38286.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Steve Wozniak Interview: Iconic Co-Founder On The iPod, iPhone, And Future For Apple by Rupert Neate, Telegraph Mr Wozniak says the Apple downgrade was "correct". In fact he believes: "It is time for the whole computer industry to maybe have a bit of a slowdown. For twenty years we have been in this replacement and upgrade market," he says. "It is very easy to postpone that when there are financial irregularities." **** How A Mac Mini Can Beat A Quad-Core Vista Behemoth (Or How Apple Can't Write Good Software For Windows) by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet.com Vendors who adopt Apple's QuickTime MOV format for their hardware need to be aware of the fact that Windows users are getting a poor product experience thanks to the poor performance of QuickTime. **** Mac Security: Antivirus by Scott McNulty, Macworld Although Apple computers are not somehow magically immune to viruses and other malware, they've been remarkable free of such pests for most of their history. But does that mean you can ignore antivirus software? **** Battlestations: Midway by Jacob Beaton, Inside Mac Games Battlestations: Midway attempts to break some new ground by combining real-time strategy and action genres in a WWII setting. While it doesn't create a totally unique game, it does succeed in creating a fresh and fun game. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Are We Sure About Pending Collapse Of Ad-Supported Internet? by Svetlana Gladkova, Profy MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Citizen Enforcers Take Aim by Benedict Carey, New York Times The public urge for punishment that helped delay the passage of Wasignton's economic rescue plan is more than a simple case of Wall Street loathing, according to scientists who study the psychology of forgiveness and retaliation. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** 0.7% Of HDB Flats Built In Last 5 Years Have Defects by Ng Lian Cheong, Channel NewsAsia **** PAP Even Afraid Of Mr Jeyaretnam's Ghost by Singapore Dino **** Singapore May Escape Recession In Q3, Looser Policy Seen by Koh Gui Qing, Reuters Singapore's export-dependent economy may narrowly escape a recession in the third quarter, but the deepening financial crisis should prompt the central bank to ease monetary policy to avoid a sharper economic slowdown. **** Globalised Identity: How Did Singapore Managed The Situation by Tan Seng Giap Jason, Giapsby's Weblog Education could be a powerful tool, but there is also a need for the young of the nation to really experience diversity to understand the importance. **** Changi Airport To Be Corporatised By July 2009 by Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia Singapore's Changi Airport will be corpratised by July 2009. It will be split into two entities - a regulatory arm and a new airport company. See Also: Corporatisation Of Changi Airport And Restructuring Of Civil Aviation Authority Of Singapore (CAAS) - Corporatisation Model Announced , by Ministry of Transport, Singapore Government. (Note: Link goes to PDF document.) From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Wed Oct 8 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 8 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 8, 2008 Message-ID: <20081008171500.29583.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Mac Security: Privacy by Joe Kissell, Macworld What you can do to make sure your private data stays that way. **** Elgato Updates EyeTV by Jonny Evans, Macworld UK The update includes some improvements to the video editor, some additional hardware support, and some country specific bug fixes. **** Why I Can't Wait For The iPod To Die by Don Reisinger, CNET News.com Nothing will change until Apple experiences a year of decining iPod sales. Once that happens, its competitotrs will panic and try to be the first to the market with something innovative and Apple will be forced to make serious changes to the iPod or come up with something new altogether. /This guy never heard of the iPhone or the iPod Touch?/ **** Apple Doesn't Need A Public Succession Plan by John Martellaro, Mac Observer A /public/ succession plan seems to be more about obsession by the media than a prudent executive management practice. **** First Look: SyncMate, Mac/Smarthone Synchronization by MacNN **** Apple Faces Pressure Over Replaceable Batteries by iPodNN Developing European Union guidelines could force Apple to adopt a more user- and environmentally-friendly approach to batteries, reports said. **** Spell Catcher X Adds DirectCorrect by Peter Cohen, Macworld Spell Catcher provides spell checking for more than a dozen languages, and adds a variety of writing productivity features not embedded in the operating system. **** Differentiating 'New' And 'Recent' Podcasts by Christopher Breen, Macworld The way iTunes defines "new" is not, "most recent" but rather "most recent that you've never played any portion of." **** What's Keeping Me? 1.3 by Dan Frakes, Macworld The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Microsoft Touts Touchless SDK by Paul Krill, InfoWorld **** New Media Feels Heat After Apple Misstep by Ben Arnoldy, Christian Science Monitor MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Unspeakable Odyssey Of The Motionless Boy by Joshua Foer, Esquire How much of our humanity are we prepared to cede to machines? This is a dilemma of the future, but it's not much of a concern for Erik Ramsey. Erik can't move. He can't blink his eyes. And he hasn't said a word since 1999. But now, thanks to an electrode that was surgically implanted in his brain and linked to a computer, his nine-year silence is about to end. **** Verbage by James Wood, New Yorker The Republican war on words. **** High-End Restaurants On A Tightrope Of Economic Uncertainty by Russ Parsons, Los Angeles Times People always have to eat, but do they have to dine out? That's the question Southern California's top chefs are facing after the last few weeks of grim economic news. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** With Recession Coming, What Social Safety Nets Have We In Place? by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread **** Energy Market And Renewable Energy In Singapore by Marie Morice, CSR Asia **** Temasek Passes On Bank Of America Offering - Sources by John Jannarone, Dow Jones Temasek Holdings didn't participate in a $10 billion stock offering by Bank of America, allowing a dilution of the stake it will own in the bank after a takeover deal with merrill Lynch is complete. **** Singapore Public Housing: 'A Nation Of Homeowners' by AFP Public houisng is often associated with poverty-stricken slums and other social ills but Singapore's high-rise apartment blocks built by the government are an exception. "Essentially we have housed an entire nation and created a nation of homeowners," Tay Kim Poh, chief executive officer of the city-state's Housing and Development Board (HDB), told AFP in a recent interview. **** The Importance Of Editorial Independence In The News Process by Lim Yan Wen, The Online Citizen **** Increasing The Price Of A Dying Technology Is A Bad Move by Dee Kay Dot As Gee If you ask me, I would say that it is a reasonable pric eincrease. But increasing the price now on a dying technology is a bad move. Not only will it affect the fix line customer base, it might also affect the customer base in other Singtel services. **** How Much Do You Earn? That's Too Much, Isn't It by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu If I ask you how much you earn per month, and you reply, say, $4000 per month. Do I have any idea whether you are earning too little, earning too much, or earning just right? Of course not. Not without, for example, finding out what you do, what is the quality of work you produce, and how easily you can be replaced. Similarly, if I ask a company how much profit is a commercial for-profit company earning, and the company tells me, say, $4 million per year. Do I have any idea whether the company is earning too little, too much, or just right? Lately, there are a lot of complains about why some for-profit companies are raising prices when the companies are still earning profits. But, none of these complains compare the profit to, say, the amount of investment the companies have made. Take two extreme example. If a company spent $1 to earn $4 million profit, one may be justified in claiming the company is earning too much profit. However, if the company spent $1 trillion to earn $4 million profit, one will be justified in claiming the company is earning too little, and the company should just close down, and the shareholders can simply earn more money just by putting the $1 trillion in the bank and earn interests. Of course, these are extreme examples. The reality lies somewhere in the middle. The problem with all these complaints, however, are that none of these bloggers bother to look at this reality. $4 million profit may be a lot of money, but without the context of the cost of production or service, the complaints sound hollow.

Permanent Link to This Post **** Lessons On Governance From Singapore by James Shikwati, Business Daily Africa The dictatorship in this tiny country of close to 4.5 million people figured out that instilling the right attitude among people is the best strategy to get citizens to engage in productive activity. **** Telco Wars: StarHub Dangles $100 Carrot by Cheow Xin Yi, Today **** Sorry For The Confusion by Tammy Tan, SBS Transit, Today SBS Transit would like to apologise to all of its wheelchair-bound commuters who have been confused by the use of blue Wheelchair-Accessible Bus (WAB) decals on buses not running on WAB routes. SBS Transit has taken immediate action to remove them to avoid further confusion and will ensure that only WAB-designated Services carry the decals from now on. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Thu Oct 9 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 9 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 9, 2008 Message-ID: <20081009171501.27760.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Mac Vs. PC: Making The Switch by Marc Stephens, Biscayne Times There's a reason you never see an Apple store empty. **** Apple To Launch $800 Laptop by The Inquisitr According to the source, Apple retail stores have been given price sheets that list 12 price points for the new range of laptops, with prices between $800-$3100. **** 'Thank You Apple. Seriously.' by David Needle, Internet News The iPhone's success is helping Apple, developers and even the competition. **** Apple Stops Colorado Call Center Plans, 500 Jobs Lost by MacNN **** What Could (Should?) Steve Jobs And Other Admired CEOs Do To Bolster Investor Confidence? by Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek Apple sells computers to thousnds of schools, philanthropies and non-profits, all of which are bound to get hit hard as interest rates rise and charitable donations drop. Maybe Apple could come up with some innovative way to help them weather the hard times. **** The Clumsys by Jack Shiels, Inside Mac Games **** Recession Or Not, Apple Will Forge Ahead by David Zeiler, Baltimore Sun Unveiling compelling new products while its competitors retrench will give those consumers who are still spending one more reason to choose Apple. **** Undercover Theft Recovery Software Reduces Memory Usage by Peter Cohen, Macworld **** Apple Field Trip Program: Hands-On Classes For K-12 Students by Erica Sadun, Ars Technica The field trips offer schools a free one-hour training sessions for students while strengthening school branding with Apple. **** Review: Maple 12 by Flip Phillips, Macworld Scientific computing marches forward. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Netbooks Will Boost Adoption Of Linux, Says Novell CTO by John Ribeiro, IDG News Service **** Blogging Like The World Depended On It by Brian Braiker, Newsweek Transforming social networking into social change. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Why Poets Take Trains by Adam O'Riordan, The Guardian Planes are too expensive, cars shouldn't even be considered. Little wonder, then, that the train is the poet's preferred mode of transport. **** The Bonds Of Matrimony by Carolyn See, Washington Post Philip Lopate is such a smart man and such a fine writer that sometimes it's hard to know whether he's gaming you — having fun with you just because he can. **** False Apology Syndrome - I'm Sorry For Your Sins by Theodore Dalrymple, In Character I am, of course, sorry if you disagree. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Two New Flyovers For CTE by Christopher Tan, Straits Times Two new pairs of flyovers will be built along the most congested stretches of the Central Expressway (CTE). THe Land Transport Authority said on Thursday one flyover will allow northbound motorists from the Pan-Island Expressway (PIE) to continue their journey on the CTE without competing with those taking the Braddell exit. **** PEMA And The Arts In Singapore by Amos Toh, Singapore Law Review These restrictions abrogate not only the right of an artist to perform, but also to fulfill his professional duties. Moreover, /PEMA/ is merely a microcosm of a wider, more perplexingly restrictive climate enforced through the letter of the law. **** Serangoon Gardens, LTA And MND: A Bureaucratic Carousel by Groundnotes Why did the LTA or MND not anticipate the protest from Tai Hwan and Mei Hwan estate residents given the experience with Serangoon Gardens? **** Has Crisis Shaken Singaporeans? by Straits Times The nightmare on Wall Street reached Singapore on Wednesday, with The Straits Times Index nosediving a sharp 6.6 per cent. But it seems not many Singaporeans are too concerned. **** Police Officers Not Allowed To Be Human - Lionel De Souza by Pkchukiss If the morale and discipline of the local police force were that easily weakened by an honest posting of a person's thoughts on the internet as what De Souza has suggested, it implies that the police officers are not sufficiently trained to contain their human emotions while on the job. **** Singapore Fund Has Stakes In UK Bailout Banks by Blowin' In The Wind **** Serangoon Gardens: Who's Afraid Of The Dark Man? by The Art Of Dumbspeak (And Pigging-Out) I think before the government arrests any more people for hurling racist remarks pertaining to Persons of Non Chinese race on their blogs, they should examine the prejudice that was blatantly displayed without proper censure and censorship in the past month. **** NUS Up, NTU Down by Sumathi V. Selvaretnam, Straits Times Singapore's two biggest universities moved in opposite directions in the latest survey of international universities by The Times of London Higher Education supplement. **** Temasek Banks Of Powerful Appeal Of Utilities by John Burton, Financial Times The current financial crisis may actually increase the appeal of PoweSeraya to buyers. **** Wayne Wang Sets Sights On Singapore by Janine Stein, Hollywood Reporter Chinese-American director Wayne Wang is talking to Singapore financiers, directors and film industry authorities about making movies in the Southeast Asian city-state. **** Here Today, Gone Tomorrow by Lin Yanqin, Today Four in five of the expats surveyed by HSBC Bank International were unsure if their children would remain in Singapore, which meant that this group was the least certain about where their children would choose to live. **** We Want A Mr JBJ But Not Another Harry Lee Kuan Yew In Burma by San Oo Aung's Weblog For Jeyaretnam, no amount of security was worth the sacrifice of individual liberties to which Singaporeans have grown accustomed, while for his nemeses within the ruling People's Action Party, security and prosperity (particularly their own) are paramount over individual rights. **** Liberalising Expression At Hong Lim Park: Speakers No Longer Cornered? by Hong Jia, Singapore Law Review From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Oct 10 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 10 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 10, 2008 Message-ID: <20081010171500.16070.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple Says Some MacBook Pros Affected By Faulty Nvidia Chips by Kasper Jade, AppleInsider Apple said this week some of it more recent MacBook Pro models may contain faulty Nvidia graphics chips that produce distorted video or fail completely. **** TV Guide: Prime Time Publishing by Joe Cellini, Apple "Aperture was the digital Swiss Army knife that let us capture, caption, organize, rate, present, transmit, and back up terabytes of RAW images from four different photographers using different camera models." **** Dream Apps Produces TaskMagic 1.0 by MacNN The software is based around the concept of grouping, which divides tasks based on difficulty, timeframe, or common topic. **** Apple Posts Security Update 2008-007 by Peter Cohen, Macworld **** Apple Announces October 14 Notebook Event In Cupertino by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica Apple has just sent out invites to a special media event on Apple's campus on October 14.. The invite reads, "The spotlight turns to notebooks," and has a ray of light shining over the back of an unidentified Apple notebook. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Linux In The Economic Meltdown by Matt Hartley, Datamation MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Why Tip? by Paul Wachter, New York Times In his brief experience, working for tips encouraged selfishness rather than teamwork. Moreover, good service was not always rewarded with a big tip, nor bad service with a poor one. "No other profession works like this," Porter told me, "and I don't see why the restaurant business should either." At his restaurant, Porter and his staff agreed, it no longer would. The Linkery would be more than just a restaurant; it woul dbecome perhaps the nation's only anti-tipping laboratory. **** A Catfish By Any Other Name by Paul Greenberg, New York Times Catfish isn't the first product from Asia to spark emotional trade disputes. But unlike the public hood-bashing that autoworkers dealt an unwitting Japanese car in 1992, what came to be known in the American South as "the catfish wars" simmered out of sight, a resentment that finally boiled up out of the very bottom of America's economy. **** Beyond The Reach Of God by Eliezer Yudkowsky, Overcoming Bias What does a child need to do - what rules should they follow, how should they behave - to solve an adult problem? SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singapore Art Sales Aim To Defy Falling Markets, China Slowdown by Adam Majendie, Bloomberg **** J.B. Jeyaretnam by The Economist Lee Kuan Yew may have been infinitely the greater statesman, but some would have judged Mr Jeyaretnam the bigger man. **** Poor Response To Dormitory For Domestic Workers In Woodlands by Valarie Tan, Channel NewsAsia **** Analysts Say Retrenchments Expected As Early As December by May Wong, Channel NewsAsia Some analysts said retrenchments could hit home as early as December, while others predict the full impact will be felt in the second and third quarter of next year. **** Global Crisis To Hit Singapore Hard by Gabriel Chen, Straits Times Economists have painted a grim picture of the economic outlook here, warning that Singpaore will not be unscathed by the financial carnage sweeping rapidly across the United States and Europe. **** Politics Of Identity And Globalisation: The Singaporean Identity by Two Cents Worth **** Journalist's Drug Charges To Be Negotiated by Glenda Kwek, Sydney Morning Herald The ABC journalist Peter Lloyd may reach an agreement with Singapore's prosecutors on his drug charges by the end of this month, his lawyer has said. **** PM Lee Says Singapore's Financial Systems Sound, Economy Competitive by S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia Singapore's prime minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday said the country's financial system is sound, and its economy remains competitive despite slowing down. See Also: Asia Faces Rough Ride , by Straits Times. Prime minister Lee Hsien Loong has warned Singaporeans to prepare for a 'rough ride' over the next year - and 'quite possibly longer.' Mr Lee said Singapore and Asian countries cannot avoid the impact of weakening US, European and Japanese economies. **** Recession? What Recession by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu It's always hard predicting the economy. As the joke goes, astrology was invented so that economy could be an accurate science. Now, with that in mind... June, 2008 : Finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam... gave the assurance that Singapore is not heading for a recession. Feb, 2008 : Asia will not tip into recession even though the United States economy is faltering, minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew said. If you haven't, time to really start saving.

Permanent Link to This Post **** Singapore In Recession, First Policy Easing In Five Years by Koh Gui Qing, Reuters Singapore eased monetary policy on Friday for the first time since 2003 after the Southeast Asian economy sunk into its first recession in six years and as the meltdown in financial markets threatened to further hit growth. **** Envoy Hits Out At Singapore by Nelson Benjamin, The Star Malaysian High Commissioner Datuk N. Parameswaran has hit out at allegations by Singapore that members of his staff abused their VIP privileges at land checkpoints and attempted to ferry an overstayer from the island republic to Johor. /The letter by Malaysian High Commissioner to Singapore was first published in the Today newspaper on Sept 20 earlier this year. I wonder why The Star newspaper only picked up this story until now./ **** Growth Estimates Revised Down With GDP Decline by Channel NewsAsia Against the less than favourable economic environment, Singapore's GDP growth forecast for 2008 has been revised to around 3% from 4-5%. **** Singapore Economy In Recession by AFP Singapore's trade-sensitive economy has declined for a second straight quarter, the government said Friday, meaning the city-state has entered a recession for the first time in six years. **** Can't Park For Free Soon At West Coast by Lediati Tan, New Paper Vistors to West Coast Park will soon be paying a price for the inconsideration of others, in the form of parking charges. **** Academic Freedom And The Rascals Prize by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread This attempt to spike the story has failed, and in fact has boomeranged on the authorities, both university and state. Internet technology made a difference. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sat Oct 11 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 11 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 11, 2008 Message-ID: <20081011171501.71404.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple Empowers Malaysian Music Production by Avanti Kumar, Computerworld Malaysia Malaysia's International College of Music said its use of a mobile computing solution, powered by Apple, has given its students significant creative and technical freedom. **** Lifted iPhone NDA Opens The Door For Conferences, Books by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** How Hard Could It Be?: Sins Of Commissions by Joel Spolsky, Inc Employees will always game incentive plans - because the geniuses who design them don't anticipate how employees will respond. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** 'Remix,' By Lawrence Lessig by Michael O'Donnell, San Francisco Chronicle This is to be his last book on intellectual property. The field will be worse without him, but any cause would be lucky to gain such a trenchant advocate. **** A Little Less Conversation by Lynsey Hanley, The Guardian The official call for more chatter in libraries is absurd. Silence, too, can be a creative, social glue. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sun Oct 12 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 12 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 12, 2008 Message-ID: <20081012171501.85177.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Adobe's Big, New Creative Suite Helpful In Many Ways by Jeff Carlson, Seattle Times **** First Look: PGP Desktop 9.9 by MacNN The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Smart Startup Advice: Don't Panic - Profit by Peter Kafka, Silicon Alley Insider MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Big Country by J. R. Moehringer, New York Times Taking as their inspiration the state guides published by the Federal Writers' Project during and shortly after the Great Depression, Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey assembled 50 of America's finest writers and asked them to contribute essays on the same general theme: why my state is special — or not. The result is a funny, moving, rousing collection, greater than the sum of its excellent parts, a convention of literary superdelegates, each one boisterously nominating his or her piece of the Republic. **** My Parrot, My Self by Anthony Gottlieb, New York Times Both in liteature and in life, parrots have been employed to bear false witness. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** What Singapore Newspapers Don't Say by Blowin' In The Wind The Sunday Times can pose questions to the West, but it can't fully report what's happening at home? **** Singapore's Forest Brothels by Erika Fry, Bangkok Post Singapore is a choice destination for many Thai 'working girls,' but an unknown number are trafficked to remote locations on the edge of the city where they are essentially held as sex slaves. **** Some Suggest Government Compensate Related Organ Donors by May Wong, Channel NewsAsia Some Singaporeans suggest that the government could look into compensating family members who donate organs to their loved ones to encourage more related donations. **** Shocked By The Harsh Realities by Seah Chiang Nee, The Star The government says there's a perfectly good reason for the disparity. In Singapore, the tariffs are calculated from oil prices in the preceeding three months. Oil ws more expensive then. Singaporeans appear baffled with the explanation, asking if Hong Kong can make its market work better, why can't we? **** Singapore Investors Decry Losses From Lehman Bonds by Associated Press Hundreds of distraught Singaporean investors flooded a park to express their anguish at losses from structured notes issued by Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. that they say were sold to them by banks as safe investments. **** They Mucked Up The Economy And Blame Everything And Everyone But Themselves by Singapore Election Watch **** Upset Investors Turn Up At Speakers' Corner by Imelda Saad, Channel NewsAsia More than 1,000 people who lost hard-earned savings investing in structured products like Lehman Minibonds and DBS High Notes, turned up at the Speakers' Corner on Saturday evening. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Mon Oct 13 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 13 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 13, 2008 Message-ID: <20081013171500.23119.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** iPhones Go To Front Of The Class At Texas University by John Cox, Network World When almost 1,000 freshman students showed up at Abilene Christian University on Aug 16, they got something more than the usual medical release forms, parking permits and Welcome Week t-shirts. Thye got a choice of a brand-spanking-new Apple iPhone 3G or iPod Touch, plus a package of ACU-written web applications to use on them. **** Why I Switched To Mac - Yes "I'm Now A Mac" by Jason Larson The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Overfeeding On Information by Alex Williams, New York Times This explosion of information technology, when combined with an unusual confluence of dramatic — and ongoing — nes events, has led many people to conclude that they have given their lives over to a news obsession. **** Amid The Gloom, An E-Commerce War by Brad Stone, New York Times E-commerce was once thought to be a refuge from economic storms. People who stay away from the mall might actually be more tempted to shop online and hunt for deals, or so the thinking went. But analysts are now revisiting that assumption. **** In Defense Of Piracy by Lawrence Lessig, Wall Street Journal This war must end. It is time we recognize that we can't kill this creativity. We can only criminalize it. We can't stop our kids from using these tools to create, or make them passive. We can only drive it underground, or make them "pirates." And the question we as a society must focus on is whether this is any good. Our kids live in an age of prohibition, where more and more of what seems to them to be ordinary behavior is against the law. They recognize it as against the law. They see themselves as "criminals." They begin to get used to the idea. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Late Bloomers by Malcom Gladwell, New Yorker Why do we equate genius with precocity? **** Sleep by Roddy Doyle, New Yorker It was the thing he'd always loved about her. The way she could sleep. When they'd just started going with each other, before they really knew each other, he'd lie awake, hoping she'd wake up, praying for it, dying. But even then he'd loved to look at her while she slept. There was something about it that made him feel lucky, or privileged. Or trusted. She could do that beside him, turn everything off, all the defenses, and let him watch her. **** Poem By The Bridge At Ten-Shin by Frederick Seidel, New Yorker **** Nymph And Shepherd by Donald Hall, New Yorker SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singapore's Cbank Says Will Ensure Market Stability by Koh Gui Qing, Reuters **** Lees Awarded Libel Damages by Zakir Hussain, Straits Times The High Court has awarded prime minister Lee Hsien Loong $500,000 in damages and minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew $450,000 in damages in a defamation suit that both won against the Singapore Democratic Party (SDP) and several of its leaders. **** Foreign Workers And Public Transport by Singapore Short Stories **** Head Hunter Of Singapore by Vir Sanghvi, Hindustan Times It's a dish that has always mystified me. Sometime in the 1970s, I first heard of the "famous Indian fish head curry" in Singapore. I had to say that I knew nothing about this 'famous Indian' curry. **** Singapore's GIC Warns Against Over-Regulating Banks by Kevin Lim, Reuters The Government of Singapore Investment Corp (GIC), the world's third-largest sovereign fund, has warned against over-regulation amid efforts by governments to solve the financial crisis, saying it may stifle innovation. **** RI And RJC To Merge by Straits Times Raffles Institution and Raffles Junior College will merge in January so that its six-year integrated programme can be strengthened and made seamless. **** Bridging The Gulf Between Sri Lanka And Singapore's Monetary Management: Fuss-Budget by Lanka Business Online **** Security Flaw In Booking System by S L Gan, Today A passenger riding in one of the company's taxis had evidently read my booking request from the taxi driver's screen, saw my name, address and mobile number and started messaging me. **** Time To Abolish Radio And TV Licence Fees? by Reggie J, New Paper MediaCorp should inform, educate and entertain the masses in a commercially viable way. /MediaCorp, by virtue of given the public airwave to broadcast programmes and earn money, should bear the social responsibilities of broadcasting minority, children, and news programming./ From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Tue Oct 14 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 14 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 14, 2008 Message-ID: <20081014171501.75328.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Will Steve Jobs Outrun A Bear? by Jon Fortt, Fortune **** Encyclopaedia Britannica 2009 Ships For Mac, PC by Jonny Evans, Macworld UK **** FileMaker Introduces Bento 2 by Jonny Evans, Macworld UK Bento 2 links with Apple Mail; works with Excel, Numbers, and AppleWorks; and adds many spreadsheet style functions. The software also links RSS feeds to contacts, events, projects, and other information stored in Bento. **** VisualHub Gets Reborn As FilmRedux, Goes Open Source by Danny Gorog, APC **** Contains Spoilers by John Gruber, Daring Fireball The single-button trackpad is gone. Which is to say there is no button at all. None of these "$800 new MacBook!" rumors came from anyone with any credibility. **** For People On The Go, iCal Is A Must by Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle **** iPhone A Goldmine For Geeks by Asher Moses, Sydney Morning Herald The iPhone has become a virtual goldmine for budding software developers - including several Australians - with some earning thousands of dollars a day from relatively simple ideas. **** First Look: OpenOffice 3.0, Office Suite by MacNN **** 10 Essential Tasks To Keep Leopard Purring by Ryan Faas, Computerworld Periodically performing a few key maintenance tasks can keep Leopard — and earlier versions of Mac OS X — running strong and prevent or resolve problems. **** OK, Now OpenOffice Is Definitely Good Enough by Christopher Dawson, ZDNet.com Yes, OO.org has been good enough for a long time; the latest release should leave little doubt for any users who had been on the fence. **** Apple Shares: The Biggest One-Day Boost Since 1999 by Michelle Quinn, Los Angeles Times Apple's stock, which had been wallowing at a yearly low, continued the climb it started Thursday. Today, Aple shares jumped to $110.26, up 13%, its biggest one-day gain since 1999, according to the Associated Press. **** What The MacBook Means To Apple by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune Apple's notebook computers have been its main source of revenue for some time now, and if Apple plays its cards right, they are likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. **** Analyst Likes Apple's Sauce by Rick Aristotle Munarriz, Motley Fool **** Top 5 Reasons Small Businesses Dump PC For Mac by Jason R. Rich, CIOL Hot business-friendly applications and cmpatibility are two of the many reasons small to mid-sized businesses are considering the Mac. **** OpenOffice 3.0 Released, For Mac by Peter Cohen, Macworld The OpenOffice.org Community announced Monday the release of OpenOffice.org 3.0, a free office software suite designed as an alternative to Microsoft Office. This is the first version to run natively on Mac OS X. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Spinning A Web Of Lies At Digital Speed by Noam Cohen, New York Times With its oodles of information, the internet is laden with falsehoods, but, in fact, these recent cases show how critical are amplifying sites like Drudge or Google News or Digg to getting reports from the backwoods before the public. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Spring Comes To Ohio by Joseph Campana, Slate **** Actor Battles To Play A Bigger Role As A Father by Jennifer A. Kingson, New York Times Survivors of a gory divorce think their stories are the worst of all, and the actor Alec Baldwin is no exception. He may have a bit of a leg to stand on — though Christie Brinkley deserves at least honorable mention — if only for the ugly public spectacle of his custody battle with the actress Kim Basinger. **** He Counts Your Words (Even Those Pronouns) by Jessica Wapner, New York Times James W. Pennebaker's interest in word counting began more than 20 years ago, when he did several studies suggesting that people who talked about traumatic experience tended to be physically healthier than those who kept such experiences secret. **** In Russia, A Second Home For U.S. Astronauts by John Schwartz, New York Times Star City has become an important second home for Americans working with their Russian counterparts, and it is about to become more important still. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singapore-Operated Lighthouses Stay Relevant And Uses More Advanced Equipment by May Wong, Channel NewsAsia In spite of technological advances, lighthouses are still crucial in ensuring navigational safety, said Singapore's Maritime and Port Authority. **** Table Tennis-Singapore Coach Quits Over "Insulting" Offer by Ossian Shine, Reuters The man who helped deliver Singapore's first Olympic medal in 48 years is set to quit as table tennis coach after rejecting an "insulting and insincere" new deal from the city-state. **** Singaore Bankrupts The Singapore Democratic Party by Asia Sentinel The Lee family again uses its tame courts to wipe out political opposition. **** Kangaroo T-Shirt Trio May Face Contempt Proceedings by S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia Singapore's Attorney-General (AG) has applied to the High Court to commence contempt proceedings against three individuals who are alleged to have impugned the reputation fo the country's judiciary, by appearing in the new Supreme Court building wearing identical white T-shirts bearing a palm-sized picture of a kangaroo dressed in a judge's gown. See Also: Contempt Proceedings Against 3 Individuals - Kangaroo T-Shirt Case , by Singapore Government. **** Singapore Art Auctions Miss Target As Stock Rout Deters Buyers by Adam Majendie, Bloomberg Two Singapore auctions of Asian art at the weekend missed estimates as a slump in global financial markets kept many buyers away. **** Singapore To Expand Its Palliative Care Systems To Deal With Ageing Population by Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia Health minister Khaw Boon Wan said Singapore is "under-performing" when it comes to care for the dying. **** No Protest Please, We're Singaporeans by Diary Of A Singaporean Mind It is time for your MP to work for you. **** Protest Outside DBS Headquarters by Tan Kin Lian How would breaking the law help you? If even a small group of investors were arrested, it would terrorize the rest into sullen submission. Any attempts at trying to build a case or even to win public opinion would collapse. **** Speakers' Corner, Outdoor Demonstrations And Sleeping by Read, Reflect, Respond Because never say cannot doesn't mean is can. **** Speech By Mr S Iswaran, Senior Minister Of STate For Trade And Industry, At The Global Climate Change And Sustainability Conference by Singapore Government For Singapore, our small size, low wind speeds, lack of major river systems and high urban density, inevitability constrain our ability to switch from fossil fuels to low-carbon alternative energies such as geothermal, wind, hydroelectric, solar, and nuclear energy. In this sense, we are an "alternative energy disadvantaged" country that has few options apart from fossil fuels. **** Police Warn Against Protest by Francis Chan, Straits Times The police have advised a group of investors of DBS High Notes 5 to call off their planned protest outside the bank's Shenton Way headquarters tomorrow. **** Prepare To Lose Jobs In Singapore by Nelson Benjamin, The Star The 300,000 Malaysians employed in the island republic have been advised to gear up for retrenchment if the country continues to slide into a recession. Human resources minister Datuk Dr S. Subramaniam said that although the technical recession experienced by Singapore has not yet translated into unemployment, it was better for Malaysians to be prepared. **** $2M That Could Have Been Better Spent? by Lee Soon Chin, Today Why is the Land Transport Authority (LTA) spending $2 million to mollify residents of Serangoon Gardens? **** By-Election Hearing On Oct 30 by Ansley Ng, Today Following Mr J B Jeyaretnam's fatal heart attack two weeks ago, the High Court has postponed hearing the application on the issue of a by-election in Jurong Group Representation Constituency. A replacement lawyer has yet to be named to the case, and the party making the application did not turn up for a pre-hearing meeting last Friday. **** 21 Strayed Onto MRT Tracks by Serene Luo, Straits Times So far this year, 21 people has fallen or found their way onto the tracks. More than 70 per cent of the cases were intentional, that is, the perpetrators were drunk, high on drugs or trying to commit suicide. **** We Can Feed Only 70, Says Help Group, But 200 Want To Eat by Tan May Ping, New Paper Transient Workers Count Too, which runs a breakfast and dinner proramme in Little India with another advocacy group, One Singapore, said there has been a surge in numbers, starting last month. **** Plane Stuck On TPE by Esther Tan, Straits Times An airplane mounted on a trailer was stranded on the Tampines Expressway for more than an hour on Monday morning, unable to pass under an overhead pedestrian bridge. **** Police Urge Public To Air Grievances In Lawful Manner by Margaret Perry, Channel NewsAsia Singapore police have advised the public to air their grievances in a lawful manner such as at Speakers' Corner or to apply for an assembly permit if they want to use an indoor venue. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Wed Oct 15 13:15:02 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 15 Oct 2008 17:15:02 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 15, 2008 Message-ID: <20081015171502.12120.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple Quietly Kills FireWire 400 by Charlie Sorrel, Wired **** Gaming Finally Comes To The MacBook by Peter Cohen, Macworld **** Glossy Screens by Lukas Mathis, Ignore The Code Selling anti-glare screen protector in MacBook Pro sizes will soon be a viable business. **** Making MacBooks Similar, Yet Different by Dan Frakes, Macworld Apple has made its professional and consumer laptop lines more similar than they've ever been. At the same time, the company has tried to differentiate the two lines by giving the MacBook Pro a few new features of its own, as well as by /removing/ a popular feature from the MacBook. **** MacBook Pros: Are They Really 'Pro' Notebooks? by Noetbooks.com Users should get at least some of the following features or the option to add them on for an additional charge. **** ooVoo 1.5 Brings Video Call Recording, More by MacNN ooVoo on Wednesday announced its high quality video chat software for Mac. **** Adobe Ships Creative Suite 4 by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld **** Apple MacBook 13-Inch (Aluminum) by Cisco Cheng, PC Magazine The Apple MacBook 13-inch (Aluminum) couldn't be more glamorous, glorious and magnificent—from a design standpoint. Performance, meanwhile, gets a necessary lift from the Intel Centrino 2 platform and nVidia graphics. **** Apple Price Gouge In Oz by Mendelson Tiu, Smarthouse Despite Apple dropping its prices in the US, Australians would have to pay more just to get hold of the newly released notebooks. **** Is It Time To Switch To An Apple Laptop? by Darren Gladstone, PC World Intel's integrated GPU, which most Windows-based laptops use, is about as elegant as a mouse in a tutu. With today's Apple announcement, a reasonably powerful integrated graphics system is available for laptop motherboards: nVidia's new GeForce 9400M. And the Apple MacBooks have it. **** How Green Is Apple Now? by Elinor Mills, CNET News.com **** How To Use Dropbox As The Ultimate Password Syncer by Lifehacker **** Is Steve Jobs Preparing His Farewell? by Gizmodo Since the very first minute, when he immediately sat down to let Tim Cook talk, he was saying: "Hey, look, Apple is more thna Steve." **** Some Of The Silly Things Apple Said During Its MacBook Unveiling by Victor Godinez, The Dallas Morning News Sure, Display Port will eventually become a standard, but everyone has HDMI right now, and it's silly for Apple to spurn that market. **** The Key To Apple's Future: Multi-Touch by Don Reisinger, CNET News.com Apple's decision to let multi-touch technology lead it into the future is a smart one. It will set the company apart in the notebook market and put its competitors on notice: Apple is willing to take chnaces to beat them. **** Is Apple's New MacBook Pro A Gaming Machine? by Daniel Terdiman, CNET News.com The upshot seems to be that for the first time, Macs will be able to hold their own as gaming machines, even if they are not quite at the elite level. **** First Look: MacBook And MacBook Pro by Jason Snell, Macworld You can program either the bottom right or left corner of the trackpad to act as a secondary mouse button. So the no-button laptop can act as a two-button laptop after all. These new MacBooks work with your iPhone headphones. **** HybridSLI A Pain No Matter The OS by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet.com **** Matte Matters by Rob Griffiths, Macworld While Apple sees only the upside of glossy screens—bright and vivid colors—I see only the negative—myself. **** Analysts: New MacBooks Priced Too High To Compete by Brian X. Chen, Wired Despite a raft load of nifty new features, Apple's new Mac notebooks will have a hard time moving off store shelves during the economic crisis, industry analysts say. **** How Big Is Apple? Depends by David Pogue, New York Times Therei's a difference between U.S. sales and global sales. There's also a difference between retail sales and corporate sales. **** More On Apple's New Mini DisplayPort by Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet.com DisplayPort has an advantage over HDMI in that it is royalty free which makes it cheaper to implement. **** MacBook Ho-Hum by Sven-S. Prost, Quarter Life Crisis What I find disappointing is that Apple aren't bolder when it comes to optical media. Many people simply won't use their optical drive much and that simply kicking those out of the normal notebooks would have been a bold but reasonable step. **** New Notebooks: What Apple Didn't Announce by Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet.com On Blu-Ray, Jobs said: "It's grat to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we're waiting till things settle down." **** Which New MacBook Is Right For You? by Erica Sadun, Ars Technica **** Hands On With The MacBook/Pro's Removable Hard Drive by Clint Ecker, Ars Technica **** Answers About The New Buttonless MacBook Trackpad by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica The entire trackpad gives tactile feedback when clicking, so when you use your thumb to click anywhere in the bottom half of the trackpad, it clicks just like a button would. The trackpad also knows when you are holding onto something, like a Window or a folder. **** New MacBook Adds Backlight Display, Nvidia Graphics by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld Calling the MacBook an "amazing product," Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the latest generation consumer notebooks at the company's headquarters on Tuesday. Jobs said that people wanted a MacBook with a metal enclosure, faster graphics, and LED backlit displays, and Apple delivered on all of those counts. One of the most touted new features of the updated MacBook line is the glass multi-touch trackpad, which supports gestures of anywhere between one and four fingers. The trackpad also eschews a separate trackpad button: instead, the whole trackpad acts as a physical button that you can click. **** Apple Unveils New MacBook Pro by Jim Dalrymle, Macworld The new MacBook Pro will feature wo graphic chipsets, the Nvidia GeForce 9400M embedded on the motherboard and the Nvidia GeForce 9600M as a discret part. The graphics deliver 32 parallel graphics cores and 125 gigaflops of graphics performance, Jobs said tath using the 9400M you get five hours of battery life and four hours with the 9600M. **** Apple Unveils New 24-Inch LED Cinema Display by Philip Michaels, Macworld The 24-inch LED Cinema Display offers 1,920-by-1,200-pixel resolution, along with a built-in iSight camera and microphone, stereo speakers, and three-port USB 2.0 hub. **** MacBook Air Gets Faster Graphics, More Storage by Peter Cohen, Macworld The MacBook Air will feature more storage capacity and faster graphics, Apple announced Tuesday during a press event at its headquarters. The revamped versions of the smallest and thinnest laptop in Apple's portable product line will ship in early November at the same $1,799 and $2,499 prices as the current systems. **** Apple's Cook Details Mac Momentum by Peter Cohen, Macworld Apple chief operating Officer Tim Cook said that Apple's most recently reported quarter showed sales of 2.5 million Mac systems — a new company record. "If you look at the history, what you would see that the Mac has outgrown the market for 14 of the last 15 quarters. That's almost four years. That's phenomenal." **** Microsoft Turns Up Anti-Apple Dial, Ballmer Slams Mac Office by David Chartier, Ars Technica Microsoft primarily beats the "PC are cheaper and have more features!" dead horse that Apple customers clearly don't care about. **** MacPractice 3.5 Designed For Leopard by Peter Cohen, Macworld The software features patient and insurance billing and reporting, eligibility verification, e-statements, scheuling, prescription tracking, insurance estimation and other features. **** GrandTotal Adds Recurring Invoices by Peter Cohen, Macworld **** Speed Download Adds AFP Integration by Peter Cohen, Macworld Speed DOwnload helps users with download tasks and can do auto-resuming downloads. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Years Lost To Drinking, And Fits And Starts Of Recovery by George Gene Gustines, New York Times If endign up in a station wagon with a pudgy, dwarflike hag doesn't make you want to quit drinking, what will? That is the kind of question, along with wondering how often a man can sink and rebound, that is raised by "The Alcoholic," an engaging graphic novel written by Jonathan Ames and illustrated by Dean Haspiel. **** As Checks Shrink, Restaurants Stretch Hours by Florence Fabricant, New York Times Restaurants that once served two distinct meals a day, lunch and dinner, are acting more like diners, opening early in the morning and keeping their kitchens busy late into the night, and serving in the traditonally slow times between meals. **** Hubris Inc. by John Homans, New York Magazine Oliver Stone's new film, /W./, is about a man many would sooner forget — which didn't stop him from making it. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Why Fined For Sleeping? by Lim Wui Liang, Straits Times It is a sad allegory of a society that has become obsessed with rules and image, at the expense of compassion and flexibility. **** Singapore's Banking System Not In Trouble, Assures Tharman by S Ramesh, Channel NewsAsia Singapore's banking system is not in trouble and the Monetary Authority of Singapore's response to the current financial crisis has been a measured one. Finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam also says there is no need to provide guarantees for local lenders. **** Singapore's Expatriates Relinquish Perks As Banks Pare Costs by Jason Gale, Bloomberg **** Li Jiawei Is Leaving - And There's Nothing The STTA And SSC Can Do About It by Red Sports The sweet euphoria of winning that Olympic silver medal in Beijing is starting to levae a bitter aftertaste in the mouth. The sense of national pride in that achievement is starting to deflate and the win is now increasingly looking like a hollow victory. **** SBS Transit And SMRT Buses Fined For Lapses In Service by Channel NewsAsia The Public Transport Counci has fined SBS Transit S$9,300 and SMRT Buses S$1,000 for lapses in service standards in the six months from December 2007 to May 2008. **** Singapore C.Bank May Guarantee Deposits - Report by Kevin Lim, Reuters The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) may guarantee all Singapore deposits to ensure local banks are not disadvantaged by similar moves in other countries, the Straits Times reported on Wednesday quoting banking sources. **** Yes, Your Number Should Be Private by Tammy Tan, ComfrotDelGro Corporation Limited, Today As the privacy of a passenger has been compromised, we are now relooking our booking system to ensure that such incidents do not recur. **** Food Prices Dropping by Lim Wei Chean and Jessica Lim, Straits Times A lone bright spot shines amid the gloom of a worsening economy: The prices of food commodities will soon fall. **** 'I Didn't Know It Was An Offence' by Lediati Tan, New Paper **** Sleep On Road Instead, The Fine Is Lower by S. Murali, New Paper Consider: Drivers who park along double yellow lines are hit with $70 fines. So perhaps Mr Kassim should have slept on the road instead. **** Protests Do Not Lead To Anarchy by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net Why must closed minds conjure images of pandemonium and anarchy when we talk about protests? From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Thu Oct 16 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 16 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 16, 2008 Message-ID: <20081016171501.95554.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** iTunes Welcomes HD TV From More Major Networks by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica **** How To Turn Your Mac Into A Wi-Fi Access Point by Mitch Wagner, InformationWeek **** Apple: New MacBooks, Same Old Prices by Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek Apple sees no reason to slash prices and sacrifice margins on its laptop computers when consumers are still willing to pay top dollar. **** What Apple Laptop Pricing Means To Windows OEMs by Joe Wilcox, eWeek Apple's pricing strategy is brilliant, if for no other reason than its riskiness. **** Humor And Leadership: Insights Into The Mind Of Michael Dell by Andrew J. Wylie, The Harbus Perhaps like the video of coach Bobby Knight's chair throwing episode, we see evidence of fact out of context. Mr Dell offered praise for Steve Jobs for the audience's benefit: "Apple has raised the bar in industrial design. THe elegant simplicity of thoughtful design." **** Apple - Bring Back The Lawyers by Seb Janacek, Silicon.com Apple is now allowing fan sites to post accurate product photos before the big Steve Jobs announcements. Where's the fun in that? **** Apple Posts Xsan 2.1.1 Updates by MacNN **** Luxpro Finally Sues Apple To Defend iPod Shuffle Clone by Aidan Malley, AppleInsider Living up to a promise it made in January 2007, Taiwanese electronics maker Luxpro has at last filed a lawsut against Apple claiming that the American company was plotting a multinational scheme when it sued Luxpro over its iPod shuffle doppelganger. **** Apple Executive Parade Not Prelude To Change by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com The practice of sharing the stage is nothing unusual, no matter what color shirt Cook wears onstage. **** Microsoft Posts Office 2008, 2004 Updates by MacNN **** Listen To Tim Cook by John Gruber, Daring Fireball The "netbook" market is an entirely different game. Apple may well go there eventually, but it won't be for another year or two, and then when they do, it will drive the PC press nuts because Steve Jobs will announce it in such a way that makes it seem as though Apple invented the entire product category. **** User Reactions To Apple Product Updates Are Mixed by Lonnie Lazar, Cult Of Mac Do Apple's customers care how much the company cares? **** Analysts Accuse New MacBooks Of Excessive Pricing by MacNN **** Review: Bento 2 by William Porter, Macworld **** TextSoap 6 Released by Peter Cohen, Macworld TextSoap is a "text cleaning" utility that maintains formatting. **** Apple Gets Apple-y, Calls iPhone "Game Changer" In New Ad by David Chartier, Ars Technica The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Dark Times For Web Ads: Analysts Cut Forecasts by Stephen Shankland, CNET News.com MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Epic Win by Christopher Beam, Slate Goodbye, schadenfreude; hello, /FAIL/. **** Light Pollutoin: Our Vanishing Night by Verlyn Klinkenborg, photography by Jim Richardson, National Geographic Magazine In a very real sense, light pollution causes us to lose sight of our true place in the universe, to forget the scale of our being, which is best measured against the dimensions of a deep night with the Milky Way—the edge of our galaxy—arching overhead. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** First Maid Dorm To Open On Nov 1, But No Takers So Far by Ting Kheng Siong, Channel NewsAsia **** Singapore To Guarantee All Singdollar, Foreign Currency Deposits by Channel NewsAsia The Singapore government said it would guarantee all Singdollar and foreign currency deposits of individual and non-bank customers in licensed banks, finance companies and merchant banks. The guarantee takes immediate effect and will remain in place until 31 December 2010. **** Government Urged To Look Into Trafficking Of Filipino Women In Singapore by Kimberly Jane T. Tan, GMANews.TV A lawmaker has said the government should pay more attention to the increasing number of "sexually trafficked" Filipino women workers, most especially in Singapore. **** Where Singaporeans Get News by Straits Times Most Singaproeans turn to at least three media sources, primarly mainstream media like newspapers and TV, for their daily news and entertainment fix. /We have more than two sources of 'mainstream' news? News on Channel 5 (television) and news on ChannelNewsAsia.com (internet) and news on 938Live (radio) and news on Today (newspaper) should be considered one single source, not four./ **** Singapore GIC Says UBS Stake Will Be Slightly Diluted by Kevin Lim, Reuters The Government of Singapore Investment Corp said on Thursday its over 9 percent stake in UBS AG will be diluted by the Swiss government's move to invest 6 billion francs in the embattled lender. **** $35M Belt-Up Help by Christopher Tan, Straits Times The government will had out $35 million to help mini bus operators fit seat belts in their vehicles over the next five years. **** Same Offence, Different Gender, Different Treatment by Where Bears Roam Free How is it that concealing the name of the woman offender in Case 1 protects the underaged victim, but in Case 2, a male offender, naming him does not cause detrimental effect to the victim? **** Jurong East Swimming Complex by Temasek Poly At the entrance, even before going in the swimming complex. A row of them is already standing behind a glass panel. And looking insid ethe swimming complex so happily. So sick... **** It's All About Populism by A Poor Scholar **** Sing$ Falls To Near 1-Year Low by Straits Times The Singapore dollar has fallen to near a one-year low against the US dollar on concern that the global economy is headed for a recession, undermining growth in the island's economy, Bloomberg news reported. **** Singapore Denies Plans For SE Asia Crisis Fund by Koh Gui Qing, Reuters Singapore said it was not aware of a plan by Southeast Asian nations, backe dby Japan, China and South Korea, to set up a multibillion-dollar fund to buy toxic debt and help the region's banks hit by the financial crisis. **** Singapore To Cut Rent For The Development Of Art Museums by Artinfo **** Singaporeans And Malaysians Asia's Top Text-Message Senders by DPA **** Will Singapore Follow Hong Kong? by Blowin' In The Wind One can appreciate the delicate position Singapore's finance minister is in — and his prudence. **** Discover The New English by Nury Vittachi, The Daily Star Singaporeans go shopping with the sentence: "Everything also I want." **** Cabbie 'Stalked' Me by Julia Koh, Today Should taxi drivers be privy to customers' phone numbers? Or should the transport company's phone operators be the only point of contact between commuters and drivers? **** Living Together In Perfect Harmony? by Yolanda Chin, Today **** Why Electricity Price Hike Was Needed by Jenny Teo, Energy Market Authority, Straits Times The increase in the tariff this quarter was necessary because of the 38 per cent spike in the forward fuel oil price from US$83 to US$115 per barrel between April and July this year. **** NTU Won't Have Its Media Exploited by Er Meng Hwa, Nanyang Technological University, Straits Times Nanyang Technological University will not allow our media platforms to be exploited to provide publicity for uninvited people who enter our campus to draw attention to themselves. This is our right and responsibility as publisher. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Oct 17 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 17 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 17, 2008 Message-ID: <20081017171500.56306.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Examining Microsoft's "Apple Tax" Comparison Charts by Bryan Chaffin, Mac Observer **** Apple Releases Migration And DVD/CD Sharing Update by MacNN Apple has released a Migration DVD/CD Sharing Update that improves the performance of migrations performed over FireWire, Ethernet and wireless networks. **** Apple China Finds New Leader by Jonny Evans, Macworld UK **** FireWire's MacBook Absence - Inconvenience Or Fatal Flaw? by Peter Cohen, Macworld FireWire's absence is certainly disappointing and will surely be felt for a while by Mac users who had invested in peripherals that use the interface, but I suspect most people will make the transition, and will ultimately find that they're not missing much by making the switch. **** Review: Apple Keyboard And Wireless Keyboard by Dan Frakes, Macworld When it comes to compact, wireless models, there's little competition for Apple's Wireless Keyboard. It's among the smallest and lightest models on the market, yet it doesn't sacrifice full-sie keys and it provides a mostly standard key layout. **** Apple Vs. Psystar Case Takes A Detour by John Martellaro, Mac Observer Both parties have agreed to Alternative Dispute Resolution. The outcome could result in a negotiated settlement, the terms of which could also remain secret. **** Apple Claims "Neglect," AIms To Have Lawsuit Dismissed by iPhone Atlas **** Early Alarms Over New Mac Malware by Shaun Nichols, vnunet.com A new rouge security application for the Mac could be on the way, according to one industry executive. **** Steve Says: You Don't Need FireWire by Dan Pourhadi, MacUser **** MacBook And MacBook Pro Dual Review by Gizmodo The class boundary remains, but it's blurrier than ever. **** Traders Point Students Learn With High-Tech Tools by Lana Christian, IndyStar.com **** Apple's MacBook - The Case Of The New Machine by Dan Turner, Computerworld This new consutrction method is ingenious, useful and elegant — an example of why Apple remains Apple. **** Environmentalists Cheer On Apple For Getting Greener by Brian X. Chen, Wired Greenpeace, an environmental blog, commends Apple for cutting down on the amount of polyvinyl chloride (PVC) used inits notebooks and new cinema display. **** Apple Sells 200 Million TV Shows, But Is That A Big Deal? by Greg Sandoval, CNET News.com **** Are You Sure You Didn't Spill Anything In Your MacBook? by Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet.com Apple has taken their fraud protection up a notch in the new MacBooks by adding tiny Liquid Submersion Indicators throughout the notebook's chassis according to AppleInsider. **** AMEX Intros Slim Blu-Ray Burner For Macs, PCs by Electronista **** AirGrab Announces WiFi Radar 1.0 by Jonny Evans, Macworld UK **** Review: Spore by Chris Holt, Macworld For now, Spore is a comical, beautiful, and surprisingly fun journey that will likely satisfy casual gamers but wil disappoint fans hoping to see a Wright masterpiece. **** Apple 2008 Environmental Update by Steve Jobs, Apple For the past several years, Apple has made a concerted effort to be more transparent about the steps we are taking to protect the environment and make our business more sustainable. In this environmental update, I'd like to inform you of our recent progress and introduce you to a groundbreaking system of reporting that we believe is unmatched in our industry. **** MacBook Pro Does Not Shift GPUs Like You Shift Cars by David Chartier, Ars Technica The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Why To Start A Startup In A Bad Economy by Paul Graham It's hard to say whether advantages like lack of competition outweigh disadvantages like reluctant investors. But it doesn't matter much eitehr way. It's the people that matter. And for a given set of people working on a given technology, the time to act is always now. **** Programming Is Hard, Let's Go Shopping! by Jeff Atwood, Coding Horror Experienced developers learn what their core business functions are and write whatever software they deem necessary to perform those functions extraordinarily well. **** Rethinking Research In The Google Era by Meris Stansbury, eSchool News As the internet replaces library databases as students' primary research option, a new discussion is emerging in academic circles: is the vast amount of information at students' fingertips changing the way they gather and process information for the better—or for worse? MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** She Fine-Tuned The Forks Of The Richan Vulgars by Dinitia Smith, New York Times It is something of a surprise nearly 50 years after Emily Post's death to be reminded that there was a real person behind the name that has become synonymous with good manners. And it is to Laura Claridge's credit that she has written the first full biography of Post. **** The Things He Carried by Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic Airport security in America is a sham—"security theater" designed to make travelers feel better and catch stupid terrorists. Smart ones can get through security with fake boarding passes and all manner of prohibited items. **** Every Man A Derrida by Tim Cavanaugh, Reason Magazine Are the great American habits of directness, foursquare honesty, and a hearty handshake being undermined by fancy-pants French critical theory? You betcha! SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Rights Group Criticizes Singapore Defamation Suits by Associated Press An international rights group called Friday on Singapore to stop using defamation lawsuits to stifle criticism and bankrupt opposition politicians. The critcism by Human Rights Watch came in response to the Hgh Court's decision this week to order Chee Soon Juan and his opposition Singapore Democratic Party to pay US$416,000 to prime minister Lee Hsien Loong and his father, Lee Kuan Yew, in damages stemming from a 2006 defamation case. **** Singaporeans Will Visit Malaysia Despite Economic Hard Times by Zakaria Abdul Wahab, Bernama Singaporeans will continue to flock to Malaysia for shopping and holiday although the worlds economy is currently facing hard times and the city-state is experiencing a technical recession. "The numbers from Singapore remain strong this year," said Tourism Malaysia director for Singapore, Rafidah Idris. **** Singapore Probes Misconduct In Lehman Bond Sales by Alex Kennedy, Associated Press Singapore's central bank said Friday it is investigating allegation sof misconduct by commercial bank officials in connection with the sale of about 640 million Singapore dollars of bonds linked to bankrupt U.S. brokerage Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. **** Crisis Tops Parliament Agenda by Zakir Hussain, Straits Times As the global financial upheaval hits Singapore shores, the issue of jobs, investments and deposits in financial institutions is set to dominate Parliament when it sits on Monday. See Also: Order Paper For The Parliament Sitting On 20 October 2008 , by Singapore Government. (Note: Link goes to Microsoft Word document.) **** SingTel Cuts iPhone Price Plans by Straits Times Singapore Telecommunications, South-east Asia's largest phone company, slashed some subscription plans for Apple's iPhone by half to lure users before rivals start offering the phone, Bloomberg news reported on Friday. **** 'Safe Haven' Image Sparks Singapore, Switzerland: Chart Of Day by Lee J. Miller, Bloomberg >From Zurich to Singapore, the "safe haven" status of wealth-management centers is being challenged by a global credit crunch, prompting on the same day a $59.2 billion bailout for UBS AG and a guarantee of deposits at banks licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore. **** SMRT To Add 112 Train Trips On Weekdays by Greta Georges, Channel NewsAsia **** LTA Launches Transport Portal And Real-Time SMS by Greta Georges, Channel NewsAsia The Land Transport Authoity (LTA) has kicked off two new initiatives - a transport portal and a message service. See Also: Added Convenience For Public Transport Users - Public Transport Portal And Real-Time SMS Bus Arrival Information , by Land Transport Authority, Singapore Government. **** Stop Putting Promises Into Other People's Mouth by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu Did ComfortDelgro promise that the taxi fuel surcharge will be dropped when "the price of fuel falls below $109", as alleged by this blogger ? No. What ComfortDelgro promised was this instead: "The surcharge... is a temporary measure to offset the spiralling increases in diesel costs. It will be removed when diesel prices fall back to $1.19 per litre which was the market price on 17 December 2007." (Note: Previous link goes to PDF document.) And, as Channel NewsAsia reported today, the price of diesel fuel at Shell, SPC, ExxonMobil and Caltex is $1.603 per litre, still higher than that $1.19 figure promised. To get the facts of something so easily google-able wrong will significantly weakens whatever arguments that follow in the post.

Permanent Link to This Post **** A Singapore Artist's Spilled Milk by Sonia Kolesnikov-Jessop, International Herald Tribune **** Expat Life In Singapore: Moonlight Picnic by Rosie Milne, Telegraph The mooncakes we took to the picnic were "Western mooncakes", as the Beloved Son put it. A friend gave them to us, and she'd got them from Raffles Hotel, no less. The main ingredient was Champagne truffle. Not Hmm, this time, but yum! **** It's Safer To Worry by Sujesh Pavithran, The Star **** Lee Hsien Loong V Singapore Democratic Party And Others And Another Suit by Singapore High Court **** Pssst, Want Singapore Citizenship? It's DIsposable. by Groundnotes If we value government scholarships so highly, if we store so much symbolic value in something an 18 year old signs, then we must really be hopping mad over news that our table tennis China-imports Li Jiawei and Feng Tianwei may be dumping their Singapore passports to return to China right? Balls. **** Singapore And Israel by Nafka Mina Compare Singapore to other 'Chinese" countries in Asia and note the difference in wealth, law and order, cleanliness, manners, etc. Certain population need taming, for want of a better term. **** Singapore U-Turn, Guarantees All Bank Deposits by Blowin' In The Wind The only possible complaint: Why so slow, Singapore? **** In Singapore, An Uphill Battle For Justice ANd Basic Rights by Robert Amsterdam **** Use Of Police Resources For Welfare Purposes - Who Is Paying? by Selene Cheng, The Online Citizen /If the vehicles are idling and not being used for operations, why can't they be used for other purposes? Surely, it will save money in the long run (if all the money used are properly accounted for), and isn't that what we as taxpayers want?/ **** Singapore Men Put Love On Hold by Reuters "No money no honey" seems to be ringing true for Singapore's bridal agencies, which are seeing slowing business as the financial crisis and a looming recession hit love in the country. **** More Are Dining At Home by Jessica Lim, Tessa Wong and Lim Wei Chean, Straits Times The belt-tightening comes amid new economic data that shows Singapore has entered a technical recession, its first in six years. **** Now That It's Over, What About Them? by Tan Mien Wee, Straits Times I am writing to ask if the authorities will compensate retailers in the Suntec City Mall area, for the severe disruptions leading to drastic sales shortfalls during last month's Formula One event. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sat Oct 18 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 18 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 18, 2008 Message-ID: <20081018171500.24788.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** MacBook Pro: First Impressions by Creativityist The trackpad is nice. I was a skeptic of the whole thing being a button, but man, they got it just right. **** OS X, The First Month by Warpedvisions.org I was more productive in Mac land within the first two weeks. **** Apple's New MacBooks: What They Got Right And What Else We Want by Nick Mediati, PC World In a world of $800 laptops, the aluminum-clad MacBook may seem a little expensive, but it's a winner. **** Apple Knows Best? Don't You Believe It! by Joe Brockmeier, ZDNet.com I find Apple's "we know how you should use your computer" attitude really off-putting — and one of the reasons I just can't see switching to Mac OS X. **** The Truth About The Apple Tax by Gizmodo The real takeaway abou the Apple Tax is that it's regressive—that is, lower-priced models get hit harder. **** New Version Of Database App Bento Adds Common Sense Features by David Zeiler, Baltimore Sun **** Analysis: MacBook UK Pricing by Mark Hattersley, Macworld UK **** Review: FlatOut 2 by Peter Cohen, Macworld Its sheer bloodthirsty combat, high-speed racing and tons of mini-games give you a lot to see and do. **** MacBook Benchmarks by James Galbraith, Macworld You can thank that Nvidia chip for closing the performance gap between the new MacBooks and the MacBook Pro. **** DisplayPort: What You Need To Know by Peter Cohen, Macworld A lot of what makes DisplayPort better than DVI is found in the technological nitty-gritty. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Why I Blog by Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic As blogging evolves as a literary form, it is generating a new and quintessentially postmodern idiom that's enabling writers to express themselves in ways that have never been seen or understood before. **** Social Organizer by Jennifer Nycz-Conner, Washington Business Journal Facebook and Twitter have added a new layer of excitement to your social life, and maybe even your career. But an activ online social life maybe clogging your schedule and your computer. Time to get uncluttered. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** What's Really Wrong With The Price Of Oil by Roger Lowenstein, New York Times In a sense, the question is whether we want to return to an era of plentiful oil and low prices — assuming it is possible — or to accept that political, geological and possibly environmental limitations will force us to diversify. **** Capitalism At Bay by The Economist What went wrong and, rather more importantly for the future, what did not. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Interview With Today Paper by Tan Kin Lian A few people have warned me to "be careful". People are so scared to do the right thing in Singapore. They are only willing to do what the government approves for them to do. It is such a sad state of affairs. I hope that more people can come forward and be courageous. **** Singapore Exports Fall Again by Robin Chan, Straits Times Singapore's exports have continued a dismal run by declining for a fifth straight month in September - although the slide was not as steep as expected. **** The MAS - A Desperate Headless Chicken by Andrew Loh, The Online Citizen Thus far, the MAS looks more like a headless chicken desperately dashing around than an authority providing certainty in leadership. **** Singapore And Freedom Of The Press by Robert Amsterdam **** Rainbow At The End Of The Crisis by Seah Chiang Nee, The Star While London and New York have lost some of their financial influence, Singapore, with its large reserves and strict banking governance, could benefit from the chaos. **** Government Worked With All Parties On F1 by Lim Bee Khim, Ministry of Trade and Industry, Straits Times We formed a multi-agency committee led by the Singapore Tourism Board to engage stakeholders in the vicinity of the circuit park. /But, obviously, this didn't work, did it?/ **** Singapore Won't Follow HK by Francis Chan, Straits Times The Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) has decided against following Hong Kong's lead in requiring banks to buy back Lehman Brothers-linked Minibonds at market price from investors. **** Government Replies To Rights Group by Straits Times The government on Friday gave its position on criticisms levelled against government leaders by opposition politicians, in response to a statement by a New York-based advocacy group, Human Rights Watch (HRW). In reply, the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Arts' spokesperson noted that in Singapore, opposition politicians have the right to criticise the government and government leaders. But, Mr K Bhavani added: "That does not entitle them to tell lies or defame." **** Singaporeans Don't Want To Retire by Theresa Tan and Ang Yiying, Straits Times Almost half of baby boomers in a new study said they do not want to retire and instead would rather work 'for as long as they can'. The Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports study also found that not all want to work because they need money. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sun Oct 19 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 19 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 19, 2008 Message-ID: <20081019171500.25877.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Finally, An Apple Notebook Built With Green Credentials In Mind by Heather Clancy, ZDNet.com **** Why This Storm May Stay Away From Apple by Randall Stross, New York Times Premium prices for premium products — surely this is a formula most unsuited for frugal times. But the analysts with whom I spoke aren't particularly concerned; all, it seems, list Apple as a buy. **** On The Way Out: FireWire And Mate Screens? by Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Apple has been unafraid to break with the past before, and unless sales of the new MacBook and MacBook Pro models were to drop precipitously, I fear that those of us who are unhappy will just have to live with the changes. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Twitter: We'll Announce Our Secret Business Model Early Next Year by Henry Blodget, Silicon Alley Insider Why is Twitter different than the 9,000 other Web 2.0 companies that are intending to figure out a revenue model eventually? Because people are /obsessed with it/. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Woman In The Moon by Carol Ann Duffy SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Sembawang Town Council To Make All Lifts In The Town CCTV-Ready by Channel NewsAsia By March next year, 75 per cent of the total number of lifts will have cameras installed to monitor anti-social behaviour such as urinating and vandalism. **** Sudden Recession? by StaticVariable **** Taming The Southern Ridges... (Part 1) by Singapore Short Stories **** Chips Down For Asia Gaming by AFP The chips are down for Asia's gaming sector, which high rollers and other visitors expected to stay home as the world financial crisis takes it toll. But analysts say the squeeze is likely to be short-term, and Asia's gaming sector should weather the financial turmoil better than Las Vegas. **** Singaporeans Find Their Voice In Financial Crisis by AFP In a country where protests are traditionally the domain of a tiny political opposition and a vocal group of human rights activists, the rally on October 11 by disgruntled financial investors was a rarity. **** Of Singapore, And What It's Good For by Tyler Brule, Financial Times Rather than focusing on building a hothouse for creative minds, Singapore should bring in all the best financial whizz kids an dplay to its great national strength - service. **** Planned Succession Makes Leadership Transitions In Singapore Stable, Says Chok Tong by Zakaria Abdul Wahab, Bernama The culture of planned succession of prime ministers and ministers on the basis of merit has made political transitions in Singapore stable, orderly and predictable, senior minister Goh Chok Tong said Saturday. **** PAP Makes No Apologies For Defamation Suits, Says Vivian Balakrishnan by Terence Lee, The Online Citizen Dr Balakrishnan said the government takes attacks on accuracy and integrity very seriously, because "establishing a high trust enivornment" is an advantage that gives Singapore an edge in a competitive global economy. He said: "We don't mind political openness, but we don't want too much of the excitement. To the outsider, when they look at Singapore, they know that politics here is serious, it's accurate, it's real and accountable. It's not a situation you get in other countries. We're an outlier, but we are outlying because we want to keep our politics honest." **** Government Looking At Helping Singaporeans Overcome Economic Hardship by Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia Senior minister Goh Chok Tong said the government is looking at how it can help Singaporeans overcome temporary economic hardship next year. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Mon Oct 20 13:15:02 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 20 Oct 2008 17:15:02 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 20, 2008 Message-ID: <20081020171502.8433.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Finder Rewrite For Apple's Snow Leopard by Karen Haslam, Macworld UK A hint that Apple is rewriting the Carbon-based Finder and other Apple-authored applications in Cocoa, seems to suggest that the company is doing its own housekeeping behind the scenes with the launch of Snow Leopard. **** Apple Ads About Microsoft Ads About Apple Ads About Microsoft by Harry McCracken, Technologizer I kinda wonder whether these venture too far into the realm of insider baseball. **** Is The New MacBook Expensive? by Harry McCracken, Technologizer The MacBook is close in price to the laptops I looked at which it resembles most closely, all of which target what I think of as the low end of the high end of the notebook market; if there's a Mac Tax here, it's not worth worrying about. **** PDFClerk Pro 3.4 Adds Watermark Support by MacNN **** New MacBook Air's Newness Lies Within by Brooke Crothers, CNET News.com The latest MacBook Air masks a lot of new electronics under an old skin. **** The Psystar Myth - Not As Cheap As Advertised by Edible Apple So all in all, an iMac and equivalent Psystar system are essentially the same. **** Computing In The Cloud, With Suspenders by Marci Alboher, New York Times **** New 'Get A Mac' Ads Hit The Jugular by Insanely Great Mac Microsoft recently began responding to Apple's Get a Mac ads and now the mothership has returned that volley. Perhaps, "returned fire" is a better way of putting. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Wikipedia And The Meaning Of Truth by Simpson L. Garfinkel, MIT Technology Review Why the online encyclopedia's epistemology should worry those who care about traditional notions of accuracy. **** The Video Web by Neil Savage, MIT Technology Review Three startups let users layer new content onto online video. **** How Microsoft Will Compete With 'Free' by Jean-Louis Gassee, CNET News.com Microsoft's future business model will borrow from Apple and Google, it will have two components: proprietary devices and "universal" Cloud services. And like its models, it will attempt to extract extra profits by nicely tying both components together. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Free To Be His Own Buckley by Sheryl Gay Stolberg, New York Times Perhaps only Christopher Buckley, the novelist, political satirist and son of the conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., would think to quote the queen of England in describing his increasingly complicated life. **** Learning To Make An Oud In Nazareth by Ruth Padel, New Yorker **** The Crossing by Gerald Stern, New Yorker **** On Reality TV, Even 'Survivor' Looks Mortal by Brian Stelter, New York Times The series — once renowned for rejuvenating CBS and drawing young viewers to the network — is showing its age. So, too, is the competition-based reality format that has dominated television for nearly a decade. **** How Do We Show Our Love For New York? We Say It With Monsters by Sam Roberts, New York Times >From the earliest urban legends to the latest computer games, Americans have embraced fantasies of the city's destruction as "a reaffirmation of New York's greatness," said Max Page, a professor of history and architecture and the author of a new book called "The City's End: Two Centuries of Fantasies, Fears and Premonitions of New York's Destruction." SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Singaporeans Come First by Straits Times Curbing the number of foreign talents who are prepared to immigrate here would be counter-productive to Singapore's long-term interests, said home affairs minister Wong Kan Seng on Monday. See Also: Written Answer To Parliamentary Question that in view of the need for a rooted local populace in Singapore, whether the future immigration policies will be tightened since our recent population statistics reveal that citizens comprise only 65% of the local population , by Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore Government. **** GIC, Temasek To Invest More by Straits Times Government of Singapore Investment Corp and Temasek Holdings, the nation's investment companies, can take advantage of financial turmoil to add assets instead of being forced into 'panic' sales, said senior minister of state for finance, Mrs Lim Hwee Hua on Monday. **** Backing Of Government's Reserves More Than Sufficient To Guarantee Deposits by Channel NewsAsia Trade and industry minister Lim Hng Kiang has said about S$700 billion is deposited by individuals and non-bank customers in banks, finance companies and merchant banks here. **** "Good Number Of Singaporeans" Affected By US Institutional Meltdown, Says Minister by Channel NewsAsia **** Singaporeans Must Play Their Part To Address Issue Of Housing Foreign Workers by Camie De-Souza, Channel NewsAsia National development minister Mah Bow Tan has said while worker dormitories are located away from residential areas as far as possible, it is a challenge to house an increasing foreign worker population in land-scarce Singapore. **** New ERP Gantry At Eunos Link; Two Gantries Up Charges by 938Live It will cost eastbound traffic more to pass throught he ERP gantries at Marina South and on the slip road from Ophir Road during evening peak hours from next month. **** Singapore Economy To Be Weak For Several Quarters - Government by Koh Gui Qing and Kevin Lim, Reuters Singapore's economy, which fell into a recession in the third quarter, will see growth remaining weak for "several quarters" through inflationary pressures will take time to ease, the country's trade minister said on Monday. Lim Hng Kiang also said while Singapore's inflation, which hit a 26-year-high of 7.5 percent in April, May and June, will continue to ease, it will take time for the decline in prices to be reflected in the consumer price index. **** Multi-Racial, Perhaps Not. by COM 101 I thought Singapore was a multi-racial country that took pride in accepting different cultures and embracing them. This is definitely not a very loving act that these Serangoon Gardens residents have done to them. **** Suing For Defamatory Remarks by Tan Kin Lian Is this the kind of society that our minister is so proud about? A society where people are fearful to spek up, in case they make a slip and get be sued till bankrupt? **** The Minibonds Issue - Difference Between HK And SIngapore by Rachel Chung, Xtralicious **** Killiney Kopitiam: A Tale About An Old Hainanese Gentleman by ieatishootipost Great kopi and kaya toast and a legacy of an old Hainanese man preserved for future generations to enjoy. **** Singapore: Great Service, Poor Building Codes by Not That Sane Regulations that we take for granted in the United States, like building codes, are not part of the milieu here. **** The Singapore Government Is Not Corrupt by Ian On The Red Dot **** Floating Dormitories? by Imelda Saad, Today **** Yes To Elites But No To Elitism by Pearl Lee, The Online Citizen From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Tue Oct 21 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 21 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 21, 2008 Message-ID: <20081021171501.11716.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Aperture 2.1.2 Fixes Print Output by MacNN **** New Laptop Tempting, But Not Enough by Dwight Silverman, Houston Chronicle The new design is smart and the new features are slick, but it's not quite enough for me to cast off my black MacBook. **** Display Is A Strength Of New MacBook Pro by Bob LeVitus, Houston Chronicle The display is to die for, and I may even stop hating trackpads. **** Camcorders And USB: Is Steve Jobs Right? by Tm Reestman, The Apple Blog The results? I believe all but one of these models allows USB 2.0 for video. **** Traveling With My iPhone (And MacBook Pro) In Japan by Ted Landau, Mac Observer **** Apple iPhone Ad: "Sequence Shortened" by Jason Fried, 37signals Apple is now adding some fine print to the bottom of some of their ads that says "Sequence shortened". **** Apple's New MacBook Is Mm Mm Good by Thomas Ricker, Engadget **** Why You Need More Than One iPhoto, iTunes Library by Alexis Kayhill, Mac 360 As much as we ask of our Macs these days is it any wonder that we need even more utilities to help us organize our organization tools? **** Has Apple Successfully Lured Microsoft Into An Ad War? by Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek One has to wonder whether Microsoft has played into Apple's hands on this one. It took the risk of launching a campaign that, after years of staying mum about hte Mac's startling growth in recent years, essentially called out Apple. But it did so at a time when Redmond didn't have any great news to announce. **** AppLoop Cretes iPhone Apps From Blogs With RSS by MacNN AppLoop has launched App Generator, a service for blog publishers that will create an iPhone app from any RSS feed. **** Digging Into New MacBook's Support Of GPU-Accelerated H.264 by David Chartier, Ars Technica All this leads to the theory that the new MacBooks are sporting a custom version of Mac OS X that finally harnesses GPU-acceleration for H.264 decoding. **** Is Price No Object To The Typical Apple Customer? by John Sheesley, TechRepublic Why do Apple customers pay a higher price for Macs? Is price no object or at least not that big of a deal to a typical Mac user? **** Review: Apple Part 1I: MacBook (13-Inch, Aluminum) by Wallace Wang, Electronista **** Andrew Zuckerman: The Wisdom Project by Bija Gutoff, Apple Final Cut Studio was central to Zuckerman's workflow from that first treatment to, well, the final cut. **** Ars Reviews The 2008 MacBook Pro, Part I: Aluminum And Glass by Clint Ecker and Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica **** Searching For The Perfect Mac E-Mail Client by Erica Sadun, Ars Technica **** If It Ain't Broke, Don't Upgrade It by Dan Moren, Macworld Besides contributing to more than 40 books as author, artist, or both, Bob Staake's also done illustrations for clients as diverse as /The New York Times/ and Anheuser Busch. And he's done it all with a piece of software that's almost 15 years old. **** MacSpeech Dictate Offers New Phrase Training by Peter Cohen, Macworld MacSpeech on Monday announced the release of Dictate 1.2, an update to their speech recognition software for Mac OS X. New to the 1.2 release is the ability for you to dictate any specific word, by spelling it letter-by-letter using a new Spelling mode. **** Extensis Ships Suitcase Fusion 2 by Peter Cohen, Macworld Extensis on Monday announced that it is shipping Suitcase Fusion 2, a new version of its single-user font management software. Changes in Suitcase Fusion 2 include a redesigned user interface and a dramatically changes code base that now uses SQLite database technology. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Untangling Web Information by Erica Naone, MIT Technology Review The Semantic Web organizer Twine offers bookmarking with built-in AI. **** Microsoft Gets Patent For Real-Time F-bomb Bleeping by Jonathan M. Gitlin, Ars Technica MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Reading Faulkner At 17, You Forsee Your Reckoning by Chaterine Pierce, Slate **** Financial Crisis: We Should Turn To Charles Dickens In Hard Times, Not Just Little Dorrit by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst, Telegraph The centre around which the Victorian age revolved and Dickens's combination of ambition and anxiety make him unmistakably our contemporary. And not only can we find parallels in his novels with the current crisis, we can also learn from them how to survive and triumph over it. **** The Thing: Magazine Or A Work Of Art? by Mindy Farabee, Los Angeles Times The Thing is not your garden-variety periodical. Putting a spin on the idea of text messaging, the Thing is by turns a window shade, a baseball cap, a set of coasters and a hunk of rubber. That last issue puts the lie to those glossy fall fashion magazines that could double as doorstops. It /is/ a doorstop. **** The Terror And Attraction Of Science, Put To Song by Dennis Overbye, New York Times Is it the hrror or the beauty that makes science cool? **** The Carnivore's Dilemma by Michael Shae, New York Times Such a litany of negatives may be presumed to create a sense of unease, if not a downright bad conscience, among those who take pleasure, guilty or not, in eating beef. Both Betty Fussell's "Raising Steaks" and Andrew Rimas and Evan D. G. Fraser's "Beef" hold fast to th ecause, but both are shadowed by an anxiety that an ancient pleasure may come to be shunned out of fear and disapproval — an anxiety that causes them to rise at times to distinctly overheated defense. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Recent 21% Increase In Electricity Tariffs Not Arbitrary by Wong Siew Ying, Channel NewsAsia Senior minister of state for trade and industry, S Iswaran, said the formula had kept tariffs lower than if the country had pegged tariffs to the daily oil price or spot price instead. **** The Privileges Of Expat Children by Singapore Kids Places **** Malaysia Suggests Curb On Ships In Key Waterway by Associated Press Malaysia on Tuesday proposed limiting the number of vessels that can enter one of the world's busiest shipping lanes amid worries that rising congestion could spark accidents. **** Has Our Prime Minister Gone Missing Again (Part Two)? by Andrew Loh, The Online Citizen Eminently qualified, so why so silent? **** Overview Of The Crisis by Heng-Cheong Leong, MyAppleMenu For a good overview of the current financial crisis — no, it's not all due to greed — do take a listen to this episode of "This American Life."

Permanent Link to This Post **** The TBT 18 Trial Is A Rape Of The Constitution Of Singapore by Jacob's Weblog These 18 individuals were only exercising their constitutional rights. **** China Sows Seeds Of Fear In Singapore by John Burton, Financial Times A suspension in share trading of two Singapore-listed Chinese companies due to debt servicing problems has undermined investor confidence in the China-related sector that has been a driving force behind the Singapore Exchange's recent growth. **** Compensation Reduces Barrier by Straits Times Reimbursement to kidney donors will help protect donor welfare and reduce thebarriers against kidney donation, said health minister Khaw Boon Wan. He said the health ministry and National Kidney Foundation are working out the details. **** Loss Of Hard Earned Savings by Tan Kin Lian, The Online Citizen I hope that appropriate action be taken to restore the confidence of the people in the fairness of the system in Singapore and to restore the reputation of Singapore as a financial hub that the Singaporeans and foreigners can trust to leave their money here safely. **** Singaporeans - Stop Referring To Foreign Workers As Talents by This Lush Garden Within This phrase only serves to demoralize Singaporeans and over-qualify foreign workers. **** Why Leave Pools Vacant? by David Kwok Ng Kan, Today Besides Yan Kit swimming pool, there are other public pools which have also been left vacant for years. **** Start Looking For A Job by Robin Chan, Straits Times Houswives and retirees should roll up their sleeves and prepare to rejoint he workforce to help their families cope with what may be a prolonged recession. That spark piece of advice came from Prof Tan Khee Giap, associate professor and co-director of the Asia Research Centre at Nanyang Technological University, yesterday. **** Vehicle Growth Rate Will Be Reduced: LTA by Geoffrey Lim, Land Transport Authority, Straits Times The roads are crowded not because the COE system is not functioning as intended, but because at 3 per cent per annum, vehicle growth significantly outstrips road growth at 0.5 per cent, thus making it untenable to continue at this rate. **** Students Start Online Paper by Amelia Tan, Straits Times Three undergraduates have started a news website as an alternative to their campus newspaper which recently saw a report on a political opposition figure's visit yanked from its pages by the university administration. **** Low: Be More Proactive MAS! by Diary Of A Singaporean Mind See Also: Be More 'Proactive', MAS , by Francis Chan, Straits Times. **** Government Expenditure To Increase By 3% Of GDP In Five Years' Time by Ng Baoying, Channel NewsAsia Finance minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam told Parliament on Monday that the government wants to increase the amount of investment returns from the country's reserves that can be used for spending. As Singapore's society ages, there will be greater demand for healthcare and other sectors. /Do we still need a huge defence budget?/ From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Wed Oct 22 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 22 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 22, 2008 Message-ID: <20081022171500.18190.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Adobe Photoshop CS4 And CS4 Extended by Lesa Snider King, Macworld All of the changes in Photoshop CS4 and Photoshop Extended CS4 add up to a friendlier, more accessible interface, with increasingly helpful tools that are much easier to find and use than before. **** Review: Aluminum MacBook Core 2 Duo/2GHz And 2.4GHz by Jonathan Seff, Macworld The latest MacBooks are a big improvement over the previous models—as long as you can live without a FireWire port. **** QuickLicense 3.0 Protects Developer's Applications by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld **** Apple Store Mac Mini Shpments To Retailers, Says To Expect No More by Gizmodo **** What's Apple's Netbook Strategy? The iPhone by Mark Hachman, PC Magazine **** Why The iPhone Is Now Apple's Most Important Product by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com The iPhone isn't just the third leg of Apple's business that Jobs promised back it would become back in Janaury 2007, when he introduced the iPhone and changed the name of the company from Apple Computer to Apple Inc. It's now the single largest contributor to Apple's bottom line. **** Apple's Next Act: Changing PC Buying Habits by Jon Fortt, Fortune Mainstream Mac users will get the benefit of improved visual performance without having to pony up for a seprate chip. It's an acknowledgment that these chips can lead to a better experience for everyone, not just gamers and video geeks. **** Twenty-Four Hours With The New Apple MacBook by Seth Weintraub, Computerworld **** Ars Looks At The Joy (And Pain) Of Developing iPhone Games by Ben Kuchera, Ars Technica Creating games has never been easier, but that doesn't mean it's a cakewalk, especially when developing for a new platform like the iPhone. **** How Apple Is Gaining Ground In The Enterprise by Don Reisinger, CNET News.com There's no telling how much market share Apple can capture in the enterprise over the next decade. But one thing is certain: by creating products that college-aged students want and evangelizing them in the ways of the Mac, Apple is positioning itself to be extremely successful in the business world over the next few years. **** Apple Hates Microsoft by Rick Aristotle Munarriz, Motley Fool **** New MacBook Pros Look Worse And Worse by Andrew Smith, The Dallas Morning News The new MacBook Pro looks pretty cool, but when you really consider what makes a great notebook computer, the new MBP is almost a worse product than its predecessor. **** Jobs: "We Sold More Phones Than RIM" by John Paczkowski, Wall Street Journal "Apple outsold RIM last quarter and this is a milestone for us," said Steve Jobs. **** Apple's Jobs: 'There Are Some Customers We Choose Not To Serve' by Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews Steve Jobs believes that Apple products typically sell to Apple customers, and stated so explicitly. They may choose not to purchase Apple products in the coming months, but that choice, he said, will be a /postponement/ of a purchasing and lyalty decision that customers have already made. **** Battery Tests: The New MacBook And MacBook Pro by Chris Holt, Macworld New Mac laptops have battery life shorter than their predecssors. **** How To Compete In A Downturn? Check Out Apple's Quarterly Earnings by Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek Here we've got a company that is earning every bit of its success, with technical innovation, hard-headed business pragmatism, and extremely hard work. It's found a way to prosper in a world despite the pressures of commoditation and globalization. It's refused any easy ways out. Apple is focused squarely on its day job. **** Review: Apple's New 'Unibody' MacBook Pro Has Both Beauty And Brains by Ken Mingis, Computerworld Carved from a single block of aluminum, it's a solid update in more ways than one. **** App Store To Top 200 Million Downloads Wednesday by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld "The 200 millionth app! We've never seen anything like this in our careers," said Apple CEO Steve Jobs. **** Apple Profit Soars, But Outlook 'Challenging' by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com **** Apple Reports $1.14 Billion Profit For Q4 2008 by Arnold Kim, MacRumors.com **** Review: 30 Days With BBEdit 9 by Craig Grannell, Cult Of Mac **** Apple Officially Surpasses 10 Million iPhones Sold In 2008 by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica Apple announced today during its quarterly conference call that it has already surpassed its goal of 10 million iPhone sales in the calendar year of 2008. The 6.9 milion iPhones sold during Apple's fourth fiscal quarter added up to more iPhones than sales during the entire lifetime of the original iPhone (6.1 million). **** Mail Act-On 2.0.1 by Dan Frakes, Macworld If you're a power user of Mail, or someone who just prefers pressing a few keys to mousing all over the screen, Mail Act-On 2 is a must-have. **** Five Reasons To Try Adobe Photoshop Lightroom by Dave Johnson, PC World **** Benchmarks: The New MacBook And Games by Roman Loyola, Macworld Finally, an affordable Mac laptop that's capable of playing graphically demanding games. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Copyright And Politics Don't Mix by Lawrence Lessig, New York Times **** Google Frees Android's Source Code by David Needle, Internet News MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Ghostwalk by Kathleen Hellen, The Cortland Review **** Dracula's Housecat by Anna George Meek, Threepenny Review **** Some Heavy Reading, Recipes Included by Julia Moskin, New York Times Once, all it took to cook like a chef was the nerve to push a live crayfish through a sieve. Now that the fall publishing season has delivered several hundred pounds of recipes from these international stars of molecular gastronomy, home cooks may want to prepare the kitchen with syringes, soy lecithin and a big bag of hero worship. **** Wary Tourists Toss Aside A Chance To Taste History by Marc Lacey, New York Times There is one eatery with a particularly distinguished history that is relevant to the question of whether one should consume salads in Mexico. Called Caesar's Restaurant, it sits int he seediest of spots, along Tijuana's Avenida Revolucion, and specializes in sald — Caesar Salad, to be exact, which it says was invented in its kitchen in 1924. **** Is Theer A Poetry In Architecture? by Jonathan Glancey, The Guardian Structure, rhythm, balance... the two art forms are very similar. **** The Joy Of Sharing Your Favorite Obscure Books by Billy Mills, The Guardian Open up and share; you're going to enjoy it. **** Freedom's Curse by Steven Pinker, The Atlantic Why Washington's crusade against swearing on the airwaves is f*cked up. **** The Hyped Panic Over 'War Of The Worlds' by Michael J. Socolow, Chronicle Of Higher Education That is the ultimate irony behind "The War of the Worlds." The discovery that the media are not all-powerful, that they cannot dominate our political consciousness or even our consumer behavior as much as we suppose, was an important one. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Sing$ Falls To Year-Low by Straits Times **** Be Cool, Funky: SM Goh by Straits Times Sngapore must aim to be a 'cool and funky' place - the kind of city the creative and entrepreneurial types would like to work and live in, said senior minister Goh Chok Tong on Tuesday. **** MOE To Set Clearer Rules To Curb False, Misleading Ads By Private Schools by Channel NewsAsia **** Four Frightening Things About Studying In Singapore by Sina **** MP Chan Soo Sen's Uni Presence Sends Wrong Signal by Choo Zheng Xi, The Online Citizen **** Press Statement From Low Thia Khiang, MP For Hougang by The Workers' Party See Also: Low Thia Khiang Urges Affected Investors Not TO File Class Action Suits Against Banks , by Hwee Goh, Channel NewsAsia. **** Singapore Oil Trading Almost Halves by Javier Blas and John Burton, Financial Times Oil trading in Singapore almost halved in September as the financial crisis and slowing regional demand combined to keep speculators away from the world's third largest energy trading hub. **** Mind Your Language by Joie De Vivre You come to my country, so learn my customs and my base language. **** 'I Was Having A Seizure' by Esther Tan, Straits Times **** Singapore Amends Constitution To Cope With Recession by Melanie Lee, Reuters Singapore's parliament voted on Tuesday to amend the city-state's constitution to allow the government more access to the country's reserves to cope with a faltering economy, local media reported. **** Malaysians In Recession-Hit Singapore Face Retrenchment by Nelson Benjamin, Gladys Tay and Mohd Farhaan Shah, The Star Tens of thousands of Malaysian workers from the services and manufacturing sectors in Singapore will be retrenched when employers, hit by recession, start downsizing in the island republic. **** Singapore Joins Narcotics Course by New Straits Times Malaysia and Thailand's battle against drug traficking received a boost yesterday when Singapore joined the annual jiont narcotics course for the first time. **** Written Answer To Parliamentary Question by Wong Kan Seng, Ministry of Home Affairs, Singapore Government What were the reasons for the Traffic Police to charge security supervisor, Mr Paul Antony Fernandez, for speeding in spite of him providing proof that he was not the driver; whether there was a need for Mr Fernandez to make 10 court appearances and spending thousands of dollars in legal fees before the charges were dropped; and what measures, if any, are in place to prevent such future lapses. **** Written Answer To Parliamentary Question by Wong Kan Seng, Ministry Of Home Affairs, Singapore Government On what measures are put in place to keep pathways and walkways safe for children and the elderly from the indiscriminate use of bicycles and motorcycles, whether there are plans to put in place formal regulations or enforcement officials, other thna the dependence on volunteer citizens to monitor the situation; and whether there are also plans to coordinate enforcement efforts with the Town Councils and NParks for pathways that are linked to areas under their responsibilities. **** Safety Comes At A Price by Lee Chiu San, Today Parents who demand safety for their children in school buses, have to bear the added costs. **** Elections, Not Auctions by Jeremy Au Yong, Straits Times When politicians bid to outdo one another with more and more goodies for voters, expect trouble in paradise. That was the message from prime minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday when he cited Norway and Australia to make a case for protecting Singapore's reserve. **** Don't Want To Clear Your Food Tray? Pay by K F Seetoh, New Paper Divide seats in a food court into two sections - one for folks who will clear their trays and the other for those who wish not to clear them. There should be a surcharge for those choosing the lazy route and a penalty for those hwo neglect their responsibility at the I-will-clear-tray tables. **** Feer To Appeal Ruling by Straits Times The Far Eastern Economic Review (Feer) will appeal against a High Court ruling that the weekly magazine defamed prime minister Lee Hsien Loong and minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew. See Also: FEER Magazine To Appeal Singapore Defamation Ruling , by Koh Gui Qing and Kevin Lim, Reuters. **** Increase In Government Spending Will Not Affect SIngapore's Financial Centre Reputation by Timothy Ouyang, Channel NewsAsia Plans by the government to increase its spending are not likely to affect Singapore's reputation as a financial centre, according to economists that Channel NewsAsia spoke to. **** Singapore's Shame: Ordeal Of Chee Soon Juan by Diane Francis, National Post Singapore represents itself as a democracy with the rule of law and a good place to live and do business. But Singapore is a bully and its strong-arm tactics against critics, domestic or foreign, is unrecognized by the rest of the world, thanks to its carefully crafted public relations strategy designed to show the city-state as a model of government, democracy, economic development and the rule of law. **** Government To Consider Restarting Some Of Deferred Building Projecs If Need Arises by Margaret Perry, Channel NewsAsia From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Thu Oct 23 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 23 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 23, 2008 Message-ID: <20081023171501.65275.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** MacBook Quality Issue Comes To Light by Karen Haslam, Macworld UK Reports are appearing that some new MacBook's are shipping with loose battery covers. Other problems are slanted function keys and extra "M" keys on the keybaord, according to postings on the MacRumors forums. /Somewhere, Steve Jobs is holding an iPhone and shouting 'told 'ya so!'/ **** The Unexpected: Battery Life In OS X Vs. Windows Vista by AnandTech Figuring out why OS X seems to be better for battery life is nearly impossible, at least without the aid of both Apple and Microsoft. **** How To Ride The Recession The Steve Jobs Way by Steve Rubel, Micro Persuasion **** MacBook Graphic Switching Is Disabled By Software by Charlie Sorrel, Wired Perhaps we'll see a software update soon. Perhaps it will be a paid firmware upgrade. **** From Apple, A Luxury Laptop In Lean Times by Rob Pegoraro, Washington Post It would be one thing if the new MacBook came with a major boost in features to justify paying more than the white MacBook, itself no slouch. But too many of the new machine's selling points are tangential to its utility as a computer, spending extra for its undeniable style may be a luxury that is better skipped. **** Apple SHares Jump After 4Q Results by Associated Press Shares of Apple Inc. climbed Wednesday even as the broader market turned sour, after the company posted a 26 percent increase n its fiscal fourth-quarter earnings. **** Apple's Redone MacBook Is Another Winner by Edward C. Baig, USA Today Apple has fashioned a winner with the new MacBook. Unless you can't live without FireWire. **** Yale Business School Dean Picked To Run Apple University by Prince McLean, AppleInsider **** The Apple Tax: Fact Or Fiction? by Darrell Etherington, The Apple Blog When your strongest argument is that people have to pay more money to run your heavily criticized product if they want better hardware, guess what the logical conclusion is. **** My Life With Mac by Letty Nola **** The New MacBook, From A Service Technician's Point Of View by Barkings! **** Why Does Flash Suck On OS X? by Rafe Colburn, rc3.org Apparently Flash 10 isn't much better than previous versions of Flash in terms of performance on OS X. /Adobe really need to focus on Flash for the Mac, before it has any chance of convincing Steve Jobs to put Flash into MobileSafari./ **** Macs To Gain Smart Card-Based Login To Active Directory by David Morgenstern, ZDNet.com **** Steve Jobs: We Still Haven't Figured Out The Living Room by Dan Frommer, Silicon Alley Insider **** Do Mac Users Need To Stuff, Zip, Or Squeeze Files? by Alexis Kayhill, Mac 360 Five years is half an eternity in computer years. It seems like only yesterday that Mac users were all using Stuffit to swtore, archive, and send files to others. **** Seven Real Reasons Why iPhone Is A Smash Hit by Om Malik, GigaOM Apple's volume-to-revenue ratio should scare its rivals. **** Apple's 'Unibody' MacBook Pro Has Beauty And Brains by Ken Mingis, ITworld.com **** The Case For A Mac Netbook by Harry McCracken, Technologizer Does Apple wanna compete with the eee PC? Beats me. But here's one scenario. **** The Average User Feels Little Or No "Apple Tax" by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet.com **** Intel Blasts iPhone; Apple Honeymoon Over by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com Company executives have decided to start including the iPhone as one of their prime examples of smartphones that don't run "the full internet" because they don't use an Intel chip. **** Archibald's Adventures by Jack Shiels, Inside Mac Games Overall it plays very well and provides a challenging puzzle experience to boot - a very well made game that I would highly recommend. **** Why I Like Netbooks by Dave Winer, Scripting News Runs any software I want (no platform vendor to decide what's appropriate). **** The Case For An Apple Netbook by Peter Cohen, Macworld Much of what makes netbooks cool and useful can be found in this now-ancient device, and I still think Apple's eMate design is great. **** Get A Mac: PC Holding A Bake Sale To Fund Vista Improvements by Chris Foresman, Ars Technica Apple has released a new Get a Mac ad poking even /more/ at Microsoft's handling of Vista issues. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Economy To Give Open-Source A Good Thumping by Andrew Keen, Internet Evolution "Free" doesn't fill anyone's belly; it doesn't warm anyone up. **** The Care And Feeding Of Entrepreneurs by Marci Alboher, New York Times MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Who Says Americans Won't Ride Mass Transit? by Katharine Mieszkowski, Salon With gas prices through the roof, our car-crazy nation showed the love for buses and trains. But there's a glitch. **** Date Local by Barron YoungSmith, Slate The case against long-distance relationships. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** In Singapore, You Analyse Press Freedom Independent Of The Political Freedom And Fear! by AirKosong.com **** By-Election Bid Dropped by Kor Kian Beng, Straits Times Jurong GRC resident Sri S. Vadivel Kounder is withdrawing his application to get the High Court to order a by-election in his constituency, following the death of his counsel J. B. Jeyaretnam. **** Marina Barrage Completed, Reservoir To Be Operational In Less Than 2 Years by Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia After three years of construction, the S$230 million Marina Barrage is ready. It dams up Singapore's river mouth, forming a reservoir - the Marina Reservoir - which has a catchment area that is one-sixth the size of Singapore. **** Perspectives - Why Chiam And Chee Soon Juan Were At Loggerheads by Enjoy The Breeze **** Good Manners Singapore Style by Travel In The Know **** Adopting A Rights And Care Approach For Migrant Workers In Singapore by Readings From A Political Duo-ble There is, without a doubt, a need to adopt a human rights and care approach when it comes to migrant workers issues. Unfortunately, that is also the language which PAP despises. **** Singapore Says Banks Interested In Lehman Bonds by Associated Press Singapore's central bank said two banks have "shown interest" ina ssuming obligations on 640 million Singapore dollars of bonds linked to bankrupt U.S. brokerage Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. **** Experts Reduce Flatulence-Causing Sugars In Soy by Tan Ee Lyn, Reuters Scientists in Singapore may have found a way to reduce certain carbohydrates in soybeans that have long been blamed for flatulence. **** Singapore Inflation Accelerates, Seen Easing On Crisis by Koh Gui Qing, Reuters Singapore's annual inflation accelerated in September on higher food and housing costs but stayed below a 26-year-high, with price pressures likely to ease in coming months as the financial crisis reduces demand. **** China, Singapore Sign Free-Trade Pact: Officials by AFP China and Singapore signed a free-trade agreement in Beijing on Thursday, capping two years of negotiations, officials said. "The agreement will enhance Singapore companies' access to the vast Chnese market and further boost our excellent bilateral trade and investment relations," said the Singaporen government in a statement. **** Singapore's Sept Inflation Up 6.7% On-Year by Rachel Kelly, Channel NewsAsia Singapore's consumer price index rose 6.7 per cent in September compared with the same period last year. Data from the Singapore Department of Statistics showed this was largely due to higher prices of food and housing. **** Cut The GST! by Singapore Dino **** Singapore's Funny Pages by Jotman Singapore's Constitution is a rights-grab, an illegal mechanism by which an unelected government usurps the human rights of its citizens through a legalistic maneuver. **** Get Out Of Town by Joel Tan, The Online Citizen Alas, in pursuit of becoming "world class," we've found that there really is nothing more to it than class, class, class. **** Expat Life In Singapore: Eating Out by Rosie Milne, Telegraph Depending how you translate it, dim sum literally means heart's delight, or little bit of heart, or touch your heart, or something vaguely along those lines. **** Department To Assist Jobless Malaysians From Singapore by New Straits Times The Human Resources Ministry has set up a committee to monitor the labour market situation in the country. **** Old Checkpoint May Stay Open by Chong Chee Kin, Straits Times The old Woodlands Checkpoint, pressed into service in March to ease Causeway congestion, looks set to stay open permanently. **** CCTV Could Cut Taxi Wait by Christopher Tan, Straits Times Stuck in a taxi queue that is hardly moving? Relief may come soon from a system of closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras at taxi stands feeding 'live' images back to cab despatch centres, which can direct cabbies to where fares are waiting. /I find it hard to believe that cabbies don't already know where the fares are./ **** More Willing To Recycle With Trial Chute by Today A trial at Choa Chu Kang showed that people are motivated to recycle more waste if it is made more convenient. **** A Surprise From DBS by Cheow Xin Yi, Today Four financial institutions involved in the structured products controversy have thrown a lifeline to some investors scarred by a chain reaction that started with the collapse of Lehman Brothers. **** Now Who Is The Pork Barrel Champion? by Gerald Giam Since the 1991 election, the PAP has used pork barrel promises in the form of HDB upgrading to further its political objectives. In the last election, senior minister Goh Chok Tong promised $180 million to upgrade Hougang and Potong Pasir flats, without even thinking through how the government was going to fund that spending, as he admitted months later. **** Hong Leong Offers To Buy Back Lehman Notes From Some Investors by Tan Soo See and Nicholas Fang, Channel NewsAsia From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Oct 24 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 24 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 24, 2008 Message-ID: <20081024171500.65573.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Beyond Parental Controls by Christopher Breen, Macworld **** My Dad, The Switcher: Day Zero by Robert Palmer, The Unofficial Apple Weblog **** Review: Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare by Chris Holt, Macworld Emotionally devastating and visually engrossing, this is one of the most beautiful, grittiest, and well-written games to come out in the past five years. Anything more realistic would probably require you to be enlisted. **** Apple Posts Revised iPhone NDA Agreement And Readies iPhone 2.2 Beta 2 Firmware by Arnold Kim, MacRumors.com The new agreement appears to limit what is considered "confidential information" primarily to Apple's pre-released software. **** False Story Of Jobs' Heart Attack Started With Teen by Prince McLean, AppleInsider The fraduulent report of Steve Jobs' heart attack that never actually happened was orginated by an 18 year old with unclear motives. **** The Day Apple Released Its iPhone Revenue Bomb by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune In the analysts' defense, the accounting methods Apple uses aren't easy to follow — even though Oppenheimer has spelled them out at almost every earnings call. **** Review: MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo/2.4GHz And 2.53GHz by Jackie Dove, Macworld The MacBook Pro's new design and its features definitely come out on the plus side of the ledger, with some outstanding aesthetic and engineering improvements to recommend it—not the least of which is its significant attention to environmental issues—at exactly the same price as the previous 2.4GHz and 2.5GHz models. However the mandatory glossy screen may be a deal killer for some people. **** Intel 'Corrects' Executives Who Slammied iPhone by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com Intel issued a "correction" Thursday regarding comments one of its executives made earlier this week slamming the iPhone as incapable of working correctly with the internet. It's hard to see this as anything other than an formal apology to Apple and ARM. **** Apple The Software Platform Company by John Carroll, ZDNet.com If Apple improves its story as a story platform, that could change the game entirely. **** Azada: Ancient Magic Casual Game Released by Peter Cohen, Macworld **** Leopard's Parental Controls by Chrostpher Breen, Macworld Tips for helping kids of all ages and Macs mix safely. **** ExecutiveSync Syncs Files In Different Locations by Peter Cohen, Macworld Smith Micro on Thursday announced the release of ExecutiveSync for the Mac, a new application that helps busy users keep files synchronized between two machines in different locations. **** Tablet iPod Rumored On Weak Evidence by Adam C. Engst, TidBITS Combine Jobs's comments with the search engine logs, and it's easy to imagine an iPhone- or iPod touch-like device with a alrger screen. /And it all makes sense, technically-wise, because I don't see how the current interface of the Mac OS X can be scaled down to a smaller screen. Of course, it only makes sense if it also makes sense for Apple and Steve Jobs./ **** CoverScout 3 Album Art Finder Uses Cover Flow-Style Interface by Peter Cohen, Macworld Equinux has announced the release of CoverScout 3, a new version of its album art finder for iTunes. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** If Looks Could Kill by The Economist Security experts reckon the latest technology can detect hostile intentions before something bad happens. Unless it is perfect, though, that may be bad in itself. **** Are You Reaching The Internet From Your Laptop Or Your Smartphone? by Scott Ferguson, eWeek **** iPhone V. Android Part XVII: Control Freak Design V. Open-Source Indifference by Pete Mortensen, Cult Of Mac MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Publishers, Enough With Vapid Hype by David L. Ulin, Los Angeles Times Let's set aside the economic sound and fury and focus on the writing rather than the noise. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Slackapore by They Call Me Jaywalk... **** Population And Health: The Overcrowded Singapore by Two Cents Worth An overpopulated country is not necessarily a healthy country. **** Singapore Air Plunges Most In 21 Years, Leading Airlines Lower by Irene Shen, Bloomberg Singapore Airlines Ltd., the world's most valuable airline, dropped the most in 21 years, leading Asian carriers lower on concerns a global recession will cut business and leisure travel demand. **** Don't Over-React by Peh Shing Huei, Straits Times Prime minister Lee Hsien Loong on Friday called for a measured response to the ongoing financial crisis, cautioning agaisnt an over-reaction that might cause more alarm and uncertainty. **** Ravi Fullofshitmon: "Some Lies Are Worth Telling" by The Legal Janitor What we should /really/ take note of is, that religious fundamentalists are hypocrites. They will accuse a government of being X, but then happily use government's powers in the same X way to pursue their own religious agendas. **** The Minibond Compensation by Chemical Generation Singapore **** Singapore Sept Manufacturing Rebounds, Set To Slow by Reuters **** Singaporeans Are Piling On The Debt by Tan Hui Leng, Today Preliminary statistics in August from the Monetary Autority of Singapore show that total debt to individuals stand at S$112 billion - almost 10 per cent up over a period of 12 months. In particular, credit card rollover debut has ballooned to S$3.3 billion, an increase of S$296 million over the 12 months against a S$94-million increase for the previous 12 months. Housing loans are also up S$6.6 billion. **** No Cashcard? Use Credit Card For ERP by Susan Ferroa, Channel NewsAsia **** Singapore's Science Complex by Science Blog What struck me in the article was that Singapore is very explicit about its goal, and that isn't knowledge for knowledge's sake. **** Fares From $0? Ads With Hidden Costs Get The Chop by Karamjit Kaur, Straits Times New rules set by the Advertising Standards Authority of Singapore will require travel agents and airlines to advertise full fares so travellers know right away how much their air ticket or holiday will cost, The Straits Times learnt. **** Senior Civil Servants' Pay To Fall by Straits Times Senior civil servants can expect their annual pay package to shrink next year, because a significant portion of it is tied to how well the economy is doing. **** Of Reserves, Auctions And The Elected Presidency by Melvin Tan, A Blog Day's Work It is the reason wy WP supports using the reserves that it rejects the EP scheme. **** LTA Can't Have It Both Ways by Simon Sia, Straits Times Motorists buy cars to drive them, not to park them for decoration outside their homes. /But different drivers drive through different routes. Drivers that contribute to congestions should pay much more than drivers who commute daily between, say, Yishun and Senoko, or Pasir Ris and Changi. There is a different, and these drivers should be taxed differently./ **** MP Clarifies On Report by Chan Soon Sen, MP, Joo Chiat Constituency, Straits Times I have been misled into attending the ceremony on Monday. **** Comfort Reviews Diesel Surcharge by Leong Wee Keat, Today When pump prices fell for the 10th consecutive time yesterday, ComfortDelGro, which operates 15,000 of the 24,000 taxis in Singapore, said it will review the 30-cent diesel surchage with its drivers. **** Civil Service Salaries May Be Revisd by Today The Public Service Division (PSD) may revise civil service salaries in light of the turmoil in the financial markets and lower growth forecasts for Singapore, the first Asian economy to slip into a technical recession. **** Why I Participated In The TBT Protest, And Why I Pleaded Guilty by Ng E-Jay, Sgpolitics.net **** AGC Cannot Decide Whether To Use Video Or Not by Singapore Democratic Party Why the dragging of feet? And why were not all the defendants informed? **** Two Fined A Total Of S$1,800 For Taking Part In Protest by Shaffiq Alkhtib, Channel NewsAsia Two men involved in a protest against recent price hikes have been fined a total of S$1,800. 31-year-old PhD student, Ng E-Jay, and 44-year-old freelance offshore engineer, Jeffrey George, admitted to taking part in an unlawful demonstration dubbed the "Tak Boleh Tahan" protest near Parliament House on March 15 this year. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sat Oct 25 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 25 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 25, 2008 Message-ID: <20081025171500.60245.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple, Amazon's Secret Weapon: Relevance by Diane Mermigas, MediaDailyNews **** Week In Review: Reversal Of Fortunes by Steven Musil, CNET News.com **** Is A Mac Right For You? by Jason R. Rich, Entrepreneur.com What today's business people and entrepreneurs are quickly beginning to understand is that Apple's iMacs and MacBooks can not only handle virtually every business application a PC can handle, but also provide a more stress-free computing experience. **** Microsoft: New Macs Are Pricey! And Deceptive! And Unfair! Even...Dictatorial! by Harry McCracken, Technologizer For all the arguments it makes that Windows laptops are a better value, there's one feature that all Windows laptops have in common that Microsoft doesn't mention. That would be.. Windows. You know, the operating system. I'm not saying that it's impossible to make the case that Windows Vista is a plus compared to OS X. But I think it's fascinating that Microsoft didn't even try... **** Apple To Oppose Anti-Gay Marriage Ballot Question by Tom Krazit, CNET News.com Apple has joined Google in publicly opposing a Calfornia ballot initative that would deny marriage rights to same-sex couples. **** Call Of Duty 4: Modern Warfare by Jack Shiels, Inside Mac Games If ever there was a perfect example of the FPS genre, this was it. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** The Idea Of "Open Source DRM" Makes Me Want To Vomit With Rage by Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, ZDNet.com MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** A Big Joke by Gene Weingarten, Washington Post Why did the post office throw the clock out the window? **** Cracking Wise by David Kirby, New York Times People are funny. Words are funnier. And poems, when they're at their smartest and best-made, are funniest of all. **** Young America's Wild Side by Jay WInik, New York Times In his latest book, "Waking Giant: America in the Age of Jackson," David S. Reynolds asks us to more carefully consider the brawling, chaotic, boisterous years from 1815 to 1848 as a fascinating age in its own right. **** Green Fantasia by Bill McKibben, New York Review Of Books Just as you can't run for commander-in-chief on any platform other than "Our best days are still ahead of us," so you can't run for pundit-n-chief either. But those instincts can get you in trouble. **** Missing The Mark by Lionel Shriver, Wall Street Journal QUotation marks have fallen out of favor, and that's bad for books. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Gambling On Casinos To Lift Gloom by Seah Chiang Nee, The Star The two casinos, opening late next year and early 2010, will need 20,000 employees that will provide a bright spark to the poor job market. **** 500 Protest Lost Savings by Gracia Chiang, Straits Times For the third week in a row, about 500 investors gathered in Hong Lim Park eager to find out how they can seek redress for Lehman-linked financial products they claim were mis-sold to them. **** Be Tiny, Live Longer? by The Economist **** 10,000 Duds? by Singapore Life And Times **** Epileptic Case: Police Will Strive To Do Better by Paul Tay, Singapore Police Force, Straits Times We have reviewe the case and agree we could have handled the situation better. On this, we will strive to do better. **** Flasher On Board? Get Him Off The Bus, I'm Late by Benson Ang, New Paper A father tried to catch a man who exposed himself to his teenage daughter on a public bus - and discovered the best and worst in Singaporeans. **** Talent Won't Flow Smoothly by Lee Siew Hua, Straits Times Cultural barriers do not come down easily in Asia, and for this reason, minister mentor Lee Kuan Yew believes talent will not flow smoothly across borders anyt ime soon. **** Judge Has Bounden Duty To Protect Citizens Rights by Singapore Democratic Party What the minister says and does is in conflict with the Constitution. So what do you do when there is such a conflict? From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Sun Oct 26 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 26 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 26, 2008 Message-ID: <20081026171500.94670.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Graphic: How Apple Is Gaining On Microsoft by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune Here's a chart that should keep Steve Ballmer up at night. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Jacking Into The Brain - Is The Brain The Ultimate Computer Interface? by Gary Stix, Scientific American How far can science advance brain-machine interface technology? Will we one day pipe the latest blog entry or NASCAR highlights directly into the human brain as if the organ were an outsize flash drive? MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Moms Are Taking Back The Holidays By Taking On Consumerism by Natalie Singer, Seattle Times Starting with homemade costumes and healthier treats for Halloween, a group of moms is banding together to transform holiday rituals - casting off the stuff and bringing back the meaning. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** It Will Be Handled 'Fairly' by Chua Chin Hon, Straits Times Singaporeans aggrieved by their investment in Lehman Minibonds and DBS HIgh Notes 5 will have their complaints handled 'fairly and properly', prime minister Lee Hsien Loong assured on Sunday in his first remarks on the issue. **** The Elected Presidency And Future Non-PAP Governments by Gerald Giam, The Online Citizen **** The Untold Story Of "Growth" by Think For Me, Singapore I would now like to thank our government for their pursuit of "growth" for the benefit of us, Singaporeans and the degradation of our social and moral values. **** Singapore Number 2 In Raising Electricity Tariffs by Salary.sg Ok, let's be fair. It's the price /increase/ that puts us up there. Our electricity is the 12th priciest - not too bad. **** An Experimental Housing Model? by Ashes Of Times **** Why I Don't Write About Singapore Politics? by The Constiution Times Once we break out of the bipartisan trap, we can take an objective view on any problem. /Unfortunately, a lot of problems do not have an objective view. Politics is about compromise./ **** Why Are Singaporeans Not Saving Enough? by My Singapore News The CPF scheme is now a red herring. The Singaporeans are saving but spending at the same time. I should have called this saving scheme a myth. /But the properties does have a value. The question is how can older Singaporeans make better use than this value, than just to die in./ **** A Rose-Tinted View Of Singapore's Education System by Singapore Educational Consultants One wonders how much of it is really due to the school system and the teachers in Singapore? /Just because many enrolled in extra tuition doesn't necessarily diminishes contributions made by teachers in schools./ **** Singapore's Road Rules - As Taught To Me By Taxi Drivers by Josh Reviews Everything **** Democracy In Singapore by Robert Amsterdam, Legal Counsel To Dr Chee Soon Juan, Telegraph We call on the international community to stand together to defend this courageous man, whose personal sacrifices for the ideals of freedom and democracy have left him a hostage tothe whims of a government that has become used to acting with impunity against its own citizens. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Mon Oct 27 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 27 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 27, 2008 Message-ID: <20081027171501.10494.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** MacBook Pro Tradeoffs by Walt Mossberg, Wall Street Journal The new MacBook Pro still provides a satisfying upgrade for power users willing to spend the moneyto move up from the MacBook or from a less powerful, or similarly powerful, Windows machine running the inferior Vista or XP operating sytems. But, for onwers of the most recent prior MacBook Pro, the new model's tradeoffs make an upgrade an iffy choice. **** Will MacBook Chip End Intel Graphics Franchise? by Brooke Crothers, CNET News.com Will Apple's decision to use Nividia chips in its new MacBooks be a catalyst for change? **** 2008-04 AirPort Extreme Update: This One Should Be For Real by Jeff Smykil, Ars Technica The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Time To Leave The Laptop Behind by Nick Wingfield, Wall Street Journal For more mobile workers, phones increasingly give them muc of what they need — with a lot less hassle. **** A Better Network For Outer Space by Brittany Sauser, MIT Technology Review Why Vint Cerf wants to put internet-style networking in space. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Alba by W. S. Merwin, New Yorker **** The Fat Man's Race by Louise Erdrich, New Yorker **** Whenever I Hear Writers Reading Their Own Work, I Fake A Migraine And Flee To My Room by Mark Ravenhill, The Guardian Far better that each generation discovers a fresh Dickensian voice through the novels, than to be haunted by a delivery that would probably seem risbly melodramatic now. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Woodlands Central Sees Increase In Business From Traffic Diversion Scheme by Channel NewsAsia **** Choosing Of Baby's Gender Forbidden In Singapore by Teoh Song Keng and Lynda Hong, Channel NewsAsia **** Talk Is Cheap by Still Me Talking does not cost much, and it starts with small individual actions that could break the self-fulfilling prophecy of surveillance. **** Fight Unjust Laws by Singapore Dino Dr Chee and his comrades have taken upon themselves to fight unjust laws. We may not agree with his political ideology, but let's support his brave attempt to put an end to the PAP's hegemony. **** The Reason Behind The Degradation Of The Cycling Trial by Notes From A Not So Young Mind Perhaps it will take a long while more before the walkers reliquish their tight hold on pavements and learn to share with cyclicst and cyclist not to abuse their rights. **** PM Did Not Address The Real Issue by Bad News On The Doorstep **** The Hapless Singaporeans by Dr Cynic And Mr Idealist My sentiments when I read the article: serve you right; have you not heard of caveat /emptor/? **** Asian Airlines Brace For Worse Turbulence Next Year: Analysts by AFP **** Primary School Textbook: Singapore Gahmen Houses Everyone by mrbrown **** STB Hopeful Orchard's Revamp Will Pay Off Despite Economic Downturn by Otelli Edwards, Channel NewsAsia **** Council Has Plans For Vacant Pool Sites by Dennis Lim, Singapore Sports Council, Susan Koh, Singapore Land Authority, Straits Times Although we had some interest from private vendors, the proposals we have received so far did not fulfil the criteria of sports and recreation usage. **** Complaint About TV Presenter: Long Hair No Longer Indicates Gender Or Sexuality by Ho Chi Sam, Straits Times Discomot with men sporting longhair is indicative of the set of gender norms and expectations one subscribes to, which derives from a specific time in history. **** A Mesure Of Dissent by The Online Citizen All that's needed are determined enough political parties or NGOs able to invest the resources, and - more critically - the right issue. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Tue Oct 28 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 28 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 28, 2008 Message-ID: <20081028171500.62752.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Apple's New MacBook Is A Stealth Business Notebook by Scot Finnie, Computerworld The new MacBook fully addresses my year-old criticisms. It reaches critical mass in a notebook computer that's aimed not just at highly mobile execs or design professionals, but at business people in general (not to mention home users and students). Apple finally has the right hardware and software for mainstream business users. **** First Look: Bento 2, Personal Database by MacNN **** Review: Apple Takes The MacBook Upscale by Ken Mingis, Computerworld If an Apple iMac married a MacBook Air, what would their offspring look like? A lot like Apple Inc.'s new upscale MacBook. **** Could An iPhone Completely Replace A Tablet Mac? by MacBlogz The iPhone revenue model is such a juggernaut for Apple, that diverting resources to a niche marekt seems almsot foolish. **** How To Become A Happy iPhone Developer by Jacqueline Emigh, BetaNews **** About Those TV Ads Knocking Vista: Are They Unjustified? by David Zeiler, Baltimore Sun Apple spends far, far less money on R&D, but look at what it has delivered over the past few years. Apple regularly delivers products and services that shake up entire industries. When was the last time Microsoft did that? **** It's The Apple Indicators, Not Market Share That Spooks Microsoft by John Martellaro, Mac Observer Apple is poised to move into double digit market share in the U.S., and from all indicators, Microsoft has few obvious strategies available in its arsenal to extricate itself from a continued defnsive position and some key failure points. **** Google Earth Lands For iPhone, Netflix Testing Mac Streaming by AppleInsider Google on Monday launched a version of Google Earth as a native application for iPhone and iPod touch owners. Meanwhile, Netflix said it has begun testing its second-gen Generation Media Player, which will stream movies to Intel Macs. **** Apple Releases Minor iPhoto Update by Philip Michaels, Macworld According to Apple's sparse release notes, iPhoeo 7.1.5 "improves the printing quality of books, cards and calendars ordered via the iPhoto printing service." **** Apple's Margin-Reducing Product That Wasn't: Blu-Ray? by Iljitsch van Beijnum, Ars Technica Blu-ray drives in the Mac, perhaps? Let's examine the evidence. **** Troubleshooting Parental Controls by Christopher Breen, Macworld The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Microsoft Plans 'Cloud' Operating System by John Markoff, New York Times Looking for growth in new markets where it is increasingly being bypassed, Microsoft said Monday that late next year it would begin offering a new "cloud" operating system that would manage the relationship between software inside the computer and on the web, where data and services are becoming increasingly cnetralized. **** Finding A Gold Mine In Digital Ditties by Stephanie Clifford, New York Times **** To Survive, Net Start-Ups Slow Their Metabolism by Brad Stone and Claire Cain Miller, New York Times **** Microsoft's Azure Cloud Platform: A Guide For The Perplexed by Mary Jo Foley, ZDNet.com Microsoft layed out its "Azure" foundation infrastructure for the cloud during the keynote kick-off on day one of the Professional Developers Conference (PDC). THe goal of Azure is to provide developers who want to write applications that run partially and/or entirely in a remote datacenter with a platform and set of tools. **** Even If Royalties For Web Radio Fall, Revenue Remains Elusive by Claire Cain Miller, New York Times **** Twitter Goes Mainstream by Jessica E. Vascellaro, Wall Street Journal One of the hottest technologies in Silicon Valley is also one of the simplest. **** Texts You Can Believe In by Farhad Manjoo, Slate Forget robo-calls—Obama's text messages are this campaign's secret weapon. **** Opera Sings An Ode To Browsers Everywhere by Saul Hansell, New York Times MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** The Questions by Alice Cullina, 2River View **** Payback's A Bitch by Louis Bayard, Salon If nothing else, Margaret Atwood has a gift for timing. Her 1986 futuristic dystopia, "The Handmaid's Tale," arrived at the precise cultural moment when theocracy was starting to look scarier than nuclear holocaust. And her latest work, a book-length essay called "Payback: Debt And The Shadow Side Of Wealth," comes just as Wall Street is undergoing a holocaust of its own. **** Confessoins Of A Naked Sushi Model by Melanie Berliet, Vanity Fair Be still, rogue toe. Please! Don't you dare surrender to that muscle cramp. Now is not the time. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Town Councils' Sinking Funds Not Substantially Affected By Financial Turmoil by May Wong, Channel NewsAsia Town councils said only a small percentage of their total investments were spent on those affected products. Under current guidelines, each town councils can use 65 per cent of their sinking funds to invest in government bonds, while up to 35 per cent can be invested in other financial instruments like corporate bonds and equities. **** Singapore Jobless Rate To Rise by Fiona Chan, Straits Times Job losses are looming as the economy slows, with companies in the manufacturing and financial services industries expected to be the first to cut staff. This means unemployment is set to rise over the next few quarters, while salaries will grow at a much slower pace, said the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) in its latest half-yearly Macro Economic Review, released on Tuesday. **** Anlysts Say Tourism Sector Unlikely To Grow In Months Ahead by Wong Siew Ying, Channel NewsAsia **** Minimum Sum Scheme by CPF Board, Singapore Government Among the active members who turned 55 in 2007, about one third (35.6%) met the required Minimum Sum (MS). This is a drop from 57.1% in 1996, and could be attributed to the increase in the required MS from $40,000 in July 1995 to $99,600 in July 2007, and cuts in CPF contribution rates in 1999 and 2003. **** Kiss Lands Man 6-Months Jail by Straits Times Kissing the back of a woman's hand may be an age-old gentlemanly form of greeting - when permission is granted. But when a teenage girl was suddenly approached by a stranger who planted an uninvited kiss on her hand on Sept 7, she complained to her fther, who then called the police. /I'm not sure whether this Straits Times article is reporting accurately, but it sure seems too excessive penalty to me./ **** Singapore's Economy Faces 'Further Slippage,' Central Bank Says by Shamim Adam, Bloomberg Singapore's economy, which entered a recession last quarter, faces "further slippage" as a global slowdown threatens manufacturing, consumer spending and tourism, the city-state's central bank said. **** Nation-Building Or Party Building? by Andrew Ong, The Online Citizen After listening to the speeches and reading through the handed materials, I concluded that the vision of the PA should be more accurately communicated as "contributing readily to the PAP," and not to our nation. /Unfortunately, I don't see much of justifications made by the author in this article to support the assertion. I would like to see more insights beyond the surface./ **** For Better Public Transport; Little India Crisis by Life At 60km/h **** Singapore Dubai Similarities by Life In Dubai Then they woke up to the fact that they were destroying their history, their heritage, their heart and soul. **** Iskandar Project Can Absorb The Retrenched by Satiman Jamin, New Straits Times Iskandar Malaysia has the potential to absorb Malaysians who may lose their jobs in Singapore due to the global economic slowdown, home minister Datuk Seri Syed Hamid Albar said on Saturday. **** Fear, Apathy - And Being Interested by Andrew Loh, The Online Citizen We need new heroes, basiclaly - people who can inspire and re-awaken the lethargic spirits of our citizens. At least as far as political participation is concerned. **** This Dude Gets It Yo by The Legal Janitor For all your complaining about "fairness" and "Singaporeans first", it is all bullshit, and you are just a xenophobic and/or racist fucker. **** Dark Days For Night Markets by Jermyn Chow, Straits Times These are bad times to be a psar malam or night market vendor. Many are dropping out of the business, hit by a triple whammy of factors: competition from heartland malls, rising overheads, and the ongoing financial meltdown. **** Tariff Revision No Benefit To Power Generation Companies by Jenny Teo, Today Changes in the fuel oil cost are reflected in the electricity tariff every quarter. As the tariff is set in advance using the forward fuel on price, there is a three-month time lag between the oil price movement and the actual tariff revision. Alternatively, if we had used the spot oil price to compute the tariff, it would have been higher in 11 of the 16 quarters since 2004. /In other words, when the tariff hasn't been increasing due to this 3-month lag while the fuel oil cost was rising, I don't see you guys complaining, eh?/ **** We Are A Power Service Provider by Ho Lai Fung, Singpaore Power Ltd, Today The increase in the tariff this quarter is used to meet the higher cost of fuel needed to generate electricity. Neither SP nor any of its subsidiaries benefit from the tariff increase. **** No Leeway For Visually Impaired Student by Lee Lay Hong, Straits Times Why is my child discriminated against for her disability, and why is she penalised for coping well? And why is the school unwilling to meet me to discuss my child's needs? **** LTA's Approach Holistic And Balanced by Geoffrey Lim, Land Transport Authority, Straits Times Any system based on forward projections is subject to errors in forecasting. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Wed Oct 29 13:15:00 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 29 Oct 2008 17:15:00 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 29, 2008 Message-ID: <20081029171500.35910.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Side By Side: Windows 7 Vs. OS X Snow Leopard by Christian Zibreg, TG Daily Microsoft has shown Windows 7 for the first time earlier today and there is every indication that this (Vista) maintenance release may turn into the Vista Microsoft should have offered to begin with. We haven't seen Snow Leopard yet, but have a good idea how the operating system may offer. Apple will go in a slightly different direction and we wondered how the two will compare. Here is what we have come up with. **** A Week With The New 13" MacBook by Jim Mock, soupnazi.org Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the new no-button trackpds don't always respond to clicks. **** Wisdom From Steve Jobs: The Importance Of Killing Good Ideas by Bob Sutton Jobs' argument went something like this: What is really hard - and a hallmark of great companies - is that they kill a lot of good ideas. **** Did Apple Get It Right With The New MacBook? by Leximancer **** A Fortnight With The MacBok Pro by David Appleyard The screen is gorgeous, the build quality is fantastic and the graphics are screaming. **** Lovely Mac OS X Pillow For Sofa by winandmac.com **** TextExpander 2.5 Adds Date And Time Math Snippets by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld **** Apple Releases Free Mac Management White Paper by Dave Caolo, The Unofficial Apple Weblog **** Psystar Introduces Blu-Ray Bag Of Hurt To Its Mac Clones by Jacqui Cheng, Ars Technica Technically speaking, there are a handful of third-party Blu-ray drives made for the Mac that users can install into their Mac Pros, so it's not like a Psystar PC is the only way to get Blu-ray on a "Mac." **** Two Macs: Fail. by Fraser Speirs An experiment I've been running for more than two years now is over: running two Macs is more hassle than it's worth. I write not to praise synchronisation technology, but to bury it. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** First Look At WIndows 7'S User Interface by Peter Bright, Ars Technica **** Why eBooks Suddenly Matter (To Me) by Anthony Caruana, Hydrapinion **** Google Settles Copyright Lawsuits With Publishers, Authors by Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service Goggle has settled lawsuits brought against it by major publishers and authors that argued that Google's wholesale scanning and indexing of in-copyright books without permission amounted to massive copyright violations. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Nurses Speak Out, About Doctors by Abigail Zuger, New York Times In "Reflections on Doctors," nurses have produced something quite extraordinary in recent medical writings: a compilation of 19 brief essays musing on the current relationship between the species. **** The Peter Pans Of Broadway by Jesse Green, New York Magazine For three boys (and their mothers), Billy Elliot is the role of a lifetime. Provided they don't grow out of it too fast. **** Ach, Wien by Rita Dove, Slate SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** ComfortDelGro To Remove 30 Cents Diesel Surcharge From Nov 12 by Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia ComfortDelGro, Singapore's largest cab operator, will be removing the 30 cents diesel surcharge on taxi rides with effect from 6am, November 12. **** Singaporeans Against The Arts by Singapore Biennale 2008 Blog Singapore audiences have this terrible desire to want to understand everything in a reductionist way. If we don't understand the literal meaning of one scene of a show, we can't deal with it - we want to be spoonfed so much. **** The Fear Of The Opposition by Gerald Giam, The Online Citizen People want to hear different, and better ideas from the opposition on how to run the country, not just gripes about every little fault of the PAP. **** Singapore Newspaper's Amazing Knowledge Gap by Blowin' In The Wind Public spending projects to beat poverty and recession and boost the economy are not unusual at all. **** Trans-Cab Axes Fuel Surcharge by Christopher Tan, Straits Times Trans-Cab, which has a fleet of 2,200 red-and-white taxis, said it will lift in the 30-cent fuel surchage levy on Nov 11, just over three months after powerhouse ComfortDelGro introduced the surcharge. **** A Tax To Get Singaporeans To Save Energy? by Tan Hui Leng, Today With Singapore having impressed upon its citizens on the need to conserve water, the government is now looking at ways to do the same for energy. **** Are Housing Board Subsidies Regressive? by Foo Cexiang, Straits Times This housing subsidy policy seems to go against our quest of a progressive society. Crucially, this regressive policy affects 95 per cent of the 80 per cent in public housing, as they are home owners. **** High Notes 5 Worthless by Francis Chan and Selina Lum, Straits Times Investors in DBS High Notes 5 finally got the news they have been dreading for weeks: Their investments are officially worthless. **** Should The Government Guarantee Bank Deposits? by Tan Kin Lian, The Online Citizen This guarantee places the Singapore taxpayers at risk and deserves an appropriate return. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Thu Oct 30 13:15:01 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 30 Oct 2008 17:15:01 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 30, 2008 Message-ID: <20081030171501.99789.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** Android: First Impressions by Frederic Filloux, Monday Note In the summer of 1997, Steve Jobs called Eric Benhamou, 3Com's CEO (the company owned Palm), "Give me the Palm and come and join my Board of Directors. Only Apple can make Palm a true consumer brand." Nothing happened. Apple's foray into the product segment had to wait ten more years. **** NVIDIA-Based MacBook Airs Now Shipping by Arnold Kim, MacRumors.com **** Apple Not Accepting Opera Mini On iPhone by David Adams, OS News Apple does stand to lose some Google revenue by letting people use other browsers, but they have much more to gain by unlesahing the creativity of the developer community and giving them the freedom to improve or replace core iPhone functionality. **** Apple's $24.5 Billion: The Case For A Big Stock Buyback by Philip Elmer-DeWitt, Fortune **** Engineer: Killing FireWire On MacBooks Was Necessary by Brian X. Chen, Wired **** The Amazing Brain Train by Richard Hallas, Inside Mac Games **** Audio Recorder 2.0 Update Fixes AMR, AC3 Recordings by MacNN **** Could Snow Leopard Be Free? by Fraser Speirs The question that looms over all Apple upgrades these days concerns whether the company's interpretation of the Sarbanes-Oxley act will allow them to do it. **** Microsoft Reveals Live Mesh For Mac by Mark Hattersley, Macworld UK **** Apple Ads Blunt Microsoft's 'I'm A PC' Campaign by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Apple Inc.'s anti-Vista response last week to Microsoft Corp.'s "I'm a PC' marketing campaign blunted the impact of its rival's efforts, an internet video metrics firm said today. **** Apple Fans Crave Up Mac-O-Laterns by Lonnie Lazar, Cult Of Mac **** Is Time Machine Enough? by Todd Ogasawara, O'Reilly Digital Media Blog **** iPhone 2.2 To Offer Podcast Downloads, Google Street View by Macworld UK Podcaster's rejection explained as Apple preps direct podcast to iPhone downloads schema. **** Apple Publishes Details Of Recent MobileMe Service Upgrades by David Chartier, Ars Technica Besides service-wide changes like improving localization support and member name suggestions when newbies sign up, MobileMe Mail, Calendar, Contacts, and Account applications all received a healthy dose of tweaks and improvements. **** AT&T Finally Gives Free WiFi Access To iPhone Subscribers by Glenn Fleishman, Ars Technica AT&T seems to have finally pushed the button—permaturely clicked a few times earlier this year—and granted iPhone subscribers the same free access to its national WiFi hotspot network that DSL, fiber, laptop 3G, and business subscribers already receive. **** Flow FTP Client Updated by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld **** PopChar X Update Improves Compatibility With OpenOffice by Jim Dalrymple, Macworld Ergonis Software on Wednesday released an update for PopChar X, its utility allowing users to insert special characters into documents. The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Too Old For Tech? Not These Silicon Valley CEOs by Eric Lai, Computerworld Think leading a technology company is only for thirtysomethings? These savvy sexagenarians beg to differ. **** Can Microsoft Be A Mobile Hero? by Jack Schofield, The Guardian In a rapidly changing smartphone landscape, Microsoft looks like a laggard. WHy does it seem so unfazed? **** Andreessen's Newspaper Advice Echoes Grove's, A Decade Ago by Scott Rosenberg, Wordyard Newspaper companies are clinging to their dwindling print profits because they can't yet see a way to keep anything close to their current pay scale and benefits in an online-only world. And the hardest pill for the industry to swallow is that there may not be any way to do that. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Visual Thinking by Catherine O'Flynn, Granta I sneer also at the two-dimensionality of maps. The missing third dimension of depth is less debilitating than the missing fourth of time. **** Move Over, My Pretty, Ugly Is Here by Sarah Kershaw, New York Times Ugliness has recently emerged as a serious subject of study and academic interest unto itself, in some small part because of the success of television's "Ugly Betty," which ABC promoted with a "Be Ugly" campaign stressing self-esteem for girls and young women. **** Ladies Of The Nightly News by Rebecca Traister, Salon Call it historical accident or mere coincidence, but this election, built as it has been around two history-making female candidates, traditional "women's issues" like the economy and healthcare and the acknowledgment of the power of the female voters, also happens to have been translated, interpreted and picked apart by women newscaters. And that's something new. **** Translating The British, For Americans by David M. Shribman, Boston Globe Sarah Lyall is a witty American married to an Englishman. She has the access afforded to a New York Times foreign correspondent and the deft hand of a portraitist. "The Anglo Files," her field guide to the British, treats the folks ont he other side of the "special relationship" as if she were an anthropologist and they a bizarre subcult requiring scholarly explanation. **** A Universe Of Books: Borges's 'Library Of Babel' by Alberto Manguel, New York Sun Barely nine pages long, "The Library of Babel" is nothing less than an attempt to describe the chaotic order and meaning of the universe, buidling on the ancient notion of the world as a book (or a book itself divided into an almost infinite number of books) in which we ourselves are written, and which we also attempt to read. SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** New Standards For Trains by Maria Almenoa, Straits Times A new operating standard for trains was rolled out today. Operators who do not follow these standards can be fined between $10,000 to up to $1 million. To help reduce congestion on trains, SMRT will modify 10 trains by removing 84 of the 300 seats from the trains. This will create more standard room for passengers. **** No Need For Fed Credit Now: Singapore by AFP **** Sept Tourist Arrivals Fall by Straits Times Even with Formula ne race, September tourist arrivals to Singapore dropped 4.1 per cent year-on-year. And the Singapore Tourism Board now said it may not meet this year's tourism receipts targets of $15.5 billion. **** Singapore, HK Job Ads Fall by Straits Times Job advertisements in Asia's financial centres Singapore and Hong Kong fell in the third quarter as the financial crisis spurred companies to cut costs, recruitment firm Robert Walters said on Thursday. **** The Foreigner's Guide To Getting A Subsidised University Education In Singapore by Mr Wang Says So **** Talk The Talk Or Walk The Walk? by Rachel Chung, The Online Citizen **** From Alexandar Hospital To Washington: The Currency Of Race by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread **** MRT's Boon Lay Extension To Start Operating From 28 Feb 2009 by Asha Popatlal, Channel NewsAsia The Boon Lay extension of the Mass Rapid Transit system will start operating from February 28 next year. **** Singlish In Cambodia by Combodia Calling When I hear Singlish in Cambodia, I often smile. I miss it so much. **** Singapore Air To Cut Flights To Various Asian Cities by Kevin Lim, Reuters **** Singapore's Casino Opening To Be Delayed - Report by Melanie Lee, Reuters The full opening of one of Singapore's casinos may be delayed due to construction issues and a shortage of labour, a local newspaper reported on Thursday. **** Las Vegas Sands Soars 80% After Talks With Singapore Government by Beth Jinks and Jean Chua, Bloomberg Las Vegas Sand Corp. soared a record 80 percent in New York trading after the Singapore government siad it was in talks with the casino company to help finish a $4 billion casino project in the city-state. The Singapore Tourism Board will "facilitate the success" of the project in downtown Singapore, the agency said. It didn't say how it would help or if it will provide financial support. **** Two Nite Owls Put To Sleep by Leong Wee Keat, Today Even though ridership has doubled within a year, the night-bus scene is set for a shake-up from tomorrow. **** How It's Fared For Cabbies by Leong Wee Keat, Today **** Toxic Towns by Singapore Life And Times Perhaps it is timely for these Town Councils who have invested and lsot in the Lehman products to account for the investment in full. **** Leadership: Doing And Saying by Groundnotes For our PAP ministers, leadership is a word, an idea, a catchphrase that is taught in expensive MBA or MPA programmes in Harvard or Yale. It's about what you say and what you say you are, but very rarely about what you do. **** Agnes Lin: A Victim Of The ST? by Choo Zheng Xi, The Online Citizen Twenty-year-old Ms Agnes Lin msut be Singapore's most loathed undergraduate, and all thanks to a Sunday Times article that portrayed her as a spoilt brat leeching off her parents to feed her expansive shopping tastes. **** TBT Trial Third And Fourth Day - The Question Of Equality - Article 12 Singapore Constitution by Chia Ti Lik Any allegation of unfair discrimination in executive acts ought to be examined as they were relevant because such acts will reveal a violation of Article 12 of the Constitution. From applesurf at myapplemenu.com Fri Oct 31 13:15:02 2008 From: applesurf at myapplemenu.com (applesurf at myapplemenu.com) Date: 31 Oct 2008 17:15:02 -0000 Subject: [MyAppleMenu] Oct 31, 2008 Message-ID: <20081031171502.25088.qmail@voot.pair.com> MyAppleMenu ==================================== **** 8 Things To Expect In The Next iPhone Update by Charlie Sorrel, Wired **** Apple's Web by Dave Winer, Scripting News Apple keeps doing this, trying to take ownership of things they didn't invent. It doesn't work, they don't end up owning it, they just keep their users from getting the benefits of Apple having competition. **** Review: Prince Of Persia: The Two Thrones by Chris Holt, Macworld Arguably the best Prince of Persia game to date, The Two Thrones offers players a diverse gaming experience with challenging combat, stealth, and platforming elements. **** The MacBook And The Cost Of Innovation by Tim Bajarin, PC Magazine Apple strives toward creating products that bring something new, something different, to computing. And I suspect Jobs will continue to price his Macs accordingly. **** A Mac Expert's Favorite Tools by Ryan Faas, Datamation Keeping any computer running at its best, or fixing its problems, is much like keeping your car in good shape. It requires regular maintenance. Here's a rundown of the best tools available and the types of chores that each is designed to handle. **** Apple Recruits Top Chip Designer, IBM Responds With Suit by Prince McLean, AppleInsider Apple recently recruited a top chip designer from IBM, resulting in a lawsuit that seeks to prevent the executive from taking his knowledge as "IBM's top expert in Power architecture and technology" to the Mac maker. **** Two Lighter-Weight Mac Todo Managers by Mike Gunderloy, Web Worker Daily **** Why It's Safer Than Ever To Buy First-Generation Hardware by Gizmodo Manufacturing is getting really good. Software updates are more powerful than ever. **** iPhone Apps Are A Trojan Horse For Music Pricing by Eliot Van Buskirk, Wired Apple's own App Store for the iPhone and iPod Touch already allows artists and labels to do an end-run around those pricing restrictions and experiment with alternate pricing models and even ad-supported music. **** Poor(er) People Buy iPhones, Drive 3G Growth by Gregg Keizer, Computerworld Counterintuitive as it sounds, lower-income buyers are driving sales of Apple's iPhone 3G, a web metrics company comSocre Inc. said today. **** New MacBooks Incompatible With Kensington Cable Locks by MacNN Apple lists the feature as a "Kensington lock slot," but owners have reported that the thickness of the aluminum prevents the standard locks from being used. **** Why I Just Bought Apple by Tim Beyers, Motley Fool CEO Steve Jobs and his team are doing exactly what they must: They're creating better, more integrated experiences and showing them off in these hugely profitable display cases that we call Apple retail stores. **** Easy iWeb Publisher 3.0 by Jason Snell, Macworld Free tool helps you upload your sites without using MobileMe. **** Japanese iPhone Owners To Be Offered TV Tuner Add-On by Sam Oliver, AppleInsider Addressing a widely-publicized feature omission for Japanese iPhone users, local carrier Softbank on Thursday announced plans to begin selling a TV Tuner add-on later this year that will also serve as an extended battery pack. **** Review: Dreamweaver CS4 by David Sawyer McFarland, Macworld Dreamweaver CS4 solidly addresses the technologies that web design professionals use and is a significant upgrade that offers a new set of tools for those who spend a lot of time with HTML, CSS, and JavaScrpt. **** Office 2008 Update Addresses Entourage + Exchange Issues by Chris Foresman, Ars Technica **** Further Testing Shows New MacBooks Limited To 6GB Of RAM by Chris FOresman, Ars Technica The Tomorrow Weblog ==================================== **** Ghost Story: Fear Of Microsoft Fades by Tom Steinert-Threlkeld, ZDNet.com Microsoft will still produce prodigious cash flow, for years to come. But all its money cannot bring back its ability to dictate how computing will evolve. MyAppleMenu Reader ==================================== **** Vote! by Jordan Ellenberg, Slate Why your ballot isn't as meaningless as you think. **** VA Hospital Confessional by Brain Turner, Virginia Quarterly Review SingaporeSurf ==================================== **** Judge Makes Major Ruling Without Hearing Defendants by Singapore Democratic Party **** LTA, NETS Say About 2,900 CashCards Caused ERP Payment Glitches by Ca-Mie De Souza, Channel NewsAsia **** Canberra May Open Lucrative Pacific Route by Matt O'Sullivan, Sydney Morning Herald Singapore Airlines' desire to challenge Qantas's stranglehold on the lucrative Australia-US route has received an unexpected flilip, the federal government revealing that it will consider allowing more carriers to fly across the Pacific. **** World's Next Great Cities by Matt Woolsey, Forbes Today Singapore features the world's busiest port and, based on assessments by Wim Elfrink, chief globalization officer of Cisco Systems, is rapidly becoming one of the world's centers for pharmaceutical research. That development strategy, focused on commerce over finance, might help soften the ensuing economic blow for many of the emerging cities on our list. **** Market Meltdown Busts Baby-Boomers' Retirement Dreams by AFP Disgruntled investors have been holding weekend gatherings at Singapore's Speakers' Corner since October 11 to demand financial institutions give back their investments. **** Employment Situation In Third Quarter 2008 by Ministry Of Manpower, Singapore Government Preliminary estimates show that employment grew by 57,800 in the third quarter this year. This was lower than the gains of 71,400 in the preceding quarter and 58,600 in the third quarter of 2007. **** Accountability Needed In Funds? by Chong Chee Wah, Today What are the checks and balances? **** Is Tan Kin Lian Heading Towards A Collision Course With The Estalishment? by Fang Zhi Yuan, The Wayang Party Club Of Singapore Tan Kin Lian is threading on increasingly dangerous grounds. **** Las Vegas Sands Say Singapore Casino On Track by Melanie Lee, Reuters Las Vegas Sands plans to open its Singapore casino by end-2009 as scheduled despite a report that the project will be delayed, a Singapore-based company executive said on Thursday. **** Double Standards On Library Silence Rule by Tan Siew Tin, Straits Times If the library has laid down one of its rules as silence, why does the management contradict its own rules by permitting noise in the library with live performances? **** Why Service Stations Are Making Fair, And Not Record, Profits by Loh Chee Seng, ExxonMobil Asia Pacific Pte Ltd, Straits Times We clarify that pump prices do not rise or fall at the same time as crude prices and by the same percentages for the simple reason that pump prices are affected by a combination of factors, and crude prices are just one of these many factors. **** Sleepers' Corner by Ledlati Tan, New Paper **** Pasar Malams Dying? Oh, I Really Hope So by S M Ong, New Paper I, for one, look forward to saying good night to the night markets for good. **** Retailers Face Hard Times by Tessa Wong, Straits Times A shake-up in the retail industry is looming as worries over the economic outlook threaten to crimp spending. Industry players are worried that the impact of the current downturn will be worse than that during the Sars outbreak in 2003, or the Asian financial crisis a decade ago. **** Health Ministry To Launch Campaign To Promote Organ Donation by Pearl Forss, Channel NewsAsia The "Live On" movement aims to promote altruistic living organ transplantation, and build up societal consciousness on organ donation after death.