[MyAppleMenu] Apr 22, 2008

[applesurf at myapplemenu.com]

MyAppleMenu
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**** Apple Ramps-Up Chinese Retail Presence <http://www.macworld.co.uk/business/news/index.cfm?RSS&NewsID=21076>
by Jonny Evans, Macworld UK
Apple has taken another move to improve its retail presence in China, opening its first store-in-store set-up there as plans eerge for two Apple retail stores in the world's most populous country.

**** Close Call: Apple's OS X Almost Looked Exactly Like Mac OS Classic (From The Book Inside Steve's Brain) <http://gizmodo.com/382368/close-call-apple-os-x-almost-looked-exactly-like-os-8-from-the-book-inside-steves-brain>
by Gizmodo
There's a gem of a story&mdash;one of many&mdash;in Leander Kahney's new book, /Inside Steve's Brain/, about the biggest OS X mistake Apple never made: The original plan UI was to take the old crusty crap interface from Mac OS Classic and drop it on top of the core.

**** Mac Hack Contest Bug Had Been Public For A Year <http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/144921/mac_hack_contest_bug_had_been_public_for_a_year.html>
by Robert McMillan, IDG News Service
When Charlie Miller won US$10,000 for hacking into a MacBook Air laptop last month, he exploited a flaw that had beenpublicly disclosed nearly a year before the contest.
The flaw, it turns out, lay in an open-source software library called the Perl Compatible Regular Expressions (PCRE) library, which is used by many products including Apache, the PHP scripting language, and Apple's Safari browser, which Miller hacked to win the contest.

**** Open Letter To Steve Jobs: Apple Should Have A First Adopter Network Program And Give Discounts To Loyal Customers <http://blogs.zdnet.com/Foremski/?p=265>
by Tom Foremski, ZDNet.com
It is high time that Apple recognized this demographic and offered discounts on new products, such as the coming G3 iPhone to its most loyal customers first.

**** Apple Squeezes Orange To Subsidize iPhone Pricing <http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2008/04/apple-squeezes.html>
by Charlie Sorrel, Wired
According to French newspaper /Les Echos/, Apple is pushing Orange to subsidize iPhone handeset prices in order to shift more units.

**** Office 2008 Vs. iWork '08: Can They Get Along? <http://www.macworld.com/article/133041/2008/04/iwork08office2008.html>
by Dan Miller, Macworld
There are no guarantees.

**** AllBookmarks Sports New Interface <http://www.macworld.com/article/133093/2008/04/allbookmarks.html>
by Peter Cohen, Macworld
AllBookmarks installs in your Mac's menu bar and provides you with access to all your bookmarks from multiple browsers.

**** Why 'No Macs' Is No Longer A Defensible IT Strategy <http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/04/21/17FE-macs-in-business_1.html>
by Galen Gruman, InfoWorld
Once confined to marketing departments and media companies, the Mac is spilling ove into a wider array of business environments, thanks to the confluence of a number of computing trends, not the least among them a rising tide of end-user affinity for the Apple experience.

**** Apple Revises MacBook Pro Firmware With V1.5.1 <http://www.macnn.com/articles/08/04/21/macbook.pro.151.update/>
by MacNN

**** Mac Bundle Battle Royale <http://cultofmac.com/mac-bundle-battle-royale/1924>
by Leigh McMullen, Cult Of Mac
The MacHeist bundle looks to be a real starter. If you have use for even just a couple of the full featured applications in the package, it's worth the money.

**** Europe: Apple's "Little Pricing Lab" For iPhones <http://www.businessweek.com/technology/ByteOfTheApple/blog/archives/2008/04/europe_apples_i.html?campaign_id=rss_blog_byteoftheapple>
by Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek
Besides selling off unsold stocks, Munster suspects the price cuts are Apple's way of running experiments to help it determine the right price for future iPhone models.
/And will Asia be Apple's "Little Unlocking Lab"?/

The Tomorrow Weblog
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**** Rudy Rucker On Evangelism Of Ideas <http://www.evilgeniuschronicles.org/wordpress/2008/04/21/rudy-rucker-on-evangelism-of-ideas/>
by Dave Slusher, Evil Genius Chronicles

**** Tension Over Sports Blogging <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/21/business/media/21bloggers.html?ex=1366603200&en=dfd808ad5f928937&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss>
by Tim Arango, New York Times
The explosion of new media, especially with regard to advertising income, has made competitors out of two traditional allies &mdash; news media and professional sports.

**** Be Good <http://paulgraham.com/good.html>
by Paul Graham

MyAppleMenu Reader
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**** Harmless Poem <http://www.slate.com/id/2188048/?from=rss>
by Stuart Dischell, Slate

**** When Language Can Hold The Answer <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/22/science/22lang.html?ex=1366603200&en=ac4802e69669b22f&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss>
by Christine Kenneally, New York Times
In stark form, the debate was: Does language shape what we perceive, a position associated with the late Benjamin Lee Whorf, or are our perceptions pure sensory impressions, immune to the arbitrary ways that language carves up the world?
The latest research changes the framework, perhaps the language of the debate, suggesting that language clearly affects some thinking as a special device added to an ancient mental skill set. Just as adding features to a cellphone or camera can backfire, language is not always helpful. For the most part, it enhances thinking, But it can trip us up, too.

SingaporeSurf
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**** No Witch-Hunts, No Responsibilities <http://singaporeaninnz.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-witch-hunts-no-responsibilities.html>
by Singaporean In NZ
The public officials in Singapore (besides being the highest paid in the world) can afford to make mistakes even though their mistakes might put the entire country at risk.

**** Mr Wong Kan Seng, Resign <http://singabloodypore.rsfblog.org/archive/2008/04/22/mr-wong-kan-seng-resign.html>
by Chee Soon Juan, Singapore Democratic Party, Singabloodypore
Mr Wong Kan Seng, the SDP calls on you to stop passing the blame. Enough is enough. It is not the officers, it is not the window, it is not the toilet. It is you. Now do the right and decent thing: Resign.

**** The Mas(k) Of PAP's Accountability: One Sets Himself Free From Prison But Two Sets Of Standards <http://blueheeler.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/the-mask-of-paps-accountability-a-single-escape-but-two-sets-of-standards/>
by BothSidesOfTheJohorStraits
Or are you trying to say that some animals are /truly/ more equal than others???

**** Unity Call <http://yawshinleong.blogspot.com/2008/04/unity-call.html>
by Yaw Shin Leong
A breakthrough in Singapore's political scene can only take place when our opposition parties start to put aside differences and collectively strive towards a common platform, for our next Singapore's parliamentary general elections.

**** PM Lee Says Ministers Shouldn't Be Automatically Removed For Lapses Down The Line <http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/342918/1/.html>
by May Wong, Channel NewsAsia
Prime minister Lee Hsien Loong has said that public officers, including ministers, should not be automatically removed or punished just because a lapse has occurred down the line.
He said that while the government must admit its mistakes openly and honestly, Singapore should not encourage a culture where officials resign whenever something goes wrong on their watch or encourage witch-hunts.
See Also:
I Have Full Confidence In Wong Kan Seng: PM Lee <http://www.straitstimes.com/Latest%2BNews/Singapore/STIStory_229934.html>, by Straits Times.

**** The Truth About The KL-SG Bullet Train <http://www.shagadelica.net/?p=711>
by Shagadelica

**** The Great Hunt: More Management Failures Than Guards' Lapses <http://www.yawningbread.org/arch_2008/yax-867.htm>
by Au Waipang, Yawning Bread
In designing any system, it is foolish to assume that humans will do their jobs perfectly all the time. Any system must be designed to tolerate human failures to a fair extent and in the case of a detention facility, this means the physical security must be robust, for it is the physical security that can be planned well in advance and tested in good time. The failure to do so suggests a basic weakness in management and policy-making.

**** Mas Selamat's Escape: Amazing 11 Minutes! <http://eastcoastlife.blogspot.com/2008/04/mas-selamats-escape-amazing-11-minutes.html>
by Eastcoastlife
I'm annoyed that the Malay Cisco guard lied to me. I made time to attend today's parliament session but was denied entry for no apparent reason.

**** Mr Tea: Invasion Of The Foreign Hawkers! <http://ieatishootipost.sg/2008/04/mr-tea-invasion-of-foreign-hawkers.html>
by ieatishootipost
Drinking Mr Tea was a holy grail experience. The Teh Tarik is perfectly balanced, smooth, fragrant with a more than adequate tea taste without leaving that waxy tannin aftertaste.

**** 'Enforcing Discplien' Or 'Enforcing A Culture Of Forgiveness For Higher-Ups'? <http://blueheeler.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/enforcing-discipline-or-enforcing-a-culture-of-forgiveness/>
by BothSidesOfTheJohorStraits
So why are the junior officers to be chastised/punished, when the director of ISD who has rightly admitted fault gets to stay on the job? A PAP that prides itself on accountability must stick to its creed. Commissioning the COI and publishing the findings to the publc is only part of the accountability that PAP promises.

**** Was The Manhunt Properly Handled? <http://www.todayonline.com/articles/249684.asp>
by Nazry Bahrawi, Today
It was a question on several MPs' lips: Could the information made public about Mas Selamat's escape have been better managed?

**** No Evidence Rice Importers Are Colluding To Drive Up Prices, Says Iswaran <http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/342784/1/.html>
by Chio Su-Mei, Channel NewsAsia
There is no evidence that rice importers in Singapore are colluding to restrict supply and drive up prices, senior minister of state for trade and industry S Iswaran said on Monday.

**** For The Lack Of A Window Grill, A JI Terrorist Was Freed <http://military-life.blogspot.com/2008/04/for-lack-of-window-grill-ji-terrorist.html>
by Military Life: Memoirs Of A Conscript In The Lion City
It is clear that Director ISD will keep his pension. So the buck will stop at WDRC personnel as far as the chain of command goes.

**** Illegal For Employers To Accept Rebates For Hiring Foreign Workers <http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/342803/1/.html>
by Chio Su-Mei, Channel NewsAsia

**** A Fare Trade? <http://tnp.sg/news/story/0,4136,162684,00.html?>
by Mindy Tan, New Paper
Fare cheats are putting bus captains between a rock and a hard place.
When they do attempt to confiscate invalid ez-link cards that are used to pay fares, bus captains occasionally face abuse and violence. But if they do not seize any invalid cards, they will not gain merit points for their work appraisal.

**** I Saw More Than A Dozen PAP MPs Asleep In Parliament Today <http://uncleyap-news.blogspot.com/2008/04/i-saw-more-than-dozen-pap-mps-asleep-in.html>
by Kengho Yap, News Release By UncleYap

**** No CCTV. No Grilles. No Guards. No Dogs. No Barbed Wire. Just One Big Open Windows, And A Lot Of Toilet Paper To Cushion Impact. <http://mrwangsaysso.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-cctv-no-grilles-no-guards-no-dogs-no.html>
by Mr Wang Says So
Overall, the security just seems so lax. Jurong Bird Park keeps its birds under tighter security.

**** Mas Selamat: 3 Steps To Freedom... <http://singaporemind.blogspot.com/2008/04/mas-selamat-3-steps-to-freedom.html>
by Diary Of A Singaporean Mind
Our greatest vulnerability is the crowded buses and MRT trains during the morning rush hour. The way I see it, it is a matter of security to have buses and trains run more frequently so that they are not packed like sardine cans.

**** Mas Escape <http://singaporesojourn.blogspot.com/2008/04/mas-escape.html>
by Singapore Sojourn
To the government's credit they have been as candid as they can in this matter.