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He wants a CTO.

The CTO’s mandate would be quite different from the Cybersecurity czar appointed under the Bush Administration. Bush’s czar helped defend against cyberattacks. Obama’s CTO, by contrast, would ensure government officials holds open meetings, broadcast live webcasts of those meetings, and use blogging software, wikis and open comments to communicate policies with Americans, according to the plan.

Interesting. I’ve been watching Obama as he rises in this election cycle (which I still can’t believe we’re in) and he’s been carefully crafting his message to fight the “inevitable” candidate, Sen. Clinton. Frankly, I find Obama a more honest, open candidate. Is he perfect? Of course not, but considering what’s been tossed into the ring from either party, I’m not all that excited anyway (Rudy? Puh-lease.)

So, who would he appoint to this post? My money’s on Lawrence Lessig. I could live with that choice very easily.

Go ahead, click that Back button.

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

Next on ABC News: America’s Bombing Campaign Not Producing Desired Goodwill Among Bombed; People Do Bad Things Despite Pleas to Stop; Oil Prices Rise Despite Constant Demand: Who’s To Blame?

ABC News: Report: Abstinence Not Curbing Teen Sex

Looks like the locals are ready for some change. After leading the city into lawsuits over the water system and raising  taxes, this little ‘burb got to vote yesterday. And it looks like the message is clear: it’s time for a change. 2 of 3 incumbents lost their bids to first time opponents, and the incumbent that did win did so by 5 votes. Better manage that money well. Results are available at ClickOnDetroit and eWashtenaw.

Quick aside: what the hell is going on in Ward 2 of Ann Arbor? A named candidate barely beat a write-in candidate? Ouch.

And, in other news of the sane, Hudsonville finally got rid of the ban on alcohol sales in town. Looks like all the beer and liquor at the Fair will come from businesses actually in the city this coming year. (Yeah, keep pretending no one drinks in Hudsonville.) Next up, let the kids dance!

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http://www.adultswim.com/video/vplayer/index.html

Also, the Adult Swim video website rocks your world.

Google announced GMail IMAP support on 10/24 at 6am. That was a little over 5.5 days ago.

Not to sound ungrateful, but you can’t announce a huge feature like that and then, you know, not deliver it. The announcing blog post even uses the beautifully indeterminate “couple of days” timeframe which, depending on your regional predications, could mean anywhere from 2 to however-many-we-feel-like days.

Ah well, when (or, if) it shows up I’ll be fine. The things you can get away with when you’re a monolithic corporation.

UPDATE (10/31): It showed up tonight; IMAP kicks ass.

The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people who can write know anything.
  – Walter Bagehot

Battlestar Gallactica delayed until April? titled: some amusing blog pun has some interesting tidbits about why if you care enough to use decoder highlighting to learn about it. 

I’m about over BSG at this point, especially if it takes a year to start a new season.

My next computer is very likely to be a Mac at this rate. For every feature of Vista that I like (native search), some idiotic thing just pisses me right off.

Tonight, it’s iTunes on Vista. Now, before you get all bent out of shape that it’s the fault of the app developer, I gotta go with this being Vista’s fault.

First, I’ve lost my iTunes library no fewer than 3 times since moving to Vista 4 months ago. It’s a pain in the ass to recovery from that because something on Vista makes iTunes take forever to write library changes (no idea what). I could easily chalk that up to an iTunes fault (and, actually lean that way), but iTunes works on my XP boxen just fine at the same version; what’s so frackin’ hard about Vista?

But tonight, tonight it’s Vista’s fault. As I continue to reload my entire library of videos into iTunes–again–I noticed that some videos I newly converted won’t play on my Vista box. They played fine on the Mac that made them, on the XP box I use at work, and on another XP box of a colleague.

After getting a Quicktime error on a file I know worked on this Vista box as recently as Monday, I hit Google. And, lo and behold, I found this:

As soon as I “Safely Removed” the USB FlashDrive, thereby turning off “ReadyBoost”, al 14 files loaded properly into iTunes, and played properly in Quicktime. [source]

Wouldn’t yah know it, I had plugged in a USB drive for the ReadyBoost benefits just this week. I unload the USB drive, double-click a file that had just failed on me and BAM it works.

That is, frankly, absolutely fucking stupid. What does or could ReadyBoost have to do with playing video files on Quicktime? Anyone?

So, now ReadyBoost is worthless to me, I still have to reload my entire library in iTunes, and I’m pissed. Working the checklist of new features in Vista, they’re not really helping me out much. ReadyBoost? Unusable. UAC? Please; disabled. Sidebar? Aside from a clock and the weather, the gadgets are worthless (and development is anemic).

Congratulations Microsoft; when I have the money, you’ve likely lost another long-time customer.