Author: Eliot Lear

I have an expression that I have ruthlessly stolen from Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, and it is,  “A double dumb-ass on you!”  Today I say that to Apple, for walking into a minefield with iTunes, and controlling what applications they allow on the iPhone and iPod Touch.  It seems that someone wrote an game called Baby Shaker, in which the idea is to cause the baby on the screen brain damage.  The game is sickening and tasteless, which I generally like, but in this case, it even turned me off.

So why is Apple in trouble?  They approved publication of the game and then after parental outrage they withdrew the approval.  Oops!  Somehow to Apple this debacle was not predictable.  Here is a lesson that many in the print media as well as the networking business already know.  If you attempt to control content at all, you take some responsibility for that content.  In no way can the iTunes store be viewed as an open market, in the same way, say as eBay.  And even eBay caves into pressure to remove some items from auction.

This is only the latest in a series of minor goofs they’ve made, the last one being the other side of this coin- they had a backlog of applications that people wanted approved for release on iTunes.  Instead of simply hiring more people they seem to have relaxed their standards.  Good news for developers, but bad news for consumers who are not careful, and bad news for Apple’s image.

The purpose of Apple’s review is nominally to ensure that an application does not interfere with the proper functioning of the consumer device.  When you have millions of these things out there, the last thing you want is to increase your support costs (such as people clogging Genius Bars) due to a poorly written application.  Of course, that’s not the only reason Apple has control.  They want a cut of the money for for-profit apps.  And indeed they would have profited from the distribution of this app, which sold for $0.99.  But if you want a piece of the action you have to work for it, and in this case Apple did not.  Even though the iPhone and iTunes largely sustained Apple’s top line growth, the company cut corners on the editorial review that they seemingly hold so dear.

Attorney General Holder this week said that it would be unfair to prosecute members of the CIA who participated in war crimes, simply because someone in the Justice Department told them it was okay.  This is tremendously disappointing news.  President Obama and his team could have sent the message that no person is above the law, that your time will come if you break the law, and if you torture.  Instead, the message they sent was that it was okay to simply follow orders of an ideologically extreme administration.  And the administration sent the message to the rest of the world that America does not hold its own accountable.  Nothing could have undermined the president’s to mend fences with the world.

Someone once said that the worst evil is not committed by those who act, but by those who do not.  Shame on this administration for not acting.

I’ve been told never to argue with drunks, and never to kick people when they’re down.  What happens, however, when they throw the first punch, verbally or otherwise?

CNN has reported a poll that 72% of Americans disagree with Former Vice President Dick Cheney’s assertion that the Obama administration is worsening America’s security.  Whether we are improving our security is an important question, and while clearly the last administration did a dismal job at diplomacy that led to America’s isolation, why go there now?

The answer  is that Vice President Dick Cheney chose to open his mouth.  There is an unwritten rule in executive politics that you do not speak ill of either your successor or your predecessor.  The reason is obvious: it looks like sour grapes.  Cheney has vested his ego in an approach that the American people have demonstrably disagree with.  It is also possible that the man whose policies were a huge source of controversy misses the limelight.  And it is certainly true that Cheney believes that his policies were the correct ones, and that the dismantling of those policies are dangerous: he’s not lying.

This leaves open the question of whether Vice President Joe Biden should engage in the same kind of dirt throwing, negative politics.  It goes back to the Vince Lombardi rule: when you get to the end zone, act like you’ve been there before.  Having exited with the lowest opinion poles in history, Cheney is not in a position to affect public opinion.  So why then engage him?