Re Apple.

Apple is in serious trouble. The Depression is not going away any time soon, Obama and Dem's various idiocies, not limited to excessive taxation, deficit spending, cap and trade massive energy price hikes, gutting manufacturing, and other Yuppie fantasy idiocies of how to run an industrial nation, are going to severely press consumers.

Status displays are only affordable when there is excess money to signal status. When it's a matter of affordability, Apple loses. It's already losing. Apple absolutely needs budget computers in the Desktop and Laptop line that are far more affordable, while maintaining some segmentation with ostentatious status-displays. They are not any different than Harley Davidson, or Mercedes, or luxury brands in general which are all hurting, along with Starbucks. Only Wal-Mart and McDonalds are well positioned, the Depression which will last years making it a Wal-Mart world.

Re Secession.

It's likely, when Obama and Dems pass things like Gun Bans, or mandatory national recognition of Gay Marriage, or other deeply SWPL Yuppie ideolog goals. Already Montana and Oklahoma have passed laws nullifying potential Federal gun bans. Obama and Dems clearly want a national gun ban and confiscation, because they hate guns and more importantly, gun owners. And want deeply a national Gay Marriage Law. Either of these can cause "soft succession" which would be 10th Amendment nullification of Federal laws as unconstitutional infringement on State's duly noted powers. Of course the Supreme Court would hold that the 10th Amendment is null and void like the Second and First, setting up a "let them enforce it" struggle. Particularly since Depression + Liberalism = massive, minority against White crime waves, and guns particularly handguns have real utility in stopping murderous attacks.

As for Obama, he's worshipped as a living God by his base of Yuppies, Women, Gays, Blacks, Hispanics, Academics, and Media morons. Anything he does is OK by them. Moreover they'd welcome a dictatorship because the biggest struggle in the West is that between the urban elites who HATE the average person and cultural traditions and the nuclear family, and the average person who hates the elites.

Eventually, things will come to a head because of nuclear weapons in the hands of terrorists. Pakistan hangs by a thread, particularly since Robert Gates says the Taliban will "never" get their hands on nukes (assume they already have). Obama and his Yuppie Scum would rather surrender to Sharia (it only impacts "the little people" after all) than fight and empower Joe Average and Joe Average won't tolerate American cities being nuked without halving the world's population of Muslims. That's the contradiction of a Yuppie Elite and President who hate/loathe American traditions and most Americans, and the requirement of most people not to be nuked into cinders.

Posted by: whiskey on May 7, 2009 10:39 PM

Awesome, Whiskey has promoted me to an "elite!" Always thought I was pretty average, myself, but I guess the bar has been lowered.

I reiterate: dumbest post and dumberer comment thread ever.

Posted by: JV on May 7, 2009 11:20 PM

BTW, whiskey is "testing99" over at Steve Sailer's blog.

Most commenters here probably already know, but just wanted to point it out.

Posted by: wanninski on May 8, 2009 3:25 AM

That's true about Whiskey? Smart, interesting guy, if a little far into the intricacies of his own thought. But why does he change his handle?

Hey, about Macs and the arts ... I happened to go to a workshop of a theater piece last night. Total no-budget thing, but slick in its tiny way. Sound was being handled by a gal with a Mac. I talked to her for a few minutes about it. Why a Mac? Basically she explained it this way: Arts people prefer Macs, because Macs are prettier and less techie than PCs. So much arts software gets written for the Mac. Which in turn makes it obligatory for people coming into the arts to work on Macs. The package she was using to run sound, for instance: only for the Mac. So if you're in the arts, you're almost certainly a Mac person.

At the media place where I worked, the designer/photography departments were all on Macs, though the rest of the org was on PCs.

When The Wife and I made our audiobook, we did it at a snazzy sound studio (a place that makes most of its money from TV ads, movies, trailers, etc). All on Mac. About a dozen computers, hundreds of external hard drives, complex networks ... ProTools was the software package. The geek-rockers who actually engineered the audiobook for us were plenty tech-savvy, and plenty irreverent about the computers and about ProTools. But they basically took it for granted that people in the creative-sound field would be working on Macs.

FWIW, of course.

Posted by: Michael Blowhard on May 8, 2009 8:56 AM

"I reiterate: dumbest post and dumberer comment thread ever."

And you keep showing up.

Posted by: Stu Pidd on May 8, 2009 9:34 AM

* Would Apple finally rule the world if it ever came out with an aggressively priced computer?

Yes.

* What would the federal government do if (fill in states' names) actually seceded?

Yank all Fed support and watch the madness ensue.

* Would academia, the mainstream media and the other usual suspects support him if Barack Obama proclaimed himself President-for-Life?

No, they would go apeshit. As they should. C'mon. What a bunch of whiners righties are. And funny how something that was actually close to a reality under Bush is now being floated as something Obama would do. When will we ever get out of the wingnut house of mirrors?

Posted by: yahmdallah on May 8, 2009 10:58 AM

"It is impossible to make any sense at all of that statement."

That's ok, we don't expect a lot from you.

Posted by: Upstate Guy on May 8, 2009 10:59 AM

Another example of upporters of Obama being critical when he deserves it and capable of thinking for themselves:

LINK

"No, academia, the media, and "the other usual suspects" would not support him if he did that"

No, not all!

Posted by: A New Day, Brothers on May 8, 2009 11:43 AM

Upstate, brrrr!

You are saying Obama is less likely than Bush to do something that Bush did not do. The likelihood of a past event that did not occur is zero. So Obama is less likely to do something with a zero likelihood. I get it now!

As for yamdallah's comment: And funny how something that was actually close to a reality under Bush is now being floated as something Obama would do. When will we ever get out of the wingnut house of mirrors?

You call righties wingnuts? Kettle! Pot! Rendezvous! Hang out! Spend some time!

Jesus! Now Bush is being pilloried not for what he did, but what he might have done but didn't do but was more likely to have done but didn't than Obama is likely to do but won't?

Okay.

Sorry about you not expecting more from me, Upstate. After long experience, I've learned not to expect anything like sense or a straightforward response from intellectually bankrupt partisan leftist hacks like you.

Posted by: PatrickH on May 8, 2009 1:41 PM

Oh, and by the way, the likelihood of Obama declaring himself P for L is ZERO OBVIOUSLY.

And the likelihood of the most rabidly left-wing media supporting him as P for L if for some UTTERLY INSANE reason he declared himself such is also ZERO OBVIOUSLY FREAKING ZERO.

And the likelihood of secession is ZERO TOTALLY COMPLETELY ZERO IT CAN'T GET MORE ZERO THAN THE ZERO OF ITS UTTER ABSOLUTE ZERO-NESS.

P.S. I am a right-wing wingnut nutbar nutty nut, but I think--even in my insane evil right-wing withered blasted heart--that poor farkin' Obama should be given at least a BIT OF A FARKING CHANCE to get some policies in place, get some stuff done. Just a chance, seeing as how he's, oh, a little over a hundred days into his frackin' goldarned Presidency (for four years NOT LIFE)?

Like, maybe, just a chance?

That is all.

Posted by: PatrickH on May 8, 2009 1:54 PM

Regarding Macs:

Maybe my modest Midwestern upbringing has left me at a disadvantage when it comes to perceived status gained by material things like clothes, cars, and computers, as I could care less how people are judging me for my computer (or car). Shoe snobs are the most confounding of all to me.

If I could get a full mac system for around $300, as I can with a decently loaded PC, I would buy a couple (because the kids would never let me use mine if they didn't have one, too).

The supposed cheap mac - the mac mini - is still $600 for a very basic system, and that's just the cpu/hd/dvd. I still have to spring for monitor, keyboard, and a mouse if I don't have them already.

I agree with M. Blowhard that the mac user experience is superior to a windows box (especially if you've had to use Vista). The only place Microsoft still owns is its office suite, but OpenOffice is a very viable alternative, and it will be my software of choice on newer systems that won't run my way old version of MS office.

Or if I can afford a mac.

Posted by: yahmdallah on May 8, 2009 3:57 PM

Of course, Obama would not try to be president for life if he has any sense. Politics has become a sort of a hot potato game. Look at Bush.

It seemed like Bush wanted to get the heck out of Washington before the dire warnings of financial collapse came about while he was still running/ruining the country. He frantically tossed the hot potato to Barack.

Obama is maxing out the U.S. credit card. Right now he is doing it with confidence, but if disaster or disasters strike, he may be looking to hide in a spare room at the ranch in Crawford, too. If we squeak by his term or terms, he can toss the potato to Hillary. If the storm clouds are gathering, he will toss it to a Republican.

In the near future, though, some unlucky pol is going to be stuck holding a white phosphorous potato. We can then all unite as one people, one nation to say: OUCH.
sN

Posted by: sN on May 9, 2009 3:50 AM

1) No. The annoying Mac commercials by themselves would prevent that.

2) Probably nothing. It would depend on what kind of president was in office, though. Civil War II is not in the cards.

3) Sure--but not without a fig-leaf of some kind.

Posted by: thaprof on May 9, 2009 6:19 PM

Quidnunc: "Loyal forces have to get there to stop the seizure before those weapons get grabbed and dispersed by secesh forces. If federal troops try to retake the seized weapons..."

Apparently you think nuclear weapons are left sitting in warehouses with no protection beyond a watchman and some padlocks.

In fact all nuclear weapons are held on Federal military bases, protected by thousands of heavily armed guards.

For instance, Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one of the three bases where Minuteman ICBMs with nuclear warheads are located. There are 150 ICBMs there. Malmstrom also has a 1,200-man Security Forces Squadron specifically assigned to protect the missiles. The missile facilities are themselves "hard targets", built to resist nuclear attack (to survive airbursts and near-misses).

You think that, say, some Montana state police could walk in and seize control?

"Look what happened in the former Yugoslavia."

Yugoslavia is no model for the U.S. Its divisions were linguistic and religious borders that were many centuries old. Army and regional security forces were organized into ethnically distinct units for linguistic reasons. There were extremely bloody internal struggles between Yugoslavian ethnic groups within living memory.

Posted by: Rich Rostrom on May 9, 2009 7:30 PM

"Apparently you think nuclear weapons are left sitting in warehouses with no protection beyond a watchman and some padlocks.

In fact all nuclear weapons are held on Federal military bases, protected by thousands of heavily armed guards.

For instance, Malmstrom AFB in Montana is one of the three bases where Minuteman ICBMs with nuclear warheads are located. There are 150 ICBMs there. Malmstrom also has a 1,200-man Security Forces Squadron specifically assigned to protect the missiles. The missile facilities are themselves "hard targets", built to resist nuclear attack (to survive airbursts and near-misses).

You think that, say, some Montana state police could walk in and seize control?"

Rich, whatever could go wrong with all the security and everything?

LINK

"Yugoslavia is no model for the U.S. Its divisions were linguistic and religious borders that were many centuries old. Army and regional security forces were organized into ethnically distinct units for linguistic reasons. There were extremely bloody internal struggles between Yugoslavian ethnic groups within living memory."

Yugoslavia isn't a model, just an example. Why there has never been any racial, ethnic or political discord in the US. Perish the thought!

Posted by: Unlocked Footlocker on May 12, 2009 12:01 PM

Lots -- perhaps most -- computer scientists use Macs because it is Unix under the hood. You don't need to do any hackery with Cygwin to get the raw power of the command line at your disposal -- Terminal.app is right there.

If you use Windows you are probably not a highly technical person. Some people default into Windows because the only language they know how to code in is Matlab. But if you're doing data analysis, compiler design, physics, bioinformatics, statistics...Macs are where it's at.

Why waste time trying to find the latest version of a given file (linear searching the hard drive!) when you can do something like

locate foo | xargs ls -alrth

and get it instantly?

Note that these reasons are the complete opposite of Michael Blowhard's reasons. Both nontechnical and hypertechnical people prefer Macs. That is a very unstable situation for Windows market share.

Posted by: gc on May 13, 2009 4:31 AM

"Lots -- perhaps most -- computer scientists use Macs because it is Unix under the hood. You don't need to do any hackery with Cygwin to get the raw power of the command line at your disposal -- Terminal.app is right there."

This. The move from sun workstations to Macs has been commonplace in the sciences over the past few years (and trust me, most scientists have little interest in status objects). With my Mac, I can use cool, Mac-y things like iPhoto and iTunes, write documents in Word, or open a xterm window and pop up latex, idl, etc. And all on a platform that I find stable and intuitive.

I find the reverse snobbery of anti-Mac folks amusing.

Posted by: CyndiF on May 14, 2009 11:53 AM






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