Admiral Mike Mullen said that the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy should be lifted.

Democratic Sen. Mark Udall said his Colorado constituents pride themselves on allowing others to live and let live.

“You don’t have to be straight to shoot straight,” said Udall, quoting libertarian Barry Goldwater.

About time. This is one of the most discriminatory policies we have. The military is supposed to build upstanding leaders, but officially requires all homosexuals to lie about their sexual orientation. It’s not that hard to see the conflict there.

It’s incredibly dumb to kick out, and discourage from even joining, perfectly-qualified people just because they’re homosexual, when we need every man and woman we can get to serve in our military.

One more note: Republicans that support the policy should be ashamed of themselves. Not allowing homosexuals to serve their nation, or to serve openly, is not supporting our military or country. It’s discriminating against individuals who serve with just as much honor as others, and it is hurting our country by keeping capable men and women out of the military.

TidBITS has some great insight into the iPad up, including a few little UI touches that we haven’t seen before.

They also had this to say about handwriting:

At no point did we wish we could write on the iPad with a stylus and have it recognize our handwriting. Although handwriting recognition has improved significantly since the days of the original Newton, it’s just not a good computing input mechanism. Just because you’re holding something that roughly resembles the shape of a notepad doesn’t mean it needs to be treated like one.

Handwriting, though, would be useful for a number of people — anyone who’s moving around and needs to take down quick notes while they’re standing and holding the device in one hand. Typing with the keyboard just doesn’t work very well in these cases.

Omni Group is bringing five of their applications to the iPad, including OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner. They’re excited about the iPad because:

Remember how Macintosh was intended to be the computer “for the rest of us”? That’s what we feel Apple’s iPad is: the best computing device for most of the things people use computers for.

Great news. I can’t wait to see how they bring OmniGraffle to the iPad.

Joshua Blankenship thinks the iPad is mostly just for consumption:

At its core, the iPad is a consuming machine, not a creating machine (at least in its currently presented iteration.) Yes, I understand there are quite a few of those 140,000 apps in the App Store that allow people to create and share, but only under very specific constraints. And not nearly on the level that I can with my laptop.

But the iPad is not designed to fill my desire to create, it’s mainly designed for me to consume the creations of others. It will change the landscape of personal computing and find its way into the hands of a ridiculous amount of people who are very happy to simply consume. My hands just won’t be among them anytime soon. I have too much creating to do.

Blankenship’s basic argument is that the iPad is, even though you can create on it using iWork or third-party applications, primarily for consumption because of its constraints. You can’t type on it as well. The hardware is limited. The UI possibilities are limited.

The first isn’t really a limitation — you can use a keyboard. The third will change in time (a 2 GHz iPad would be perfectly capable of doing all kinds of work). The third is the only real limitation of note.

But I think this misses the point.

Blankenship is defining “creative” work very narrowly, and inaccurately. A touch UI may limit certain kinds of work — for example, no matter what, a Photoshop-like application with the same depth of features may never work — but he’s limiting creative work to kinds that seem dependent on a windows-based and mouse-driven UI: Photoshop design, photography, video editing, application and web development, et cetera.

These aren’t the only kinds of creative work.¹ Drawing and painting are ideally-suited to a touch tablet. There’s no reason you can’t write just as effectively on a tablet than on a regular computer (and with Hockenberry’s point, there’s good reason to think you’ll write better). Architects would certainly benefit from being able to create new building designs anywhere they get inspiration, or even edit the design on site while it’s being constructed. Teachers and students would benefit immeasurably from textbooks, the web, and iWork all on one device. Doctors could finally get rid of the rooms full of paperwork and their clipboards. Campaign workers can carry it with them, house to house, to show people their campaign materials, sign them up for the campaign, and log their response. And…

You get the idea. The iPad might be limited for the types of creation that we in the creative professional community are used to, but this isn’t the only kind of creative work people do. There’s all kinds, kinds that you and I might not be able to conceive right now but someone else can, a kind that a computer that weighs 1.5 pounds and can be carried around anywhere a magazine can will enable.

That’s what the iPad is all about. This isn’t about consumption. This is about opening up the future.

1. And, really, some of these may work even better in a touch-based UI. Video editing, photography, and application/web development all seem on first blush to either work fine in a touch UI, or in an improved manner. [↩]

ArsTechnica has large gallery of the iPad.

Look at Safari — the search bar has live search suggestions just like the desktop version.

Craig Hockenberry on the iPhone OS’s single-application focus:

There’s an inherent benefit to only doing one thing at a time: the load of worrying about other tasks is lifted. Knowing that there isn’t anything else competing for your attention is quite liberating.

Of course, the iPad is an extension of this.

What I find most interesting is the inclusion of the iWork applications. I suspect that we’ll all benefit from working in Pages, Numbers and Keynote without the distractions of the web, Twitter or chat. And in the long run, we’ll prefer it.

Hockenberry is exactly right. Writing on an iPad could be a much more focused experience, more similar to a typewriter than a computer.

Apple’s iPad page is up.

Let’s just get this out of the way right now: it’s a terrible name. I don’t know what they’re thinking. Maybe they like dumb jokes.

So here it is: the hardware is what we expected, and the OS mostly is as well. The Mail application shows some unique uses of the screen real estate, however.

Apple has their own ebook-reading application plus book store, and it looks fantastic. Why didn’t they do the same thing for other publications, though?

Apple developed a new version of iWork just for it. Along with the keyboard dock, this could replace a notebook for most people. It browses the web, plays their music and movies, runs games, and they can create documents, presentations and spreadsheets on it. For most users, that’s all they need.

So we have a device that is more portable than any notebook, plays *video* for 10 hours, is a great ebook reader, and can be used for productivity.

That’s a big deal. For a lot of people, like students and normal computer users, this could be their only computing device. For others who do more involved tasks, an iPad combined with a capable MacBook Pro or iMac would be incredible. The iMac or MacBook Pro would be used almost exclusively at the desk for real computing tasks: editing video, photos, developing applications, designing web sites… And for everything else — browsing the web on the couch, reading a book in bed, the newspaper in the morning, and whatever else, they use the iPad.

Apple is going all out here. The device isn’t really a satellite device to the notebook. At some point, when it is more developed and has a bigger processor, this device will replace the notebook computer altogether.

The Hayek vs Keynes Rap. Very well done, and it stuffs quite a lot of information in. If you want a quite good overview of the Keynes and Hayek debate (perhaps the most relevant debate in the 20th and now the 21st century) in a wonderfully-silly format, watch it.

Thread & Water. Great t-shirts, for a great cause. All proceeds go to supporting clean water in Haiti.

It’s by a bunch of great people, including Phil Coffman and Joshua Blankenship. The shirts (and the web site) look fantastic.

Ma Jian, commenting on the world’s silence toward China’s abuses:

China’s economy needs world markets as much as world markets need China, if not more. Moreover, the West’s inclination to appease China will gradually cause ordinary Chinese to lose confidence that economic modernization will ever set them free. So continued silence when poets, writers, or lawyers – people like Shi Tao, Yang Tianshui, and Tan Zuoren – are treated like criminals will only assure that China’s markets are eventually lost alongside Chinese freedoms. A closed society will eventually return to a closed economy.

The real criminal in the Liu Xiaobo affair is, of course, the Chinese state. But those who think that China’s mutant political authoritarianism and mighty economy can long prevail are guilty as well. Such a system is as unsuited to the future as Mao’s system was to the past.

He’s right, of course. The CCP, like all dynasties of China’s past, has quieted the people’s discontent with economic growth.

You can’t discuss “sensitive” political issues (e.g., the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, Tibet, Falun Gong) in public for fear of being arrested, much less in Tiananmen Square itself, which is crawling with police, soldiers, video cameras and microphones. You can’t search or discuss them online.

Anything that is inconvenient to the government is cleansed and hidden, discussion forbade. The government wants the people to stay in an economically-induced stupor, so the CCP can stay in control. As long as the economy keeps growing, they believe, criticism will be muted.

The West has enabled this by respecting China’s “sovereignty” and not criticizing their actions as forcefully as we should. Ma cites Obama’s visit to China, where he more or less bent to every wish of the regime. This gives legitimacy to the government’s repressive policies, which deserve none. This doesn’t mean the West should cut off all trade and connection with China; rather, I think that more connection with the country — political, economic, and cultural — is necessary to help China to a liberal government. But what it does mean, is that while we trade with China, we should be honest: the PRC is a terribly-repressive government. No lecturing, just honesty.

So that’s our role: form a solid and genuine connection with the Chinese people, but be honest about the PRC’s abuses.

The CCP is right, too, at least for a while. As long as their economy continues to grow at such a magnificent rate, and the people benefit from it, then the people will hold off in their criticism. But whether they like it or not, the CCP will face public discord sometime in the near future. 7-10% GDP growth is in no way sustainable. Usually in Chinese history, when the public is unhappy with the ruling government, they funnel their displeasure into rebellion. They topple the government, and someone rises to take full control again and replace it. This cycle is as old as China.

But unlike the past, the CCP now has a choice. They can retain full control of the country, and thus receive the full brunt of public anger, or they can allow that anger to vent in a more productive manner: into a democratic process. If the CCP allows other political parties to exist and run for election, making it one party among many, it could very well survive. Rather than topple the government (the system) itself, the people could merely elect another party to power, and when they fall out of favor, the CCP is waiting in the wings.

This has precedence in Taiwan. Taiwan, after being taken over by Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT when they fled mainland China in 1949, was a one-party state until Chiang’s son began instituting democratic reforms in the 1980s. While the Democratic Progressive Party won many elections during the 1990s and 2000s, the KMT took a majority in their legislature and won the presidency in 2008. One party opening up control to a multi-party system doesn’t necessarily mean a permanent loss of power.

Indeed, that’s the only long-term way I can see the CCP remaining in power in China. Ironically, it may be the CCP’s desire to remain in control that ultimately opens China to democracy.

That doesn’t mean the West can sit back and let it happen, however. Ma’s fear that the lack of political liberalization as a result of economic liberalization, and the West’s silence on it, may resign the Chinese public to the cynical belief that they will never see political liberalization is valid and frightening. If that becomes the case, we may doom the PRC to China’s historical rhythm: public discontent, rebellion and anarchy, and finally a strong-willed leader who takes absolute control. And if that happens, China will have no hope of political and liberalization.

TechCrunch is reporting that Jobs said that the tablet is the most important thing he’s ever done.

Who knows if the report is true or not, but it sums up people’s expectations for the tablet quite nicely. We are expecting the tablet to completely change how we read publications, or consume media, or… something. But we’re expecting it to completely change something on an iPhone-like level.

Leo Laporte was talking about this today, and said that Apple can’t just hit a double or a triple — it has to hit a home run. Everything less will be considered a failure.

I think the tablet is going to be much more difficult than the iPhone was, because it’s more ambitious in what it’s trying to do. We were expecting very simple things from Apple conceptually for the iPhone: make a better phone, and add in a good iPod. Apple delivered something much more of course, but the hurdle was a lot lower.

The tablet is different. The tablet is inherently something we don’t need. We can read news and magazines online, watch movies and browse the web on our iPhone or computer. We won’t buy it because it fulfills a need, but because it’s so much better at doing these things.

Those are tough expectations to meet. But only Apple can do it, because they’re the only ones who dare to make such a dramatic change. There’s nothing more inspiring than that.

Justin Williams on Indie+Relief:

For an idea to go from a single tweet to a massive, worldwide charity drive in the span of six days is impressive and possibly insane. That said, I’d do it again in a heartbeat (though I hope that won’t be necessary).

I just now learned of Justin Williams and Garrett Murray’s Indie+Relief, and what an incredibly great idea it is. They raised over $140,000 to donate to Haiti relief.

This is the Mac community at its finest.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden:

I would not subtract anything from the praise that is due to philanthropy, but merely demand justice for all who by their lives and works are a blessing to mankind. I do not value chiefly a man’s uprightness and benevolence, which are, as it were, his stem and leaves. Those plants of whose greenness withered we make herb tea for the sick serve but a humble use, and are most employed by quacks. I want the flower and fruit of a man; that some fragrance be wafted over from him to me, and some ripeness flavor our intercourse. His goodness must not be a partial and transitory act, but a constant superfluity, which costs him nothing and of which he is unconscious. This is a charity that hides a multitude of sins. The philanthropist too often surrounds mankind with the remembrance of his own castoff griefs as an atmosphere, and calls it sympathy. We should impart our courage, and not our despair, our health and ease, and not our disease, and take care that this does not spread by contagion.

Charity is typically praised, for it is given without expectation and desire for compensation (This certainly is doubtful, however), while for-profit business is held in low regard — because profiting, that is, expecting a return for the work done beyond merely covering simple costs, is a part of the motivation. The achievements of the former are hailed, and their givers held in great respect, but the suggestion that the latter has made any great achievement and contribution to our advancement is likely to be met with a smirking chuckle followed by some caustic words whose wit was long ago lost, whose tone suggests a belligerent self-assuredness that only words of common wisdom can be encapsulated in. The former is praised because it is seen as sacrifice, while the latter is chastised for its “selfishness.”

I don’t find this a proper arrangement. Why should providing help to someone, without expectation of some compensation, be valued more than the beneficial results of someone working for their own reasons?

Charity certainly is important; providing aid so people can succeed again is necessary and, when the person deserves it, a great act. But ultimately, even at its finest, charity is merely the placing of a coat over a puddle, the filling in of a missing step. Charity does nothing of motivating the person to aspire to do something great — lead an upright life, write a life’s achievement, become truly excellent at one’s career, or any other admirable paths — it simply bridges the gap.

But the life of someone who has lived for their own reasons, and achieved something as a result, can provide infinite motivation for as many people as there are in the world, for all of time. Reading of the lives and acts of people thousands of years past can be just as grabbing and inspiring as it would be when they walked the earth.

It seems to me, then, that a person’s greatest contribution isn’t how much stuff they give away, but whether they live for their own reasons and morality, and succeed based on it. A person’s own triumphs are like new wood in a fire for others, inspiring the best in them.

Richard Wolffe, an MSNBC analyst, said that according to administration sources, the White House is considering whether intelligence about the Christmas bomber was willfully ignored within the intelligence community:

“Is it a case of the agencies having so much rivalry between them that they were more determined to stymie each other or the centralized system rather than dealing with the terrorist threat or was it just that there were so many dots no one could connect them because it was all too random to figure out,” Wolffe said.

“Seems that the president is leaning very much towards thinking this was a systemic failure by individuals, who maybe had an alternative agenda.”

If the White House is truly considering whether there is a conspiracy in the intelligence community to allow a terrorist attack occur, then this is absolutely unbelievable. If true, this administration has stepped across a line it will never be able to get on the other side of again, and it is despicable. They will have lost all legitimacy.

Wolffe already is a jackass for even suggesting this is possible. He is saying that a group of Americans within our intelligence community are conspiring to allow Americans to die from a terrorist attack. He is accusing them of treason of the highest kind.

Andy Ihnatko doesn’t think Apple will offer a content store for the tablet:

Are you an independent publisher? Or maybe even just an author with a collection of short-stories? Great. Hook up with an iPhone developer and hand over a copy of your book in PDF or HTML format. He or she can quickly stick it in an app wrapper and you can release it as an saleable ebook without going through any publishers or distributors. There’s no vetting process; Apple is happy to just take 30 percent of the purchase price.

Hey may be right, but I don’t think it’s the best way to do it. I explained my reasoning when Jason Snell argued the same thing: it makes for a poor experience, and this will lead to publishers making their content free again to try to get readers. And that means we aren’t in any better a position than we are today.

Neven Mrgan doesn’t want this, either, for a different reason: it’s really, really hard for writers to develop their own iPhone application.

Both arguments are convincing. I hope Apple does create a content store, and a common reading application or something similar.