monkinetic weblog | redmonk.net

Supreme Court Justices Scalia and Breyer participated in a debate sponsored by the American Constitution Society and the Federalist Society. On Slate.com, Dahlia Lithwick descibes their diverging styles:

And if this debate mirrors a marketplace of ideas, Breyer will make the sale through the earnest personal connection of a Wal-Mart greeter, while Scalia opts for the aloof certainty of the Tiffany’s salesman: “Sure, you can buy some other, cheaper constitutional theory, but really. Ew.”

The closer is great as well:

Stephen Breyer’s jurisprudential Grover—sweet and optimistic and eager-to-please—is working the room, confident he’ll sell us on his constitutional theory, one lawyer at a time. And Antonin Scalia’s constitutional Oscar the Grouch—frustrated and misunderstood, yet somehow more lovable for it—doesn’t even try to close the deal. He doesn’t need us to vindicate him. He’s confident history will do that.

This is repulsive: Republicans Set Obstacles for Incoming Democrats, and I’m ashamed I voted for anyone involved in this.

For better or worse, the people voted for the new Congress and these kinds of tactics should be seen as a slap in the face of the American People. Not only were the Republicans caught completely off-guard (inexcusably) by the public backlash over the war in Iraq and the conservative backlash over big-government spending, they are now being sore losers and making it as hard as possible for the incoming Congress to do what it was the people voted them in for.

It’s going to be well nigh impossible anyway for the Democrats to live up to their campaign rhetoric (as for any politician - promising is easy, delivering is hard). The Republicans should be big about it and respect the people they claim to represent.

This especially burns me:

The unstated goal is to disrupt the Democratic agenda and make it harder for the new majority to meet its promise to reinstitute ‘pay-as-you-go’ budget rules, under which new costs or tax cuts must be offset to protect the deficit from growing. (emphasis mine)

Asumming (perhaps naively) that the legislation is as it appears, this kind of fiscal responsibility is exactly what the Republicans should have been pushing for the last 12 years. Shame on the GOP.

Dustin asked for my lifestream code (a mangled version of Jeremy’s), so I sent it to him and now you can find him around the web.

With Microsoft’s release of the Zune, the Mac internet is going nuts explaining why the Zune is a broken, inferior product to Apple’s iPod. And at first glance I have to agree with them. But my cynicism is tingling, and I don’t think that Microsoft intended the Zune to start out as a viable iPod competitor. Instead, the Zune is part of a strategic triumvirate intended to make the iPod irrelevant on Windows. This strategy is composed of Windows, the XBox, the Zune, and, playing the part of the One Ring: XBox Live Marketplace.

(Note: I seem to suffer from a pathological need to do a depth-first traversal of any idea, which usually means I’m down in the weeds around the time I lose interest in writing on a topic, so I never publish. Instead, I’m going to try and skim this idea as fast as possible, and I’ll revisit it later if more needs saying.)

Posit: Microsoft is a platform company. No product needs to be perfect on day one if it has the support of a powerful platform for which it is the only solution. It takes an ecosystem. (see Internet Explorer.)

Posit: Microsoft thinks ahead. Far ahead. They see that the iPod has brand caché, but the thing that makes that brand succeed is the media platform: the iTunes Store runnig on Windows, most importantly. So they need that media/commerce platform.

Posit: The XBox (in original and shiny 360 flavors) has established itself as a dominant player in the console market. If you look at consoles these days, they are not the game machines of our fathers. They are powerful, specialized (and getting less-so) PCs. The XBox 360 is Microsoft’s Media PC, one where it owns hardware and software.

Posit: Xbox Live set the standard for console gaming online. Sony has it’s own version for the PS3, and I’m pretty sure Nintendo has something like it for the Wii. Microsoft recently launched the XBox 360 Live Marketplace, where gamers can purchase not only games, but movies and TV shows as well that can be viewed on the user’s television.

Posit: Soon Microsoft will be launching Live Anywhere which brings that marketplace to Windows Vista and Windows Mobile.

Posit: Microsoft has a marketplace for the Zune, and some are suggesting that the Zune Marketplace uses XBox live as the backend.

To sum up: Microsoft is building a network of devices that connect to (read: eventually will require) some version of XBox Live Marketplace for sharing (read: purchasing) content. The Zune’s wireless support will grow the ability to wirelessly connect to this marketplace, Windows will be connected, and the XBox (the new Media PC) is connected.

Microsoft’s goal is to OWN their customers’ media experience (and media $$$), and if the iPod on Windows is an early casualty of that battle, then no one in Redmond will be weeping.

Photobooth is addictive.

Dustin from Bajooter (on the left) over to hang out.

My work on documenting kuler’s REST API is coming along nicely. Here are the methods I’ve written up so far:

• User:Login
• User:Logout
• Theme:GetList (Mykuler)
• Theme:GetList (Highest Rated)
• Theme:GetList (Popular)
• Theme:GetList (Recent)
• Favorite:GetList
• Search:Get
• Theme:Get
• Theme:Get ASE (link)
• Error Message

It’s not much of a “write up”, but it does document the proper URL, query parameters, and the XML structs that are returned for each method. My biggest challenge in the near future will be figuring out the POST that saves a theme to a user’s favorites in kuler.