Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

Judge Vaughn Walker
Decision Striking Down Proposition 8

See, here is the problem. We, the United States of America have ousted the Bible from carrying any authority, certainly any moral authority. But now what do we base our morals on? Without the law of God there is no law, there is no morality, there is no order. Morality becomes something less then an objective standard, something that is at our whim. Morality becomes defined by us and so we are now redefining it. You see the real issue here is not a question of rights. No one has the “right” to deny anyone marriage. No, at stake here is the definition of marriage, and who defines it. Since God’s law has been thrown out, we are now looking to man’s laws to define what a marriage is, and man is now attempting to say that marriage can exist between any two people regardless of gender.

Let me take an extreme example, lets say a man (or a woman) wanted to marry a computer. Would they take this to court because they couldn’t get a marriage license? Marriage is a fundamental right, so shouldn’t a person be allowed to marry their computer?

It’s a fairly silly notion, but it illustrates my point, and that is this; no one is denying these homosexual couples the right to marry. The problem is that marriage has not been defined as being between two members of the same sex… until now. So these people have been free to marry… any consenting member of the opposite sex. Marriage requires two people of opposite sexes.

Let me illustrate further, suppose a person wanted to marry their mother. For the sake of illustration, lay aside for a moment the issue that this would be heinous sin. According to our laws is a man allowed to marry his mother? Of course not, that falls outside the definition of marriage. A man may not marry his mother, for the time being that is not lawful even by man’s laws. It would certainly cause a lot of problems if it was lawful. Same goes for siblings, you may not marry your sibling.

If marriage is not an objective standard with objective limits and boundaries, then marriage has no meaning. God has instituted marriage as being between a man and a woman. No one is allowed to redefine it!

So in closing, while I do not believe proposition 8 is/was unconstitutional, I don’t care. If it is, the constitution would need to conform to God’s law.

Unless you’ve been living under the Verizon rock you can’t have missed that AT&T today announced restructured data plans, and at long last, the official means of tethering for the iPhone.

But there’s a catch (isn’t there always with AT&T?). No more unlimited data.

I will be the first one to admit that unlimited mobile data is just a bad idea. Ask AT&T how it’s worked out for them. It’s not been a picnic I can assure you. But up to this point I really haven’t cared how much mobile data I use since my plan is “unlimited.” However, being the techie geeky kind, I happen to know that my data has never gone over 1.5 gigabytes in one month. And typically, my usage is in the 800 meg, to 1 gig range. But that is really beside the point. Tiered data pricing makes a lot of sense to me and I support tiered data pricing. And since AT&T’s “unlimited” data is actually really soft capped at 5 gigs a month anyway, I was thinking tiered data would save me a good bit of money. My thinking was that 500 megabyte incremented tiers would be fantastic. I’d fit in nicely at 2 gigs with plenty of head room.

So what’s my beef? Well, AT&T didn’t introduce very many tiers today. There’s the 200 meg per month plan for $15.00. Obviously that’s just garbage. Anyone with a smart phone is going to use more than that. And these are smartphone plans. And then there’s 2 gigs per month for $25.00.

And that’s it.

Those are the 2 tiers…

I’m serious.

It’s not a joke.

It’s utterly ridiculous. My unlimited plan is $30.00 and the new plans are capped at 2 gigs and only $5.00 cheaper. Okay fine, I can deal. I know a few folks who won’t be able to live with that, but I can. As I say, I’ve never gone over 1.5 gigs myself so I can deal, even if I was hoping for better pricing.

But here’s the real kicker. You would think, if I pay for 2 gigs a month I should be able to use that data in any way I please right?

WRONG!!!

In order to use that data on my computer via iPhone tethering, I must shell out an additional $20.00 per month. And that does not increase my bandwidth cap at all. I still only get 2 gigs. Let me rephrase, in order for my iPhone to act as a conduit for the data I’m already paying for it to have access to, I must pay an additional $20.00 a month. This reminds me of the days when ISPs wanted to charge additional fees for each computer in the house. It’s completely ludicrous!

I refuse. I’m already paying for data. I could understand this if it was an unlimited data plan. But if I’m paying for a specific amount of bandwidth then I better be able to use it in any way I please.

It’s such a joke!

Well, I’m out of rant. But this article is pretty good!

I really do like the concept of a single Push Notification service for the sake of battery life and phone performance. I use Push Notifications primarily for BeejiveIM (Gtalk), Pushmail, Facebook, and Echofon (twitter). I’ll use BeejiveIM as an example of how this works.

In order for me to stay signed in to Gtalk when BeejiveIM is “in the background” (I use quotation marks because the app is actually not running in the background at all, and until iPhone OS 4 comes out, it’s state is not even stored in memory, making it’s launch time a little long to feel like it really is running in the background), BeejiveIM’s servers must maintain my Gtalk account’s connection to the Gtalk server. If someone sends me an instant message, the BeejiveIM server through which my account is signed in, sends a notification to the Apple Push Notification Server (PNS), and the PNS pushes the notification to my phone where I see both a pop-up message, and a badge is placed on the app’s icon.

If you followed that you can see a drawback here in using a 3rd party server through which I am signed in to my Gtalk account, but I’ve never really had a problem with my account being signed in through Beejive’s middleman server. And for the most part it works really well.

But here are the real draw backs. And the kicker is, these could be eliminated by better implementation (isn’t Apple supposed to excel at implementation?). Current implementation is better than nothing (certainly better than the iPhone OS 1 and 2 days where we had NOTHING) but I REALLY hope Apple expands Push Notifications soon.

I would like to see 2 things ASAP:

1. Notification Management (and no more single mode disruptive notification popups)

Push Notifications do not stack, but in it’s current implementation, if they did, it would be even worse! Because they popup over everything, and nothing else is accessible until the notification is dismissed. And if I got 10 notifications while my phone was in my pocket or something, I would have to acknowledge and dismiss each one. And of course, once I have acknowledged and dismissed a notification it is gone, never to be seen again.

So I want Notification Management. The way I want this to work is to have a place where all notifications are collected (push or local, missed calls, ALL notifications) and I can view them at any time, mark some or all as read etc.

And then to replace disruptive popups, how about a double height status bar of a color not yet used by iPhone, say yellow perhaps (green is for active calls when not viewing the call screen, looks like red is for active VOIP calls in iPhone OS 4, blue is for an active tethering session), with text displaying the number of new notifications.

2. I want the push notifications to wake the app in question so it can update with the new information

You see, the push notification system shows me something is new, but the app receiving the push notification does not update with that new information. The only thing the app gets is a badge with a number on the icon. So I have to wait for the app to pull that new info in when I open it. It’s even worse right now than it will be with iPhone OS 4, because right now the app is killed completely when closed so when opening, I must wait for the app to load itself into memory. In iPhone OS 4 this will be somewhat alleviated because OS 4 will save the state of the app in active memory so that when you activate it again, it can pick up right where it left off (Sound familiar Android users?). So you don’t have to wait for it to load itself into memory. But you still have to wait on the app to receive the new information that was already sent to you in a push notification.

So to fix this, how about to go along with the way Apple is approaching multitasking (freezing the app in active memory), let the push notification wake the app up in the background, update with the new information, then if the user hasn’t activated that app, let it go back to sleep. That way it’s ready to go when I open it.

These two things seem simple to implement, and they seem like no brainers to me. And the lack of those two things really hurts the iPhone user experience. But Apple has had a habit of SLOWLY (painfully so) adding much needed features as we go so we will see what develops for iPhone OS 5 I suppose. I can’t imagine Apple won’t expand on their way of approaching multi-tasking…

But, Apple did something when they went to the unibody design that REALLY ticked me off. They dropped the Express/34 slot off all models but the 17” and replaced it with an SD card slot.

...

SAY WHAT?!?

As a professional in the field of film and video I have NEVER used an SD card. I have on occasion used an SD Card reader for my personal camera. But never in my professional field of work with my laptop have I even considered the need for an SD Card reader. I do however, use the Express/34 card slot every day to connect eSATA drives to my laptop. It is a professional laptop, being a MacBook Pro and all. The MacBook Pro does not have eSATA ports, as most laptops do not. But with that wonderful standard called the Express/34 slot, I can use any number of adapters to connect all manner of gadgets, hard drives etc (including by the way, SD Card reader adapters). I would not be able to use my laptop in this professional setting very well without the Express/34 card slot.

The real kicker here is that putting an SD Card reader on the consumer MacBooks makes sense. But to replace a real professional standard multi purpose slot with an SD Card reader that only serves the one purpose is just a low blow to Apple’s loyal professional users! The position from Apple seems to be, “if you need a Express/34 Card slot, get the 17” MacBook Pro. Well I happen to be a fan of the 15” considering the 17” just too big. One of my colleagues had a 17” for some time. It’s just too darn big. My 15” is perfect and has served me well. I don’t want to be forced to buy the big bulky 17” but that is exactly what I would have to do if I upgraded right now.

Let me now move to the Pro Apps. Apple’s Pro Apps still don’t run in 64 bit. We Pro Apps users are still living in the 32 bit, access to only 4 gigs of RAM past. And the key application, Final Cut Pro, is STILL a mostly carbon app, not Cocoa (the OS X API of choice).

And now today I am seeing disturbing reports from Apple Insider, and Mac Rumors that Apple is planning to scale it’s Pro Apps to fit into a more prosumer model.

Hello? Final Cut PRO!

Does the use of the word “Pro” in these names Apple has bestowed on these products now mean nothing? There is no doubt that I have lots of things I would like to see happen to Final Cut Pro, and it’s bundled apps. I believe there is a number of ways they could be improved and would love to consult with Apple (I’m only slightly kidding, I have lots of ideas I wish Apple would ask me about), but the words “scaling Final Cut Studio apps to fit prosumers” frightens me. If that means what I think it means, then I’ll be needing to learn to use other editing software soon.

So Apple, I’m pleading with you, remember your Pro users and don’t spit in their collective faces please! Your Pro Apps and Pro computers have been a wonderful thing in my life, but now I’m very worried!

I know I’m just one person, but I have a lot of Professional Apple using friends that feel the same way. Don’t drive us out of the camp!

There’s also a few more pics here on Facebook.