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Today's reading list

• Welcome to the out-of-control decade: We have seen the future, and it doesn't belong to you - More and more I'm considering a boycott of the iPhone the act of a responsible technology user. People stop using applications out of convenience if they are cumbersome. People stop using apps for moral reasons if they steal private information. Because Apple controls what software is allowed to be written for the iPhone, it is a closed hardware system where the owner is unable to install anything they might want. No one would ever produce a laptop that restricted users in such a manner; it would be met with the same abhorrence as an application stealing private information. I remember having an old iRiver MP3 player (256 MB!) that only allowed me to copy to it and not from it. MP3 players, despite the RIAA, have become more open. Will all personal devices start trending towards the closed system that Apple models? My comment on selling your privacy for convenience (a major theme in the young adult novel Feed): Something we think we want can give us what we want and yet still be destructive.
• Separating Explosives from the Detonator - Bruce Schneier is vindicated for his longtime warnings of the US's flawed security theater: Only two things have made flying safer [since 9/11]: the reinforcement of cockpit doors, and the fact that passengers know now to resist hijackers. A round-up of his interviews after the fact. Commenting on how rare it is for a terrorist act hurt anyone (highway fatalities being a more serious threat), he says: A terrorist attack cannot possibly destroy our country's way of life; it's only our reaction to that attack that can do that kind of damage.
• UPular mixed by Pogo [ via VOTD: POGO's UPular] - A fun and funky remix of scenes from UP. Made me want to watch the (wonderful) movie again.

• Watch This: Skhizein, an Incredible Animated Short Film - Thoughtful animated short from France about a man who exists beside himself after being hit by a meteor. Beautiful.

  Skhizein (Jérémy Clapin,2008) from Bertie on Vimeo.