The whole legal fight against Big Tobacco blows my mind.

After all these court cases, the tobacco companies have been found at fault for knowing that tobacco killed people in any number of nasty ways, and fought and cajoled to keep their knowledge quiet. Various megafines were levied, some of which have since been reduced, but the fact remains that We Know that Big Tobacco Knows that They Are Killing People.

It completely blows my mind that tobacco is legal.

How can it can be that States continue to allow the sale of something we know is highly addictive and kills people. I fail to see how it is any different from, say, marijuana, except that it was discovered in the 16th Century when morals and medical knowledge were different than when today's Class A drugs were discovered/created and regulated. Marijuana is a great example — it may eventually turn your brain to mush, but at least it doesn't kill you. According to Wikipedia, everyone's favorites non-authoritative source, you would need to smoke 21 joints at once to even have a shot at killing yourself. If I read the correponding article on tobacco, it says nicotine is 20 times more toxic than cocaine and around 25 times more toxic than cannabis. I've also heard it said that nicotine is more addictive than crack cocaine, which is scary if true.

While I am not advocating drug usage, I am merely pointing to a instance where I think the law is inconsistent. For the record, I don't use any of these drugs, including nicotine.

Anyway, this aside, we are starting to see Big Tobacco turn nasty and start playing dirty. I guess they got away with killing people, so why not.

In Arizona, there are two supposed no-smoking propositions on the books for the November ballot. See if you see anything odd about these two no-smoking initiatives:

	Proposition 201 Smoke-Free Arizona Bill	Proposition 206 Arizona Non-Smoker Protection Act
Sponsors	American Cancer Society Americam Heart Association American Lung Association Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids Arizona Hospital and Healthcart Assoc	RJ Reynolds Arizona Licensed Beverage Assoc
100% Smoke-free Restaurants, Bars, Bowling Alleys, & Pool Halls	YES	NO Prop 206 allows smoking in all bars, and bar areas of restaurants, bowling alleys, & pool halls
Enforcement & Penalties	YES Arizona Department of Health Services Civil penalty of $100-500 for a violation by a business	NO Prop 206 provides NO penalties for a business that allows smoking where it is prohibited.
Protects existing local laws that ban smoking in restaurants and bars	YES	NO Prop 206 rolls back all city, town, & county Laws
Supports the rights of local communities to address smoking issues in the future	YES	NO Prop 206 preempts all city, town, & county laws relating to smoking

(The titles are linked to the Arizona Legislature's web site, so those links are to the official proposals on the ballot)

While 206 does prohibit smoking in public places and places of employment, so does 201.

The thing about 206 that blows my mind is that it overrides any existing legislation present or future. Case in point: the City of Tempe has a no smoking ban in bars. If Prop 206 passes that will be overriden and there is nothing the City of Tempe can do about it. Don't like smokey bars? Leave the State - you'll get no respite here!

If you look at the wording of the two propositions, 206 is clearly written in response to 201. I just hope that the voters in Arizona are not taken in by Big Tobacco's cynical attempt to undo years of lobbying and fighting to reduce tobacco dependency by calling this proposition the "Arizona Non-Smoker Protection Act".

The only people they are protecting are their shareholders.

I wish someone would step up with a proposition to classify tobacco as a Class A drug in Arizona. That would stop this nonsense once and for all.

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I've noticed a strange phenonemon in our new house. Almost all the clocks in the house tell a different time even though we set them all when we moved in back in June.

Here's the rundown of every clock in the house:

Microwave	ok
Toaster oven	+19 minutes
Patio clock	-24 minutes
Rich cooker	+6 minutes
Coffee maker	ok
Living room clock	+10 minutes
Bedroom alarm clock	ok
Mac computer	+10 minutes

The last one is particularly strange, as the computer is set to sync with a time service! When I unchecked/re-checked the box for the time service lookup it corrected itself.

The strange thing about this is that I never noticed the clocks drift in our house in Austin - it seems to have started here. And all the clocks are digital, so its not like the mechanisms got jogged in transit.

At least the alarm clock is right, so I won't be able to use this as an excuse for oversleeping. Unless it forgets to ring.

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The lease is up on my Infiniti in March, and while I love the M45 to death for its electronics, performance and comfort, 18mpg really sucks with gas being where it is.

Given that March is only 6 months away, its time to start looking for my next ride. Right now the front runner is the 2008 Scion xB, which gets a redesign away from the current look. A mule has been spyed showing the new car to be longer but thats about it.

Apart from gas mileage (the old xB gets 30+mpg), the main attraction is that its cheap. New Steve doesn't have the kind of money to go around buying new $60,000 cars. Or $30,000 cars for that matter

Now Edmunds has some dirt on the new model ...

The new vehicles will be designated as 2008 models when they arrive at Scion dealerships next spring. Production of the 2006 xA and xB will end in December."

While not really saying much about the new car, I'm really hoping it looks like Scion's T2B prototype. Please... Pretty please ... with bells on!

On a side note, my lease expires on March 21st, so hopefully when they say "arriving in Spring" that means on March 21st, otherwise I'm screwed

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I've been playing quite a bit of Saints Row the past week now that I have a working Xbox 360.

Its basically just like Grand Theft Auto right down to the way the cars handle. Even the plot is the same. Not that that's a bad thing - it looks gorgeous, especially the flames.

But all is not well in paradise. The game has some major bugs, more than any Xbox 360 I've seen. I thought the whole reason Microsoft boxed the games up was to do quality control and ensure buggy games don't go out the door. Hmm.

Here's what I've seen in a week:

• Last night when there was a lot going on on-screen, the game totally froze. I was still able to power off without having to yank the plug but it was still a little annoying given that I was half way through a long mission.
• I've had a wierd situation with the game not responding when getting into a car. I had a homie with me. I pressed Y to get into our car. I started to get in on the passenger side from which my character will scooch across to the drivers seat. He was going to get in the back. Just at that moment another car tapped the front of our car and nudged it a little. This made my homie get into the drivers seat. Now my guy couldn't scooch so he sat in the passenger seat. It was in the middle of its "get in the car" action so I didn't have control and pressing Y didn't do anything. And the guy in the drivers seat didn't realize he was in the wrong spot and just sat there. Luckily I could Save and re-Load the game to break out of this.
• One problem I've had which has been reported elsewhere - when the game has a lot going on, the graphics can tear on screen. Sometimes a texture doesn't get laid down and you see cars driving on nothing. Its like the video card runs out of texture memory. I had the whole of the background disappear during a hectic police chase to the point where the cars were on big black and white polygons. That time there were lots of bump maps on the vehicles because they were all beat up, so I guess free texture memory got critically low.

I guess this is the worst of it. Some problems, like the graphics tearing, should have been found in QA - its not hard to recreate - just shoot lots of cops so they come after you big time. Hmm. The one with getting into the car is a little trickier to recreate, but easy enough to fix - if you have NPCs getting into a vehicle that then moves, cancel the getting into the car (better yet, reassess where your entry point is, but I'd settle for canceling the action - at least the game wouldn't stop!)

Its a pity these little issues are there, because its a fun game apart from that. I especially like that I got my character to look really similar to me - its fun seeing "me" kicking butt.

One light on the horizon - at least with Xbox Live, if/when they issue a fix, I'll be able to download it. If this game had been back on the PS2 with these issues I'd have been tempted to take it back. As it is, I'll wait for the fix so I can get back to cleaning up the 'hood

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Last night Gigantour came to Phoenix. Because Dodge Theater only has one stage only 5 bands came to town - Megadeth, Lamb of God, Opeth, Arch Enemy and Overkill.

First the venue. Dodge Theater sucked. The sound system was terrible, but worse than that, half the folks there were seated in the stands. I was lucky to have been able to pre-order my tickets so I was in The Pit - a flat area in front of the stage, but that area was far from full. Its hard to get a good moshpit going when half the crowd is sitting down.

When I picked up my tickets, I noticed a sign up on the doors of the theater stating "No moshing" which everyone seemed to think was pretty funny.

The show kicked off at 5pm. First up was Overkill. I only caught the second half of their set. I'm not into old-school metal - I was into that when I was 15 and it doesn't do anything for me now, so while they played really well I can't say it rocked me. Of course, because everyone was stone cold sober and had just got off work, not much was going on with the crowd and maybe that was part of it.

Next up was Arch Enemy. The crowd had warmed up by this point and for good reason. Arch Enemy totally rocked. The lead singer is Angela Gossow, this crazy German woman who could scream (growl) deeper than most guys, and the band was awesome too. They definitely made a convert out of me. I queued up later in the evening to get my Arch Enemy poster signed by the band, which was cool!

After Arch Enemy came Opeth, one of the two bands I went to see. They played what seemed like one of the shortest sets, but then each of their songs is over 10 minutes long. The 4 songs they played were: Ghost of Perdition (from Ghost Reveries), The Leper Affinity (from Blackwater Park), Windowpane (from Damnation) and Deliverance (from the Deliverance album). It was funny hearing them play Windowpane in the middle of all this heavy stuff, and coming after Arch Enemy, but a lot of the crowd got really into it - you could hear them singing along. Opeth didn't do a meet-and-greet session, which was a little disappointing given that all the other bands did. Also the sound was godawful for Ghost of Perdition - they had Martin Mendez's bass guitar up too high, but the rest of the songs sounded awesome. I'm always disappointed whenever I hear Deliverence performed live - I love the outro of that song but it never seems to work live. Perhaps its because the first time I heard them live their old drummer Martin Lopez was already out of it and he was the one that laid it down on the album. Ah well, still a good set.

Next was Lamb of God - my other favorite band. I was wearing my Lamb of God shirt for the evening, and it paid off. They played the most amazing set - it must have been 10 songs or so, including about half off their new album Sacrament which came out a few weeks ago. Considering how new it was, the crowd was still singing screaming along. And of course, Lamb of God got the moshpit going full force. During their set they set up a "circle pit" where the moshpit goes in a circle really fast. I jumped in and time slowed down - it seemed like I was in there for 10 minutes but can't have been more than a couple - I was getting pushed, nudged, thrown — what a total adrenaline rush. In fact that pretty much sums up the whole of Lamb of God's set. They're just awesome live.

Being a bit of a metal-geek, I queued up to get my ticket signed by the Lamb of God band members. They must have thought it a bit odd that this 40 year old guy was being all geeky, addressed them all by first name and kept saying "you rocked!", but it was the height of the evening for me



Last up was Megadeth - the headline band. Again, I'm not into old school rock, so after one song I headed home. Megadeth were rocking but after going nuts to Lamb of God I was out of juice.

Next time I hope they do this at Mesa Amphitheater - thats a more open space, and appartently the Unholy Alliance tour that came there (again including Lamb of God) was an awesome show by all accounts - the moshpit was turning so fast during Lamb of God that a dust devil started up above the Pit! Work made me miss that show last time but it won't happen again!

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I know (from the comments on MacRumors) that I'm not the only one disappointed by the new "5.5G" iPods.

I think the expection was now fairly widespread that we would see the full-sized screen iPod this time around, given that its been a year since the last one was announced. The full screen iPod is the one I first described over a year ago, and whose image (shown below) has been used in various posts on Engadget and over the Internet in conjunction with the concept. It then materialzied that Apple had applied for patents around the concepts covered.



I still stand by my idea that Apple will, at some point, introduce the ability to download books from the iTunes Music Store and have the iPod "read them" to you audiobook-style. Heck, maybe I should patent it myself and make some serious money down the road. Be good to have a patent or two from my new life to go with those old Dell ones ...

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Over the weekend Eri made a teddy bear for our 4 year old daughter. It is a funny looking bear for sure, but she did it all just by cutting the fabric without measuring it out, and never having made one before, so actually it came out pretty well.

Those of you with kids will know whenever you give them soft toys it is customary to ask "what is the bear's name?". Mia will always give an answer right away. We have a monkey from Build-a-Bear Workshop that is called "Ham" for this reason. Why Ham? Who knows ... she was 2 when she named it, and even she doesn't know - she named it on the spot and its name is Ham.

The name she chose for this new bear is "Mury E". The first word "Mury" is pronounced half way between Mary and Murray. The "u" is like a shallow German ü. I found this name pretty interesting. Let me explain.

I've been reading a book on innovation these past few days. The book makes the distinction between "innovation" and "invention" - innovation is the generation of customer value, whereas invention is coming up with something new. The two often go hand in hand but are distinct. The Japanese are famously not good at inventing, but are good are making things better - which is another way to say "adding customer value to existing products" - that is, they are great at innovating but not necessarily inventing. I always found this a particularly interesting part of Japanese culture, and the finger of blame is often pointed at their education system which was traditionally rigid and stifling.

So what does this have to do with Mury E? Well, how did she choose that name? She chose a name that cannot actually be accurately written to phonetically match the way you say it in either English, Japanese or Spanish - the three languages she is familiar with. Its almost German, but she doesn't know German. So why that exact pronunciation (and it must be exact, or she will correct you!). Perhaps the answer is "because nobody told her should couldn't call it that". Nobody told her that names must use phonemes (sound parts) that are valid in your common language, so she went outside of the boundary of English and Japanese phonemes and made one up.

The thing I find interesting is the link to invention. It seems to me that when trying to invent (or to innovate for that matter) we can learn a lot from the mind of a child. Adults are all too quick to stick within the lines and follow convention, and we could go much further by ignoring those walls and listening to our inner child.

On a side note, the "E" in "Mury E" is interesting too. And she absolutely pronounces it - it is part of the bear's name. Tyler (who is now 5 years old) and Mia both just started new schools. It seems in Phoenix is there are two kids with the same name, the convention is to pronounce the first letter of the last name. One of Tyler's best friends is "Ryan S" and Tyler will always pronounce the "S". The funny thing was, when Mia announced her bear's name was "Mury E" Tyler asked "Is there another Mury?". Even Mia doesn't know what the "E" stands for, just like Tyler doesn't know what Ryan's "S" stands for. Its just part of the name. Again, nobody told her it has to stand for something ... it just is.

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Gah! Make it stop!

Why is that George Lucas (or more likely 20th Century Fox) feels the need to release another "Limited" or "Special" Edition of the Star Wars movies every year?

This one at least has the 1977 original in there which a lot of folks have been clamoring for (I'm not sure why ... the effects were pretty shocking, and even the revised versions are a little off in 2006)

Personally I'm not buying another Star Wars Special Edition until it comes out on HD-DVD. Lucas filmed the three newer films in HD so while the originals will be shabby as ever, the new ones should look pretty good. Of course, you can already see them in the same quality on HBO-HD so even that isn't much of a reason to get excited. Plus the first two of the new trilogy blew goats (Jar Jar ... nuff said) so thats only leaves 1 of them that will be worthy of getting in HD form.

Now if only Microsoft would release their HD-DVD player add-on so that Blu-Ray could be dead before PS3 comes out ... and we could get done with the stupid format wars.

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Picked up a copy of Saints Row last Tuesday. Its very impressive, at least if you liked the freeform nature of Grand Theft Auto 3 and its successors Vice City and San Andreas.

Everything was going well until I came downstairs on Thursday morning and found the 360 had powered itself on and had 3 red lights flashing around the power switch. A quick search on Google told me this was some kind of hardware failure. Apparently in some cases you'll get something on screen but my TV tells me there's no signal, so I guess that may point to a problem with the video card.

I'm not sure if the 360 doesn't like Saints Row, or if this means that the 360 (and by proxy the upcoming PS3) are sailing a little too close to the bleeding edge - at least, when building to a price point. A little unreliability may be expected when you compare the 360 to, say, a $5000 gaming PC rig.

At least with the hard drive, I should only need to get a replacement Core System for $300 and hopefully won't lose my games. I'll certainly be posting if thats not how things go. Problem is I really don't have the $300 to spare, so its just as likely that the 360 will go back in its box and stay that way for a while...

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Back when I was at Dell we would talk about the "nightmare scenario" of how it was unacceptable for Dell.com to drop off the 'Net. If nothing else, Wall Street doesn't like it. We strove for "5 nines" uptime (i.e. 99.999%) and most of the time we were pretty close. Well, it looks like something bad has happened, because Dell.com has been offline all day. And not just www.dell.com but also the support.dell.com, accessories.dell.com, premier.dell.com (the relationship customer buying portal) ... in fact pretty much all of it.

I'm guessing there's a major internal network failure going down, to have such a major impact, and I can only imagine the non-fun that folks there must be having.

If its any consolation to the folks working on it, this one wasn't caused by me... at least not as far as I know.

The bad part is, I was thinking about impulse-buying a 2405FPW 24" widescreen monitor for the office ... Now I've had time to talk myself out of it - at least until I can get one under $500.

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