Here's how it was explained to me by someone who says they understand what I saw at the 5th Ave Apple store this morning.

1. The people lined up there were employees of resellers, companies who buy iPhones and resell them overseas and online at higher prices.

2. They line up there every day, in case there are any they can buy. Most days there aren't.

3. They come back the next day, because there's money to be made. These people aren't there to buy phones for themselves.

4. The line went round the corner and down the block.

5. This would be a good story for a business reporter to dig into. Imho.

Click on the pic below for a blowup. Sorry for the lack of clarity in the picture. I might ride by there tomorrow morning to see if I can find out more about what's going on.

 8/21/2010; 6:19:27 PM.   .

And Christians and Jews, athiests, agnostics. Men, women, boys, girls. Bike riders, walkers, runners. Tourists. No one seemed offended. Or in any hurry to get anyone away from anywhere in particular. It was a sweet, relatively quiet summer morning in NY.

I rode past the Fifth Avenue Apple Store and saw a huge number of people lined up. I asked what they were lined up for. iPhones. They were almost all, if not all, Asian. Many did not speak English. I asked why, now, after all this time -- they're lined up. I was told it's been this way ever since the product launched. I took pictures.

The map. 13.5 miles, 1.5 hours.

 8/21/2010; 9:30:37 AM.   .

And Howard Dean and Newt Gingrich and Sarah Palin. Send them to overseas to a country where they don't have our Constitution and tradtiion of tolerance for diversity and freedom of religion. Where they can learn the lessons of history on their own dime. Make them wear yellow stars, as my ancestors did, as a show of good sense and courtesy. So everyone can know they are Americans who weren't good enough to live in America.

I was thinking deportation might be the final solution for the problem, when Karen Hughes wrote a positively Nazi rationale for "moving" the Park51 community center, as a show of national unity. Like so many Americans who have spoken out on this, she needs a refresher course in civics. Or a lesson in 20th century history.

You can't single out people who practice a specific religion to be persecuted, just because a majority thinks it's sensible to persecute them. What other rights would you like to deprive them of? Due process? Habeas corpus? Maybe we should just re-settle all American muslims to camps far away from New York, so the people still grieving over 9/11 don't have to think about them? After all why should they be in New York at all? If two blocks from our hallowed ground is too much to bear, why should we put up with 20 or 200? (And btw, in the US, there is no such thing as hallowed ground. We are not a country that's based on a religion.)

Obviously this whole idea is ridiculous and un-American. In a way it would be better if the people wanting to open this community center were less ideal American citizens, if only to prove that our tolerance isn't subject to hypocrisy or seasonality or popular styles. Freedom, Mr. Dean and Mr. Gingrich and Ms. Palin and Ms. Hughes, is an absolute. Not something that is subject to your idea of good sense or unity. Or as Hughes puts it, courtesy. For crying out loud, this is the United States, not your country club.

 8/21/2010; 7:26:55 AM.   .

When my Windows servers reboot I'd like them to go all the way, to log on and run the startup apps.

This happens all the time, when they automatically update themselves, which is a good thing.

Unless I'm awake and around when it happens it means my servers are off the air for a while. Sometimes hours.

There must be a setting somewhere?

 8/21/2010; 7:12:36 AM.   .