Microsoft is getting into the retail store business, and has hired a Wal-Mart exec to lead the effort; the move is heralded as “taking a page out of Apple’s playbook,” and that’s almost certainly what they think they’re doing — after all, Apple has had a great deal of success with its stylish brand-enhancing shops.

This is baffling on a number of levels (timing for one), but the biggest head-scratcher is why they think anyone would go to a Redmond-owned store to buy any MS product. Apple stores work because Apple kit is perceived as stylish, hip, interesting, and desirable on levels unconnected with mundane IT concerns. There are plenty of legitimate technical reasons to prefer the Mac platform, both in terms of hardware and software, but those are secondary, I think, to the appeal of the stores.

Apple also offers a unity of design and function as well as a delightful marriage of hardware and software that Microsoft simply can’t match (this “we make both” angle is a nontrivial aspect to Mac reliability). Microsoft, on the other hand, has a broad and confusing suite of products, but doesn’t sell any computers at all unless you count the XBox.

Further, Apple enjoys tremendous channel control; it’s next to impossible to buy a new Mac for much less than retail, so a buyer doesn’t hurt themselves financially by doing their deal at an Apple store vs. ordering online. Microsoft’s gear and software, on the other hand, is traditionally deeply discounted by resellers, and MS won’t be able to compete with or undercut those prices without poisoning their own channel. End result: High prices at MS retail, lower prices at Amazon, and no crowds at the shops.

Sony, Dell, and Gateway all tried to do the retail thing, and unless I’m wholly incorrect none of them managed (or have managed) to make the shops interesting from a financial perspective. Nobody ever stood in line for anything these guys made, and the same is true for Microsoft. IT managers herald the next rev of Exchange Server, sure, and those stung by Vista await Windows 7 with cautious optimism, but none of those guys are going to stand in line for their upgrades.

Look for the Microsoft stores to be awkward, weird, and without obvious charm — which is more or less what happens every time MS apes something someone else did without understanding why the other party was successful.

Grandstanding douchebag Richland County Sheriff Leon Lott has arrested 8 in a quest to charge Michael Phelps in connection with candid party pictures appearing to show him smoking pot.

In a guns-drawn raid on college kids,

deputies seized four laptop computers, a desktop computer and a computer storage drive from his client’s home — supposedly to try to find evidence against Phelps, Harpootlian said, adding they refused his request Wednesday to return the items to his client.

This over a case that is, at best, simple possession, a misdemeanor in South Carolina (and nearly every other state as well).

Nice.

At the uber-elite TED conference during his presentation on the eradication of malaria, he did something fantastic:

“Malaria is spread by mosquitoes,” Gates said while opening a jar onstage at the Technology, Entertainment, Design Conference — a gathering known to attract technology kings, politicians, and Hollywood stars.

“I brought some. Here I’ll let them roam around. There is no reason only poor people should be infected.”

Of course, the mosquitos released at TED weren’t malarial vectors, but the point was made, and I suspect he had everyone’s attention for the remainder of his talk.

FanTAStic.

(Note: I thought this was already posted back on the 5th, but here it is in the “drafts” box. Oops.)

In an unprecedented space collision, a commercial Iridium communications satellite and a defunct Russian satellite ran into each other Tuesday above northern Siberia, creating a cloud of wreckage, officials said today.

Was this event (a) sort of inevitable or (b) bizarrely unlikely?

There are apparently now bars in the world wherein one may order a “Captain Sullenberger,” which consists of two shots of Grey Goose vodka and a splash of water, shaken.

This is indescribably fantastic.

The Catholic Church is selling indulgences again.

If you give empowered people the additional power of seizing goods without a burden of proof, eventually you get situations like this:

TENAHA — A two-decade-old state law that grants authorities the power to seize property used in a crime is wielded by some agencies against people who are never charged with, much less convicted, of a crime.

Law enforcement authorities in this East Texas town of 1,000 people seized property from at least 140 motorists between 2006 and 2008, and, to date, filed criminal charges against fewer than half, according to a San Antonio Express-News review of court documents.

Virtually anything of value was up for grabs: cash, cell phones, personal jewelry, a pair of sneakers, and often, the very car that was being driven through town. Some affidavits filed by officers relied on the presence of seemingly innocuous property as the only evidence that a crime had occurred.

Linda Dorman, a great-grandmother from Akron, Ohio, had $4,000 in cash taken from her by local authorities when she was stopped while driving through town after visiting Houston in April 2007. Court records make no mention that anything illegal was found in her van and show no criminal charges filed in the case. She is still waiting for the return of what she calls “her life savings.”

Dorman’s attorney, David Guillory, calls the roadside stops and seizures in Tenaha “highway piracy,” undertaken by a couple of law enforcement officers whose agencies get to keep most of what is seized.

This is robbery, plain and simple, and the officers involved should be charged as such, or at least held personally liable together with the state. Seizing property without a conviction is simply obscene, and will lead to abuses like these no matter what supposed “safeguards” lawmakers try to incorporate.

(HT: Cathy.)

They’re trying to suggest to survivors that they may be liable for a dead parent’s debt — apparently as a matter of policy.

Paul Kelleher: Yes, I’m calling to inform you that my mom died on the 24th of January.

Bank of America Estates representative: I’m sorry. Oh, it looks like she never even missed a payment. That’s too bad. Well, how are you planning to take care of her balance?

PK: I’m not going to. She has no estate to speak of, but you should feel free to just go through the standard probate procedure. I’m certainly not legally obligated to pay for her.

BOA: You mean you’re not going to help her out?

PK: I wouldn’t be helping her out — she’s dead. I’d be helping you out.

BOA: Oh, that’s really not the way to look at it. I know that if it were my mother, I’d pay it. That’s why we’re in the banking crisis we’re in: banks having to write off defaulted loans.

The rep’s apparent intention, as Kelleher described it, was to mislead him into believing that he was obligated — at first legally, then, failing that, morally — to cover his mother’s debt (which, in any case, was not large: she had had a $1000 limit on her card). Of course, Kelleher was sophisticated enough to know that’s not true. But how many other less savvy callers in similar situations, he wondered, might respond to the rep’s breezy “how are you planning to take care of her balance?,” with a confused “I guess I’ll mail in a check”?

Wow. Classy move, BofA. Remind me to start using you oh, NEVER.

They’ve dropped Michael Phelps.

The Agitator puts this in context, and reminds us that the Onion was on this kind of thing 11 years ago.

Here’s the response to the absurd “EX-masturbator” shirts from yesterday.

Via Making Light, we find this nearly perfect encapsulation of modern American non-think. The author explains:

I wrote these principles after reflecting on the content of contemporary newspapers and broadcast media and why that content disquieted me. I saw that I was not disturbed so much by what was written or said as I was by what is not. The tacit assumptions underlying most popular content reflect a worldview that is orthogonal to reality in many ways. By reflecting this skewed weltanschauung, the media reinforces and propagates it.

I call this worldview the American Cargo Cult, after the real New Guinea cargo cults that arose after the second world war. There are four main points, each of which has several elaborating assumptions. I really do think that most Americans believe these things at a deep level, and that these misbeliefs constantly underlie bad arguments in public debate.

His outline is simple, clear, and almost completely right as far as I can tell. He begins with:

I. Ignorance is innocence

Complicated explanations are suspect

The world is simple, and there must be a simple explanation for everything.

Certainty is strength, doubt is weakness

Admitting alternatives is undermining one’s own belief.

Changing one’s mind means one has wasted the time spent holding the prior opinion.

Your opinion matters as much as anyone else’s

When a person has studied a topic, he has no more real knowledge than you do, just a hidden agenda.

Hey, I said it was probably true, not likely to cause you to think kindly on your fellow man.

The Senate Sergeant-at-arms — i.e., the fellow ultimate responsible for the crowd problems on Inauguration Day — has joined Facebook to post an exhaustive and complete apology for the problems some encountered trying to enter their seating areas, including the “tunnel of doom” problem.

It doesn’t make it right for those who couldn’t see the event despite having tickets (fairly fancy, privileged tickets, even — it was Blues and Purples who had trouble, not lowly Silvers like Mrs Heathen and I), but it certainly IS refreshing to see a public figure issue such an honest mea culpa.