I think the longest parliamentary majority government in post-War Italy lasted all of four years. And it was a center-right coalition under the leadership of Silvio Berlusconi himself (2001-05). As they say, at least Mussolini made the trains run on time!

I love Apple TV and think the long-awaited integration of the Internet and television is about to go viral.

People familiar with the company’s plans also said that Apple executives are well aware that the battle for the living room is going to be arduous, and that the company must get it right the next time. In 2008, when Mr. Jobs re-launched the failed Apple TV at another Apple event, he said: “All of us have tried. We have, Microsoft, Amazon, TiVo, Netflix, Blockbuster. We’ve all tried to figure out how to get movies, over the internet onto a widescreen TV, and you know what, we’ve all missed. No one has succeeded yet.”

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The great respect being offered on the death of West Virginia Sen. Robert Byrd conveniently overlooks that he began as a committed Klu Klux Klan member and staunch segregationist and became over time the high priest of congressional “earmarks.” Staying in the Senate until one is senile should not, in my view, obscure others from remembering one’s past. In Byrd’s case, that past is hardly one worth honoring.

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I agree that Google’s Android OS has made great strides and that the HTC Evo 4G looks like an awesome device, but the iPhone remains the most elegant, simple and yet robust mobile phone on the market.

For a long time, iPhone felt like a Lexus while Android was more like a Kia. With recent upgrades, Android has transformed into more of a Honda. But with iPhone 4, the iPhone is now an Aston Martin (it was James Bond, remember). But the crazy thing is that the iPhone is an Aston Martin with a Honda-price. Meanwhile, Android remains a Honda at a Honda-price — it’s a good deal, but it’s not an iPhone-deal.

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It is completely beyond my why the Obama Administration and congressional Democrats could be this obtuse.  No one should want — and I doubt any American really does support — the government standardizing serving sizes and recipe compositions, even on health grounds.

Remarkably, Section 4205 of the new health reform law, which requires chain restaurants and vending machines to provide nutrition notices, instructs the HHS Secretary to:

Consider standardization of recipes and methods of preparation, in reasonable variation in serving size and formula of menu items, space on menus and menu boards, inadvertent human error, training of food service workers, variations in ingredients…

HHS Secretary to Regulate Serving Sizes and Recipes for Cheeseburgers and Fries | John Goodman.  Who could have known? That’s in part because the provision literally was buried:

You’ve heard the phrase “buried in the bill,” of course. Section 4205 of the “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” the health care reform bill President Obama signed on March 23, 2010, is contained on pages 1206-1214 of a 2407 page bill. It could hardly be more buried than that.

Food Lability Law Blog.

And so, America has gone from “Cheeseburger in Paradise” to “I Can Has Cheeseburger” to self-proclaimed “reformer” rants against Five Guys burgers as Xtreme Eating.  What a country!  It’s all well and good that Ms. Obama’s pet issue is childhood obesity, but outlawing fatty and big meals will, like illegal drugs, just make them more desirable.  So this proposal for more government will inevitably backfire, as well as being totally repulsive from a civil liberties standpoint.

These are a sample of my photos from a “friendly” match between DC United and AC Milan — featuring international superstar Ronaldinho — with son Allan a few weeks ago at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC.

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Apple’s Steve Jobs discusses the origins of the iPad at All Things Digital’s D8 Conference. Revealing.

And ironically, the Wall Street Journal has encoded the video with Adobe Flash ;-)

A tremendously insightful analysis by a young entrepreneur. Since the secret of success is, as Edison said, more perspiration than inspiration, more luck than talent, maybe the Facebook founder has a little of both?

We compete with different companies in different ways. One of the things I try to do as CEO of this company is not make mistakes that other companies make — I make different ones, he jokes. The world is changing so quickly now that I think the biggest competitor for us is someone we haven’t heard of. So we just need to stay focused on doing what we do and doing at well… I think people look to us a the leader in this space. And I think there’s a widely held belief that we’re much closer to the beginning of the space than the end … it would be easy for us to just keep things as they are, but we don’t believe that if we did that we’d be doing the best thing for us or the industry. So we do what we think are the best things even if they are controversial.

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This is an ongoing issue with the American judiciary system. Judges are by institution isolated and by tradition older than the general population. Increasingly, however, they are called upon to rule on technologies with which they have no experience at all.

It does’t look like we’ll be seeing much Tweeting-from-the-bench on the Supreme Court any time soon, but the Hillicon Valley blog highlights an amusing moment at a recent House Judiciary subcommittee meeting, attended by two Supreme Court Justices — Antonin Scalia and Stephen Breyer — in which they’re asked if they plan on using Twitter any time soon. Scalia says he doesn’t even know anything about it, and notes that his wife refers to him as “Mr. Clueless.” Reassuring to know that of a Supreme Court Justice. Breyer, however, seems to indicate a realization that Twitter, as a communication platform, really could be quite powerful.

Subcommittee Chair Steve Cohen: Have either of y’all ever consider tweeting or twitting?

Justice Scalia: I don’t even know what it is. To tell you the truth, I have heard it talked about. But, you know, my wife calls me Mr. Clueless — I don’t know about tweeting.

Justice Breyer: Well, I have no personal experience with that. I don’t even know how it works. But, remember when we had that disturbance in Iran? My son said, ‘Go look at this.’ And oh, my goodness. I mean, there were some Twitters, I called them, there were people there with photographs as it went on. And I sat there for two hours absolutely hypnotized. And I thought, ‘My goodness, this is now, for better or for worse, I think maybe for many respects for better, in that instance certainly, it’s not the same world. It’s instant and people react instantly… and there we are. It’s quite a difference there and it’s not something that’s going to go away.

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