Many American commentators have a very particular view of the EU and regulation. Usually the view is that the EU are wrong but in many ways it’s just different from regulation in the US.

This is on daringfireball:

Apple is getting away what some describe as “malicious compliance” because they’re under no popular demand from their actual customers to comply in any other way.

I don’t mean to single out Gruber; this is a common opinion. It’s true in the sense that customers are not demanding it but wrong in the sense that, well, let’s ask Steve Jobs¹:

This weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Road Trip!” Here is my entry. This was taken on a journey from the the Bay Area to Tahoe.

For this weeks PhotoFriday, “Beach,” I went all the way back to my first visit to San Francisco, with this image of Baker Beach. You can see the famous Bay Area fog and — if you expect all of California to be as warm as LA — lots of overdressed people.

Please vote for my entry in last weeks challenge, “Reflections.” I’m entry number 81.

I thought showing the hustle and bustle of a busy area at night would be a good interpretation of the theme “City” — this weeks PhotoFriday theme. Or if not good, at least different from most of the other entries, which seem to be sky-scrapers from a distance(!).

When I think of “Stillness,” this weeks PhotoFriday challenge, I tend to think of a lake; an apparently unmoving body of water. (A lot of the other entries, to my eyes at least, don’t represent “Stillness.” Of course, mine may well miss the mark for them…)

Whatever its merits, this one was taken near Spooner Lake, which is very near Lake Tahoe.

I didn’t have an entry in the last challenge, so there’s no need to vote for me(!).

This weeks PhotoFriday challenge is “Frozen” and, I suppose, technically this snow might not actually be frozen. But snow is something you think of when you the word frozen comes up so I think it’s a valid interpretation of the theme! It was taken (in July!) near Lake Tahoe.

It’s been a while since I’ve entered the PhotoFriday challenge, but I liked this weeks theme — “Body of Water” — and thought I had a good image for it. This was taken a couple of years ago in Lake Tahoe, California.

I barely recall any mention of Halloween when I was growing up. That’s changed in the last few years. It’s certainly being much more heavily promoted these days and I want to say — though I have no evidence to support it — that it’s at the expense of Bonfire Night. Presumably children asking strangers for sugary treats is safer than fireworks and piles of burning wood?

This weeks PhotoFriday theme, “Pristine,” is a word that I always associate with clean, white, untouched snow. I’ve only ever been skiing once and, since I spent most of my time falling down, I didn’t have my camera with me very much. So instead, I have the above image, taken near Lake Tahoe. The snow, despite it being July, is still pretty much untouched.

Lake Tahoe is one of those places whose name I was familiar with but I couldn’t quite put my finger on anything specific that I knew about it. Indeed, one thing that I thought I knew about it — that it was in California — was only partly true.

Although I usually try to stay away from check-box tourism — that is doing things just to complete a set or increase a count — I did pretty well numerically this time. I got almost all the way around the lake, just missing out on the south east corner, and added another state, Nevada, to my tally.