Sick England: Happy Slapping

Happy Slapping in the UK- comment by Richard Grannon


'Happy-slapping' video shows teenage girl being kicked in the face in playground attack

The mother, who did not want to be named, said: "I couldn't believe my eyes - it was worse than anything you could see at the cinema, truly horrifying. A lot of work has been done to collect these fights on a clip. How could someone be so heartless?"

The film shows the blonde victim being assaulted by a girl with short black hair.

She is first knocked to the ground with a punch to the face before having her head slammed against the road.

As she desperately tries to get to her feet, the other girl knees her in the face - followed by 14 other kicks to the head before the victim finally lies unmoving on the ground.

The video includes at least five bloody brawls, many between boys and girls as young as 13 in school uniform. They swing punches and aim kicks at each other while jeering crowds record the action on their phones.

We don't need a Colosseum to watch Christians being fed to lions. We can do that now on every street corner and broadcast it around the world on the Internet.

Like this:

Happy slap town

Quote: Joan Collins

Yes, the actress. Shut up. It's good.

Joan Collins: the day I said no to James Bond

Ian Fleming was a species almost extinct today - an aspirational writer. Men wanted to be James Bond, and women wanted to be the glamour-puss that James Bond would be attracted to. Nowadays, we seem to be spurning the very thought of being smooth, suave and sophisticated, and seem to prefer the dull reality of T-shirts and Doc Marten's. You can see the decay of aspiration from the Promenade des Anglais to the Sunset Strip: shirtless louts and mini-skirted slags drunk and vociferous, behaving badly because they know no better and have no one to look up to.

That's from a three-screen article. Go read. I howled over her description of Las Vegas tourists.

Reference: iPhone/iPod Touch Backup/Sync

PhoneView for iPhone and iPod Touch

It's not exactly an iPhone/iPod Touch version of Palm Desktop, but it'll do!

Ecamm releases renamed PhoneView

PhoneView gives me an easy way to move data onto and off of the iPhone media partition and has been delivering this functionality reliably despite a series of Apple iPhone firmware releases. It lets me add notes, browse and grab images, look through my call data and more.

aigo/Gigabyte M528 MID: First Review

This is the one Intel MID that excited me earlier this year.

Then the proposed price crushed me.

Now it's in someone's hands: Hand on with aigo MID by UMPCFever

The two key things are:

The Qwerty keyboard is larger than TyTN II's but I think it is not suitable for long time input as similar as I usually do on my TyTN II and ex-phone Hermes.

Although the keyboard of aigo MID is designed for thumbs typing, it seems a little bit wider for easily access to the middle keys of the keyboard.

Maybe my hands are not that big enough to handle it or that's why I can type very fast using the small qwerty keyboard in TyTN II and Hermes.

It still much much better to use a on-screen keyboard for long message typing.

Hmmm ... bad news on the keyboard.

So, OK then, what about that great battery life, eh?

However, the battery life does not show what Intel promised (theoretically)~~ I don't see 10 times longer in battery life~~(that is for sure >.< )

The battery capacity is 2700mAh, 3.7V (~10Wh). For a normal use, surfing internet with Wifi on and simple text input may give you about 2 hours operating time. Even worse than EeePC 900 and Kohjinsha SR8 !!! However, I did not count exactly the running time. Hope I will have time to test it again (both in Windows and Linux environments)

Two freaking hours?!!?

At this point, there's no ... um ... advantage to this over an HTC Advantage or an iPod Air.

How do they expect to sell any of these if:

1) The price is a multiple of an iPod Touch (which, face it, is a MID -- and more!)

2) The battery life is the suck?

Over at the link, there's also an unboxing video and here's a huge photo gallery.

An Example Of iPhone/iPod Touch Keyboard Lag

This is a video demonstrating a social network for iPhone users called Plazes, over at TechCrunch.

At about forty seconds in, you can see the kind of keyboard lag and freeze I mentioned here and here and here and here.

iPlazer


By the way, Plazes seems to be a lot like GyPSii.

Previously here:

Reference: GyPSii For iPhone

YahooMail Is Still Screwed

Lots of delays again today.

Thirty seconds to open an email.

Thirty seconds to get the Compose form.

Thirty seconds for it to be sent.

Thirty seconds to get the Check Mail screen.

What hell are they doing over there?!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #103

Fed's Direct Loans to Banks Climb to Record Level (Update2)

May 15 (Bloomberg) -- The Federal Reserve's direct loans of cash to commercial banks climbed to the highest level on record in the past week as money-losing lenders increasingly turn to the central bank for funds.

Funds provided through the so-called discount window for banks rose by $2.8 billion to a daily average of $14.4 billion in the week to May 14, the central bank said today in Washington. Separately, the Fed's loans to Wall Street bond dealers rose by $75 million to $16.6 billion.

And here's the scam at work:

Net Miss

There was one net miss, on May 14, the Fed said. A net miss occurs when the actual reserve level in the banking system diverges from the Fed's projections for a day by $2 billion or more. If the level is outside expectations, the federal funds rate can deviate from target.

The central bank also reported that the M2 measure of money supply rose by $1.1 billion in the week ended May 5. That left M2 growing at an annual rate of 6.7 percent for the past 52 weeks, above the target of 5 percent the Fed once set for maximum growth. The Fed no longer has a formal target.

The Fed reports two measures of the money supply each week. M1 includes all currency held by consumers and companies for spending, money held in checking accounts and travelers checks. M2, the more widely followed, adds savings and private holdings in money market mutual funds.

During the latest reporting week, M1 fell by $7 billion. Over the past 52 weeks, M1 declined 0.1 percent. The Fed no longer publishes figures for M3.

Emphasis added by me.

"The Fed no longer has a formal target." -- in other words, things are so out of whack, they have to get rid all past measures and limits.

"The Fed no longer publishes figures for M3." -- let's not tell the children.

Let me paint you a picture.

A stumbling drunk is trying to cross a multi-lane highway. By sheer dumb luck he has missed getting smashed by any of the hundreds of speeding cars. But he still has lanes to go to get to the other side.

That drunk is our economy.

Prepare for our flattening.

Quote: Peggy Noonan

Pity Party

"This was a real wakeup call for us," someone named Robert M. Duncan, who is chairman of the Republican National Committee, told the New York Times. This was after Mississippi. "We can't let the Democrats take our issues." And those issues would be? "We can't let them pretend to be conservatives," he continued. Why not? Republicans pretend to be conservative every day.

Emphasis added by me.

To reiterate:

When will my fellow Americans wake up to the grand deception being perpetrated against their vital interests?

This is what people who vote Republican think they are upholding:




This is what the hell Republicans actually want:



Wake up before the country is wrecked!

Previously here:

You Bastards Will Hang One Day
Pottersville, U.S.A.

Oil sets record near $128; pump price at high, too

NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices surged more than $3 Friday, shattering a previous record in a spike near $128 a barrel, as prices at the pump pushed to new highs of their own.

The gains come 10 days before the Memorial Day holiday, the traditional start of the peak U.S. summer driving season, suggesting that retail gas prices have further to rise.

Americans are now paying a national average of $3.787 a gallon for regular gasoline, up nearly a penny from the previous day, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service.

Diesel prices also have risen to record levels, meaning that even Americans who don't drive will likely face even higher prices on all sorts of goods because of increased shipping costs. A gallon of diesel now sells for $4.482 a gallon.

Emphasis added by me.

Did any of you think it was over?

There's the rest of this year still to go.

And next year too!

Go refresh your memory.

Gear Diary Does Mobius

Mobius Seattle 2008: Day One, First Half
Mobius Seattle 2008: Day One, Second Half, Sony XPERIA X1
Mobius Seattle 2008: Day One, Second Half, MWg
Mobius Seattle 2008: Day One, Second Half, HTC
Unboxing the HTC Advantage 7510*
Mobius Seattle 2008: Day Two, First Half, Zune

Note that you'll have to clickclickGoBack with most of the photos. Only some of them have made it to the Gear Diary Flickr photosream.

Because Judie is just tooooo busy playing with her new HTC Advantage. La-dee-frikkin-da. Who me? Jealous? Little ol' moi?

Hell yes!!


The iPod Air will be better ... the iPod Air will be better ... clicking my ruby slippers together!!

*Alternate title: Drown In The Juices Of Your Jealousy, Mike Cane!!!

Rare 1960s TV: Space Patrol

Space Patrol (1962), Ep 09 (1/3): Husky becomes Invisible

Space Patrol was a science fiction television series featuring marionettes that was produced in the United Kingdom in 1962. It was written and produced by Roberta Leigh in association with the Associated British Corporation. For many years it was believed that all but a handful of episodes had been destroyed, until a complete cache of 16mm prints was discovered in the loft at Roberta Leigh's house. Despite their scratched and grainy condition, they were of sufficient historic interest to warrant a DVD release. Selected episodes were issued on DVD in 2001, and the complete series was released in 2003 on Region 0 discs.

The show featured the vocal talents of Dick Vosburgh, Ronnie Stevens, Libby Morris, Murray Kash and Ysanne Churchman, and comprised 39 half-hour episodes. This series is also known by its U.S. title Planet Patrol to avoid confusion with a U.S. series of the same name.

It concerned an interplanetary police force in the year 2100, and focused on the crew of Galasphere 347 under the command of heroic Captain Larry Dart. The crew includes elfin Slim from Venus, sausage-mad Husky, from Mars and the Martian parrot Gabbler (a Gabblerdictum). Providing technical support was Irish genius Professor Heggarty. Keeping them all on a tight rein are Colonel Raeburn and his super-efficient Venusian secretary Marla.

Leigh had previously worked with Gerry Anderson on children's puppet series, and there are some obvious similarities between Space Patrol and Anderson's Fireball XL5, although Space Patrol was made on a lower budget.

Although compared (and often confused) with the Gerry Anderson productions, Space Patrol stands out on its own. This is mainly due to the boldness of a few creative choices. The only music involved is extremely vanguard. Final credits always showed panoramic views of a gigantic city of the future, and never featured any music; only the throb of some industrial machinery, sounding like a gigantic pump or a steam engine, beat in rhythm. The male characters from planet Venus (Slim for example) presented obvious androgyne features (in contrast to the rustic, virile Martians). Thus the style of the entire series created an extremely eerie atmosphere, that remains rarely matched even by the best adult science-fiction on screen.

In this episode, when Dart is sent to Mars to find the eggs of the Aba bird to help find a cure for a condition known as the "floats", he calls on Professor Zeller who has discovered that his new star-measuring apparatus can make objects disappear.

When I saw this series as a child, I thought it was from Gerry Anderson -- but I couldn't understand why it was so bad. The puppets were crude and ugly, there was no dramatic music, and the entire styling was just cheap and unimaginative. And the robots -- not shown in this episode -- scared the bloody hell out of me. (In one episode, they revolt! It gave me nightmares for years!)

Seeing it decades later (which is a shock as for years everyone believed all the episodes had been lost!), I'm surprised at how adult it was compared to, say, Fireball XL5. It tried to adhere to actual science, the music was a harbinger of decades-away techno- ambient- industrial, and check out the pre-Star Trek pointed ears and the pre-punk spiked hair! There's also some very sly humor in the series -- and in this episode, so listen carefully!

This was apparently released in the U.S. at one time on VHS tapes. It's never been available here on DVD.

Apparently Babylon 5 creator J. Michael Straczynski was a big fan of this show during his childhood. He provided a blurb for the video cover, which also survived onto the British DVD set. See the text I've highlighted in red below:



Space Patrol (1962), Ep 09 (2/3): Husky becomes Invisible


Space Patrol (1962), Ep 09 (3/3): Husky becomes Invisible


Space Patrol fan website
Space Patrol wikipedia entry

The iPod Air Will Be Better ...

... that's my mantra, as I am assaulted -- assaulted, I say! -- by YouTube videos of the HTC Advantage showing stuff like this:

HTC Advantage - VGA Output in action



Judie Lipsett hypnotized by the HTC Advantage! She can't be saved!!!

MSI Wind: Mad Traffic Here Again

Five of the top ten posts here today deal with the MSI Wind.

Six, when I count the updated subnotebook dimensions post -- into which I added the MSI Wind yesterday.

Nine of the ten posts are about subnotebooks (yes, even the eInk post).

The All-Time Top Post here is Everex Cloudbook: The Asus EeePC Killer?

The Second All-Time Top Post here is now MSI Wind: Photos And Video


Everyone is eager to fondle the totables!

I think this proves there is a huge appetite for an inexpensive yet capable device that meets each person's particular needs.

For some people, it'll be the hp Mini. For others, the MSI Wind. While others who already have the Asus 700 series might continue to be content with that for a while yet.

While I thought the hp Mini Note would trump the Asus EeePC, in my own case that proved to be false. My fondle of the Mini was not drooltastic.

The Asus EeePC 700 held its own against the Mini on several points.

Now I need to get my fingertips on an MSI Wind to see if it can trump the Asus.

As usual, should Apple jump in with an iPod Air next month, that will trump everything for me and be the device I get.

What's Happening To My Links?

What the hell is going on here?

The hyperlink should be:

href="http://mikecane2008.wordpress.com/2008/03/25/
hey-im-not-homeless-im-a-geek/"

Instead I'm finding it to be:

href="../2008/05/09/2008/04/30/2008/
04/28/2008/04/26/2008/04/24/2008/03/25/
hey-im-not-homeless-im-a-geek/"

How are all those other dates getting in there?

They are screwing up the Previously here: in the Blogger backup blog!

Any HTML experts out there who can explain?

Disintegrating England: Soldiers Go Hungry!

Exclusive report: Soldiers need loans to eat, report reveals

A highly sensitive internal report into the state of the British Army has revealed that many soldiers are living in poverty. Some are so poor that they are unable to eat and are forced to rely on emergency food voucher schemes set up by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Some of Britain's most senior military figures reacted angrily yesterday to the revelations in the report, criticising the Government's treatment of its fighting forces.

The disturbing findings outlined in the briefing team report written for Sir Richard Dannatt, the Chief of the General Staff, include an admission that many junior officers are being forced to leave the Army because they simply cannot afford to stay on.

Get this:

The analysis, described by General Dannatt as "a comprehensive and accurate portrayal of the views and concerns of the Army at large", states: "More and more single-income soldiers in the UK are now close to the UK government definition of poverty." It reveals that "a number of soldiers were not eating properly because they had run out of money by the end of the month". Commanders are attempting to tackle the problem through "Hungry Soldier" schemes, under which destitute soldiers are given loans to enable them to eat.

The scheme symbolises a change from the tradition of soldiers getting three square meals a day for free. Now hard-up soldiers have to fill out a form which entitles them to a voucher. The cost is deducted from their future wages, adding to the problems of soldiers on low pay.

The controversial Pay as You Dine (PAYD) regime, which requires soldiers not on active duty to pay for their meals, has seen commanding officers inundated with complaints from soldiers unhappy at the quality of food that they get and the amount of paperwork involved.

Emphasis added by me.

When money is the measure of everything, this is what happens.

And this is what happens back:

Douglas Young of the British Armed Forces Federation said: "People are leaving the armed forces for financial reasons. There's no question about that."

Liberal Democrat defence spokesman Nick Harvey said, "Junior ranks in the armed forces have terrible salaries when you compare them to people starting out in the police service or fire service. How on earth are you supposed to recruit and retain people unless you offer a decent salary?"

Emphasis added by me.

What, you expect commitment or loyalty or patriotism or duty to be a part of the equation? The ground was already set: all that matters is money money money!


He fed his soldiers well!

Previously here:
[these links might be unreliable; go to the WordPress blog]


England Continues To Fall
Bloody England
England: You Can Die For Nothing There
England Continues To Sink
Degenerate England
Britain: The Lion Stirs?
England Slides Into National Insanity
England Goes Totally Off Its Nut
England: The Coming Explosion
Britain’s Last Man
Britain Commits Suicide — Again!
Dark Future
Hey! I’m Not Homeless! I’m A Geek!

Tell Me Again, Eejit, How Drugs Only Hurt Users?

'Father of 36' jailed for benefit fraud

A married father-of-two was jailed for 13 months today after fraudulently claiming almost £80,000 in benefits for 36 children.

Irvin Fraser, 30, from Aberdeen, admitted claiming child tax credits over three years, costing the public purse £79,718.

The recovering heroin addict began the scheme to feed his habit, Aberdeen Sheriff Court heard.

Emphasis added by me.

At the time he was using £150-£200 worth of heroin daily, he said.

Emphasis added by me.

Oh, the eejit will argue, if the heroin was legal, it'd be cheaper.

Hey, a cup of coffee is cheap, yet there are people who can't afford that. I was just begged for change for a cup at 6AM this morning!

You think someone in the grip of a drug is just going to peacefully sit around and beg for spare change?

"As a result of the substantial media coverage Mr Fraser has had to deal with a substantial amount of ill feeling, particularly within his own area.

"It's not surprising they are less than happy regarding his conduct ... made clear to him on numerous occasions when he's felt safe to leave his home as it were."

Awwww, the poor baby!

The Ultimate Unanswerable Question

My mother hated all women

My grandmother told me that “education is never too heavy to carry around” and my mother's hated younger sister, Edith Newman, who had distinguished herself in the Second World War as the country's first woman munitions officer, encouraged me to go to university. The women my mother denigrated were the ones urging me towards independence. Now I see that, unlike her, they were my positive models.

To the warped ones out there who have deformed the minds of the children they should have never had, all their children have the one question that can never be answered: Why did you do that to me?

Who's The Pig? YOU!

I swiped this photo from the Times of London's article: Manchester riot forces big screen U-turn for Champions League

If these sports fans are the same psychodemographic as Americans fans (and they probably are), they believe themselves to be a superior breed, unyieldingly patriotic, and contemptuous of people they don't understand.

So they probably go about their lives asking, Why has everything turned to such shit?

Look at the picture, you fuckhead: It's because of you!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #101

OECD warning as stagflation goes global

Price pressures across the emerging world are reaching levels that may soon threaten stability unless governments jam on the brakes. Inflation rates have reached: Venezuela (22pc), Vietnam (21pc), Latvia (18pc), Qatar (17pc), Pakistan (17pc), Egypt (16pc) Bulgaria (15pc), The Emirates (11pc), Estonia (11pc), Turkey (9.7), Indonesia (9pc) Saudi Arabia (9.6pc), Argentina (8.9pc), Romania (8.6pc), China (8.5pc), Philippines (8.3pc), India (7.6pc).

Many of these countries are now suffering the worst prices spiral in thirty years, setting off widespread riots. India's government has suspended futures for a clutch of key commodities as states resort to draconian measures.

Emphasis added by me.

And:

While the soaring cost of food and energy is the key driver for the poorest countries, others are ensnared by their own currency pegs. Most Gulf states are linked to the dollar, forcing them to shadow the US Federal Reserve's super-loose interest rate policy, with inevitable over-heating. China operates a semi-fixed rate, or 'dirty float'.

Christian Noyer, governor of the Bank of France, said this week that the pegs had become a major headache. "The world environment has become very inflationary. Many emerging economies are partially 'importing' US monetary policy, although their position in the economic cycle is fundamentally different," he said.

Emphasis added by me.

Governments are going to start to wake up to that fact. Alternatives will be sought. The future could find America financially alone, like a plague carrier in an isolation ward.

Not that the current configuration of the Euro is salvation:

The ECB's task is doubly complicated by the yawning gulf between the Germanic and Latin blocs of the eurozone. Industrial output fell in Italy, France, and Spain in March. April manufacturing orders fell at the fastest rate since the dotcom bust in Italy and Spain. "We're suffering a clear and profound slowdown in the Spanish economy", said Pedro Solbes, the country's finance minister.

The issue of Spain's crumbling property market intruded on the bank's policy agenda last week, pitting the South against the hawkish Bundesbank chief Axel Weber.

It is understood that the meeting broke down into a fierce exchange of national views, ignoring the EU treaty requirement that the ECB focus on the eurozone as a whole. EU officials have begun to ask whether Mr Weber is committed to monetary union. A senior German advisor told a closed group of investors in London last week that "it wouldn't matter in the least if Spain left the euro".

David Bloom, currency chief at HSBC, said the single currency was likely to fall from near record highs as investors woke up to the realities in the South.

"The euro has been trading on the German export story. The market has conveniently ignored the collapse in Spain, and the near recession in Italy," he said.

Emphasis added by me.

Could some countries be evicted from the eurozone? If the weakest members were excised, wouldn't that drive the Euro into even higher valuations against the U.S. dollar?

Quote: Hordac The Refuser

I see a future ruled only by those in leather, with fast cars and ass-less chaps and guns and mutant powers.

This in response to an Ambrose Evans-Pritchard column, EU to launch assault on bankers' bonuses

A confidential document prepared for the gathering in Brussels finds the "short-term" pay structure of modern capitalism has become deformed, causing firms to take on "excessive risk" without regard to the interests of stakeholders or society.

And:

EU governments are paying close attention to a law going to the Dutch parliament this month. It imposes a 30pc supertax on pay packages above €500,000 (£398,000) and limits bonuses and stock options to 100pc of pay - far below the windfalls made by UK-based traders and bankers at the height of the credit bubble.

I don't think Ambrose favors it.

And I do think Hordac is correct.

Reference: Toilets (Yes, Really!)

Choosing a new toilet is not as easy as you think

I mean, how difficult can buying a new toilet be? It's a basic utilitarian, functioning gadget. It's not as though you have a million varieties to choose from now, is it?

Wrong.

Did I want "bulk handling"? Could that be marketing speak for do I poop like an elephant? Or my friends? Imagine the scene: I'm standing in the middle of the W. 23rd St. Home Depot on a busy Saturday morning and the salesman is waiting while I'm going through my mind thinking which of my mates could be problematic in the "bulk handling" area. My mind hasn't been into this space before, and I was amazed that I had to think of my friends in this way.

What about the vegetarian girlfriend? She eats a lot of beans. Then there's the New Zealand mate who had confessed she had blocked her own toilet a couple of times. I wasn't going to take any chances. For the Gizmodo generation, Kohler offers seven different flushing technologies to choose from.

The salesman impressed upon me that the "high-performance gravity-fed technology" delivered "extraordinary handling" and had "optimized rim-wash for exceptional cleanliness." Was it a car? Was it a train? No it was just a toilet!

My god!

Judie Lipsett is already planning Toilet Gear!


Judie: Cane, you were under NDA about that!!!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #100

There's no special significance to that number, by the way. I wasn't holding it for anything in particular.

Collateral Foreclosure Damage for Condo Owners

Barbara Sanz has never missed a mortgage payment, but the plunge in real estate is punishing condominium owners like her anyway.

Four years ago, she bought her first condo in a glassy new Miami tower when the building was filling up. Now nearly one in six residents in the 43-story building is battling foreclosure and their contributions to the building association are shrinking. Each of the remaining owners has had to chip in an extra $1,000 assessment and $50 more a month for cable and Internet. That is on top of Ms. Sanz’s $450 monthly maintenance fee.

Even though she pays more, her building has broken washers and dryers and unusable exercise equipment, and her hallway is spotted with mold.

“It’s not fair,” said Ms. Sanz, a 32-year-old event planner. “The first two years, I enjoyed all of the benefits of living in a condo. I’m disappointed now. I hate the way the building looks.”

When people buy condos, they expect their monthly fees will cover many of the responsibilities that they would otherwise have as owners of single-family homes, like cutting the grass and paying the water bills. Now many find themselves nagging each other in the hallways to pay their assessments and adding special fees while haggling over chores. In Miami, Chicago and San Diego, condo owners are adjusting to the economic woes, sometimes by mowing themselves and working shifts for building security — all while lamenting their lost community.

“What motivated people to go into the condo market in a way that led to overbuilding was the expectation that it would be easier than owning a home on a maintenance basis,” said Sam Chandan, chief economist at the real estate research firm Reis. “The downside is that your fate is tied to 50 or 100 other people who may stop making their condo payments.”

Emphasis added by me.

I've always thought condo and co-op ownership was a stupid idea.

It's basically buying a drawer in a chest or a cubicle in an office.

There's no land to plant emergency food. And you're surrounded by other people on all sides. Forget privacy too.

So, aside from the misery of the people going through it (well, not really, didn't they frikkin think?), I'm glad to see my derogation of them borne out.

Deterioration of my eyesight has led to the ignominy of having to wear glasses for reading.

This day I have to wear them for the screen!

When I take them off and look at the screen, it's now twice as blurry as it was before I put them on.

Get me stem cells, dammit!

I don't want to go through life looking like this:

Quote: Hank Williams

I Am So Sick Of "Social"

I have come to *loathe* the word social.

It has lost all meaning. Everything is friggin' social. Social meeedia they say.

Why not just be done with it and call email "social messaging" and instant messaging "instant socializing". How about "social walking" for when you walk down the street and say hello to people. "Social eating", for when you take a friend out to eat and are nice to the waiter. "Social sleeping", for when you go to bed with your wife or significant other, or, well with whoever. How about "social peeing", for when you (guys) go into a public bathroom and there is someone at the next urinal.

We use the term as though we are just so amazed that we can use the computer to actually *communicate* with people and/or share experiences. Well knock me over with a darned feather.

I like the cut of this guy's jib. The name of his blog is Why does everything suck?

I wonder if he was online in the 1980s and saw CompuServe's CB Simulator? The Suits over there initially wanted to kill the very idea of it. They were unconvinced that people would chat by typing on their keyboards.

Which is why CompuServe has gone to a very deserved and wholly unlamented bye-bye.

Reference: iPhone/iPod Touch P2P

iSlsk Brings File-Sharing to iPhone

TF: Please describe iSlsk

errrick: iSlsk is simply an application that lets you connect, download (and share, in the future) music directly from your iPod/iPhone through the Soulseek network. Anywhere, no computer required. That’s what makes “iSlsk” special and different from all other Soulseek clients out there.

There's a video at that link.

I wonder if this would allow iPhone-to-iPhone file transfers?

YahooMail: Redefining Suck

Do you know how many damned times in the past two months I have seen that goddammed message?

What the hell is going on over there?

They have hundreds of millions of people counting on them and this crap happens over and over and over!

And today is important, because I'm sure there's a message waiting from Judie Lipsett:


What did Microsoft do to Judie?!!?

No Wonder CitiGroup Is In Deep Shit

Just look at the quality of the brain power over there:

The Kindle, Amazon’s ugly but useful ebook reader that launched in November 2007, may be a burgeoning hit, says Citigroup Analyst Mark Mahaney. Citi expects Amazon to generate between $400 million and $750 million in revenue from the Kindle by 2010, or 1% - 3% of Amazon’s total revenue.

My Comment in reply:

Was this guy from Citi a transfer from their subprime loans division?

Previously here:

eInk eBook Readers: They’re All Dead, Jim!

I Make Judie Lipsett An Offer

Via email, re: her free free free HTC Advantage:

BTW, you SHOULDN'T unbox it. You might get a paper cut. Just FedEx it to ME and I'LL unbox it. Who said chivalry is dead?

You think she'll do it?

Update: She doesn't give me a chance to impress her with my manly-man unboxing skillz. Tech wench!

Rocket Man With Jet-Powered Wings

Fox News: Passing from free fall to a gentle glide, Rossy then triggered four jet turbines and accelerated to 186 miles an hour as a crowd on the mountaintop below gasped — then cheered.

MSI Wind: First Look With Video Fondle!

It is indeed a big fat global marketplace out there. At least as far as tech companies are concerned.

The first video of the MSI Wind popped up in Turkey and generated a great deal of excitement.

Now there's a brief examination of a working model from a site in Chile!

This is the original language post.

This is the Google Engrishfied translation.

There's an embedded Flash video in which almost all sides of the unit are shown. We finally get a glimpse of its bottom, showing the air vents plus the bulge of the battery in this picture:


Click to make big

It looks like there are stereo speakers at the bottom front corners.

Other screen snaps show a Western Digital hard drive and Atheros for WiFi.

Overall, the impression is very favorable.

Thanks to MSIWind.ch -- which itself is in Switzerland!

Judie Lipsett Turns On Me

I get this secret communique from her via email:

holy shit. they just gave us the advantage 7510. damn

Apparently Microsoft broke the program I had her running under.

How the hell did they figure out the code was giving her a free HTC Advantage?

Foiled again!

Even worse, she's blogging about her liberation from my brainwashing enslavement to the Borg time at Mobius.

My plans have turned to ashes. I go to sleep, grim.

Nikki Finke Gets Writing Award

"Best Of The West" Column Writing Win

The 2008 "Best of the West" journalism competition, recognized as the West's most prestigious, is designed to reward journalistic excellence and to promote freedom of information. It is administered by the nonprofit First Amendment Funding and draws entries each year from journalists in the 13 states west of the Rockies[.]

This pleases me greatly.

Nikki is the only person with a moral sense writing about that warped pit of sin and evaporative sensation, Hollywood.

Just wanting to do that is award-worthy.

But Nikki gets to the truth. With style and elan.

I haven't regularly read about Hollywood since buying Variety in the mid-late 1970s. I enjoy her site immensely.

Congratulations, Nikki!

Previously here:

TV Gets The Bottomfeeders
Tonight’s TV: Monopoly!
How Good Is The Movie Iron Man?
Nikki Finke’s Nightmare Is Becoming Real
Fall 2008 TV: Still Nothing To Watch
Nikki Finke’s Deadline Hollywood Daily
Vote Vote Vote For Nikki Finke!
You CAN Fight And WIN!
Quote: Nikki Finke (Again!)
Quote: Nikki Finke On Hulu
Quote: Nikki Finke

I Said Apple Sync Was Important: Here's Proof

iPhone dev continues

My work with the iPhone SDK continues, working on three clients to our backend services at the moment. I’m very much looking forward to blogging about this as it’s cleared at work. But as you probably have noticed from my posts, working locally and synchronizing with the back-end is what I believe most iPhone applications are about. Do quick and stuff you need to remember on the iPhone, work out the details from your computer, keep everything in sync. That’s why I’m excited about Google’s data integration. That’s why I’m excited about integrating SQLite. That’s why I spend a lot of time working with SOAP integration.

This is a fellow I posted about earlier, programming for the iPhone (and, as it turns out, the iPod Touch too).

He has a good grasp of what the reality should be.

All this talk of Cloud Computing. None of it's been real.

The iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPod Air will make it real.

MSI Wind: Photos Of Black Version

Update: Better images. Click each to enlarge.





































Right now, the black MSI Wind is the top contender for my cheap subnotebook. If it turns out to be too big, too heavy, or otherwise flawed, the next contender is the Asus e900 -- in black.

Previously here:

MSI Wind: Photo Of Three Colors
New MSI Wind Photos!
Update 3: Subnotebook Dimensions
MSI Wind Hits eBay In Italy
MSI Wind: $610 In U.S.?
Help Interrogate MSI About Its Wind!
Attention MSI: Wind Has Wings
MSI Wind: Photos And Video
MSI Wind = hp 2133 + Foleo?

A Perfect Subnotebook Accessory?

Whoa ... this sounds lustworthy.



Go read the specs.

I really could have used both a cheap subnotebook and this when the band Girls Don't Cry was still together and performing.

I'll be watching for reviews of this. I hope it'll be worth getting.

(And, yeah, maybe the next-gen iPhone will do video -- or there will be a third-party app to enable it -- but still. Why use up the iPhone's battery when this would do the trick?)

Quote: Joanna Stern

I Gave Up My Notebook for an Eee PC 900

Last week the long-awaited Eee PC 900 arrived at our office. After it underwent the Ellis Island sign-in process—okay, rather our laptop tracking database—it was greeted by some eager onlookers. Like a great big bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, we passed the system around, and I think many of us licked our fingers clean.

"Licked our fingers clean"?!

If I did that after an in-store fondle, God only knows what I'd pick up.

Wait ... is that a festering blister on my trackpad thumb?

Blog Notes: Blogger Version

WordPress' code gnomes have recently done some tinkering that is biting me in the ass now that I'm simulposting.

When you see the Previously here: at the end of some posts, that list is manually generated by me. I try to look up the relevant posts and put their titles and links in.

This used to be a simple process. Without going into boring techy details, WordPress is now abbreviating the URLs when I copy/paste them from Visual format.

This is playing havoc over at Blogger, as the abbreviation is interpreted over there as being a Blogger link, when it's actually a WordPress link. That means a 404.

I just caught that today.

And right now I'm so dispirited by it that I don't have the strength to go through the Blogger posts to make any fixes.

I've added the URL for my WordPress blog in text in the sidebar, so I hope that will lead people who hit a bad link over to the source blog.

MSI Wind: Photo Of Three Colors

-- swiped from InkTech, Italy

But over at the Laptop Magazine blog, silver was also mentioned as a color.

I hope, unlike the Asus EeePC, MSI will make black the readily-available color.

Previously here:

New MSI Wind Photos!
Update 3: Subnotebook Dimensions
MSI Wind Hits eBay In Italy
MSI Wind: $610 In U.S.?
Help Interrogate MSI About Its Wind!
Attention MSI: Wind Has Wings
MSI Wind: Photos And Video
MSI Wind = hp 2133 + Foleo?

New MSI Wind Photos!

Whoa. This stuff was published April 28th and it only gets to me now?!

Why didn't anyone leave a frikkin Comment with the URL?

Go see the retail box and slipcase at Tweaktown.

Previously here:

Update 3: Subnotebook Dimensions
MSI Wind Hits eBay In Italy
MSI Wind: $610 In U.S.?
Help Interrogate MSI About Its Wind!
Attention MSI: Wind Has Wings
MSI Wind: Photos And Video
MSI Wind = hp 2133 + Foleo?

Update 3: Subnotebook Dimensions

Click for Update 4.

This adds the MSI Wind. Note that it will have two different weights, depending on Linux (3 cell battery) or Windows XP (6-cell battery)! Note that it will also be larger(!) than the hp Mini Note with a weight that approaches it too.

hp Omnibook 300 - source: hp Omnbook Archive
11.1″ x 6.4″ x 1.4″ - 2.998 lbs

hp Mini Note (2133) - source: hp specs
10.04" x 6.5" x 1.05" - 2.8 lbs

MSI Wind - source: I4U News
10.23" x 7.08" x 0.748" - 1.24" -2.3 lbs (Linux), 2.6 lbs (XP)

Palm Foleo
10.55″ x 6.67″ x .94″ - 2.5 lbs

Asus Eee
8.86″ x 6.30″ x 0.79-1.26″ - 2.0 lbs

Everex CloudBook
9.06″ x 6.73″ x 1.16″ - 2.0 lbs

Everex Cloudbook Max
9.4" x 6.9" x 1.1" - 2.2 lbs

Celio Redfly
9.0" x 6.0" x 1.0" - 2 lbs

Fujitsu LifeBook P1610/P1620
9.13″ x 6.57″ x 1.36″ - 2.2 lbs

MacBook Air
12.8″ x 8.94″ x 0.16-0.76″ - 3.0 lbs

Lenovo U110
10.8" x 7.7" x 0.72"-0.88" - 2.4 lbs

Note: Bookmark this post in case changes are required.

Here is a very rough montage I put together to compare the Palm Foleo, hp Mini Note, and MSI Wind:

Supplemental:
XO and Asus EeePC: Comparing Size, Keyboards & Screens - Updated
P1610 vs Asus eeePC size
hp Mini Note (2133) versus Asus EeePC top photo
hp Mini Note (2133) versus Asus EeePC keyboards photo
hp Mini Note (2133) versus Celio Redfly front photo
hp Mini Note (2133) versus Celio Redfly head-on photo

MSI Wind Hits eBay In Italy

NOTEBOOK MSI WINDPC-U100 WHITE 10.1'' ATOM1.6GH NUOVO!!

301 Euros is the bid at screensnap time.


Click to get bigness

Here are the tech specs; I highlight something previously unknown:

* CPU: Intel Atom Processor 1.6 GHz
* Chipset: 945GMS + ICH7M
* Grafica: Share with System Memory
* Memoria: 1 GB DDR2 667
* LCD: 10" W (1024x600) WSVGA LED
* HDD: 2,5" 80 GB
* Drive Ottico: ND
* Card Reader: 4 in 1 (SD, MMS, MS, MS Pro)
* Dispositivi di input: Tastiera , TouchPad (Mouse non in dotazione)
* I/O:
o 1x D-Sub
o 3x USB 2.0
o 1x Mic-in
o 1x Cuffie
o 1x RJ45
* Batteria: 3 Celle (3,5 ore di autonomia)
* Wireless: 802.11BG, BLuetooth V2.0 EDR
* Webcam: 1.3 MP
* Audio: HD Audio, Speaker stereo, Microfono
* Dimensioni: 260x180x19-31,5 mm
* Peso: 1 Kg.
* Sistema Operativo: Windows XP Home

Graphics memory shared with system memory? Anyone want to comment on the possible performance impact of that? And how does that compare to the Asus EeePC, Everex Cloudbook, and hp Mini Note?

Previously here:

MSI Wind: $610 In U.S.?
Help Interrogate MSI About Its Wind!
Attention MSI: Wind Has Wings
MSI Wind: Photos And Video
MSI Wind = hp 2133 + Foleo?

Redflying At The Borg Hive

Judie Lipsett of Gear Diary is my mole at the Borg Hive Microsoft's latest Mobius indoctrination brainwashing Kool-Aid drinkfest conference.

But I think she's playing double-agent on me.

This is the latest photo she sent me:



That's Matt Miller, the ZDNet madman blogger, who pairs a $500 Redfly with a $1,000 HTC Advantage.

I still don't know why oh why.

Anyway, Judie's got her eyes open to steal snatch lift beg an HTC Advantage for me (if her programming hasn't worn off!).

Because the best price is always free.

Especially when it comes to Windows Mobile.

(You just know Hell will serve ice cream before I see one now!)

eInk eBook Readers: They’re All Dead, Jim!

Teleread reports on a rumored US$150 eInk ebook reader.

Too little, too late.

Next month the apps will start to flow for the iPhone and the iPod Touch (as well as any iPod Air or whatever it will be called).

And with that flow will come more ebook reading software choices than anyone could imagine.

In addition, if the price of the EDGE iPhone drops to $199 with an AT&T subsidy, why would anyone in their right mind want to spend:



$400 for an Amazon Kindle,



$300 for a Sony Reader,



or even $150 for this latest device?

Sure, I gave reasons why I favored the Sony Reader.

But check that date. That was over a year ago: October 2006.

Well before the iPhone.

The iPhone and iPod Touch can offer a more book-like reading experience than any of the current eInk devices. (Sidebar: Someone at Sony might have read that post. Their site touting a special James Patterson edition of the Sony Reader contains this ersatz rendition of Coverflow:



-- too late! And eInk can't do that anyway.)

In addition, the iPhone and iPod Touch are pocketable to take along everywhere, they have better screens, offer the promise of over-the-air ebook purchasing like the Kindle (but better!), and they won't restrict people to one ebook format.

And that's only to begin with.

Because of their color screen, more memory, more storage, and more powerful CPU, they offer the possibility of entirely new ebook formats with embedded audio and video clips.

And let's not forget the pinch-out ability to immediately increase the typeface size. Current eInk readers restrict everyone to sizes that are already built-in.

Does this mean Apple will also announce their entry into ebooks?

Not necessarily.

Apple would be very content to let others do that for a while and establish the market. Then -- and it would be insidious -- announce their own ebook file format, software, and section in the iTunes Store. Before then, they can watch sales for the Kindle and Sony Reader shrivel and die. Without that competition, the field would then be wide open.

Sony gave it a good try. They really did.

Amazon wasn't even close.

But that's it, guys. They're all dead, Jim.

He's dead, Jim!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #099

BANKS FACING WOES

May 14, 2008 -- Wall Street's banks and brokers aren't out of the woods yet, a former director of the Federal Reserve Board told The Post.

Even after already grappling with losses and writedowns of around $350 billion, financial firms may need to solicit more cash from deep-pocketed investors to bolster their business, said Vincent Reinhart, former director of the Fed Board's Division of Monetary Affairs.

"Losses [that financial firms] are talking about are bigger than what's already been admitted," said Reinhard, who added that financials may face another $659 billion in writedowns and losses.

Emphasis added by me.

Anyone who's been reading this blog for a while shouldn't be shocked by that news.

I've already mentioned two trillion here, one trillion here, and two to six trillion here.

It's not over. Not nearly.

Reference: Video Clipping

RedLasso

Redlasso is the only site that enables users to search National and Local TV and Radio broadcasts, create clips and share them.

Let me gripe a bit here.

Why the fek is this site spelled three different ways by the site itself?

It's RedLasso in the Firefox tab, redlasso as the site's logo, then Redlasso in the quote above.

And I hate idiotic non-descriptive names like this.

Blogger Banner Improvement

Well, it's better than it was. But obviously something is screwy that I can't fix. Blogger gives no guidelines as to what its dimensions should be and I've tried twice now to make it look better than the triaged one. I think that will have to stay for the time being.

The more I go through this, the more appealing testing TypePad becomes.

Errr ... Day Of The Triffids, Anyone?

Vision of the apocalypse and kicking Pandas: Cannes kicks off

Opening night red-carpet glory this year is for Brazil's two-time Oscar-nominated director Fernando Meirelles, whose "Blindness", about a world where people have lost their sight, starts the world's biggest filmfest.

The film, starring Julianne Moore, is one of 22 competing for Cannes' prestigious Palme d'Or, this year to be awarded by a jury headed by Sean Penn and handed out by Robert de Niro.

Based on a book by Nobel winner Jose Saramago of Portugal, the latest movie by the maker of "City of God" and "The Constant Gardener", is a gripping story about humanity facing an epidemic of blindness that raises a heap of questions about human nature and the fragility of society.

"It's as if civilisation was built on a thin layer of ice that could crack at any moment," Meirelles said at a news conference here. "It's a metaphor on all the ills of the 20th century."

Oh, I see.

This one is serious because it lacks the plants.

Right, gotcha.

Next!

Chronicles Of Depression 2.0: #098

Gas prices pass $3.75 a gallon; oil falls on inventory view

Meanwhile, light, sweet crude for June delivery fell $1.24 to $124.56 a barrel Wednesday on the New York Mercantile Exchange on expectations that an Energy Department inventory report later Wednesday will show a big jump in crude supplies.

Oil prices hit a trading record of $126.98 a barrel Tuesday. Oil prices may be more volatile in coming days as investors square positions ahead of the June contract's expiration next week.

Emphasis added by me.

Things have been a bit quiet on the oil front.

As that cliched movie line goes: Too quiet.