Jul 18, 2010
Let the Christmas Creep Begin
Remember when it started in like November? Now you get this;
Geraldine James, Selfridges Christmas Shop’s buying manager, said: “Christmas is coming earlier each year.
“I can see a time when we offer a capsule Christmas collection throughout the year.”
Jul 17, 2010
Bob Herbert on Unitasking
This is all part of what I think is one of the weirder aspects of our culture: a heightened freneticism that seems to demand that we be doing, at a minimum, two or three things every single moment of every hour that we’re awake. Why is multitasking considered an admirable talent? We could just as easily think of it as a neurotic inability to concentrate for more than three seconds.
I’d also recommend Garrison Keillor’s Silent Brotherhood piece from April.
Jul 17, 2010
'Junkware' comes standard on Verizon, T-Mobile smart phones
Via DF:
Remember the golden days of personal computing when you’d bring home that expensive wonder box, remove the machine from its Styrofoam swaddling, plug it in, switch it on and — hey! What’s this? … Well, customers who bought Motorola’s new Droid X smart phone or Samsung’s Vibrant, both of which launched Thursday, may feel a tinge of deja vu. The Droid X comes loaded with several nonstandard applications for Google’s Android, most of which cannot be removed.
The Droid comes with Verizon’s visual voicemail installed, which not only can’t be uninstalled but requires more charges to actually use. I’m sure Consumer Reports will withhold endorsing these phones for the uninstallable junkware.
Jul 16, 2010
Learned From a Wikipedia Blackhole
Wikipedia apparently has pages dedicated to each day of the year. I ended up on my birthday and I share a day with some pretty good people (in order of awesomeness):
- Andy Pettitte (1972 - !!)
- Tim Lincecum (1984 - made a really good commercial and smokes weed)
- Waylon Jennings (1937- dead sadly)
- Wade Boggs (1958)
- Mike Holmgren (1948)
- Dusty Baker (1949)
- Paul Rusesabagina (1954 - The guy Don Cheadle portrayed in Hotel Rwanda)
- Neil Patrick Harris (1973 - Doogie!)
- Leah Remini (1970 - known for making fat guys think they had a chance at a hot wife)
- Mary Carey (1980 - has a tendency to show her (big) boobs and much more, failed governor candidate)
- Justin Leonard (1972)
- Ice Cube (1969)
- Jerry Buss (1934)
- Courteney Cox (1964)
- Helen Hunt (1963)
Oh yeah… and Derek Anderson, but we’ll pretend like he’s born a day later.
Jul 16, 2010
Busted for Praising Your Own Work Anonymously
Fascinating plan:
Write books.
Sign up for Amazon account and write comments praising your books and trashing competitors.
When confronted with fact that you stupidly put your address on the account threaten to sue.
Blame wife.
Say sorry.
Jul 16, 2010
Is Gawker Getting Revenge?
Apparently there’s this whole story going around that a little 11 year-old girl was humiliated on the Internet after some website posted a picture of her. Or something, I’m not totally sure really, but Gawker is mad about it.
Now everyone should feel bad for this girl, she’s 11 and has had some seriously messed up shit happen to her because she got worked up. Gawker ends their post with this nugget about Tumblr;
- Tumblr is becoming a home for trolls. Tumblr was originally the good-natured domain of hip New York creatives. It was, on balance, a creative force on the Internet. But the role it played in trolling Jessi Slaughter shows that Tumblr is developing a nasty side as well. Tumblr founder David Karp better get on this before Tumblr becomes 4chan with a slick minimalist interface.
I’m pretty sure any place on the Internet that allows people to sign up for free and interact with others has some trolls. Is twitter a home for trolls? Blogger? Of course they are and we all know it, and I’m sure Twitter helped fuel the fire of this story just as much as Tumblr, but it’s oddly absent. Same is any links to actual Tumblr posts to prove the point that Tumblr fueled this whole thing. I did a search on Tumblr and it pulled up hundreds, thousands of results for the girl, but Gawker couldn’t link to one?
I have no idea why Gawker seems to have it out for Tumblr, but this post comes at an odd time between the two sites. Just yesterday Charlie Todd of Improve Everywhere called out Gawker for their long used practice of uploading videos to their own servers, thus removing most benefits to the original creator*. They stole and they got called out on it, by the creator, on his Tumblr blog. The reblog figure which Gawker claims fueled the fire around the girl seems to have been used just the day before to call out Gawker for stealing content.
*. The practice also always content to remain viewable even after the user removes the original piece, thus allowing embarrassing (or more often than not copyrighted) video to continue to haunt someone. Also they’re not the only ones to do this Mediaite also does it, even having the balls to place overlay ads over content they don’t own.
Jul 16, 2010
(via brooklynmutt)
Jul 15, 2010
Moto Droid X bricks itself
It’s emerged that the Motorola Droid X contains an ‘eFuse’, which will brick the phone if it detects that you’ve tinkered with it. It’s designed to stop you upgrading to unapproved firmware, for example. Motorola’s position is that tinkerers are customers-non-grata.
So instead of one centralized company that can tell what you can and cannot install or do with your purchased hardware, Android allows for multiple companies to do that. Yay openness!
Jul 13, 2010
Novelity Idea: Pick the Announcers
You know what’d make the All-Star so much more enjoyable? Removing Tim McCarver from the microphone. Instead offer the job to any number of All-Star announcers. Vin Scully is just down the road from the stadium, or if you have issues with him being biased why not Jon Miller? Or go with an AL/NL combo, I really don’t care just get rid of McCarver I beg you.
Oh game over. Well Yanks will get to start the World Series in Philly I guess
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A Scrap pad for History, Politics and Culture
"Publish and set up a standard; publish and conceal not"
- Jeremiah 50:2
"Comment is free, but facts are sacred"
- CP Scott
Note: All Amazon links are affiliate links. You can subscribe via RSS.
"Publish and set up a standard; publish and conceal not"
- Jeremiah 50:2
"Comment is free, but facts are sacred"
- CP Scott
Note: All Amazon links are affiliate links. You can subscribe via RSS.
