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Rant

Microhoo? Nope.

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MSNBC: Microsoft abandons bid to buy Yahoo

Wow. I mean, wow. The only other time I can think of Microsoft walking away from a proposed merger was way back, for Intuit (Quicken)… to be honest, I think it’s the right move for the company, but now I have to wonder what’s next for Yahoo!… I know the shareholders aren’t going to take it well and given the hubbub over the Google/Yahoo! ads trial (and the DOJ’s reaction to it,) I can’t imagine a merger there would be allowed.

Or does Y! come back Monday morning with a “oh, alright, $33/share is enough after all”? Of course, I’d love to see Microsoft say “sorry, the offer is lower now!” *g*

The mind boggles – just as much as it did when the merger was announced in the first place.

Rant

Hippies, The World Economists

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I had to laugh at a recent news story on TV… it’s not often that the local news is forced to admit that what might be “good for the environment” might be “bad for humans.” A story a while back about how electrical cars might be worse for the world, due to the batteries that run the car. Explosions, leaking waste, etc. Of course a story like this caused the Tree Huggers to hug themselves into a frenzy: new batteries must be found.

Pft. Who would of thought Cartman was being sensible about something…

The story this morning, though, was about food inflation and shortages …and why it’s the Hippies fault.
Continue reading Hippies, The World Economists →

digital pity

To The Day!

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True, it’s just a rumor. Yes, nothing is “known for certain” about the next generation iPhone. But 16 days after making a purchase, exactly two days after my window of return closes, I see this:

Fortune: When the 3G iPhone is introduced this summer, AT&T, the exclusive U.S. iPhone sales partner with Apple, will cut the price by as much as $200, according to a person familiar with the strategy.

Which is exactly what I said would happen – just makes this rumor 100% true. *g*

GeekStuff

GTA IV

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No reason for a review here – there’s plenty floating out there already… what I will say is the following:

+ I got an advanced copy through pleading, so I’m already 6 hours into the game and have been enjoying it. A lot. And I’ve only seen spots of 1/3 of the overall map.

+ The game play is exactly what I’ve loved GTA and Bully for

+ All of things that I used to dislike about the game are gone in this release (GPS nav rules, auto-saving after every mission, easy health restoring)

– Niko is one slow moving bastard; praise the A-to-Run button

+ The graphics work is simply amazing, even by 360 standards; best thing T2 could have done was release the retro-feeling Bully two months ago…

I’ve heard there’s multiplayer too, but in all honesty: I can’t get away from the story yet.

Rant

“hell has officially frozen over.”

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Furrygoat: Q: What do you get when you cross a browser application with the ability to go offline? A: A client application without any the goodness that the platform (be it Windows or OS X) has to offer.

What’s wrong with this post? Absolutely nothing. I agree with Steve completely on this matter. When you’re right, you’re right. Hasn’t happened since Heretic was released and we both recognized it as the best LAN-based game of its day.

Oh yeah… it’s completely frozen over.

digital pity

iPhone: Workaround #1

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As I noted in an earlier post, I found a problem with Outlook->iPhone sync’ing for Appointment items that had a relatively large size. Tim Heuer mentioned that the same sync process had issues with specific types of Outlook Appointment items…

Based on his findings, I spent a little while in VBA and came up with a small for that addresses both issues, but I forewarn you: I’m not taking any responsibility for any data loss on this one… it’s pretty straightforward but if you’re like me, you have over 1000 calendar items and that’s a lot of data to do batch updates on.

If you’ve suffered from the combination of iTunes, Outlook, and iPhone, and don’t mind getting your hands rather dirty, please read on.
Continue reading iPhone: Workaround #1 →

digital pity

iPhone: Concession #1

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As with all new technologies in my life, there’s always a period of transition. A chunk of time when you have to unlearn what you’re used to and re-learn things with new devices that are expected to be better than the original. I mentioned some of what I expected to have to give up – and new things that popped up that were unexpected – in my last iPhone post so the Concessions list has a foundation already… but this is different.

This is a bug: there’s a cap to how big a Calendar item’s body can be yet you’d never know about it until you hit the problem.

I have a Calendar item in Outlook that has 6903 characters. I didn’t create it but it’s in my Calendar just the same. Not an unreasonable size anyway. The bug here is what happens when this item is Sync’d to the iPhone: nothing. iTunes completely ignores it and your Calendar on the iPhone has open time for this slot. It doesn’t put in a stub or truncated item for you. It doesn’t tell you there was a problem. No error, no warning, no sync log file to investigate. And what’s maddening: no choice on how to handle it. Ideally there would be a “Sync items larger than blah” option. Apple didn’t include it and odds are it would be explained as “that’s a feature! Who likes error messages? It just works!”

Enter Concession #1: watching Calendar items sync and make sure the items are smaller than at least 6K of text or else I miss meetings.

Update #1 – Seems I’m not the first to have this problem either: http://timheuer.com
Continue reading iPhone: Concession #1 →

digital pity

Warning: iPhone Update Coming

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Don’t buy an iPhone for another 15 days.

Why? Because I recently bought one, and if past history has shown me anything, as soon as I buy something like there one of the following things happens: a new version is often released or a price drop is enacted. And always 48 hours after I can do anything about it. Since the iPhone has a 14 day return policy and I bought it yesterday, in another 15 days there should be a price drop or new model available.

It has happened before – odds say it will happen again.

Thoughts on the device follow…
Continue reading Warning: iPhone Update Coming →

Rant

All I Got Was This Paper?

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Has it occurred to anyone else that in The Breakfast Club is the fact that the Geek doesn’t end up with one of the women? I mean, the Burn Out gets the Princess; the Jock gets the Headcase. The Geek gets an essay.

Most realistic part of the movie, I think.

Rant

I Said, “Shut up!”

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MSNBC: “I send a message to Tibetans in the San Francisco area ‘Please do not make any violent activities,'” the Dalai Lama said Thursday morning during a stopover in Tokyo. “Of course, this is an expression of their feelings… No one has a right to say ‘shut up!'”

Actually, I find myself in the position to tell the Dalai Lama that he is wrong. I have every right to tell someone to ‘shut up!’

…I just don’t have the right to expect other people to shut up, just because I told them to.

Rant

I, For One, Welcome Our New Scapegoats For Everything

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ValleyWag: Cheerleader’s mom blames YouTube, MySpace for her daughter’s beating

The ‘goat just send this to me via IM, but I heard about it on the radio and I have to say… I look forward to being able to blame things that have been going on for over two hundred years on web sites. After all, bullying never existed before the Internet. People never got beat up before computers were networked. And God knows the floppy disk alone caused people to get pissed off for stuff that other people say.

FWIW, the only thing that I will blame – or credit – YouTube and MySpace for in this is the fact that they are helping natural selection along. If anyone is dumb enough to stage a fight, film it, and then blt it to the world with pride? They are need to go away for a while… if you use leeches can they syphon off the stupidity?

The only thing dumber than filming the fight is the fact that girl obviously did someone to provoke this reaction and did so in a public forum – I believe the audio from the video has snippets of “cheated” and “stole” which means that there’s a history here rather than a random act.

And of course the dumbest thing of all is that the media is now involved – makes me wonder what would have happened if the girls fought it out in Second Life.

Rant

It Ain’t Easy Being Green

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Mayor Nichols of Seattle is trying to impose a $0.20/per bag surcharge for each paper or plastic bag people use while shopping at food, drug, or variety stores. He pitches this to the public a meer week after wanting to throw a new tax at Seattle residents for “improving the Seattle Public Market,” just as the “parks improvement” tax is expiring and following news that the Alaskan Way Viaduct has sunk even more into the ground (and with no useful plan in sight.)

His reasoning? He wants to help the environment by preventing waste before it’s waste. As part of the bag-fee, he’s also wants to ban all of the Styrofoam containers that 90% of the take out places use for delivery. And I quote, “if we can cut down materials that people use that we know to be harmful to the environment, we can do more with prevention than we can with recycling.”

My reasoning? I think we should consider the following:

  • 10% surcharge on food – it people are eating then they are shitting and that makes a lot of waste
  • $3/beverage citywide – if you aren’t bringing your own cup to use, you’re causing waste
  • $1 increase to water utilities for flushing – people shouldn’t be wasting possible compost materials
  • $10/planting for all new greenery being planted: that’s only going to make paper some day and that’s no good
  • 25% increase on condoms – same as the bags: if you need new ones, you aren’t reusing properly

Meh.