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Showing posts from April, 2010

Late breaking news, part 2: Tea Partiers are "racially resentful"

News flash: the sun rose in the east.  And in other headlines, a  survey by the University of Washington Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race & Sexuality finds that Tea Partiers are "racially resentful." Is this a fancy way of saying black people piss them off? Which is another way of saying they are racists? Hmm...I wonder. Tie this with the recent poll which found this same group of grumpy white people thought "the Obama administration favors blacks over whites."  Newsweek has more information , if you are finding this hard to believe. Just to show they don't play favorites, the TP'ers also disliked Latinos. 

Why jailbreak your iPhone when you can do this?

This just in: a clever person out there has managed to successfully hack his iPhone so it will boot into Google's Android OS (which also means -- he's made it boot into Linux!). Apparently he's only got this working on an older iPhone (not 3G or 3GS) but by golly -- the fact he's done it at all is pretty astonishing. There's an embedded YouTube video that demos this unnatural act in all its perverse wonderment. Somewhere there is a great disturbance in the Force. Thanks again to Slashdot for bringing this to my attention.

Gizmodo on the new iPhone

In an oddly serendipitous set of circumstances, Gizmodo "found" what they claim is a prototype for the new iPhone in a bar in Redwood City.The real deal is scheduled to be launched this June. By the time they got their hands on the prototype, the owner had remotely killed it, but they do have a number of photos, as well as descriptions. My impression is the styling is heavily influenced by the iPad, including an aluminum band around the perimeter. Although I won't be rushing out to buy one (not until my AT&T contract expires anyway) it appears to be a handsome device. I will be upgrading to the 4.0 firmware once they make it available for the 3GS. Check it out , fanboy! In other iPhoney news, the beta release of the 4.0 firmware has already been jailbroken .

Late breaking news: Tea Partiers are angry old white people

The latest CBS/New York Times poll reveals this shocking information:  people who identify themselves as members of the Tea Party movement are, for the most part, angry old white people who watch Fox News. In other news, scientists expect the sun to rise in the east tomorrow. Here's a snapshot of your basic Tea Party sympathizer/supporter: 75% are over 45 years old 95% identify themselves as Republicans  or "Independents" (ha!) 73% say they are conservatives 89% are white 63% say they get most of their political and current events news from the Fox News Channel More interesting takes on reality from the Tea Party: 92% think the country is on the wrong track 59% think President Obama was born in another country (30%) or say they don't know (29%) 52% say too much is made of the problems facing black people 25% think the Obama administration favors blacks over whites When pressed for why they objected to Obama, 19% said "they just didn't like

Quote o' the Day

" The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. " -- H. L. Mencken , American journalist, essayist and social critic. Consider that next time you find yourself watching anything on the Fox Network.

Mike Huckabee: I'm (still) not a homophobe. Riiight

Former Arkansas Governor/Baptist Preacher Mike Huckabee has the "aw shucks" act down pat. He can spew the most incredibly offensive drivel imaginable and still sound like a reasonable, well-intention person. I bet if he'd been in Salem, Massachusetts he'd have convinced those poor women they deserved to be burned as witches. Brother Huckabee recently compared efforts to legalize same-sex marriage to legalizing incest, polygamy and drug use. He's quoted in The Perspective ( student publication of The College of New Jersey ), as saying, "You don't go ahead and accommodate every behavioral pattern that is against the ideal...That would be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let's go ahead and accommodate those who want to use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them." Afterwards, Huckabee took

Opera Mini : Now Available for iPhone!

Omigod! Against all that I thought possible, Apple has approved the Opera Mini browser for iPhone (presumably an iPad version can't be far behind). Omigod! I'm downloading it now !

Adobe to sue Apple over lack of Flash?

Latest rumor in the continuing soap opera that is Flash vs. the iPhone: ITWORLD has an article that says there are reports that Adobe is planning to sue Apple in a couple of weeks for Flash non-support. The problem is apparently with the new Apple SDK ("software development kit" for you non-geeks) license, which locks Flash out of the iPhone (and iPad!) even tighter that it previously was. I can picture some Suit at Adobe sputtering, "But they have to have Flash! Everybody uses Flash!" Having a version of a site with Flash and one without is going to be a pain in the ass for the average web developer. Guess which one they'll go with if they want to woo the iPhone/iPad user? Although I use (and like) products from each company I have no great love for either Apple or Adobe -- from a corporate point of view they are both arrogant pricks as far as I can tell. So I'm going to enjoy this pissing contest immensely. Word to Adobe: few if any technology battl

Texas Stadium -- GONE

I suspect a lot of you did not get up at the crack of dawn to see the demolition of Texas Stadium. Here's the video (selected after pains-taking reviewing of numerous candidates ). One of the fascinating things about this sort of thing is the surgical precision in which the operation is carried out. This is a controlled implosion, not an explosion. Timing, as they say, is everything. ...By the way, Arlington Taxpayers, you'll be hosting a similar event before you know it.

Republican D.A. to educators: teach sex-ed, go to jail

Wisconsin Republican District Attorney Scott Southworth sent a letter to 5 school districts opining that teaching children younger than 16 about contraceptives could be construed as contributing to the delinquency of minors ( PDF of his letter -- warning: big file ).  Rep. Kelda Helen Roys, author of the bill authorizing the sex-ed classes, said, "I think this is about trying to intimidate school administrators and teachers into staying silent." Interestingly enought, Southworth, a member of the Wisconsin National Guard who served in Iraq, s ued the University of Wisconsin, Madison back in his student days, saying he shouldn't be forced to pay student services fees ("segregated fees") because a percentage of them might end up supporting campus organizations with whom they disagreed ideologically or politically. The US Supreme Court said, sorry, it doesn't work like that. Refreshing to know that my home state of Texas has no monopoly on bone-head R

Ed Roberts, father of the PC: Rest in Peace

It's funny how we can be responsible for something much large than ourselves. Case in point: the late H. Edward Roberts . He's well-known in a somewhat narrow context and yet I'd be willing to bet the next 10 people you see have no idea who he is. That being said, he's directly had an impact on you if you are reading this. Ed Roberts developed and sold what was arguably the first commercially successful personal computer, the Altair 8800 , way back in 1975. Just as significantly, he hired a couple of bright, ambitious college dropouts to write a version of BASIC for the Altair 8800: Bill Gates and Paul Allen . Gates and Allen went on found a little software startup called Microsoft. Perhaps you've heard of it? Roberts came out of the hobbyist electronics world. MITS, the company he started, initially designed and sold telemetry devices for model rocketeers, the moved to selling kits for programmable calculators (back when these were enormously expensive). The Janu

iPad: the Flash killer?

I'm not sitting here (like some colleagues) eagerly awaiting the arrival of an iPad. I have an iPhone which I like a lot, but I don't see the iPad as being that much of an improvement. It's an interesting device but, as is typical for Apple, is overpriced and over designed. Still, I'm hoping it's wildly successful for one reason, and one reason alone: it has no Flash support. Confused? Let me explain. Full confession: I hate Flash. Or rather I hate how it's used by lazy designers to build non-compliant non-accessible websites which are only visible to a subset of the web population. Don't get me wrong: Flash is a tool, and like all tools, there are somethings it is very well suited for. But mostly it is used by ad agencies and design firms to add sizzle and sex appeal to their presentations to clients so they can sell services. Its use contributes to what I once heard referred to as "bandwidth drunkenness." So, the iPad won't support this bli

Obama resigns!

The existence of a birth certificate that reveals President Barack Obama was not born in Hawaii has created a firestorm of controversy in the nation's capital. Fallout from the previously unknown document has escalated to the point where many have publicly stated Obama has lost the ability to effectively lead the nation. Among the shocking revelations: Obama was actually born in Havana, Cuba and that his birth name was Jesus Ernesto Guevara. Ann Dunham, who the world thought was his birth mother, actually adopted him. The birth certificate lists his father as Juan Guevara, an aide to Fidel Castro. Opponents are now saying this is what drove his decision to impose "Cuban-style" socialist healthcare on Americans. In a further shocking revelation, Obama/Guevara revealed he'd been having a torrid eighteen month affair with one-time opposition running mate Sarah Palin. "It's true, you can see Russia from her bedroom," he said. The White House press offic