gone nukin'

Actually, I happen to agree: nuclear power is one option to mitigate global emissions. I can't believe anyone can seriously levy the argument "you emit when building the plant." Are you retarded? You emit to build a COAL-FIRED PLANT AS WELL! Talk about grasping at straws ...

Associative Proof

How NBC's new television show, Heroes exemplifies the design argument central to Alan Cooper's book, "The Inmates are Running the Asylum," and, subsequently, the design theory for his company, Cooper.

You don't please the masses by catering to the masses, you please the masses by catering to one facet of societal norms. That is the secret to success of things like M*A*S*H (Korean/Vietnam war vets), Seinfeld (yuppie Jews), Friends (yuppies), House (cynical people), Law & Order (those with OCD and those who wish their lives were better organized), CSI (OCDs who are closet voyeurists, lol), etc.

It all goes back to that old adage, "do one thing and do it well."


... or was that "Jack of all trades, master of none; oftimes better than master of one?" :o)


... just so long as the trade's not humor I guess, because then you get a fat slice of oppression from the political machine! Be careful now Romney, or you might wind up in Putin's cabinet! haha

how to lose "yous guys" in 7 days

I give you: Trumpia! If you think about it like I did, it's like the anti-social social networking/communication tool.

With further ado, I give you: the comment I left them! (which I wonder if they will answer):

Dear Trumpia,

Let's say a friend of mine is using your service and I get contacted via all my devices until I respond to one. I feel included, and I didn't miss the change of venue for our club meeting. Now let's say I want to sign up for Trumpia. What are the odds that I will want other people to "blast" me on all my devices when, say, I carry my phone with me "all the time?" Close to zero. So I will set my own personal settings to the "path of least annoyance" - the device I have most frequently with me. Odds are also that the person who contacted me originally will have done the same thing. And so on.

Everyone is going to tend toward that setting, especially after the first time they happen not to have their most convenient device with them and they get blasted on all channels. So your service only works well until people either sign up (and change the permissions) or opt out. In the former case you end up back where you were before Trumpia, with everyone being no more connected than the days of just e-mail or chat or text, all of which were supposed to connect people (and did, until they got used to the tech). In the latter case, you aren't using Trumpia, so it's no longer relevant.

I'm not trying to knock your company, because I think it's a move in the right direction, but to me this is a downside that says "fad" rather than "game-changer." Everyone wants to be connected yet no one wants to be annoyed, and I believe people are going to opt for, as I said, the path of least annoyance to them. This will result in the sum of all their communication devices bringing no additional benefit beyond their most commonly-used device.

Have you done user testing to see if the above is an issue?

freedom of information

NYTimes and IHT abandon Times Select. "It was a success." What a terrible, bullshit argument. No business, especially not the struggling newspaper dailies, would dare shelve an idea that was actually making them money.

I'm also glad that a bespeckled geriatric is one of the few people in America with the testicular fortitude to state plainly that the war in Iraq is over OIL and that Bush is a nitwit. Christ, people, W A K E U P!

mmm ... Orwellian

Couldn't have said it better myself:

"After all, it seems the burden of ending the war will fall to the next president. Bush was clear on Thursday night - as he was when he addressed the nation in January, in September of last year, the December before that and in April 2004 - that his only real plan is to confuse enough Americans and cow enough members of Congress to let him muddle along and saddle his successor with this war that should never have been started."

Thanks for that concise and scathing summary of our failures, International Herald Tribune!

lunatic lottery-winner

In stunningly vivid irony. What a greedy son-of-a-bitch. Why is it so hard for society to call a spade a spade? This is greed, exemplified, and yet we'd prefer to make all sorts of excuses for our behavior.

He's beset by sob stories? Here he is on CNN, another sob story. Here is a modest business proposal: if you want to be remembered, be like Buffett. I'll found your non-profit donation (and make sure to funnel 40% of the profits to myself, so that the organization generates no net profit).

Men are from Mars ...

If there were Martians, their preferred method of transport would be second-hand motorcycles.

these are a few of some interesting things

1) Random Mastadon-ness!

2) Just plain cool. (hint: it's a trick of the mind)

3) not cool ... not cool at all. A warning label would add what, $0.04 to the cost of manufacture? It may be a ridiculously small percentage of lives saved from injury, but it's undue injury. And if you merely think about how many teens ride with severely reclined seats, even when driving (not that teens would heed the warning labels). Also, even if you don't heed the warning, you do retain some of the information (like advertising). The potential for an airbag to deploy improperly and unduly injure you is very slight, but vehicles still carry warnings about those.

And given the yearly stories of dogs and babies killed in overly hot cars, maybe there should be a warning on the windows. Stupid individualistic sheep need constant reminders in order to maintain their vigilance of their fragile, ignorant little lives (and the lives of their pets - children included).

meal rusiness beetings

They're run absolutely nothing like this. I mean, come on - no one that old knows wtf "pwnd" means!

RIAA = asymmetric profit structure

Yeah, where was this support when Apple launched? Nowhere. Now that it's actually a successful business model, the corporate drones want a bigger slice of the theoretical pie. Theoretical because I sure as hell am not going to pay more than about $1 per song.

The artists are the ones who deserve a larger percentage of my dollar, not these fat-cat executives!

They aren't getting it - they get TEN PERCENT OR LESS of the revenue from each song sold on iTunes! That's not Apple's fault, it's the fucking bullshit industry. Why do you think artists are quick to open their own sites and tour so heavily? That's their only chance to make a decent profit from their work.

Also, if you think about it, how exactly are NBC and its cohorts going to undermine Apple? They can't promote another service that charges more for media, so they'll subsidize some cheap knock-off in order to gain market share, then jack the prices sky-high. Sounds fun, I can't wait until you help them do it! Yes, you, you fucking ingrates - where are the how-to articles on getting real music back on the radio and break the recording industry's stifling grip on artistic talent? That'd be too "subersive" for the mainstream media (and against the media conglomerate's interests, since Universal owns NBC, which owns MSNBC, and the whole thing is owned by GE).