Posts under ‘Rants’

Name a Star for Free

You’ve heard the ads: “Name a star, get a parchment certificate, and have it recorded in the Library of Congress.” Do I have a deal for you. Name any star you want in a tweet and it will be recorded in the Library of Congress. You’ll have to print your own certificate if you want [...]

YouTube Serves Notice on IE6

YouTube is preparing to drive a wooden stake into the heart of Internet Explorer 6. Kill it!

Buzz Kill

Watch Dave Winer’s opinion of Google Buzz drive off the cliff: Twitter-killing follow-up. (Scripting News). http://r2.ly/xcex # My first Buzz tweet. Not sure if you’ll be able to read this. Let me know. http://r2.ly/xcp7 # After 15 minutes I remember that Google is mean and distrusting and filled with side-goals that have nothing to do with [...]

iPad Limitations — Here to Stay?

The original Apple Macintosh had a monochrome display, a one-button mouse, no expansion slots, and a keyboard with no function keys or numeric keypad. Apple touted each of these limitations as a feature. Yet each of these limitations was eliminated in later products. The Apple iPad has no GPS, no camera, no stylus, no flash [...]

Easy Cash With Google?

From The Official Google Blog: “Use Google to Make 1000s of Dollars!” or “Easy Cash with Google: You Could be Making up to $978 a Day Working from Home!” You may have seen offers like these using Google’s name or logo that sounded too good to be true. Unfortunately, nearly all of them are, and, [...]

EPA Declares My Personal Emissions to be Pollutants

Seriously. :-/ ___ Yeah, both carbon dioxide and methane, for the juvenile among us. For some reason, the EPA chose to ignore water vapor, another greenhouse gas I emit. Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/chicagoenergy/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

President Obama Wins the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

President Obama wins the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.” I must admit I initially didn’t see what Obama did to deserve this award, especially in the first ten days of his presidency. After all, the nomination deadline was February 1, 2009. Then I did [...]

On Searching for Truth

A search for truth with no willingness to change is: Like a fishing competition. Catch and release only. Like a vegetarian going big game hunting. Just another trophy for the wall, ultimately unsatisfying. Like a scene from A Few Good Men. “You can’t handle the truth.” Familiar? ___ Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mrjoro/ / CC BY-NC 2.0

Facebook to Sell Targeted Ads in Your News Stream

Facebook will soon have targeted ads in your news stream. Why do I make this baseless1 claim? Allow me to direct your attention: I. Facebook has proposed an updated Statement of Rights and Responsibilities that bans sponsored status updates. That indicates two things: Facebook is contemplating commercial messages in the news stream. Facebook doesn’t want [...]