Author: Richard

A Boehner in the house

After the sweeping Republican victories in the November elections, the newly elected House members are just today taking their offices in Washington and since Republicans now have a majority in Congress, the Speaker of the House (formerly San Francisco’s Nancy Pelosi) is now Ohio’s John Boehner (R). His name is pronounced “Bainer” because… he said so. which bugs me.

The dude shoulda just changed his friggin name instead of making everyone pronounce it “bay-ner”. NY Congressman Anthony Weiner (D) doesn’t make everyone pronounce his name “Whiner” – well, I guess that would be bad for other reasons – or “Winner”, so why can’t the new Speaker take a que?

These aren’t the only other name silliness I’ve noticed. In the 2004 Democratic Primary election, Joe Lieberman’s campaign chairs last name was Gobush and Lieberman pronounced it “Gobish” instead of “Go Bush” while acknowledging the humor of it in interviews and I thought that was the wrong move. He should have said “Ya his name is ‘Go Bush’. He’s my campaign chair precicely because I’m gonna be the guy to get Bush to Go out of public service and out of a job”. zing. but no…

I hold politicians to a higher standard because – duh – we all do, but Brett Favre is the worst committee of this name-crime. He was just like “everyone pretend that its “Farve” and say it like that, and everyone totally did without question and thats not even pronunciation – thats changing friggin spelling.

Theres a newly elected congressman in Idaho or something named Crapo and he’s saying its “cray-poe”. pleez… People: change your name if you dont like it. just cuz we go along with it for sports heroes doesnt mean we like it.

Here’s Boehner accepting the gavel from an awkwardly wide-smiled Pelosi (her actual speech was hella long):

Here’s Boehners speech:

And here is Liberal radio talk show host Mike Malloy explaining the reason the Boehner cries so much during speeches and interviews (true) is because he’s a drunk. I don’t get the connection so much, but now that this dude is in a higher position of power, you can expect a lot more commentaries like the one below:

Also – I have no idea whether this Malloy video was made by a fan or a hater as there are signs of both in it. weird.

Cancer Cure Charity uses donated funds to sue other “cure” charity

The Susan G. Komen charity is suing other charities with donated funds… All for the use of the phrase “for the cure”… Since, you know – the whole “curing cancer” thing isn’t as important as using punishing lawsuits against others who are also searching for such a cure.

“We were certainly taken aback by it,” she told HuffPost. “We have partners running these kite events around the country. What if one of them uses, say, magenta? Is that pink? I mean, where are we going with this? We just want to raise money for cancer. What we don’t want is to have our energy misplaced by having our charity partners trying to police the good work that we’re doing.”

Sue Prom, who started a small dog sledding fundraiser for breast cancer called “Mush for the Cure” in Grand Marais, Minn., said she was shocked to hear from Komen’s lawyers this summer asking that she change the name of her event or face legal proceedings.

“I had to call the trademark helpline, because I had no idea what I was doing,” said Prom, who runs the annual sled race with her husband and friend. “We pay for the expenses out of our pockets, and we’ve never personally made a dime from it. We have t-shirts, sweatshirts, domain names, posters, stationery, all with ‘Mush for the Cure’ on it. What do we do with all the materials now? How are we gonna defend ourselves? We’re not like Komen.”

Prom said she’s been running the event for six years, and the most she has raised for the National Breast Cancer Foundation is $25,000. Before the NBCF could accept the money, they warned her to file for a trademark to protect her event legally against the Komen Foundation. But now that Komen has opposed Mush’s trademark application with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, Prom is looking for a pro bono lawyer to help her figure out what to do next.

“I think it’s a shame,” she said. “It’s not okay. People don’t give their money to the Komen Foundation and they don’t do their races and events so that Komen can squash any other fundraising efforts by individuals. That’s not what it’s about.”

You’ll be comforted to know that the American Cancer Society’s CEOs make a total of $1.7mil per year and only 10% of your donation goes towards research.

Apple TV remains unimpressive

Apple interrupted my stream of Dexter from my laptop to television to let me know that an update for the device was available and I got excited thinking I was in for the awesomeness I’ve been waiting for: Apps on the AppleTV. FINALLY, Hulu, ABC video, news – and eventually games like Angry Birds where you use your iPhone or iPad as the controller will now make this $99 device a little black brick of bodaciousness.

Alas… it was some meaningless bug fix. DAMMIT Apple… what is taking you so long to make this device something noteworthy? what is the wisdom in letting GoogleTV upstage you with these features in new tvs while you lag behind only to be late comers? It makes no sense.

This dude on Macrumors.com summed it up better than I and it’s from a post that is not even responding to the current update of the AppleTV:

When the time is right? Yes, instead of offering an innovative and interesting new product with all kinds of potential 3rd party support and things to look forward to, let’s offer the same old product that didn’t sell before for a somewhat lower price, take away all internal storage so it’s even less useful in some areas, ignore ALL previous customer suggestions (say 1080p?) and hope it sells anyway. Then we’ll hint that SOME DAY maybe we’ll offer something useful or interesting to consumers IF we sell a whole boat load of them, which we won’t because it’s uninteresting and out of date just like the last version that didn’t sell for squat.

Sometimes I TRULY wonder how Steve ever got where he did. He’ll show all this innovation in some areas like the iPhone but then appear to be Forrest Gump when it comes to something that’s actually pretty simple like home theater products (i.e. offer the best quality and state of the art features for a reasonable price offering all the conveniences of the best products that already exist).

For example, if Apple TV had 1080p from the start, a DECENT sized hard drive (even if that meant making SLIGHTLY bigger to fit a 3.5″ hard drive; imagine THAT!?!) contained a DVR and Blu-Ray drive with support to convert them to be stored in iTunes automatically (like they do for CDs; a license would make this possible), had a front panel display that at least had a CLOCK on it (rather than just a little led light that does squat) and maybe even display title/artist information so you can see what’s playing music-wise when the TV is turned off and don’t have to wear out your projector bulb just to see a flipping album cover endlessly…or perhaps offer a cool visualizer to watch while you listen? What’s THAT?!? ), put in place the ability to add features like Netflix support, etc. as they become available (i.e. give the thing proper hardware assisted video decoding) and supported ALL the available formats so you can watch your home movies etc. without having to convert them to M4V and left provisions in place for gaming (and included a “remote” that could be used for gaming ala the “wii”) and offered it for around $500, MAYBE just MAYBE the thing would have actually SOLD because it would have the potential to replace most of the home theater gear out there (just add receiver and TV).

THAT is what it would take to be as innovative as an iPhone. Apple TV should be a general purpose computing device with slick controls that can be upgraded to do just about anything you’d want it to do, whether it be a DVR or a cookbook display for the TV in the kitchen/dining room. If it had the proper connections (e.g. input video as well as output it) and the right hardware inside (hardware assisted encoding/decoding) with enough room to store apps/videos/movies (1.5TB 3.5″ drives and larger are DIRT CHEAP for goodness sake!), it could do for TV what the iPhone did for smart phones. But no, some of those things MIGHT cannibalize iTunes music/movie sales, so we cannot include them! Never mind that we claim we do not make much profit from selling those sorts of things. We simply CANNOT offer a user-friendly do-everything type device because we want to sell SD 480p movies with low-quality video encoding and Dolby Pro Logic 2-channel sound to people that don’t think there is anything better….

This device just doesn’t do enough… It needs services from 3rd parties, it needs games, and it *should* just be open to the app store like the iPhone is and allow developers to build their own stuff for the device. Imagine calendars, weather, and other features made for the big screen, not to mention a Richardland TV channel option to stream directly to the living room and finally democratize tv.

What is Apple waiting for?…

Dexter star divorces his co-star wife

In this “real life” place, circa 2008, Dexter (“real” name: Michael C. Hall) married his sister and now they’re gonna go ahead and not do that anymore:

Dexter star Michael C. Hall and his co-star wife Jennifer Carpenter are divorcing after just two years of marriage.

The actors, who play brother and sister on the hit drama, wed at the end of 2008 – a year before Hall was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

Carpenter said in October that Hall’s cancer battle had brought them close than ever.
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“His illness was the best thing that ever happened to us,” she said

However, a representative for the stars has confirmed that they have decided to part ways.

“Having been separated for some time, Jennifer Carpenter and Michael C. Hall have filed for divorce,” the publicist told Entertainment Weekly.

I didn’t know of his illness, other than his sociopathic need to murder people and dismember their bodies (there is no actor behind the character for me, if you haven’t noticed) but I also don’t really care. I care about how this affects the show that I just started getting into at Thanksgiving. I’m almost done with Season 3 now. Season 5 just wrapped. Actually, the episodes I’m watching were aired right around the time Dexter married his on-screen sister. and now they’re done… I was hoping the only time we’d seem them split would be when one of them got cut in half – which.. may happen now, right?

They have to either write out this chicks character with some decision to move to Oregon or kill her, right? Otherwise the awkwardness on set would be just too much to get through.

Maybe she’ll get accidentally killed by Dex cuz she has a bag over her head like that urban legend where a reluctant dude joins a gang rape of a hooded victim and after he’s done it’s revealed that it was hiss sister (wait, is that a real urban legend? or did i read that in a dirty novel or something?). Or maybe he will and they’ll change the name of the show to DEBRA as she carries on his legacy after finding out about him – or even better – they keep the name and her inner monologue is about his memory with flashbacks of him that guide her instead of Dexter remembering Harry….ya, thats not gonna happen.

Electronic Pickpocketing

Coolest new mode of theft in awhile:

Credit card issuers, along with the U.S. State Department, have begun installing radio frequency identification (RFID) chips in credit cards and passports because the technology holds more data than magnetic stripes and can be read quicker.

But, that convenience, experts warn, can also put people at risk of having their information taken.

“I wouldn’t walk around in public with my cards exposed like that,” said Walt Augustinowicz, founder of ID Stronghold. “It’s too easy to do.”

RFID chips are commonly found in cards used to raise gates in parking garages and unlock doors at businesses. All one has to do is simply swipe the card in front of a reader.

Within the last few years, that same technology has been introduced to credit cards and U.S. passports, potentially putting holders at risk of being ripped off.

It doesn’t matter if the cards are kept in a wallet or a purse since they can transmit through them when prompted by a RFID reader, which are for sale on eBay.

Augustinowicz said it amounts to electronic pickpocketing.

“[At Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport], where you’ve got lots of crowds and a lot of people moving back and forth, no one is going to think anything of you walking by them with a briefcase with a higher-powered reader in it,” he said.

Using free software, he showed what hackers when using a RFID reader on a credit card. The account number and expiration date pop up on the computer screen almost instantaneously after the reader gets within a few inches of the card.

The only credit cards that are vulnerable are those that allow users to tap or pass a reader to pay rather than swiping. Some might also have a symbol on them that indicate they transmit.

Google informs users of Facebooks info-trapping

Google and Facebook are working toward the same ends: they both want to be the place you start your online activity, stick around for awhile and discover other things through. Google started with search and then mail and messaging and is now adding social network features while Facebook started with social network features and is now adding email and messaging.

Both companies are notorious for allegedly being loose with users personal information, giving them an interesting Coke vs Pepsi style marketing war when trying to convince the consumer that they are the better choice.

Here is what you are shown when you try to import your Gmail contacts information into Facebook: