Author: Richard

The iPad Approacheth

With availability of the iPad, just weeks away, millions of people like me CAN’T WAIT till it hits stores!…so we can go to our local Apple store to play with it for free and then go home without buying one…

Tens of thousands of others, however, are excited about actually OWNING one though. I would be too if it had half the features it should, and I each one of their absence (no multi-tasking, no camera and less functionality of a real computer at above-Netbook price) is a deal breaker for me, especially considering how easy their inclusion would be. The purposeful holding-back so the 2.0 and beyond versions have lots of room for improvement is obnoxious.

Almost as obnoxious as the device’s absence of Flash…

This official commercials from HP Computers Youtube account touts their new device’s superiority to the iPad (without mentioning the iPad by name of course) because it has Flash. The video is titled “NEW! Web, Flash & Air on Slate Device from HP” in a non-specific slam on the iPad’s frustrating lack of Flash, going on to say in the description “Access the full web and not just a part of it!“.

That’s the short version. The teaser with the one line touting. But HP went further with this 5 minute long demonstration of just how Flashy this Flash enabled Flash Player device is. What was subtle in the first video is pounded hard in the following video that translates to “Wanna watch MTV on your tablet device? stay away from the iPad. Apple loyalist? have fun playing your Spongebob maze games on it, SUCKER!”


Alan Tam from Adobe Flash Product Marketing walks us through Adobe Flash and Adobe Air functionalities on HP’s upcoming slate device. Learn how you can access the full web, and not just a part of it.

Indeed, if the device is price-compatible or even competitive with the iPad, has all the same features and has the added advantage of not banning the thing that makes watching videos on sites like Hulu possible, its hard to see why anyone would view the Apple product as superior – EXCEPT for the inevitable situation an HP Tablet user will find themselves in where someone see’s them holding the interactive tablet device and says “oh cool, is that the iPad?” and when the awkward reply of “no.. its an HP Slate Device…” comes, the significantly less impressed “…oh…cool..[i guess]”. The deep burn of that negative wow-factor may just be the thing that keeps Apple on top of this market. After all, isn’t that the business model of the iPod and the iPhone?…

Apple deserves credit for pushing this market forward though. While these things should be commonplace by now, it was Apples announcement that has brought the others to the surface. Being first deserves kudos, but it comes with ridicule as we saw with the endless “iPad sounds like a feminine hygiene product” cracks. As that meme grows stale, new ones like the following arise.
This is a submission for a Doritos viral marketing campaign contest:

Patrick Kennedy, Motivational Speaker

Patrick Kennedy (D-Rhode Island), the son of the late Ted Kennedy went a tad nuts while speaking in support of a resolution sponsored by Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan within 30 days. Kennedy accused the media of ignoring the war and obsessing over the “tickle fight” scandal that forced Rep. Eric Massa, D-N.Y., to quit. He also sounded a lot like Chris Farley…

As others have pointed out, there hasn’t been anything close to a press blackout on Afghanistan recently, and sorry, but the Massa thing was provocative and legitimate news. Listen to Massa recap it in the clip below:

UPDATE: SNL does a “Really??” Segment on Massa:

Howard Stern on Precious Fatty

Howard Stern said what all of us were thinking about Gabourey Sidibe and actually, I’m surprised he’s the only one who’s said it publicly – especially the way he did so. The whole spiel is very un-Sternian in its lack of crudeness and cruelty. He really just says the truth: she’s unhealthily huge and should change that and that Hollywood isn’t an industry-town that rewards obesity with acting roles. If you’re a big fat fatty in Hollywood, you can be a comedian or a one-shot role player and Gabby is the latter. It’s not mean to point that out – it’s mean to lead her on by pretending she’s going to move on to an illustrious career after this. eek.

Which is not to say that she’s gonna vanish immediately either. duh. not after all the buzz on her. Actually, I hear she has been given a role in the Showtime series The C Word and a role in a feature called Yelling to the Sky, so ya, she’ll have some kind of a wave to ride at least. But staying that size isn’t going to make that surf a long one. just makes sinking inevitable.

Stern also made the same Gabourey/Cabaret song acknowledgment that I’ve been saying to myself every time I hear her name, so I liked having that validated as a reference.

Democrat to Hannity: “Aren’t you tired of this sh*t?”

and that’s not a paraphrase. the dude (liberal pundit Bob Beckel) said “shit” on Fox News without batting an eye – which is, i’d say – amusing enough to post it. It’s cable news so it’s not illegal or anything, but… its cable news. people don’t normally say “shit” on it and it’s generally frowned upon. It’s funnier though that everyone except conservative columnist Cal Thomas doesn’t react at all to the naughty word that was uttered and just keep rolling along.

“Coffee Party” organizes to make Congress play nice

A left wing movement calling itself the “Coffee Party” has been formed to respond to the right wing movement against Obamas expansion of government policies calling itself the Tea Party. Washington Post did a profile on them and they have a website, but… it’s all kinda murky as to what exactly is going on with it.

The first thing I thought of when I heard of this though was, how come no one is calling these people evil brainddead bigots like the Tea Partiers are constantly labeled? A rally over Barack Obama’s policies called the “Coffee Party” and no one has cried racism? How soon ye forget…

I guess a “Chris Rock” impression voice needed to be present.

Clearly this Coffee thing is kind of all over the place when it comes to explaining wtf it’s even attempting (follow the link for video vs interview clips of its founder saying how she created the moment to oppose the Tea Party but that she’s not opposed to the Tea Party and prepare to be confused) and looking to them for more specifics is an exercise in vague niceties:

We want the political process broken down into three steps:
1) open and respectful dialogue
2) thoughtful and informed deliberation
3) competent and decisive execution.

The process is so broken, we can’t get past step 1 right now. We demand cooperation, productivity and accountability in government in the same way we would demand it of an employee we might hire for a job.

We want local chapters to have the autonomy to figure out their own legislative and electoral priorities. At the national level, we’ll make recommendations for direct action on legislation. But they will only be suggestions. We value and celebrate diverse opinions just as we value and celebrate diverse backgrounds. All that is required to be part of this movement is a sincere commitment to participating in, and protecting the democratic process.

Okay… so they have a problem with there being a lack of open and respectful dialog in Congress and they want to organize against it..somehow. Alright.. I guess. although it’s a really weird thing to rally over. whatever. these “can’t we all just be nice?” types like to look across the pond as examples of Government things we should emulate when it comes to larger government and more control from the state, but never nuclear power, social issues that lean to the right or civility in politics.

Recently in the UK, this happened:

Ukip’s Nigel Farage faces reprimand after calling Herman Van Rompuy ‘wet rag’ . (you know this is a story from UK as soon as you hear there is someone named “Nigel” involved. charming).


MEP and UKIP leader Nigel Farage on Wednesday delivered another major tirade against EU President Herman van Rompuy and, along the way, severely insulted Belgium and Greece during a plenary debate in the European Parliament. Farage said Van Rompuy had the “charisma of a damp rag” and the appearance of a “low-grade bank clerk.”

Study proves: Smokers are stupid

Actually it just showed that Smokers Have Lower IQs Than Non-Smokers, but I’m going with the words “proof” and “stupid”, cuz duh.

Cigarettes are the only drug type substance people get hooked on that starts with a horrible experience. You do heroine or wine coolers and anything in between and you’re like “dude, this is AWESOME” or at least “ya, this is giving me what I want enough to keep doing this”, but with smoking it’s horrible for everyone. You cough, it hurts – everyone reports bad first try’s, yet they are stupid enough to force themselves to get hooked and dependent on this expensive life shortening and quality-of-life decreasing product. Good one…idiots.

According to the investigators, 28 percent of the study participants smoked at least one cigarette a day, around 3 percent said they were ex-smokers, and 68 percent had never smoked.

The smokers had significantly lower intelligence test scores than non-smokers, and this remained true even after the researchers accounted for socioeconomic status as measured by how many years of formal education a recruit’s father had completed.

The average IQ for non-smokers was about 101, while it was 94 for men who had started smoking before entering the military. IQ steadily dropped as the number of cigarettes smoked increased, from 98 for people who smoked one to five cigarettes daily to 90 for those who smoked more than a pack a day. IQ scores from 84 to 116 are considered to indicate average intelligence.

Recruits aren’t allowed to smoke while intelligence tests are administered, the researchers note, so it’s possible that withdrawal symptoms might affect smokers’ scores. To address this issue, they also looked at IQ scores for men who were non-smokers when they were 18 but started smoking during their military service. These men also scored lower than never-smokers (97 points, on average), “indicating that nicotine withdrawal was probably not the cause of the difference,” the researchers say.

The researchers also compared IQs for 70 pairs of brothers in the group in which one brother smoked and the other did not. Again, average IQs for the non-smoking sibling were higher than for the smokers.

This French anti-smoking ad campaign (whats next? German anti-bratwurst commercials?) says the message nicely.. Continue reading Study proves: Smokers are stupid

Jay Leno is not a creep but this remixed ad is clever

Jay Leno moves from his canceled variety show at 10pm back to his role as host of the Tonight Show at 11:35pm on March 1st, so naturally NBC found it necessary to shell out hundreds of thousands of dollars in royalties to have a Beatles song score the Public Service Announcement of the change. A clever Youtuber however has flipped the sentiment of the ad to make it a bash on Leno.

The original ad features the Beatles’ “Get Back,” at a point in the lyrics that say “get back to where you once belonged” which I guess is their way of saying the whole ‘Conan O’Brien as host’ thing was a big mistake and that Jay should have never been pushed out in the first place.

UPDATE: I’m leaving the embed here even though it’s expired cuz… wtf? that’s weird that a network would let a commercial for themselves expire on their own video distribution website. Hulu videos and whatnot, I understand expiring – but a commercial for the Tonight Show? really? you don’t wanna just leave that up for posterity and another excuse to show people a preroll commercial? whatever dude…

While I think Leno is getting smeared to hell over this debacle, I can’t deny that this Leno-bashing remix of the above promo is diabolically clever. It’s the same ad, slowed down for an unsettling effect and the audio replaced with Radiohead’s “Creep”, ending in the lyrics “I don’t belong here”.
Ouch + Zing = Win.