Keeping the Worms Out of Your Apple.... iPhone!

Recently I have noticed a bunch of articles being written about worms infecting jail broken iPhone. These worms vary in maliciousness from basically Rick Rolling you, to trying to steal your banking information, but they all exploit the same thing. These worms assume that the owner of the jail broken iPhone did not change the SSH password that allows directory level control of the iPhone systems. If you are unaware of what SSH is basically it’s a way to connect to something running Linux, which is what the iPhone OS is based on. Once connected the user can pretty much do whatever they want so long as they have the proper permissions. The problem is that all iPhone have the same password for the ‘root’ user, however only jail broken iPhone give the owner the ability to utilize that SSH. In a world with no jail breaking this would not be an issue since no one could get access to the iPhone through SSH, however in reality we have users that want to both have a jail broken iPhone and the functionality that comes with having the ability to SSH into your device.
The one thing to keep in mind is that when you gain the ability to SSH into the iPhone, you also need to take on the responsibility to protect your device. This means you need to change the friggen SSH password from ‘alpine’ which is what it is for ALL iPhones to something else. You can Google exactly how to do this but suffice to say it is really easy (I googled it for you) and if you can successfully SSH into the phone you can have the password changed in seconds. Now you have an iPhone that is as secure as any Linux computer out there and these worms will not bother you.

RIP: Shaggy, Fred and Daphne

This circulated the tubes a while back but now it comes to you in t-shirt form! Velma and Scooby Doo as real monster hunters. Alas, it seems, Shaggy, Fred and Daphne did not survive the monster apocalypse so it's up to the nerdy (and apparently hot and toned) Velma and her now raged-filled dog to save the world.

I would love to see a one-shot trade paperback that explains how this came to be and what happened next. You could incorporate all kinds of sweet monsters into it if you played your cards right; vampires, zombies, lychans, maybe a few mummies... Heck, you could even get specific and throw in stuff like the Creeper (he killed Shaggy and took his eyes!) and Deadites and even Jason Voorhees! Velma and Scooby could be on a quest to find the Necronomicon in an effort to put an end to all the madness! Maybe I shouldn't have posted that idea... should have sent it to a couple publishers first... damn. Oh well, every one buy this t-shirt.

Parker! Bring me pictures of Spider-Man!

We all know Peter Parker has had a hard time holding down a job. He's not loaded like Batman and his job does not necessitate running into danger like Superman's so your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man has always been kinda screwed every time some one needs his help but he was on the clock. But that does not excuse the wall-crawler from robbing a pizzeria!

That's right Spidey fans, some jackass in Tacoma, WA donned the web-slinger's duds and a 9mm and waltzed into a Papa Murphy's pizzeria for his take of the till. That was last Wednesday but, unfortunately, it gets worse. It turns out that on Nov. 4, two Spider-Men walked into a Bank of America in Texas, decked out in Spidey costumes, hooded sweatshirts and guns and apparently got away clean. Here is, I kid you not, a still shot from the bank security camera.


If he's already got the costume on, why did he think he needed the hood? What was he trying to accomplish there? Was he trying to make people think it was a different Marvel Comics hero? "Oh my officer, I was so scared I can't remember if it was Spider-Man or Thor!"

And actually, the cops investigating the bank robbery Spider-Men think one of them was actually a Spider-Woman... insert your own joke here.

I hate to say it but maybe J. Jonah Jameson was right all along. Maybe Spider-Man is a menace. After all, he did get arrested in LA on the Hollywood walk of fame a couple weeks ago for slugging some guy.

My, my, my... what is this world coming to? Before you know it, people dressed as the Fastastic Four are going to be robbing banks and pizzerias because they saw Spider-man do it and they thought it was cool. Blind criminals dressed as devils will try to join in but they'll have walked into Build a Bear workshops by accident! Terrorists are going to dress up as the X-Men to pull off unspeakable acts of evil! Although I'm sure none of them are going to want to dress as The Phoenix, too revealing for Muslim extremists.

Games Workshop Grows a Pair!

Maybe Games Workshop reads the blog, because it has just come to my attention that the Warhammer 40k movie Ultramarines will be written by Dan Abnett! Now there is an actual hope for the movie, and maybe just maybe this shows that the neck beards over at Games Workshop have grown a pair.

Let Me Google That For You!

Ok, you may or may not have noticed that I am a bit of a Google fan boy. I remember back when I was in high school and Google first came on the scene I challenged the librarian to a search engine contest. I used the Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” button and she used some other engine, probably Yahoo (points if you can tell me what Yahoo stands for) we both search for some information on a topic I think I was writing a paper on at the time. My search found by far a more relevant result, than any of the top 10 results she received, so I won, and Google won. Basically from that point on I was hooked, and no other search engine would do for me anymore. I have also jumped on to every product that Google puts out, with the exception of Wave, cause I honestly don’t understand it yet and don’t want to spend a lot of time using it. Google has become a huge part of my online life; this is basically do to the fact that they provide services that are free and easy to use. The internet is currently in a phase of clean design and high usability (partly why I think that MySpace is getting pwned so hard right now) The Google products definitely fit the bill, I love the simplicity of the bar at the top with the link to the various services, like mail, calendar, etc. This blog is published by Google using their free Blogger software.

Google’s stated purpose is to organize the world’s information, but they make their money through ads, and all that information is a big part of their ad strategy. Of late there has been a lot of frightened rumblings about the power that Google wields on the internet. They potentially have all your emails from Gmail, any search query you perform while signed into your account (and once your signed in it leave you signed in) the event you are planning via the calendar, as well and any other information you have offered up on the altar of the Google cloud. Having all this information in one place is very convenient, but for some people its also very scary. I used to be a bit afraid of the amount of information that I have made available to Google, and there is the point, it is information that I made available! Google did not force me to subscribe to their products, I could have used one of the many other free mail clients for my personal email, I could use a different calendar (maybe one with kittens). Typically I use whatever I determine is the best at the time for the need I have, when I graduated from college I needed a new mail client and so I started using Gmail, which lead me to use the other Google products too, but I chose to use these products, so I gave Google my information.

Google themselves have of late been producing way to both see what information they have on you, as well as ways to export the information out of Google and potential move it to someplace else on the internet. I totally understand the reasoning for creating this, it gives people the warm fuzzies thinking they can walk away at anytime, but what are you going to do with that information? I personally think that there are 2 types of people that would actually walk away, the first are people that have a ton of information with Google and get scared by that amount Google knows about them, the second are people that have very little information in Google and remove it to basically make themselves as invisible as possible on the internet. The first people are heavy internet users, so what are they going to do with that information other that put it into another set of services, like Yahoo, who will then own all that information. The second type doesn’t really want their info on the web anyway so it’s not a big deal to them to not use these services.

I am definitely the first type, I want to have all my information at my finger tips, either from any computer I have access too, or my phone and to go this well… Google I choose you! (woot Pokémon reference) I do not plan to take my information out of Google, because basically I am not paranoid about them having this information. As the internet moves forward and the cloud becomes more powerful everything will be on the internet somewhere, and at least with Google I am putting my information all in one entities hands.

Recently I have read a lot of articles about Google’s search suggestions. It’s a fun game, you type in part of a search query and see what that search engine brings back for result, and the results are often humorous. I am all for a laugh, but I think the whole suggestion thing is being taken a bit far, while I am not a Google developer I would guess that the reason for the suggestion is to cut down on the amount of typing you need to do before you get to your results, if the suggestion does not have what you are looking for then you keep typing till you are actually searching for what you are looking for on the web. On top of that the suggestion must be based on a computer algorithm and that algorithm will change over time as Google makes changes to the way it does search so I would not put too much effort into thinking about the greater implications of the search suggestions.

Lastly I would just like to briefly talk about Rupert Murdoch. Rupert (I am going call him by his first name) recently came out saying he was going to take all of the News Corp content out of Google, basically blocking Google crawlers from aggregating the information. His goal here is to stop Google from “stealing” his intellectual properties. I put “stealing” in quotes here because, well, Rupert is crazy! He thinks that by doing this he will stop Google from giving access to News Corps properties, properties he wants to sell to the consumers and make money from. I am not some crazy everything should be free person, I think that companies have a right to make money, cause that money goes to the people that work there who are also consumers (the amount of compensation is a totally different argument) Rupert thinks that he can just produce the properties, like the wall street journal and the people that want them will pay to read them.

There are at least 2 things wrong with this approach

1) The audience of people that will do exactly what he wants is not a self sustaining audience. It does not renew on its own, lets use the Journal as the example. The Journal is a subscription (which is the mail pay model for news papers, Ryan correct me if I am wrong here), people sign up for the Journal cause they are interested in reading it and because they know what the Journal is by its reputation. The people that are willing to subscribe to the Journal are already roped into paying for it so that is fine, but this makes it harder to attract new people who are willing to become part of this model. This stops a viral audience, one of the things that the internet does well from view the articles. I am sure if you asked Rupert this would be more or less what he is going for, he wants to stop these people that just casually consumer his content and limit to just those that will pay, well as I said before the people that want to pay are already paying and are already viewing the content so this is not attracting any new eyes, hence this approach is not self-sustaining. If he was to allow the some of the content to be available for free, as well as not blocking the biggest search engine in the world from accessing the materials, casual readers would come across the article, and either they would read it and do nothing (which is what Rupert does not want as this does not make him money) or they might read it and tell someone else to read it or put a link up on Facebook, or tweet the article. If every set of eye balls falls into one of those two categories then the more eyeballs you get to see the article the more likely that the article will be seen by someone that wants to read the Journal and would pay for it! Even if the percentage of the people who read the article and end up paying for it is small that percentage is going to be greater than the number of people that are just willing to pay for it already and are already paying (people die, need a way to keep drawing people in).

2) He can go ahead and do this, but all it will do is make people go to one of the millions of other free sources for the information. I mean imagine it, New Corp blocks Google, now all the people that use Google, which is almost everyone, have a whole where the News Corp material used to be, opening up a hole in the market that can be filled by a someone else, who will provide the same news and free, and if done correctly will make them a lot of money. Rupert would be creating a vacuum, but it would not be a big enough vacuum to change much of anything, unless he could get all the other big media outlets to also block Google too, and I personally think that this will not happen.

Rupert is showing his crazy old man side, he is trying to apply the business model that worked for print news papers to the internet age, an age where click-throughs and referral traffic is important, cause that is how your stuff gets seen on the net, we live in a world where Googling something is a verb in the Merriam-Webster dictionary. To most people Google is the internet it’s the way things are found. If I want information on something I am not going to check if there is an article in the Journal about it, I am going to Google it and if there is an article on what I am looking for I will give it a read.

So Rupert, give it a rest, Google is not clogging up yours tubes or stealing your revenue, and if Google is really affecting your bottom line then the fault lies with you, and a business model that does not work on the internet. Sorry old man but the times they are a changing and you better change too or else be left behind (granted I would not mind being left behind with all his money).

Your father was the captain of a starship for 12 minutes, he saved 800 lives...

... I dare you to do better. What better existing nerd property to use making an MMO? Star Trek is based on the idea of an ongoing, indefinite journey. Just think, create a character, join a ship, raise to the rank of captain and then build your own ship, explore strange new worlds and new civilizations, boldly go where no man has gone before! The only thing I could think of being better would be a Firefly MMO. Of course the skies of that on-line world would be crowded with gorram Firefly-class transports with Serenity splashed across the side all captained by brown duster- wearing pretty boys.

This is going to be quick. The Star Trek MMO is on it's way! Here's the supposed box art:

And here's a quick clip of the game play:


Looks pretty good to me. And the best part is it would be easy to have universe-changing events. All you would have to do is send out a message to all ships that the borg are invading or something. Check out some of the in game screen grabs too.

Also, here's where R2-D2 was hiding in the new Trek movie. This is confirmed, unlike the last few rumored R2 sightings.

And now for something completely diffrent...

Actually it's the same thing Spence was just talking about. Net Neutrality. In the event you couldn't slug through Specne's tirade, here's the quick and dirty. Right now, you pay a greedy as hell cable company to connect you to the internet, how much you want to pay depends on how fast you get there but once you are there, access to different web pages all run at the same speed. But if the companies have their way, that won't be the case. Google can afford to pay the ISPs a shit-ton of cash so getting to them will be the same speed as now, but Casual Geekery can pay diddly shit so it could take you 10 minutes to load our page. OR, this could happen: think of it as how you pay for cable access. One flat rate just to connect you to the internet THEN, want to get to iTunes and Pandora? An extra $10 per month thank you! Want to get to YouTube and Hulu also? $10 more please ($15 after the first three months). Like to social network? Well Twitter and FaceBook are free (for the first three months, $10 per month after that). Check out this terrifying graphic for more.

Think this can't happen? It is EXACTLY what they do for premium channels. The only difference is those are luxuries, the internet should be a right, like it is in Finland. The internet is the last great bastion of the basis of our democracy, the idea that every man has an equal voice and an equal chance of being heard. Public television and radio? Bullshit. The internet has had more influence that both of them combined in the few years it has been readily and quickly accessible to the masses. Do not let them take it from you, fight them every way you can think of.

So as we take our leave, support the new head of the FCC, he's one bad mother - shut your mouth. He just may be the John Connor we need to raise from the ashes of greedy asshole- contorlled internet and lead us into a safer, brighter future.

Let My Packets Go!

If there is one thing I love it is to argue, especially when the topic is academic, I just love the idea of taking a train of thought through to the end, and I don’t get emotionally involved in the argument because again it’s just academic. However the is something in Tech news that I do feel very strongly about, and that is Net Neutrality (total name fail). Net Neutrality, which I will refer to here on out as NN, is the hot button topic where the spheres or technology meet politics.

If you are unaware of what NN is let me give it to you in the most concise why I have heard it explained. Basically NN mean that the Internet Service Providers, such as Comcast, Verizon, etc cannot prioritize the packets running over their network, in essence it would mean that an email packet, a bit torrent packet or a packet from a webpage would all be treated the same way. Without NN regulation Comcast could throttle Hulu traffic because they want you to use you’re their competing streaming web page (not sure if they have one but that is my example). The ISPs are totally against the idea of NN because they want to be able to dictate how the internet works going forward, and will obviously pick things that benefit them rather than benefit the consumers. Comcast has already been investigated by the FCC for throttling bit torrent ( I would like to point out that bit torrent is a totally legit peer to peer service and does not always mean there is piracy).

The FCC is the body that is created to regulate things like the internet and television and telephones. Basically they are there to stop the companies from totally screwing their consumers. Without FCC regulation in the internet it would be open season for the ISP to do whatever they want. Right now there is nothing set in stone, but the ISP are held to basically a best practices which give us the internet we know today, and when they violate these best practices, for instance by throttling bit torrent the FCC investigates.

The debate over NN needs to happen, and I would think it will need to be settled soon. I really hope that when this comes up for a vote that NN will prevail and the FCC will set about putting in regulations that keep the internet from being segmented. Now you might be saying to yourself that the government has no business regulating the internet, the internet should be allowed to regulate its self. This is true, and I don’t want the FCC to start laying down crazy regulation, but what I do want is regulations that stop the ISP from coming in and screwing the customers.

Let me lay out an extreme example for you of a world where there is no NN. In this world the packets you send are sniffed at every turn in the internet pipe line. So you send an email from your Gmail account to your buddy who has a Yahoo mail. Without NN the ISP you are using could hold that email back just because they don’t like Gmail, on top of that Yahoo could reject any email from Gmail, since they would want people to use Yahoo’s mail rather than a competing mail service. Does this sound good to you? I hope not, the amount of anti completive behavior that would result from a lack of NN would be staggering.

Basically the FCC just needs to lay down the law and the law is “You cannot prioritize any packets regardless of their content” and just let the internet get back to being the internet.

I have heard an argument against NN that basically says that things like Google and Twitter get a free ride and the ISP are footing the bill. Let me tell you this is BS! Google pays for the bandwidth they use, as does Twitter, the more people that use them the more bandwidth they use and the more they pay the ISP, basically the ISPs want to double dip. I am all for paying for what you use, if you are uploading HD video all day long and you need more upstream bandwidth then you should have to pay for that bandwidth, but I don’t want my packets to be sniffed and the prioritized based on their destination or content.

John McCain, who I personally did not vote for but is a person I have a decent amount of respect for, is proposing a bill called the something like the “Internet Freedom Act” but basically what it says is that the government cannot regulate the internet, dumb dumb dumb! The name of the bill is total shit too, yes while on the surface the bill is providing freedom because the government is not regulating the internet, but what it does as I have said before is open the internet up to the ISPs. McCain is also the number 1 recipient of money from the Telecom, over $900,000, companies who are for the most part the ISPs (he is not in their pocket or anything, also if you can find me a politician that is not in someone’s pocket I will print this out and eat it) McCain has said himself that he does not understand the internet, and I am not expecting him to (insert age joke here), but I don’t think it’s out of the question for me to expect him not to try to make legislation on something he has no idea about. I would like to paraphrase Dan Carlin (who I think said this) “when you make legislation the most important things is to see how the legislation is pissing off” for NN the legislation is pissing off the ISP and thus it is good.

The ISP like to claim that if the FCC regulates the internet in favor of NN then they will lose all sorts of money, but right now we have a free internet (free in the sense that all packets are the same) and they are making a mint! I think the figure I read said that Comcast had a 22% jump in earnings. A jump during a recession, they are raking in the money. Without NN the ISP would definitely make more money, but is that really the direction we want the internet to go in? I for one as a consumer and pretty heavy internet user want the FCC to regulate in favor of NN and I know that there are many tech people who are in my camp too (well really I am in their camp since I am not popular enough to have a camp) Check out the video below, it’s a clip from the long running and trustworthy show “This Week In Tech” with Leo Laporte.

If you disagree with me definitely send me an email imaglide@gmail.com! I would love to hear what you think, but if you disagree I am going to assume you are either a greedy bastard or out of touch. If you want to help go check out http://www.savetheinternet.com/ and sign the petition, they will send your request to your politician and get them to make the right call when it comes to voting on this.

This is what happpens when you abuse little people

Over the years, three movies have stood out in my mind as totally and completely abusing midgets, now more commonly known as little people. These flicks are (in no particular order) The Wizard of Oz, Return of the Jedi and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. The reason these three are the worst offenders should be obvious, Munchkins, Ewoks and Oompa Loompas. The only real question is, which is the bigger crime? Dressing up little people as semi retarded man-child things?

Dressing up little people as Teddy Bears?



Or dressing little people up as psychedelic acid-trip nightmare creatures that sing perfectly without rehearsal?


Only you can decide but either way, I'd say the little people inside the suits just struck back at LucasFilm Ltd. during the Today Show's Halloween special. I present to you, Ewoks, drinking, brawling, moonwalking and humping Al Roker!!!!

Yeah that's great, you just killed three people

By now, you've all seen the trailers for that flick "The Box". In the event you haven't, here's the setup. James Marsden and Cameron Diaz are a happily married NASA technician and school teacher who are going broke for some reason. One day, they are visited by a gentleman who drank acid or something and brings them a mysterious box containing nothing but a button. He then makes them an offer, push the button and you get $1 million but someone in the world you don't know will die. Check out the trailer. (sorry about the asinine intro, it's the only trailer I could find to embed.)

While there are some good aspects of Sci-fi, horror, conspiracy and I'm going to say aliens, I'm not super excited to see it. However, after seeing that trailer over and over on TV, I laughed my ass off when I saw this little gem on Funny or Die.

The Button - watch more funny videos

That's what I always thought should happen whenever people in movies and on TV are presented with a moral dilemma. Imagine how much easier it would have been if the castaways on Lost just shot Ben Linus the first time he double crossed someone? How awesome would it have been if the Joker said "you'll never kill me because of some misplaced sense of self righteousness..." and Batman said "Fuck this" and dropped him? What if Luke, sans-hand on Cloud City said "oh sure Dad, I'll join the dark side with you, just help me up" Then he force pulled Vader's lightsaber off him and cut him in half?

Man! I mention H.P. Lovecraft a lot on this blog

While I read and enjoyed a number of H.P. Lovecraft's works over the years I've never been a HUGE fan. I treat the godfather of horror/science fiction much like I do Monty Python - I like it, I don't have a boner for it.

That said, I have mentioned H.P.'s Cthulhu Mythos more than almost any other topic on this blog with the exception of the undead. Here's a little something that was brought to my attention on YouTube


Just another evil attempt to make children think the great priest of the great old ones is cuddly and not the one that will rip out their souls and ... chew them... or something. It's been a while since I read the Call of Cthulhu.

Law Suits, More Like Zoot Suits

I sent most of last week on a vision quest in the desert of California, so I have been a little out of the loop on tech news hence the lack of posts. Luckily Ryan is not as crunch and has been posting alone, but I am back and to ease back into this as well as to get my dander up again about something I wanted to bring up the update on the whole “There’s a Map for That” ad campaign being run by Verizon. ATT is suing Verizon over the ads claiming the ad “mislead consumers into believing that AT&T doesn't offer ANY wireless service in the vast majority of the country.” Basically they are mad because the casual non-nerdy consumer will not be able to tell that the whole in the map are not areas with no coverage rather they are areas that lack 3g. Personally I think this is a great attack, and it might be hard for ATT to win this battle since the ad is pretty clear to anyone in the know that the map is just about 3g and not about total coverage, but since 3g is a cell phone buzz word that all of the providers are throwing around most consumers will have at least heard it before and probably think it is cell phone coverage. On the other hand most judges are not all that tech savvy especially if they try the case in Texas, so maybe they will win. I think the end goal here is to have Verizon stop the ad campaign basically because they don’t want to deal with the ATT law suit. Will it work? I say no.

(Stunned Silence)

Got $19,999.95? Want a land cruiser/tank? Well have I got a deal you you sir! This deranged piece of equipment is available now on Amazon.com for the low, low price of 5 cents shy of $20k.

It's the JL421 Badonkadok Land Cruiser/ Tank! Do you a (I assume lightly) armored tank to cruise around the desert in? Do you need a tank to intimidate that guy at work into giving you your parking spot back? Do you... I've run out of clever things to say because I'm in shock that someone actually built this behemoth.

Somehow, I ran across this beast on Amazon when I was looking for Firefly comics and this popped up in the "Customers who viewed this item also viewed" category and took me by surprise. At first I thought it may be a joke, especially given the crazier and clearly photo shopped pics in the gallery. So I punched the name into Google and what do I find, references to this nutso craft as far back as 2005. Either the guy keeps making them or no one has bought the first one yet.

So what do you get for your $20,000? I'm glad you asked fine sir! It's got room for five inside the "armored" plated hull and five more on the roof. A 400 watt sound system with a PA function, all kinds of trim and under lighting as well as a movable control stick that allows you to drive inside via the included camera or with your head sticking through the roof.

I have no idea how practical this non-road legal mini Jabba the Hut sailbarge is. Not sure how much cargo it could haul, not sure how impact resistant the steel plating is, not sure how quick of a getaway you could make at 40 mph top speed. But I am sure that if you roll around town in this baby, you will get pulled over and then taunted for spending $20,000 on it.

Shut up Alexis Castle!!!!

No one else in the 'Verse is happier than I that one of my man-crushes, Nathan Fillion, has steady work on the ABC series Castle.


Fillion has found the perfect role to play, a mystery writer with child-like joy who is "a bit of a douche" according to Fillion. Now, there was much hype when this photo leaked out from the set of Castle for the then upcoming Halloween episode.


If I have to explain who he is dressed as, get the hell off my blog. At last, the long awaited return of former Browncoat Malcom Reynolds, captain of the Firefly class vessel Serenity! that's right, it seems that Fillion and the writers of Castle have an awesome sense of humor dressing him up as his well known geek counterpart (or according to the show a "space cowboy"). What I find especially impressive is that I bet Castle's target demographic is very different than Firefly's so this is basically an in joke to the online geek world.

There's one problem, Castle's daughter is kind of a bitch. Watch the clip. Don't worry the actual bit you want is in the first few seconds.


Shut up little girl! We all want Mal back! Although I have to admit when you say "space cowboy" out loud it does sound kinda stupid. Makes it even more impressive that Joss Whedon was actually able to pitch the show to Fox.

One Mans Trash is Another Man's Speakers

Terracycle is allowing nerds to reduce their carbon footprint. Finally nerds can do something useful with all those Cheeto packages that are littering your desk, send them over to Terracycle and they will turn those packages of delicious orange dust into speakers.
Terracycles a company in New Jersey, “insert joke here”, is doing something they call “upcycling” where they take trash and turn it into useful products and then sell them to consumers. For instance for 19.99 you can buy speakers made of Cheeto packets, and backpacks made of Capri sun pouches ( I just hope the backpack does not puncture through and leak everywhere (maybe this only happens to me)). Check out their webpage for other interesting things they have “upcycled”
I am all for this, while I am not a crazy environmental activists I am all for anything that helps out especially when the end result is something pretty cool. There is really something for everyone here; hipsters will love the irony for walking around with a messenger bag made for Capri Sun juice packets, hippies can rock out to some crunchy jams with some Sun Chip speakers, there are also biodegradable flowers pots for those with a green thumb, and a ton of other neato products. So, nerds keep eating your Cheetos, but send those packages in to Terracycle, together we can make something far more useful than a painting on Campbell's soup cans.

... of the Dead

It seems that as long as George A. Romero is willing to put pen to paper and jot down something about the living dead, some studio out there is willing to give him the cash and access to cameras so he can make a film about it. Check out the trailer to his upcoming film, George A. Romero's Survival of the Dead.

Ok, here's the basic plot line: humans are trying to wait out the still rotting corpses by taking refuge on Plum Island off the coast of Delaware (which does not exist) but wait, there's a twist this time! The humans are working on a way to bring zombies back to life. Ummm... even if there were a cure, I'm not sure it would be any good unless you gave it someone a couple hours after infection because you can't fight decades of decomposition.

Before I pass judgment on this little flick written and directed by one of my heroes let's check out a clip.


Not at all sure what the point of that was but OK. Let the judgment begin: George, one of the things that made your zombie movies so awesome was that we only got one flick per decade and they were rife with era-specific social commentary. This is George's third zombie flick this decade and after the weak but enjoyable Land of the Dead, I'm not sure he has much else to say. Are you making up for the fact that there was no 90s installment of the series by piling them on now?

Now, you could look at Diary of the Dead as a reboot of the series because it documents the initial outbreak seen in Night of the Living Dead with a modern setting. But if that's the case, I'm not sure what that movie had to say... well, actually I do. I suppose it was about the instant celebrity possible peopel think they can get if they have a video camera and YouTube. The guy opts to keep charging batteries instead of saving his friends... deep.

Here's my biggest problem with the newer flicks, I don't want my zombies to evolve or change or learn or anything like that. I want them to be zombies. At the end of Land of the Dead the zombies wander off after feasting on the rich of Fiddler's Green and the hero just lets them go? Why? Just because they chowed down on the evil rich people doesn't mean they won't much a few poor folks they come across as they wander out of the city. And here's the proof that not even our hero believes the zombies have changed - he continues his trek north in the Dead Reckoning, an armored, armed to shit truck! Why didn't he get out and walk or use a more energy efficient car from the Fiddler's Green motor pool? BECAUSE HE'S STILL AFRAID OF FRACKING ZOMBIES!

Zombies don't change Geroge, stop trying to make them. You're never going to teach enough of them to eat something else. Sure, Bub from Day of the Dead started ignoring the people but how long did it take to teach that one zombie that little trick? Take a note from Zach Snyder and just make awesome zombie movies please.

Maybe the helicopter is made of chocolate

Only 23 more days until Left 4 Dead 2 comes to stores and I can stop rhythmically gunning my way through the original game on auto pilot and only playing the finales.

This is a quick update to show you the newest trailer that looks like a compilation of in game cut scenes that depicts the plight of our four heroes as they battle their way across zombie infested 'Nawlins.


They really didn't need to sell me any more on this game but that trailer totally did. Meelee weapons galore, new special infected, crazy environments and AWESOME regular weapon upgrades. Why do I love gunning down zombies so much? I think the hardest part of a real zombie apocalypse would be having to act like I wasn't wicked excited so as not to creep out the people I was trying to survive with. Man... maybe I should go see a shrink or something.

Grandpa Ryan, tell us again how stuff on the Net used to be free.

In an attempt to become exactly as popular and socially relevant as Napster is, Hulu is going to start charging you for video content next year.

Damn that graphic is bigger than I thought

It seems News Corp's (which owns Hulu) Deputy Chairmen Chase Carey has decided that his company gots to get paid for broadcast content online. Here's what the typical greedy fuck with the Geraldo Rivera moustache had to say:
"I think a free model is a very difficult way to capture the value of our content. I think what we need to do is deliver that content to the consumers in a way where they will appreciate that value."

Wasn't lying about the mustache was I?

Translation, "You don't appreciate that fact that stuff we spent no money making is free so we're going to teach you a lesson... plus I need a new yacht."

Bet they wish that little slogan wasn't all over the web site

I have no real comment on the monetization of Hulu because I watch very little on it. However, I like the idea that it's free and it's there. But get ready to watch all you want before they throw up the pay wall. The word on the street is that Hulu has no plan on how to start charging yet and it may leave current offerings untouched while adding another level of paid "premium" content that you have to shell out cash for.

Either way, it's got to help boost News Corp's falling profits which I sure are not hurt at all by Carey's $10 million signing bonus and $8.3 million per year salary that he got when he returned to the company earlier this year. Business as usual in the corporate world.

So as Hulu is poised to enter the realm of "I like it but I ain't paying for it" in the same way that Napster and The Real World did, the anarchist in me considering burning down the HQ of another media conglomerate and operating a pirate television station like one of my heroes from the 1980s.

(Clever title describing my hatred of Apple here)

So Windows 7 is out and I love it. I will give a full list of reasons why later this weekend but it took no time at all for Apple to do what they do best, use a slick image to crap all over every PC out there. Take a look.

Gee wiz! Mac is so young and hip and cool! Awesome! God Almighty I hate these fracking ads! But I digress from the point. I'm not about to begrudge Apple (or whoever they have in advertising) for coming up with a great marketing campaign. The commercials are funny and before the righteous indignation boils up inside of me, I do chuckle a bit because Windows and PCs do have their share of problems. The Vista era Mac vs PC ads were great because Vista was/is a piece of crap. So much so that I stayed away from it until I replaced my XP laptop a few weeks ago and the new one came preinstalled with Vista. In the month I suffered Vista, I experienced more problems with it than I care to recall and I quickly and quietly took it out back and shot it in the head with Windows 7 as soon as I could.

Here's my real problem with this new set of ads. First, they obviously had to be made months in advance of Windows 7's release so Apple didn't even have time to get specific with any flaws in the new OS. If there are problems, point them out and we'll all have a really good laugh. I'm fine with that. Second, are they really focusing on the "hassle" of importing all your shit onto a new OS? That's the best they got? Ohhh ZING.... I guess. Hate to break it to you, but when I upgrade to 7, all my stuff was saved on my hard drive and it was just a matter of rearranging the directories on a few files to make everything hunky dory. Oh no! That's sooooo much harder than switching to an entirely different OS that is set up in no way like the platform you've used your whole life and is so damned simple and restrictive a trained monkey can use it.

If you're going to crap on Windows 7 at least come up with something good. Before I go I will give Apple points for this one though, 80s Miami Vice PC cracks me up for some reason (even though it's supposed to be the mid 90s).

But to be fair, Apple should have appropriately aged back Mac also until he was a just a long flannel shirt wearing, Starbucks guzzling, Kurt Cobain wannabe rocking out to Smells Like Teen Spirit.

Windows fanboy in me aside, here's what everyone needs to remember when they claim their OS is perfect and I'm talking to companies and fanboys alike.
Oh and fret not Windows fans... I have it on good authority that PC totally banged that chick in the second video! BOOM! In your face Justin Long! Where is Bruce Willis to help you now!?

Go Bill Go!

Hate on Bill Gates all you want (that picture is a little creepy), but he is a good guy. As the richest man in the world and head of Microsoft, he has taken a lot of hate over the years. Anyone with as much money as he has is always vilified by the masses since they don’t have all that money too. Usually the cry is for those rich people to do something good with their money, not just fly around in private jets, while ruling the world as part of the secret government.

Well then Bill Gates is the man, basically he has been using his massive wealth to help humanitarian causes all over the world. Just take a look at the webpage for the Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation; they have paid out almost $3 billion since 2008. That’s a lot of dough but granted that is like what the US government spends on stamps for a year. I love to see people spending their wealth on worthwhile things, especially when that money is not coming directly from the tax payers.

Now Gates is donating $100,000 to help fight malaria. The money will go to creating a gum and chocolate that will help fight malaria in children. That's good since the old way to fight it was the tonic in a gin and tonic and we don’t want kids walking around all wasted. I don’t really have anything super snarky to say, i just wanted to post this because really cool. Go Bill!

This is not the Driod Your Looking For...

I have been pretty lax in posting recently and I apologize for that, but there has not really been anything in tech news that I have found all that interesting recently. Even this post is about a topic that I don’t find all that interesting, but since it falls into the domain of mobile phones - which is something I post about a lot - I figured I would do a post.

What I want to talk about is all the Android scuttlebutt (not sure if this word usage is correct, but I don’t really care). In case you are not aware or live under a rock, Android is Google’s mobile phone OS. The big deal about this OS is that is supposed to be for open development (which Google seems to be a bit two headed about).



Open development is awesome in theory; if enough developers get behind it the possibilities are pretty limitless. Those developers would be able to create awesome applications and tweaks that made the mobile phone experience amazing. Any gripe with the phone or OS could be solved with some quick coding and since it is open, Google would not be QAing these apps. This is the total opposite of Apple, who reviews the apps before letting them into the app store (just Google “Apple and Google Voice”). I have mixed feelings about this, but the overall reasoning is that they don’t want apps that will detract from the user experience, and that is the name of the game!

We are quickly getting to a point where hardware is becoming far less important than the things that hardware gives you access to. This is partly because hardware has become sufficiently robust to support almost anything we as consumers need it to do. This is especially true in the desktop/ laptop market. People have basically been buying machines that are way, way more powerful than they need to be to surf the net, send email, and play Bejeweled. So unless you are a gamer and you actually need the hardware to be up to snuff, it is not all that important. Take netbooks they are basically laptops that only exist to give you access to the internet.

Ok, back to mobile phones. Mobile phones are moving in a similar direction as desktops and laptops. As more phones come out, the functionality that those phones are capable of get more and more similar. For instance, most smart phones, and some non smart phones can use GPS and Wi-Fi to access the Internet. This is on top of messaging and calling that phones have been able to do since the late 90s. The actual needs vary from consumer to consumer, but I foresee a time when almost all phones will have GPS, Wi-Fi, email, Internet browsing and music playing. They will just come standard, and the networks will support all these features. In order to differentiate themselves to the consumers, the phone companies will need to provide all the same things their competitors offer and some things that differentiates their phone from all the others: the way to do this is application functionality. They will want to tout the things their phone can do in terms of interface and ease of use, or “user experience”.

Open development is technically a great boon to the “user experience” argument, as it allows the developers to rapidly develop things to make the user experience better, and there would be no restriction on this development, hence “open”. Apple has crippled the non-jail broken iPhone from having multiple applications running in the background. It has rejected any app that in its eyes reproduces any functionality that is native to the iPhone. In a true open development environment, the consumer would get to pick and choose the experience they want from the handset.

Historically open development has not been we received by the general consumers, take Linux for instance. Tech geeks love to tout it as the best OS. It’s usually free and anyone can develop for it. In comparison to Linux, the Apple operating systems as well as the Microsoft operating systems are really, really closed down in comparison to Linux but because of the user experience those operating systems have captured massive consumer market share. Apple has recently been stealing market share from Microsoft by running ads to attract consumer to the “better” user experience, as in no viruses, spy ware, and crashes.

However the Apple operating systems are totally locked down and are only intended to be run on approved Apple hardware devices. I am solidly in the Microsoft camp when it comes to operating systems, my brain just thinks in Windows. I could do a different rant all about the MS vs Apple crap but that is not the point of this post.

Oh right... the point. The point is that user experience is the thing that attracts the consumer’s and allows companies to eat up the market share. There’s a lot of competition in the mobile market and the goal of the providers is to attract as many customers as possible and get them to pay for their service (duh!) I have hypothesized before that Verizon would kick ass and take names if they got some better phones and I still hold this to be true. Yes, they have the best network but we as consumers also need cool devices to utilize that network. If all your phone can do is make calls, I can go on any network and do that (well maybe not AT&T in the Bay Area and NYC... and half the country if you want 3G).


I need a phone that can make calls and do other things and do them well and with an awesome user experience. Well Verizon is getting Droid (did you know that Lucas owns the rights to that word?, check out the fine print in the Droid commercial) Droid is an Android phone (ooo clever marketing name). It’s one of many that are rolling out currently and I would bet that within the next year or so, the majority of carriers will all have Android phones. This will make Android more widely spread and technically it should make available all the benefits of the “open development” to all Android users.

Before I get into the problems I have with this I would like to throw out one more prediction. I am going to predict that Android will rock the iPhone, but not be for at least two years or so (just enough time for my AT&T contract to end). But it’s going to take those two years for Android to start gaining traction. Its going to take two years because as we see the market flood with Android phones, developers will have to write code that in some respects take the different hardware into consideration. Especially if the applications are going to run fast and utilize optimized hardware features that will vary from phone to phone and chip to chip. Potentially, this will mean that developers may only create applications for certain types of phones. In addition to that someone needs to push the eco-system for the phones. The iPhone has Apple pushing the app store but I find it hard to believe that the phone makers will be pushing the application environments for the Android. Rather they will talk about the cool hardware and software their individual phones will have, which is basically what they do now.

The other issue with open dev is that there is no QA process, kinda like what Apple has with the apps, the community would need to be very open, much more watch doggie, and helpful to weed out Android apps that could potentially be harmful, or just plan suck. I mean, if I was a virus writer, I would totally write something that on the surface looks like a cool app, make it free, and then when people download and install it I now have another phone on my zombie bot net. If there is no code review or QAing on the apps the Android eco-system is open to these kinds of threats. Google would be capable of performing this QA, but that would go against their open development goal with the operating system. Not that they have never lied, or changed their minds, before.

Ok, this post is getting pretty long, which is probably good since we have not had anything up on the blog recently, so I will wrap it up. We are going to see a lot of Android phones, coming out in the next few months, Verizon is going to pimp the hell out of the Droid to get people to either stay at Verizon because now they have a “kinda” cool phone, or maybe attract some people over to Verizon (this one I find somewhat less likely) but it will be about two years before we really see the impact Android will have on the market and start to see it stealing market share from the likes of the iPhone and Blackberry, which I think is still the number one smart phone on the market right now.

Then again I could be totally wrong. If you disagree with me or have a comment, or if you actually read this please leave a comment, however if you are a troll, well screw off.

There was a fire fight! (aka Geek Fail)

I must be slipping in my old age. Check this out.

Apparently the legendary Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day is actually coming to theaters Oct. 30. I have heard of the sequel being in the works for years but never heard that production had started or that filming had commenced in Boston. I must have had a geek stroke (or as one lovely lady put it “geek fail”) to have JUST realized that the flick was coming out 19 days before it opens.

But… hey! The flick is actually coming out! Here’s the break down: The brothers have been laying low in Ireland for the last decade since they torn the Boston underworld a new one. But one day, a member of the Yakavetta (played by Judd Nelson) crime family decides to draw the brothers out by murdering a priest friend of theirs.

In much the same way the original flick was more about Willem Dafoe’s FBI character than the Saints, this one will focus on Agent Smecker’s protégé, Agent Eunice Bloom played by Julie Benz. She’s hunting the brothers during their new bout in America with the help/hindrance of the three Boston detectives from the first film who wound up helping the Saints in the climatic finale.

Also returning is Billy Connolly as The Duke and David Della Rocco as himself though I would assume only in a dream sequence seeing as how he’s really, really dead. Also appearing is Peter Fonda? How did they get him? Screw it… check out the full theatrical trailer.

Now the thing I’m most excited for is the fact that writer/director Troy Duffy may actually get a paycheck from this movie seeing as how his own hubris screwed him out of one on the first flick. Yes, the story of Duffy’s fall is almost as widely know as the movie itself – especially since Duffy signed a release and let a couple of his friends document his rise from bar tender to filmmaker in their documentary, Overnight. That doc has been described as better than The Boondock Saints by some and did about as well at the box office. Most people know that Boondock Saints wound up making a decent profit on DVD but few people know Duffy saw zero dollars from the home movie sales.

So when Oct. 30 rolls around go find a theater playing All Saints Day and buy a ticket. After all, Duffy hasn’t worked in movies in 10 years and I think he’s been punished long enough. Check out his online diary of the making of the new flick and dust off your DVD Boondock Saints and psych yourself up for the end of the month. I know I will.

Call me when it’s a real Portal

Check out another great item from ThinkGeek. Presenting the latest product from the Aperture Science Computer-Aided Enrichment Center; It’s the Interactive Portal Shirt!

Each shirt has a 5.8 GHZ wireless camera right above an LCD display that displays what the other shirt is recording. Apparently they originally made the shirts to be actual portals but 128 test subjects were injured or maimed in the testing phase. That’s a shame because until I can leap into another person Neo Style I’m not dropping $100 on EACH SHIRT. That’s right, you need to pay $100 twice to get the effect. Just like in the game you need a blue and an orange portal for the gimmick to work.

Check out this video.

Now, I’m going to be honest. The price is the only sticking point with me. That’s a wicked fun concept for two people to wear around. Turns out the electronics are completely removable so the shirts can be washed and you can actually plug in a DVD player or video game system into the shirt and play it while your buddy just stands there and can only watch upside down. I’d think about it if they were $50 a piece but I’m sure they’ll come down in price. After all, the technology is being used for goofy stuff like this as opposed to something like military adaptive camouflage.

If this technology is available to ThinkGeek now, imagine what the government has cooked up with it. We’re talking full on Predator camo here.

I was once told by a very reliable source that back in the 80s, the government could easily read a document over your shoulder from space using 80s satellite technology… and it’s just been in the last few years that Google Earth has allowed us (civilians) to just see cars. So if Black Ops hasn’t developed full on active camouflage by now I’m actually going to be very disappointed. They’ve been trying ever since 1943 with the Philadelphia Experiment.

If MI-6 can do it, the CIA should be able to (feel free to stop at the 20 second mark to avoid the mind numbing crap that forced them to reboot the James Bond series). And once again… call me when it’s a real portal.

Are You Frigeen Kidding Me!

Why the hell would anyone want an Xbox signed by Sarah Palin, especially when it costs $1.1 million? Check it out here.

The actual Xbox 360 with Palin's John Hancock on it

I personally don’t want anything signed by that idiot, but I could imagine some hipsters trying to be all ironic owning this. However hipsters don’t typically have 1.1 million dollars ( I mean come on, they need to spend that money on skinny jeans and crappy music… oh burn). I took a look at the auction and surprise, surprise there are no bids. On top of that the person that posted the auction, dmorrill32, has a feedback score of 0 and the requested method of payment is “money bookers” not Paypal. On top of that but only “pre-approved buyers” can bid, and they need to email the poster to qualify. Is the dude trying to compile a list of morons with a lot of money? When I think about this I feel a bit like Lewis Black “If it weren’t for my horse”

The auction contains a quote from the poster; take a look at it below:
“I live in Alberta Canada and I have always wanted to drive the Alaskan highway from my home near Edmonton Alberta, all the way to Alaska. This trip is about a 7000km / 4300mi round trip. I figured that since I was going up there anyway, I should try to see the most famous person from that state, so I timed my trip with the governor’s picnic in Wasilla. When the governors picnic took place there were hordes of people trying to see her, but I pushed my way through the crowd to the front of the line. When I was in front of Sarah Palin, I told her that I had traveled three days to see her and asked her to sign my Xbox360. She said it was the most extravagant thing she had ever been asked to sign. I shook her hand, removed myself from the crowd, and then I packed up my Xbox360 and headed home. It was one of the greatest thrills of my life to have watched Sarah Palin on CNN, SNL, Youtube, and then to see her right in front of me.”

Here's this moron getting his Xbox 360 signed by the worst governor ever.

Firstly I question the sanity of this dmorrill32, meeting the Governor of Massachusetts would be cool, but I would not drive many hours to do it, nor would I “push my way to the front of the line” mostly cause I would probably get tackled or shot or something, and because just don’t care enough to do it, I would wait in the line. An additional knock to this dude's sanity is that he posted this now. Not during the election, or when the Palin lovers were out in full support. Had he posted this during the 2008 election he would have stood a chance, although a small one that some rich repub would want to own this piece of memorabilia. But now!? I think the GOP just wants Sarah to disappear into the background (I know I do) and so they can forget about her and the damage she did to their presidential candidate. Also I think I read somewhere that we are in a recession and people are trying not to spend money on stupid stuff.

Next is the fact that Xbox’s have over a 50% failure rate, what depth of shame would you reach if your million dollar Xbox with Palin scrawl on there was to fail. I guess if you spent $1.1 million on an Xbox you probably would not play it, but if you were dumb enough to buy this, you are also dumb enough to use that Xbox.


Lastly I would like to reiterate the following quote “It was one of the greatest thrills of my life to have watched Sarah Palin on CNN, SNL, Youtube, and then to see her right in front of me”, had this dude been selling the Xbox for twice or even three times the market price for the same Xbox I would almost believe that quote, but he obviously got the Xbox signed to sell it on eBay. So only the idea of the money he was going to maybe make was what was giving him the “greatest thrills of my life”

Ok I need to calm down before my head explodes. Hopefully either eBay will see this and take it down, so those “pre-approved buyers” don’t get hosed, or at the very least I hope no one bids on it. I would just like to in conclusion call this guy a Giant Jack Ass.
Thank you

No Tweets for Me

This should be a quick post. Yesterday for anyone that follows me on Twitter, I tweeted that it was a slow Twitter day. Basically, I was checking my Tweetdeck and I was not seeing any new posts. I thought this was strange, as I follow a fair amount of very tweety people (“tweety” is like chatty but on Twitter and yes I made this up). I was able to see my posts, but all the posts in my columns were old. At first I thought this was because no one was saying much of anything, but later, I learned that something was clogging up the tubes over at Twitter and posts by people you follow were not ending up in the feed. However this was not happening to everyone, just some users. Twitter agreed that something was wrong and they were looking into it.

Twitter is known for its outages and fail whales, so this is not really anything big, more just par for the course for the popular social networking site. However I was one of the users who experienced the strange phenomenon so I wanted to at least write an entry about it. If you (the one person that reads this blog) experienced this too leave a comment and we commiserate together.

It’s like Teddy Ruxpin… if he were built by Cyberdyne Systems

The Teddy Bear. Childhood friend. Named after a president. Sent from the future to protect you.

Well not quite. This is the Army’s prototype Battlefield Extraction-Assist Robot or BEAR (very clever) that is designed to haul wounded soldiers off the battlefield without putting other soldiers in danger.

Built by Vecna Technologies out of Cambridge, MA, BEAR can haul 500 lbs, either stand 6 feet tall or “kneel” to only a few feet. BEAR can act as a recon robot, can lift more than wounded soldiers and got placed as number 11 on Newsweek’s 15 best examples of Weapon Porn. Check out this demo video by Vecna.

I’m all for ANYTHING that saves a US soldier’s life but this thing has a goddamned teddy bear head on it. Apparently the Vecna company is run and staffed entirely by 15-year old Japanese girls. They say the reason is to reassure victims as they are rescued but I’d like to see the research that backs that up.

Now, I’ve never been shot or hit by shrapnel or stabbed in a battlefield (one time I got a splinter on a soccer field but that may be different) but I’m pretty sure that’s not going to make me feel better. I imagine a reassuring sight is more like the medical chopper swooping in, the 40 ton tank rolling up to shield me from fire or Dr. Manhattan in his black Speedo.

By the logic they’re putting out there, then medics should wear teddy bear shaped helmets. BEAR with me here for a second (rimshot), I think they should have put a freaking Terminator’s head on that thing! I don’t care who we’re fighting in the future, Islamic extremists, the Chinese, Canadians… they'’ll all be terrified as a swarm of Terminator-headed rescue robots sweep in to survey the area or pluck fallen soldiers from the area.

Seriously though, kudos to Vecna for looking out for our boys in tan. Since you’re local, feel free to send us a BEAR for mature, responsible testing that in no way involves flipping my boss’ car on its side in the parking lot.