I'm on to you, Hawking...

I think Stephen Hawking just got a Netflix account

After seeing Independence Day he decided that humans contacting aliens probably wouldn't be the best idea!

Now after catching up on Dr. Who he gets to work on figuring out how to build a time machine and just where/when he'd like to go and what he'd like to see.

"If I had a time machine I'd visit Marilyn Monroe in her prime or drop in on Galileo as he turned his telescope to the heavens. Perhaps I'd even travel to the end of the universe to find out how our whole cosmic story ends. "

It will be interesting to see what he thinks when he's caught up on Lost.

I don't know what he'll be watching next, but I know I'll be watching his new documentary on the Discovery channel.

This Week On Netflix Instant Watch (4/23-4/30)

Gonna divide this into three sections: Good or at best "normal" movies, terrible movies you and your friends can drunkenly riff on, and TV show series.

NOTE: I haven't watched most of what I'm listing, these are more notable things that are on IW and were added in the past week.

Normal Movies
Stagecoach - A classic western.

Fargo - Do I need to explain this? If you haven't seen it, see it.

It Might Get Loud - A documentary about three musicians. I hear most of it is really good. It was in theaters last year.

Bad Movies
The Gay Bed & Breakfast Of Terror - I had the pleasure of watching this with some friends and it is awful. One of the worst movies I've seen. It covers just about every gay stereotype and every conservative Christian stereotype (right down to having pictures of GW Bush and his cabinet next to Jesus), makes no sense in parts, and in the end, the only two people left alive, who are gay, become straight and continue to kill gays. It's pretty over the top, and the actors look like they never kissed anyone of the same gender before filming. I'm sure it was made in jest, and if it wasn't, then I wonder what audience this was made for. Not humans, at any rate.

The Glimmer Man - Do you like Damon Wayans? Do you like Steven Segal? No? Well too bad. This is a hilariously bad action movie, with Segal still trying to pull the Bhuddist pacifist act but not enough to kill thugs with razorblades hidden in credit cards. Damon Wayans is the forced partner, who has a love for Casablanca and... oh who am I kidding, you've seen this cookie-cutter plot a million times. It's pretty funny though.

TV Shows
Party Down: Season 2 - Party Down is a great show that's unfortunately on its way to being canceled. They've been putting up the new episodes on Netflix soon after they air on TV. So while there's only one episode here, there's more to come. In the meantime, watch Party Down season 1, which is also on instant watch.

NBC Thursday Night 4/29: Is Marchtember Oneteenth good for you?

Community S1E22 "The Art of Discourse": As to be expected, Community was pretty great last night. Pierce makes an ass of himself and Shirley makes a stand, either she leaves or Pierce does, to which Pierce walks out. But not before Abed smashes Pierce's guitar and whips out a bucket list of fraternity movie tropes he wants to complete before graduating. Jeff and Britta wind up dealing with some high school students going to Greendale for college credit, who want to know how to live their life so they don't end up in their 30s back at community college. This escalates into a shouting match which is embarrassing for humanity, ending in a food fight.


Is there really a winner here?

There has been some dissension in the ranks about this episode, but mainly with the Duh-Off towards the end. Which to me was so absurd and silly you couldn't help but laugh at. Abed straight up says "Man, this show is sloppy." and I lost it. As a big fan of Animal House, Abed and Troy acted out some of my favorite bits, although I'm not sure what movie a robot named Boobtron 4000 is referencing. There is a recurring theme showing that all the characters, regardless of age, are pretty childish. But if you've been following this show, you don't need an episode devoted to it to know that. The writing and acting was so good that when the high school kids taunted Jeff and Britta, you wanted to punch them in the face, and really while some episodes don't feature some characters over others, this gave everyone an equal share. This is, of course, ignoring Senor Chang, who stopped by to steal cookies from Girl Scouts.

It's really hard to sum up Community in a short block of text, but as I will say till the end of time, if you're not watching this, you're missing out. Next week's episode, titled "Modern Warfare", looks like it will be the best one of the season.

Oh, and you get to see how stupid "pwn" sounds when said outside the internet. As if it wasn't already.

Hulu: Community S1E22: The Art of Discourse

Parks and Recreation S2E21 "94 Meetings": If you gave P&R a shot in the first season and didn't like it, I beg you to watch the second. It's vaulted into one of the best newer comedies out there, and keeps getting better. This week, Ron finds out he has to attend 94 meetings because his secretary, April, booked them all for March 31st, since she assumed March has only 30 days in it. So Ron splits up the meetings among the staff (and the non-staff, as Ann and Andy are there) to get them done with. Leslie tries to stop a Pawnee historic house and gazebo from being destroyed, a landmark of Pawnee's first interracial marriage, followed by families of both sides murdering each other. After a mess of disastrous interviews, April finally quits working for Ron, to which Ron seeks her out and gets her to come back to work, teaching her a couple things about how to ensure Ron never has to have a meeting with anyone.


"TOM, SACRIFICE YOUR TINY BODY"

Every character on this show gets more endearing every week. Chris Pratt is just adorable as Andy and there is not a bad moment when he's onscreen, let alone the callback to the fake FBI agent he played during the Halloween episode. April's family was amazing, moreso when they showed her sister Natalie, who is an exact clone of April in looks and demeanor. It was like looking into a window of the early episodes. Overall this episode was very chaotic and I'll probably have to watch it a few more times to fully catch all the jokes. With the hectic pace that is dealing with 94 postponed meetings in a single work day, the humor was rapid fire and didn't take time to breathe at all. I feel I'm not fully qualified to try and contain this one.

Also, Councilman Hauser... isawyourpenis.

Hulu: Parks & Recreation S2E21: 94 Meetings

The Office S6E26 "Body Language": I'm not a huge fan of The Office so I don't want to get into too much detail. I might be missing a few callbacks or references or even things like not laughing when someone does something that's so "them." That being said, this episode wasn't very good. It was about a deal with a laser printer manufacturer and their rep is a very attractive woman, to which Michael Scott is confused if she's removing more of her clothes during the meeting because she's interested in Michael, or if she's flirting to get a better deal from Sabre. In the meantime, Dwight is trying to get Kelly to sign up for a minority executive training program so Darryl doesn't get it.


Shut it, paleface.

They spent way too much time on Michael staring awkwardly at everyone else. Really, the whole printer deal plot was poorly thrown together and built on a pile of being uncomfortable, but failed to do so. They drilled in the fact that the rep was hot a bunch of times and there was a lot of gaps without dialogue that didn't achieve anything in the acting/emotion to make up for that. The second plot with Dwight, however, was fairly funny and had a few good moments. It didn't save the episode or stand out compared to say, last week's episode, but I guess if you're a fan of the show it's better than another clip show.

Hulu: The Office S6E26: Body Language

30 Rock S4E19 "Argus": I don't care what the naysayers tell me, but 30 Rock this season has been great. This week, there is a quarrel as Grizz is getting married, but both Tracy and Dotcom want to be the best man, to which Liz has to play the problem solver yet again. Jenna has a new boyfriend (Will Forte) who Liz feel uncomfortable being around, and after thorough investigation, finds out he is a drag queen who dresses up as Jenna. Which for Jenna, is the perfect thing since she can finally truly be in love with herself in a way she wasn't before. Jack gets a peacock named Argus from Don Geiss' last will and testament, and is feeling a bit lost without Geiss being around anymore. In the end, Liz winds up having to be the best woman to three weddings in order to shut everyone up, and Jack assumes Argus has the soul of Geiss, and gets several problems off his chest as he slips the peacock a glass of whiskey.


HOW DID HE GET UP THERE SO FAST

This was a really happy, sweet episode. Apart from Liz, everyone got what they wanted in the end. I wish I had a gif of Jack experiencing the 5 stages of grief in a matter of seconds. It didn't have a lot of content in terms of plot, and was more of a character exercise. I know this isn't a lot of text devoted to this episode, but it's one that leaves you laughing, but you still smile and go "awwwwww" afterwards. As much as one normally does when seeing someone do a duet then make out with themselves, anyways.

Hulu: 30 Rock S4E19: Argus

It's Me, The Stupidest Android App

I was browsing the Goondroid Wiki for various apps for my HTC Hero when I noticed GentleAlarm. It's pretty clever in that the free version doesn't work on Wednesdays, so you buy the paid one.

Let me take a second to tell you about my alarm setup. I have one set at 7AM, and one set at 7:30. One goes off, I judge how tired I'm feeling, I choose to go back to bed and wait for the second alarm. Given I've had sleep issues, the description of this app intrigued me, especially this "sleep cycle" function.


Hey there gentle dream traveler, let me waste your time. (image courtesy Androlib)

So you start the app and it throws a wall of text at you talking about sleep cycles. I say whatever and set an alarm for 7:30. It sets a pre-alarm for 7. Hang on a minute. Isn't that what I have been doing for the last month? Using the alarms that come with my phone? But I digress, maybe it's got a funny sound or makes beeps in the night to help me sleep or something.

7AM! Buzzing from flashy thing on top of large box. Ung look at flashy thing. Ung see lots of symbols and wall of text. Ung just touch flashy screen until sound go away.

It spouts a bunch of text at you when the pre-alarm goes off. Now I don't know about the rest of you, but when you immediately wake up from an alarm, is the first thing you do read a bunch of words, let alone words telling you what a pre-alarm is? It was like I was holding a lost piece of alien technology. I snoozed the alarm, woke up half an hour later, and uninstalled it.

I really don't think there's a substitute for what I have as my current alarm.

Scared Yet?

If you read the posts that i write you probably have noticed that i am not a big fan of Facebook. I think they are kinda evil. The link below is a time line of the various privacy changes that Facebook has made over time to the Terms of Service.


Adjust Your Tinfoil Hat

Damn!

First?! More Like My Fist in Your Face!

You know what pisses me off in all its incarnations? People that post “First” in the comment sections on the internet. This needs to stop, and as soon as possible. If I had a platform where people actually listened to the thing is say I would scream this from the top of that platform as loud as possible (whoa extended metaphor Batman!)
Posting “First” is just about the more useless thing ever, I mean I sort of understood when it was a big thing over on I can haz Cheezburgr but it extends beyond that, I have seen it on totally random web pages on the internet. I have the ability to figure out what the first posting on a web page is, its pretty clear, you don’t have to waste my time and yours by posting “first” in that comment. I mean if you are really really feel the need to do this, maybe work it into an interesting post. For instance you could start your post with something like “First off I would like to say I am a total and complete fan boy” that way you are getting the inane satisfaction of putting “first” into the first post but you are contributing something to the discussion. I personally think that this should be a banning offence everywhere on the internet. In fact I think someone needs to write a Firefox add on that filters out all these “First” posts.

Fine, I Guess I Will Write About the iPhone Fiasco

Originally I wasn’t going to touch this topic with a 100 foot pole, but I guess I will write up my views on it anyway. Of course I am referring to the fiasco over the iPhone 4 and Gizmodo. Now let me start out by saying that I do like Gizmodo, I think their coverage of tech is pretty decent, they have a wide variety of writers that cover a gamut of topics, and hell you can’t go wrong with the Hobomodo for getting free shit (like the Google sticker that is now on my laptop, I am a certified fan boy), I think that CNET does a better job of being objective, but Gizmodo is a great place for keeping up on what’s going on with tech.

Ok, so a dude, I am going to take a page from Leo Laporte and not use his name that works at Apple was out for his birthday in a German beer bar, getting sloshed, and he happened to have what looked like an iPhone 3g. Like many a drunken person he left his phone at the bar. I can’t really fault him for that, I used to leave my phone at parties in college (it’s fun to try to figure out where it ended up), I have left my wallet in a cab while drunk, one year I thought it would be a fun idea to balance my phone on the rim of a pint glass, guess what happened next? It fell into the pint glass, which was full of beer. The next morning the phone was dead. We all make mistakes, however in this case his 3g was actually a disguised iPhone 4, so he left a prototype phone, a phone that was not his at the bar. On top of that the phone belonged to Apple who is security nut jobs of a company, nothing they don’t want the public to know is let out of the bag till Steve is good and ready, they play the media machine like a harp, but like every tightly held secret the harder you hold on to it, the more likely it is that something will slip out, and that is exactly what happened. This dude left the phone at the bar, someone that was sitting nearby grabbed it, they say they attempted to give it back, and when that was not achievable he held on to it.

This dude basically figured out that the phone was not in fact a 3g and shopped around for someone that would want to purchase it off of him, he tried Wired, they took a pic and left it at that, he tried Gizmodo and they wrote him a check for $5000 for the phone. Gizmodo then dismantled the phone and posted all the details to their web page this past weekend. I heard that in 1 hour Gizmodo received something like 1 million unique visitors. That is a massive amount of traffic for 1 hour for any web page.

Apple contacted Gizmodo about getting the phone back, and Gizmodo, told them the only way they would get the phone back was to officially request it, this basically would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the phone was real, which they did and Giz sent them the phone back.
In the after math of this the police raided and confiscated a number of computers and electronics from the Gizmodo editors, who did the article on the iPhone4, house as evidence. The local police are treating the incident as a theft and are investigating.

I find a couple of things interesting with this situation; firstly, should the Apple employee be fired?
Personally I don’t think he should be, he made a mistake that is very common, and I think that Apple should realize this and have a bit of a sense of humor about the whole thing.

Next, does this do damage to Apple?
It could be argued that it does, the cat is out of the bag, we have some idea about the iPhone 4 now, and it takes some of the “wow” out of the announcement. This might hold a bit of water, but I think from a practical stand point it really does not hurt Apple at all, anyone that follows tech news knew that there was going to be an announcement this summer and that the announcement was almost guaranteed to be about the iPhone 4. I heard an argument that this might hurt Apples 3g sales since people will not wait till the 4 is official, but we all knew this anyway so I don’t think this leak changed the minds of anyone looking to purchase an iPhone. Either you were cool with getting the 3g now or you were going to wait anyway.

Should Giz, and other blogs, be considered journalists and should they be entitled to the protections associated with that title?
I think that Ryan is going to take a stab at this topic since he is a journalist where as I am just a blogger. I did want to touch on one part of this, and it specifically pertains to the discussion of this on TWIT this past Sunday. One of the panelists said that this would never have happened at one of the big news organization. I totally agree, but I also think that that is part of the problem with the big news organizations. Granted Giz is not small, but you have to start somewhere, why does being owned by a massive corporation make things more legit than being small. I have some strong opinions about the press in general, but I will try not to get all heated here (that’s for a different post), but I do think that new entities that are owned by large corporation kinda hurts the message of that news entity, because now the news is all wrapped up in corporate politics. Giz is like a teenager, young, fresh, rebellious, bucking society’s pressures, playing in an industry of senile giants, that in a lot of ways are too big and ponderous to get out of their own way, and when the young kid shows up they basically yell “get off my lawn”

I would like to consider myself an upstanding person, however if I was the person that found the phone I might have done the same thing. Had I done the right thing and returned it to Apple I imagine my world would have become a nightmare of non-disclosure agreements, and other scary legal documents, which may be the fate anyway of the dude that sold the phone the Giz. I hope he kept the $5000 around for lawyer fees.

Finally, who is to say that this is the final prototype, yes Apple confirmed that it is a prototype, but for all we know it was a prototype for a particular purpose. The kid that was testing I believe worked for the part of Apple that designed the cell phones radio. It could have been a prototype for that any only that, I find it hard to believe that Apple who basically required the construction of a bunker in order to give developers access to an iPad would be letting the fully developed iPhone 4 walk out the door, but who knows stranger things have happened.