They missed a couple

Just got an e-mail from www.beontopranking-google.com, a rather dodgy-seeming link directory.

And, shouldn't it be: goooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooogle

or

g0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000gle

both of which are available (or seem to be)

Mobile TV is great

I love watching TV shows or Japanese animation on my Zune. As long as the picture quality is good, the subtitles are readable and I don't miss any of the action (sometimes shows like Torchwood come out too dark). Admittedly, I have a commute of about an hour each way.

And I have walked down the street trying to catch the last few minutes of an episode of Torchwood, because I'm not as likely to put it on when I get home. Haven't walked into anything yet.

I can't see watching it on my phone, though, unless phone/mp3 player integration gets better.

Target practice?

Putting the owl in the middle there (as that woman suggests) doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Then it'll just look like an owl being used for target practice.

Hardly the message they want to convey, I think.

Computers are just machines

I've been told that computers can distinguish between patterns very well, but have trouble telling the difference between, say, a puppy and a kitten (they're anatomically very similar).

Instead of words, present the user with a picture of a puppy or a kitten and ask them to identify it. Or a smiling face and a sad face.

(did I choose the happy icon or the sad one?)

Such tools exist

They're just not that accurate. I remember pasting pieces of text into one of these things years ago and having different ones come up different genders.

Re: Here we go....

"So I guess that's it then, Google is going to rule the world."

I, for one, welcome our new googley overlords.

IT people are vampires?

I'm sure that must be the moral of the story.

And someone could surely form an entire doctoral career around trying to decipher amanfromMars's comments. I'm sure there must be a deeper meaning in them.

insert title here

Honestly, what the Zune really needs is games, and a decent document viewer (I have some vague idea that the ipod has one of those).

Even my cheap 2GB bootleg mp3 player had tetris and a dinky .txt file viewer. Shame that my Zune doesn't

Calendar in Thunderbird

There's a great calendar in Thunderbird, it's one of the major plugins/extensions.

Unfortunately, my job uses MS Exchange (which, of course, only works in Outlook). Otherwise I'd have switched to Thunderbird when Outlook crashed on me last year instead of getting the damned thing back up and running.

Fan blog or news organization?

Who's to blame here? The "fan blog" who says "hmm, look what I saw, wonder what it means" (and yes, I did read his whole post), or the people who took the story and said "hey, look what happened!"?

I think the lesson here is: don't spread other people's musings and call them facts.

Really fake friends

With so many TV shows and the like getting into social networking, I can actually say that a couple of my online friends aren't fake, they're fictional. The fake ones I always reject (as they're usually spammers).

@ Savvy users dont see this kind of ads :)

Not true. Some do see them, or at least hear them.

There's a site called freelaptopnation that's been advertising on the radio in NYC for a while. They offer a free laptop to anyone who goes to their site. I checked them out a couple of times, but was immediately put off by their criteria for getting this "free" machine.

When every store you hear a commercial for has a website as well, it makes sense that every website you visit will start to advertise *outside* of the web.

Google, come run my life

I, for one, welcome our new Googly overlords.

reminds me of another story...

I just read the other day about a woman who contacted a company called "Guns for Hire" looking to have husband killed. Turned out that they staged gunfights for movies.

I knew that this technology existed...

I also heard that only around 2 people in the world could actually pilot the things. It's supposed to be incredibly difficult. And, of course there's the idea of strapping about a hundred pounds of rocket fuel to you back and lighting it.

I *really* don't think this is a good idea.

@ Melissa

"Instead of using this money for something useful like finding out if they can change the diet of the cattle to reduce emissions they are wasting it on yet another study that shows that cattle produce greenhouse gasses."

Since they're researching how different diets affect the levels of methane the cows produce, I think they are probably looking for something just like that.

The purpose of the study seems to be to find how much gas these cows produce and why, not if they produce any at all.

@ Buzz-Saw Balls

They were called "Toclafane" (I did have to look that up). A bit like Imperial probe droids. And they had bits of people in them, too, so not quite a match.

Though, with all the cloning going on, how long till we stick people brains inside our robots. Seems to be progressing faster than AI....

Mine's the one that looks like a pepper-shaker, thanks. Saves me from having to catch the bus...

This laptop will self-destruct in seven seconds...

This "unnamed" reporter is obviously some sort of spy. Either that, or he got his laptop mixed up with that of a good old fashioned secret agent.

He must've slept through the warning that all self-destructing spy devices are required to give.

My coat and bag, please. No need for hat or gloves today, as it's quite nice out.

Maybe not a bad idea

The CompUSA name has recognition. If run well, people will forget that it went under once before. And Systemax already has their own stores and brand name to go to. If all else fails, they can change the names on the physical stores.

I can see the next lawsuit

"Man sued for listening to music: RIAA claims 'unlawful distribution' of sound waves"

Are we to be sued for ripping CDs to put on our computers and mp3 players? I wouldn't be surprised if they tried.

@At least they're offering refunds

No, the article says they are NOT offering refunds.

Hard to refund a download. It's not like you can give it back.

And also

I expected Wikipedia to get a mention. I know you can't go over everything that happened, but I thought they had an eventful year, what with secret mailing lists and criminal charges exposed.

So basically:

Step one: Design something to custom specifications and have it built for you

Step two: Decide that what you've just had built is completely unusable (or, apparently, that you can't tell if it's usable, which is even worse)

Step three: Try to blame it on the manufacturer

This is incredibly stupid and irresponsible, especially since these helicopter are needed to save lives. I hope they're being put to some kind of good use here and not just being wasted.

eBay?

Aren't there more...professional ways of auctioning off your company's name? This seems to have a lot of PR stuntness to it.

A great idea

As someone who suffers from seizures (though not ones triggered by flashing lights and such), I think this is a good idea. As the article says, TV tests for it, so why not video games, especially since people tend to be much closer to the screen when they look at them.

They better lay off the pills...

So, Nokia sees the future looking like a Nokia commercial? Because I swear I could see it in my head, all those carefully chosen people swapping content in a carefully choreographed way to carefully orchestrated music.

See myself doing it? Not at all.

Why, oh why?

Only 12:55 in NY. Almost half the day to go before I head to the pub.

Holy shit?

If we get actual holy shit on eBay, I'm seceding from the human race.

Get rid of the letters, then

I've been told that it's nigh impossible for a computer to tell the difference between a kitten and a puppy. Maybe we should move away from typing in letters to picking if a pic is of a kitten or a puppy.

I look forward to the game wherein you have to identify kittens and puppies to get the stripper to take her clothes off...