meet your new Microsoft and Apple, kidies

[ I wrote this fourteen years ago to the day and never around to publishing it til now ] 

[ because Facebook stole my soul ]

Don't look now, but I think I've figured out who are the new Apple and the new Microsoft for the next twenty years. It's Google and Facebook. But Google, in my not so humble opinion, will be the underdog we cheer for, the Apple in this contest. Facebook has all the DNA of Microsoft circa 1982. Nerdy visionary leader with a voice like Kermit The Frog. Check. Runs roughshod over competition, even buying and stealing ideas. Check. Emulates the cool kid on the block (that being online advertising behemoth Google). Check-a-roonie.Acts arrogant towards regulators, users and watchdog groups. Check, check check. Howz Google like Apple? They've been acting a lot like Microsoft, too, doncha' think? Well, let's say Google is acting like Apple circa 1982. The playing field is the World Wide Web. Google has for the user the simplest, elegant tools for finding and organizing data on the web, so far, and it knows how to monetize those tools. Apple thought it was going to revolutionize the world in '82, so does Google in '10,

Dogbert helps people migrate from Windows XP

Step away from your creaky old morning routine and upgrade to the latest Dilbert comic right here. Free Open Solaris disc for best comment that names which OS Dilbert's company is moving to and why. Make it funny, please.

Courier goes up in a puff of smoke

HuffPost has heard from H-P that Microsoft's Courier project is deader than a stinking lifeless mackerel carcass that only a feral cat would be interested in picking over. I love cats, so of course I'm gonna' pick over this story. Even back at Rabid Fanboy, I always suspected this project was more vaporware animation than a working gizmo, yet if one watches this animated demo, it looks like an awful shame that Microsoft and H-P didn't pull this off. This looks like a more creative and work friendly iPad, suitable for working professionals and students. Hell, if I was going to college, I wouldn't mind using this.





That's probably what killed this project, that and H-P just dropping a billion and a half on acquiring Palm so it can chase the dream of being in the hand-held mobile device market. Apple saw the tablet as a fun accessory to your life and made it so. The Courier project looks cool but it looks like a tool you use at work or school, and gosh knows, we have more'n'enuff tools in those places. I likes the iPad but I don't see it as a creative tool. Yet. Microsoft and H-P will probably sit and wait and see how well the Chrome OS netbooks and tablets available at end of this year.

Eff The Nukes, What Happened To My Freakin' Internet?

The next serious shit conflict involving superpowers (i.e., China vs The United States) may never involve nukes at all, nor vacuum bombs or other trigger happy forms of intercontinental ballistic mayhem but may be played out over the internet, testing internet defenses, shutting down utility grids, flooding nodes with DDS attacks, pre-set zombie attacks from within terminals, PCs and mobile devices, I think we're all getting the drift here, aren't we, thought so. Folk hero, security defense expert and 9/11 whistle blower Richard Clarke lays it out in his new book Cyber War, snatch a copy on Amazon, either hard copy or Kindle (hey, if you got the Kindle App for PC,Mac, iPhone, iPad, you could be reading it right now).

Don't trust earthworms in Ancient Greek helmuts

Every seventeen seconds, a pig is accidentally crashing some goat's hard drive. You can help by visiting Pearls Before Swine. Tell Stephan Pastis that Lastangelman sent you and he'll smile politely and say,"Who?" while slowly reaching for the sawed off carbine.

The Man Who Would be King Of Blockbuster

Farhad Manjoo reports on Slate.com about one man's goal to subjugate and save Blockbuster Media from itself. Is this Greg Meyers going to be the Mark Cuban of video rentals? We'll see at the next board meeting scheduled June 24th, where he'll try to get himself on the board of directors and then try to unseat current chair and former 7-Eleven CEO James W. Keyes. I honestly thought Blockbuster was going down for the count when majority shareholder and leaky Depends wearer Carl Icahn resigned from the board and reduced his stake in the company from 16.9% to 2.5%. Company shares are down at forty cents, but then again, I bought into Blockbuster decades ago when it was going at fifty 1985 cents a share and I had a multiple spermgasms in my chinos when Viacom bought 'em out in early nineties. Since 2002, the company has been seeing its business take a bad hit in value, you'd think it was some penny stock scam.I figured that Ed Lambert from Sears Holding would swoop in buy them out by now just for the real estate alone. It's still not a bad idea. Robert X. Cringely once felt Apple, of all companies, should buy out Blockbuster and convert them into Apple video stores with video kiosks stations to load up movies and music and sell iPods, Nanos, Shuffles and AppleTV. Even I thought that was stupid, especially when the iPhone and iTouch happened.
Anyway, I wish Greg Meyer best o' luck next month. With the shares at forty cents a pop, if you got two or four grand lying around that you won't miss, I'd sink it into Blockbuster on a whim and hold onto it until this whole Meyer thing plays out. Hell, if the shares get back up to $4.00 level your share value will have increased tenfold and if it tanks even further, like I said, if you got the four grand you won't miss, quit complaining, the stock market ain't for crybabies and neither is betting on the horses.

The Flash Manifesto by Steve Jobs

Apple CEO Steve Jobs lays it right on the line about why Apple mobile devices (read: iPhone, iTouch and iPad) will not ever be using Adobe Flash in a direct 1.700 word post on the company website under hot news. That's okay, Jobso, Adobe may throw its lot in with Google, as Android is going to be the new Windows Mobile competing open platform that developers prefer. Adobe is even allowing Google engineers improve the code, so we'll probably will have an open elegant version of mobile Flash (and PDF and Photoshop ...). Not that a merger or sale with Mountainview is in the cards. Perish the thought.

Jon Stewart rips Jobs a new Apphole

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Appholes
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Tea Party

See Jon Stewart tear a new asshole in the universe right here

The Return of The Downfall Clips

Hitler returns to You Tube, Slate.com's Farhad Manjoo leads the charge. Sit back and savor the irony. BTW, I like cat videos.

The Four Horsemen of the Facebook Apocalypse

Oh fucking God, No! It's Mark "Alfredo Linguini" Zucker-Borg's worst freakin' nightmare! Four freakin' Democratic senators wrote a goddamn freakin' letter - a letter, godammit - not an e-mail - we're talking deadwood, pen and ink, snail-mailed (or FedExed, they can't be that much behind the times) - saying how displeased - displeased - with Faveborg's new policy of sharing user info content with advertisers.

"Social networking sites have become the Wild West of the Internet," Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a letter he wrote Tuesday with three other senators — Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Mark Begich (D-Alaska) and Al Franken (D-Minn.).

Really? Jay-zus jumpin' age Key-rist, I mean, when's the last time anybody has compared any part of the freakin' Internet to The Wild Freakin' West, what, like, 1999? Nice way to state your case, Gran'pa Schumer, wunnerful how shakin' your finger anna givin' out the stern warnin' izza gonna' stop ol' Zuckybaby from tryin' to make money from this humbug Page typesetting machine pyramid scheme social network phenom. Of course all the usual paranoid schizoids with great acronyms are filing this and that with the Federal Trade Commission, my fave being the Electronic Privacy Information Center or EPIC, get it, I knew you would, which is basically some Clydes with an internet connection in a basement who thought this was for real and got busy writing petitions, writing Congressmen, harassing Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Rupert Murdoch and anybody else they think is out to steal their brainwaves for the Matrix. I hate Facebook's slimy ways as much as anybody, but privacy is almost over, in fact, I'm pretty sure by the time I qualify to collect Social Security, which is sometime after The Singularity, privacy will be illegal. If you're not on the grid, you will have wished ya' did. Yeah, I know, but Nipsy Russell was out gettin' a haircut, and O.J.'s lawyer was fertilizing a lawn last I heard, so cut me some slack, 'kay, hmmm?

Back to the saga, anyway. This whole thing got blown way out of proportion more than Google's Buzz snafu, and let me tell you, Schmidtty-boy izza smirkin' anna' gigglin' like a five year old watchin' the class egghead get scolded by teacher in kindergarten. This all started with this stupid LIKE button. If you go to a website that has signed on with Faveborg's affiliate program and you like the content, you can click on this stupid LIKE button on the website and - poof- all your Faveborg buddies would see you dig this website, like this article or know you like whacking off to forty-five year old Coppertone ads on the internet and maybe they should keep their kids away from you for about ten or fifteen years. There is a way folks, to avoid this godawful persecution from Zuckybaby-Borg - don't use the LIKE button, ya' schmucks! And if there is any other things you don't want Faveborg to reveal to anybody, learn to navigate your privacy settings, as difficult as it is to manage. You know, some people actually manage to get even Windows to behave, without being super-nerds, 'cos they learn to use their brains. The other option is, of course is to opt out of the Faveborg Collective. Every four to six months there's another cookie cutter story about paranoid schizos, dumbfucks who shouldn't be allowed near the internet and absolute clydes who either dropped out of Faveborg or avoid it like the plague and still use Morse key codes and Ham radios to communicate with the outside world. So if you're that paranoid join the trend. How about starting a group on Faveborg, let's call it "Let's See How Many Faveborg Members We Can Get To Leave Faveborg!"