Simpsons Crack on (M)Apple

I was only a matter of time...say, where can I get one of those myCubes?

McDonalds Files Patent for Sandwiches

Ok, the title may be a over-generalization, but today McDonalds did file a patent application for what they call the "METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MAKING A SANDWICH". I kid you not. They're even covering "cocktail sandwiches", i.e. burger bites etc.

Who knows exactly who McDonalds plans to go after with this one, as my understanding of patents is that if even one thing is different, it isn't actionable. So if Burger King decides to "apply appropriate condiments to [the] appropriate compartment" before they "assemble sandwich fillings and hot garnishes in [the] tool", they'd be fine. Mickey D's lawyers can't be that stupid - there has to be some kind of terminology in there that they think is bulletproof; there's too much prior art to make this thing fly.

I just love looking at the flowchart.

Republicans Aren't Bitter...Nooooooo

I was going to write about the Patriots and their surprise success story at QB. Then, I got this email from the guy who sends me tons of joke/junk mail everyday (we all know at least one):

A possible new President

What a fantastic idea. You know what would really P**S OFF the Democrats...

Bush should resign now.

Then Dick Cheney becomes President (that would really P**S OFF the libs)!!!

Then he appoints Condoleeza Rice as VP.

Then Cheney resigns two weeks later and Condoleeza Rice, a Republican, becomes the first BLACK - WOMAN President!!!

What's scarier than the obvious partisan driven ignorance and spite is the fact that there are people out there laughing at this, many of whom are doing so not completely in jest...
 

Eats, Shoots & Leaves

Happy Birthday Dad. In honor of your acute understanding of the English language and your persistent adherence to its syntactical rules, I hope you enjoy your gift: the NYT bestseller, Eats, Shoots & Leaves. The back of the book sells it nicely (and a big hint from TLM helped too):

A panda walks into a café. He orders a sandwich, eats it, then draws a gun and fires teo shots into the air.

"Why?" asks the confused waiter, as the panda makes towards the exit. The panda produces a badly punctuated wildlife manual and tosses it over his shoulder.

"I'm a panda," he says at the door. "Look it up."

The waiter turns to the relevant entry and, sure enough, finds and explanation.

"Panda. Large black-and-white bear-like mammal, native to China. Eats, shoots and leaves."

So, punctuation really does matter, even if it only occasionally a matter of life and death.

The Watchman

Apparently I am the last one to even know about this, though in all fairness TLM's brother mentioned it in passing last summer when have about Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, etc. He said pretty specifically "The Watchmen is going to be better", and seemed pretty excited about it. From the few conversations I've had with him about comics I can see he's knowledgeable, so I perhaps should have pressed a bit more to find out why.

Well, a trailer came out this week for the upcoming "Watchmen" movie, and it got me excited enough to go out and buy the actual graphic novel (my first ever, if you can believe it). After having read maybe .1 of it and watching the trailer, I can now see why he said what he said.

Oh, and as if that weren't enough, there are more than 80 other movies in production that are based on either a comic or graphic novel. Nice.
 

Say It Ain't So, Chuck Turner

Bald, yes. Bold, definitely. Bright, maybe not so much.

FBI raided Boston City Councilman Chuck Turner's office this morning, arresting him and charging him with bribery, and the situation looks grim by the looks of the picture floating around (eerily reminiscent of the undercover footage that got fellow Boston politico and Massachusetts State Senator Dianne Wilkerson busted earlier this month for the same thing).

Oh, Chuck. This isn't like the time you refused to shovel your sidewalk - you're in a much bigger heap of trouble this time around. Now I think it becomes a contest to see who can sing louder, Turner or Wilkerson. Only the coming weeks will tell.
 

ANTM 11 Winner - McKey???

What?? Look, I understand that the show needed to branch out, and they have been as evidenced by the last few seasons' (er, cycles') winners. We got a second-chance underdog. We got a Latina. We got a plus-size model. One of this season's (er, cycle's) contestants was a trans-gender woman, who I thought was a shoe in.

No, this season they gave it to the clumsy "linebacker type" with a grin so wide and pointy it would make the Joker cringe.

She did improve the most, I suppose. And she didn't totally blow the commercial challenge. Why do I watch this so intently again?

New Star Trek Movie Trailer

[Geek alert] As if I weren't excited enough by the fact that the new Star Trek movie was being directed by J.J. Abrams, virtually guaranteeing a blockbuster success, the new trailer came out. Now I officially feel more excited about this Star Trek incarnation than I was about all the others combined.
 

MVP(edroia)

Dustin Pedroia was voted the 2008 AL MVP today, becoming the first Red Sox player to do so since Mo Vaughn did it in 1995. Scrappy, clutch, and as many are quick to point out, short in comparison to his peers, Pedroia is also only the third player ever to win the award in the season after winning the Rookie of the Year, along with Cal Ripken and Ryan Howard (only way to beat that is to do it in the same season - oh, right, that's been done, twice. Ichiro and Fred Lynn in case you were wondering).

Some say those who vote these days have become slaves to numbers, but I think this year they got it right.

Why Developers Prefer Macs

Disclaimer: I know the following quote borders on sappy, but maybe that’s why it stuck out to me. Or maybe it’s all that kool-aid I drank.

"Working on the Mac really inspires me to do great work…When you work on something great, you're generally going to build something greater."

http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/17/47TC-developers-mac_1.html
 

Totota Wallpaper a Gray Area

From Slashdot:

"TorrentFreak reports that Toyota's lawyers have recently contacted computer wallpaper site Desktop Nexus in a blatant example of DMCA abuse. Toyota issued a blanket request to demand the immediate removal of all member-uploaded wallpapers featuring a Toyota, Lexus, or Scion vehicle (citing copyright violation), regardless of whether Toyota legally holds the copyright to the photos or not. When site owner Harry Maugans requested clarification on exactly which wallpapers were copyrighted by Toyota, he was told that for them to cite specifics (in order to file proper DMCA Takedown Notices), they would invoice Desktop Nexus for their labor."

Ridiculous. Oh, and by the way, doesn't it behoove companies like Toyota to not suppress but rather encourage fan art? It's free marketing, no?

Just for that I'm taking a picture of the Matrix and making a new wallpaper...

Motor Storm is (finally) Coming

TLM was nice enough to gift this yesterday - a PS3 original I've been secretly wanting since I played it at I Politico's so many months ago. It's just a racing game, nothing special, but with all the free time I have these days (sarcasm), it's just the thing I needed.

Doing the iPhone Dance

Found this Joy of Tech today and sadly it's something to which I and iPhone users everywhere can relate.

Nigerian Prince's Biggest Investor

We've all gotten the email - some prince in Nigeria needs your help to move millions of dollars around and if you send $100 here and $1000 there you get it back a thousand fold. This king of all internet scams is so unbelievable it's been poked fun at a thousand times - even Saturday Night Live has referenced it a couple of times (most recently Anne Hathaway joked: "I found this amazing new guy, we met on the internet. I usually don't read letters from strangers, but how often do you get an email from a Nigerian Prince? He's such a sweetheart, and - not that it matters - but he's incredibly wealthy.")

That's funny and all, but consider this: the scam is still out there for a reason, and that reason is that there are actually people still falling for it.

For example, Janella Spears from Sweet Home, Oregon recently "went public" with her experiences - a story that ultimately ends with the nursing administrator and reverend investing over $400,000 into the fictitious deal.

$400,000. That's almost half a million dollars she shipped away, and not all in one payment, mind you. This was a total achieved over two years of scammage, and all of it seems gone for good (which, by the way, begs the question - where did it go?).

Embarrassing, yes. Legal, no-ish. Morally derisive, definitely.

Mactracker

I was introduced to this little app way back in the early 2000's - i.e. before I was a Mac guy. At that point I thought it to be mildly interesting and completely useless. Why would I want and/or need to know how much a Macintosh IIx cost or what its startup chime was?

Well, I still don't really care about that particular information aside from its historic interest, but I find myself using Mactracker more and more for actual, practical reasons.

For example, when my old boss asked me to help find and install RAM into his eMac (not a typo), Mactracker had the answer. I use it to store information like serial numbers and warranty info about all of my machines, too. I've found it most useful, though, to identify a particular model of mac and specific information about it (not so much the startup chimes). Case in point: when going in with a friend to buy an external hard drive as a birthday present for another friend, we needed to consult Mactracker to find out what types of ports his machine had. As phenomenally awesome a present a brand spanking new HD is, it's value is diminished somewhat if you can't hook it up to your machine...

Oh, and there's one more thing. Mactracker is free. Yeah, free. So go get it if you haven't already.