Tag: Web, Blogging and Computers

Wi-Fi Deadbeats

This is sort of funny if it were not a pathetic business model meeting rude nerds:

Even worse, when lingerers were confronted, they were bellicose. “We get yelled at by people who feel it’s their right” to use Victrola’s Wi-Fi without making a purchase, Ms. Strongin said. Tony Konecny, the shop’s head roaster, added, “It’s rarely a pleasant interaction.”…Some of Victrola’s customers were in a slight state of disbelief when the Wi-Fi was disconnected. One regular customer repeated over and over, “That just doesn’t work for me,” Ms. Strongin said…

More wi-fi freeloader backlash from last month and last year.

Totally Dad

Isn’t it funny when the Boingsters go totally Dad and denounce average students for disagreeing with what they say or not worshipping because Boingsters are, like, Wired-hired bloggers [despite not having much to add] and, ummm, they are older people so…you know…you better respect us ’cause…we know better than you?

Lesson: everyone goes Oldie Olson. Some know when it is time to admit it.

Twisted Blankle

I must have twisted my blankle or strained my black as I can’t think of anything to blog about this morning. A pull bloin. Maybe its just fear of the impending first fitba game of the summer tomorrow night, dread at the prospect of the unknown way this corpse will fail me.

I am big on the web nostagia post most of all from yesterday’s slew. Nils took the bait….blait.

A Night Off

Last night my Sympatico high speed was down – you know it is unannounced maintenance when it goes off at 5 pm and is back on in the morning. I don’t bother call support to complain about the semi-annual shutdowns anymore. I just say to myself “yes, I rebooted, thank you.”

How nice that was. I watched TVO’s Studio 2, the best hour of TV in Canada, and a rerun of Heartbeat and thought about how 12 years ago I have a black and white TV with no cable in the near north of Ontario’s Upper Ottawa Valley, no internet, no computer, no CD player. Back then, I read books and I wrote letters and likely watched TVO on Friday night.

What I Want The Web To Do For Me

I was listening to an US AM radio station last night when I heard an ad for eHarmony, a dating/matching service, which got me thinking how it is too bad that it is focused on the big but (if at all effective) one-time event. We need similar tools like that on the web which actually serve on-going purposes like some of these:

  • e-Literate.com: a readers service where you put in the last 12 books you like as well some other information to get recommended reading for the next 12. No sales of books are tied to the site as flogging is not the point.
  • Ska-mazon.com: you tell the web site which ska records you have and it will tell you the ones you should look out for and where you can get them. Flogging is OK as it is pretty hard to find good ska these days.
  • e-Quaintance.com: once you have pals from undergrad who move away but you keep in touch with and once you have a family, everyone still needs a circle of some what tenuous acquaintences that you can get together with but have no need to really get to know. You can have a decent pint with them. You can talk a bit of sports with them but when they head out you can’t be sure if you have their name quite right. The service weeds out those who would be a particular irritant to a decent crowd – including you.
  • LiFix.com: It is as likely as not that the thing you would be best suited for is something you have really never come into contact with. I, for example, am convinced but for fate I would have made an excellent Bush Tucker Man or second rhythm guitarist for a major rock act….major. So with this website, people load in their lives facts offer to give them up in exchange for a better fate and see if through a succession of elaborate exchanges of place and identity, the real life you deserve – like mine of either the outback or spandex – might be lived either on a temporary but also perhaps permanent basis given filing of certain consents and health information.

Is this too much to ask of the internet which promised so much but gave us only blogs? There must be more web apps you would like to see.

Brian’s War In Iraq

I haven’t reminded you for a while – so do not forget to read my upstate NY neighbour Brian’s posts from Iraq where he is working as a paralegal with the 10th Mountain Division. He has been involved with some of the biggest non-combat news stories coming out of the war and, while he maintains his professional cone of silence, he is able to deftly tell fthe story of what it is like to see what he is seeing. Today, he writes about seeing photos of an entire village Saddam had murdered as part of the making of the case against the former dictator.

512 MB

Care of Best Buy and 65 bucks US, we can now take 831 1.2 MB photos with our digital camera.  That is 1/2 of the memory on the hard drive of my last computer – sure I bought it in 1996 but it cost 3,000 bucks so I thought I would squeeze it for everything it was worth.   Memory is like air now.

What am I going to take a 22 minute movie of anyway.

Vatican v. Gomery Handbags

In a remarkable move consciously mirroring this week’s plot of The West Wing, differences are appearing amongst the cardinals heading to Rome:

With Pope John Paul II lying in state, the battle over his legacy is being brought into the open by some cardinals preparing to choose his successor. The comments are preceded by praise for the pontiff who led the Roman Catholic Church for 26 years, but the need for change and renewal is being made clear. It started Sunday when Brazilian Cardinal Claudio Hummes, a contender to become the next pope, criticized what he suggested was a church out of touch with contemporary life. “The church must adapt to the modern world,” Hummes, the Archbishop of San Paolo, said before heading to Rome. “It can’t give ancient answers to new questions.” The next pope, he added, “must respond to progress and maintain a serious dialogue with science.”

I am just surprised that he made no comment on the testimony from the Gomery commission…sorry the explosive testimony. Favorite Gomery memes¹ so far:

  • Canadians are whimps for not breaking a court order – no need to link to that one. Its everywhere;
  • Canada is a dictatorship because of publication bans – yikes! Blog cops!! In my shed!!! They are watching us all!!!!;
  • Use of plummy pip-pip rights of an Englishman talk in a failed effort to talk law;
  • Poor Paul Martin – vote Tory (nice try Ben…vote NDP… or even independent Rhino); and
  • Best of all – AL YOR BLOGS AR US – the stone brained demands of 14 year olds everywhere that you must let them post any loony comment they can think up.

So far – its men in red gowns 1 v. panicy bloggers in Canada 0 as far as confidence in their democractic institutions goes. Sad.

[Ed.: What was that? Who are you? HEEEEeeeeeeeelp me – the blog cops got meeeee….]

¹ Note: Ben and I hate this word yet I use this word.