I've heard...

That Microsoft is working on a Zune phone that will allow you to record something and send it to someone else with a Zune phone. But they'll only be able to listen to it for three days unless you pay Universal Music Group a dollar.

This new product will be called the "Zone". Microsoft's marketing message will be "Welcome to the Zone".

This "record and recall" feature should be added to the Zune within a year, but look for C|Net to buck the trend and to annoint the "Zone" it an "iPhone killer" for the next six months.

Also, the Zone is slated to be compatible with Windows XP SR2 and Windows Vista only.

Retrospect music spending

It's a little hard to believe, but I've spent upwards of $700.00 over the four-point-five years ITunes has been around. All of it legit - and about 347% higher than my previous music buying habits. I'd say that Steve has something going on.

Too bad he's the largest Disney shareholder and he apparently couldn't manage to weigh in on the bullshit drama that ABC foisted on everyone tonight.

I don't regret any iTunes tracks I bought up until a few days ago. Do you? And how much have you spent since buying music appeared online?

(latest - Apparently, this counterculture maniac thinks everyone should get "stoned", whatever that means.)

Moving

We just moved to Baton Rouge. More to come.

Another Messed Up Charge Slip

Gawdammmit! My bank is always making mistakes. Bank of This Continent, if you know who I mean.

CHECKCARD GEORGE BUSH INT'L HOUSTON TX DEBIT ON 08/03/2006 - $12.60

My letter follows:

Dear Gyant Bank:

I'd like to protest the charge of $12.60 against my Visa™ card, number xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx, expiration date xx/yy.

Now, I'll admit - I was mistaken in purchasing two plastic-bottled (nice touch!) Bud Lite™ beers. After many years of beer supression, I was looking forward to the free-thinking atmosphere of the Uniter "Beer States" of America! Whoooooooo!

Those beers appeared enticingly cold in the cooler. In fact, I was almost sure that I could see delicious beads of condensation against the smooth surface of the bottle. The beer almost looked as if it was trying to burst out - like it wanted freedom or something. (My stomach growled about that cruel bottle - holding that beer against it's will!)

I asked a friend of mine to touch the beer to verify it's coldness, but he couldn't - he told me that someone who used to work at the beer booth last year said it should be cold.

Hrummph. Well, if that's good enough for George Bush Intercontinent airport, it's good enough for me! I trust that the coolers'd be kept "kool" in a place like GHWBIA!

I sent my hard-earned money into the breach with the anticipation that it would be met with the chilled reception that only an "I-scold" (ha-ha, that's what my wifey calls 'em!) Bud can deliver!

I was especially excited because this all happened in George Bush Intercontinent Airport - and I was on my way to Baton Rouge - (the overcrowded castle next door to the shithouse as my Republican friends call it).

In other words, what a Bush promises, it delivers, and I knew that in this temple of beer, auntie-terrerism and precision flight, I couldn't go wrong!

Now, I know that in today's corporate climate of belt-tightening, I might be asked to sacrifice as a citizen. To pay more. To expect less. For the good of the country.

I stand behind this directive! Yes, sir!

But, sir, there is only so far any citizen can go on a regular basis. This beer was as warm as...well, I don't mean to be rude (and if y'rn a woman, skip to the next paragraph!) but that beer was as warm as...well, as Jesus said: "the path of an ass in the heat of July"*.

I found out from the Oriental woman running the counter (is she a terraist?) that the beer is "sprayed" to make it look all frosty and shit.

To add insultation to injuriousness, I paid too much for beer in the airport last time I was there, and I was surprised to find that the beer was even more expensive today - despite our conquerisquation of the rice and hop fields in Afghanistan.

Fox News (they've got a store in the Houston Airport!) said that Afghanistan was going to plow under the poppies for the "stoppies" - in other words, grains or other crops that would "stoppie" the drug trade. I want to help - but not if our government is going to let expensive Afghani rice and grain into our beers. It is time this practice stopped.

You'd think that those people have better things to do since we liberated them from the Tally-Man - but no - they just grouse an shoot at the brave Americans we send over there to fight.! It isn't like grain is hard to grow.**

(Aw, hell, we have better things to do - my wife has to spend hours on the phone with our investment counselors, trying to figure out what to do with all the money we made off of Enron in 2000!)

Back to business, what exactly are we fighting for, if not freedom? And does not freedom mean that OneClass members get beer on the cheap in the ass-hot terminals at GHWBIA? I'm disappointed. Therein lies the problem, and my complaint.

Since I was in the George H.W. Bush Airport, I proclaim my right to have the American people pay for my mistakes over the next twelve years. (Please submit a form 1099-DMBASS to the I.R.S. (not the record company!), and submit a credit to Capitol One against the above-mentioned account for $12.60.)

Thanks!

An American who can count. (and 2-3 Billion a week in Iraq is a lot to keep up with)

*Not an actual Jesus Quote. For actual Jesus Quotes, click here. Jesus quotes may be substituted, and not quoth by the actual carpenter, who may not actually be from Nazareth, Jerusalem, or for that matter, in this corporeal world. But hey - believe what you want. It might be Jesus on the other end. You never know.

**This entire post is a fucking joke. If you were on a phone, I'd say "hang up". If you haven't figured it out yet...pull the power plug outta your computer, drink a bottle of beer, and head for the nearest coast.

Microcowards

Microsoft should just bite the bullet and do what worked so well for Apple - let go of their entire legacy codebase. Seriously.

My advice to Microsoft is to buy or develop a new operating system with a provision for Windows compatibility - but the compatibility layer should be partitioned from the new OS and deprecated quickly.

Sure - put a few people on a team to make sure that legacy codebae will run in the new OS, but kill that insanely complex and increasingly bloated monster now, so we can all move forward.

Win32 and the NT Kernel are suffocating security, innovation, and style on the Wintel platform - which could develop into the MacTel platform more easily than I think people will admit at this point.

Fitshaced

The Passion of the Drunk

Jesus, David Letterman and Jay Leno just got six months worth of material...and now there's a report detailing his barely-veiled Jew hatred.

Maybe he found a way to turn water into wine?

God, I hope the Sheriff doesn't hang Mel up on the cross to make an example out of him...

87 m.p.h in a 45 zone? While he was 50% above the legal limit? The judge will crucify him.

Dude, Road Warrior was a movie. Not an instructional video!

Marburg Place

Look, if someone can get away with naming a development site MARBURG place...well, then I think even I can get into this marketing gig.

In case you missed the movies, books, and magazine scares about hemorragic fever in the 90s, the biggest baddie of them all is the Marburg virus, which can cause death within three days as the internal organs liquefy, leading to bleeding from every orifice on the body - even tear ducts.

Thankfully, this little girl isn't an actual little girl - she's a stock photo and doesn't have to worry about living in Marburg Place. But you can! Come home - to Marburg Place!

Both Barrels

Stephen Maines tells Microsoft what the rest of us have been saying for twenty years.

Government Spending in Perspective

Make sure the poor people don't frivolously spend their relief money: Check.

Make sure the really really rich don't misspend the people's money: not so much.

This message in fiscal responsibility brought to you by Republicans. Republicans. Republicans.

Zune

Microsoft pre-announces this "iPod killer" a week before Apple's WWDC starts.

On a Friday afternoon no less, when the headlines are filled with reporting on three wars, a nutty grocery knifer, and a heat wave.

Now, given that the rest of the world (except for the stenographers at C|Net, who just rewrite press releases) understands that you always release bad news on a Friday afternoon (see also, Bush, George W.), and always pre-announce well in advance of your competitor (to diffuse the competitor's own news by inviting speculative comparison), well, what have you got?

You've got a music player that's going to have the style of a Microsoft keyboard, some bullet-point features, massive marketing resources, and the deepest pockets in the industry. Whether it works well or not - whether people find it compelling or not - we'll hear a lot about the Zune (not even worth making fun of the name) over the next few months.

And, perhaps most importantly, the Zune will be a massive money loser. Like the X-Box, it will succeed only because the giant piggy bank at Microsoft buys the ads, subsidizes the hemorragic production line, buys dinner for the gang at C|Net, and repeats this formula year after year until they have the iPod's market share. And then, they still won't stop. Unless it doesn't happen - and I don't think it will.

I mean, have you seen the pictures of this thing? It looks like the best of the 3rd and 4th generation iPod, combined in a lovely mustard-yellow anodized case. Barf. The comments at the Microsoft "Zune Insider" (boy, there's a pun waiting there somewhere) are a mixture of "check out my podcast" and "you guys are idiots".

What, are we going to start calling them "zunecasts" now? Dinna think so. Microsoft is a little too late to this party to do truly well, I'm afraid, and while the hole won't be as big as the X-Box's, it'll be another money whilpool in the once-tranquil sea of Windows and Office revenue. And if something happens to threaten either one of those revenue streams...well, Microsoft may have to start thinking about inventing products no one else has actually, you know, gotten to yet. And making them work well. Frankly, if it comes to that, I don't give them much chance-but such a scenario is a decade off at the earliest.

(Don't even get me started on Microsoft's plans to replace everyone's AAC files with Windows Media versions of the same tracks. It's not fair, and may be actionable in court - you don't see Sony buying DVD owners Blu-Ray new versions of their collections, do you? There's a good reason, and it's not because Sony is poor.)

When it finally hits the streets, C|Net will do a glowing review of the Zune while the New York Times struggles to find anything outstanding about it. Still, it'll sell a lot of copies and give the iPod some competition - which for all it's efforts, Creative hasn't been able to do with players that are probably better today than the Zune will be tomorrow.

Money makes the world go around, and money equals influence. That's the only reason the Zune will do well - if it does well - at all. Massive money from the Office and Windows ATMs, helping to flood the airways, billboards, and pop-ups of the world with the message that Microsoft's player might not be cool, but it is...something...

Well, I hope they've got something compelling up their sleeves. I don't know what Apple has up theirs, (and even if I did, I wouldn't say) but I can tell you this: Cupertino is going to be a very exciting place during the next three months.

Apple's going to give Microsoft a lesson in stolen thunder.

Power Floutage

Things are going great in New Orleans a year later:

“I had to go somewhere else to sleep,” said Nicole Guinchard, a waitress who works a 60-hour week on two jobs. “It was a hotbox in here,” she said outside her house on Dauphine Street.

“The deal was, at first, it was every time it rained. Lately, it’s been for no reason at all,” said Linda Morreale, an owner of a neighborhood tavern, Bud Rip’s. Ms. Morreale has seen her customers slowly drift away: “Everybody sits around until they get kind of uncomfortable.”

There is sudden darkness, then the creeping invasion of the humidity outside.

Mr. Stephens, the contractor, detailed the stages: “You get hot. Your kids get irritable. They drive you crazy. It’s a whole big ordeal.” Not to mention, he said, the extra $400 he has had to spend to replace groceries lost to the failures.

“Every couple of days, the lights be going off,” said Samuel Breaux, a warehouseman in a neighborhood sewing factory. The big building goes dark, and the women stop sewing. “You can’t do too much of nothing when the power’s out.”

Entergy executives say the problem is a complicated mix of uncertainty over how many people to serve, power lines that remain down, and connections that are no longer as reliable. Before the storm, when the electricity blinked out for a moment — as it did even in normal times, during New Orleans’s frequent summer storms — the utility could immediately switch to alternate lines. That option is far less available now.

“We don’t have the same number of power lines,” said Rod West, an Entergy manager. Most of the 22 substations were flooded; Entergy estimates it will need $267 million just to fix the remaining damage.

$267 Million. We spend that much in Iraq before the sun gets overhead. We're busting our humps to get precision munitions to Isreal so they can kill more civilians, but power in New Orleans? Not so much. Maybe Louisiana should just elect Jeb Bush governor - that'd get shit fixed.

Nice to see where this government's priorities are - Entergy's bailout was denied by the Bush Administration - and what's going to happen this year?

When the hell is this country going to stand up and say "We've had enough!"

Accountable

I guess we've moved from an era where the president is accountable for failure to one in which he is held accountable for nothing.

Don't ask me to cite examples for Bush's failures. It's easy enough to use Google: just search for "George W. Bush".

Google Terrorist

Whoa! The entire U.S. Subsonic strategic bomber fleet (and the most capable bombers we have) are all located here!

All a terrorist would have to do is look up the XML source code on this page in Google Earth to find out where we're keeping all of our strategic bombers!

Oh, shit! Hoss and Google be trines to destroys de country!



B-52s
I hear they're a great band!

-93.6707639480546
32.50284736082494
0
892.8760546196684
-1.379602057189533e-10
0.04287538291932862

root://styleMaps#default+nicon=0x307+hicon=0x317

-93.6707639480546,32.50284736082494,0




Stop Analyzing, and Start Seeing

Dammit, stuff like this makes me want to yell.

Not that it's bad - graphs can be a useful analytical tool.

But - fer fuck's sake - can we please resist the temptation to quantify every single goddamned thing we do and just look at it?

Shit, I thought that was what art was supposed to be about. Not much use in everything conforming to an "ideal" histogram, now is there?

I'll bet that...

..this shit is really worrisome to the national security hawks.

Anyone with a good arm and some creative thinking could time this stuff well enough to take down an airliner with 200 people aboard and shut down a major Silicon Valley artery.

Shit, I guess I'm a terraist now.

Yeah, that's me!

Surprise. AT&T's shitty service disease is spreading.

Signed,

DB

Jawja

From these results, it looks to this progressive that even Georgia wingnuts are disgusted with Republican "leadership".

Check out the Jawja primaries.

Yes, the turnout for Democrat candidates was higher in the biggest race. 445k approx. votes to 395k approx. votes. Could Georgia end up with a (choke) Democrat governor?

It would seem the GOP is out of tricks, and that even the "orange" Republicans are staying away from the polls.

Uh. Oh.

update - with 96% reporting

democrat turnout for governor's race: 476,544
republican turnout for governor's race: 414,575

As Happy Gilmore says: "Someone's closer!"

Cool Page of the Day

The California Independent Systems Operator's System Status Page

Actually, this is a pretty HOT page. My in-laws in Redding just watched their outside temps drop under 100 degrees - at 8:14 p.m.

Billmon's Velvet Hammer

One of the top three writers in the blogosphere.*

Humble, too!

*Actual opinion.

Answer the Question, Mr. Gonzales

“Why wasn’t O.P.R. given clearance as so many other lawyers in the Department of Justice were given clearance?” Mr. Specter asked.

Mr. Gonzales replied, “The president of the United States makes decisions about who is ultimately given access,” and he added that the president “makes the decision because this is such an important program.”

That's going to get you an "F" in debate class, Albie. Neither of those excuses is an answer to the question posed.

An answer in keeping with constitutional principles would be along the lines of:

"The O.P.R. was not given clearance because other intelligence agencies advised the president that commie infiltrators were trying to steal our precious bodily fluids.

Therefore, the justice department, under my direction, exercised authority to prevent this grave threat to national secur-it-tie, by obtaining warrants from the FISA court to surveil those parties. We then found that they were innocent of any wrongdoing. I have no idea why the preznit did what he did."

Notes for debate class: "Resolved: The United States Government of, by, and for Republicans is immoral and must be replaced."