Amazon makes an unintended funny…

a message from Amazon about items in my shopping cart:

Please note that the price of The High Price of Materialism has increased from $10.85 to $11.32 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of The Overspent American: Why We Want What We Don’t Need has increased from $10.40 to $10.79 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

Please note that the price of Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture has increased from $10.20 to $10.65 since you placed it in your Shopping Cart. Items in your cart will always reflect the most recent price displayed on their product detail pages.

crazyness

So, I’m staying a nice hotel in the self-proclaimed capital of Silicon Valley. Of course, they have hot and cold running internet (wireless and wired!), but there is no outlet with 10 feet of the desk (where the wired internet is). Unless, of course, you move the bed away from the wall and unplug the clock.

morons

The SeaTac Airport Trees incident

The Seattle Times: Local News: Airports trees stoking “war on Christmas”

Ya know, I’d like a Menorah in addition to XMas trees if they are going to be on public property too. I however think that suing the port “to make a point” during XMas season was a stupid move 10 times over. All it does it make all of us look petty and horrible. If it was a cross or a creche, something undeniably religious, I’d sign up on that suit myself…

Then again, the responses to the article also harken to my worst fears. The kind of stupidity on the other side “This is a Christian Nation” kinds of crap…

hey half of America!

You get what you deserve.  Everyone knows that the situation in Iraq is a quagmire and that our plans (or lack thereof) have been flawed and are still flawed. Report after report comes out saying that we are doing the wrong things and yet the president feels firm in his convictions. He is the decider, the commander in chief. His will is strong. Which is exactly why so many of you voted for him, right?
The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Democrats on Iraq report: Bush just doesn’t get it

Which Vista Edition is Right for You?: The Vista Editions

ExtremeTech has this super scary matrix to help you figure out which version of Vista you should buy.
Which Vista Edition is Right for You?: The Vista Editions

Now, there are two ways to look at this diagram. One is Microsoft is Stupid and the other is Microsoft is Evil. Having all these different versions is going to do nothing but confuse customers. How many times has this lesson been proven?

The Microsoft is Stupid argument goes like this: Microsoft is being good intentioned, meaning to let users pick the features they want for the price they want. This gives Microsoft customers a lot of options and options are always good, right? Having worked there for eight years, I know that the ‘soft isn’t as evil as most folks think. More, bumbling and not aware of its own size and influence. Kind of like the St. Bernard that is continually knocking things over. The folks in Vista marketing didn’t quite get the fact that the differences between all the different versions only make sense to a Software Design Engineer with a degree in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon. Now, when my mom goes to the store to buy her copy of Vista, she’ll just stare at them for an hour and then call me, an Engineering Manager with a degree in Computer Science and Applied Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon. While I understand the differences between the various versions of Vista, I’m gonna hafta figure out how to explain it to her. Good luck on that. “You don’t need disk encryption” “why not?” etc… Maybe this won’t matter ’cause most folks will just get the version of Vista that Dell slaps on their new machines and only the ones who care will upgrade. We’ll see.

Now, The Microsoft is Evil argument will have a lot of traction, especially on Mac fan websites and Slashdot. The argument is this: when faced with such a daunting set of options, most folks will just go for Ultimate, ’cause that must be the good one, right. No need to figure out which has what, just get the one with everything. This plays into American’s love of supersizing and Hummers. Now, when I said that Microsoft wasn’t as evil as most people thought, I should have added as a whole. There are some absolutely evil bastards working there who are just as plotting and evil as most people think. So, I think that the evil argument has some weight as well.

So, was the Vista version model the product of good-natured idiocy or soul sucking evil? Only Steve Ballmer knows.

Either way it is still stupid.

Adwatch: Zune Endless Cookie – Gizmodo

Holy crap gizmodo makes me laugh sometimes…

Here’s an ad that symbolizes the Zune’s song sharing with a cookie that is split for sharing with strangers, only to grow back, over and over again.

No one understands that after 3 days, the cookie DRM activates in your stomach, giving you a bleeding ulcer and diarrhea. Just kidding…about the cookie, not the DRM.

Adwatch: Zune Endless Cookie – Gizmodo

Sources confirm plans for a smaller, ultra-thin form factored MacBook Pro | MacScoop

Sources confirm plans for a smaller, ultra-thin form factored MacBook Pro | MacScoop

I am writing this from a 12″ PowerBook, which I dearly love. I find myself drifting more to my 17″ MBP these days, but mostly ’cause I use it for work, and that screen real estate does come in handy for coding. For sitting around surfing or reading the e-mail or doing anything on a plane, you can’t beat that sub-notebook size. I was bummed that Apple hadn’t introduced a new 12″ MBP, maybe my wish will be granted next month…