casa.de.geeks

Archive for the ‘news’ Category

The following pictures were taken at a Walmart in Oklahoma City. The first depicts two American Indians on horseback with spears raised overlooking their land and grazing buffalo. The next picture is a large panoramic view of early American settlers wearing cowboy hats with their covered wagon stampeding onto the land. The last picture shows a more modern Caucasian woman with a cowboy hat riding a horse in the foreground and a city skyline in the background. The last picture is captioned “Oklahoma City”.

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Great history lesson, Walmart! Really. The natives were just chillin out, tending to their buffalo when a stampede of immigrants came along, pillaged their lands, and built a concrete jungle on it. I hope all those people who want to deport all illegal immigrants take a long hard look at this and think about how their own ancestors came to call this country their home.

Don’t you ever just feel like the last few weeks in technology were full of bad news and let downs? All you’re looking for is the light at the end of the tunnel. I always ask myself why the general population seems to hold people in tech related professions to a higher standard when it comes to service. I’m not saying we’re not excellent… but we’re not perfect. We make mistakes and truth be told there is not a giant magic easy button tucked away at the back of our desk drawer collecting dust waiting for the day when your priority #1, mission critical, last-minute-I-need-this-done-now, project comes along. Sometimes users request the impossible… or just the plain ridiculous, like the lady who wanted to remove the Pac Man from her Google.

Seriously though, why do other people/companies/entities get to screw up so bad and still skate on like nothing happened?

BP is still taking a big dump in the Gulf of Mexico. Progress with cleanup efforts and fixing the spewing oil leak is dragging on as if they think time itself will solve the problem.

It seems that Apple and AT&T screwed people over big time with what looks like an obvious bait and switch to me. One of Apple’s major selling points for the iPad was the ability to get an unlimited data plan through AT&T for $30 a month without a contract! Now shortly after the 3G versions are released, AT&T says they’re no longer offering unlimited data plans for the iPad or the iPhone. Even those who already signed up and will be grandfathered into an unlimited plan are forced into never skipping a payment – kind of like being on a contract, because I’m sure if you missed a month AT&T would just make you sign up for their new plans.

One final frustration of mine: T-Mobile should be ashamed of themselves! Verizon and Sprint are offering up all the awesome Android phones like they’re the ones that started this whole thing! C’Mon TMo – you offered up the first Android phone to the masses with the G1 and now your best offering is the MyTouch Slide? Where are the top-end handsets to compete with the HTC EVO 4G and the HTC Incredible or the Motorola Droid? TMo isn’t even directly selling the Nexus One but they should! They need to!

But hey, a little bird has been chirping about a big event coming soon for T-Mobile: Free phones on June 19th. If this is true, TMo could win over a lot of new customers and maybe that’s just what they need for the phone makers to consider giving TMo better handsets. I took the time to check out plans for two Android phones on Verizon’s network with unlimited data and T-Mobile still has the best priced plans. Here’s to more waiting for my dream phone.

My opinion of natural health supplements has always been that they might actually help and are natural so if they don’t they’re probably harmless. The most harm I could imagine them doing was for people to delay treatment taking useless stuff and having their condition get much worse. You know kind of like the nutters that have cancer, but instead of going to the doctor they try homeopathy, weird berries, and or praying. Then they die from something that probably could have been treated. You’re never going to get away from that kind of stupid even if they didn’t have health supplement stores people would just wonder into the woods to munch on mandrake root to cure their cancer or whatever. Read the rest of this entry »

Another example of users making me angry because they don’t bother to understand the technology they use. Apparently people are all up in arms over Google accidentally collecting data about Wi-Fi networks with their Street View cars. If you research the issue, you’ll find that payload data was only collected from unsecured networks. If you know anything at all about Wi-Fi, you know that these days securing your wireless router is so easy a caveman could do it. There’s no excuse for not doing it! In fact, if you wanted to, you could prevent your router from even broadcasting an SSID in the first place! You can’t sue somebody for invading your privacy if you are willingly broadcasting it unsecured for your whole neighborhood to see.

Do these people not see the irony? They’re suing Google for collecting data that they’re knowingly broadcasting out into open air but not a word about the fact that Google took pictures of their house! I bet these are the same kind of people that put their last names on their mail boxes for all to see.

I hope Google squashes these people. SQUASH.

When Jenny McCarthy set out on her foolish and unholy crusade to stop people from vaccinating they’re kids most people could understand where she was coming from. After all her son was diagnosed with autism shortly after he got his vaccines. Read the rest of this entry »

Unlike most things you see in Sci-Fi movies one intriguing and very useful piece of tech might be closer than I previously thought. No I’m not talking about flying cars or killer robots. I’m talking about a personal heads up display.  Something you wear as a pair of glasses or contacts that can display things like a GPS map or text messages. The University of Washington has made several contact lens style HUD’s that they’ve been testing and will hopefully develop into something that can be commercially made. Read the rest of this entry »

For those of you that don’t know what Homeopathy is let me enlighten you. Homeopathy is when you take medicine and dilute it so much that the medicine is no longer present but the remaining water “remembers” the medicine was there and can heal people. Ok ok stop laughing some people will believe anything. Read the rest of this entry »

More and more lately it seems that H1N1 is in the news and the number of people getting sick keeps rising. More people are dying from “swine flu complications”. I did a quick search for “swine flu complications” and found the Centers for Disease Control’s site on H1N1 and scanned over it. I clicked the H1N1 Flu & You link and scanned it too… and to my surprise stumbled upon these paragraphs:

What is CDC’s recommendation regarding “swine flu parties”?
“Swine flu parties” are gatherings during which people have close contact with a person who has 2009 H1N1 flu in order to become infected with the virus. The intent of these parties is for a person to become infected with what for many people has been a mild disease, in the hope of having natural immunity 2009 H1N1 flu virus that might circulate later and cause more severe disease.

CDC does not recommend “swine flu parties” as a way to protect against 2009 H1N1 flu in the future. While the disease seen in the current 2009 H1N1 flu outbreak has been mild for many people, it has been severe and even fatal for others. There is no way to predict with certainty what the outcome will be for an individual or, equally important, for others to whom the intentionally infected person may spread the virus.

Now really…. REALLY?! Who is having swine flu parties?! I’m giving up hope on humanity. That is all.