Your Computer Will Get Thinner–Guaranteed

I’ve been saying for quite a while, at least 5 years, that we aren’t far away from a time when your desktop computer will be little more than a browser, with all of your applications and data stored server side–somewhere out there.  The day may be closer than you think according to the Wall Street Journal.

Google is preparing a service that would let users store on its computers essentially all of the files they might keep on their personal-computer hard drives — such as word-processing documents, digital music, video clips and images, say people familiar with the matter. The service could let users access their files via the Internet from different computers and mobile devices when they sign on with a password, and share them online with friends. It could be released as early as a few months from now, one of the people said.

I think this is a good and bad thing.  Good because it will open up the ability to store and share information between individuals.  Bad in that Google is the entity doing it.  As far as I can imagine, no competitor has both the resources and the power to do it.  Microsoft?  Maybe, but they are going in so many directions and have their fingerss in a lot of pies.  Google is web focused.

Product Recommendation — Creative ZEN Plus

If you are looking for a small mp3 player as a gift, I’d check into the Creative ZEN Stone Plus. I bought one for the Missus a couple of weeks ago, and this thing is great, especially when compared to the iPod Nano. For one thing, you can easily move files to and FROM this player easily–something that has always annoyed me about my iPod. Secondly, you can’t beat the price, which is less than $65, making it affordable enough that you could make a case for just buying a few of them and giving everybody the same thing. No way you can get anything with an Apple stamped on it for close to that. The third thing about this player that stands out when compared to the iPod is that it comes with a built in FM transmitter, which is really handy when you are on the go. Hop into your car and tune in to the right frequency and you are listening to the same thing that was just coming through your headphones without plugging anything else in.

There are some really nice accessories as well, including a wristband–the player is the size of a large watch face, and a keyring. Not to mention all of the skins and protectors you can buy.

There are also 4Gb, 8GB, and 16Gb video versions of this player, which is also much cheaper than their iPod counterparts, but I’m not interested in watching video that small, so I haven’t looked at them very closely. Another consideration when choosing a player that is video enables is that, if you are like me, you’ll drop it 100 times the first day you have it and crack the screen anyway. Just something to think about.

In short, if you are past the hype of the iPod and want a good player for a good price instead of a good player for an outrageous price, I’d recommend this one. I’ve had really good history with Creative’s ZEN players–this is the fourth one I’ve bought, and they’ve all performed really well.

Top Marathoner Dies in New York

The craziest thing about this story to me is that he was only 6 miles in. As they mention in the video, autopsy results are pending. It is very scary to think that something like this can happen to a top athlete with unbelievable endurance. Scary and very sad.

New Feed Subscriptions in September

Here are all of the new sites I added to my reader in September. When I say “new” I mean new to me in most cases.

Total Diatribe
If you were impressed with Billymacs ability to consume adult beverages, you’ll be even more impressed with his ability to find nutty stuff and add cleverly biting commentary. A new blog, and I’m expecting great things from it.

Donklephant
Here’s one I can’t believe I just found. A common sense moderate political blog. I don’t mean to imply that common sense can’t be found there, but usually only as it exists on the line between Democrat and Republican. Very pragmatic, as opposed to the, uh, idealism(?) you find here.

KTownLowDown
Another new blog authored by Little Bigfoot SVD. So far a lot of the lowdown that exists there is on a personal level, but he’s running a poll right now asking what you want him to blog about. One man, one vote. If you don’t like it, you had your chance to change it!

Ideas From Free Minds
I found out about Michelle’s blog after seeing her on Tucker Carlson’s show and wrote a post about her. My only complaint is that she doesn’t post enough–there was a huge opportunity to make this blog big when she appeared on TV. I hope she takes advantage of it!

Taylor the Teacher
As Taylor states on her site, she’s a philosophical anarchist who loves to help children learn. Sometimes the public education system even helps her in this endeavor.

TED
Technology, entertainment, and design videos. You’ll agree with some, you’ll disagree with others, but they are all pretty interesting.

Ahmadinejad’s Response to Columbia University

He said Bollinger’s comments included “insults” and false claims, and flew in the face of an environment that’s supposed to let people speak their minds.

This was Ahmadinejad’s response to the introduction given by Columbia University’s President, Lee Bollinger, where he also called Ahmadinejad a “petty, cruel dictator”.

Ahmadinejad is dead wrong, and his response shows exactly why it is ridiculous to try to build democracies constitutional republics in the Middle East where ideas of tolerance of opposing opinions and free speech can’t be comprehended. This is exactly what free speech is all about–I call you a lowdown dirty scoundrel and have facts to back up my claims. You then respond with a defense or retaliate with facts that show otherwise.

These ass clowns are under the illusion that they can come here and exploit our tolerance for free speech (they have no such tolerance) to get their message across without question. They have no inkling that it flows both ways. That’s why I don’t have a problem allowing him/them/anyone else I disagree with have their say.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again–the best way to confirm that someone is an idiot/jerk/ruthless dictator is to give them an opportunity to prove it in their own words.

Can’t wait to check out the entire video. I’ll be watching cnn.com for more info this afternoon.

Violence Isn’t Cost Effective Anymore

This TED talk by Steven Pinker is pretty interesting. I’ll let all of his side comments, such as crediting Bill Clinton with the decline of violent crime in the 1990s, go. The most interesting aspect of this talk is not that violence is decreasing over time, but why violence is decreasing.

It seems pretty simple to me–violence has a very low return on investment.

Because of mass media, no act of violence seems isolated anymore. Therefore, committing an act of violence is a PR nightmare. Maybe not for individuals, but for states most definitely (Iraq). And states themselves have decreased the profitability of violence by individuals. It is virtually impossible for an individual to successfully take any significant amount of property from someone else by force (without penalty).

That’s why people rob banks without weapons. The rewards of successfully robbing the bank without a gun are equal to those of robbing a bank with a gun, but the risk of being unsuccessful is much less because the penalty for using a weapon in such a crime is greater.

It is sort of interesting to consider cultures that believe violence will be rewarded in the afterlife. There seems to be a definite perceived benefit to violence there.

Vanessa Hudgens, Nude Photos, and Total Jackasses

What are these people thinking? And I’m not necessarily talking only about the minor celebrities or local news people who have sex tapes or nude photos out there floating around. It shouldn’t be too much of a leap to think that we will only hear about a very small percentage of the ones that exist. Let’s face it, with digital cameras and digital video cameras easily accessible to everyone these days, it only follows that there are a countless compromising photos and videos in existence. Some of them are bound to be of celebrities people someone somewhere may have heard of.

And really, who cares?

Before Paris Hilton made this the “in thing”, I knew a guy (friend of a friend) who had some topless photos of a (super hot) high profile girl. He threatened to release them in the media, and it eventually let to her becoming much lower profile. To this day I don’t understand why he did it. Obviously, it was an attempt to embarrass her and get back in her in some way, but it made him look sort of pathetic in my eyes. I think if he’d thought it through he may have realized that would be the outcome–maybe not.

The funny thing is, I don’t think any less of her for her having the photos taken other than her poor judgment in who she let photograph her. He’s the one that came out looking like the lesser person, at least in my eyes.

I pretty much feel the same way about the Vanessa Hudgens photos. Of course, I was forced to look at them in order to properly research this post. If you haven’t seen them yet, I wouldn’t bother. They are not that big of a deal.

But the guy who released these is a complete jackass. I don’t know how much he got paid, but I doubt it was enough to buy back his word, which I’m sure he gave her that he would never let anyone else see them.

Then there is the other price he has to pay–I wish him luck in finding another girl who will let him take dirty pictures of her.

Nice move, moron.

Ron Paul on Bill O’Reilly

Three things you can count on when being interviewed by O’Reilly

1) If you are against the war, your answers to questions regarding it will be the voice over for video of angry Muslims protesting and/or burning the American flag. They are very aware that their viewership values images over words, and a large portion of it can’t digest both at the same time.

2) You will only get a chance to answer about half the questions he asks. This especially happens when O’Reilly is being pulled into waters that are over his head. “We don’t have time for a history lesson” translates into “If I allow you to answer this way you will make a point that I can’t refute because I don’t know what I’m talking about.”

3) When O’Relly responds to you with, “that may or may not be true”, you can rest assured that you are dead on right.

Here’s the video…

[youtube OYxKOyWHaTw]

Simplifying Dr. Paul’s Foreign Policy (Again)

Of the candidates in the debate last night, Ron Paul is the only one who advocates leaving Iraq immediately. Here’s a simple analogy.

If you walk into a nest of hornets, they are bound to attack you. We’ll assume that you didn’t know you were walking into a hornet nest before, although that isn’t necessarily the case here. Even though you are bigger and stronger and have a shotgun, you are going to get stung–repeatedly.

What do you do? I see two options, and they both start with getting the hell away from the hornets. The only decision to be made is whether or not to come back with a can full of gas and completely incinerate them. To stand there in the middle of them and try to shoot them with the shotgun is idiotic. If you do that, you deserve to get stung.

Here’s some video from last night’s debate.

[youtube 8BB3NrSpRGE]

So Just What is Government Health Care?

Mitt Romney isn’t in favor of government health care. He doesn’t want the government to pay for people’s health care. He wants you to choose your own private insurance plan (from a select few approved by the government), and the government can then subsidize it.

You see the difference? Through subsidies, he will be able to prevent any use of federal funds (taxpayer money) to pay for the health care of individual citizens. Because, you see, subsidies don’t come from tax payer money. They come from, uh, from uh…

Wait. I’m confused. Just what is a subsidy then?