Top 10 Trump voter excuses in 2020

Top 10 excuses Trump voters will give after America crashes and burn.

10. What problems? America is great again. Sorry, I'm off to pick up my pre-employement check.
9. I had to because all that Healthcare and Economy was choking us. 
8. I really believed that he respected women.
7. This is exactly what we expected for someone who isn't tainted with Washington political experience.
6. You didn't tell me Medicare and Medicaid was government healthcare.
5. I was so moved by Meliana's speech
4. I just voted for Republican.
3. He sounded so honest. At least he was honest.
2. I voted for Pence.
1. I'm an idiot. Why did you let me vote?

Bonus..
0. A lot more of you were supposed to vote for Clinton.

With an iPhone 6, everybody's Uri Geller

A bent spoon. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, we all know that buying Apple gives you the coolness and exclusivity of being a member of the select few who own the most popular phone in America. Apple has decided that it isn't enough. Now buying the latest Apple phone gives you psychic abilities.

Yes you will be able to bend your now phone like a spoon. Since there is nothing wrong with the phone, the only explanation left is that you have psychic abilities.  

If the iPhone 6 bends, it could be just you

How is it that we are all upset about phones bending in pockets? Isn't this what we've been working for? No more annoying bulges in pants pockets. "Is that the new iPhone6 or are you just happy to see me?" Is it a worthy enough a fiasco, enough to add the '-gate' behind it, becoming Bendgate. Or is it just a feature that was never intended for general release?
Bendy phones, now that is a concept. More of a blast from the past. The last time phones were this curvy was the Nokia 8110. Remember that? The one Keanu Reeves was holding in the movies.

No, not that one.

Yes, that one.

It's been a long time since the Nokia 8110. No, the Huawei concept phone doesn't count because it's not a 'real' phone. We don't count concept cars, do we? And the Nokia 7110 doesn't count either. Nobody wants to remember that train wreck.
No, really. I don't get it. Why is there all this fuss? The phone bends because you sat with it in your pocket. At what point did you not feel the phone poking against you as you sat down. At same point you decided to ignore it as an inconvenience and get on with the business of sitting down. When you made that decision, unconsciously or not, you have passed the point of responsibility. That is, you have decided to sit down with your phone in your pants, heaven be damned.
Your next visit may not be heaven but it'll most likely be the Apple Store.  

Lessons from the MTGOX fiasco

Bitcoin Magazine (Photo credit: zcopley)

As we've all heard, MTGOX has gone under. Now I'm sure we've all heard this because it's all over the mainstream news. It's everywhere. It's a scandal. Ergo, it's newsworthy and deserves to be reported on. They don't understand what is it they're reporting on but they said it anyway. Which questions the quality of news you actually get from mainstream news..
But back to MTGOX. Some say it's a tragedy, some say it was timebomb that finally went off. All we can do is learn from it. And here are the top 5 things to learn from the demise of MTGOX.

1. If you believe in BITCOIN, so will others. So much so, they'll steal it from you. Money isn't evil, it just drives people into doing evil things. So virtual money will drive people to do evil virtually.
2. You need better security to protect bitcoin transactions, better than those used to protect trading card swaps. Apparently Magic just won't cut it
3. Like in the real world, don't expect other virtual banks to bail your virtual bank out of trouble. It's the government's job apparently and they're still trying to get the spelling of bit-coin right. With dash or without.. And like the real world, the other virtual banks have thrown MTGOX under the bus, claiming that it was 'rogue'.
4. The bitcoins that were stolen were not lost, like the mainstream news reported. The total amount of bitcoins that were stolen were about 7% of all bitcoins in the world. Why would anyone steal all those bitcoins and not spend it later. Unless the point was to destroy Bitcoin's reputation. Who would want to do that? After all that time and effort to hack MtGOX? .. except someone who feels threaten by it.. perhaps...er.. forget about what I said. Is that a drone humming above?
5. . ... and finally, if you're gonna steal virtual currency from va irtual bank, steal everything. Everyone will be so upset with the bank, they'll stop looking for you. Really, how many people have you heard talking about getting the guys who did this? Why not go after the people who did this? Unless.. that drone is getting closer isn't it.

Amazon will send you things before you order them

In their non ending quest to be the only place you buy stuff from, Amazon is always looking to improve the time it takes for you to get the stuff you ordered. That is why they have boxes set up for you to receive stuff from them and in some places they are toying with the idea of 4-hour deliveries. That's why they are planning to drone your stuff to you.
Well, in the next logical step in the race to get stuff to you faster, Amazon has decided to skip you altogether. Your order, that is. Amazon has decided that one day, it'll just ship stuff to you before you order them. Amazon will just know what you need and ship it to you. Women, be prepared to be creeped out when you get from them the heavy, non-wing, maxi sanitary pads on the day before you start monthly periods. Or a new set of your favorite mascara the day you run out. Men won't be left out. You'll get the bar of soap and fresh undies thrown in with your next order because Amazon knows you're running out. Yes men, Amazon is now your mother.
Now, how will it know what you need is another matter altogether. Amazon hasn't patented mind reading yet so that's some thing to look out for. Knowing Amazon, it'll probably start with looking at your purchase history, what you buy and how often. So it'll know the right shampoo to send and look at how long it took between purchases to figure out when to send it. Then, it'll move on to your social media sites. Soon you'll receive packs of condoms in the mail just because of those risqué messages you're sending out to that special someone. Which should make an interesting discussion with your spouse.

Amazon Patents “Anticipatory” Shipping — To Start Sending Stuff Before You’ve Bought It http://techcrunch.com/2014/01/18/amazon-pre-ships/

Watch out for drones bearing books in Australia

An Australian company is trying to deliver books with drones. That's right, drones.

Here your 50 Shades of Boom

Why wait for tomorrow for that book you ordered when you can get it right now. Two Australian companies are working together to make this happen. Since there is more than one person involved, it's safe to assume it's okay. I mean how crazy can two aussies be?
I know it's hard to compete with Amazon but do we have to resort to armaments?
And I get that some of us can't understand a Kindle. Or that reading from a screen is not the only same as reading from a piece of dead tree. Or that you're afraid of dropping it in a toilet. But really, does your need to read exceed the fear of something with 4 spinning blades showing up to your house or front door. Maybe you shouldn't fear the blades of the drone as much as you should a hardcover falling on your head. Or maybe that's the thing we need to make children read more, the fear of drones showing up with more books.
Can you imagine the swarm of drones flying around the next Harry Potter or Twilight book comes out?

Drone me Facebook

Facebook is trying to buy social mapping app Waze for about a billion dollars. Great. Just when you found a awesome GPS direction finder, traffic avoidance system, it's gets bought by the people who are in the business of selling information about you. You don't want the whole world to know where you are right now. You don't even want them to know where you were last night.

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It's all a conspiracy, you know. The State Department is just outsourcing more and more stuff. Ever since their failed campaign to get Hamas to check-in their meetings on FourSquare, they are looking for legal ways to find people and sick the drone on them. With Facebook buying Waze, all they have to do is like a few facebook pages and follow a couple of squinty eyed looking guys on the Internet and Facebook will do the rest. Or they could spend a few bucks buying the information. How? Because Facebook is probably selling them.
Imagine the done is already on the way and the Paypal payment is taking forever to send the money to Facebook.
I give up. Don't Like my page. Drone it.

Google's bought Waze. Probably tired of people driving in the wrong directions using Maps.

Steve Jobs: Tech bully

In the most ironic turn for geeks, it turns out that the person who most people associate with high tech, Steve Jobs, turns out to be a mortal enemy of geeks, a bully. Wait a minute. How is this so?
Well it turns out that at some point Steve Jobs wasn't happy with a company trying to hire Apple staff. He then wrote to the company and threatened to use Apple's patents as a club against said company if they didn't stop. Not only did he say that but he also pointed out how big his club was. Now image yourself as the geek who suffered through high school, studied hard, went to university to come out and work for the most dynamic tech companies around... only to find out that your boss was that same tormentor from high school. Yes, that 'revenge of the geeks' fantasy didn't turn out as you had expected. Even when you thought you made it on Brain power, the Brawn still manages to come out on top. Riding on your Brain, apparently.
You see, there was this gentleman's agreement between companies to not poach each other's employees. And HR people who did, lost their jobs because of it. While in some cases, HR wasn't allowed to go out and recruit, in others, the company hiring went to that person's then employer and asked for permission to hire them.
Some people dismiss this as nothing new but won't condemn Jobs for it. They claim it is old news and nothing surprising. Well, so is indentured servitude... When you see people who work for you as objects you have control of, your attitude may not be too far from you and that southern plantation owner. Sure makes that 'employees are the companies greatest asset' slogan sound different, doesn't it. Some companies love their asset so much, they will bully others from taking them.
Apple strangely, is throwing Jobs under the bus. Current CEO Tim Cook, claims to have no part in this. Since he deals with the Chinese manufacturers, there are probably a lot of things he doesn't see.
Typically, Apple fanboys claim that this is not characteristic of Jobs. To them, I say, stop dreaming and start reading Revolution in The Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made. Find out how sausage is made.

No end to Apple's bossiness

I'm sure that when people got their IOS6 update, the last thing they expected was to get lost. But get lost they did. It seems that the new Maps application in IOS 6, which unlike it's predecessors which we powered by Google, isn't up to sractch.
I'm not saying the people behind the Apple map program were incompetent. They knew that their solution would not be as good as Google Maps. They knew there would be some distance between the two products. Apparently, nobody at Apple took the time to figure out how much that distance was. Given this is a mapping application, where knowing the distance is something people expect the application to be good at, that is appalling. Apparently their product map is also self-powered.
But what amazes me is the bossiness of it. Here you are standing in Paris and you try finding Notre Dame on the map by searching for it. The IOS6 Map application points you to South Bend, Indiana. How that could be more relevant or more famous than the Notre Dame in Paris is beyond me. The next you'll be telling me, I'll be standing in London looking for the way to Liverpool, only to be told to go to the airport for a flight to Liverpool, New York. How could that even be possible?
Look I understand what it is. It's all about the unique Apple experience. But why must you amazingly tell people that greater Notre Dame from Paris is magically in Indiana?

Whacking off to silence

Did you hear? Microsoft just patented a method of silencing the phone. That's what companies do now, method patents. They stop making stuff and just patent stuff instead. Nothing to do with method acting. Except over-doing it makes other people think you're crazy.
So what did Microsoft patent? A way of silencing the phone by whacking it. Yes, you heard me right, by whacking it. Giving it the smack. The five finger salute. Well, I sincerely hope they mean by hitting it. I don't encourage violence towards inanimate technological devices but the alternative is ... well.. As long your whacking it .. you know what I mean.

Back to the patent. So this patent is not really a method patent. It's a patent about the mechanics of silencing the phone when it detects a sudden degree of physical force. Or the technical term, smacking. Apple ...er.. Microsoft patents the mechanism because it can't patent methods. We've been smacking things for ages. If it were ever brought to court, I imagine the judge will just simply interrupt the lawyer, tell them to approach and then smack them silent for wasting the court's time. 

But since you can patent process, the workaround is to re-describe that method as a process. The process has to have an aim. The aim of the process is to turn off the phone. So the process describes the phone being turned of by actions that suspiciously look like smacking.

Great now all those alarm clocks will have to re-design a new way to silence the alarm.

Apple refuses to tell customer the name of their new product

Did you know that naming something gives you power over it? It's true. Look it up on Wikipedia. It's actually the true name. A true name is a name that describes the true nature of it. In tech, that is usually the name of the product. Trust me on this.

Perhaps that is another reason why Microsoft names thing the way they do.
Perhaps also that is why Apple did not call the most recent version of the iPad as the iPad3. Apple is known for hand-holding their customers. They keep hiding details from their users. Making choices for them (by not giving them a choice). At this rate, Apple will soon refuse to tell customers the name of their product. It may give the users too much control over it.  They'll just refer to every new product as it.
Frankly, it's brilliant. There are so many up sides to this.
First, training sales staff will be so much easier. No need to hire someone with the ability to memorize more than one name. No need to remember pesky specifications. Why should they? It's all awesome and magical. "You want one. You don't even know what it is but we know you don't care and still want it."
Second, Apple doesn't have to worry about stocking all the stores with the latest products every time they make a new product announcement. It may confuse first-time customers enough to buy the older version. But technically they asked to buy it. It's still it and that is what they are selling.

The bullets are in the mail

First of all, my condolences to the family and victims of the Batman movie shooting in Colorado. I deeply sympathize with what they are going through.
But I have to say something about the killer. No, not alleged. We are definitely passed that. We passed that the moment the police had to send in the bomb squad to remove the booby traps in his apartment. What I can't get out of my head is that he got loads of ammunition over the Internet and had them mailed to him.
What a crazy world we live in when we can get bullets delivered to us. It used to be a thing that you could threaten someone by sending them a bullet in an envelope. This guy asked for them in the dozens.
And in the mail, for pete's sake. You can't even send liquids in the mail for fear they might leak. You can't even dab a bit of talcum powder to make that romantic birthday card smell sweeter without Homeland Security kicking down the door. And this guy got bullets send to him. Which is more dangerous or suspect? The so-called solutions looking for a problem?

Wearing Google Glasses in Paris can cause physical harm

I hate to say it but I told you so. Didn't I tell you some time ago that wearing Google glasses is going to bring physical harm. I said that people were going get physical with you if you wear Google glasses. Now someone has. And it's not even Google glasses. It's a digital eye glasses made by arguably the father of wearable computing. It's practically the same thing, made and worn by the father of wearable computing for goodness sake. Could there be a better test case?
The story is that he was accosted in a Parisian McDonalds... wait a minute... accosted by the French? Isn't that some sort of euphemism? With seedy undertones..
Well, there he was, eating with his family, wearing his digital eye glasses when some employees came up to him and his family. Words were exchanged, in French presumably. And they were booted out of the restaurant, apparently, rudely. So let me get this straight: The French selling American fast food kicked out a Canadian who had brought his family to Paris so that their kids can practice their French in France. Were the French that offended? Did they miss Minitel that much?
This can only mean one thing. This clearly proves that eating American fast food with all it's salt and questionable meats will only make the rude even rude-er.

For a more serious discussion on Google glasses and privacy click here.

Where all those stories about dragons came from.

The discovery site has a really nice picture of a lizard that bears a striking resemblance to the dragon.

I think this is the real dragon. Can you imagine the guy woke up to find this lizard on his face and screamed like a girl at the top of his lungs? Guess what he told his friends who came to his help? I bet you can.
There you go, the source of all those dragon stories.

I first found this on Amanda Blain's Google+ post.

How Microsoft creates it product names

There has to be a poster on the wall of the product development division of Microsoft that is from the 80s. It tells them how to come out with names for their products. It'll probably sound like like this:

1. Step One: Find a generic name that is related to the product.
2. Step Two: Capitalize the first letter
3. Step Three: Copyright the Name.

It's genius really. They don't have to think of names like iPod or Gmail. 

Think about it. Windows. Surface. Office. Word. Access. Media. Excel. Phone. Exchange. Put the work "Microsoft" in front of them and you have a real product name. Of course, there are limits. The wouldn't do it with someone's name, like Bob, would they?

Microsoft abandoning Nokia after driving it into the ground?

Apparently, Microsoft wasn't finished. Refer to previous post.
Now there is word that Microsoft is coming out with their own phones. Imagine that! The reason is that they wanted to come out with their own phone. Something that they can dictate what hardware would go in. Something that they have control over fully. Something that they couldn't have with Nokia.
Apparently, it wasn't enough that Nokia employed a former Microsoft executive as it's CEO. It wasn't enough that Nokia dropped it's in-house OS that had a larger market share outside the US than Windows Phone to make Windows Phone exclusively. That it wasn't enough that Nokia ignored the international market that it was more popular in to focus on selling Windows Phone in the US. Nokia was such a difficult partner still to work with.
What is the thanks that Nokia gets? It is laying off enough people to make a dent in the national unemployment index. MS-Layoff.
Tablet hardware vendors should consider themselves lucky.
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Now to counter the negative reports on Windows Phone 7, Microsoft has committed to a Windows Phone 7 update. Sincerely, I think there were more reports on the Windows Phone 8 announcement than Windows Phone users.
Anyway, Microsoft has launched MS-Promise for Window Phone 7.8. They announced that they will put in as much Windows Phone 8 features in Windows Phone 7 in an updated called version 7.8. Or at least it'll look like it enough to fool any of your friends who care. Talk about a low hanging fruit. I bet that they will do this as soon as they finish launching Windows 8, Windows 8RT and Windows Phone 8 in September. Windows Phone 7 user have nothing to worry about. Just ask Windows Mobile users.

Is there anybody MS isn't screwing

We've all heard about the big Microsoft Surface tablet announcement. Apparently, their hardware partners only heard it just before us. Nothing like hearing your supplier announce that they're competing with you next week to give you that feeling of... being screwed. Just after all those Windows tablet announcements at recent trade shows. Way to support your partners, Microsoft!
Some people justified this by saying that only Microsoft can compete with Apple. Why? Because each windows license would be 83 bucks or something. Microsoft believed none of their partners could compete with Apple's price given the cost of the hardware. This is good hardware. They can't use the stuff Android uses. So they feel that only they, Microsoft, can come out with a high quality tablet made from high quality components at a cost that can rival Apple sold at roughly the same price.
Hmm. I think I know another way you can do this. Bring down the price of the windows license! Give it away free for a year or something. You knew if that really wanted to, they could.

They followed the tablet announcement with the Windows 8 mobile details at a developers conference later. Basically, all of you Windows Phone 7 users are screwed. Your phones can't be upgraded when Windows 8 mobile come out in September. So basically, the phone you bought last month will be obsolete in 2 month's time. And what about the people selling the windows phone 7? All the phones is stock just went bad. Now nobody wants to buy a Windows phone 7. Everybody will wait for Windows phone 8. The phone dealers are all screwed.
At the conference they announced that VOIP is built-in and it doesn't have to be Skype. That will be popular with the phone carriers.
So MS just screwed their hardware partners, phone users and phone dealers. The carriers just don't realize how screwed they are selling windows phone. Is there nobody left?

Apparently doing Porn is a bigger deal than Murder

I didn't know what to make of this Yahoo story headline: "Paris police investigate porn star sighting claims." The fact that Paris police are interested in porn stars is startling. That they are concerned about them being sighted is another.
Apparently, this Canadian Porn Star is suspected of murder and is wanted by police. He obviously got out of the country using one of his many aliases.

Texting lane a self writing joke?

People who text while walking are so much of a nuisance that cities are considering marking lanes on the sidewalk for people who want to text while walking. This is true. Why? People who text while walking are more distracted, so they tend to walk slower. That way, they can have a place to walk slower while everyone else walks normally. And this is going to get worse as more people have smartphones. Now it's texting but people will just walk and use their phones to play games, read facebook and general not care about other people. 

I can see this not solving the problem totally. You see, while walking and texting in a lane will make it safer for them to do so without bumping into people walking the other way, it still won't stop you from bumping into the person in front of you. Until someone writes an app to track the guy in front of you via GPS and display a warning when he slows down. I will write an app that interrupts the use with the message LOOK UP every 5 seconds. How will this work? The message won't go away until you actually look up. The app knows because of the camera watching you. 

This will all lead to all sorts of shenanigans. People who hate the people who text while walking will just draw a fake texting lane leading to an open manhole. People will just walk and drop in like lemmings. Is that the way these lanes will solve the problem of people texting? By getting rid of them?

Why people are really mad about Google's new privacy policy

You've all heard it by now.
People are upset with Google. You can't blame Google. They were trying to do the right thing. Google announced changes in their privacy policy. Then they put it everywhere, telling people to read about it.
That's when people got upset. That's where they got it wrong.
You know why people were upset? Google tried to make them read. You don't make people read, especially important stuff. No wonder people were upset.
When was the last time someone tried to make you read stuff and liked it?