And to think I paid $2 to a former Radio London DJ for a one of the first ever copies of Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in near-mint condition ever pressed. You know, you can get any number of copies of Beatles records at yard sales and thrift shops for pennies, it's vastly more fun and rewarding to play and it will be a format that will be relevant and catered to for many generations to come.

Go buy yourselves a nice Rega deck and enjoy the music.

Well I, for one, have been under the impression that Apple Computer were an offshoot of Apple Records ever since Apple Computer started adding sound capabilities to their products.

Sosueme (donk!)

Most of the airport security personnel I saw in my travels recently were, in fact, trying their best to keep things moving and were quite polite. I actually think that the agents hired since 9/11 have matured overall and have a body of experience behind them which makes them more efficient and professional. Not to say they're perfect, but they have got a lot better.

My take on the agencies hiring these agents is that they really aren't playing a power game as such, but they certainly are going about security in a very wrong way. The goals of a terrorist are twofold: Gain publicity for the cause and terrorize the populace. The security techniques enforced by the TSA are basically doing the work for the terrorists.

I laughed uncontrollably.

Then I vomited.

Then I laughed uncontrollably.

You forget the mini-scandal of the 1990's, very conveniently happening around the time the Internet started opening up for the common man (and uncommon woman), in which Sony produced a line of video cameras with night vision which rendered certain types of material transparent under certain lighting conditions. Sony corrected the bug in later models, but the originals were going for good money apparently.

There were some quite fun images of young ladies cavorting on the beach to be had at the time, and *not one* had a bomb secreted in any orifices.

Or perhaps we should start an alternative to Facebook called "Assbook" in which people sign up to specifically express hatred and lack of desire to associate with others. Now instead of individuals posting updates which read "Just had the best bowel movement of my life" you'll see "@fredjones: I fucking hate your goddam bowel movements!"

And Mafia Wars: Way more realistic.

I have always believed that Nixon's opening of trade with China was a massive mistake. We basically turned a communist nation, theoretically a non-belligerent enemy, into a superpower. We handed sensitive technology to a communist country which has never stated that it won't engage in hostilities with the United States. Indeed, they have recently been developing some advanced military technologies which are frankly disturbing, and I can't help but think that they got a leg up in this by the uncontrolled flow of technology to factories in China.

In the short term manufacturing goods in that part of the world has allowed the common man (and the uncommon woman) to afford nice, shiny things which would have been completely unthinkable to previous generations, but we're now seeing the downside to this dance with the devil.

Hey, I'm lovin' it - I just got a patent on the wheel. Anybody got the number for General Motors corporate office?

As soon as Lotus won't run ;-)

(Yes it's still out there, marketed under the Smartsuite label from IBM)

Same here, and it runs quite nicely, albeit a bit slow. But it's fun to play with.

Also note that Windows 7's current user interface resembles the bastard child of both Gnome and Finder ;-)

Mmmmmm... iPhones

Having joined I now wish I hadn't. My attitude is that if you've got something earth-shaking to tell me, you know where to find me, either on email or via telephone.

The problem with Facebook, Twitter et al is that its too easy to post pointless banality, mostly because the most banal of people tend to have their Facebook open at all times, within easy reach of their electronic rodents. Adding some level of extra effort to the process of conveying life's little stupidities acts as an effective filter for the less important things.

Cheers

I have to agree on the general assessment of iTunes - it's as bloated as a whale that's been beached for a month in the middle of summer.

My problem with the Finder is that it's interface paradigm, with a single menu bar at the top of the screen, is hopelessly outdated and inefficient. I feel like I'm using an OS from the early 90's.

Otherwise, I will say that it runs it's native software beautifully. I have a first generation Intel Mac Mini which only accepts 2GB of RAM, and it runs as a media server and player for my projector without complaints or hesitation, often playing hi-rez media files that my quad-core, 8GB Windows 7 64-bit machine hiccups with. And I've used it occasionally for audio production, with similar results.

So all they really have to do is ditch their user interface and they've got a winner in my opinion ;-)

Yep, combine OS/2 with the PS/2 architecture, which was essentially plug-n-play as we know it today, and you had an awesome system. Unfortunately IBM had so much internal strife at the time combined with pure greed that it never really had a chance.