News

Apple’s Ping Sows the Seeds of Facebook’s Demise

Facebook is the cool site to hate these days, because while you just know they are going to come up with yet another appalling way to violate your privacy, you keep going back, because, well, all your friends are already there. It’s like a giant party that no one is having very much fun at, but no one wants to leave because there ain’t nothing going on anywhere else. Of course, you could have said the same thing about MySpace back in 2006, and Friendster before that. The conventional wisdom says that eventually something will come along to topple Facebook from its perch at the top of the social networking world. (More after the jump!) Read more…

Been away for a while

My host (Hi Andy!) was changing ISPs, and I knew I was going to have to change my DNS information, but I never got around to doing so, so the blog has been offline for a while. Sorry about that. We’re back after 59 days of downtime (according to Google), absolutely none of which was due to the hosting provider. I suppose if I’m going to be a blogger, I should keep my DNS entries up to date.

The Boom and Bust Cycle

Sometimes, especially if you’re a long-dead economist, you have to climb down from your ivory tower and speak to the youth of today in a language that they can understand. In this music video, two giants of economics break down their differing views on how to fix what ails us when it comes to boom and bust.

Stay Classy, Lincoln County!

From the “only in North Carolina” file, 30-year-old Richard Peterson had a meeting with his probation officer, but he didn’t show up. Instead, his probation officer turned on the TV, and was stunned to see his missing charge bragging about a one night stand with a stripper on “The Jerry Springer Show”. Peterson’s stunt earned him three days in jail, and presumably, a spot in the dumb criminals Hall of Fame. WRAL News has more information, courtesy of The Gaston Gazette.

Mike Celizic: CBS Wrong With Tebow Ad

Mike Celizic of NBCSports.com has an interesting post on CBS’s decision to accept anti-abortion advertising from conservative evangelical group Focus On The Family featuring University of Florida football star Tim Tebow. He’s dead on when he says that the only reason CBS is taking this ad is that the market is soft for advertising in general and for 30-second spots that cost two and a half million dollars in particular. Unfortunately, there’s really no downside for CBS – who’s not going to watch the Super Bowl because of one commercial? Still, I wish the Good Without God folks or the Atheist Bus Campaign could afford to pay for a rejoinder ad. Actually, what I really wish is that CBS could keep political and religious advertising off the air during an event that has nothing to do with either.

General Motors Does A Bad Cleavon Little Impression

Next week, the automakers are supposed to return to Washington, DC (presumably NOT by private jet) to testify to Congress about the details of their restructuring plans as required by the bailout bill passed last December. Details of General Motors’ plan have begun to leak out, and it appears that Rick Wagoner has decided to seek inspiration from Cleavon Little’s portrayal of Sheriff Bart in Mel Brooks’s 1974 cult classic Blazing Saddles:

[the Johnsons load their guns and point them at Bart. Bart then points his own pistol at his head]
Bart: [low voice] Hold it! Next man makes a move, the nigger gets it!
Olson Johnson: Hold it, men. He’s not bluffing.
Dr. Sam Johnson: Listen to him, men. He’s just crazy enough to do it!
Bart: [low voice] Drop it! Or I swear I’ll blow this nigger’s head all over this town!
Bart: [high-pitched voice] Oh, lo’dy, lo’d, he’s desp’it! Do what he sayyyy, do what he sayyyy!
[Townspeople drop their guns. Bart jams the gun into his neck and drags himself through the crowd towards the station]
Harriet Johnson: Isn’t anybody going to help that poor man?
Dr. Sam Johnson: Hush, Harriet! That’s a sure way to get him killed!
Bart: [high-pitched voice] Oooh! He’p me, he’p me! Somebody he’p me! He’p me! He’p me! He’p me!
Bart: [low voice] Shut up!
[Bart places his hand over his own mouth, then drags himself through the door into his office]
Bart: Ooh, baby, you are so talented!
[looks into the camera]
Bart: And they are so *dumb*!

GM’s “restructuring plan” comes down to this: Give us more money, or we’ll declare bankruptcy. The gamble, of course, is that Congress will back down and turn on the money spigots without GM having to undergo any sort of serious reorganization. But GM may have underestimated the patience of the American people, and the willingness of Congress to be held hostage to companies that think of themselves as “too big to fail”. What worked for Sheriff Bart just might not work for Rick Wagoner.

h/t to TPM and Marketwatch.

Blackwater Changes Its Name to “Xe”

In what can only be described as the first step towards ultimately changing their name to an unpronounceable symbol, notorious private security firm Blackwater USA announced they are changing their name to “Xe”, which is of course, pronounced the same as the letter “Z”. Unless you’re Canadian, in which case it isn’t. Why the name change? To protest their contract with Warner Brothers, of course. To escape the stench of getting kicked out of the country of Iraq and being fired by the State Department, of course. Xe will focus on providing training facilities, where trainees will presumably learn the same sort of target discrimination skills practiced so aptly by the Blackwater guards who were charged with manslaughter for gunning down 17 Iraqi civilians in a 2007 firefight in Baghdad.

h/t to TPM.

Siftables – Blocks With A Brain

I subscribe to a podcast of talks from TED, an annual tech conference that attracts some of the best and brightest from across the world to come and talk about the interesting things that they’re doing. This presentation from David Merrill of the MIT Media Lab demos a new product concept called Siftables that stands poised to change the way people think about interacting with computers. Here’s the talk:

If you’re wondering when you’ll be able to buy these, watch this space.

Blackwater Ordered Out Of Iraq

The Iraqi Government revoked the operating license of security firm Blackwater Worldwide, and as a result, the company’s personnel are being ordered out of the country. Blackwater provides private security contracting services for the US State Department and other US government agencies, and has come under fire because its employees have been accused of being somewhat trigger happy. Blackwater founder Erik Prince told Mike Baker of the Associated Press, “Our abrupt departure would far more hurt the reconstruction team and the diplomats trying to rebuild the country than it would hurt us as a business,” while Iraqi Interior Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf told the AP, “They have to find a new security company.”

Which brings to mind a question. Whatever happened to the security company the State Department used to use? You know the one.

Saddlebacking: A New Word Enters The Lexicon

FAIR WARNING: If you’re easily offended, you should probably skip this post. If you aren’t, then take the jump.
Read more…