Idiot Crisis

More significantly revealing photos here.

This is straight-up awesome: A cardboard upright bass!

(h/t to J-Walk)

Ubuntu Linux’s bug database contains an extremely high-priority bug which affects most operating systems.

Summary: Microsoft has a majority market share.

Description: Microsoft has a majority market share in the new desktop PC marketplace. This is a bug, which Ubuntu is designed to fix.

Microsoft has a majority market share | Non-free software is holding back innovation in the IT industry, restricting access to IT to a small part of the world’s population and limiting the ability of software developers to reach their full potential, globally. This bug is widely evident in the PC industry.

(more)

From Discourse.net:

I have rarely seen a more transparently biased lede than one that appears on Rumsfeld reaches out to Democrats by ANNE PLUMMER FLAHERTY.

She writes “Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld reached out to Democrats late Friday, opening up the door for them to retract their stinging indictment of him as Pentagon chief.”

The clear sense of this opening is that Rumsfeld has performed a gracious action, kindly allowing the Democrats to return to the path reason, away from some horrid corner they have painted themselves into. It fails utterly to reflect the reality that the Democrats (and indeed, the majority of the American people) were compared to appeasers of Hitler, and more or less accused of treason. And it leaves out the key fact that Democrats are organizing to pass a motion of censure against Rumsfeld.

Contrary to this biased lede, it is Rumsfeld who has painted himself and his country into a corner. And the Democrats have neither need nor desire to retract their indictment of him — nor their motion to censure him.

It’s so discouraging that so many journalists apparently don’t give a shit about actual journalism.

Microsoft Expo’s project leader, Garry Wiseman, wrote a blog post earlier today criticizing Sina, one of China’s largest search engines, saying “Sina.com steals our design and graphics”.

The post highlights the similar look and feel of Sina’s new classifieds site to a previous release of Expo, including the identical color scheme and a pushpin image that appears to have been flat out stolen
(Full story here)

Isn’t this uh, a bit ironic?

Rumors have been swirling for weeks … that Apple will soon be selling full length movie downloads on the iTunes service. This morning, Business Week is stating, based on unnamed sources, that the service will launch by mid-September.

And adding color to the story: WalMart is pissed off.

(full story here)

Of course Wal-Mart is pissed off… they’re going to lose tons of money on their overpriced DVD sales. This will also hurt all retailers and will benefit consumers. Obviously, Apple’s going to score big on this one.

Donald Rumsfeld is briefing President Bush: “Yesterday, 3 Brazilian soldiers were killed.”
“Oh no!” exclaims the President, “that’s terrible!”
His staff is stunned at this unprecedented display of emotion, watching as Bush sits, head in hands.
Finally, he looks up and asks, “How many is a brazillion?”

According to the Federal Reserve Bank, $1 spent on excellent preschool education saves $7 in special education, social service and future incarceraton costs more than a dozen years later. Are we, as citizens, willing to elect government leaders who spent our taxes on something that offers a return so far in the future? I hope so.

–Rob Waldron
President and CEO of Jumpstart, a national nonprofit early education organization.

I wish there were more people like this guy.

Radio Shack is now on the list of stores to avoid on principle.

RadioShack uses e-mail to fire 400 employees as part of planned job cuts

FORT WORTH, Texas — RadioShack Corp. notified about 400 workers by e-mail that they were being dismissed immediately as part of planned job cuts.

Employees at the Fort Worth headquarters got messages Tuesday morning saying: “The work force reduction notification is currently in progress. Unfortunately your position is one that has been eliminated.”

…

Derrick D’Souza, a management professor at the University of North Texas, said he had never heard of such a large number of terminated employees being notified electronically. He said it could be seen as dehumanizing to employees.

“If I put myself in their shoes, I’d say, ‘Didn’t they have a few minutes to tell me?’” D’Souza said.

And the stock market said “woo hoo! Fuck ethics/civility or treating human beings like uh, human beings! Show us more money! We love money!”

Shares of RadioShack rose 29 cents, or 1.6 percent, to close at $18.21 Wednesday on the New York Stock Exchange.

I’ve been a bit slow reading Getting Things Done and implementing the process contained within, however “slow” is better than “going nowhere.”

Midnight Inbox is an application released by Midnight Beep and is available for Mac OSX. Since I’m a Mac fan and love to haul my uber-lightweight and uber-useful 12″ PowerBook G4 (I’m using it now, actually), I’ve decided to download it and give it a spin.

If you’re interested in David Allen’s “Getting Things Done” (GTD) and are a Mac user… well, you should download and check it out yourself!