E-Dribble

Saw this on dribbleglass today and it made me smile.

Now’s your chance, guys.  Come up with a good question to ask Steve Ballmer and he will take the time to answer it!

I could post some, but I’d rather hear yours.  What would you ask our good friend, Steve?

Say what you want about his curriculum and tactics, but when this man is done teaching you firearm safety, you completely understand the inherent risk of handling them. The only downside I can see to his method is that it prohibits any question and answer sessions at the end.

Darwin works in mysterious, but incredibly effective ways.

Another week in the news and while Microsoft continues pushing their next big OS and Mac releases another commercial making fun of Windows, the open source community deliberates on why there’s so much sexism in the FOSS world. It’s not the first time that the question has been raised in the community.

While I wait for the people that develop my OS to put on their big-boy pants and join the adult world, I have time to wonder how we got the reputation that we did.  I mean, let’s be honest with ourselves.  In spite of the fact that inarguably *nix is a better foundation upon which to build an OS, a very small percentage of the technical community takes the movement seriously.  I have my own suspicions but to be honest, I’m cynical, jaded and very often wrong.  I try to at least challenge my preconceptions and prejudices, so I won’t waste anyone’s time putting them to paper.  Instead of my canned rhetoric, I’m hoping for some enlightenment.

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Charging users that embed Youtube videos with music in it although they’re already charging Youtube for the same videos? No sweat.  Have the gall to consider a cellular phone ringtone a public performance?  These guys do.

Man, it seems like these guys have hit the bottom of the barrel.

Hehe, just kidding. Now they want to get paid for the 30 second previews used to sell their music.

Although the purchasing public continue to fund them, the recording industry doesn’t let appreciation get in the way of suing the very same people that line their pockets.  This though, surprised even me and I’m not shocked by much that they do.  Charging people to listen to a thirty second clip so you can sell them an overpriced album?

Fantastic!

The Smashing Pumpkins have decided to release their next effort free of charge, with a limited edition set you can buy, if you’d rather.  I think it’s pretty fantastic, but I’m going to be honest, the approach is a little confusing.

Beginning around Halloween, they’re going to release 44 songs, again all will be available for free.  For those that wish to support the band, they will package them in 4 song EP’s, totalling(if my math can be trusted) 11 albums you can buy.

I really hope they consider a boxed set, as Paypal is likely to freeze my account for suspicious behavior if they make me buy each EP separately.

I totally support them and don’t want to be the one to cast derision towards any group that steps away from abusing their fans but I have to admit that I’m more than intrigued to see how they decide to market a 44 song release spanning months.  It’s what I would consider at the very least an eclectic method of music marketing.

I swear to God, this guy drives me batshit.  As  much as I try to consider myself a linux defender, I realize that I just can’t allow myself to be viewed as an ally to this asshatedry.

Mr. Vaughn-Nichols writes a lot of articles that chap my ass. I get it.  Microsoft is Evil and we must stamp out the fire of proprietary restrictions.  Okay, okay.  You don’t get a virus.  Got it.  You don’t have to pay for an OS upgrade, roger that.  This latest attempt to bring to light the evil that resides in Redmond is by letting us know how much it will cost to turn an XP computer to a computer running 7.  His estimated cost? $42,961.  Not including retraining the world to use the new Start button.

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We all have moments where we see the young whippersnappers taking the easy way out and without fail, we all eventually have a moment of weakness where we lash out, regaling them with stories of how we used to do things.

The cop in this article will use this experience to tell all those younguns how they used to have to use pepper spray to subdue a 61 year old woman for driving a car with tint that was too dark because they didn’t have tazers in the old days.

That’s some fine police work there, Lou.

If there was any part of your being, no matter how small, that thought the techs at BestBuy had any knowledge concerning computers, this should snuff that out.

Microsoft partnered with BestBuy to create a tutorial/exam designed to show the techs why Microsoft Windows 7 was a superior choice to linux.

I shit you not when I say that it’s a fantastic read.  The original post lost it’s images, but I’ve linked to a mirror, so hopefully you will get to witness exam in all it’s bullshit.

Opera 10 has been released to great fanfare and many news outlets are taking the time to let us know how great it is.  Cnet wants us to know about the great game widgets you can install on it.

There’s still no easy way to block ads.  But you can now play basketball with it.

Opera has stated that it won’t implement an ad blocking measure into the browser for altruistic reasons.  They don’t feel that they  have the right to strip content providers of income.

In reality, it wasn’t too long ago that Opera was forcing you to look at ads that they embedded in their own browser if you opted not to pay for a web browser.

So, it’s simple.  They feel a kinship to people serving ads.

For those that missed it though, you can now play basketball in Opera.

Just what we needed.