Best Buy sent me an e-mail telling me it had shipped Tuesday at 2 PM Ohio time--1 PM here--and so for it to arrive less than 24 hours later is outstanding fast.
So the new Toshiba DVD recorder (model D-R410) now sits atop the 25-year-old Toshiba CD player (model XR-40). I don't expect the DVD recorder to last any 25 years, but you never know. I certainly wouldn't have bet on the CD player lasting that long.
To test it, I've started dumping K-on! to DVD. Two eps in the can; taking a break to write this. (How I suffer for you. How can I ignore Mio, when she's so cute?)
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Okay, so let's talk about the new iPad:
WAIT NO THAT'S NOT IT although some Apple enthusiasts really do need that kind of thing....
Steven invites hate mail. Steven's always-correct dissection of Mac fails goes back a long, long way.
"Apple designed their own CPU...," he says. That right there is disconcerting for me.
Steven links to
Worst part? No multitasking:
This is a backbreaker. If this is supposed to be a replacement for netbooks, how can it possibly not have multitasking? Are you saying I can't listen to Pandora while writing a document? I can't have my Twitter app open at the same time as my browser? I can't have AIM open at the same time as my email? Are you kidding me? This alone guarantees that I will not buy this product.No multitasking? In 2010? Apple designed their own damn CPU and the thing can't multitask?
No flash support, either, and you can only get applications from Apple's app store.
Meanwhile, Steve Jobs is off in la-la land:
"We've wondered for years as well—in order to create that category, they have to be far better at doing some key tasks... better than the laptop, better than the smartphone," Jobs said. "Now, some people thought that was a netbook—the problem is that netbooks aren't better than anything!"Well, I'm pretty sure that a netbook which can do more than one thing at once is "better" than an overpriced tablet which can't.
They start at $500, and you have to pay $30 per month to get "wireless content".
Good idea, bad execution, Apple. Zero points and none of my money.
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I was wrong: the STFU speech was tonight, Wednesday, not last night, Tuesday. I don't care; just edit it if you ever re-read that entry.
Anyway, I'll comment on it tomorrow.
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But speaking of MC Sleepy:
Never Laugh at a Narcissist, opines Joy Liz.
Boss Tweek is in trouble with "Tri-state" voters. Not sure what that means. The lede says, "President In Deep Trouble With Middle Class; Many Think His Attempt To 'Reconnect' Shows Serious Desperation." That, I can believe.
And so he'll triangulate: he'll start talking rightward in an attempt to "reconnect" with the middle class--whom he, until now, has done his best to destroy.
Here's hoping that the middle class isn't as stupid as Obama thinks.
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Ann Coulter wonders, "Can't we at least get a toaster?" She's discussing Obama's anti-bank rhetoric, and says, "If Obama plans to hold Wall Street accountable for its own bad decisions, it will be a first for the Democrats."
True.
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Girl didn't want swine flu vaccine, got it anyway; parents not notified. This is how the school system wants to operate: they get to make all kinds of parenting decisions for you, regardless of what you want for your children.
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Man sues bill collectors. Well, WTF, I suppose a man's got to have a hobby.
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So apparently the guy who wrote The History of the World According To Karl Marx
...no, wait, that's not the title. Sorry, got right here... ah: A People's History of the United States, that's the alleged "history" book. Yeah. Well, the guy who wrote it is now hobnobbing with Marx and Lenin and Stalin IN HELL!!!.
"Howard Zinn was fool and a hypocrite, and yet another armchair communist preaching the evils of capitalism and democracy while living fat off both," says Dennis.
It's not the editorial policy of the Fungus to exult in peoples' deaths, even when they're communists, but at least it's one less marxist pseudo-intellectual we have to worry about.
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ET touches on something here which I've thought about in the past, myself. Consider that the Empire is, in fact, the legitimate government of the galaxy--okay, yeah, Palpatine perpetrated this huge Byzantine scheme to get the Senate to vote him into power, but he did get the vote. Sure, the leadership of the Empire is full of bad guys. Sure, it's tyranny.
If you believe in moral relavatism, then technically, Luke and Han and Chewbacca are all the bad guys because they're rebelling against the legitimately appointed head of government.
The average citizen of the Empire is not going to see all the evil stuff being perpetrated by the Emperor and Darth Vader. In fact--unless he happened to live on Alderaan--all he's going to see is what the Emperor wants him to see, and you can bet that the evening news wouldn't contain any news about Emperor Palpatine that could make people dislike him. He'd continue to be popular.
Rather than celebrate his fall and tear down his statues on Coruscant, the people would be in mourning. Someone would fill the void pretty quickly, and his ascension to the throne would come in part from his vow to the people to "crush--once and for all--the rebellion that killed Emperor Palpatine!"
This fulfills my quarterly geek obligation to bloviate about Star Wars. Can I have my union card back now?
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This contains pictures which are NSFW. Just so you know. Whenever I link to a Zombietime page, I have to issue that warning, because the communists don't have any respect for propriety.
I'll quote what he wrote about his first picture, nasty words X'ed out:
This sign kind of summed up with perfect concision the two-pronged pro-choice strategy for the day. The “text,” to get all postmodern, is to focus on women’s ownership of their own bodies and their individual rights of self-determination. The “subtext” is to intentionally destroy any sense of propriety in the proceedings, to use vulgarity and sexuality to rob the other side of its innocence and somehow in the process thereby drag the pro-lifers into the gutter where prim virginity is no longer a source of power but rather something to be mocked.Yeah, that's pretty...interesting...artwork, there.
The fatal flaw in this horribly ill-conceived two-pronged strategy is that that subtext totally undermines the text, and vice versa, so that the argument ends up canceling itself out. Any legitimacy your point of view might have had instantly evaporates when you start yelling “Xxxx xxxx xxxx!” in your opponent’s face. You can try to win by having a rational debate; alternately, you can try to win by punching below the belt; but if you try to do both simultaneously, you are sure to lose.
(And no, don’t ask me what’s going on in the crotch region of that sign — I couldn’t figure it out either.)
Typical liberal debate: "Christian fascists go away, abortion rights are here to stay! Right-wing bigots go away, abortion rights are here to stay!"
Then he slams another farcical debate method:
This woman on the pro-choice side had what I judged to be the most idiotic sign at the entire rally. Her accusation, I assume, was that one-third of pro-life women had in fact themselves had abortions, and so were all hypocrites and thus had lost the moral high ground. But her argument gets tripped up on its very first assumption: Perhaps, “statistically speaking,” one-third of American women overall will have an abortion at some point in their lives; but by definition that one third of women will almost all be in the pro-choice camp, otherwise they wouldn’t have chosen to have abortions in the first place.That is exactly so.
This form of “logic” is very commonplace on the left; it is almost universally assumed that anyone who takes a moral stance against anything is him- or herself the most extreme practitioner of the very thing being condemned, and thereby a hypocrite of the worst kind. Thus, all politicians who vote against gay rights bills are themselves assumed to be closeted gays; preachers who praise monogamy are inevitably having affairs; law-and-order advocates are secret criminals; and women against abortion must necessarily have aborted their own babies. Presumption of hypocrisy is the default setting for the Left, and that presumption prevails even in the total absence of any evidence. Or, in this case, the most ludicrous of statistical fallacies.
Without the presumption that conservatives are hypocrites, the moral basis for many leftist tenets crumbles. Because if someone who actually is virtuous advocates a virtuous path, it’s impossible to criticize their position. Only by pointing out the messenger’s possible [NOT PROVEN-ed] flaws can the message be rejected or mocked.
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On to motorized stupidity:
I am guessing that the car in the image is a sign, not an actual usable vehicle. They are using it as a way to show off what their shop can do.
If you look at the monstrosity's front wheels you see that there is no way they can actually pivot, thus allowing one to steer the car. Also, if you hit one little bump while driving that thing, you're going to be taking the car back for body work when the wheels hit the fenders.
Assuming, of course, that the thing doesn't have an air bag suspension. It could be sitting on the bump stops to make entry easier--but WTF, you're going to need a stepladder to get into and out of that hunk of crap anyway, so why bother with airbags?
Oh, wait--there's no drive shaft. That makes it "incredibly stupid stationary sign" rather than "incredibly stupid car".
More:
This is why big rims on otherwise unmodified cars are stupid. Drag racing on 20-inch wheels--what did the moron expect? At least the highest stresses come from launch; if that thing had broken halfway down the track, that guy would've been buying a new car instead of just replacing an axle.
...there is a way to prevent this kind of thing; you use a C-clip eliminator kit on the rear axle. The way most rear axles are made, C-clips hold the axle in the housing. If the axle breaks, it can come out just the way that one does. A c-clip eliminator kit sets the axle up such that even if the axle breaks, the outer bearing acts as a retainer for the broken axle.
Most of the time it's not necessary, but it is for racing. As you can see.
Moron.
Big expensive stupid failure. Some guys want to show off how great their customized truck is...so they break it.
How? By attempting to jump a short berm, maybe two feet, that my freaking stock Jeep could handle...and I'd wager that the modifications to that Chevy cost twice as much as my Jeep did.
Er...no. Try seventy times as much! "The entire build totaled $350,000."
The coil-over shocks blew right off the axles on both ends. Watch the slo-mo and you see the thing broke on the side that hit ground first, the right side.
They spent $350,000 on this hunk of junk and they couldn't afford a handful of grade 10 bolts and some extra 1/4" plate for boxing the mounts? The shocks look okay, including the eyes on the ends; clearly the bolts holding them on are what snapped.
They spent "15 weeks" on this shit, and no one thought about how strong their suspension would be?
I suppose if you're just building a vehicle for the show circuit you don't have to consider what will happen if you hit a bump, but you shouldn't let your monstrosity's tough appearance fool you into thinking it can actually handle going off-road.
Jesus.
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I like this, but I can't embed it:
"DO NOT TOUCH: Not only will this kill you, it will hurt the whole time you're dying." LOL.