This little ditty –by NYT tech writer David Pogue (and friends)– was posted sometime earlier today and (as I type this) has been viewed 3,772 times. I found it on the digg home page so we can assume it will be seen many more times.
I have to wonder if anyone has felt moved to this kind of hijinx by any previous cell phone? Maybe. I just missed it.
I downloaded the YouTube update to AppleTV last night and watched some videos on the big (bigger) screen. Stupid videos are still stupid. Shitty quality videos still look shitty. And the good ones look pretty darned good. Watching “Internet video” on the big screen in the living room takes a little getting used to.
I had the sense that I was getting a peek at the future. Thousands of videos, downloaded from the Internet to my little AppleTV box. No idea what the business model will look like but this is disruptive technology. If I was the guy responsible for “scheduling” programs on a “TV network,” I’d be nervous.
You’ll find a real review at engadget.
According to a new Harris Interactive study, more people say the Web will be their primary news source than network news or cable news. While today 25% of respondents in the U.S. say they rely on network TV news, the Web comes in at number 2 with 18%. But when asked what source they will turn to in the future, those numbers flip and the Web moves ahead of network TV news by 4%. [Lost Remote]
Last week I stumbled across an interesting (and lengthy) 2006 Rolling Stone article by Janet Reitman (“Inside Scientology”) that takes a peek behind the curtain of “America’s most mysterious religion.”
I’m not sure how someone could read this and not be convinced L. Ron Hubbard (the guy that came up with Scientology) was a wacko con man. Try to imagine convincing a new convert of the following:
“…75 million years ago, an evil galactic warlord named Xenu controlled seventy-six planets in this corner of the galaxy, each of which was severely overpopulated. To solve this problem, Xenu rounded up 13.5 trillion beings and then flew them to Earth, where they were dumped into volcanoes around the globe and vaporized with bombs. This scattered their radioactive souls, or thetans, until they were caught in electronic traps set up around the atmosphere and “implanted” with a number of false ideas — including the concepts of God, Christ and organized religion. Scientologists later learn that many of these entities attached themselves to human beings, where they remain to this day, creating not just the root of all of our emotional and physical problems but the root of all problems of the modern world.”
Let me say once again, this sounds like a load of horse shit. But why am I more skeptical of these “teachings” than the miracles of the Christian faith? The Bible is the literal Word of God and Dianetics is science fiction? That works for a lot of people.
Not sure where this post came from, maybe all the killing and dying in the name of religion.
Speaking of Holy Wars, maybe we should send the members of our most fanatical faiths (Scientologists, The Jonestown Brigade, The 101st Branch Davidians, etc) to mix it up with the extremists of other religions. If the other team is playing 12 year old suicide bombers… we send in some grandmothers willing to drink poison Cool-Aide. Let’s out-crazy them.
The Personal Democracy Forum lists six requirements for the first "tech president": [via Buzz Machine]
(George, this is the perfect follow-up post to our three hour chat this morning.) For those of you that weren’t there, this morning’s topic was: "True or False: Sometimes We Are Better Off Not Knowing."