2009’s Predictions
* Announcement of Successor to Xbox 360 (not release, ANNOUNCEMENT) [Project Natal? - FAIL]
* Windows 7 is released. People will be excited, but there won’t be much different from Vista [Sort of Fail - But We are all winners here]
* Next Generation of Amazon Kindle [Yes, plus Kindle DX]
* iPhone Forks: 32GB 3G (agreed), Low-end iphone “nano” (we disagree) [3G and 3GS. No nano though - Fail!]
* iTunes offers a majority DRM Free (or at least expands it) [Yes!]
* Facebook “jumps the shark” [Fail!]
* Yahoo will finally be bought by someone [Fail!]
* WoW will reach 13M users and get around to announcing the next expansion, but they won’t release the expansion in 2009 [Expansion announced - Not at 13M, half and half]
* 64 bit processors will outsell 32 bit and 64 bit OS will struggle for ascendancy (but, based on the current state, might not make it) [Don't know about sales, but acendency is there. Call it 50%]
* Web 2.0 goes mainstream. Example: Check out this post about Brightkite vs Twitter [Sure]

Lame News
Pat -Bill Gates joins Twitter!
Craig -“Avatar” pulled from 2-D Screens by Chinese Government due to its provocative anti-authoritarian message. Movie is allowed to stay on 900 3D screens.
Laurie – 3 Condoms makes you a prostitute
Mike – Vice Principal Calls in Cavalry Over Science Project

Casu – Marzu Cheese – From Wikipedia

Casu marzu (also called casu modde, casu cundhídu, or in Italian formaggio marcio) is a traditional Sardinian sheep milk cheese, notable for being riddled with live insect larvae. It is found mainly in Sardinia, Italy. Casu marzu literally means “rotten cheese” in Sardinian, and the cheese is known colloquially as maggot cheese.

Are You a Blue-Collar or White-Collar Developer?

Craig – I have met some people with a classical CS background, and they have no sense of reality, i.e. getting a job done. However, I’ve found that people w/o schooling tend to miss a lot of the finer points of things like OO development, advanced language features and so forth. I have found that a good mix of the theorists and practicians can make a good team.

People with out the theory tend to brute-force things more, as well as stick with the old reliable (which may be the right choice). Sometimes the theoreticians are too… theoretical!

Pat – My engineering degree makes me white-collar, but my experience leads me to believe there’s at most a moderate correlation between education and development ability. Many great programmers I work with are blue-collar. Lots of white-collars I’ve known have great ideas, but can get caught up in “code religion” and don’t produce great code beyond prototypes. The ones who really grasp fine details and architecture tend to come more from white-collar backgrounds, but not always. One of the absolute best architects I’ve ever known has no degree, and often teaches me a thing or two. I wonder if the degree is as much an indicator of personality as a cause of theoretical quality.

If architects had to work like web designers…

Lame News

Mike – Canadian Health Insurer Pulls Coverage Based on Facebook Pictures.

Pat -Adoptee finds out his dad is… Charles Manson.

Craig – “Police Arrest Exec for not Using Twitter”
A big crowd was turning out to see Canadian teen sensation Justin Bieber and police “were concerned that the crowd might break the glass in store windows with its shrieking.” They asked a senior VP to tweet to get the crowd to disperse. He did not comply and was arrested.

Gravity?
A theory of quantum gravity may have been disproved by a recently-observed exploding star. This is cool, because it means that there may be a single Grand Unified Theory that links electromagnetism, strong and weak nuclear forces, and gravity into one set of science.

Lame News
Craig-Asteroid 2009VA came within 2 earth radii on 11/6. Nasa only noticed it 15 hours prior. Scary because they’re noticing them so late in the game. This was a 7 meter asteroid, which would have wiped out all orphans on the planet.
Pat- Massachusetts high school bans the word Meep!
Mike- Researchers create artificial penises for rabbits! Said rabbits then proceeded to mate like themselves.

Windows 7
Craig-
* Likes: Shake to minimize, swoosh up on the taskbar, speed, compatibility, upgrade process, New Windows Media Player,
Window Snap, New Paint, calc and wordpad, throw to other monitor
* Dislikes: Sidebar everywhere, need a hack to get quicklaunch back,

Pat-
* Likes: Aero Peek, Taskbar (beats OS X Dock), new shortcuts (win-left and win-right), unintrusive UAC, Windows Live Essentials
* Dislikes: Sidebar (it’s not you, it’s my non-widescreen monitor)

Mike-
* Likes: Aero Peek, New Taskbar, Show Desktop corner button, UAC refinement
* Dislikes: Control panel still not fully refined, core applications (Paint, Notepad) still poor in quality
* Confused by: Only two power plan options on the tray icon?

Rudi-
* Likes: Speed. Libraries. SysTray enhancements. Bubbles! Free addons to further enhance the UI
o Problem Recorder
o Snipping tool!
o Sticky Notes
* Dislikes: IE6

Freeware install tool : http://ninite.com/ lets you install lots of common utilities with a single click.

Funny aside: Verizon is assaulting iPhone, Island of Misfit Toys spoof

Lame News
Craig- A bird dropped a piece of bread on to the LHC’s outdoor mechanism. The bread caused a short circuit when it fell and would have caused the LHC to go into shutdown mode. Oh mon dieu! Le oiseau a baisse’ le pain sur l’LHC!
Pat- Nobody wants to be president of Bank of America.
Mike- nVidia takes potshots at Intel with political cartoons.
Rudi- Cops: Man who took champagne nabbed for 63rd time.

We started by making up stories about what we’d give away, but here’s a hint. If we’re at home giving stuff out, it’ll be whatever candy was closest to the checkout.

We check out some techie costumes!

Scariest News of the Week

Craig
Canned Pumpkin Shortage due to a wet growing season…. Where will we get our Jack o’ Lanterns? (If Craig makes Jack o’ Lanterns out of canned pumpkin and not whole pumpkins, the rest of us would like to not see them please.)

Pat
New version of Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) could eat files if you so much as accidentally logged in to Guest account. SPOOKY!

Laurie
Researchers say that this photo at Jim Morrison’s grave showing his ghost is the deal deal.

Mike
Intel pulls new faster firmware after it starts corrupting users’ SSDs running Windows 7.

Stargate Universe

Impressions, predictions… Reminds us of tons of shows and movies: Last Starfighter, BSG, Lost in Space, Voyager… What’s with the steam when the gate shuts off? Signed on for 30 episodes.

And because Mike promised it, here’s a link to Robot Chicken Star Wars!

Say What?

Apple made lots of money. Worst economy in decades, and we’re ALL buying iPhones. Except Pat and Laurie. And Craig. Their stock is at a record high now. Apple, not Pat and Laurie and Craig. And they announced the multi-touch Magic Mouse, which is basically a mouse with a touchpad in it!

Google Wave

What’s it like?

Lame News

Mike:
Craig recently realized that “baa baa black sheep”, “twinkle twinkle little star” and the alphabet song are all the same!!!

Laurie:
Archeologists unearthed a small round amphitheatre similar to the Colosseum in Portis, Italy. Around the 2:11 mark of this video they show off a Roman poo they found in the toilet. Magister Hankius the Saturnalia Poo!

Rudi:
A Gwinnett County man who drove into a sinkhole created by last month’s deluge of rain was arrested Friday for tampering with evidence.

Ira Strong told Gwinnett County Police on Sept. 21 that he believed West Liddell Road in Duluth was open because traffic barriers blocking the street had been pushed aside. But according to a witness, it was Strong who moved the barrels after he drove his car into the 6-foot deep hole.

Pat:
Marge Simpson is on the cover of Playboy. First cartoon ever… why wasn’t it Jessica Rabbit?

Craig
Balloon Boy Incident was a Hoax!!

Boy was never really in the flying saucer balloon. On Larry King Live, Wolf blitzer asked Falcon why he didn’t come out when called. “You guys said we did it for the show,” said the boy. Richard (dad)’s former research partner, was paid by Gawker.com to write about the former “Wife Swap” star.

Was the boy hiding in the family home? Probably not!

Even watching the balloon, it was pretty obvious that a 50 pound boy could not be in it.

Tweak and Geek presents: The best SciFi series pilots that you’ll never actually see

Craig – “2012″

On a mining ship in the near future (2012), the crew, while mining an asteroid in the Asteroid Belt, finds a pocket of a mineral that, when a human is exposed to it, causes a massive buildup of energy in them that gradually increases until the person dies a gory and explosive death and the chemical is contagious. However, in a weird twist of coincidence the coming of this event is the 2012 “thing” predicted by the Mayans. It turns out that the only way to counteract the effect is to use an artifact found in an ancient Mayan pyramid that dissipates the energy by granting any wish that the user has. A shadowy New Zealand corporation begins mass producing these devices. The show will revolve around a secret, Knights Templar-like Mexican secret society that goes around trying to stop people from making stupid wishes that will destroy the world.

Luckily most people are retarded and wish for stupid crap like a bonnet for their kitten or another pack of cigarettes. Why no one ever thinks to wish for the reversal of this effect is evidence that the show will have bad writing.

Pat – “Unnamed”

Teenagers are disappearing across America. This disappearance is linked to a MASSIVELY MULTIPLAYER ONLINE GAME. At the end of season 1, we learn that the game is being run by Cthulhu and the other minions of R’lyeh. But in season 2, we learn that it’s really the result of a reality TV contest that has just corrupted the game. And then we learn that it’s THIS TV show doing it, kind of like The Ring. Only in the very last episode, it’s revealed that this entire series has been a hoax, and it’s really the evil, soulless orphans that have been consuming teenagers.

Mike – “Spaceportal”

In the two-hour pilot episode, a bunch of archeologists dig up an ancient square-shaped device from some Mayan ruins. A top-secret government agency, with the help of Pat Ferland, Nerd Extraordinaire, is able to decipher the mysterious glyphs on the device and activate it. Turns out, the device is a spaceportal, securing one end of a wormhole that leads somewhere else in the galaxy. A crack team of Navy Seals led by General Craig Bossie and Pat go through the spaceportal and find themselves on an Earth-like planet amid what appears to be modern-day Mayan structures. The team discovers that an alien race has enslaved the local Mayans, much like was done in early Earth history. Pat meets a local Mayan, Luah-Ri, and falls in love. A battle for the slave’s freedom ensues and after our protagonists win, Pat decides to stay on the distant planet to be with Luah-Ri. The way I see it, this show will be so good, it will probably spin off a couple of other shows.

Laurie – “Dream Police”

Yes, the Cheap Trick song would be the theme song.

A college senior, the protagonist – Fiona is trying to balance her social life, difficult course-load as a chemistry major and new skill at being brought to crime scenes in her sleep!(?) Like Alias and Buffy there will be a certain juxtaposition of a normal person trying to lead a normal life and these completely unbelievable circumstances and awesome responsibilities. When she sleeps, Fiona has extremely vivid dreams where she sees crimes being committed. Sometimes these crimes are in the past, present or future – there is no boundary, but they always seem to occur within driving distance for her. Perhaps we can save a trans-continental crime for Sweeps?

It’s not just that Fiona is seeing the crime – the criminals see her, too! She’s even wearing her pajamas! I can already see the hilarity that will ensue when Fiona falls asleep after a Halloween party in her costume and she watches a priceless work of art be stolen from a museum while she is wearing a hamburger costume – all caught on surveillance tape! With the help of her friend Reagan, a physics major intensely interested in the phenomenon of astral projection, and the reticent assistance of family friend Detective Dirk Hailey, Fiona tries to right past wrongs, prevent innocents from being hurt, bringing the guilty to justice, and saving the future. All while memorizing the possible physical organic reactions that can occur on her exams.
End!

Predicted winners:
Lame: Craig, not his show. Craig himself.
Good: Dream Police
Weird: Pat’s mom
Original: DUH, Space Portal!

Blog of the religions: Here’s what we learned

52 Weeks, 52 Religions with John Hummel

Craig: Overall, the inteviews seemed impartial and professional. I was glad that there wasn’t even the slightest hint of condescention. The podcasts all seem to be in the same format, and he is pretty fair by asking all the people basically the same questions. He gives the same treatment to all the interviewees, although it’s pretty certain he thinks they’re full of crap. From what I listened to, it seemed that most of the people he interviewed were pretty reasonable, and they were basically not proselytizing. The format was fun, but the audio was generally somewhat poor. I thought the word association game was fun, but the answers weren’t generally very interesting. I think that most of what I heard was interviews with people who used to be Roman Catholic.

Listened to:
Jehovah’s Witness- They seem pretty reasonable. The elders were pretty good sports.
Hare Krishna – Doesn’t seem as crazy as you would think. Actually sounded somewhat Buddhist and peaceful and really in to it.
Southern Baptist – Also not as crazy. But not outstanding. Pretty boilerplate Christian. Not very humble.
St. Pete’s Atheist Free Thought Group – The atheists seemed a little self-important and overly dramatic.
Church of Satan – Very interesting. An atheist group; based on peoples’ need for ritual. Don’t actually worship Satan. It’s pretty much false advertising. Was a very illuminating interview!
People’s Spiritualism Church – The lady he interviewed was a total flake. I couldn’t really figure out what was going on.

Pat: The Wicca episode was nowhere near as interesting as it ought to have been. The beginning consisted of several restatements of “Wow, if you had to complain to shut down my religion, yours must suck.” I was disappointed and stopped listening. It doesn’t help that the Wiccan interviewed no longer had a coven to practice with.

Mike: Frigging Craig couldn’t stick to just one (as always!) and stole mine! I listened to Jehovah’s Witnesses (I even told him about it, too!).
OK, the JWs appear much more docile than I imagined. As the host mentioned, they — like many Christians he’s interviewed — are nice people who are trying to do the right thing. Like many religions, the JWs faith is the only one that “follows the bible to the letter”. When asked about how literal they take the bible, the JWs replied that every word is accurate, although some people mis-interpret things like “created the Earth and the Heavens in seven days”. No where does it say seven twenty-four hour days. JWs don’t believe in Hell or Purgatory (not in the bible!); instead you pay for your sins (everybody does it) through death. Upon death you are unconscious (not in limbo or anything) and after Armageddon God (Jehovah, by name) will resurrect a predetermined number of people to live on a perfected Earth with him. They feel the door-to-door stuff is their responsibility and they understand some people don’t like it, and that’s OK.

Laurie: Listened to – Baha’i Faith. This podcast episode was kind of long and was a different format that many of the other podcasts in that most of the audio was recorded during an introductory session hosted by a representative of the group. I chose this because I remember fliers for the Baha’i group in college and recently Office actor Rainn Wilson has been speaking out about how Baha’i followers are being treated in Iran.

The overall message of the Baha’i is that there is one God, who loves us all and that most of the other monotheistic religions are right. They strive to unify all religions, peoples, as one human race. They believe that being in the world and doing good is the way to practice (i.e. they are not ascetic). And apparently, they are also good cooks. I wish John had been able to edit the long talk and maybe have also talked one-on-one with Trish to include some of his more repeated questions and interview tactics. But he did ask a lot of questions during the session and broke in to read the passages being read aloud so they would be clearer for the listener of the podcast to hear.

Lame News

Craig:

Spider Bugs Pope in Prague
A spider crawled on the pope during a speech in Prague on Saturday during a speech:
* Pope didn’t notice it, but he did swat at it (video, you can see him starting to swat)
* The audience was noticeably disturbed
* The spider was hanging by a web as he processed out.
* Compared to the famous Obama fly-swatting incident.

Pat:
Someone made a Facebook poll about assassinating Obama. That’s just…. retarded. The Secret Service will be paying that guy a visit, I think.

Mike:
Someone tries to claim business-use tax breaks. Apple doesn’t bite.

Laurie:
PC World does an exposé of the fledgling tech tattoo craze. Something that Patrick wouldn’t know ANYTHING about.

Listener Feedback/Voicemail

Old Email:
June 19
——-

Hi,
Did you register No Naked Dogs dot com?
Is it available?
Sincerely,
Lou

Email thread Sept 16
——————–
From Bill:

So I’m on Amazon (looking at a great album by Kevin Gallagher, a very talented classical guitarist that I must hate forever) and I see this ad for worldvision.org where you can sponser livestock for people in other countries. On the add (next to a picture of a happy little boy clutching a goat) they have the following quote:

“My very own goat saved the family from hunger.”

– Thabani, Age 11
An orphan in Zimbabwe

And my first thought is: “WHAT family? You’re an orphan!”

Reply from Craig
…

I also just thought about this… my mother is an orphan!

Re-Reply from Bill

Hey, so’s mine! You’re right, orphans suck!

The Hobbit film might be able to start
New Line Cinema and the Tolkien estate were in legal wars. A settlement has been reached, and a pair of films by the director of Hellboy may now go forward.

Listener Mail as transcribed by Google Voice

Your Hello hello, what’s up. He when. Start date pieces. I believe Chiefs talk to the dentist. Okay. Okay back.

We’ll get right back to you!

Apple’s Wednesday Press Event (predictions)
This will go out after the press event, but what rumors might come through? We’re thinking about this the day before…

App Store Interface? (Maybe, maybe they’ll let you arrange apps on your computer!)
iPod with Camera models delayed? (This is a strange rumor since they haven’t announced iPod with camera anyway.)
Apple Tablet? (Consensus: No.)
Beatles on iTunes? (If no, Craig says he’ll eat his hat. We’re going to hold him to that.)
Online iTunes storage? (Big old data center being built: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2009/07/28/apple-moving-quickly-on-nc-project/ )
HD iPods? (Maybe they want to compete with the Zune HD. Play back HD video if you hook it up to a TV!)
Classic iPod cancelled? (Too early. Maybe in the next couple of years if Flash continues to reduce in price.)
Bigger iPod Touch? (64GB might be accessible…)
New iPod Classic? (More than 120GB HD? Is that really something with a market?)
iPhone freed from the shackles of AT&T? (OH PLEASE!)
MMS on iPhone? (Didn’t AT&T already announce that?)

Favorite rumors – which do we think it is?
Laurie: Online Storage
Mike: Online Storage (Craig will eat his hat)
Craig: Beatles (Mike and Pat are bitches)
Pat: Online Storage (Craig will eat his hat)

Lame News

Pat
Bank of America refuses to cash a check for a man when he doesn’t provide a thumbprint. Problem is, he had no arms.

Laurie
H1N1 fears make Italian Catholics eschew their Twilight-esque traditions.

Michael
Diebold impeaches e-voting unit, sells it off for $5 million.

Craig
Ohio robbery suspect asked victim for date. Returned 2 hours after the crime to ask the victim out.

We’re having a little contest…
The for of us will each try to concoct the “best” Sci-fi show for the new TV season. By best, we mean most horrific. We’ll talk about our ideas. You can vote on your favorite!

Comic-Con Review with Pat and Laurie

Nerds!

Game Reboots

Article on the Guardian, “Which Game Series” would you reboot? Article talks about the recent rebooting of things in our culture.

Recent reboots

• Transformers
• Battlestar Galactica
• Star Trek
  
  Now with MORE LENS FLARE
• Punch Out
• Batman
• Super Mario Bros (Over and over)

Tech and Religion

52 religions/52 week blog podcast.
http://www.blogthereligions.com/

Lame News

CRAIG (cheating — this one doesn’t count)
Army Colonel eats 40 year old cake. He opened a can of pound cake at his retirement party that he got in 1969. He said it’s good.

CRAIG
Apple bans Google Voice App – Google had approval from Phil Schiller, but now its app was denied (rumored to be b/c of AT&T)
(Update 8/3/09: The Feds are even checking this out! Why was it denied?)

MIKE
Media runs with stories without even the slightest amount of fact-checking.

PAT
EA promoted Dante’s Inferno with a “Lust” themed event, suggesting people take lustful pictures with Booth Babes at Comic-Con.

LAURIE
Maine makes the news again for being the home of brilliant minds.

iPhone 3GS Announced on Monday!

Faster Processor, Video, 3MP Camera, Voice Control(!), Compass, Landscape in other apps like mail, Copy/Paste (new s/w), Search, Multimedia messages (but ATT won’t let them), Tethering Capabilities (but ATT won’t let them), Voice Memos, Nike crap (who cares), enhanced YouTube and stock apps

$99 iPhone3G 8GB (old iPhone, not the GS)
$199 – 16GB, $299 – 32GB

Other stuff…

Rules for Time Travelers

Windows 7 Starter kit… 3 app limit removed!

Lame News

Craig
90 y/o Woman survives 3 days in bathtub by drinking water from a rubber duck.

Pat
Guy gets robbed while on vacation, thinks it was his obssessive Tweeting. @robbedguy maybe publicly broadcasting MY HOUSE IS EMPTY was a bit of a tipoff to the crooks.

Laurie
Chicago area man is selling rides in his Ferrari.

Mike
Mike was duped by an email claiming that his recently sent package was undeliverable and that he should print out the attached form to claim said package at the local office. Thankfully, Norton AntiVirus stopped the Trojan contained within the attachment dead in its tracks. Mike had been considering removing Norton since it never found anything more serious than a tracking cookie here and there; he has since changed his mind.

UPDATE (6/10/09):
Craig here… I have an update! The awesome time travel movie I couldn’t think of is called “Primer”. It’s a great movie about some young techies that accidentally discover time travel and also discover some interesting applications. In addition, it doesn’t violate any of our rules presented here.

Here is the time travel mechanism they use…

• Star Trek
• Windows 7
• Kindle DX
• Laurie’s research lab was on CBS. (http://www.liai.org/files/Alessandro_Sette_CBS_Evening_News_May_07_2009.mov — this used to be a link, but that was ruining the podcast feed. STOP TRYING TO HELP US OUT, WORDPRESS!)
• The awesomest T-shirt ever… READ THE CUSTOMER REVIEWS. DO IT NOW!
• Better t-shirt: Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal

Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus
With “DEBORAH” Gibson. It’s a must-see! A must-see of awfulness. Even “Syfy” would be ashamed.

Lame News

Craig’s a cheater and submitted two

Oprah on Twitter

Nude hiking banned in Swiss Alpine Region
200 Franc fine on violators. This practice dates back to the 18th century “Free Body Culture” movement.

Pat
ZOMBIE FIRE ANTS!
If only they’d been PIRATE zombie fire ants…

Mike
Mac OS X email worm not written well enough to be a threat
The writer of the worm — in addition to incorporating many misspellings in the emails intended to be forwarded around by the worm — left bugs in the code that render the worm unable to cause any havoc at all.

Laurie
I love overdubbing!

Lost
Spoiler alert! Laurie and Mike talk Lost. Time travel, Ben’s new role as Locke’s whipping boy, and a potential third faction are discussed.

Blackberry Woes
Laurie and Pat are having issues with their Blackberry Pearls; they intermittently lose information like text messages and call history, despite software/firmware updates. Laurie also doesn’t like how the GPS requires data connectivity in order to function. Mike has the same problem (the GPS one) with his iPhone. Mike tries to convince Laurie to upgrade to an iPhone.

iPhone OS 3.0
Mike covers some of the features due in the upcoming iPhone OS release, most of which can be found in the Apple iPhone 3.0 details.

Lamest News of the Week

Laurie
Guy plays guilt-trip on girlfriend by faking a crime.

Mike
Cow poo-powered golf cart!

We’ll be back in the recording studio next month. See you then!

Whopper Bar

This looks insidious.

Google Calendar Needs Notification

Why can’t it send accept/deny emails? Google, you’re On Notice.

Info on the new Shuffle

$79, Talks to you, Special earbuds, 1.8″ x .3″, 4GB, Multilingual

Craig Bought a new Camera!

Powershot SD1100IS

Image stabilization, Voice Tags, Can Record Video, 8GB SD, 8.3MP, Rechargeable Battery

Replacing Olympus D-450Z – 1999 model.

The Replacements

What Technology are we replacing now? The tech age is progressing and some of our things are reaching “end of life”. What is your next big replacement?

Craig

• N64 with Wii
• Computers
• Camera
• iPod Video with Touch

Pat

• TV to HDTV… eventually
• iPod from Mini to Touch… That was huge! No pun intended, ha ha
• Computers – maybe even time for a Netbook (or the rumored 10″ iPod Touch…)
• Phone? … I’m so tempted for the iPhone, but I like T-Mobile as a carrier
• Nintendo DSi? I had a PSP but I hated it. But, I’m so tempted by many DS games
• TwitterFox to TweetDeck. Once you’re doing enough following to need groups and organization, it’s time for a bigger app

Lame News

Craig

ChimpMan Terrorizes Texas
“Dumb as a hatful of assholes”.

(From my new favorite blog – “Weekly World Inquisitor”. Found out about this b/c of Twitter. How? Listen to find out.)

Pat

Worlds.com is “definitely” going to sue World of Warcraft

And in other news…

We’re going to do one more episode late this month, and then we’re taking April off. Sorry — work pressures are making it hard to produce our HIGH QUALITY show in a timely fashion.

Bonus silly link!

http://www.someecards.com/ – “When you care enough to hit send.”

D – Let’s talk about Windows 7 and the Starter Edition

Windows 7 SKU List

Good news: Most consumers only have to worry about 2 SKUs – Home Premium and Ultimate
Bad news: In addition to worrying about their crappy water, dictators and famine, now emerging markets only get sucky Windows SKUs. That’s our way of eliminating competition.

Shades of Grey – Open Source, Fringe, and Social Networking?

Best / Favorite Open Source Apps

Craig

• Filezilla 
• Firefox
• Thunderbird
• DotNetNuke – Web CMS
• Paint.Net for light editing, GIMP for heavier

Pat

• The GIMP
• Firefox addons: Web Developer, Firebug (how did we EVER do Javascript without it?), FireFTP, Twitterfox, AdBlock Plus, Flashblock
• Eclipse software development IDE
• WordPress blog
• PodPress podcasting plugin for Wordpress
• LAME (not) MP3 Encoder

Bonus – not discussed on the show!

• Gnu Octave – Matlab Clone (http://www.gnu.org/software/octave/)
• .NetTiers Open source CodeSmith template library for easy database access.
• Evolution Mail Client (http://projects.gnome.org/evolution/developer.shtml ) – Integrates with MS Exchange. Only really available on !Windows

Social networking Good, Bad and Ugly

Defriend due to Whopper Sacrifice. Message on Facebook reads:

Facebook® has disabled WHOPPER® Sacrifice after your love for the WHOPPER® Sandwich proved to be stronger than 233,906 friendships.

Fringe

Craig
Haven’t watched it yet… heard good things. It’s on hulu.com.
Pat
Me either. And I’ve never even used Hulu. Shame on me.

bcrem – Is Linux killing Microsoft?!?

Interview with Jim Zemlin, Linux Foundation director. Great interview

Craig

• Could Linux really be considered an alternative for hardware makers? (i.e. Walmart Linux PC)
• Netbooks will run lightweight Windows 7 – that could be a feather in the hat
• Computers need less horsepower etc, as things become web-based, and the OS is less of a factor
• Vista’s 5 year tardiness made people lose hope, but the fast turnaround time for windows 7 is making people have renewed confidence
• The average person does not know, or care about Linux. The real problem is that the people advocating Linux are all techies!!

Pat
No. Any more questions?

Mike Swindler – Voice Mail: Any useful tips for Thunderbird?

The Junk Mail filter requires constant care and monitoring, much like a small cat.

Thunderbird site tips

On the specific question of editing mail: External Editor. Craig successfully connected it to ConText and it worked FINE!

Anti Patterns

Recently, Craig has become interested in software design patterns. They’re time-tested solutions to general problems. Although they do not, by themselves, deliver guaranteed results, they are good tools.

However, I’ve also noticed that bad habits are much easier to adopt than good habits. These bad habits, “antipatterns”, are “a commonly occurring solution to a problem that generates decidedly negative consequences”. Antipatterns can represent a lesson learned, rather than just a bad thing. The interesting thing is that using antipatterns don’t necessarily lead to failure, rather, they may lead to a bad solution to a problem. Think about when you first learned about exception handling in Java or C#. Say you’re performing a division. You get two numbers as input, and perform your division inside a try block. If the divisor is 0, your program will throw an exception. Well, that’s great, because you can just recover from it in the catch block. However, using the exception handling as a normal part of program flow is an example of something that works, but is a poor solution. Exception handling is a costly operation and can degrade the performance of your program.

Antipatterns don’t only exist in software. They exist anywhere that problems need to be solved. Wikipedia has a pretty good article on antipatterns, as does a consulting company’s wiki. Sometimes it seems that antipatterns are just an opportunity for someone to give an insoluble problem a funny name.

At www.antipatterns.com there are several books (Antipatterns in Project Management, Antipatterns and Patterns in Software Configuration Management and AntiPatterns – Refactoring Software, Architecture and Projects in Crisis).

Here are some interesting management antipatterns from Wikipedia:

• Design by Committee: Many contributors but no unifying vision. Too much consensus and not enough leadership.
• Crisis Mode: Deal with things only when there is a crisis. Being reactive rather than proactive.
• Analysis Paralysis: The inability to take action due to the over analysis of a problem.
• Death March (SuperHero): Employees are expected to bear the brunt of a failing project with unreasonable expectations (deadlines or budgets).
• Escalation of Commitment: The failure to rescind a wrong decision

Interesting Software Design and Programming Antipatterns

• Gold Plating – Working on a project beyond its worth (i.e. 90% of effort in last 10%)
• Magic Numbers and Strings – Hard coded values
• Copy and Paste Programming – Copying and modifying existing code instead of implementing a general purpose solution (who hasn’t done this?)
• Programming By Accident – Trying things until something works (html/css)
• God Object – Having too much functionality in one object.

Lamest News of the Week

Craig
Kids With Nazi Names Taken From Home
Adolf Hitler Campbell, JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell were taken into state custody. No comment on why, but this came to everyone’s attention when, last month (I remember this), a grocery store refused to put Adolf’s name on a birthday cake. Lameness?

• Lame parents would name their children such
• Lame grocery store taking editorial liberty with their birthday cakes.

Pat
Need your pr0n fix without that annoying captcha? Automate the captcha with a Javascript neural network! This is actually a nicely-written neural net… but it sure is odd to apply such high-tech to this sort of problem!

Bacon Explosion

Although this is not technically a technology related post, I learned about the most innovative thing man has ever created, the bacon sausage roll! This is the ultimate perfect food for people. Ingredients:

• 2 pounds thick cut bacon
• 2 pounds Italian sausage
• 1 jar of your favorite barbeque sauce
• 1 jar of your favorite barbeque rub

This recipe uses a 5×5 bacon weave (yummmmmm), with barbecue seasoning. Then it’s covered with pork sausage. Then MORE BACON is added! Roll it up and smoke it for 2.5 hours. Glaze it with your favorite barbecue sauce and slice. Serve it on biscuits or as is…

Listener Driven (NOT!) — you see, Pat can’t count, and… we’ll have that episode soon, we promise. It just won’t be #22.

Technology for the Outdoors
Since Craig started hiking 10 years ago, there has been a really big boom in the technology available to the geeky weekend warrior. It used to be enough just to bring a book and a maglight. Nowadays, you can have a completely battery-powered trip and not bat an eyelash!

Here are some interesting gadgets that weren’t readily available before.

• GPS – even though this has been around for a while, they used to pretty much just tell you your lat and long and elevation. Then you get your paper map out and figure out where you are. Now, GPS units accept topo maps, have nice hi-res screens and decent battery life. You can even enter the trails you plan to take and look at it every 30 seconds to see how much longer it will be. An interesting article tells about some pretty nice Garmin models as of last fall.
• Water purification – It always used to be the ceramic or membrane pumps, or even a few drops of iodine. Although the real technological advance is probably the high tech filters, there are some fun purifiers. The MSR MIOX creates a strong oxidizing solution using just salt and water. Also available are the UV water purifiers (Steri-pen) that use intense UV to kill germs.
• Satellite phones, for the deep deep woods hiking.
• Headlamps – Not using incandescent any more. 100 hours on an LED headlamp (i.e. Petzl). It keeps me going at night. Good to have around the house too!
• Portable Solar Panels – Now you can get portable solar panels to recharge your gizmos whenever you want. They are still a bit pricey, but now you can charge your Kindle any time!
• Media players – When I first started hiking, I could carry 200 or 300 songs and a few audio books on my iRiver. Now I can bring enough music to last an entire long weekend, plus a few movies, the latest episode of LOST and a nice word find game. Media players have definitely allowed the hikers to keep nature at bay!
• Digital Cameras – When I started hiking, pretty much the only alternative was to bring your film camera, or your bulky digital. Now, cameras are sleek and tiny.
• Portable Defibrillator – Not ultra lite!

Listener Email
“Thanks” to all our listeners that signed us up for the Marine Corps Association email list!

Listener Driven Show deadline: February 6, 2009!

The Big Bang Theory is a show about some CalTech physicists, and it spoofs geek intelligence vs real-life common-sense situations. They have a funny bit where they extend the rules of Rock, Scissors, Paper:

That got us thinking… what are the top 10 optional rules for Rock, Scissors, Paper?

10. Lizard, Spock. By the way, Wikipedia assigns this to Sam Kass.
9. No Zerg Rush.
8. Ba-Rock Obama Paper Scissors – Rock beats everything as long as it promises change and has a fresh attitude.
7. Saving Throws! Requires a D20.
6. Aqua Regia – Beats everything – even dissolves the legendary golden scissors. And ham.
5. LARSP – Live Action Rock-Scissors-Paper; you have to act it out. Suggestion: Use cheap scissors and beware papercuts.
4. MMORPS – Multiple Player online Rock Paper Scissors. The more you level up your R/P/S, the better chance you have. A level 80 scissor beats everything and can visit the realm of the Lich King.
3. Dynamite. This is a terrible rule, because (A) it’s unbalanced, and (B) dynamite beats rock, scissors beat dynamite, but paper is somewhat undefined. If paper beats dynamite, then dynamite is a weak choice, and if not, then dynamite is your best choice.
2. Dead Sea Scroll – This paper alternative turns the tide when it suddenly is too much of a shame to cut it with scissors, but too fragile to cover a rock!!
1. Free Parking Jackpot.

Call for entries
T&G Episode 22 is almost upon us. We’ll build this episode entirely out of user-submitted stories, ideas, and questions — so email us, comment here, or call our GrandCentral number with your suggestions!

Programming Errors

SANS Institute Releases Most Dangerous 25 Programming Errors

“Today in Washington, DC, experts from more than 30 US and international cyber security organizations jointly released the consensus list of the 25 most dangerous programming errors that lead to security bugs and that enable cyber espionage and cyber crime.”

These errors are said not to be well understood by programmers. This announcement focuses more on the source of vulnerabilities (from a programmatic standpoint) rather than the vulnerabilities themselves (disease rather than symptom).

SANS predicts four major impacts of this list:

• Software buyers will be able to buy much safer software.
• Programmers will have tools that consistently measure the security of the software they are writing.
• Colleges will be able to teach secure coding more confidently.
• Employers will be able to ensure they have programmers who can write more secure code.

Insecure Interaction Between Components

• CWE-20: Improper Input Validation
• CWE-116: Improper Encoding or Escaping of Output
• CWE-89: Failure to Preserve SQL Query Structure (aka ‘SQL Injection’)
• CWE-79: Failure to Preserve Web Page Structure (aka ‘Cross-site Scripting’)
• CWE-78: Failure to Preserve OS Command Structure (aka ‘OS Command Injection’)
• CWE-319: Cleartext Transmission of Sensitive Information
• CWE-352: Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF)
• CWE-362: Race Condition
• CWE-209: Error Message Information Leak

Risky Resource Management

• CWE-119: Failure to Constrain Operations within the Bounds of a Memory Buffer
• CWE-642: External Control of Critical State Data
• CWE-73: External Control of File Name or Path
• CWE-426: Untrusted Search Path
• CWE-94: Failure to Control Generation of Code (aka ‘Code Injection’)
• CWE-494: Download of Code Without Integrity Check
• CWE-404: Improper Resource Shutdown or Release
• CWE-665: Improper Initialization
• CWE-682: Incorrect Calculation

Porous Defenses

• CWE-285: Improper Access Control (Authorization)
• CWE-327: Use of a Broken or Risky Cryptographic Algorithm
• CWE-259: Hard-Coded Password
• CWE-732: Insecure Permission Assignment for Critical Resource
• CWE-330: Use of Insufficiently Random Values
• CWE-250: Execution with Unnecessary Privileges
• CWE-602: Client-Side Enforcement of Server-Side Security

How can you, as a SW engineer, help to curtail these? How many have you seen in the wild? How many have you perpetrated? And none of these are really new, so — will this list even help?

Lamest News of the Week
(Craig) Would-be bride, 107, seeks her first husband

BEIJING – A 107-year-old Chinese woman who was afraid to marry when she was young has decided to look for her first husband and hopes to find a fellow centenarian so they will have something to talk about, a Chinese paper reported.

Anybody got her number?

(Pat) Mac’s iWork.com discussion at MacWorld
So, iWork.com docs can be easily shared with others? Google Docs does that already. And it’s free.

(Laurie) Australian’s Pull no punches when it comes to shark attacks
They always say you should punch a shark to make it let you go. Hopefully Laurie’s travelling friend Edmund won’t have to put this tip to use!

Listener-driven Episode 22
Call, email, or comment! We’re going to build episode 22 of T&G entirely from user ideas, suggestions, and stories. Submit them by February 6th, or it could be a short episode.

The new season of LOST began Jan. 21, 2009.

Questions. Questions that need answering!

Laurie
1. Where did the Richard Alpert group come from and why did they oppose Dharma?
2. What was the four-toed statue?
3. Is Christian Shepherd dead or is Jacob just using the body/personage?
4. Where is Kate’s horse?
5. What is the black smoke, really?

Craig
1. How far ahead in time has the island gone?
2. What is the true nature of the island
3. When will we find out about the real nature of the Dharma Initiative (i.e. Valenzetti Equation)
4. What is all the whispering in the woods? Is it the “Others”?
5. Is Whidmore really behind everything? This seems a little complicated for someone like him to orchestrate

Pat
Does JJ Abrams REALLY have a plan, or is he still making the show up as he goes?

What we know so far – synopsis for the uninitiated

Hurley says it best

Season 1 : Oceanic Flight 815 crashes en route from Sydney to LA. The island is dangerous and is inhabited by smoke monsters, polar bears and people who try to kidnap children. The castaways find a hatch and realize the island had been used for scientific purposes in the past. An attempt to escape via raft is thwarted by the Others.

Season 2 : Castaways from the tail of the plane also have sour dealings with the Others. The hatch is opened and numbers have to be typed in a computer to keep things operational. One of Others is captured, tortured and set free. The hatch explodes. Three main characters are taken captive by the Others.

Season 3 : The Others force their captives to perform surgery, and break rocks before they finally escape. One Other helps the castaways. The island is revealed to be toxic to pregnant women. A rescue helicopter crashes but the castaways are able to contact the freighter it came from.

Season 4 : The freighter people are made up of scientists, mercenaries working for the opposition of the Others, and a secret castaway. To protect the island, it is moved. Six of the Oceanic 815 passengers get off the island but cannot tell the real story of the crash or the events that happened after. It is now explicit that there is a time travel component to the story. In flash forwards their life off the island is revealed and some intend to return.

THEORIES!

I think that Charlotte and Miles are connected to the island – maybe born there?

People have been trying to control the island for a long time and we’re getting a taste of the history, i.e. flaming arrows and British commandos.

Indigenous people on island – probably people from different times that are trapped there.

Valenzetti equation (6 factors that can predict/cause the end of humanity – represented by the numbers) – the end is much nearer than we think and somehow Daniel is going to figure out how to alter one of them (i.e. the time thing)

I think we’re going to find out how the Black Rock got there – the others may be the original crew…

Super Spoilers

According to Wikipedia, some of the things we can expect to see this season for unanswered lingering mysteries are:

Areas intended to be explored included the reason Libby (Cynthia Watros) was in the mental institution, why Ms. Hawking (Fionnula Flanagan) was in a photograph with Brother Campbell (Andrew Conolly), what happened between Ben and Henry Gale, the survivor of a hot air balloon crash and how Ben was caught in Rousseau’s trap in the second season episode titled “One of Them” and the four-toed statue seen by Sayid, Jin and Sun.

The Bacon Explosion

Presentations!

Businessweek presentation about presentations.
Pat wrote about this topic a couple of months ago, too.

Every geek we know more or less hates Powerpoint with a passion verging on holy. Unfortunately, presentations are a necessary evil — sometimes, you have to get a point across, concisely, to a live audience.

Sci Fi Update

Atlantis is over, and The Wraith are fought off (for now)… BSG Starting Up Again! 3.5 Minutes LONGER!!! Earth is a burned out nuclear shell can humans and toasters ever be friends? Lost – Locke is dead… Ben wants everyone to go back… but the island is gone (or is it?)

Help us with Episode 22

Episode 22 will feature all listener-driven content. Email, call, or comment and we’ll pick the best ideas to build episode 22. Deadline is February 6th!

Star Tech
Scott Johnson’s blog poses the question which is more influential on technology: Star Wars or Star Trek? In his opinion, Star Trek is the most influential. What do we think?

• Star Trek: A world without money is a utopian impossibility
• Star Wars: The restoration of the republic is a return to a theocracy (Jedi “divine right” warriors police the populace)
• Star Trek: Given the ST history (WWIII etc) there’s no way they could be at such a level of technology in the 23rd century, since most of the 21st would have been devoted to reconstruction from WWIII
• Star Trek: Mathematical language translation is cool, although in real life, the universal translators would be very distracting (hear it in other language – what you need is translator microbes)
• Both: Neither seems to have a discernable middle class… that’s where most of the innovation comes from
• Star Trek: Beaming tech is instant death!
• Star Wars: Ship design has become an art form, but it’s totally impractical
• Star Trek: Science. Even things like telepathy are science. Star Wars: Magic (midichlorians? magic magic magic with crappy faith storyline elements)
• Star Wars: Spaceships are more like cars. A dude and a Wookie can fix a spaceship. In Star Trek, it takes a team of skilled engineers.
• Star Trek: “According to The Making of Star Trek, by Stephen Whitfield and Gene Roddenberry, the bridge design of the NCC-1701 was once considered for use by the real-life United States Navy, because of the efficiency of its style and layout.” [Wikipedia]

“We’ve replaced this starship’s dilithium crystals with Folgers Crystals… let’s see if they can tell the difference…”

Lamest News of the “Week”

Or, as Laurie suggested, is it Weakest News of the Lame?

Craig
A tumor removed from a newborn’s brain contains a foot. Kind of a “fetus in fetu” thing. Small tumor contained a tiny foot, partial foot, a hand and a thigh!

Pat
Our sometimes-host Laurie sent us an article about stories of Social Network defriending. Some of these stories are most definitely LAME.

Highlights of 2008

• Bill Gates Steps down as chairman of Microsoft (Steve Ballmer throws a chair:  http://news.zdnet.co.uk/internet/0,1000000097,39216371,00.htm )
• Vista’s horrible (?) failure. (Windows 7 announced this summer: http://blog.pricegrabber.com/blogbytes/2008/06/30/windows-7-announced/)
• First real internet presidential election — but what happened to Obama’s Tweeting? (Obama’s Twitter Feed: http://twitter.com/BarackObama )
• Google releases the Chrome browser (Google chrome comic book: http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/small_00.html)
• The end of SG1 (movies) and Atlantis ending announced — Stargate Worlds in Trouble http://days-since-cheyenne-mountain-employees-have-been-paid.com/ — is this the end of a beloved franchise?
• iPhone 3G (2.0) / iTunes App Store
• The Rise of the solid state drive
• Microtransactions enter mainstream online gaming; the subscription model now has competition
• Economy go boom. Stock up on canned food and ammo.
• Large Hadron Collider controversy, but the world didn’t end!

Pat and Craig’s 10 Geek Predictions for 2009

• Announcement of Successor to Xbox 360 (not release, ANNOUNCEMENT)
• Windows 7 is released. People will be excited, but there won’t be much different from Vista
• Next Generation of Amazon Kindle (A rumor: http://news.cnet.com/amazons-kindle-2-leaked/)
• iPhone Forks: 32GB 3G (agreed), Low-end iphone “nano” (we disagree)
• iTunes offers a majority DRM Free (or at least expands it)
• Facebook “jumps the shark”
• Yahoo will finally be bought by someone
• WoW will reach 13M users and get around to announcing the next expansion, but they won’t release the expansion in 2009
• 64 bit processors will outsell 32 bit and 64 bit OS will struggle for ascendancy (but, based on the current state, might not make it)
• Web 2.0 goes mainstream. Example: Check out this post about Brightkite vs Twitter

Miscellaneous Notes:

It is the distant future… the year two…thousand! 

You listen to World IV cast NOW!!!
http://www.worldiv.com/blog/?p=788 

Great LHC Joke – this says it all about 2008:

Top 9 Gift Ideas For Geeks 2008 – Do we agree?

The original blog entry from the Roger Alsing Weblog.

iPod Touch Software 2.2 – Kind of late, but here we are
New Features:

• Search and address bar are now side by side
• Download Podcasts from the iPod (not the iPwn)
  • Quick letter navigation of podcasts is gone
  • Podcast “no album art” is now a head with “waves”
• Ability to turn off autocorrection
• Security fixes for Webkit and Safari
• Home Screen Shortcut
• Google Maps improvements omitted from touch (street View, public transit navigation or sharing information via e-mail – why?)
• New Languages
• Mail Improvements
  • Improved email fetching scheduling
  • Improved HTML email formatting
    
  • 
    

We didn’t plan this part…

• If you think Prop 8 in California was controversial, check this story out!
• Tweak and Geek now has a Facebook Group, yippee!
• WoW
  • Downtime
  • Different Servers
  • How many servers on a cluster
  • Client-prediction, synchronizing a client-side simulation with a server-side simulation
  • TCP vs UDP (by the way, Skype prefers UDP)

Moving to a new office

Tales of moving into 100 square feet…

• Can an IT worker work without privacy?
• Can an “Open Concept” work for developers?
• What about noise? Phone spillover?
• Is it worth moving into a cramped space just for appearance’s sake?

Craig just moved to a new office; this is just the beginning of the story.

Office Dress Code

Craig just had an office dress code implemented (no jeans, etc). What are things that you need to take into account when instituting a dress code for your business?

What dress code is right for you?

• Industry – specific
  • Medical – Scrubs
  • Retail – clothes matching the business
    • Home depot – casual / flannel
    • Clothes – match the style sold
    • Police / Military / UPS etc – Uniform
    • Finance / Insurance – Suit
  • Other
    • IT – Can they have a different code than the rest of the company?
    • Consultants – Are jeans ever OK?
  • What are you trying to portray? Stability? Playfulness? Customer Service?

What is the effect of dress code on morale? Does a casual dress code help morale? What about employees that rarely, if ever, have client contact? Does a dress code set the culture of a business, or can it be a turnoff to bright employees?

What are some casual dress code faux pas?

• Sandals with socks
• Hats
• Camo
• Tube tops
• Pink taffeta sports coat

Lamest News of the Podcast

Craig:
The family that drinks together…

Trying to find someone to come pick up the one year old boy seems to be tough – mom is arrested for OUI. Dad shows up and is drunk. Grandma and Grandpa arrive and are also 1/2 in the bag. Very Jerry Springer.

Pat:
Google is tracking Flu Trends! Googling for certain terms implies that CAPTAIN TRIPPS IS HERE

Election Night, Party Time!
Is anyone having an election night party? What are some good ways to celebrate?

1. Elephant and Donkey steaks
2. Sit R-D-R-D-R-D…
3. Drink a beer every time a state goes blue, a martini every time a state goes red (or vice-versa)

OMG A Bug in Windows!

Microsoft Windows Security Breach KB958644 – Definitely shook things up around Craig’s office, being an IT shop! Vulnerability in “Server” service (file and print sharing) could allow remote code execution. Only authenticated users are allowed in Vista, which minimized the impact. This is a really significant issue for all older Windows verisons. Sadly, not sexy though.

A good summary of articles is at http://wordpress.com/tag/kb958644/

NULL

NULL is this weird value in SQL that means “I don’t know what the value is.” It’s tricky to work with if you’re not careful, and can easily be the source of problems.

Craig wrote a poem!

Roses are red
Violets are dull
My love for you
Is equal to NULL

Tweak and Geek – the debate rages on!

Which one of us is Tweak and which is Geek? Or is it a couple of verbs? Write in with your suggestions, and we’ll pick the ones that amuse us the most to become the official explanation.

Gameboy FAIL

How Pat killed his Gameboy, by request

Lamest News of the Week

Craig:
Man Lives Amid Chads of 2000 Election”
Talk about capitalizing on something old… he wants to sell bags of chads for $20 each

Pat:
Virtual Love, Death, and Murder
Virtual divorce in Maple Story leads to real life arrest of Japanese woman after she stole her “husband’s” login info and deleted his character.

Listener Feedback
Blog commenters on last week’s lamest news of the week, including some interested parties. Wow, this Internet thing works both ways — spooky!

Coda
The Asgard in Pegasus? WTF?

Hands-on with the New Nano
Laurie purchased the new model of the iPod Nano, and gives us a hands-on review.

Heroes Season Three
Pat hates it because he’s stupid and ugly. Craig likes it because he’s smart and good-looking.

Since the Large Hadron Collider Failed…
It did not destroy the Earth, but here are 10 ways to do so:
http://www.livescience.com/technology/destroy_earth_mp.html

10. Total existence failure (need – just wait 2E50 years) (Or a Death star)
9. Gobbled up by strangelets (need – LHC)
8. Sucked into a microscopic black hole (need – microscopic black hole)
7. Blown up by matter/antimatter reaction (need – 2.5 trillion tons of antimatter)
6. Destroyed by vacuum energy detonation – (need – light bilb)
5. Sucked into a giant black hole (need – giant black hole, gravity tractor)
4. Meticulously and systematically deconstructed (need – giant mass driver)
3. Pulverized by impact with blunt instrument (need – big asteroid)
2. Eaten by von Neumann machines (Need – von Neumann machine) – Grey goo
1. Hurled into the Sun (need – sun, something to knock the earth into the sun)

Lamest News of the Week

Craig:
Rabbits invade Nelson Mandela Museum
Also – 10/13 – Dow gained 976 points, largest single gain ever – lame part is that it is not the largest percentage gain ever. Best point gain since 1932, but only the 5th best ever. Best is 3-15-33?

Pat:
Someone on the Internet got all mad about a bad review. Don’t mock Chuck-E-Cheese knockoffs run by Christian ex-Marines.
Also, there will be a WoW-oriented mouse with 15 buttons!

Laurie:
The Girls Next Door are all moving out of the Playboy Mansion!

Grand Central Messages

• Mike Swindler – iPod update
• Flo – In Stargate Continuum, when he goes back in time and gets rid of the SG program… paradox

Random stuff…

• The new Microsoft commercial
  
• Google’s Chrome Browser
  A description, by Google, in comic form.
  Check out the URL about:internets
• (Post Production: “Chrome” actually refers to anything on a browser that’s not actually rendering the html page…)

What Would a T&G Episode be Without iPods?

• New Ipods
  Nano (motion sensor)
  Cheaper Touches
• Itunes 8
  Genius – cross-marketing madness
  Accessibility
  NBC Coming back (hooray, BGS!)
  HD TV Shows (but you probably need an Apple TV to appreciate that)
  New Visualizer
• Ipod Touch and iPhone S/W 2.1 – Fewer crashes and a volume fix. Free if you bought 2.0
• (Post Production: If you’ve upgraded to 2.0, you don’t have to pay the 9.95 to get to 2.1… take that, Pat!)

Foxit Reader — a lightweight, fast, cheap alternative to Adobe Acrobat Reader.

The Lamest News Since Last Episode
You’ll have to hear it to believe it!

Craig has crazy adventures — but finds a Wii!
At a MUSIC STORE, of all places. And not a big-box music store where you might expect that sort of thing, but a little independent store.

Virtual Console
Why is it totally awesome, and why can’t we play those games that we USED to be so good at? And while we’re talking about downloadable games, a tip of the hat to Braid.

Job hunting
When is it time to start that search and move on?
What are the barriers to be faced?

Stargate Continuum
We said we’d talk about it, and boy, do we! SPOILER ALERT: We will explicitly discuss several parts, including the ending. With spoilers. You’ve totally been warned.

Comic Con 2008 – Chewbacca is big.

Pat saw a Stargate Atlantis panel, met some folks including Peter Mayhew and Penny Arcade, and saw lots of grown adults in costumes.

Stargate Continuum is out, and we’re going to watch it before the next podcast.

We’re getting a lot of wrong numbers to our GrandCentral line, which is kind of weird.

iPod Touch Volume Problems – 2.0 software reduces the volume significantly.

This is show #10 – amazing! Here’s a recap of our previous shows:

Windows Vista

• We still like, but don’t love, it.

iPod Touch

• The cloud of 2.0 hurt our fanboi-ism, but we still both use them constantly.

Social Networks: LinkedIn, Myspace, Facebook, and Twitter

• Myspace: We’ve moved on.

• LinkedIn: Both active

• Facebook: Both active

• Twitter: The new darling (when it’s up)

Kitchen Aid

• Craig has a new shiny

Listeners

• Do we still have any? You’ve all stopped commenting

Gravatars

• Adoption slowly rising, and we still think they rule

Microhoo (cahnoogle?)

• Who cares?

The Process movie – it’s not a comedy, it’s a documentary!

Edit August 6: This video is no longer available. Too bad; it was funny.

We’d love to hear your feedback at tg[at]tweakandgeek[dot]com. Or you can call us and leave a voicemail at 678-999-6321.

A Couple of Notes:

Ad for the iPhone 3G!

iTunes App Store Highlights

• Twitter Clients
  • Twitteriffic
  • Twittelator
• Games and Amusements
  • Phone Saber
• Facebook
• AIM
• iPint
• TapTap Revenge
• AOL Radio – Revolutionizes the ipod… now the music library is basically infinite

$9.95 to upgrade – good on ipod touch and 1G iphone. Have had some crashing issues, though

Cool Features of iPhone 2.0 Software

• App Store
• 3rd Party Apps
• GPS/Wifi Location Integration
• Movie Screen Flipover

User Voice Mail – GrandCentral
How do you get more reliable podcasts? Send cash, of course!

Unordered Decade of Methods to Lose Your Best Developers

10- Subject them to unreasonable IT Policies
09- Enforce unreasonable working hours / inflexible schedule<
08- Underpay them
07- Micromanage them

Programmers are notoriously stubborn and independent!

06- Discourage Teamwork
05- Have no clear technology roadmap for your company
04- Be stingy with the training budget
03- Discourage them from using industry standards/best practices in order to meet budget/timeline
02- Enforce unrealistic timelines and budgets
01- Make them use outdated technology without an upgrade path

We’d love to hear your feedback at tg[at]tweakandgeek[dot]com. Or you can call us and leave a voicemail at 678-999-6321.

A Couple of Notes:

Tech Ed took place at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando. Note that there is 2.1 million square feet of floor space. Almost as much as Bill Gates’ house!

Speaking of Billy-Boy, here is the video that they showed at the Keynote depicting his theoretical last day:

An authentic “Pre Stressed” Vista Hat:

Does anyone but Craig get the irony? (It actually is way more beat up than it looks… the camera simply makes everything look better).

Craig HIGHLY recommends Sara Ford’s Blog. She’s recently been on a kick about VS settings. However, they are pretty useful…

Reflection

Here’s some pseudocode showing the difference between reflection and regular code:
Regular (calling a method from an instantiated object):
call obj.Method(arg)

Using Reflection:

obj = InstantiateObject(type = object)
MethodInfo = GetMethodInfo(obj, "Method")
MethodInfo.AddArgument("Arg", val = xxx)
MethodInfo.Call()


Simple, huh?

XNA Competition

Here’s the DreamBuildPlay competition for all you would-be game programmers.

PolyMorphic Podcast: http://polymorphicpodcast.com/

Pixel8 Podcast: http://pixel8.infragistics.com/default.aspx

Pat’s infamous blog post about Spore porn (“Sporn”): http://www.worldiv.com/blog/?p=404. Maybe this could be our co-host-ghost, Mister Jugs…

Gravatars
See what all the hype is for yourself at http://www.gravatar.com.

Hungarian Notation
Here is the link for the Simonyi article about hungarian notation: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa260976(VS.60).aspx

Listener Voicemail
Tweak and Geek highly recomment GrandCentral (http://www.grandcentral.com) for all your Internet voicemail needs. And those needs are numerous and necessary!

http://www.guam.net/ – High Speed Internet in Guam! Here’s the technology of Tweak and Geek:

• Headsets
  • Pat uses Logitech, Craig uses Plantronics .Audio 550 DSP (Kevin, you know all about DSP)
• Skype
  • Here is an interesting blog entry about the whole Skype /Supernode thing
• Audacity
• Levellator
• LAME
• WordPress
• PodPress
• iTunes

Apple’s press release on the new iPod Touch and iPhone Models:http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2008/02/05iphoneipodtouch.html

Rumors

• M$ offers to Buy Yahoo! – Google throws self off bridge in despair.
  • (We’re late to get this edited! Yahoo! wants more money.)
• nVidia/Ageia (including Intel/Havok)
  • (Late on this too! nVidia plans to release PhysX technology as an update for the 8000 series cards.)
• Time Warner experiments with tiered internet pricing. Good? Bad? You decide!
• Pat to sell www.worldiv.com for $15,000, and Craig to go back to the breadline for his $0 blog (http://www.business-opportunities.biz/projects/how-much-is-your-blog-worth/)

Q: Why Podcast?
A: You make lots of money and meet lots of hot women. (Not really – it’s fun).

A podcast we can both agree on : http://www.dotnetrocks.com

We’re pretty partial to the TWiT (This Week in Tech) podcasts: http://www.twit.tv

0) Errata

• T&G#4 Schroedinger’s Cat 20:12 – I said that the cat and the atom device are in a transparent box. That actually should have been an opaque box. This was brought to my attention by my Social Worker cousin Lynn. I got her to read the book Alice in Quantumland a few years ago, and she knows about as much about QM as anybody. I highly recommend that book… if we can get a Social Worker to pick out errata in a Quantum Mechanics Discussion, then we are doing a great job…
• “IM IN UR ____ ___ING UR _____” is based on a classic Starcraft game. The original phrase was “IM IN UR BASE KILLING ALL UR DOODZ”

Wired ran a “IN UR ___” Geekipedia page. Our favorite was “Im in ur quantum box…. maybe.” Or the top-rated one, “I’m in ur mom, making ur siblingz.”

1) Listener Email

• Ken’s Email about buying a new PC

Long time listener, first time caller.

I am considering buying a new computer and I was wondering at what point do you
decide that you can’t live with your last one and that you have to have a new
one?

Once you’ve made that decision, do you build your own piece by piece or do you
buy a fully built computer system?

• Megan’s Email About CD Digitization

The glory days of jewel cases are over; I want to digitize my CD collection.
What’s the best strategy and software to use? Keeping in mind that you,
Craig, have made me covetous of an iPod Touch.

• Nate’s email about Blu Ray

Warner Backs Blu-ray, Tilting DVD Battle
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/05/technology/05disc.html?ref=media

I read this article today which is about how Warner Bros is now going to use
only Blu-Ray which means that Blu-ray will be the leading High Def DVD
format.
I was wondering what you guys thought about this?

Is Blu-Ray really the superior format or has HD DVD just lost out.
It seems like Blue-Ray is a lot more expensive.

• • Several studios have been exercising “out” clauses in HD-DVD contracts — focus may be shifting to Blu-Ray
  • HD-DVD far from dead yet — still has MS behind it

2) What Consumer Electronics to buy with a windfall – the T&G buyer’s guide

• Noise Canceling Headphones
• Digital Camera
• Nintendo DS
• GPS
• PC paraphernalia:
  • ShuttlePro V2 – great for music, video, other stuff — Pat even uses it in Visual Studio
  • Graphics tablet such as Wacom Graphire
• Wii

3) Talk about WorldIV Gameblog Interviews

1) Answer listener email

Laurie from Atlanta

You are my only hope Tweak and Geek! Please help me find some cool gift ideas for the geeks and tweaks in my life! It would be great if you each could find 1-5 cool things this Christmas that you think every geek and tweak should have.

Geek gifts-

• Virgin Electric Charter

Fly to space! Only $1,764,000.00

• Dell XPS World of Warcraft edition

Because you NEED a laptop with 4GB RAM, SLI video cards, and a PhysX accelerator. $4,499.00… but can it run PacMan?

• The XO Laptop Give one Get One Program
  

• Amazon Kindle

Not only does it up the ante, it also raises the bar… E-Ink is rad… check out here how it works!

Geeky Stocking stuffers (www.thinkgeek.com): Yes they still have a snail mail catalog.

• Action Figures:
  • Star Trek (TOS)
  • Einstein
  • WoW
  • Zelda Twilight Princess
• Awesome T-Shirt – while(!Succeed == try())
• I’m in UR ______________ ____________ing UR ________________
• #include <beer.h>

Remember when an iPod was a pretty darned nice present?

lolcats: http://www.icanhascheezburger.com

2) Quantum Mechanics Discussion – is observation lowering the life expectancy of the universe? What does observation mean?

I have never been an oil refiner, but if it is in fact, fun, then I apologize to all of the kickin’ oil refiners out there.

Wave Function (Ψ)
Bra and ket vectors (<Ψ|, |Ψ>)
Psi and Linear algebraic operators

Planck’s constant: h = 6.626068 × 10^-34 J s (very tiny)

I think Pat has Planck’s Constant patience left with me because I take so long to do show notes

Cool Quantum Stuff:

• Flash Memory
• Schrodinger’s Cat – effect of observation – The ASPCA will have something to say about this Gedanken experiment. (“Not being dead” <=> “alive”)

Humanity’s observation effects on the universe – For fun, sci-fi novel Quarantine by Greg Egan has this as its main theme.

Book: Where Does the Weirdness Go? David Lindley

3) Cool WorldIV Interviews (Kudos to Pat on great execution)

• Cuppytalk
• The Ancient Gaming Noob
• Rampant Coyote

4) Wow! it’s WoW

My coworkers should read this.

This podcast was actually recorded on the event horizon of the black hole Cygnus X-1.

Our “Genius-Level” podcast:
http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx
tweakandgeek.com/podcast : GENIUS

The level indicates the reader level, not the level of the host.

Blog Trackback Discussion
Trackbacks were originated in August 2002 by Sixapart’s MovableType.

Trackbacks – Manual process
Pingback – Supports automatic discovery of link

Trackback spec: blogger

Maine Tech Geeks has 2364 spam trackbacks. That’s even more than the spam comments we get! (of which we have 33).

WorldIV is even worse, with over 170,000 spam comments (including many trackbacks — WordPress and Akismet anti-spam software don’t differentiate these well) and only 363 real comments.

Kitchenaid

“Bing Cherry”
Pasta Maker – Broke the mixer!
What do I use it for?
Cakes
Bread dough

Time Management
Problems
Approaches/Tools

• Products and Books – Franklin Covey
• Book – Time Management for System Administrators

DIA: “Do It Anyway.” Allocate time specifically for less-enjoyable tasks.

Our explanation of Web 2.0 c0uld have been bettr.

Online Communities
MySpace
Pros

• Easy To Use
• Popular
• Large community of “developers”
• Easy to manage friends
• Blog incorporated (has RSS)
• Easy to hook up (in the non-Biblical sense) with old friends and colleagues.

Cons

• Sketchy – or is it?
• Hard to customize
• Music on profiles is annoying
• Security Issues
• Kind of ramshackle
• Everytime I do 1 thing, I get a bunch of spam friend requests

No offense is intended to any gay Mormons who may listen to the Myspace segment — this story is just intended to highlight that you never know what might be behind a friend link. For a site that discusses homosexuality and Mormonism with far more sensitivity than a couple of grouchy software developers will, visit Affirmation at www.affirmation.org.

Pat’s fiance does indeed have great hair.

The IBM mainframe email system is, in fact, an online thing, just not a web-based one.

As of September 7, 2007, there are 200 million users on MySpace (not 180 million). My hyperbole needs honing.

Facebook
PRO

• Custom applications (Scrabulous)
• Import friends from GMail
• Kind of fun
• Tagging pictures
• Extended network

CON

• Confusing Interface
• Weird friend process

The news sources don’t seem to agree on much with the Microsoft purchase. Microsoft paid $240M for a share of Facebook, and nobody knows quite how much Facebook is worth.

Facebook opened registration to everyone in September 2006.

After the Facebook segment, I went back and found out that if you click the “home” link, some of the missing features complained about were right there. But seriously, could they have hidden it any better?

LinkedIn

We’re not sure, but some resources [1] report that 98% of all email on the Internet is LinkedIn invitations

PRO

• Mostly professional
• Import friends

CON

• Mostly for careers, but is basically irrelevant
• Limited usefulness
• Get people I never heard of from companies where I worked

Twitter

• Kind of fun
• Import friends
• Can update Facebook status

Forums

• Open discussion around a topic/theme
• Subject to flamewars, spam, and low signal-to-noise ratio.
• Older format, much experience, around since dial-up/BBS days

Blogs

• Ego-oriented, more focus
• Discussion, but often less than forums
• Very popular
• Very Web 2.0 / RSS / etc
• Blogging Granny – http://amis95.blogspot.com/ (Spanish)

John C. Dvorak… you’re welcome.

The Dubai Blog is actually quite entertaining.

MMORPGs

• Game – not “really” serious
• Nick Yee’s Daedalus Project
• Social aspect is driving factor in longevity / player retention
• Big money – WoW estimated around $60M+/month
• Big business — IBM leadership study http://www.seriosity.com/leadership.html
• Second Life – MMORPG?

Sweden was in fact the country that set up the embassy in 2nd Life.

See the Second Life U2 Concert here.

Outlook

• Social aspects of Internet use dominate tech
• Tech will grow to improve mashups — ref: Google OpenSocial http://code.google.com/apis/opensocial/
• Are social networks really relevant?

[1] This blog post

iPod Touch

There are no Touch-dedicated holding devices — armpads, cases, etc — as far as we know yet, which is a gripe we forgot to mention. Pat couldn’t remember during the show, but he uses a Moshi iPod iPouch, and it works really well. A bonus is that simply inserting and removing your iPod from the pouch generally cleans the screen nicely. IThere’s also room to store a pair of earbuds, or (randomly) iPod Touch stand clip, and a spare battery for my noise-cancelling headphones.

Our comments on 64-bit Windows also reminded us — the iPhone or iPod Touch will not work properly on 64-bit Windows. The iPod is no longer just an external drive that plays its own media — you can’t see the “drive” when you connect it.

Also, as promised, “some blog somewhere” pointed out that the iPod Touch has a shortcut for returning to the Music controls by doubleclicking the Home button.

We are very sorry that we called people who didn’t predict the phone-less iPhone “brain dead.” That’s awfully insensitive for our brain-dead listeners.

And Pat was completely lying when he said “I’ll edit that part out.”

Windows Vista

To summarize our confusing comments on the topic: UAC is annoying, but it’s not the killer many folks have made it out to be.

We know that there are a lot of under-the-cover and technological differences between Home Premium and Ultimate. We were joking only about the lack of obvious, user-visible differences.

Yes, the task switching love is sarcasm.

.NET Rocks! is one of our shared favorite podcasts, with pretty good technical content for .NET developers.

Vista and XP seem similar, as discussed around 26 minutes… until you try to write an installer for it! We didn’t get around to discussing that.