Respect Authority

Nerds everywhere shit their pants with joy today, as G1 — Google’s first attempt at phone-making and latest attempt at world domination — hit stores. Lines at T-Mobile locations, Google’s slightly-odd choice for the G1’s service provider, snaked around corners as overeager employees passed around trays of pastries to waiting patrons, who probably said things like “Fuck pastries, where is my phone?!”

Ironically, the phone’s release comes the same day that Apple said iTastic sales of the iPhone were responsible for its stellar fourth-quarter earnings. Profits jumped 26% as the iPhone 3G outsold leading smart-phone competitor Blackberry.

So the real question is — what are nerds to do? I picture this as the same sort of dilemma they would face if both Star Wars and Dune were playing on TV at the same time. (Although really, any self-respecting nerd would have all six Star Wars movies on special-edition DVD). Google has long been the purveyor of innovative search tools online, and things like GMail and Google Maps’ Street View have completely overhauled the way we think about the Internet. A true testament to the company’s technological prowess (and pop culture relevance), “Google” at some point became its own verb. Read More ›

Bill Gates and his liberal economic ideology are out to destroy America and prevent his granddaughter from being the Paris Hilton of 2050.

Recently, Bill Gates, in his capacity as world’s richest human, went on Fareed Zakaria’s show to talk about broker frownathon ‘08. In the interview, Gates was asked to defend capitalism, discuss the extinction of low-skill American jobs, and critique education. He also was asked about his plan to short-change his kids upon his terminal obsolescence.

In response, Bill gave an articulate explanation for why he’s not creating a “Gates Family”. While he was at it, he also provided a brilliant explanation for why the Estate Tax is not only justifiable but morally right and pragmatically patriotic. Some more of that one’s crazy spread the wealth nonsense I keep hearing about.

Here’s part of his interview:

Watch the full interview here.

[Fareed Zakaria's GPS]

This just in, robots now at least… 16 times scarier than before!

As if the chilling video proving that it is indeed possible to make a robot with Down Syndrome wasn’t scary enough, here’s something even more terrifying: facts. This future agent of the apocalypse is called the Hybrid Assistive Limb (HAL) and has 50 sensors and a series of motors to help it move. Additionally, it’s been made to help disabled people move better… and chop them up into a thousand little pieces while they sleep, no doubt. The robot was based on an actual 5 year old… uh, yeah, apparently the one from The Grudge.

Robotics company Cyberdyne Inc is going to begin producing these mechanical horrors, developed by Osaka University’s Robotics Department, on a mass scale on Friday. Friday, an army of future grocery store baggers and McDonald’s mop-pushers… Saturday, the world! Read More ›

As if Google wasn’t already keyword-searching my e-mails and potentially stockpiling all the information necessary to become the real Big Brother, now the Internet search behemoth is offering to censor my alcoholism. 

This week, a Gmail engineer with many drunken regrets and a lot of time on his hands, unveiled Mail Goggles, a Gmail application that asks users a few math questions before they send an email, effectively giving them time to, you know, think things through. 

Appropriately, the application has a default weekend/night setting, though particularly scrupulous e-mailers (and full-time alcoholics) can set it to run more often. Similarly, completely unscrupulous drunks, like myself, can turn it off, and thereby continue to embarrass themselves on a weekly basis, uncensored and unleashed. 

Unfortunately, Google has yet to come up with a solution for drunk texting, drunk dialing, drunk fighting, drunk hook-ups, drunk walks of shame, drunk stomach pumping, or drunk murder. But really, it’s only a matter of time.

Back in July, Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer started up a rumor mill by mentioning that Apple’s ridiculous profit margins would take a hit during a “future product transition”. Pretty soon after that, the project code name, Brick, started circulating around the Apple rumor websites (yes there’s more than one and yes they’re all devoted solely to Apple).

It turns out the “Brick” may not be a product at all but in fact a revolutionary manufacturing process in which a solid brick (get it?) of aluminum is lasered and water blasted into, perhaps, a new MacBook that’s rumored to be released on Oct. 14th.

Forming a laptop out of a single brick of aluminum would eliminate weak joints, screws, dead metal weight, and Chinese girls. Plus, having the factory in Apple’s backyard not only gives Steve more opportunity to micromanage everything but wisely takes advantage of the cheap labor market emerging in our new, freedom loving, third world country.

Also, Apple’s innovative move might have something to do the future of American manufacturing, energy production, and corporate self-preservation during awkward international falling outs. Whatever.

[Computer World]

When people ask me about space, and you’d be surprised at how often they do, I tend to display a notable lack of enthusiasm for the idea of traveling there. This is to say I make comments like “No way in fuck am I going to space.” My reasons are numerous: I have a distinct fear of wide open areas, I wouldn’t look good in a spacesuit, and space doesn’t have TiVo (yet). But while I was sitting back, bitching and moaning about zero-gravity training and the unflattering texture of impenetrable fabrics, people who think of and subsequently invent stuff to make our lives easier (scientists) were discovering a way to get people like myself in orbit. Read More ›

Regardless of the fact that music today, for the most part, just isn’t very good, the four major music labels and SanDisk are teaming up to release albums on a special version of SanDisk’s CompactFlash memory cards, commonly used in digital cameras.

Photo Credit: AP

Another ill-fated move at driving profit into a dying industry, the SanDisk slotMusic mini flash memory cards can be read by some cell phones and PDAs, MP3 players, car stereos and your computer with a USB adapter. Not that anyone will buy them except for a curious few, especially considering to start they’re only releasing 29 albums on the format — a pretty pathetic number to try to represent the vast amount of popular music available across a wide range of genres. Nonetheless, Usher, Weezer, Elvis, and the veritable legend Akon (jokes!) are some of the artists that will be accounted for in the initial launch, which is due before the holiday season.

Personally, I think it’s going to be a hideous failure, invoking nightmare flashbacks of the long deceased Mini Disc, and here’s why. Read More ›