Archive for November, 2008

That’s balls.

Posted in Politics on November 29th, 2008 by Joshua

I just heard about this event. Apparently, someone stood up and shouted, “Tyrant! You are a tyrant!” at Attorney General Robert Mukasey while he was giving a speech last week. Mukasey fainted a little bit later into his speech.

It turns out that the guy who yelled it was a judge. That’s awesome.

µTorrent vs. Transmission: Which is faster?

Posted in Technology on November 28th, 2008 by Jeff

utorrent vs. transmission

µTorrent.

I tested the current Mac clients of µTorrent versus Transmission using the .iso file for the latest version of Ubuntu. Both clients were fast, reaching the maximum of the 1.2 MB/sec connection, but while Transmission’s download speed varied wildly between 300k and the 1.2 MB/sec cap (and Activity Monitor bore the variance out), µTorrent hit the 1.2 MB/sec mark early and maintained it all thoroughout the transfer. A second test narrowed the gap, but the edge still went to µTorrent.

This has been my experience using uTorrent on Windows also; µTorrent has always been a faster client than any other GUI torrent client out there. Transmission might have the edge with the elegant, tiny UI and the lovely web interface, but if you want the data fast, use µTorrent.

But this was just my highly unscientific test. What’s been your experience?

George W. Bush’s horrible e-mail secret, revealed

Posted in Politics, Technology on November 16th, 2008 by Jeff


From the New York Times article about Obama having to surrender his Blackberry1:

Three days before his first inauguration, George W. Bush sent a message to 42 friends and relatives that explained his predicament.

“Since I do not want my private conversations looked at by those out to embarrass, the only course of action is not to correspond in cyberspace,” Mr. Bush wrote from his old address, G94B@aol.com. “This saddens me. I have enjoyed conversing with each of you.”

LOLOLOL He’s got mail LOLOLOL

1 This is idiotic, by the way. Concerns about security? All devices like that have remote wipe. Presidential Records Act? How hard is it to back up email — sure, the current administration couldn’t do it, but apparently they had enough trouble with the internet that they had to go with AOL. But whatever, the dude in chief should have an iPhone anyhow.

Twitter is fucking retarded

Posted in Technology on November 11th, 2008 by Jeff

So I played with it for a while. Cracked jokes. Followed famous people. Followed not-so-famous people. Geolocated myself. Posted pictures via twitpic or douchetweet or fuckchirp or whatever lamprey-like fly-by-night jackass service reared up to add the moronic and superfluous features that the folks at Twitter were smart enough to originally eschew.

And my verdict is: It’s retarded. It’s AOL keywords.

It’s the CB radio of the 2000’s.

For all the connectivity Twitter supposedly offers, it offers no genuine connections at all. Everything is passive. You send out a “tweet”1 into the universe with no idea or clue that anyone will answer. You have no idea if anyone heard you. You have no indication that anyone cares. It’s just a firehose of the pointless flotsam and jetsam of cultural minutia and lifestyle effluvium, delivered in a lightly distracting, OM NOM NOM-style all-you-can-eat infotainment/ego-casting stream to whatever millennial-enabled wireless device you’re willing to hook into it2.

It’s like talking to yourself, out loud, on the bus. And it offers just about the same amount of useful feedback.

If Twitter is the future of online communication, or the future of blogging and/or journalism: I’m out. I want the communication I spend my ever-decreasing amount of free time on to be richer, clearer; not constrained by arbitrary limitations based on the maximum length of SMS text messages.

1 I never thought I’d hate a single word more than the word ‘blog,’ but here we are.

2 Also see: Facebook.

Incase only publishes positive reviews

Posted in Technology on November 9th, 2008 by Jeff


Dear Incase,

I know for a fact a couple months ago I reviewed this case on your site:

http://goincase.com/products/detail/protective-cover-cl59038

I reviewed the case fairly and accurately, and yet, you don’t have my review up there. Admittedly: My review was negative, because the case I purchased initally was made of stretchy, faulty rubber and distorted itself. It would slip off but in the meantime it allowed all this crunk to slip around back and stain and discolor my iPhone. Awesome!

Granted, the initially defective case was replaced (after complaint) free of charge, but now, the replacement has ripped at the top on the ‘tread seam’ near the headphone jack (as others’ have as well). So while I like the look of it — it looks like a mountain bike tire, in a good way — I haven’t been blown away by the quality of the case.

I’m a pretty loyal Incase customer — your MacBook Pro bag is quite nice — and I like the look and feel of this case enough that I visited your site with the intention of buying yet another case, faulty or not. But given that you nixed my previous review, I have to ask, why even bother having reviews at all? My advice is: If you’re not going to play fair and put up critical reviews, just take down that feature altogether. As it stands, it’s more than a little deceptive to only keep the positive reviews up.

~Jeff

I’m very proud of you, America

Posted in Politics on November 5th, 2008 by Joshua
I Voted.

You did it right.