Geoff said 12 minutes later

Man you have way too much time on your hands.

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GJ said about 1 hour later

Nope, I just make sure to inject some fun into 70 hour weeks. Otherwise, you go nuts.

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Geoff said about 7 hours later

Define nuts. Injecting your printer with "Me Want Cookie" sounds a little nuts. :)

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GJ said about 12 hours later

Actually, programmers have been writing software bombs that do that and lock the hardware until someone enters "Oreo" on the terminal. So, to avoid confusion, it now says "WHAT ARE *YOU* LOOKING AT, BUB?"

Also, nuts is a relative terms. There's nuts, as in inherently odd (that'd be me), and nucking futs, as in shoot up a post office. I was referring to the latter term.

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GJ said about 12 hours later

Also, this isn't my printer. That'd be no fun at all.

Geoff said about 2 hours later

Well said.

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GJ said about 3 hours later

Socialism in its purest form does not work well, for much the reason this parable claims. At the end of the day, humans are competitive creatures, and human progress comes about from this competition. However, capitalism in its purest form also has its problems, most notably the total lack of compassion for the poor and unfortunate. We as the residents of the USA tend to walk in the middle between these two extremes. Few of us wish to see the poor and sickly suffer, but at the same time, we want the ability to earn an unlimited amount of wealth and not have the government take it away to do with as it sees fit.

It's striking that balance that makes government so hard. Right now, we are shifting towards socialism, as evidenced by the push for socialized medicine and the takeover of the banking and automotive industries. Does that mean we're going to turn into France overnight? No. In fact, that's the nice thing about our government. We'll move towards socialism long enough to correct some of the sins of the capitalists, but at some point the electorate will decide they've had enough of "sharing" and capitalism-friendly politics will begin to win elections again.

Geoff said about 13 hours later

I think the fact that these folks on TV keep ripping on GM products isn't helping. I hate to tell Mr. Stewart but that North American car of the year he is referring to is the Malibu, which is a damn good car from the reviews I've read...and it looks good too. Compared to the rest of it's class, it was only edged out by the Toyota Camry...beating the Nissan Altima and Honda Accord in Motor Trends comparison test. Most considered it the most stylish of the group, both inside and out. Not too shabby for a lousy GM car.

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GJ said about 14 hours later

Stewart got the NA Car of the Year thing wrong, correct. They were trying to play it up funny, but to those of us who know what he's talking about, it fell flat. The rest of the segment was still pretty freaking amusing.

GM gets ripped on because, let's face it, they made a lot of crap over the years. Here's my point: the Malibu is very highly rated, higher than the Camry or the Accord, yet both of those are outselling the Malibu at least 2-1. Why? Because GM burned a lot of people over the past few decades with crappy cars. Even if the newer cars are better, you cannot rebuild the bridges you burn overnight. GM will simply have to come out of this way smaller, and learn to do the car business the right way all over again if they want to simply survive. Too long, they've believed they were too big to fail. Guess what? The party is over.

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Geoff said about 17 hours later

No doubt. I still found it funny, but it isn't helping GM's image by reinforcing the "old" GM. That's all.

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Steve said 2 days later

I just want to thank you guys for paying into the unemployment fund, as I'll probably be reaping the rewards of that due to our uniformed public and stupid government. Instead of constantly saying we build crappy stuff, why don't you ask, why? Why? Because our competitors get major financial help from their goverments (not just now, but for many years now - 0% interest loans in Japan for their automakers). Because our competitors make parts in low income countries (which we are finally getting around to doing, to the detrement of the American workforce). Because our country allows anyone to sell anything here, while we struggle to be ALLOWED to sell stuff in some other countries. So, in order for us to sell cars here at a reasonable price, we need to make them with cheap parts built by Americans who get paid (and in many cases deserve) reasonably good wages.

So, thanks again for that unemployment check. Parsla's been living off it for a while, I'm likely to shortly, since Obama doesn't think cutting 50% of our workforce was cutting "deep enough." How the heck does he think we'll be able to engineer better cars with half the people? Oh wait, the same way our bosses are telling us...."just work harder."

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Geoff said 2 days later

At this rate just about everyone is going to be unemployed.

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GJ said 2 days later

Let me get this straight. Detroit was making crappy cars since, gosh, at least the 1970s, probably earlier. At that point, they were the kings of the automotive world, and the crappy cars syndrome was not a symptom of a lack of funds, it was a sin of management greed. That's the primary crack in the door that the imports needed. The first generation of imports were crappy in there own right, but they began to sell as Americans tired of the crap iron they were getting from the Big 3.

Now comes the oil crunch of the 70s. Imports, which are generally small and more fuel-efficient than the dinosaurs being sold by Detroit, sell in even greater numbers. Detroit doesn't seem to take this seriously--they build a few amazingly crappy small cars and wonder why they don't sell like hotcakes.

Cue the 1980s. The imports have managed to build an image of quality, while the lack of quality continues to plague the domestics. More and more and more people dump US-made vehicles for Accords, Civics, Camrys and Corollas.

Finally, in the 1990s, Detroit starts to realize that they're losing this game, and begin to build better cars here and there. However, as the cash crunch settles in, the price of fuel drops bigtime and they find the American public more than willing to buy big SUVs that they can make a killing on. OK, I get it--they focus on building trucks of all sorts to sell to the public, and the bleeding is stemmed for a bit.

However, they all but abandoned the car game to the imports. When the oil prices went back up and trucks took a hit, Detroit was in trouble, having to turn the now huge design manufacturing system to cars--something they'd been neglecting for a long time, and now have to beat the imports who are dominating this game. Not surprisingly, they made little headway, as former customers who now buy imports are rather skeptical of Detroit's shiny new fleets.

It's at this point that the economy goes to hell in a handbasket, and the Big 3 are headed over the cliff of no return without government help thanks to this lovely set up.

Now, there is no doubt that the trade policies don't help. Nor does the labor union, or all of the other woes. But please don't make me laugh by insisting that the US auto companies didn't dig their own economic grave. They did. The government is now trying to come up with a way to preserve some part of the domestic auto industry, if possible, but it will look nothing like it used to once the process is done. As I've been saying since this all started, the US auto business needs to shrink to fit the role it now plays--that is the only way they'll ever be successful in the long run.

GJ said about 2 hours later

Not looking for an argument...I just thought this sign was funny.

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GJ said about 14 hours later

Oh, and I think the word they really wanted here was "rationalization." That gem gets people in trouble no matter what their spirituality and moral compass.

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Marc said 1 day later

Maybe they meant "Reisen." It is Lent after all and those are delicious.

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GJ said 1 day later

Marc wins the internet today.

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Geoff said 2 days later

You can thank Al Gore. He did invent it after all.

GJ said 28 minutes later

Nanny state action. California is the king of the nanny states. New York isn't far behind.

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Geoff said about 1 hour later

God forbid you put your window down and drive around for 5 minutes before turning on your AC.

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GJ said about 1 hour later

Which is more fuel-efficient than using your A/C anyway at lower speeds.

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Kristen said about 5 hours later

As the owner of a less than stellar looking black car, I hope they plan to offer some sort of trade-in bonus so that I can rid myself of the evil black energy sucking car. So I can go buy an SUV (but not a black one)

GJ said 38 minutes later

Oh, like, wow.

The argument with the activist and the mayor was very similar to disagreements Abby and I get into. The smack applied to the other woman? Yeah, I've seen that happen, too. And yes, if she did that to Aaron when he was say, three, he'd first look to make sure we were watching, and then immediately start wailing and carrying on, no matter how slight the hit was.

This was precisely the same thing. That shriek, coming from a supposedly grown woman? Are you kidding me?

As for a tag, why not "tantrum"?

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Marc said about 1 hour later

I liked how she supported the entire "fall" by holding the arm of the chair all the way to the floor. What would have been funnier is if during her scene, she threw herself to the floor and actually injured herself. At least then the battery charge would be worth it.

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GJ said about 2 hours later

My guess is the battery charge will get el-droppo-ed

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Geoff said about 3 hours later

um yeah, smacked in the back of the head with a magazine/newspaper...give me a break.

Geoff said about 13 hours later

This won't end console wars, not by a long shot. There is nothing unique about the actual GAME PLAY. Who gives a rats butt how it is distributed. It may be where things are heading eventually, but good luck getting 5MB's on your local broadband to stream HD. We have pretty good cable broadband here in Rochester, and I'm lucky to get half that on my network.

The Wii was a revolution because it changed the way we played games. Until someone can top how we interact with games, I see nothing revolutionary about this system. Sounds more like a business model than a gaming console.

I don't see this going anywhere unless they have a HUGE advertising budget, and some kick butt games designed only for this system.

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GJ said about 16 hours later

You miss the point. First, 5MB broadband isn't very far off--you can already get it in many countries, it's just not generally available here in this backwater country. Second, and more importantly...the client hardware is irrelevant to the game being played.

Got an XB360, but want to play a PS3 title today? You're out of luck. This system--no problem.

Got an older computer, way behind specs to play any games released in the past three years? Today, you're out of luck. This system--no problem, since the game runs on the server hardware.

So, Geoff--it ends the console wars by making consoles obsolete. Make sense now?

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Geoff said about 16 hours later

Kind of. But generally speaking the games sell the system. If this virtual console has no good games, then you still need your console. That's the one thing most consoles are usually good at providing...a few killer games. Obviously you have your universal EA, SEGA, etc... games, but Nintendo isn't giving up Mario. Will the Rock Band instruments works with this system? Who knows. Time will tell whether THIS will be the ultimate system. It's definitely a cool idea...but they are going to need some serious server space and power to run this on a global scale.

And about Broadband...read this puppy:
http://www.jsonline.com/blogs/entertainment/41834997.html

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GJ said about 18 hours later

He's talking about broadband as it exists today in the States. Remember my "backwater" comment? The USA is way behind Europe and Japan / Korea in terms of broadband speed available to consumers. What's required by this service exists in other locations--and the USA doesn't dominate the worldwide consumer market like it once did, so they could potentially roll this out and not have to worry about the US catching up right away.

You talk about games selling the systems--I would agree. With the glaring exception of Nintendo, however, the big sellers on console systems are not made or distributed by the console makers. If an alternative arrives that can wipe out the upgrade cycle, it will cream the hardware market.

Now, of course, you bring up a good point about backwards compatibility. That'll be an interesting nut to crack, especially for games like GH which have system-specific hardware. GH isn't the end-all, be-all software, if anything it's at its apex and will decline from here. I don't know that it will be as big a problem in a year's time.

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Geoff said about 18 hours later

This may be on a topic all on it's own, but is our inferior communications systems have more to due with our geographic size? By comparison, Japan and other European countries are tiny. Probably a bit easier to lay down FIOS lines in those smaller countries. And of course, Japans invents just about every cool electronic device there is, so it's natural they get dibs first.

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GJ said about 19 hours later

It is more due to politics than geography. If it was geography, speeds would be lickety split in the cities, wouldn't they?

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Geoff said about 19 hours later

Guess I'm thinking more about TV. This digital transition is like pulling teeth....

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GJ said 1 day later

I've been digital for as long as I can remember. :)

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Geoff said 1 day later

Yeah it must be those yahoos in Montana who have giant antennas for watching terrestrial analog and extraterrestrial aliens

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GJ said 1 day later

Speaking of streetlights, anyone catch the one Google Street View caught the other day?

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Marc said 1 day later

I'm very skeptical this product will work well, let alone ever exist. This smells like future vaporware to me. If it does come out though, it certainly could be a big player in the market.

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GJ said 1 day later

It *is* the guy from WebTV, and we all know how well that worked out.

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Geoff said 1 day later

Yeah I find it hard to believe they have an infrastructure to support this. There would be some serious server load and bandwidth needed to run this. Not to mention storing everything you do on the their system?

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GJ said 1 day later

It's called virtualization, dude. It's been around before, this time around they call it cloud computing or somthing asinine like that. It does take some serious horseypower, but it's physically doable. It's the economic model I'm trying to figure out. Ad-revenue won't support this puppy.

Geoff said about 14 hours later

Oh boy. I may be home schooling my kid if this garbage reaches the enlightened world. I love how they claim there are no transitional fossils to be found. Maybe it's time they actually pull their face out of a bible and go to a museum, or hell, do a Google search...but they probably think Google is the work of the devil.

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GJ said 1 day later

Oh, they go to a museum, all right--they go to this one. They crazy, it's strong in these folks.

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GJ said 1 day later

Breaking news--the creobots lost. Final vote tally was 7-7, and they needed a majority to take it. Many thanks to the Republicans on the board that refused to give up their principles to these creobot morons and keep this crap out of the science textbooks. Huzzah!

Of course, the fact that it was even this close is depressing. You can bet they won't give up on this battle anytime soon.

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Geoff said 1 day later

victory at last!

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GJ said 2 days later

Nope. The creobots added an amendment to allow teachers to discuss that there are differing theories on the age of the universe. I don't think they're talking about 13 billion vs 12.5 billion, I think the different theory they have in mind is about 6000 years old. Measure passed, 13-3. Idiocy reigns supreme in Texas.

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GJ said 4 days later

Yay, both creobot amendments were stripped off. See the Dallas News for the article.

GJ said about 16 hours later

double click this blocked vid, and it'll take you to youtube where you can actually see it