A Nitrous Crouton

While still not a completely successful flight, congrats to SpaceX for getting through first stage burn, stage separation and a good chuck of the second stage burn on their second Falcon 1 launch attempt.

Naturally, footage from the launch is already up on YouTube.

When I saw that elements of the Iranian government had decided to be offended over the portrayal of the Persians in "300", my mind started to wander.

I saw a shirtless Dick Cheney screaming "Halliburtons! Tonight we dine in hell!", Condoleeza dancing with streamers in slow-motion, Ahmadinejad being kicked into a pit while holding a vial of enriched uranium. Then I had to slap myself.

Oh, and 20 minutes of the Security Council voting on a resolution in slow motion? Really boring.

After almost six years, I finally retired my old Qualcomm cell phone. Yes, I had been using it since 2001, and it was a refurb to begin with. The power supply connector was disintegrating and the battery finally reached a point where it couldn't hold a charge on stand-by, much less making a call. It was really time to let go.

As I mentioned a couple months back, even if the iPhone were available now, I couldn't justify being an early adopter, paying the hefty price and switching carriers. But yes, I do wish I could. I also loathe most cell phones. I especially loathe the typical Sprint selection.

Thankfully, they did have a palatable looking phone in their current line-up: I am now sporting a Sanyo SCP-7000. Good sound quality, better reception at my bar-challenged home, doesn't look stupid and rugged enough to knock around in my pocket. The UI sucks, of course, and the built-in ring options are amusingly painful, they sound like rejects from Super Mario World on the old Super Nintendo. That said, so far I'm happy with it, I didn't want a cameraphone, don't care about SMS or IM, web browsing or Bluetooth, I just wanted something to make and receive calls. Because in cell-phone terms I'm the grumpy old man rocking on the porch brandishing a cane.

While America undoubtedly is possessed of some overbearing cultural pride, other societies do need to remember the stones in glass houses adage when making fun of Americal Idol, NASCAR and Anna Nicole Smith. In case any European readers have managed to successfully managed to block it out of their minds again, let me remind you: Eurovision. Example A for 2007: Vampires Are Alive. Thanks a lot Switzerland.

Every once in a while, I run across a contest where I’m not entirely sure who the intended target audience would be for the prize. Today’s example is the Microsoft Office Live “I’m Going Places” Sweepstakes. The grand prize is ten flight hours for you and up to six friends on a private jet. While that’s a cool idea for a prize, the absurdly high value of the prize ($50,000), makes it a bit silly to offer as a prize. Since that value is taxable, you’re looking at anywhere from $10,000-$20,000 in federal and state taxes depending on your existing income bracket. To put it mildly, if you’re well off enough to even be able to consider affording that kind of a tax bill for a prize, you’re probably in the higher tax brackets, so we’ll say $20K. So the prize is basically a 60% discount on private jet fare for one long round trip, or two medium trips at a cost per head that takes you into first-class commercial territory even if you were able to split the cost between all the travelers. Microsoft can’t be targeting rank and file IT workers with this contest, who are they after, cheap-ass CTOs? Do they think a cheap-ass CTO is going to buy Office Live for their company? The mind boggles.

Gmail is pretty effective at filtering spam. This just makes me wonder how someone will eventually circumvent it on a wide scale, however temporarily.

My current thought is to use the YouTube purchase against themselves. I mean, gmail isn't going to filter 'Check out this neat video!' messages sent by itself, or short emails with YouTube links.

I wonder if we've yet seen the first male enhancement spam ad uploaded in the form of a YouTube video. If we haven't, we will.