Categories
personal

Easier AND Better

Great video explaining the video rental store (with just a touch of walking uphill, both ways). Clearly they’re a lot more nostalgic about it than I am, but maybe I’m weird for not appreciating having to spend 2 hours driving all around the city to find the one Blockbuster that still had a copy of whatever we were trying to watch that night.

Somehow, I don’t think I’ll be wanting to trade in iTunes, Netflix, Amazon Prime and my media server for a return to that any time soon.

Categories
personal

Cross Platform

I’m kind of surprised that Gruber missed the real zinger of Frank Shaw’s comment that MS Office is cross-platform, while iWork isn’t.

• … come with full versions of Office 2013, including Outlook, not non-standard, non-cross-platform, imitation apps that can’t share docs with the rest of the world.

In what universe is Office cross-platform? Yes, there is a suite called MS Office [$YEAR] for Windows and for OS X, but those are in no way the same apps, and don’t even read documents the same way! Hell, Office is even incompatible with itself, with how many different formats over how many different versions, spread across two platforms? Shaw’s definition of standards and compatibility clearly differ from mine.

Categories
personal

Solving the Congressional Crisis: A Proposal

Its a terrible movie, but an excellent idea:

Categories
politics

Real Reasons

I’ve been having trouble writing about the shutdown and impending economic apocalypse because its just so stupid. And insane. One thing is clear, this is entirely the fault of the Tea Party for being a pack of selfish xenophobic assholes, and the rest of the GOP, John Boehner in particular, for being cowards.

The other thing that’s clear is that the Tea Party and the GOP leadership are lying about their motivations. If they really cared about the deficit, they wouldn’t be cheering a shutdown that’s costing hundreds of millions of dollars every day and harming countless small businesses. They wouldn’t be threatening to violate their oaths of office by destroying the United States’ financial standing. Its becoming increasingly clear that this is just the same song its always been. Paul Krugman said it best today:

It’s about anxiety over a changing America — the multiracial, multicultural society we’re becoming — and anger that Democrats are taking Their Money and giving it to Those People.

You can’t see it right now, but I’m totally making my shocked face.