Brent Kearney

The look and feel of Windows 7 is great. It reminds me more of a Mac than any previous version of Windows.

Don Reisinger’s recent review on C|Net had some praise for the Apple Macintosh-like user interface of the Windows 7 beta, which apparently makes it more attractive, but on the other hand, compared to XP it is “harder to perform basic functions”, and, “Microsoft has placed too much stock in Apple’s design and not enough in usability.”

Microsoft Vista, the latest version of Windows, was criticized for poor performance, annoying user interface, lack of compatibility, and ongoing susceptibility to Internet malware. This provided a major incentive for people to switch to Mac, and was the subject of much ridicule by Apple’s marketing team.

I found one thing interesting in Reisinger’s review: given the significant user interface changes in the upcoming Windows 7, large businesses will have to consider the training and support costs of the upgrade. I think that another consideration should be: if they’re going to have to learn a new user interface anyways — one that looks like a Mac — why not go for the real thing, and be spared the traditional Windows headaches?

The next version of Mac OS (10.6) is likely to be out before Windows 7, and according to Apple, it will “set a new standard for quality”. It will also feature even greater compatibility with Microsoft server products, adding to the all-in-one platform’s attractiveness for the corporate IT department.

As the owner of the Heart Attack Grill explains the merits of lard-soaked buns and 4 ½-pound meat patties smothered in cheese and mayo in this interview, he remarks, “This is bad for you, and it’s going to kill you”. The dessert menu is composed of unfiltered cigarettes, and scantily clad girls in fantasy nurse costumes will push you to your car in a wheelchair.

I wonder if anyone has actually had a heart attack in the restaurant, half-way through a “triple bypass burger”…

The marketing angle here, and the fact that it is successful, is quite interesting. The tobacco industry could probably learn a thing or two from it. Let’s hope they don’t!

Mac Daily News reports that the folks at Costco found a use for Microsoft’s new media player, the Zune: as a table for selling iPods:

It’s hard to believe, but according to this MSN Japan article, many women are suffering from a strange affliction: perpetual orgasms. All day long, just standing there. One woman claims to have about 300 per day.

The condition, which lasts anywhere between a few days to a week, has been dubbed persistent sexual arousal syndrome (PSAS).

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Some mornings you just need that extra jolt of stimulation that comes with a double-Americano from your local coffee shop. There are other mornings, however, when even that won’t do the trick. Cafés here in Banff have come up with the solution: the atomic bomb of coffee beverages, the Canadiano. One café, to be consistent with the local ski culture, calls it the “caffeine avalanache”.

A Canadiano is just like an Americano, except that instead of adding hot water to the espresso, drip-coffee is added. Most patrons order it in the large cup. Zing!

This is really old news, but I just came across it yesterday, and thought it was pretty funny. The BBC reported on the phenomenon of Google Bombing in 2003, and to this day, a search for miserable failure still places George Bush’s home page first in line, despite the mountain of matches on the practice of Google bombing itself. Michael Moore is catching up, with a 6th place ranking. Friends tell me that the same search used to bring up the Whitehouse’s page on the war in Iraq.

Millionaire Michael Robertson has offered Floyd Landis, the Tour de France champion-in-question, $100,000 USD to take a polygraph test to prove his innocence in the face of doping allegations. The test would be filmed and broadcast on the Internet.

From the offer on his blog:

I want to believe you earned your victory through grit, determination and hard training, but I need proof. I would like to offer to pay you $100,000 to take a polygraph test. The test would cover the 2006 Tour de France and your alleged use of banned drugs leading up to and during the event.

Are there drugs that one can take to pass a polygraph test? :-)

The foundation of the first hotel in space was launched this month by the private company Bigelow Aerospace, whose mission command centre is in Las Vegas. They expect it to be commercially available by 2015.

This development has a lot of people considering the implications of sex in space. Zero-gravity nookie is among many people’s fantasies, but according to some space experts, the fantasy is probably better than the reality:

It’s a pretty messy environment…for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction,” Logan told an attentive audience over the weekend at the NewSpace 2006 meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada, sponsored by the Space Frontier Foundation.

Sex in zero-g is going to have to be more or less choreographed, “otherwise it’s just going to be a wild fling.”

The last thing people would want is a “wild fling”, right? Some people might be unconvinced by these harsh warnings!

Now this is funny. Although, also scary. You be the judge.

Debate has been raging over "Net Neutrality" recently, since it has come under attack from large telecommunications companies and mindless politicians. Large telcoms such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast have been spending millions to lobby (bribe) U.S. politicians to implement laws which would allow them to break the Internet into tiers, so that they may give better access for sites who pay them more money. So websites from big TV networks, Hollywood studios and other large entities with deep pockets would get a lot more bandwidth, and would therefore work a lot faster and reach more people. On the other hand, you and I, the consumers, would get whatever meagre bandwidth that the big telcos feel like allowing us. This represents a fundamental shift in the way that the Internet works: the empowering thing about the Internet is that it allows anyone with access to become a publisher of information, everyone’s voice can be heard with equal opportunity. That is a bit of an idealization, but its close enough for our purposes. The new regulations would remove all of that, and make the Internet more like the cable TV networks – consumers pay for content, and publishers pay for bandwidth.

Even though this is only in the United States, the change would be profound for the world. The DNS root domains are located in the USA, for now, and a large portion of the content of the Internet lives in the USA. So breaking ‘Net Neutrality there would be a very bad thing. Luckily, those in charge really have a good understanding of how it all works! :P

Chairman of the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee, Senator Ted Stevens, gave a public address to explain how he understands the Internet to work, and why breaking ‘Net Neutrality would be a good thing. If you want the whole story, listen to the speech here. If you want a summarized, and much funnier version of the now infamous “Series of Tubes” speech, see below.

If you’re not familiar with Ted Stevens, representative from Alaska, you may recall his successful lobby for the Bridge to Nowhere, a $233 million dollar bridge to a town of 50 people, so that they don’t have to ride the ferry that comes every 15 minutes. The bridge will cost $4.5 million per resident. I guess in a country whose government cooks its books to the tune of $2.3 trillion, anything goes.

Getting back to the funny part, since the Series of Tubes speech, ridicule on the Internet has been intense. It started on the super popular Daily Show, with Jon Stewart, which provided some excellent coverage of the speech, complete with explanatory diagrams directly from Ted Stevens’ mind. Its a great summary if you’re not interested in listening to the whole rambling, stuttering, almost incoherent speech.

Then came the techno remix of the speech, “DJ Ted’s Techno Tubes”, in mp3 format, which you can download here. It captures some highlights of the Series of Tubes speech: “Tubes! Tangled up tubes! The Internet is not a truck! Its a series of tubes!” Hilarious.

The latest incarceration is the Series of Tubes video to go along with the mp3. Watch it here, on YouTube. Another great contribution to the Internet culture.

Inside sources at The Stupidity Awards tell me that Ted Stevens is a nominee for the forthcoming 2006 World Stupidity Award. He has my vote!

The largest city in Canada draws mixed opinions from across the federation. Some love it, and most hate it. Those who love it are those who live there, for the most part. This man, Mr. Toronto, sets the bar for loving Toronto. "Toronto Appreciation Day" just rolled through Banff, and its on the way to Calgary and Edmonton, where I’m sure that it will receive a warm welcome. Be sure to leave some feedback for him; give Toronto the love that it deserves ;-).