These Aren't the Nuts You're Looking for

via Flickr

No Cure for Cancer

Every few days we see a story about a new treatment that is a promising cure for some disease or halts aging. These aren't from tabloid newspapers or websites. These are from respected scientific publications.

So if all these "breakthroughs" keep occurring, where are the results? I'm not mad, I'm just curious.

I guess things like "'Stress' protein could halt aging process, say scientists" make good headlines, but "nope, that didn't work!" does not. So we never hear when a new treatment or theory doesn't pan out.

I do wish the journals or publications would keep us updated on these. That way I'll know when I can start smoking again.

Why is Printer Ink so Expensive?

HP attempts to justify the (absorbantly) high cost of inkjet ink.

They fail miserably. So badly in fact, that it just looks like their hiding something, like heavy mark-ups.

IBM: We Now Own Commerce

IBM to buy Sterling Commerce

If you're not familiar with Sterling Commerce, this won't be a big deal to you. If you are, this is HUGE.

Sterling is one of the world's big EDI companies. They do business with literally anyone who does EDI. Frankly, I'm surprised AT&T sold it. Now, as you can imagine, this has big implications for anyone working with Sterling.

I was with a company that used Cognos, and when IBM bought them (and began changing everything around) the company I worked for did their best to get away from Cognos due to all the changes. Guess what? They also use Sterling. I'm guessing their going to have to try to do something else for that as well.

Kevin Costner Vows to Fight Oil Spill

I hear he's going to use old copies of Robin Hood to help sop up some of the mess....

Kindle for Android This Summer

Reading books is probably the most used function of my Android phone. I've got two different book readers on there now. Mostly I stick to public license books, but I've also purchased a couple. The problem is getting the free book readers to recognize the books I've purchased. It's doable, but it's kind of a pain once I get them transferred to the phone.

I'm pleased to see that Amazon will be offering their Kindle app for the Android market this summer. The app has been available for iPhones and iPads for a while.

The big news: you’ll be able to buy books right from Android devices.

For anyone who has used the Kindle app on the iPhone or iPad, not being able to do that is one of the big annoyances. If you want to buy anything, you’re kicked out of the app, back to the web, to make the purchase.

Yes, it’s silly. But both sides likely put up with it for their own reasons. From Apple’s perspective, the Kindle Store directly competes with its own iBookstore. From Amazon’s perspective, there’s no way they’d pay Apple a 30% commission to sell their titles as in-app purchases.

Android doesn’t present those issues.

Via Techcrunch

My Space is Closed

Does anyone actually use MySpace anymore? I know I shut down my site last year after a recruiter found it and told me "it didn't reflect well", whatever that means. That wasn't the entire reason I shut it down though.

One, I never looked at it and as far as I could tell, very few others did as well.
Two, MySpace is so eaten up with spammers and malware that it's dangerous just to look around.
Three, everyone seems to have migrated over to Facebook.

Whatever. I still have my blog listed on my resume. It may not reflect a corporate mentatiliy, but it's a (mostly) family friendly environment, and I talk about tech issues (and anything else that grabs my attention). On the whole, I've gotten more positive feedback than negative.

I guess that's all anyone can ask.

Build It Better

"Steve Huffman, co-founder of social news site Reddit, gave an excellent presentation (slides, transcript) on the lessons he learned while building and growing Reddit to 7.5 million users per month, 270 million page views per month, and 20+ database servers."

Awesome article with a couple of surprises. Screw database normaliztion! Wow, the ways they're achieving that volume would never have occurred to me.

Motion Induced Blindness

Creepy, especially if you think of this happening while you're driving.

Unromanticity

Time looks at whether or not marriage statistics are accurate.

Yeah, I know. This isn't even remotely tech related. I just wanted to blog about it because of "unromanticity". Heh.

Brilliant

I Always Suspected

Still Broke

The network technicians still haven't managed to fix the servers that went down when the UPS was replaced. We're still flooded with calls. Don't know how much I'm going to get done today. I ended up taking 167 calls yesterday myself (not certain how many my co-worker took - she was on a project most of the day).

Today's not looking much better.

Lone Wolf

On my own today at the office and I'm busier than a one-armed paper hanger.

The network technicians had to replace a UPS last night and apparently botched the job. Nothing is working this-morning and everyone is calling to let me know.

Problably light blogging today.

I Always Liked Kiwis

New Zealand women are regularly getting drunk and cruising around in packs looking for men to have sex with.

So, for all you single geeks out there, they also need computer programmers and network techs. Just sayin', that's all.

And This is Why I Don't Use Bing

Oh Please

Woman jailed for T-shirt: 'Didn't mean to offend anybody'

Her shirt said "I have the (slang for female body part) so I make the rules."
She intended to offend. That's obvious. If she thought differently, she's a complete idiot (not ruled out).

I for one am tired of seeing shirts like these in public. It's crass and obnoxious. I'm all for First Amendment rights, but let's use a little common sense. I don't want my kids seeing this stuff. I'm not saying we need to legislate against wearing vulgar shirts, but I am for personal responsibility. If you're going to wear one, especially in court, expect to be treated like this.

Also, if I see one where my kids can see it, expect me to say something. As a society, we have certain unspoken rules. You shouldn't curse in front of a lady or kids, you should behave in a civilized manner, and if you step over those lines, you should expect to have someone say something to you.

That Hurts More Than Just Pride

Volvo shows how to not demonstrate their auto-breaking feature (though the name might well be appropriate).



via TechEBlog

Gravitationaly Attractive

Three spacecraft flying three million miles apart are to fire laser beams at each other across the emptiness of space in a bid to finally prove whether a theory proposed by Albert Einstein is correct.

"Gravitational waves are the last piece of Einstein's theory of general relativity that has still to be proved correct."

Gravity is such a weak molecular force, I can see why they need to use this extreme method to test. I wish them the best of luck with it. It seems the more we find out about the universe, the more it seems Einstein was correct.

Spikey Blood

Had a little issue yesterday that kept me home on the couch. My blood pressure spiked up to 176/129. It was high all day Sunday, but it really went up Monday morning about 3:00am, prompting me from a deep sleep with a horrid headache.

I was so lethargic and unable to think that it was all I could do to concentrate on TV as I lay on the couch. I actually found myself watching things I wouldn't in my right mind.

So, the Mrs. made me go to the doctor. Deciding that my current blood pressure medication just wasn't doing the job, they decided to put me on some beta blockers as well. So far, so good. My BP is back down to pre-spike levels (still high), but better.