Unsought Input

I found an interesting article today that says the acutal inventor of the iPod is not Apple but some furniture salesman named Kane Kramer from the UK.  Apparently his invention was patented in 1979 (I believe he calls himself a revolutionary) but since he couldn’t afford to pay the costs to keep the patent, it fell to public domain where Apple more than likely found it and gobbled it up .  I do admit, it’s a great design and years ahead of it’s time.

I am borrowing this picture from his site that shows his early patent drawings.

What I also find interesting is that no mention of this guy would have ever come up if Burst Patents hadn’t tried to cash in on Apple’s sucess by trying to claim the iPod violated it’s own patents.  In Apple’s defence they said, wait, no, you don’t have the patent, we stole it (legally) from this British Bloke over here.  Oh, and thanks for the good idea, buddy, here’s a free iPod for your trouble!

Too bad his iPod broke after less than a year.  I feel kinda bad for this guy, I mean, if he had been able to hold onto his patent would we all be listening to music on our Kane Digital Audio Player?  Or would Apple have found another public domain patent to copy? It’s always interesting to me how these things turn out.  Any comments?

Had to rebuild my desktop at work this morning, which meant re-installing the RAW Viewer. Why Microsoft never saw fit to natively support RAW files in XP is beyond me. Then there’s the whole “Windows Genuine Advantage” validation routine they make you go through to actually download the viewer. But that’s another post for another day. I found something interesting while downloading the viewer from Microsoft’s website:

See it? No? How about a closer look:

Lookie there – the Firefox logo on the Downloads pane. So whoever wrote up the downloads page didn’t check their browser before grabbing their screenshots.

At one point, I followed the statistics of how many people used first Netscape Navigator, then later Mozilla, then Firefox. At one point, I watched closely what market share they had versus Internet Explorer. Lately, it seems all those figures are up for debate and scritinizing. But it sure says a lot when Microsoft’s own employees prefer the competition’s browser.

According to BusinessWeek, the Lunesta ad is one of the least-skipped commercials on TV. This is an important metric for advertisers. Ever since TiVo and other DVRs have made it easy for people to jump past commercials, advertisers have tried to find ways to get them to watch.

If you look at the rest of the the list, it’s hard to see what makes a commercial less skipworthy. I have a theory in the case of Lunesta. I think people don’t skip because they are mesmerized by the soul-eating Lunesta butterfly. Watch the video:

…And now you tell me: doesn’t it look like the butterfly brought that woman the sweet gift of a quiet death? Every time that commercial comes on, I point to the screen and yell to my wife, “That butterfly is going to steal her breath!”

Apparently I’m not the only one creeped out…

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When most airlines are having technical troubles, they call a mechanic or get out the manual or something to that matter. I am assuming. I have never worked for an airline but this is what I figure happens. It is logical, it makes sense.

Not if you work for Nepal Air. An article today on MSNBC is headlined “Airline sacrifices goats to appease sky god“. I thought that this headline might possibly be, you know, something to catch my attention and that the “sacrificial goats” were like, you know, taking away the in flight pretzels or beverages, some type of budget cut. Not actual goats. And not to an actual “sky god”.

These sacrificial goats, who’s names were Mindy and Max, were sacrificed in the name of Akash Bhairab, who is the renowned Hindu Sky God. Akash Bhairab has long been in control of all flying aircraft in and out of Nepal and surrounding areas and of course, if there is technical troubles, there must be sacrifices. Max and Mindy are not the first of their kind to be sacrificed for the greater good of on time departure and arrival times. It has been rumored that the Boeing 757 in question had offended Mr. Bhairab by having “technical troubles” possibly dealing with the “electrical wiring”, two things which the ancient and all powerful sky god is not familiar with. Thus, the sacrifice had to be made.

The highlight of this entire article from our good friends at MSNBC was this little snippet:

“The snag in the plane has now been fixed and the aircraft has resumed its flights,” said Raju K.C., a senior airline official, without explaining what the problem had been.

Without explaining what the problem had been? Obviously the problem was that the 757 had offended Mr. Bhairab and measures had to be taken. There will be a funeral held for Max and Mindy in the proper manner later this week. There is no comment from Max or Mindy’s surviving family as they are goats and do not speak.

It has been rumored that Delta plans on converting all of their staff to the Hindu religion later this year to gain Mr Bhairab’s favor over their current budget crisis.

A new reality show on CBS this fall will feature forty children running their own ghost town. Does this Lord of the Flies rendition sound like an actual quality reality show? I think so. Here is the trailer for the new show this fall.

But, according to the parents of the children sent off (to win thousands of dollars these parents signed the rights to send their children on a six week survivor trip) to live in this western ghost town in the middle of the desert, things did not turn out so well. (more…)