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?

Believe it or not the Chinese earthquake that killed 12000 people and counting was predicted by a mass migration of frogs. Yes, the massive earthquake in China yesterday that killed thousands of people was predicted by an incredible movement of frogs that was noted by the public as a bad omen. The government told the people that the idea was silly and that it was just the frog’s natural migration (across major roads that had not seen this kind of frog travel previously) for mating. The mass movement was first noticed on May 5th.

Even with all of our scientific methods of testing this just goes to show we still don’t know enough to tell when horrible tragedies like this will occur. But animals do. Or apparently they have some idea. Maybe we can prevent all the deaths next time by watching out for weird things like this. Or maybe will we evacuate a whole area and nothing bad will happen at all. Who knows?

Just when you thought it was safe to drink water you hear about this. This headline on yahoo.com today strikes fear into the hearts of all Americans who thought it was healthy to drink water. Yes, conspiracy theories aside, there was a five month probe to find out what was actually in our drinking water. And do you know what they found out? I think you might since I put in in the headline of this article but allow me to reiterate. They found prescription drugs and other stuff in minute concentrations in our drinking water. Minute. I.e. small amounts. Very small. But still present. And what do our utility companies say? Is our water safe? Should we be allowing our selves and our loved ones to drink this water? This aqua pharmaceutical cocktail that comes out of our taps and into our glasses, into our showers and baths and food?

First off, let’s talk about media hype. It’s built up around times when people are getting too worried about other things: war, elections, terrorism, etc, to distract everyday people like you and me from these intense subjects by worrying about something else. In magic it’s call slight of the hand. The magician makes you look the other way and does the trick while you are distracted. Then, viola! You didn’t even know what was happening and now it’s already over and you are just left to wonder how it was done without you noticing.

So, the media creates hype and fear about your drinking water while there are several other important things to be reporting to the good people of America about so that you are distracted. Yes, something in the water is very scary. You need water to live and you trust the water that comes delivered to you. So, I agree, it’s a scary idea that there is something in the water. (more…)

Here is my second amazing podcast this time talking about the Coreys.

And for those who want to play the DWallz podcast drinking game at home take a shot every time I say “of course”.

(Okay morons since everybody seems to be having such a hard time figuring out how to listen to the podcast let me explain, either lick on the link and play it in your browser with whatever program you have setup to play mp3 files OR right click and “Save Target As” to your desktop and then listen to the mp3 file with whatever program you like that plays mp3s. Was that clear enough for everybodyor do I need to make a powerpoint presentation?)

DWallz amazing podcast 10-20

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This is my inaugural podcast where I discuss the the shooting at Success Tech. Please don’t be too distracted by my sexy voice and miss my important message.

DWallz Awesome Podcast 10-16-07