Who prefers -1, +1, or 90%, 120%, or... whatever?

Here's a nice long list of the top downloaded apps ever for each category. It's pretty sad seeing stuff as bad as Koi Pond for #1 overall paid app and MobileChat for #1 paid social networking.

http://gizmodo.com/5101021/list-of-m...frivolous-crap

Roger Ebert rails against our infantilizing celebrity obsessed media.

The AP, long considered obligatory to the task of running a North American newspaper, has been hit with some cancellations lately, and no doubt has been informed what its customers want: Affairs, divorces, addiction, disease, success, failure, death watches, tirades, arrests, hissy fits, scandals, who has been "seen with" somebody, who has been "spotted with" somebody, and "top ten" lists of the above. (Celebs "seen with" desire to be seen, celebs "spotted with" do not desire to be seen.)

The CelebCult virus is eating our culture alive, and newspapers voluntarily expose themselves to it. It teaches shabby values to young people, festers unwholesome curiosity, violates privacy, and is indifferent to meaningful achievement. One of the TV celeb shows has announced it will cover the Obama family as "a Hollywood story." I want to smash something against a wall.

As in most matters, Ebert speaks for me in this regard, the smashing in particular. His final line -- "The news is still big. It's the newspapers that got small." -- is spot on and, I'm increasingly convinced, the way out for newspapers in the long term. The news is big and newspapers need to get back to covering its complexity, significance, and interestingness.

(link)

The wireless carrier is facing a class-action lawsuit over allegations that it shafted employees of commissions totaling more than $5 million.

Shares in Goldman Sachs fell as much as 6 per cent today over fears that the blue-chip investment bank will report report a bigger than expected fourth-quarter loss. The stock settled down more than 1 per cent at $65.09 each at 4pm today.$

blockquote p Wolfram Schulte introduces us to the Research in Software Engineering (RiSE) group.br br The RiSE group will start publishing weekly videos on Channel9. The videos will not only describe tools or technologies the researchers are working on, but they will also explain how the tools work through 'classroom' videos./p/blockquote p a href='http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/Peli/The-RiSE-of-Research-in-Software-Engineering/'Screencast announcement at Channel9/a.br a href='http://research.microsoft.com/rise/'Page in Microsoft Research/a./p

Apple is looking into the use of liquid coolants to transport heat in its notebook computer designs, a controversial technique it employed briefly on its line of dual processor Power Mac G5s several years ago.

pimg src="http://www.gamasutra.com/db_area/images/news2001/21310/console.jpg" align="left" hspace="5"/A new report from research and consulting firm The Diffusion Group (TDG) says that current trends could potentially lead consumers to abandon their local cable companies or satellite TV operators, turning to video game consoles, such as Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, for on-demand video services. Titled "Console Vendors OTT Delivery: Let the Games Begin!," the 49-page report argues that the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are evolving into multimedia gateways with their non-gaming .../pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?a=8WlFO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?i=8WlFO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?a=bnB4O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?i=bnB4O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?a=jgtTO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/GamasutraNews?i=jgtTO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/GamasutraNews/~4/472645489" height="1" width="1"/

Heya! I live in Nova Scotia, Canada, and am wondering how to get internet on my MBA and/or MBP when I'm away from home, away from WiFi. Particularly at school, there's no WiFi, so I'm left without internet.

I have an iPhone on Rogers, but there's no 3G in my area. Only EDGE, so tethering would be ridiculously slow, right?

Can I do anything to get faster-than-EDGE speeds? What are my options?

David Weinberger sez, "Charlie Nesson (of the Berkman Center and Harvard Law) and Joel Tennenbaum discuss (it's a podcast) their countersuit against the RIAA on Constitutional grounds. Charlie argues that the RIAA is a private agency enforcing a criminal statute...using the federal court as a collection agency, as he puts it. Charlie is also quite eloquent about the unfairness of the massive apparatus of state being trained on single, unrepresented individuals." If this doesn't a) fill you with rage and b) fill you with hope, you are dead inside. What a great piece of audio. Radio Berkman: The “Pay Us” Hotline - Fines and the RIAA (Thanks, David!) Previously: Legendary Harvard law prof fights constitutionality of RIAA ......br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=0ccce817a6ab9a2fa5d7132bf83be0d6p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=0ccce817a6ab9a2fa5d7132bf83be0d6p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=0ccce817a6ab9a2fa5d7132bf83be0d6" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

So I just started a new job in late August doing IT work. I love the work I am just frustrated that I am expected to pay for everyday expenses. I am not talking about travel expenses (which are of course reimbursed with per-Diem). I am talking about the fact that they expect me (the IT guy) to use my personal card to order parts and software and be reimbursed at the end of the month. This isn't a problem for small things, but certainly gets annoying. It can add up and end up putting a crunch on my finances and something doesn't seem right about that. The company needs to have a better way to deal with purchases, not expect people to use their personal money for business expenses. Or am I off base to think this?

img class=face src=http://planet.ubuntu.com/heads/jono.png alt= pAt first I wondered what was the point of twitter. Today I a href=https://twitter.com/johnleach/status/1034831782found it/a:/p blockquote pstrongjohnleach/strong introduced his cats to squirty cream. one was terrified of it. years of trust building, gone in one short hilarious squirt./p /blockquote pYou are an amusing man, Mr Leach. img src=http://www.jonobacon.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / /p

Hi, I'm a life long Mac user whom has really started to get irritated with Mac's price locks and their blocking their products from interfacing with others. I've been working from my iBook for over two years now and I just need a more powerful computer for what I use this for. I'd like an intel, but it's just way out of my price range, so I'm considering purchasing a PC with that kind of power, and converting it. I'm a very capable person with the ability to troubleshoot and educate myself, but the main reason I use Macs is because I don't have to mess around with the hardware and operating systems, so I want to make a purchase that will give me as much, in one shot, as I possibly need to do this, so that as few hardware modifications as possible are needed. At the same time, cost is the reason I'm considering this, so I'd like to find the best buy as well.

I'd like at least 2GB or more RAM and it would be nice to be able to use firewire for my external harddrives.

How different are specialized sign design software from print design software? FlexiSign or CorelDraw (sign industry standards) compared to Illustrator.

can avi be used at all?

Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John waxes lyrical about this bad-ass zip-up bookcase with a hidden compartment. Drool. Although I have since fallen into the German bohemian style of book storage which involves rooms lined with teetering piles of cracked, used paperbacks upon which half-empty beer bottles have been haphazardly stacked, I used to have a love affair with book cases, and this break-apart Platzhalter delights me. I believe that secret compartment in back is where I would store the books I don't like guests discovering: my disturbingly water damaged copies of Naked Came The Stranger and My Secret Life always raise more questions than their prominent display is worth. Platzhalter book shelf splits into "V" and reveals secret compartment, Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=0ee2707232c20e3e76bab36d064c352ap=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=0ee2707232c20e3e76bab36d064c352ap=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=0ee2707232c20e3e76bab36d064c352a" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/nombrayexamplesite.png" width="903" height="415" style="display:block;float:none;" / New web service Nombray is out to help folks establish their online identity by registering their name-based domain. Enter your name into the Nombray search engine and register the various available combinations of vanity URL available. (For example, a search for my name returns GinaTrapani.name, GinaTrapani.us, GTrapani.com, etc.) Then, register the URLs of your choice for $20 apiece, and use Nombray's simple web page designer and hosting service to link to the various social networks and profiles you've set up across the web. (See CEO Chris Lunt's Nombray-powered chrislunt.net site above for an example, where Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are linked from tabs in a top frame.) Almost three years ago we a href="http://lifehacker.com/software/feature/geek-to-live-have-a-say-in-what-google-says-about-you-152444.php"advised you to register your own domain to have a say in what Google says about you/a, and Nombray looks like an easy way to do just that./p div class="related"a href="http://www.nombray.com/"Nombray/a [via a href="http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10111337-2.html?part=rss"Webware/a]/div br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=4c1112a8644de07f37242234aaaebf72p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=4c1112a8644de07f37242234aaaebf72p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=4c1112a8644de07f37242234aaaebf72" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=D4XE8l5c"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=6vGMDHGJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=JRYSSuxT"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=JRYSSuxT" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=G9nqfAe7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=G9nqfAe7" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/nLC45527pTk" height="1" width="1"/

via MacNN:

GenArts has published v3.0 of its Sapphire plug-ins for Avid editing systems, specifically Symphony, NewsCutter and Media Composer. The focus of the update is on its 36 new effects, such as TVDamage, which reproduces broadcast artifacts like static and ghosting. Many are divided into specific themes, such as wipe and dissolve transitions, or texture- and Z-buffer-based effects. Some also attemp...


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via MacNN:

ProteMac has released KeyBag, a program that intercepts and records every keystroke entered on a Mac. The utility allows users to keep track of all chat conversations, applications opened, and keys pressed in any application, all while running hidden in the background. Users can also use the records as a detailed backup copy of information, in case a file is accidentally deleted or the computer ma...


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via MacNN:

Iomega on Tuesday announced two new models to its range of eGo Portable Hard Drives, including the ultra-secure Encrypt with hardware-based encryption for double data protection, and super rugged BlackBelt with Drop Guard Xtreme data protection. The eGo Encrypt uses the advanced 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) to protect its 320GB of content from unauthorized access....


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I have photography business and I'm looking for an app that I can manage my budge and schedules... Any idea???

What Your Computer Does While You Wait : Gustavo Duarte

I need some advice. After reading Engadget's recent review, talking about the Rev A as the 'dark age', is it really THAT bad? I understand a MBA Rev A would NOT be a good machine for someone using intensive graphic programs, video editing, and gaming, that's completely understandable, nor do I expect it to be.

BUT, what about someone who doesn't need those intensive applications? For me, I simply need a word processing unit, and light web-browsing, excluding gaming, and intensive flash sites. Think MacRumors, and other sites with not exactly resource-hogging sites, and using Pages and the like for school? My MBP would handle anything else.

What would the result of that be? (Word processing and web-browsing?) Would it get really loud and hot? Or would it suit my needs? I don't want to drop the bank on a new one if I don't need it.

Thanks in advance guys. I'm basically wondering if these horror stories are all they're cracked up to be, especially with those of us users wanting to use it very lightly. Any MBA Rev Aers out there wanting to share their experiences.

pFiled under: a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/government-legal/" rel="tag"Government/Legal/a, a href="http://www.autoblog.com/category/gm/" rel="tag"GM/a/pimg width="205" vspace="4" hspace="4" height="204" border="1" align="right" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.autoblog.com/media/2008/12/41megcjq8fl._ss500__opt.jpg" alt="" /General Motors has just revealed the plan it has submitted to Congress today, and the details show just how far the largest U.S. automak