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10 Oct 2009 18:30

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Tech: T-Mobile’s massive bag of FAIL: Sidekick user data is GONE.

  • fail #1 T-Mobile’s Sidekick data network was down all last weekend into this week. That issue still isn’t resolved as we write this. Twitter users spent much of the last week (loudly) grumbling about this fact, killing T-Mobile’s rep online.
  • fail #2 Now, a much worse issue: Everyone who owned a Sidekick? Your user data is GONE. Kaput. Microsoft Danger relied on cloud hosting to serve data, and didn’t back up any of it. And the cloud went poof. Ouch. Bad move. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 17:59

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Music: Sad saps unite: Our Saturday Mixtape is designed to bum you out



We've been pretty bummed out by "Hellhole Ratrace" by Girls lately. It's a beautiful song, but it's beautiful in that way where you have to hang your head while you're taking in the beauty. So with that in mind, here's a soundtrack for the bummed-out.
  • 1. This gut-punch of a tune by the Drive-By Truckers, “Two Daughters and a Beautiful Wife,” is based on the true story of the family of musician Bryan Harvey. They were killed randomly during a series of spree murders in Richmond, Va. in 2006. It’s one of the strongest in the Truckers’ catalog, but man, you wish they never had to write it.
    2. Begging to be coupled with the previous tune is this one by Antony and the Johnsons, “Another World,” which deals with the very issues the Truckers dealt with, but in a more direct fashion. We must hate you for giving you two gut-punches in a row.
    3. You can tell that Girls singer Christopher Owens, a former Children of God member, had to fight really hard for his optimism. On “Hellhole Ratrace,” he’s straddling the line between pain and optimism. Optimism wins.
    4. Even Elliott Smith’s rockier songs were doused in bitter. “Don’t Go Down” is very bitter, plus it was from the death-allusion-filled “From a Basement on the Hill,” Smith’s posthumous final album. Gut punch number 4. (Sorry.)
    5. We’ve all been here. End of a relationship, drunk, trying to reconcile, showing up unannounced. Being the very kind of drunk jerk you despise. OK, we all haven’t been there, but Casiotone for the Painfully Alone has, and he’s singing from experience on “Destroy the Evidence.” Fortunately, this gut punch has a little levity thanks to the Casio backing. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 14:55

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Politics: Daily poll: Can Obama expand rights for gays?

  • Fresh off his Nobel Peace Prize win, Barack Obama will speak at a Human Rights Campaign dinner tonight. Many are hoping he can make a dent in an issue that many gay-rights supporters have been hoping for. But Obama’s been distracted by everything else. Now that he’s finally giving it some attention, can he pull it off? Vote. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 14:38

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Tech: Some jerkwad wastes beer AND a Palm Pre. Painful to watch.

  • WHY?! FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!?! Beer is awesome. So is the Palm Pre. So some jerk decided to combine the two to see what happened. It isn’t pretty. In fact, it’s pretty darn sad. It pains us to watch it. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 14:33

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World: Iran has the nuclear facilities, but it needs nuclear fuel

  • 300kg of nuclear material needed source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 14:06

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Politics, Sports: Rush Limbaugh owning the St. Louis Rams: It’s a racial thing

  • I don’t want anything to do with a team that he has any part of. He can do whatever he wants, it is a free country. But if it goes through, I can tell you where I am not going to play.
  • New York Giants defensive end Mathias Kiwanuka • Explaining why he wouldn’t play for Rush Limbaugh as a St. Louis Ram, specifically saying his comments about white kids “getting beat up on the bus while black kids are chanting ‘right on'” are racist. Limbaugh is one of the investors trying to buy the team, which quickly went from one of the NFL’s best teams to one of its worst. 24 of the NFL’s 32 teams need to approve the still-in-early-stages bid if it goes through, so Limbaugh better hope that he has a lot of friends among the 32 owners. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 13:51

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Sports: Ryan Howard upsets 12-year-old girl. 12-year-old girl gets even.

  • give 12-year-old Jennifer Valdivia caught slugger Ryan Howard’s record-setting 200th home run ball at a Phillies game in July. She offered to give the ball to Howard, with the promise he would show up. He never did.
  • take Feeling that the potentially-valuable ball was stolen from her. Valdivia and her mother got a lawyer, and this week, in the midst of the Phillies’ playoff run, threatened to sue. The ball was promptly returned. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 

10 Oct 2009 13:40

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Offbeat: Will someone think of the guinea pigs? They need rescue, too

In L.A., there’s a rescue group for guinea pigs. Because, well, someone needs to protect them from becoming … uh, guinea pigs. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 13:21

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U.S., World: Fidel Castro has nice things to say about Obama’s Nobel Prize

  • Many will say that he still hasn’t earned the right to receive such distinction. We prefer to see in the decision, more than a prize for the president of the United States, a criticism of the genocidal policies that not a few presidents of that country have followed.
  • Former Cuban dictator Fidel Castro • In a comment in the country’s state-run media. Considering that Americans have feelings just as mixed about Castro as they do about obama winning this peace prize, he’s not helping by saying such nice things about Obama. Barack Obama: Latin America’s favorite president ever. • source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink

10 Oct 2009 13:08

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Music: Meet the Eigenharp: The future of music or the future of hype?



It’s not often that we can say that we've seen something truly original. But the Eigenharp certainly fits that bill. It's loaded with technology that takes the best of synthesizers and mixes it with the best of traditional instruments. It's been a good 60 years since we've had a game-changing musical instrument. To paraphrase The Strokes, Is This It?
  • What it is A mix between a MIDI-sample-powered synth and a responsive, tangible instrument, it’s completely portable and (smartly) comes at two price points – a super-expensive one (the Alpha, which looks like a mix between a Chapman Stick and a hookah) for the musical nerds and the pros, and a cheaper one (the Pico) priced within the reach of normal people.
  • Post-guitar? The electric guitar, in the grand scheme, has held its status as the most influential instrument for about 60 years. Others have tried, but electric guitars had just have the right mix of portability and shape that make them make sense in thousands of settings. That’s what intrigues us about the idea of the Eigenharp: It has the same appeal the electric guitar did.
  • A reference pointYears ago, we used to live in Milwaukee. We knew this guy named Jim Bartz, who had an interesting artistic outlet in the form of the Stringstation, a musical instrument with 40 strings meant to convey a huge sonic experience. In a lot of ways, this reminds us a lot of that. It’s got that wild, out-of-nowhere experimental tinge to it that Bartz’ instrument does. source
Posted by Ernie Smith • 0 Comments • Permalink
 
 
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