Why do Mens Magazines always get it wrong?

So, I was over at dailygeek.tv ranting about this 21 cheep, cool things you can buy. It was an article from men.style.com (which I guess is suppose to be a cool name for GQ on the web),

And I have to stop and wonder why these magazines always seem to get it wrong. Either they expect every tom, dick and joe to have a couple extra Gucci Attache cases filled with $50,000 in unmarked, non-sequential bills laying around the trunk of their Porsche or they are pointing out some stooopiiiidd junk that just isn't worth the over-priced mark up.


Go Read the article

http://men.style.com/features/big_story/cheap_chic/slideshow/h/042007CHEAP?loop=0&slideshowId=slideshow41012&iphoto=0&nphoto=21&play=false

Now here are my thoughts:


Timex - many of us don't have the $1000s it takes to get a good watch, or even one of the semi-cool $100+ ones. Timex is a good brand, but this is a lame watch.

Shaving Brushes and Art pads? Why are these on the list?

Who the hell cares about somebody's Egg McMuffin knock off from a place in New York? I live on the Beach. This isn't cool, cheap or worth the print. My bet is somebody had to come up with one more item for the list before deadline, and this was on his desk.

DVDs?

Underwear? The only cool underwear are the naughty little panties your date was wearing last night and are now living in that special hidden spot with other mementos of previous nights. Mens underwear haven't been cool since we got too old for underoos.

Cheap ($90) shoes from the UK? Not cool. That simple.

And as a final point...

THere is nothing cool in the Gap and definitely not $50 bucks worth of cool. I think if you fall into the gap, they tie you up and waterboard you until you think that wearing pink Polo shirts with the collar turned up will be much cooler now than when it was lame in the 80s.

Mac Hacker gets no attention, wins $10k

So, there has been a lot of news about this hacking into a Mac.

First, let me remind everyone that the CanSecWest security conference was holding a contest to win a Macbook if you could hack into a Mac from a remote location. No one could do it, so they had to change the rules, allowing physical access to the Mac. So the winner of the MacBook basically “allowed” this access by physically typing in the address of the web site. So, this was not someone taking over a computer but more like giving up control.
Now, that is not to say that Zovi, the engineer behind the actual hack did not come up with a critical flaw that needs to be fixed. I will admit Macs are not perfect, but that is one hack compared to the thousands in Windows.
Speaking of thousands of hacks, here is the real point that they seem to get wrong in every “Mac isn’t so tough” security story.”

(I will explain after the excerpt)

Security experts not surprised the Mac was hacked
Jim Dalrymple - MacCentral
Thu Apr 26, 3:09 PM ET

Security researcher Dino Dai Zovi sent a shudder through the Macintosh community late last week when he successfully hacked the Mac with an exploit that he sent to a friend attending the CanSecWest security conference. By gaining shell access to a Mac by pointing the Safari Web browser at a specially-constructed Web page, Dai Zovi won a $10,000 prize from 3Com’s Tipping Point division—and took a lot of Mac users by surprise.

…snipped for space…check out the whole story at http://news.yahoo.com/s/macworld/20070426/tc_macworld/securityexperts20070426_0 ...

“If a hacker turned their attention to the Mac, it would suffer just as much as Windows,” [Ray] Wagner, [Gartner’s managing vice president in the secure business enablement group] said. “Attacking the 95 percent of the market gets them more attention.”

Really, now, read that last line again? When was the last time a Windows hacker got any attention? I can’t remember, can you? But, I can remember the attention those two guys got when they hacked third-party wireless drivers on a Mac (note: They didn’t hack the Mac, just someone else’s software, and there is still some question as to how much was BS and how much was real hacking). And Zovi, here he is getting tons of media attention, like this blog and the MacWorld article I am citing, and thousands of other tech news sources. Not only that, HE WON $10,000 for finding it!!!

When was the last time a Window hacker got that kind of attention? Even the Vista hackers that have already busted the DRM and Authentication routines in Microsoft’s brand-spanking-new cheap rip-off of OSX haven’t gotten as much attention as this one hacker who devoted his time to OSX.

Therefore, Wagner, this security expert contradicts himself by being quoted in one of the many articles that give attention where none should be had.

Apple's DRM-free movement just another poke at Windows

So, it maybe completely beside the point that most Vista ready computers aren't, and that drivers aren't ready, and it is going to take 4 gigs of Ram to run Vista and a word processor, but after reading/listening to this security/cost analysis paper that explains how Microsoft has made DRM the true reason for being of Vista and how it hands security decisions over to Hollywood and literally degrades performance if your hardware is too good.

Here is a link to the text:

http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt

And this is to the podcast feed where the reading of the document is performed by Cory Doctorow for your listening pleasure.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/doctorow_podcast

But before you go away to check this out, consider this.

Just as Vista is being released, Apple suddenly starts working against DRM. Jobs calls for DRM-free music and iTune comes out with a deal for better, DRM-free tracks from EMI. Other production companies are planing ot follow suit, with Universal and Amazon are making moves for DRM-free content.

With Vista set to screw up your HD life with its draconian, "The USSR were pussies" security and controls", there is a lot more at stake with DRM than whether you can download iTunes to you Zune. I don't hear Norway complaining about the DRM controls in Vista, strange huh? Yep. No politics in the EU, just out to "protect" their citizens.

I have to give out credit to boingboing.net for turning me on to this, and the gaget/tecb news site gizmodo.com for turning me on to the very interesting news on boingboing.com.

Growing Up With Elminster

I can’t say that I grew up on Forgotten Realms stories, but they became a big part of my reading life through out the years.
I first discovered the world of Abeir-Toril while looking for an easy read. I had spent the previous year tracking down and reading the entire Eternal Champion series by Michael Moorcock. After all the dramatic intrigue and “heavy reading” of a series that spanned the life of Elric, Hawkmoon, Corum and John Smith in a multiverse-wide battle between the forces of Law and Chaos, I was looking to take a little break.
As an elf fan, I decided that I wanted to read something about the pointy-eared race, but there was nothing on the shelf. The Dragonlance series had devolved into slapstick fantasy rote about kenders, gully dwarves and gnomes, so I had given up on that series, and there was a long gap the Shanara series at the time, at least on the bookshelves available to me.
However, there was one book in the fantasy section of K-mart. It was primarily about a barbarian in some icy land, who had a Drow as a sidekick. I wasn’t too sure. D&D-based novels had become a disappointment after the first two trilogies. But, what the Hells! I was desperate.
We now know that the dark elf sidekick became a shooting star that launched the Forgotten Realms into the bestseller lists. Originally, an adventure setting for D&D designer Ed Greenwood, the Realms would become the most successful role-playing setting in the fantasy genre and in RPGs in general.
Going along with the game material were a continuing series of books under the Realms label. Most were trilogies telling the stories of particular heroes like Drizzt or Arilyn Moonblade. A few one shots were here and there, but what really made the Forgotten Realms series a success was its continuity.
While not on the same level as comic books or other series, the Realms books evolved and grew into a chronicling of the Realms, not only in novels, but also in what happened in the game.
When D&D 2nd Edition came out, the Avatar Crisis slew gods and rocked the very foundation of the Realms. Kara-tur brought an Asian invasion to the Realms and when the world was changing again, the return of the Sorcerer ushered in 3rd Edition D&D.
Now, it was not a smooth ride for me as a reader. During the 90s, I swore off most of most of the Realms books after the Harpers series brought me a book where an orc said, “cool” or some such modern slang. I really can’t remember the exact details, but I stopped reading everything Realms, making the Drizzt series my only exception.
But I came back around, and have been a loyal reader of nearly every Realms book that comes out. I’ll admit that I haven’t been able to keep up with them all, but I try to space some out so I have something to read during the long dry spells between releases of other series.
And the one thing I have noticed is the steady evolution of Realms books over the last couple of years. Just as characters in D&D gain level and skill, the quality of novels has increases, as has the level of writing.
In the Everis Cale trilogy, we read about a Chosen of the god of thieves in a dark but still heroic story. In the recent Depths of Madness by Erik Scott de Bie, a party of “old” elves, Halflings and humans is led by a “younger” Elven shadowdancer who uses sex, lies and a bit of ruthlessness not often seen in Realms books to deal with them and the twisted evils they encounter.
It was in reading Depths, that I realized that the Realms have changes. Growing up and adapting to its growing audience of adult readers instead of trying to pander to the young’ens that were like us so many years ago.
Sure these are still high fantasy novels with heroes that have almost comic book lives, with friends and enemies that come back from the dead left and right, but it is nowhere near the painfully bad books that came out in the dark times. There is still a wide range of styles, from the indomitable Elminster to the honorable Drizzt Do’Urden to the shadowy Cale or the dominating Twilight.
If you are a fantasy fan, a Forgotten Realms fan, D&D player or a comic book fan looking for a change of pace, step into the Realms.

VT Abuses

I extend my sympathies towards those who lost family and friends in the horrible shooting at Virginia Tech.


However, I am more sorry for the abuses the media is already heaping upon the survivors and the public to push for ratings and political agendas.

First, VT was not the deadliest attack on US civilians. 9/11 and Waco have that beat. But I guess Waco is forgivable because it was a government sanctioned, if misguided and unjustified, attack, and 9/11 was performed by Muslim terrorists and we can't say anything bad about them in the news anymore.

Second, I can already see the gun-control nazis coming out of the wood work, and I want to point out that if these students and professors were allowed their constitutional rights to bear arms, Cho might have been stopped before such a death count could be tallied, or he might have even been afriad to do something like that in fear of being shot. (Minor props to ABC Evening News for mentioning this side of the gun control debate, if not on equal terms as the anti-gun nazis but at least not belittling the argument.)

Is it too early to start talking like this? Not according to the news networks and not according to the anti-contitutionalist.


Personally, I feel kind of ashamed to have to say anything like this, but if people don't start now, we are going to have another Patriot Act shoved down our throats while the public is too emotional to realize how blind they were.

Hot News Delivery

I have been using podcasts to keep up with the news, and I just got to rave about the best kept secret on CNN. Virgina Cha reguarlly does the CNN Now in the News Podcast (available through iTunes) and she has to be the hottest news babe around.


This screen cap is not the best quality, but check it out for yourself.

Love those Lady Humps...

I have been collectiong weird covers for awhile. I have Typo Negative doing Possession and Hit Me Baby, I got Warren Zevon doing I Kissed A Girl...but this one might just take the cake.





Can't get much better than that...Except maybe for this one.....

So many fun new toys...

All right, boys and girls.

If for some reason you read yesterdays post, and came back today, you might find that I have again changed my template.

You might ask why?

Why? Because Blogspot is out of beta and has added some new stuff to the behind the scenes workings. As you see, there is now a Google search box and Google ads on the page (feel free to click, they are sponsors, after all), some news and video feeds and other new prettiness ot the page.

Needless to say, I have spent a few minutes playing with some of the new options available to me.

Expect new looks as I dig deeper into what I can do.

Really? You don't say!

Hmmmmm…….Deja Vu?

No, just more people trying to treat you like an idiot and scare you out of going on vacation.

By DAN ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer
Tue Apr 3, 8:47 PM ET

DENVER - A top researcher predicted a "very active" 2007 Atlantic hurricane season Tuesday, with at least nine hurricanes and a good chance one will hit the U.S. coast. The forecast by William Gray predicts 17 named storms this year, five of them major hurricanes. The probability of a major storm making landfall on the U.S. coast this year is 74 percent, compared with the average of 52 percent over the past century, he said. …. From AP, via Yahoo News…Go here for the whole story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070404/ap_on_re_us/hurricane_forecast


So, I got to wonder if this will be anything like last year’s Huricane season…The one that was predicted to bring even worse storms than Katrina to the US…The one where they “revised” their prediction to a “less severe” hurricane season…In September!

And, remember! These are the same “researchers” that are telling you that Global Warming is being caused by mouth-breathers.

“Mouth-breathers? Where did you come up with that?” you say.

Well, we all know that the Environmental Tyrants have been talking about all the bad carbon emissions.

For the longest time, I thought they were talking about CO, as in Carbon Monoxide, a poisonous gas released by combustion engines and other burning processes…

Excuse me for thinking that there was any science behind the Green Kings movement.

You see after the Supreme Court ruling allowing the EPA to regulate car emissions, all the news agencies – CNN, FOX, ABC, etc.—have been reporting and consulting experts about the need to control the most dreaded of Greenfarce gases – CO2, or Carbon DiOxide.

Now, for those of you who don’t remember your 3rd grade science, or had a liberal education where learning stuff wasn’t as important as playing nice and being like all the other kids, Carbon Dioxide is the stuff we, as in mammals and all animals, breath out! We suck in the oxygen and blow out CO2.

And does that CO2 go to waste, or to clog up the atmosphere and kill off the polar bears?

No, Plants…You know, those green, leafy things that are alive, but alright to eat because they don’t have a cute face? Plants suck up are unwanted CO2 like Al Gore’s houses suck up energy. They use it like we use oxygen, and in turn, they spit out Oxygen as waste.

Wow, that is like…in balance..or an ecosystem or something.

Anyway. CO2, the stuff plants breath in to live and we breath out, is what is causing the polar ice caps on Mars to melt. We are bad, bad people.

Now, this may be a little off subject, but it is all part of the same plot to keep you afraid and obedient. More, scary hurricanes are coming. The hurricanes are worse because of global warming. Global warming is worse because gas-burning cars spit out carbon dioxide. So, don’t go to the beach, because storms are coming and cars are bad and you should stay home and work and pay more taxes like the good little serfs you are.


(I know this is kind of a rambling rant, but it is stupidity like these news stories that gets me so angry, not because they put them out there, but because there are people who believe this crap.)