Who is Hahleq?

Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment June 12th:

• Two Current TV Journalists Sentence to 12 Years in North Korean Labor Camp – So the short story is this: "Two journalists weaken U.S.", but that's hardly news is it? The vast preponderance of so-called journalists today is to pick at the speck's in America's eye while ignoring the logs in everyone else's eyes. Oh, that's right, the logs in everyone else's eyes is Americas fault. My bad…
• Could Twittering about your vacation put your home at risk? (Associated Press) – Don't just let anyone be a "follower". Don't accept friends invites on any social media except from people you really, really trust. If you can, separate your work networks and your personal networks so you can post only appropriate information to each audience.
• Major Mount Changes Coming to World of Warcraft – Hmmm… maybe levelling a Pally wouldn't be that painful after all.
• Great Move, EC. Now We Have to Download IE Ourselves… – Hurray for Microsoft! I'd love to see them continue to play hardball with all the "sue-to-win" pansies. Want people to come to your browser? Build a better one. Some have and are doing quite well, but always forget that Microsoft continues to carry the weight that make our current technical enjoyments what they are. MS has their faults, but their pro / con balance sheet is skewed way over to the pro side.
• Free Anonymous BitTorrent Becomes Reality With BitBlinder (Enigmax/TorrentFreak) – hmmmm… I'll have to put this on my "play around with" list.
• Why Natal Is a Big Deal – If Natal can indeed live up to the hype and get released in my life-time, then it truly is a big deal. Then it will take a generation or two of games being made for it to realize its potential. So hopefully by 2013 or thereabouts, we'll really be into a new gaming world… hopefully.

Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment June 8th:

• Twitter "Not Playing Ball" but Will Experiment With Verified Accounts – hmmm… online identity service anyone? Yeah, it would need a nice long list of identity and security features to be really viable, but I have the list and the technologies to make the list happen exist, so…
• Fear of Aerial Images – Not only refuse to be terrorized about terrorism. Refuse all the fear-mongering from everyone. Turn off the news, go live your life and you will be amazed at how much better everything will seem and eventually be as you move forward pursuing you dreams and ignoring those that want your dependency.
• Activision 'Disappointed' by Lack of Price Cuts at E3 – I'm disappointed as well. Guess my purchase of a PS3 continues to slip into the future and at this point will wait till we come out the otherside of the 'econolypse' I mentioned in my earlier posting. That means probably no PS3 till 2011 or later depending on how much longer my fellow citizens continue to tolerate the socialist overlords and their apparent messiah.
• Paid Twitter Streams Are Here: Super Chirp (Michael Arrington/TechCrunch) – Difficult to square the reports of impending economic doom and the idea that people would spend vital, "survival" dollars to get celebrity tweets. People mag and other rags aren't enough at the check-out line, eh? Ah well, I'm sure I'm spending money on things that others would deem silly as I otherwise prepare for the impending and at this point, unavoidable econolypse.

Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment June 4th:

• Time Puts Twitter on Cover, at Vanguard of American Economy (Ryan Tate/Valleywag – Gawker) – Hugely LOLing right now. Figures the moronic marxists at Time would think a company with lots of buzz and no business model in sight is at the Vanguard of Anerican Economy! Kind of like how all those trillions of "stimulus" money is actually going to get the private economy moving. At least their stupidity / insanity / blind-commitment-to-socialism is consistent. Gotta give them that. So far, the only business model around Twitter are what other businesses are doing with it. I'm not saying Twitter isn't building value, but only as a message transport mechanism. Is TCP/IP or SMTP or FTP or SSL at the "vanguard of the economy"?
• How Twitter Will Change the Way We Live (Steven Johnson/Time) – Everyone I know tired of the breakfast cereal type updates after their first week using Twitter or it's kin. Also if this guy's experience of using Twitter in a conference is "life changing", then he either hasn't really been on and around internet tools for very long or has a really hideous life. Just sayin'.
• By puzil – Picture of the day.
• ThoughtFarmer, Cultivating Social Intranet Software – I have no specific comment on this particular article other than to comment on not even being passably interested in reading one more thing about "social-net-anything".
• Palm Pre Review Roundup – Good to see someone providing something that may drive the iPhone to greater heights. For now, neither the Pre nor the iPhone give me an itch to give up my BB Curve.
• Adapter plays HD files off of any hard drive – So if you don't have an Xbox or PS3 to stream video from your home network to your TV, this is a pretty cool, though manually intensive (attach / remove hard drive from PC) way to watch video on your TV.

Things I read today that I found interesting and worthy of comment June 2nd:

• Sucks to Be Nintendo… – Come one everyone, let's show some proper levels of skepticism out there please? Everything I've seen on this is clearly emblazoned with some such disclaimer, "Vision presentation only, actual functions and features may differ". Sure, this is cool if you can actually pull it off and I'm SERIOUSLY dubious that this can be done in the next couple of years. Cool as the Wii controller is it isn't anywhere sensitive, responsive or accurate enough for serious game playing. Anyone who's played with the Xbox or PS2 camera games has to be seriously skeptical, right?
• Millions of Chinese Twitter Users Suddenly Unaware That I Dislike Ramen – No wonder President Obama sees so much to admire in the advanced Chinese regime. At least the cattle are moved around by modern trains though, eh B.H.O.?
• Nintendo Hard at Work on Wii Catheter, Wii Hip Replacement – OK. So regardless of anything else in this article, the title alone made me LOL.
• US CIO Kundra Calls for Web 2.0 Co-Creation of Knowledge With Citizens – Friggin' government. The internet has been fine without you. Go away. Don't you have some hard working entrepreneurs fortune to confiscate or something? Oh, that's right, you'll steal that money to fund this complete and utter boondoggle. At least thats all I hope it adds up to. Bahhh, bring on the revolution!
• Ten Years After Napster, Musicians Are Still Getting Screwed – and here I thought the point of being a musician was to achieve the title of this article? Or is that just guitarists? Sorry to be so flippant, but I'm so VERY tired of this topic. Distinguish yourself from the clutter of junk out there and you'll do fine. If not, then embrace the oft-repeated ethos of "not selling out". Mission accomplished… I'm not buying.
• Supreme Court to Review 'Business Method' Patents (Michael Orey/Business Week) – So unless you work for a consulting company where your ego is already way out of whack, any reasonable thinking person knows this whole business process patent crap has been just that. The Amazon "one-click" fiasco was the poster child for this for a long time. The interesting thing to me isn't whether the court will come down on the side of business method patents as being unpatentable, but how they define the line separating what "ideas" may or may not fall into that category. Of course, the court has ruled contrary to the Constitution quite a bit lately (no, I'm NOT talking about domestic – overseas wiretapping… completely legal under Rep and Dem admins), so I could be unpleasantly surprised, though this case hardly ranks as high as some other bonehead calls by the high court lately.
• *Left 4 Dead 2* Announced For November – Yeah, baby! Bring me more of that zombie shootin' goodness!