@richpav GAH! NO! I CAN’T BELIEVE IT!! I won’t believe it! THEY LIED! THEY LIED!! I’M SO OFFENDED!! / overdramaticsarcasm is.gd/1Ldj
@richpav GAH! NO! I CAN’T BELI…
by ThePete 12:02 am 2008-08-20
@strictly So, do you guys care…
by ThePete 11:57 pm 2008-08-19@strictly So, do you guys care what McCain and Obama are up to in your country? Random question, but I’m really curious…
@MariAdkins Haha, I’m SUCH a s…
by ThePete 11:44 pm 2008-08-19@MariAdkins Haha, I’m SUCH a silly Atheist! But hey, if shopping is immoral, why doesn’t the church mind it on Christmas, hmmm? ;)
http://twitpic.com/8b78 - Hm…..
by ThePete 8:06 pm 2008-08-19twitpic.com/8b78 - Hm… I think I’m getting some Twitterspam. What do you think?
So, our government faked all o…
by ThePete 8:00 pm 2008-08-19So, our government faked all of these pictures of the moon missions? (ping.fm/8X2KH)
Star Wars Fan Film proves Clov…
by ThePete 7:43 pm 2008-08-19Star Wars Fan Film proves Cloverfield needed more subtlety. (ping.fm/Pr6OQ)
thepete.com: Moron the US Econ…
by ThePete 7:12 pm 2008-08-19thepete.com: Moron the US Economy–I mean–More On the US Economy: I was inspired to write this.. tinyurl.com/6g7mkf
Moron the US Economy–I mean–More On the US Economy
by ThePete 7:10 pm 2008-08-19I was inspired to write this post by a combination of things. First, my post on that IMF guy saying another of our banks was going to withdraw itself from existence and then a reply to said post on Utterz by Maharet (listen to it here: www.utterz.com/u/utt/u-NTEyNTkzOA#utt-NTEyNTkzOA ).
As I responded to Maharet’s post, I realized something about the complexities of what our country is facing. In fact, I recognized that there are NO complexities to these problems at all.
Sure, the news likes to talk about sub-prime mortgages and greedy lenders and people who can’t pay their loans back and selling off bad loans as investments and blah, blah, blah, but I think it’s much more simple than all of that.
I feel like the strongest, most stable systems are the most simple systems. Our system is not simple.
In a nutshell, though, the problems, themselves do seem very simple. Check it out:
Unending inflation (devaluing of the dollar) combined with unending outsourcing (devaluing of the American worker) equates to an empty country, economically speaking.
Unemployed workers with no money (or money worth very little) to buy with, leaves the United States completely wiped out as any kind of economic power.
It seems to me like that scenario does in our very way of life.
Not that I want this to happen–hell, I don’t even want to be right on this. But to me, I feel like a few failed banks should not crush our economy like they seem to be threatening to. If our economy was strong, and hadn’t given away most of its jobs and much of the value of it’s currency, we’d have, you know, an actual foundation to stand on in case the scaffolding of banking falls on our heads. Since we don’t have a solid foundation of value and labor in our country, when our banks fail, there’s nothing else left.
PLEASE TELL ME I’M WRONG!!
I really want someone to tell me I’m wrong!!!
Just make sure to include clear explanations a child could understand. I went to film school. ^_^
Another US Bank to Crumble?
by ThePete 6:00 pm 2008-08-19
Weee! It’s so hard to not be cynical when things just keep getting worse.
So, the above is a screencap of an article capped just moments ago at http://timesonline.co.uk/ and it talks about how an ex-IMF guy (that’s International Monetary Fund, not Impossible Mission Force) says that another US bank is about to tank and that the US economic crisis is only half over.
The Fed and the USG have been trying for months (years?) to get this thing under control and this guys says it’s only half over?
Half over???
All I feel like saying to that is…
Weeeeee!
(You know, it’s like that feeling you get when you’re on a roller coaster that is hurling toward the ground!)
Mobile post sent by thepete using Utterz. Replies.
@CK67 haha, the worst has past…
by ThePete 2:29 pm 2008-08-19@CK67 haha, the worst has past, man–but thanks for your concern. :D It’ll be at least another month before I do that again. :(
I know I’ve gone off my whole-…
by ThePete 1:14 pm 2008-08-19I know I’ve gone off my whole-foods-only diet when my flatus smells bad. Last night? Mint chocolate chip! Today? Butt-based cat repellent.
Why Must the RIAA Harm All that is Good?
by ThePete 12:13 pm 2008-08-19
This morning I saw a Twitter post that said simply "Say it ain’t so, Muxtape!"
My heart skipped a beat–Muxtape.com is my favorite site for sharing music. It allows users to upload twelve songs from their computer, then creates a playlist and a URL they can share with there friends. I’ve been dutifully waiting for their iPhone app to arrive but after seeing the above screencap, can we believe we’ll ever see an app or even their website again???
Why must the RIAA be so draconian? I understand protecting copyrights, but I’m not sure how Muxtape makes their money, so I can’t imagine what grounds the RIAA has for threatening the site when all it ends up being is a site that allows users to share mixes of the favorite audio tracks–hell, at http://thepete.muxtape.com/ I have a handful of straight audio clips that aren’t even music.
And is it me, or does behavior like this from big business just make them look bad? What about the folks that actually buy music that they hear for the first time on Muxtape?
Something similar is happening with Pandora.com. Rather than looking at the site as a massive commercial for music, Sound Exchange (the group in charge of collecting royalties for musicians) is now demanding royalties so high from online music sites that the peole behind Pandora are considering shutting down.
Pandora is a site that allows you to create your own custom radio station based on the artist or song name you enter. Essentially, it’s exactly like the process you go through when choosing a traditional radio station–you know, you pick the one the plays mostly music that you like (if you can find one). Pandora.com does this all for you–pretty cool, huh? Except the royalties Pandora.com has to pay, I’ve heard, are twice what traditional radio stations have to pay. I think the excuse is that on the web so many peole can listen to the music.
I’m just going to come out and say it: fuck the free market–it is stifling the growth of music and is cutting off innovation.
The system as it is now creates boring, unrisky, music that doesn’t push art (and therefore humanity) forward. I gave up on traditional radio over a decade ago and have been getting introduced to new music through movie soundtracks and friends who are musicians. Thanks to sites like Pandora and Muxtape, I’m actually listening to new music again. Well, I WAS.
Who thought greed would be a good business model, anyway?
Mobile post sent by thepete using Utterz. Replies.
Muxtape down thanks to RIAA ba…
by ThePete 10:48 am 2008-08-19Muxtape down thanks to RIAA bastards! (muxtape.com/)
Yesterday, tried to pay my iPh…
by ThePete 7:51 pm 2008-08-18Yesterday, tried to pay my iPhone bill on time but the AT&T site turned “$170″ into “$1.70″ and now keeps throwing errors when I try to pay.
Interesting take on capitalism…
by ThePete 5:27 pm 2008-08-18Interesting take on capitalism and sustainability called Mad Max Syndrome (ping.fm/rFNLO)
Newly detected air pollutant m…
by ThePete 5:24 pm 2008-08-18Newly detected air pollutant mimics damaging effects of cigarette smoke (ping.fm/OrlWU)
@beep Whoops–Bram is 19th Cen…
by ThePete 2:41 pm 2008-08-18@beep Whoops–Bram is 19th Century… stupid-me.
@beep love your new avatar–I …
by ThePete 2:39 pm 2008-08-18@beep love your new avatar–I think I’ll stop by FaceYourEighteenthCenturyAuthor.com, too. Maybe a nice Bram Stoker for me?
thepete.com: Killswitch for th…
by ThePete 1:41 am 2008-08-18thepete.com: Killswitch for the Killswitch on the iPhone:
So, I was checking for updates fo.. tinyurl.com/5dqp7a
Killswitch for the Killswitch on the iPhone
by ThePete 1:41 am 2008-08-18
So, I was checking for updates for my jailbroken iPhone last night and lookie what I found! Boss Prefs v2.12b was available on Cydia (one of the alternative "App Stores" you can use after jailbreaking your iPhone)!
BossPrefs is a cool little utility that allows you more control over settings on your iPhone–and more settings to set, too. This latest version gives users a cool new button to press that claims it can beat the killswitch Steve Jobs says he has at Apple HQ, at the peak of Mt. Doom, in the heart of Mordor.
Well, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the gist of it is true–Jobs has admitted to having this killswitch ( http://thepete.com/…-my-iphone ) and therefore I’m mad.
I may not fully own my iPhone outright, yet, but when I forked over my $200 last month, I did not agree to Apple having the ability to reach onto *my* iPhone and turn stuff off. The ability for them to do this is positively anti-American.
Imagine GM being able to reach into your car and change the radio station or turn off the headlights or disengage the seat belts. I could be using my iPhone to call for help after an accident and he could go "hey, you’re using Fring, an app that lets you use Skype over the Internet connection on your phone! Not cool!"
He cuts it off and you’re left with having to redial the call for help–or worse if you happened to have canceled your voice plan.
Of course, they don’t *let* you cancel your voice plan and Fring doesn’t work on 3G iPhones yet, but you get my point.
After all, who is Jobs to tell me what I can run on my phone and what I can’t? Can I control what he has on his phone?
No, so that’s all there is to it. If I had the ability to wirelessly shut down apps on my own phone remotely I might not mind as much that he could do it to me, but, essentially, he has more power over something that sits in my pocket than I do.
Not cool.
Also, if he had only overtly warned us that he had the ability, I could have made the choice of whether to accept the killswitch or not, before I even bought the phone. Instead, it’s probably buried in the contract someplace.
Again, not cool.
So, enter the Boss Prefs app for jailbroken iPhones. If it’s to be believed, activating it shuts down Jobs’ ability to shutdown any app running on your iPhone that he doesn’t like.
THANK YOU, BOSS PREFS!!
We, the Jailbreakers, SOLUTE YOU!
OK, well, *I* solute you. I assume other jailbreakers appreciate it, too.
Mobile post sent by thepete using Utterz. Replies.
