Telling it like it is

Today's dumbass story from Florida (obviously) : Man uses stove to light cigarette, but ignites oxygen tank. A Pasco County man is in the hospital after getting burned in his own house. Police say Henry Laskin was trying to light a cigarette on his stove when the oxygen tank he was wearing exploded. So this guy is in such bad health that he's already wearing an oxygen mask - probably for emphysema - yet he's still smoking? Why do we waste healthcare dollars on retards like this?

ComCast , the owners of the dire G4 TV channel, have put into motion the final piece of their masterplan to get rid of the far superior TechTV. Following the buyout and "merger" to G4TechTV this year, then the removal of "The Screen Savers", then the mass firing of all prior TechTV staff, ComCast today announced that the channel was going to drop the "TechTV" portion of its name and all remaining TechTV content to once again become G4. Apparently, they blame the TechTV content for their "miserable viewing figures". Erm. No. The reason for the miserable viewing figures is because the station is shite, the shows are shite, the presenters are shite, and you got rid of all the good TechTV shows and presenters when you "merged". The good news is that this leaves the door open for someone to re-finance a phoenix-like reappearance of TechTV now - ComCast are losing the rights to the moniker. Still - having suffered at the hands of...

Yesterday Microsoft bought Giant Company - the manufacturers of the only working spam-scanning software that works in Outlook. Giant Company also manufacture one of the best spyware scanning programs too. Today Microsoft announce that both products will now become cost-option extras in Windows. So MS are selling buggy, corrupted code, and then they want to charge for more software that will help patch the holes in their own OS. That wouldn't be quite so bad if they were just going to use Spywareblocker and Spam Assassin "as is", but the fact that their programmers are going to dick with the code to make it more "microsoft-friendly" means that those programs will suffer the same fate - they'll become slow, buggy bloatware.

San Francisco politicians have proposed banning all handguns in the city, except those carried by police, military or security guards. It goes to the vote in 2005. Whilst they've obviously seen the light, being an educated blue state (as oppose to a dumb B*sh state), I wonder if the public would dare to vote it in?

Must. Not. Kill.

Geico are suing Google for $8.35m in lost revenue. Geico claims that Google's AdWords program, which displays the rival ads under a "Sponsored Links" heading next to a user's search results, causes confusion for consumers and illegally exploits Geico's investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in its brand. Their lawyor Charles Ossala claims that "When a consumers enters 'Geico' ... and goes to the sponsored link believing there's a connection, that is where the confusion arises." Well first off, Charles, "a consumers" ? Secondly, you'd have to be pretty slow on the uptake to think that a website that didn't link to "geico.com" was anything to do with them. Sadly, I expect the lawyors will win though.

The weekend flew past, obviously. We went to see Ocean's 12 on saturday night. The cinema was packed - standing room only. Film was good. The weather has been giving us a brief respite before the onslaught of the impending no-power, wastelands-of-siberia Christmas storm. It was 17°C on saturday! We finally managed to get the roses trimmed and mulched - the previous snowfall had stopped that activity in its tracks. I read last night that B*sh has started recalling retired army personnel to active duty. Over 100 60-plussers, and one guy who's 70 have all been recalled to active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a nice pre-christmas present for some families I'm sure.