At what point do you just finally give up hope and realize something is never going to happen?

I fear I have finally reached that point with Guns N’ Roses ever releasing their 10-year-in-the-making album, Chinese Democracy. I probably should have given up hope after Slash, Duff McKagen and Matt Sorum all left the band and went on to form Slash’s Snake Pit, and, later, Velvet Revolver. The band was falling apart, and when it got down to just Axl Rose and an ever-rotating line-up of other musicians, it wasn’t even really Guns N’ Roses anymore, but just some band backing Axl’s enormous ego.

For some odd reason I’ve kept holding out hope for this mythical sixth album, kind of like those who look for the Lost Dutchman’s Gold Mine: it’s become more about the dream than the actuality.

While I was into music since I first heard the Ramones sing “Rock N’ Roll High School” in the mid-70’s (yes, I was like 6-years-old), Guns N’ Roses first major album, Appetite For Destruction, made me go just a little nutso. I found the album extremely early in it’s life cycle, and I wore out three cassette copies of it driving around in my car; it was the only album I listened to for months on end. I even went to an Aerosmith concert in St. Louis (not the infamous St. Louis show, thankfully), a four-hour drive, just to see GN’R open for them, I was just that nuts for them At the height of their popularity, I was still crazy for them, and followed them all the way through their fifth album, “The Spaghetti Incident?”, and then it all fell apart as internal struggles in the band tore them apart.

That was 15-years ago, and around 1998 we started hearing that Axl had brought in all sorts of new members and was working on Chinese Democracy, and all the fans started waiting… and waiting… and waiting… and then, oh yeah, we waited some more. We’ve heard numerous “release dates” that come and go without nary of a sign of it actually showing up. It has gotten to the point of being so outrageously funny that Dr. Pepper, the soda company, has issued a challenge to Axl: release the album in 2008 and they’ll give a free can of soda to every one in the country.

Rumors now place production costs for the album to be in the range of $13 million, making it possibly the most expensive album ever made, and still there is no sign of it.

Why do I even bring this up? Because I was looking for news on it again, and, as always, coming up empty handed. I’ve heard a few tracks that will supposedly be on the album, and while they aren’t bad, I just don’t feel the passion for them I felt for previous outings. Essentially this is GN’R in name only, and it’s kinda sad. As I said, the band has rotated so many times that I can’t even tell you who is currently in the line-up, and in the old days that would have been unimaginable for me to not know every little factoid about this band.

There is no doubt my musical tastes have changed since their last album, which was bound to happen with maturity. I certainly never just sat around, not exploring music as I waited, but I’ve always kind of held on to GN’R for some reason, and Chinese Democracy has been talked about so much that it kept the band alive in a fashion for me. It was always there, giving me hope of one more shot at capturing that old feeling.

I think it’s not even so much I want the album at this point, I just have to admit that what was once so important to me is no more, and those days are long gone. It’s like saying “good-bye” to an old friend, like I’m letting a part of my childhood die off, and this dream, this never-ending project had become my last tenuous connection to that time period in my life. There are so many memories connected to early GN’R for me, so many nights of driving around, the windows down, singing “Paradise City” at the top of my lungs and probably annoying more than a few people.

I’m actually listening to a few random tracks from when the band was still intact (well, minus Steven Adler on drums, but Sorum was always a better drummer any ways) as I write this, and it is just time to accept it’s over, and move on. It was fun while it lasted, and it certainly doesn’t change who I am as a person, it just means I can finally totally move on and embrace all the great music that’s out there that maybe I didn’t give a shot before… like… Zamfir, Master of the Pan Flute… hey, it could happen!

Apparently it is another slow news period in the world, because the story of Miley Cyrus posing for pictures in Vanity Fair is yet another non-story that should not be getting anywhere near the coverage it is.

For those of you unfamiliar with her, Miley Cyrus is the star of the insanely popular Disney series, Hannah Montanna. (warning:insanely loud music plays when you go there) She is also the daughter of Billy Ray Cyrus, the well-known country music singer.

First off, let’s just talk about it artistically. I am certainly no great art critic, but I think this is a simply gorgeous portrait. There is no denying that Annie Leibovitz is probably the greatest living photographer of this age. She has an unmatched eye for capturing a person’s essence, and her sense of lighting is phenomenal.

However, people are up in arms over this image saying that it over sexualizes the young pop star. As this story has swirled for the past couple of days, Ms. Leibovitz has now had to issue a statement defending the image, and Ms. Cyrus has issued a statement that she is “embarrassed” by it, and has apologized to her fans.

For what? Seriously, what is there to be apologized about here? Yes, she appears to be wrapped in a sheet, but, so what? This image is only as sexual as YOU choose to make it, and to me it is a perfect summary of that odd time in every woman’s life where you are no longer a child (the back) and yet you aren’t quite a woman yet (her cheeks are still very Cherubic), and, shocking news, that’s exactly what she is, a 15-year-old. I personally see absolutely nothing wrong with the portrait, but that may just be me.

Ms. Cyrus’ has also suggested she was coerced into this photo by Ms. Leibovitz, which I find hard to believe.  Also, both her grandmother and teacher were on set while this picture was shot, and all three were shown the image on a laptop within minutes of the picture being taken, agreeing it was a wonderful image of the young woman.

So who are these “outraged” people?  Why are they so upset about this picture?  I ask this in all sincerity because I simply do not get what is wrong with this picture, and, I have to be honest, it makes me wonder about the people who do have a problem with it.  Why is this so offensive?

When speaking with the diabolical “M” last night, she raised an extremely valid point: “Would we be having this same discussion if she wore a backless dress to the Oscars?”  The answer is that we wouldn’t be.  Because people with overactive imaginations looked at this photo, and placed their own thoughts in to this, it became an issue.  To me, again, I just see a beautiful portrait, wonderfully shot and lit, but yet I see nothing sensual in it.

I know I was fairly rough on Ms. Cyrus’ Disney co-worker Vanessa Anne Hudgens, back when those nude photos of her came out, but to me there is a world of difference here.  In Ms. Hudgens’ corner we have skanky pictures taken in a bedroom, fully nude verses a beautiful portrait revealing nothing but a back.  Yet, here we are, and Ms. Hudgens’ is currently working on High School Musical 3, so apparently people don’t get THAT upset over some full-blown nudity, but if you show a bare back, the apocalypse is coming.

This probably all comes down to the old argument of “beauty is in the eye-of-the-beholder”, but in this case it would seem it is more about what is dirty/wrong is in the eye-of-the-beholder.

-slowly bangs his head on his desk-

Why does the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) insist on being such monumental asses? Is it a game to them? Some sort of, “Hey, let’s see if we can get away with… THIS” game of chicken they play with the music industry as a whole?

Their latest target is a company named Project Playlist that lets users, as their name implies, build playlists of music from various sources. The company does not host any files, pays royalties to performance bodies, and clearly states that they attempt to only index sites with legal music files.

Project Playlist, Inc. aspires to index and organize the music on the Internet in a responsible and efficient manner, and is therefore committed to copyright protection. Accordingly, our search engine is based upon our growing index of links to music files legally posted on the Internet for promotional or other legal purposes. Our music player allows performance of music files through streaming technology and “in-line linking” of series of hyperlinks. In that way, we make it easy for our users to create a playlist that points to a series of music files hosted on third party websites. We do not control those third party websites. We do not host music files. We do not allow uploading or downloading of music files to projectplaylist.com. We are not a “file sharing” site, peer to peer or otherwise; and we do not support or endorse illegal copying of music.

So even with all of this, and being the chosen music player of MySpace, where artists willingly post their music for promotional purposes, the RIAA has chosen to sue them.

They are using the argument that Project Playlist facilitates the piracy of third-party websites by allowing people to play the music files from these sites, which PP clearly says they do not want and will comply with any take-down notice they receive from an artist. The RIAA also tries to claim that PP pays no compensation, even though they list on their site exactly how they do pay royalties.

To me, this is like suing Apple for their iPods playing pirated music, or how about going after the makes of blank CDs for passing around pirated music on their media? The RIAA seems to have two modus operandi now: find anything online since it’s easier to track and then sue the pants off of them.

I would love for someone to tell me what exactly the RIAA does now outside of suing. I mean, do they actually play any sort of productive role in the world of music, or is strictly now about how many people they can sue? I know they are supposedly about protecting the rights of musicians, and safe-guarding the copyrights of their works, but what about when all they do is antagonize the fans?

The coup de grâce of this whole thing is how all of this money the RIAA takes in is not getting to the musicians they are “protecting”. This has been discussed for a couple of months now, and, to the best of my knowledge, has not changed. So, where is all of this money going? They keep suing, they keep winning, where is all of the money? I mean, the RIAA is there to help the artists, isn’t it? And when they sue in their names, doesn’t that mean those artists should reasonably expect a payment?

Snarkiness aside, and this is just my observation, I think the RIAA knows they have hit on a money making scam the likes of which the world has never seen before. I mean, if you can go around suing people for any number of reasons that you can seemingly make up as you go along, do it for the “artists”, and then find ways to not pay it out, wouldn’t you?

All-in-all, you just have to look at this organization and wonder what the next target will be, because there is obviously no end to their war to alienate every music fan ever.

I got the chance to be a last-minute fill-in guest last night on the Elite Tech News podcast with all of the regulars:

Mark ‘Rizzn’ Hopkins of Mashable
Steven Hodson of WinExtra
Frederic from The Last Podcast
Jason from Webomatica
Art Lindsey of artlindsey.com

We discussed a wide range of topics for over an hour including, with links by Frederic:

1. Twitter’s personnel and uptime issues and the college student who claimed to be arrested in Egypt and used Twitter to communicate with the outside world… and I insulted the entire country.
2. Border Agents Can Search Laptops Without Cause, Appeals Court Rules where I somehow made everyone think I take horrible vacation photos.
3. Faster - Why Constant Stress is Part of Our Future wherein we learned Mark likes to blog sans pants.
4. Microsoft’s Mesh
5. Yahoo/Miscrosoft deal *snore*

And some final BitchMemes for the week

1. Video comments on TechCrunch and Seesmic in general
2. Mike Arrington in general

It was a great time, and hopefully I can come back to join them again someday in the future. So, for all of you who have always wondered what I sound like, here ya go. (or you can click here to listen)

I wasn’t aware until last night that ReadWriteWeb had decided to continue the, “Oh bloggers are over stressed and we’re all dying” meme started by the New York Times. I already covered this on April 6th in Dying To Blog, but this one brought up even more silliness.

News blogging is probably one of the most stressful occupations you can have. First, you have to watch the crazy-fast moving, non-stop tech world all the time. News bloggers have thousands of feeds in their RSS readers. Staying on top of all that is not easy. In addition, you have to write well. It is not just the story, its how you present it that makes a difference. Creativity needs to be present whether you are sick or its rainy or you are simply not in the mood. Every day you need to watch the world and re-invent yourself.

Welcome to the world of writing, here’s your laptop.

Blogging is no more stressful than any other form of news delivery job, but I guess it is all a matter or perspective. However, to say it is “one of the most stressful occupations you can have” is just narrow-minded hyperbole. I could make you a laundry list as long as my arm of occupations that are more stressful just off of the top of my head. (air traffic controller… stock broker… cop… fireman… doctor…)

If someone is so stressed out by writing news blogs, than change to another type of blogging. There is a seemingly never ending stream of blogs needing writers, so if you’re doing this, you’re choosing to do this and you need to stop your whining. Yes, I get stressed out sometimes, but most of the time I am thrilled to be doing what I’ve wanted to do since I was 4-years-old, and getting paid a fair wage to do it. I get to work at home, in my favorite chair, wearing what I want, a dog sleeping on my foot and some crap show playing in the background on the television. Why should I be stressed?

I hate to call it like it is, but this is one of those stories that is going to circulate for a while because it’s an easy write-up, and it’s also linkbait because people like me aren’t going to be able to resist the urge to whine about it. Don’t bite from the apple, and just let this meme die, it is beneath us to continue to beat this into the ground. If you can’t manage your own stress, learn to, and stop trying to make people feel pity for us; I am neither deserving or wanting of it, quite honestly. Suck it up, do your assignments, and then get up and go exercise or something. Works for me.

Frederic over at The Last Podcast found this fabulous YouTube video that paints a portrait of how some bloggers seem to think of how we write.

Guillermo Del Toro is going to to direct The Hobbit. This already makes me exponentially more excited for this project than I was for The Lord of the Rings.

The only thing that is tempering my excitement some is that this is a two picture deal covering The Hobbit and… it’s sequel? True, there was a 60-year gap between the original novel and The Fellowship of the Ring, and somehow New Line Cinema feels they can bridge this gap. Yes, there is a fifth book by J.R.R. Tolkein (kinda), called The Silmarillion, but it deals with the history before what we already know. As far as I know, he did not create in bridging texts for the stand-alone novel in the trilogy, so it makes me a bit nervous what might be in that one.

Del Toro is a fascinating choice for these films, and I am excited to see what sort of vision he brings to the films. Will he devolve Gollum some to reflect the time difference? The spiders should be fun. I am most excited to see how he handles Smaug, the dragon. (I am betting even money he asks Ron Perlman, a fave actor of his, to do the voice, and I would have no objections.) I have heard Ian McKellen will be returning as Gandalf, though that is rumor at this point. His age shouldn’t be a problem as Gandalf was always supposed to look elderly without it ever really being specified just how old he “looked”.

The only problem with this choice is that Del Toro tends to have “a look”. If you are unfamiliar with his work, he directed Blade II, Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth. He has a very definite look to his lighting and camera angles, but I think they will work for this film.

The director will be moving to New Zealand for four years to shoot the films back-to-back, and work with Peter Jackson, director of The Lord of the Rings, who is serving as producer on these two films.

Meanwhile, the music video for the theme for the Speed Racer movie showed up on MySpace.

Yes, this film looks silly as all get out, but it also looks to be fun. I am glad to see the Wachowski brothers doing a fun film this time out. I think they got caught up in the Matrix trilogy and really didn’t know where to go with it. They did redeem themselves with me when they did V For Vendetta, a movie I professed a deep love for not once, but twice.

I know some will be shocked I am interested by a movie that is so wildly over-the-top, but as I’ve said before, so long as the film sticks to its own rules, I have no problem with it. Since physics have been clearly tossed out the window for this project, as they should be, then let total car mayhem ensue, fine by me. If they tried to imply that real world physics applied and then tried to do these race courses, then my brain would shut down in the theater and I would sit in the corner, drooling all over myself as my brain cells slowly died from stupidity.

All that aside, I do plan to see it as they really seemed to have captured the look and feel of the original series. If it does well, rumors are already circulating of a sequel, so hopefully it will be good.

It seems that computer makers have decided that I, amongst many, many others, am right about Vista not being the be-all, end-all of computing. HP, Dell and Lenovo computer manufacturers are all formulating plans for how they will continue to sell XP well past the June 30th cutoff set by Microsoft.

The plans consist of HP providing XP recovery discs to business customers who wish to downgrade from Vista for an undetermined amount of time. Lenovo will be stick with XP recovery options through January 31st of this year. However, Dell is taking the cake and promising XP, for possibly a small extra fee, through 2010, when Windows 7 is expected.

This information may end up being moot as Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, hinted to a conference in Belgium on Thursday that Microsoft may just extend XP themselves if customers demanded it. Um… I could be wrong, but when the computer manufacturers start telling you that customers want it, you may have the consumer vote you’ve been waiting on.

While many commenters on my previous Vista posts have been telling me it’s all about how the users use it, I think that is part of the problem. XP, for all of its flaws, was pretty straight forward for the common user, and, sad to say, but you need to design for them still, they are still a large portion of the consumer base.

I think of the other huge problems was the lack of computability with older peripherals. Notice I said above that HP was going to be doing this for their business customers? Well, think about a large corporate office. Printers… scanners… networked drives… UPS supplies… peripheral after peripheral, and Vista not being compatible with that many of them. Many people said, “Oh, just buy new!” Er… I’m glad you think companies have never-ending tech budgets! As a small business owner, I have 3 printers in my office alone, and my key one, an HP LaserJet 6P has served me well for years… and would not work with Vista. So if I buy a Vista-based computer, I have to also budget for a new printer? I think not.

Microsoft thought of no one but themselves when it comes to Vista, and I think that concept is now biting them in their collective behinds, just as it should.

I know it’s an old rant, and I know people far more familiar with the subject than myself have commented time and time again on it, but I don’t care.

The oil companies can burn in Hades for all I care.

It seems the major oil companies are set to announce huge profits on the fact that oil broke through $110 a barrel.  And that just makes my blood boil.

I am obviously all for a company making a profit seeing as I own a business myself, but when the world depends on what you sell, there is a point where you have to say, “Okay, maybe we don’t need to make quite as much.”

The economy is/sliding into a recession.  There really is no way to argue the way out of it any more, no matter how you spin it.  Food prices are reaching record highs, people are losing their jobs, there are people in America living in tent cities around Los Angeles due to losing their homes (yes, the housing market is a disaster, and that’s a whole different rant), but the oil companies chug along making huge profits, and people don’t go, “Hey… wait a tic…”

I wish we weren’t so reliant on oil, however, we are.  Until someone gets off their behinds and makes an alternative fuel that works (i.e. hydrogen), we’re stuck.  So for the oil companies to keep talking about profits while people suffer due to those profits, well, it just makes me a little ill.  I find it hard to believe there isn’t something they could trim somewhere that would make it easier on regular folks to fuel up their cars.

A lot of people I talk to also don’t see just how far this goes.  For instance, I sell hundreds of plastic model kits a month in my business, and people don’t understand why my prices have gone up slightly as of late.  Much to my surprise, most of customers don’t realize oil is used in the production of plastics.  Then there are also transport costs from China to Japan… Japan to the USA… wherever they land in the USA to me, all of these steps which uses oil.  True, my products are luxury items, but the price of oil takes its toll on them also.

As for alternative fuels… give up the dream of corn based ethanol.  I’m sorry, but it’s bogus.  It takes oil to produce it (something they prefer you not know), and it is causing corn prices to skyrocket which effects numerous other food products.  You want a true biodiesel?  One that requires next to nothing to get it to work, and a huge country is running up to 70% of their vehicles on it?  Look to Brazil and sugar cane.  Sugar cane is also easier to grow, takes little to no oil to convert it and it burns fairly cleanly.

This is a hard line for me take as someone who owns a business, it really is, but when your business is a commodity every single person in the world depends on for their standard of life, I think it changes the rules of the game some.  Do I think they will ever cut their profits?  Heck no.  I just want more people to think about this, and do what they can to cut their oil consumption.  Ride a bike, take mass transit when you can, walk if it’s a short distance, because the only way we MIGHT ever get their attention is if we start talking with our wallets.  Is it foolproof?  No.  Something has to get through to them, though.

Facebook finally got an application I’m enjoying: Triumph.

Simply put, you fight people… endlessly.  You start off with a small kingdom and start building your offenses and defenses, trying to attack your neighbors to capture some of their land.  As the game progresses you can join an alliance which basically means if someone picks on you too much, your alliance members will attack them to tell them to back off.

It is deceptively easy because you think you only need to worry about the war aspect, but you also have to manage your lands with things like commercial zones (to generate cash), residence (your people need somewhere to live), military bases (to increase your troops effectiveness) and so on.

Does it accomplish anything?  No, but it’s fun, it’s a nice break between writing articles, and I fully admit I like to imagine I am in control of the vast lands and armies of Seanlandia… we have cupcakes on Tuesdays… after the weekly beheading of my enemies.

If you’re on Facebook, check it out, see if you can take me on!  (HA!  I shall crush you like worms beneath my heel!… and, no, M, it’s not a high heel)

Adam Ostrow, one of my editor’s at Mashable, has launched… well, re-launched, an exciting web application that I can’t believe how much I enjoy.

ReadBurner had a short-lived run earlier this year that got the tech bloggers buzzing, but then it sadly went away when it got more popular than people could handle.  Adam, along with  Drew Olanoff, Thomas Connors, and Alexander Marktl, saw an oppurtunity to sweep in, re-design it, and bring it back better than before.

So what does it do that makes it so interesting?  For those of us who use Google Reader for our RSS feeds, we have the ability to click a handy little button that lets us share whatever stories we find interesting with those people who are in our Google contacts.  Until ReadBurner it was just amongst friends, but using some of Google’s handy ways of sharing tools, RB shows you which stories are being shared the most, how many times it has been shared, and who it is that thought it was worth passing around.

For those that might worry that you’re being shared without your permission, no worries.  You have to manually add your feed to ReadBurner.  (You can find the link to your items by clicking on “Your shared items”)

Is it interesting?  Oddly, yes, but I couldn’t tell you why exactly.  It does bring some stories to your attention that you might have otherwise missed, or never even been aware of, but that also adds to the amount of information you have to process in a day, but it’s fun, so who cares.

The stories do trend towards being more about what’s going on in the tech side of things, and it may not be quite as useful to say someone who like politics, but that’s why people need to spread the word.  The site is only as good as the people who add their feeds, and while I already love the site, I think with more diversity to the stories, it’ll be even better.

So what are you waiting for?  Come over, join the fun, add your feed.  Oh… and it’s optimized for mobile devices.

Well, the new laptop is here. I did go with the Dell Vostro 1500, which I talked about back in February.

So why did I go with this system?  Numerous reasons.

- Windows XP was available on it.  That was a huge reason.

- Dell Vostros ship without trialware, making for a much more pleasant experience.

- Kick ass screen.

- Did I mention it comes with XP?

- Dell had an amazing sale on this model last week.

So, what all did I get done to it?

• Intel Core 2 Duo T7250, 2.0GHz, 800Mhz, 2M L2 Cache
• 15.4 inch Wide Screen SXGA+ display with TrueLife LCD
• 2GB, DDR2, 667MHz 2 DIMM
• 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT
• 120G 5400RPM SATA Hard Drive
• 8X DVD+/-RW with double-layer DVD+R write capability, w Roxio Creator

It also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, built-in webcam, SVHS out, 4 USB 2.0, Ethernet port, etc, etc… and for the price of a MacBook Pro, I could have bought two of these.  So, sure, it is still Windows based, but for the price I got this at, it was hard to pass it up.  Oh, and I love the keyboard, it has great action.

So, there you have it, another PC laptop, and I am turning my old one, which still has some life in it, in to a media streamer for my D-Link DSM-330 DivX Connected HD Media Player, which I will be reviewing soon.

Yes, the site was down for around 17 hours for reasons beyond my control, everything has been fixed now, and we shall discuss this… later.

I have been running into this a lot more lately both for work and for this site, and that is people watermarking images they have no copyright claim to. Take the G.I. Joe Cast Pictures (which have now been removed by request of Paramount) I posted the other day. It took me quite a while to find copies of those images that didn’t have website names written all over them or being locked from anyone being able to save them. As far as I am concerned, these images belong to the film studio (hence why I took them down when they requested I do so), and not to any individual website, so why they feel they have a right/necessity to put their name on it is beyond me.

What irks me even more is in my work side of things. When it is obviously a studio-shot, meant for product promotion, manufacturer released photo… why put your company name all over it? It looks garish and unprofessional to me. If someone steals a picture I got from the toy company in the first place, why should I care? Now, yes, hotlinking is an issue, true, but it’s not such a large issue that companies should be paying employees to put watermark after watermark on an image. If it’s an original photo, something you shot yourself, than by all means you should mark it. We do it to any eBay photo we put up that we took the picture of personally.

My absolute favorite has to be people who mark up screenshots of a website for when I’m writing up an article about a site. Come on! It’s a screenshot for crying out loud!  This is something anyone can make by hitting the “Print Screen” key, so you went through some labor intensive process?  I think not.

Moral of the story?  Stop writing on images… unless it is for humorous purposes, of course.

Danica Patrick won the Indy Racing League (IRL) Japan 300 race today, making her the first woman to win such a race. A major accomplishment to be sure, and she is to be congratulated, just as any racer should be.

Unless you are Bob Margolis of Yahoo Sports, then it’s just time to show that misogyny is alive and well.

See, Mr. Margolis feels compelled to write a piece about the race entitled “Putting Patrick’s victory in perspective“, because we’re all incapable of doing that ourselves. In his piece he felt compelled to try to educate us that the win had nothing to do with her.

It didn’t happen as the result of a final lap, wheel-to-wheel battle, one that many close observers of the sport feel she will never win.

It instead was more a battle between the race engineer’s computers on the Andretti Green team and that of her rival Helio Castroneves’ Penske Racing team. It was a matter of who would get the best fuel mileage in the final handful of laps of the 200-lap race.

So?

Since when has racing ever not been about the crew, as well as the driver? True, I am not a race fan, but what little I do catch, be it Nascar or IRL, fueling has always been a part of the strategy. When to take a pit stop to fuel up, drafting to conserve fuel, etc, but Mr. Margolis seems to feel this was some sort of sin.

Both drivers had made their final pit stop on Lap 148, and when race leader Scott Dixon was forced onto pit road for a final splash of fuel, it became an opportunity for both Patrick and Castroneves to win – in a fuel mileage battle.

Really, a fuel mileage battle… how shocking! How about instead of bemoaning her win, you point the finger at Mr. Dixon’s crew for not doing their job and mismanaging his fuel?  He was in the lead and he had to pit for fuel… guess his management sucked.

Even Ms. Patrick admits it was a fuel battle in a quote to the media:

“It was a fuel strategy race, but my team called it perfectly for me,” said Danica Patrick. “I know I was on the same strategy at Helio (Castroneves) and when I passed him for the lead, I couldn’t believe it. This is fabulous.” She won the race by finishing with 5.8594 seconds ahead Helio Castroneves.

5.8594 seconds seems like a pretty sound win to me, and a factoid that Mr. Margolis chooses not to raise. Instead he prefers to say that Patrick likes to silence her detractors by posing in swimsuits.

Even when he compliments her, he can’t resist making another misogynistic comment.

To her credit, Patrick remains a model for young women everywhere. It may be a model of how persistence, a pretty face and the willingness to take the heat can pay off in the end.

What do her looks have to do with anything? Do you bring up the appearance of the male drivers when they win? “He was persistent, had a well defined chin…”, somehow I don’t think so.

For a sport I don’t even care about, I can’t believe how much this man’s… “writing”… irritated me. (I won’t even start on his abysmal sentence structure) A win is a win, and saying it was somehow less due to fuel management is just a cop out. So, if he can call it as he sees it, so can I… Misogynist pig, table of 1?

Earlier this week I wrote a diatribe about Windows Vista that got some… passionate… comments from Vista users. The feeling seems to be that it is fine once you fiddle with it, and that you need to “learn” how to work with it. It would seem that Steve Ballmer, the CEO of Microsoft, shares a similar view as he referred to Vista as “a work in progress” this past Thursday at a technology conference.

“A work in progress”?

You spent five years in development and you have one year of real world release under your belt, but it’s still “a work in progress”.

Wow.

I instant messaged my ever-allusive friend, M, since she was the one who had the issues that set off the article the other day that I wrote. Once I filled her in on Mr. Ballmer’s comments, she replied with ‘”this car that you are driving down the highway … it’s a work in progress” -crashes into divider-’. I had to give her points for the analogy.

Could someone else tell me when something that is this mission critical to the way something works is allowed to be released to the public as “a work in progress”? Mr. Ballmer has basically told you that you are working with a Beta version of the program, but they let you pay for it. How kind of them.

I really cannot understand why people are not more outraged by this. Is there any other time in your life you would accept a sub-par product that costs hundreds of dollars, and you allow the manufacturer to describe it as “a work in progress”? Somehow I doubt it.

M made another very valid point when she said to me today, “but that’s exactly the point, a computer is like a car. The only difference is that instead of maintaining your life, the computer maintains your livelihood, and there’s a big connection between livelihood and life, so the difference is very minuscule.”

For me, this couldn’t be true.  Every cent I earn is earned via the computer.  Whether it be my online store, my eBay auctions or my writing, my entire livelihood is derived from being on a computer, and that means “a work in progress” is not acceptable to me.  I should not have to “learn” to do tweaks, I should not have to turn off features so it will work in an acceptable manner, I should not have to sacrifice a chicken to it to get it to boot, and it certainly should not be “a work in progress”.

One thing people have to remember is that the majority of computer users are not like the people who have no problems with Vista.  The people I know who say this are computer savvy individuals, but you have to remember we are the minority.  Why do you think places like Geek Squad exists?  It’s not for us, it’s for people like M.  Mind you that she is an exceedingly intelligent person, and talking to her sometimes makes me feel like I’m about 10-years-old because I can’t comprehend some of the things she discusses, but when it comes to computers, the roles reverse.  She is indicative of the common user; they don’t know this stuff, and I’m sorry, it’s not their place to.  Your operating system should be the most basic thing possible because everything relies on it, if it starts acting up, you have a very expensive paper weight, so how about making sure you take those people into consideration and you don’t release “a work in progress”?

For those new people out there, “M” is real, she just prefers her name not to be spread all over the Internet… it hinders her nefarious plans

The G.I. Joe pictures just keep popping up all over the place. We still haven’t seen Cobra Commander, Destro, Zartan, Breaker or Heavy Duty, but these images are steps towards finally giving a feeling for the film. I am getting more and more certain these “black outfits” on the Joe’s is some sort of “final mission” outfits, and not their every day uniforms… at least I hope so.

Hawk you can’t do much with as he just puts the team together. Duke… eh. I never cared for his character in the first place. Ripcord… I could have sworn he was a Caucasian… oh well. Storm Shadow, um… yeah… not sure about that outfit. Baroness is pretty dead on. Cover Girl was a red head, but as long as she has a “model” look, it works. I’ve already praised Snake-Eyes and questioned Scarlett, but since they were new images, I included them.

As usual, click on any of the images for a much larger view.

ALL IMAGES REMOVED AT THE REQUEST OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Sorry folks

The second character shot from the G.I. Joe movie is out and it is of the covert agent of the team, Scarlett. About a month ago we got the shot of Snake-Eyes, which I loved, but this one I am mixed on.

I’m thrilled she has her crossbow, red hair and the ponytail, but why all black for the outfit? Yes, her original outfit was a bit goofy, but basic black seems boring to me. I’m hoping maybe this is like a “final mission” of the film outfit or something.

Normally I would tell you to see the bigger version of the pic here on my site, but since the first site to run the pic, JoBlo.com, decided to be annoying and watermark the image, you’ll have to go to their site to see the mondo sized pic. (ETA: These asses have now blocked linking directly to the picture and insist you go through their main page, as I feel their being a bit draconian, no link for them)  I give them full credit for being the first with the pic, but come on guys, watermarking? Are we 5-years-old? If anyone deserves to mark an image, it’s the studio, not some halfwit website, or are you going to tell me you took the image yourselves? Yeah… that’s what I thought.

One of my co-workers at Mashable, Stan Schroeder, sent out a Twitter update about some new jeans, so I had a look, and what you see to the left is what I saw.

Apparently these brilliant things are the brain child of some fashion group named Sanna’s Brazil Fashion out of Japan.  You can see more of pictures of these… things… over at their website.

I would love to know what idiot thought these were a good idea.  The original blog post Stan linked to over at Style Talk actually seems to think they are a good idea, referring to them as “sensuous” and “economical” at $88 for those in the USA buying them.

All I can say is, “please don’t.”  I would hope people would have enough sense not to buy these things, but you never know, but it’s about the last fashion trend I think I ever want to see taking off.

And, I’m sorry, maybe it’s a guy thing, anything that low on my hips would drive me bonkers I think.  I would constantly be wanting to pull them up!

Anyway you slice it, these things are so bad, I just had to share.

Over the years movies have been sitting firmly in the 90-minute running time to try to maintain the attention of the audience, and also to maximize the number of showings a theater could run during a given day. It’s been a sad trend, leading to movies far more concerned with their running time than any actual artistic vision, or actually telling the best story they can.

Luckily there are some people out there now fighting the trend, saying that it’s okay for a movie to run 2 - 3 hours; they have a story to tell and they’re going to tell it.

This all comes from the news today that the running times of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and The Dark Knight have had their running times announced. Neither film is going the 90-minute route, and I’m thrilled.

Indiana Jones is going to click in at 140-minutes, 13-minutes longer than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. It is not difficult to imagine those 13-minutes will be consumed with jokes about Indiana’s advancing age, but hopefully not. I am still feeling some trepidation over this film, but I might as well face facts that I am going to see it no matter what.

The news I am really excited about is the running time The Dark Knight; current estimates put it at about 165-minutes compared to Batman Begins being 140.  Considering they will not only be dealing with The Joker, but the end of the film will see the appearance of a second villain (I won’t say which for those who wish to be spoiler free) to set up the third movie, it’s going to be a busy film.  All I hope is they handle the Joker correctly, because if they do, the nearly three hour runtime won’t seem like enough.

All-in-all, it’s looking fairly decent this summer movie season, but I’m sure something will disappoint me along the way… of course.

Dancing With The Stars is tripe television, I admit it.  However, that does not excuse the crimes against music this show perpetrates every week.

There is no doubt that band leader, Harold Wheeler (pictured to the left) has a large task in front of him each week with the amount of music the band must perform, all in varying styles; this, however, doesn’t make it easier to stomach the way they slaughter some songs.  Since season one I have waited for them to use the Moulin Rouge version of “Roxanne” for a tango, and they finally did a few weeks ago… and it made me want to die a little bit.  The film version of this song is raw, guttural, verging on the primal, but instead we got something akin to pop and saddled with lackluster vocals that didn’t deliver a tenth of the power the original did.

This is but one small example of the egregious handling of source material this band doles out on a weekly basis.  On last night’s show we were treated to the band not even being able to find the correct rhythm in the first few bars of “Pon De Replay” by Rihanna.  Around the second bar of the song they actually changed the beat slightly, throwing the dancers, Shannon Elizabeth and Derek Hough, off their steps.

Mr. Wheeler does have an impressive resume, and is well respected in the music community, so I am not sure what is going wrong here.  Is it sub-par musicians?  Horrible singers?  (I am sorry, there is no defending those singers, they’re awful)  Is it to many styles of music?  What is it?  As someone who loves music, this band’s slaughtering of songs is getting close to driving me away from the show completely.  Even Tom Bergeron, the host, seems to be having a hard time with calling them a “great band” anymore as you can hear him snicker under it from time to time.  (Quick aside: I got the chance to visit his old morning show, Breakfast Time on FX, once, and he is one of the nicest folks I think I have ever seen working on a television show)

Will it ever stop being so painful?  Doubtful.  We’re in the sixth season, and it’s the same pain each time around, and it sadly seems to be getting worse.  It would just be nice to see them NOT slaughter a song… just once.