Well, as they say, all good things must come to an end.

StarterTech was the idea of my mother, and was envisioned as a site that would put technology in the simplest terms possible so that even someone like my dad could understand it.  We launched it on April 12, 2008, and while we plugged away at it, it has just never quite lived up to our expectations.

When I purchased FunJug a few months ago, and it had absolutely abysmal traffic, after just a few months of working at it, it is out-performing StarterTech by a significant amount.  I kept working at, but if anything traffic was just getting worse.  I started considering closing it, and then on Sunday, by 3 PM CST it had had exactly one visitor … yep, one.  So I decided to at least shelve the blog for now until I can rethink it some and maybe come at it from a different angle.

For now the site will stay as is, I just won’t be updating it any more.  And, hey, having 30 to 45 minutes of my day back each day isn’t exactly saddening me, but still would have seen the site do better.

Yes, yes, Moronic Monday episodes should be recorded on Mondays, but you can blame Talkshoe for letting us down.

Anyway, here is a selection of stories Steven found that our especially moronic.  It’s amazing how the Internet never seems to have an end to stories that just make you want to smack your head against a wall.

(Links by Steven for some of the stories we discuss in this episode)

Researchers Find Link Between Facebook Use And Syphilis In The UK – The Next Web
Is Baby Talk the New Startup Naming Convention? – GigaOM
Uh … WTF?: EA planning to charge for game demos – The Inquisitr
Symantec safety expert on why some cities are risky – CNET

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Yes folks, the Americans are once again going to attempt to make a Godzilla movie … that sound you just heard was me crying.

In 1998, Godzilla was made by Dean Devlin and Roland Emmerich, the “filmmakers” who also gave us Independence Day, and it was pretty much considered a complete disaster of a movie.  And the thing is, no one will ever claim that the Japanese Godzilla films are high art, but they are a fairly simple formula, and there are certain trademarks of the character such as his atomic breath that make him who he is.  Yet somehow these two yabbos totally missed the mark and made some sort of film about a giant lizard that was Godzilla in name only … it was truly horrible.

It has now been confirmed that Legendary Pictures and Warner Bros have completed a year-long negotiation with Toho to make a totally new film, and, yes … it will probably be in 3D.  Of course it will be, because every movie has to be in 3D now.

No creators are yet attached to this project, nor any other details at this time other than that the licensing has been completed.  Dan Lin, Roy Lee and Brian Rogers will be the producers; Yoshimitsu Banno, Kenji Okuhira and Doug Davison will be the  executive producers.  Speculation is that this will be a 2012 release as Warner Brothers has not yet announced any tent pole films for that summer, but that means this film will have to be fast tracked to be completed in time.

There has been no new Godzilla film anywhere since 2004′s Godzilla: Final Wars, but it is rumored that a new film may appear in 2014 in Japan for the character’s 60th anniversary.

Here are a few pointers for whomever ends up working on this film:

• Give him atomic breath
• No egg laying … for the love of all things Godzilla … no egg laying
• Atomic breath
• No hiding in buildings
• Did I mention atomic breath?
• No acting like you don’t know where he is … he’s a building-sized lizard!
• Oh, and if you don’t mind, could he have atomic breath?
• Keep Devlin and Emmerich as far away from this film as humanly possible
• And one last thing … ATOMIC BREATH!

Hopefully this won’t be as large of a disaster.

If anything good has come from the Lower Merion School District it is that it is causing the wiretapping law to be reexamined.

The recent situation with the Lower Merion School District using the built-in webcams of the school issued laptops to potentially spy on individuals that had either stolen the laptops or taken them off of school property without permission.  The issues arose when the school activated the camera of a laptop in the possession of Blake Robbins and he was in turn accused of being involved with drugs due to some candies he was eating being mistook for pills.

It was discovered that every laptop had the software installed to remotely access the cameras, and none of the families in the district had been notified of this fact.

Totally separate of the original manner, which has become a huge controversy, the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee of Crime and Drugs held a “field hearing” today at Philadelphia’s US District Court, Courtroom 3B, headed up by Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA).  The meeting did not involve the actual school district as this is more of a general issue, but the subcommittee did hear evidence from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about why the wiretapping laws should be expanded to cover any means of recording where one has a reasonable expectation of privacy, so this would have no impact on ATMs, casinos, street cams and more (all examples that were mentioned).

While there have been the critics and families that have questioned why this is even a story, but I think the Senate looking into it makes it pretty clear that things went wrong here.  How would you feel if you were sitting at home and you learned that the webcam staring at you could be activated without your permission or knowledge?  Not a good feeling, and you should have the right to not even worry about such a situation.

No final decision was made today, but it’s good to know that the situation is at least being looked into.

Were you aware that Uma Thurman released a new movie in the United States last October? Don’t worry, no one seems to have realized it … nor did they in the United Kingdom.

Released in Oct. 2009, Uma Thurman’s latest film Motherhood, it’s the story of a frantic day in a mother’s life in Manhattan as she prepares for her daughter’s sixth birthday party. It sounds like your standard dramedy film about a family that is frazzled, but finds in the end is the most important thing is one another.  Nothing ground breaking, but not anything horrible either.

Well, for whatever reason, when it was released in the United States it was only shown in 48 theaters, and averaged $1,043 per screen for an opening weekend of $50,081.  The final domestic gross was $93,388, which is laughable for any film, but those are the breaks.

When it got released in the United Kingdom the weekend of March 5th, the idea was to make it exclusive to the Apollo West End in Piccadilly Circus, London, in the hopes that exclusivity at one theater would drum up demand for it.  Well, seeing as it did £88 (approx. $131) for the entire weekend, and £9 of that came on Sunday … or in other words, one person saw it.

According to The Guardian, the film cost $5.5 million to make, and the worldwide theatrical gross has been $701,784, while it will probably make it up in DVD revenue and pay-per-view, the idea is that money is usually profit, not the time you make up your budget.

As some one who follows movie news closely, the fact I had never heard of this film until this story came out, something that tells me that this film wasn’t promoted for anything.  Did I mention it also starred Anthony Edwards and Minnie Driver?  You have three big names in a film, and you not only don’t promote it, but release it to 48 theaters and one theater respectively?

Um … Okay?

Any way you slice it … $131 for an opening weekend of a film with three named stars in the U.K. means you should hang your head in shame and consider if you really should be in the film industry.

A total of 53 this week.  May see a major drop next week, trying to make a major decision about one of my blogs.

FunJug.com

• Ben Folds’ Chatroulette Piano Ode to Merton
• Japanese Chip Commercial
• Apology Commercial from U by Kotex
• Lady Gaga Telephone Parody by Key of Awesome
• Inglourious Basterds – Quentin Tarantino’s Camera Angel

Photo.BLORGE.com

• Top 40 best photography websites

RememberingChristmas.com

• Turn Your Christmas Cookie Recipes Into Easter Cookies

SeanPAune.com

• Twitter Is 4-Years-Old… When Does It Start Making Money?
• Conan O’Brien And Fox Talks Appear To Be Happening Again
• The Braindead Techcast Ep. 29: Moronic Monday’s – your dose of moronic posts of last week
• Chris Evans Cast As Captain America
• The Braindead Techcast Ep. 30: Headline lies and how we discover Sean’s a Star Wars dork
• Judge Rules Constance McMillen’s Rights Were Violated
• The Braindead Techcast Ep. 31: Who knew – a condom for your remote and Kotex pulls a Dominos
• Scott Pilgrim vs. The World Trailer
• The Braindead Techcast Ep. 32: MG Seigler proves that the end of days are just around the corner
• Scattercast Episode 88: Wherein I Actually Dabble A Bit In Politics?
• The Braindead Techcast Ep. 33: Techmeme Friday, Sean thinks suicide when told he could’ve been Scoble
• Fox Cancels “24″

StarterTech.com

• Why I’m Giving Up On The BlackBerry Platform
• Trade In Your CDs, DVDs And Blu-Rays For An iPad
• ShopSavvy Is The Essential Mobile Tool For Shoppers
• Wikipedia Is Down
• Netflix Begins Shipping Watch Instantly Discs For Nintendo’s Wii Console
• Xbox 360 Getting USB Thumb Drive Support
• Hate Trial Software?  Try The Dell Vostro Line

Tech.BLORGE.com

• Happy fourth birthday, Twitter!
• Amazon and Barnes & Noble prep e-book apps for the iPad
• Internet Explorer losing market share rapidly in Europe
• New planet found with Earth-like temperatures
• Warner Brothers gets cozy with Blockbuster for new distribution deal
• Skype coming to Verizon phones this week
• Wikipedia crashes due to overheating problem
• GoDaddy ceases registering Chinese domain names over new rules
• Pricing for iPad magazines emerge, and they won’t be cheap
• Radio Shack quietly shopping for a buyer, possibly Best Buy
• Xbox 360 to get USB thumb drive support on April 6th
• Rumor: Apple launching mobile advertising platform named “iAd”

TechnoBuffalo.com

• Xbox 360 To Receive USB Mass Storage Support
• Rumors Of A Blockbuster Bankruptcy Filing Just Delay The Inevitable
• Happy Birthday, Twitter!
• Will Google Invade Your Television?
• A Look Back At The First Commercial For A Portable Computer
• Viacom Is Suing YouTube Over Clips It Uploaded Itself?
• Buyer’s Remorse: Is It Ever A Good Time To Buy A Gadget?
• People Waste A Fortune On Gadgets They Don’t Understand
• Why Are You Buying A Single Store E-Reader?
• Could Digital Magazines Become Mini-Movies?
• With eBay Out Of The Way, Skype Is On Fire
• The iPhone OS Is Becoming A Serious Mobile Gaming Platform
• Apple Rumored To Be Prepping An Ad Network, Google Sure To Be Unhappy
• Is Your Country The Next To Ban Violent Video Games?

After eight seasons, Jack Bauer has finally met an enemy he can’t defeat: cancellation.

It’s been eight long years for Keifer Sutherland’s Jack Bauer, and Fox has decided the show has run its course.  The network was finding it just too expensive to continue producing it, and while there had been some talk of moving it to NBC, but Mr. Sutherland said, “that was never a real possibility for me.”

Now with the series coming to an end, The Hollywood Reporter spoke with executive producer, and show runner, Howard Gordon, and it sounds like the creative team was also a bit burned out by the 24-episode concept, and was feeling like they had limited themselves creatively.  Even with the series needing to start thinking about season nine, the show’s creative team hadn’t even come up with a basic concept for another season.

With the series coming to an end, this is leaving open the possibility for a movie which will still follow Jack Bauer over a day time period, but in a normal film length which means that he will finally be able to move between cities without the audience being bored for four hours while he flies somewhere.  The longtime premise for the film has been that Jack would travel to London, and Mr. Gordon confirmed that CTU would still be involved in some way, but this is far more about Jack as a character than anything.

I have to say that while I have watched every episode of the series, I’ve always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with it.  It is so insanely preposterous at times that you have to wonder if the writers aren’t screwing with the audience.  ”This scene makes NO sense … throw it in any way, no one will notice!”  Don’t believe me?  I have four words for you: “Season two mountain lion.”  Need I say more?

How many nukes have gone off over the course of this show?  How many times has Jack been on the brink of death?  How many times has he quit CTU/the government, only to be pulled back in for some reason or the other?

No matter how much the show was horrible at, I kept watching because it was like a master class in everything that was wrong with storytelling in the television medium.  And despite everything it did wrong, I still oddly found myself enjoying it.  It was improbable, ridiculous and even insulting at times, and yet we all kept coming back season after season for the love of Jack Bauer … well, and the Satchel of Doom. (which has been missing for seasons seven and eight!)

As much as I loved and hated the show in the same breath, I will miss it at the end of the day.  (Ha!  ”end of the day” … see what I did?!?)  No one else could deliver a screaming line quite like Jack, never again will I hear, “Damn it!” screamed in that way just tells you “If this wasn’t on network television, Jack would be saying something a lot stronger …”

So, good-bye, Jack … and thanks for the hours and hours of me saying, “Why in the world am I watching this …”

Although Steven and I both work seven days a week, we like to treat Friday night like it’s the end of our week.  To do this we do a mass attack on the entire tech blogosphere by taking on all of the main headlines on TechMeme for that night.  There were some doozies tonight as always.  Enjoy!

(Links by Steven for some of the stories we discuss in this episode)

iPad App Store Reveals Launch Apps, Top Seller Lists, App Details – MacRumors
Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt Spotted Together Again: Photos – Gizmodo
Jobs And Schmidt: We’ve Seen This Movie Before, I’m Just Not Sure Which One It Is – TechCrunch
Another Step in Open Site Governance – Facebook Blog
Radioshack search – New York Post
For the media biz, iPad 2010 = CDROM 1994 – Scott Rosenberg’s Wordyard
BREAKING: Explicit Apps Are Back in the App Store — Almost – Mac Stories
USB Memory Support for the Xbox 360 coming April 6th – Major Nelson
Exclusive: Facebook Poaches Yet Another Major Googler-This Time, Ad Exec David Fischer [UPDATED] – Kara Swisher
AP Exclusive: ‘Smart’ meters have security holes – Associated Press

Press the big green button to listen in!

Scattercast is 88 … and has turned into a crotchety old man.

- Viagra for child molesters … yeah, that’s a good idea.

- I don’t trust any politicians any more.

- Threatening the president is never a wise idea.

- I don’t care how you feel about Constance McMillen, her school messed up … big time.

Here’s

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for those who wish to download it, subscribe to Scattercast via iTunes.

Steven and I discuss the stupidity of magazine pricing on the iPad, I mean, it’s like insanely stupid.

We then wonder if the sky is falling as a certain Apple fanboi sings the praises of a Microsoft product.

Seriously, who named the JooJoo?

Listen in and enjoy the show!

(Links by Steven for some of the stories we discuss in this episode)

Tech giants rising up against China over censorship … Ya, Okay … would you like to buy a bridge? – The Inquisitr
Windows Phone 7 Destroys The iPhone (Well, Its Foursquare App Does) – TechCrunch
Go Daddy Says China Refusal Is No PR Stunt – Epicenter
JooJoo tablet now shipping, should greet US consumers on March 29th – Engadget

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The trailer has hit for the new film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, and I know you will all be shocked to learn that Michael Cera is playing a lovably awkward character.

Based on a comic book that, for once, I know absolutely nothing about, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is summed up in the following manner by the official site:

Scott Pilgrim (Michael Cera), bass guitarist for the garage band Sex Bob-omb, has just met the girl of his dreams. However, he must defeat Ramona Flowers’ (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) seven evil ex-boyfriends, who are coming to kill him.

Scott Pilgrim has never had a problem getting a girlfriend. It’s getting rid of them that proves difficult. From the girl who kicked his heart’s ass — and now is back in town — to the teenage distraction he’s trying to shake when Ramona rollerblades into his world, love hasn’t been easy. He soon discovers, however, his new crush has the most unusual baggage of all: a nefarious league of exes control her love life and will do whatever it takes to eliminate him as a suitor.

As Scott gets closer to Ramona, he must face an increasingly vicious rogues’ gallery from her past, from infamous skateboarders to vegan rock stars and fearsomely identical twins. And if he hopes to win his true love, he must vanquish them all before it really is game over.

While the premise is cute, and I like the footage overall, the trailer makes it glaringly obvious that Mr. Cera is playing the same character he has played in every movie he has ever been in.  Yet this is the actor that held up the Arrested Development movie for a couple years because “[he] didn’t want to go backwards” in his career.  Dude, you play the same goofball in every movie you’ve ever made, deal with the fact you are a one-note actor and move on!

The film comes out Aug. 13th, I’ll be seeing it about a year later on cable.  If it was anyone else playing the title role, I probably would be more jazzed about it.

Update 06/01/2010: The second Scott Pilgrim vs. The World trailer is now online.

Steven and I have a heck of a time getting Talkshoe to work tonight, but once we did we went a little wacky with the subjects, jumping from one to another rather rapidly, some hoe ended up discussing feminine hygiene product commercials at one point … it actually makes sense once you listen to it … I swear.

Listen in and enjoy the show!

(Links by Steven for some of the stories we discuss in this episode)

Facebook ‘linked to rise in syphilis’ – Telegraph
Twitter Quote of the Day: Roy Bragg – Shooting at Bubbles
Sprint CEO: Rate Plans Will Move From Minutes To Gigabytes – Digits
Instapaper For The iPad May Be The First Killer App. And It Will Be Universal. – TechCrunch
Kotex mocks its longtime ad strategy in new spots – The Inquisitr
Can Microsoft really build a better browser? - Ars Technica

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