Bruni sends word that Rona a kind of Home Depot in Montreal, used Apple's ad at Jacques Cartier Bridge to point out their paint recycling program. Neat, Right?

Venezuela is the only country where you can drink beer and think you are helping science. The major science prize is given by the biggest beer company and My Wife Won this year! So drink Polar Beer and support Venezuelan Science.

View H1N1 Swine Flu in a larger map

After a lot of intentions I finally installed Windows 7 on a machine. I used the Dell with a clean hard druve is a year old midrange machine, has a 3.4 rating (out of 7.9). It is very impressive, responsive and very nice to look out. I am thinking it could be a solution to my iTunes issue, namely, iTunes is still the best podcast, music manager out there. I could buy a big drive and have a dual boot machine (Ubuntu/Windows) and use Ubuntu at work and Windows at home. Still Microsoft has a lot of work to fix its problems. The multiple Windows versions have to go and Microsoft has to decide either it stops making IE and Office or it starts making it for all OS. Microsoft has to get out of its preserve the monopoly mentality. Windows is big business but it really has to compete to stay on top, the only way that will happen is if other OS has the rest of Microsoft tools. And please make the Zune compatible with Mac OS X and Linux, come on Microsoft! Be cool again!

My other new thing today is SkyGrid, looks pretty good, a lot of info in a real-time web format that makes sense. Very configurable. SkyGrid uses flash which is fine, but for some reason Flash doesn't work in 64 bit OS. Unless you use a 32 Bit browser. Why Adobe why? And why did I believe it was ok to use a 64 bit OS? Man, the future is getting slower and slower...

So, Oracle buys SUN. Sun was one of my favorite companies and I am sad to see them go. But I have seen them going for a long time and I was very disappointed with the decisions they made. They could have taken over the world but they were so dispersed with so many different ideas and projects without consolidation. For me the day they died was when they sold us a card for a machine only to discover later that Solaris didn't supported it. We switch that machine, and eventually all machines, to Linux. What will happen with Sun hardware, very likely it will disappear or become a brand to some manufacturer. What will happen to Java, OpenOfice or MySQL? Those could be huge distractions for Oracle, if they get very involved with those Oracle itself may start to go downhill. Hopefully, Oracle will ignore those. So long Sun, and thanks for all the Java!

Or have I drink more than I thought?

It is sad that the governments of the world think corporations and companies have more rights than people. The Pirate Bay Founders being convicted means that the political system must be overthrown. Companies own governments. Chavez may be closer to the truth than we think.

Sometimes when I don't have change to fill my scooter tank gas, they let me fill up for free. It cost around 5 cents (with tip), because as reported in the New York Times, gas prices in Venezuela are ridiculously cheap, subsidized, and the government can't do anything about it.

Yes, some of us think this is right, because it's about the only thing we get from the government in exchange for the taxes and the suffering we pay, for our sin of being born here. But it is very unfair because the more money you have you get the largest benefit. Bigger and more cars, more leisure time to use them, avoid public transportation. Poor people can't do those things and public transportation is ridiculously expensive. Chavez has talked about solving this, but he won't. For some reason his natural constituency feels a strong need to defend that right we, the opposition, enjoy. Thanks for that.

Just saying...

With a little help from my friends (particularly, Sebastian and Gabo), all the comments are now in place. With that Tyromaniac is, pretty much, back to normal and a new era of peace and prosperity can start! I don't think anyone will notice the few details missing, but these could be resolve in the changes that are a'coming.

I was blogging.

After years of suffering from the services in Venezuela I've decided to move my blog to a hosted service done by professionals. The site should be up more since the Internet and Electric service will also be done by professionals. Unlike in Venezuela... There are a few kinks to work out. The old comments have disappear and there are several esthetic issues with the site that I hope to resolve with a little help from my friends. We'll see how it goes...

For as long as I can remember I have had my site in my home or office, why did I do it? Was it a Geeky thing to do? Probably, but I think mostly it was that I was young and foolish then, I am old and foolish now...

Dear Facebook,

Our brain indicates that you've been misusing certain features of our humanity. This post serves as a warning. Misuse of my features or violating common human terms of use may result in your website being disabled . Thanks in advance for your understanding and cooperation.

If you have any questions, please contact your priest or your psychiatrist.

Tyromaniac

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours at an Apple store. I needed to buy batteries for my two old MBPs still in used by my family. I picked up the stuff I needed and proceeded to wait until the friends I was going to have dinner with arrived. Every single employee suspected I was a shop lifter, maybe it was my Woodstock shirt or the fact that I was using a G1. If I was I would have taken something bigger. You could hear a sigh of release when I finally paid for my stuff after my friends showed up. One thing I would not have picked is the new shuffle, and I don't think I am alone in that, I didn't see a single shuffle sold while I was there and the reason was clear, every single shuffle in show didn't work. Presumably they were out of battery, which says, how easwy it is to leave it on and how little the battery last.

A funny thing I saw was a genius (maybe he wasn't a genius but another kind of employee, but the story is better if you think it was a genius) that was communicating with a pretty french speaking girl using Google Translate. They would swap the computer and the languages and take turns in writing... Pretty cool, but I wonder what each ended up taking from the exchange.

Apple seems to be relishing its place as the new Sony and Microsoft combined. They seem to be coming up with stupid products to see if people realized how bad they are. First, if you connect to the me.com website with Firefox in Linux, you get a message saying that you need to upgrade your browser. It works perfectly but Apple decided to imitate Microsoft on that one. "Let's kick them for not using our product." Then the new Shuffle, it has to be the most stupid thing I've ever seen. You can only use the headphones they give you, or buy an expensive accessory, they couldn't do an accessory, they had to tie you with the headphones. Forget using speakers with your music player. The good feature is the playlist in the iPod, sounds good, except it also sounds like a nightmare to remember what you have to press for how long to get the info you want. It is really a product that would have made Sony proud. It will sell, of course... because People Are Fucking Boring.

Market Share in the Mobile market continues to be reported with the fake Smartphone category. Though they admit that is only 12% of the market. But now the truth is starting to come out, but they are still disguising it. Last time Apple was very proud because it had sold more phones than Blackberry. Now, Blackberry Market Share is at 19.5% for 74 million units, while Apple is at 4.7& for 4.1 million units. Of course, the reporting says Apple has doubled the sales... What? Wasn't Apple selling 6 million phones per quarter just six months ago? Well, yes, but because it is convenient the are talking year over year increases. But a year ago, everybody knew the iPhone 3G was coming. Apple is opening more and more markets but the sales are decreasing fast.

(Warning: Spoiler ahead.) I am not a fan of Stephen King, I've read a few of his books and found them interesting, but that's that. Nevertheless, I have an appreciation for him, he is a successful writer with some imagination. So, when they announced that with the Kindle 2 they were going to release a story based on the Kindle 2 and only for Kindle (1 or 2) I decided to give it a try. The story is not bad, but it was destroy for me with a stupid unnecessary over explanation. The whole story is based in a guy that orders the Kindle and reverses two numbers of his credit card. The problem is that credit card numbers have verification digits, so reversing two numbers will not make a new credit card numbers the guy even said that it had happened to him "several times", Amazon will give you an immediate error in that case. Furthermore, the guy said he used Amazon a lot to buy books. In that case, the credit card number would be in the system, he wouldn't have to type it in every order! This is important because the whole story is based on Amazon and the Kindle. Besides, even if we swallow all that, he should just have gotten a Kindle from another UR, not a multi UR Kindle...

The Kindle (1 or 2) is a suck ass Mp3 player. You can play music but you can't do the standard things (pause, next, previous) that you can do in the oldest of players. But if, despite of that, you insist on listening to podcasts in your Kindle, here is a good tip: Put the podcasts in the Audio Book folder instead of the music folder. That way the Kindle remembers where you left off if you have to take a break from listening for some reason. This feature, called bookmarking, is mysteriously and stupidly missing from a bunch of Mp3 Players. The iPod does, so does the Zune, and some Nokia Phones (but not all). My favorite player right now, the iRiver SPINN, doesn't do it. If it did, I could throw away my iPods.

Why the Japanese Hate the iPhone:

Besides cultural opposition, Japanese citizens possess high, complex standards when it comes to cellphones. The country is famous for being ahead of its time when it comes to technology, and the iPhone just doesn't cut it. For example, Japanese handset users are extremely into video and photos — and the iPhone has neither a video camera nor multimedia text messaging. And a highlight feature many in Japan enjoy on their handset is a TV tuner...

I followed with interest the release of Kindle 2. Even though I wouldn't buy one, I am happy with the original, I think Amazon did well with this version. It's clearly an evolution, they took out two things I liked (the SD Card and the Cover), but I am pretty sure most people won't miss them. The new Kindle has more memory, it is faster, but the best feature has to be the Text to Speech. You can start reading a book, ask the Kindle 2 to read another chapter to you while you are in the car and continue reading once you get home. Sounds great. Except Book publishers are objecting, they claim that reading is an audio license that Amazon doesn't have. Even if the law falls in Amazon's side, the publishers may not give Amazon a license to publish books in the Kindle format. But Amazon is the biggest book seller in the world, would they want to upset Amazon? More important, and this seems to have fallen through the cracks of opinionated columnist, is the fact that Amazon owns the biggest seller of audio books: Audible. How about this? If Amazon can't publish a book in Kindle format it won't put it in Audible either...

Sony Releases New Stupid Piece Of Shit That Doesn't Fucking Work

So real, it hurts.

I am really down on Microsoft. I have three Xbox 360 and all of them have some problems. One developed a weird grahic problem in several games after Microsoft repair it twice for the three red lights of death, I am tired of them, try to fix it myself and failed. I got an used three red lights of dead ringed Xbox for cheap and try to repair, did so successfully using the X Clamp Fix, but now the thing just crashes constantly in almost every game. My out of warranty elite crashes if I don't use it for a few days, after it gets warm it stops crashing. After opening these things my impression of Microsoft has gone way down. Just by looking at the insides it is clear these things are shoddily made. The engineer who design the Xbox 360 should just go back to school. The things look like they are put together by a five year old. They all have a ventilation problem, despite being mostly nothing inside. really crummy. To top that I gave away my Zune after getting tired of not being able to hear my subscription music if I didn't reconnect the Zune to the computer every two weeks or so. Besides the Zune works only with Windows, while the iPods and my new iRiver SPINN works on any system. iTunes is still the best platform for podcasts which sucks when you want to use Linux. The only light on these Microsoft darkness is my Vista Tablet. It is an old machine and it had to be called upon service when my daughter mac started to crap up. I gave her my old MBP, which immediately develop a screen problem (a blue tinge in the screen), it is now in the shop (under AppleCare), my daughter is grudgingly using the Asus eeePC. The Vista Tablet as a TV computer works just great. It is amazingly good despite the obvious limitations. I will, at some point, buy a Windows 7 machine to do that job, probably a Dell Studio Hybrid.

That turn of events made me think, how is Microsoft going to market Windows 7? After the Vista perception debacle, people will stay with XP. Unless, Microsoft uses my brilliant idea. About a month after Windows 7 comes out, make an install fest day. In every Fry, Best Buy, Comp USA, set up stations where geeks will install Windows 7 Home Premium in any machine that support it, for a cheap price, say 40$. People should also be able to print a screen from their desktop PCs that proves that their machine support Windows 7 and get to take a CD (OEM type, no box, no manual) and a sheet with installation instructions for both XP and Vista. My point is that the only way that Windows 7 won't suffer the same fate as Vista is if people actually try it out for a while. Most of Vista criticism comes from three camps: XP users that do not want to learn new things, people that use Vista for a little while only, and people who never use Vista, just heard how bad it was and repeated it like geeky parrots. So, the solution is to give drove of people an easy great way to try Windows 7. The Windows 7 Install Fest Day. That's the ticket.