No publicity is bad publicity

Some like to diss bloggers as "attention grabbers" that have nothing better to say. As a blogger myself, I usually dispute that claim but I gotta admit some bloggers went over the board.

For example, one blogger claimed that he has "been using Macs for a while ... wondering if they're all that special" and he might switch back from Mac to PC. Well, everyone is entitled to their opinions. In fact, I wrote my fair share of criticism of Mac. However, this guy kept bashing the apps because he doesn't use them! Check out his nonsense:
"I really dislike iPhoto. I much prefer the Windows thumbnails."
What's he smoking? iPhoto is a photo management software (it's not perfect but I must say it does a pretty good job.) Windows thumbnails? That's a file preview mode! He's comparing apples to oranges.
"You know, .Mac is interesting, but way too expensive."
Apple's .Mac is a service not unlike the paid version of Yahoo's e-mail and photo storage service. I don't see how .Mac being expensive a reason why Mac is inferior to Windows.
"I'm not a musician, GarageBand to me isn't particularly compelling."
OK. That's as ignorant as saying "I'm not a painter, Mona Lisa to me isn't particularly compelling" as the reason for Louvre not being special.

Anyway, I gotta give him some credits for having the guts to diss Mac. I'm pretty sure he'll be expecting "hate mails" from some unhappy Apple fanboys. To be honest, some of his points are valid: low-end Macs are slow. Text Anti-aliasing do seem fuzzy on my Mac and better on Windows.

Another blogger wrote that phones should be replacing general purpose PC as the main device for computing needs. Well, that's pretty much stating the obvious. I mean, that's the ideal but not gonna happen in the near future! And the biggest disadvantage is giving too much control to your phone company, which has the tendency to charge you for anything you like to do with your phone.

I left out links to their blogs on purpose since I don't wanna give them extra traffic. In the meantime, I'll try my best to come up with more articles with high shock value.

RIP Montana Mazurkiewicz

Most think sport is about machoism most of the time, but it has a touching side too:

Notre Dame Fighting Irish's head football coach Charlie Weis visited big Irish fan, 10-yr old Montana, before he died of brain tumor last Friday. Weis granted him a wish: calling the first play for Irish's next game (vs. Washington last Sat)

Irish's first play was at their 1 yard line. What did Montana call? "Pass right!" That's a dangerous play at that situation but Irish went with it and got good 13 yards out of it.

Good karma working at its best? I think so.

And it's good publicity for Notre Dame, which hasn't had a lot for the past few years when it hasn't won as much as it used to.

You gotta earn your right before you trash talk

Terrell Owens, all-star wide receiver of Philadelphia Eagles, might indeed be a "bad apple" to his team at times (e.g. his feud against his coach, the management and his QB) but it's not something Derek Smith, a linebacker of 49er, who a lot of football fans have never heard of, has the right to say.

That's his comment before the Eagle-49er game, in which his defensive team has given up 143 yards and 2 touchdowns to Owens.

What did Derek Smith say after the game? Well, he still didn't want Owens on his team. Yeah right, like he wanna be on your team!

Man, some people might enjoy publicity like this, but it just sounded stupid to me.

Money can't always buy victory

I'm not talking about sports (where money could buy victory) This is about how a student fought against the almighty Microsoft's army of lawyers who sued him for selling 2 unopened boxes of M$'s software on eBay.

The result? He counter-sued and M$ settled.

Sometimes our legal system doesn't seem that broken.

Update your resume

Have you been wondering why the diaster in New Orleans caused by Hurricane Katrina was handled so poorly? Maybe this explains: Discrepancies reported in Brown [chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency] resume.

Assistant to Manager, assistant manager, what's the difference anyway? (That reminds me of an episode of "The Office")

And at the highest level of academics, teachers always learn from their students. So you might say a student is also a professor!

Let me see: I have been working as assistants to CEO, directors, architects...... I should sign up for a Harvard distant learning class ASAP so that I could put Harvard Professor on my resume!

Wait a second! I wasn't on President Bush's campaign team before. (New resume now in trashcan)

Do you Yahoo? No thanks.

Yahoo is accused by a media watchdog of becoming a "police informant" for the Chinese government that led to the jailing of a journalist for "divulging state secrets."

Yahoo's practice is widely criticized by members of the media. While they acknowledge the need to comply with local law, most question whether such action is ethical. After all, the "state secret" here is an internal Communist Party message that warned journalists of the dangers of social unrest resulting from the return of dissidents on the 15th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, in June 2004. Isn't that kinda obvious?
See "Yahoo business ethics sorely lacking" (Infoworld)
and "Web of complicity" (Telegraph UK) Don't forget this is a company that was willing to buy the notorious spyware writer 3721 in order to "compete in the China market." I still remember how bad I felt when my computer was hijacked by 3721.

Surprisingly, there are quite a few netters (on popular website slashdot.org) defending Yahoo, saying it's nothing wrong with taking care of shareholder's interests.

I don't know about them. To be honest, I'm a heavy user of Yahoo's services: My Yahoo, email, fantasy sports...... Now I'll think twice before using any of them. I've already switched my homepage to My Netscape, even though it's inferior in terms of features. And this will be my last season playing fantasy sports on Yahoo. ESPN: here I come!