News & Views 29 Apr 10

This might be a regular feature, or it might just be hit and miss.  What it will be though is mostly quick quips on news items.  Some will be political, some tech, some other junk.  It’ll mostly just be stuff I found interesting, funny, stupid or worth noting.

Yahoo Inc. CEO Carol Bartz received a $47.2 million compensation package during her first year on the job as the Internet company tried to motivate her to engineer a turnaround.

Seriously?  47.2 million to try to motivate her to do her job?  I’d be motivated to do her job for a tenth of that – and given her results I bet I could do better.  Wait, is Yahoo still on the web?

Facebook’s new social plugins have been installed on 50,000 websites in one week.

Honestly, I figured it would be more than that but that is IMPRESSIVE!  I love the new social plugins and the open graph stuff they rolled out.  It’s VERY reminicent of the social network system I designed about 2 years ago.  Hey all you investors that told me it was a stupid idea – what do you think NOW????  Yeah, you’re pretty smart about this stuff, aren’t you.

Twitter is, in many, ways a network with only five degrees of separation.

I’m growing out of love with Twitter for the third time.  If you read this story it makes it sound like you can connect to anyone in the world with 5 steps – but don’t miss this story: Only 7% of Americans actually use Twitter while 41% have a facebook profile.  So basically, it takes you 5 steps to reach 7% of Americans.  That doesn’t really sound so good.  I personally find that I get about 400% more interaction off of facebook than I do off of twitter when I tweet something and it pushes to facebook.  Twitter interactions are becoming few and far between.

The person who found and sold an Apple iPhone prototype says he regrets not doing more to return the device to its owner

What a load of legal positioning, pr CRAP!  This dude found the iphone prototype and knew he had hit the big time!  He sold it as fast as he possibly could.  I would bet my wife’s iPhone that “returning it to the owner” never ONCE entered his mind!  He had the scoop of the year and he knew it!  I still think it’s insane the way the California Police responded to it.  SAVE APPLE!  Get their phone back!  Maybe the idiot from Apple that took a prototype phone to a bar should be held responsible for leaving it there – assuming it wasn’t all a PR stunt in the first place.

More than three-quarters of Americans have heard about the state of Arizona’s new immigration law, and of these, 51% say they favor it and 39% oppose it.

First of all, I think this move by Arizona is brilliant and about two decades late.  Second of all, Arizona is a soveriegn state, who gives a crap what the rest of the country thinks about it, or what the Federal Government thinks about it.  This hoopla about “racial profiling” in the new law cracks me up!  Of COURSE it’s racial profiling!  They’re trying to keep all the illegal MEXICANS from streaming in!  They’re aren’t worried about illegal Irish or Germans coming in by the thousands.  Good Grief!  Since when did “racial profiling” become illegal?  It’s just not ‘politically correct’. Maybe the Federal Government should stay out of things it doesn’t have a constitutional right to touch and instead worry about what it is constitutionally bound to protect, now there’s an idea!

The United Nations this week elected Iran to its Commission on the Status of Women, handing a four-year seat on the influential human rights body to a theocratic state in which stoning is enshrined in law and lashings are required for women judged “immodest.”

Wow, I don’t think I need to say anything here.  Not sure I could – I’m laughing too hard!  The UN continues to prove just how stupid and ineffectual they are.  Putting Iran in charge of women’s rights is kinda like putting the head of the KKK in charge of the NAACP.

“I mean, I do think at a certain point you’ve made enough money. But, you know, part of the American way is, you know, you can just keep on making it if you’re providing a good product or providing good service. We don’t want people to stop, ah, fulfilling the core responsibilities of the financial system to help grow our economy.“ – Barack Obama

So, the Obama’s adjusted gross income for 2009 was $5.5 million.  I wonder if he thinks he’s “made enough money”.

Former Vice President Al Gore have added a Montecito-area property to their real estate holdings.  The couple spent $8,875,000 on an ocean-view villa on 1.5 acres with a swimming pool, spa and fountains, a real estate source familiar with the deal confirms. The Italian-style house has six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.

OK, Al can make and spend as much money as he wants.  But when his latest money making is off the global warming farce, and then he does this – it’s just STUPID.  When will people quit listening to this idiot?

A Pentagon report presented a sobering new assessment Wednesday of the Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan, saying that its abilities are expanding and its operations are increasing in sophistication, despite recent major offensives by U.S. forces in the militants’ heartland.

My Grand-daddy used to say “if you’re gonna fight a war, fight it to win it.” Ok, that’s not true but the point is.  If we’re going to fight this stupid war (as far as I’m concerned we should be out of there) we dang well better fight it to win it!  It’s stupid that we are making a half-hearted effort over there.  If we’re staying can we PLEASE do the job right?!?!