A new cable channel headed by former Vice President Al Gore hopes to draw twentysomethings looking for news, information and features produced by young adults for young adults.
Current TV, of which Gore is chairman, will launch Aug. 1 in 20 million cable and satellite households nationwide in place of 24-hour news channel Newsworld International. [continue]

Younger viewers meaning 18-34 year olds.

I have watched News World International on DirecTV and was a pretty decent news channel. Broadcasted out of Canada by CBC, it did carry stories not otherwise covered by the three other news cable stations, and I am sad to see it go.
‘Current’ is the name of the new channel that News World International is becoming. Al Gore bought NWI to make his brainchild a reality.
A description of the new channel.

Current is the first national network created by, for and with an 18-34 year-old audience, offering 24 hours of independent programming. The new TV network adopts what has made the Internet the medium of choice for young adults—customizable content and consumer participation. It offers unique short-format content created in the voice of its viewers and uniquely tailored to their interests: everything from technology, fashion, music and videogames, to the environment, relationships, spirituality, politics, finance, and parenting… subjects that young adults can rarely find on TV. Current also enlists its viewers to become creative partners, providing an open forum to submit viewer-produced content, making it the first television network whose programming is supplied in part by the very audience who watches it.

Sounds interesting, but one does have to wonder how politically slanted the channel will be, given a former politician is running the show.
Current is supposed to start broadcasting August 1st, so we will see.

Radio talk-show host Michael Graham was suspended by station WMAL-AM yesterday for repeatedly describing Islam as a “terrorist organization” on his program.
Graham said he has been ordered off the Washington station, without pay, for an indefinite period while the station investigates the comments that drew complaints from a Muslim group, the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). [continue]

I am a little confused why it takes so long to ‘investigates the comments’. Do they not have the tape recording of his entire program? How long does it take to listen to it?
Here is a bit of him defending himself.

“If the Boy Scouts of America had 1,000 Scout troops, and 10 of them practiced suicide bombings, then the BSA would be considered a terrorist organization. If the BSA refused to kick out those 10 troops, that would make the case even stronger. If people defending terror repeatedly turned to the Boy Scout handbook and found language that justified and defended murder –and the scoutmasters responded by saying ‘Could be’ — the Boy Scouts would have been driven out of America long ago.
Today, Islam has whole sects and huge mosques that preach terror. Its theology is openly used to give the murderers their motives. Millions of its members give these killers comfort. The question isn’t how dare I call Islam a terrorist organization, but rather why more people do not.”

Calling Islam ‘a terrorist organization’ definitely isn’t the politically correct thing to say, but I think people miss the larger point.
The Islamic terrorists make up only a small portion of modern day Islam. What Michael Graham is asking is, why isn’t Islam taking care of this on there own? Why are there not Muslims on TV everyday denouncing what the terrorists are doing?
The simple answer is the majority of Muslim leaders that have power, do not have any personal interest in stopping them. So the war goes on against Islamofascists, with it being viewed as the ‘Christians/Jews’ vs. Islam, which it is not. Only when mainstream Muslims take back their religion from these radicals will the war on terror end. Unfortunately I don’t see that happening anytime soon.

What Michael Graham said was over the top, but I do not think he was being literal in the sense saying all Muslims are terrorists. It just appears the majority of the Muslim community is indifferent to the terrorists.
I really have nothing against the religion of Islam or any other religion. I would just like to see people not fly planes into buildings or blow up buses and subways.
I don’t think Michael Graham should be suspended for what he said. But if enough advertisers bail and ratings slip enough, from a business standpoint it would be silly for WMAL not to move in a different direction.

AN 85 year old grandmother is suing Rockstar games after she discovered the version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas contained hidden, sexually explicit scenes. [continue]

The article makes a good point. Everything in the game the player does is illegal. But the sex, that is legal, at least in most states.
Violence in video games has for the most part been accepted, even the cop killing, but sex has not.
Interesting though, a democratic taking up this fight instead of those stuffy straight laced republicans. Some call it a political play on her part, yeah probably, but that is what politicians do.
It will be interesting how it all plays out, but one thing is for sure, the publicity for the game has been enormous.
I think this law suit is silly. The game is rated M, unless you modify the game.
I do think, if not already the case, that customers should be able to take the game back for a full refund. That is if having the ability to modify the game and have access to a little hot coffee bothers them.

Not one but two Register readers emailed us to tell us that MSN’s Virtual Earth is promoting a world free of the menace of Apple Computers.

If you’ve got time on your hands - stand up Jens and Stefan - have a look at Apple’s Cupertino headquarters from Google and MSN’s rival map sites. Both sites offer aerial photos alongside maps. MSN’s version is here and Google’s is here. [continue]

As soon as I saw this, figured it had to be FUD and it is, the image is just old, before Apple moved their HQ there. All the fan boys have their tidy whiteys in a bunch over nothing.
What is more irritating is this little gem.

Even more disturbing MSN’s Virtual Earth still shows the twin towers of the World Trade Center in all their pre-9/11 glory.

More disturbing? Are we suppose to be so ashamed, upset, embarrassed or sad over what happen on September 11, 2001 that we need to expunge all pictures of the World Trade Center towers from human record? Do we have to force ourselves to forget what once was?
From September 12, 2001 to even today, I still say we should rebuild the towers exactly the same way they stood on September 10, 2001 just stronger and higher.

Turns out Donald Trump holds the same views.
“What we need is support to build a bigger and better version of two buildings and more that were taken down by people that were animals. If something happened to the Statue of Liberty, you wouldn’t rebuild it as something other than the Statue of Liberty.”

Makes a lot of sense to me.
There would be plenty of space in the towers, many floors could be dedicated to the event of 9/11 with each person lost on that day memorialized fully. But that isn’t the sensitive blue state view that is going forward.
So the terrorist won this battle, they took down the WTC towers, that was their goal. If we would rebuild the towers, it would show the terrorists the backbone of this great nation, how we would not be intimidated by their evil ways, but we won’t. We will spend a lot of money building something that no matter what it is, someone somewhere will be unhappy with.

Mountain Dew, sweet sweet Moutain Dew. The life source.
I have drunk Dew almost daily for about 15 years. I have stopped several times and have suffered the consequences. I think this time though, I am off for good.
It has been 7 weeks now since I have tasted the power of Dew and I am happy I am finally off the stuff, again.
Detoxing from Dew is tough, two to three days of throbbing sometimes blinding headaches. Nothing helps, aspirin did not help at all, even consuming a Dew during the headaches never brought timely relief.
The temptation is still there. The week I decided to go cold turkey off the stuff, work swapped from Coke to Pepsi for its vending machines. Being a college the machines are just loaded with Dew.
But I remain strong, I hit the Tropicana Fruit Punch when I get that thirst. I know Fruit Punch is not the healthiest, but it is a whole lot better than being hooked on Dew.

“Today is the Amiga’s 20th anniversary. Commodore officially introduced the Amiga 1000 with much fanfare at the Lincoln Center in New York on July 23, 1985. It was the most advanced computer of its day. The Amiga 1000 was originally conceived a few years earlier by a small California company called Amiga, Inc. and was financed by a group of Florida doctors looking to invest in a killer game machine.” …..

Yes, Amiga Happy Birthday.
Although I have never used or even seen one, happy 20th birthday.
I do however have had an experience with an Amiga user.
Back in 1992 I was living with my aunt and uncle going to college up in Delaware. They had a new washer installed incorrectly which led to a whole lot of water damage. After the cleanup, new carpet needed to be installed. Talking to one of the carpet installers, computers came in conversation. I was majoring in computers and he also had an interest in computers. I had a 286-16, he had an Amiga. I never heard of them, but I got a lesson about the Amiga. He went into total Fanboy mode, telling me how much better Amigas were than the IBM compatibles and Amigas were the future, yada, yada, yada.
I did not argue, just listened to his sermon.
I tend not to get into the typical fanboy rants, this vs. that.
It has been 13 years since that education.
What I want to know, if the carpet installer is reading this on his Amiga, is your Amiga still faster than my computer? Is Amiga still the future?
No?

Minority Report

It is the year 2054 - Washington D.C. - dreams can be recreated through computers, computer monitors and displays are transformed into holograms, and identification is done through eye-scanning. John Anderton (Tom Cruise) lost his son, and to prevent horrible events from occurring to other individuals he joins a unit known as “Pre-Crime” - where murderers are arrested before they can commit the murder. How does Pre-Crime work? Through 3 people known as “precogs”. They are 3 psychics used to see the future and they see murders exactly the way they will occur. Through advanced technology, Pre-Crime officers are able to see what the precogs see, and they analyze the data, identify the perpetrator and victim, and try their best to stop the murder from occurring. The perpetrator is put into a sleep state with a device called a “halo”. John Anderton gets accused of murdering a man he has never even met, causing him to run from Pre-Crime and prove his innocence.

The term Minority Report was used to reference flaws in the precog’s vision. When one of the precog’s visions did not match the other two, it was called a Minority Report and quietly discarded.
Minority Report was a good sci-fi movie. I’d give it a 4 out of 5 rating.

Pre-crime is an interesting concept, but I don’t see it as being acceptable, at least not in my life time.

Some off topic stuff…
Tom Cruise has been getting a bad rap in the media lately and probably deserves so.
I don’t follow the celebrity news that much, but have been hearing about his antics lately.
Going from Nicole Kidman to Penelope Cruz to Katie Holmes.
That bothers me more than some of his Scientology comments like his interview with Matt Lauer.
I don’t agree with him 100% but I understand what he is trying to say. Basically, that we as a society take too many drugs. Many people that are currently on these types of medication, if they would make lifestyles changes, be it diet, exercise, change careers, etc, could take care of their problems without drugs. But he takes it too far by just making a blanket statement that all people can do this, but in reality they can’t. So the meds help many people that need it.

Let us not forget his Oprah appearance.

Which File Extension are You?

It looks like Daylight Saving Time is about to be extended, and that has child safety and fire prevention advocates riled. …..

I hate Daylight Savings Time. Yes I absolutely hate it.
There is nothing more annoying that having to change clocks and sleeping patterns for no good reason.
Why?
To save energy? Well, sure just ask this congressman.

“The more daylight we have, the less electricity we use,” said U.S. Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.)

Oh I get it. We change the time and viola we have more daylight.
What does the earth stop rotating for an hour during daylight?
No? So we have the same amount of daylight. We are just tricked into getting up an hour earlier and going to bed an hour earlier.
Well thank you very much.
I really don’t care if it does save energy, it is crap.
Actually I should rephrase this. I do not hate DST itself, I hate the frackin changing.
If DST is so wonderful and saves so much energy why not just make the whole year DST. Imagine the energy we could save if everyone is tricked into getting up earlier the entire year.
jeesh

A Guide for the Pizza Amateur

One weekend when I am feeling adventuress I am going to try this. I love pizza, but delivery is not cheap and not really that healthy. I have bought pre-made dough in the past, but I am sure the ‘homemade’ dough is much better.