Category: Random Ramblings

Anything that catches my fancy as a topic I want to cover. Truly random crap.

Wil Wheaton: Don’t watch cable news with a fever

This is a few days old, but I enjoyed this post by Wil Wheaton so much, I just had to link to it.  I’ll go ahead and quote the part that particularly made me pay attention to the post:

This means that I’ve done a ton of reading today, and I’ve subjected myself to a few hours of CNN. Jesus. Fucking. Christ. No wonder so many Americans are misinformed, if they are getting their information from cable news. These douchebags do everything they can to create controversy where there is none, and they don’t even try to hide it.

Example: Wolf Blitzer, on The Situation Room (which is only watchable because of Jack Cafferty), just teased a segment on Jon Stewart thusly: “He says it will be the most controversial Academy Awards, ever . . .”

Read on for the reality of what Jon Stewart actually said.

[tags]Wil Wheaton, CNN[/tags]

Bad design frustrates users

(via Tingilinde)

I’ve link to Joel on design before because he has good things to say about bad design. I’ve got some hands on experience with a TVisto playback device that seems to have a bad user interface that I’ll write about later (I want to work more with it before I declare definitively that the interface is bad). Yesterday, news.com ran an article about the problems many people have using modern gadgets with poor design problems.

Half of all malfunctioning products returned to stores by consumers are in full working order, but customers can’t figure out how to operate the devices, a researcher said on Monday.

. . .

The average consumer in the United States will struggle for 20 minutes to get a device working before giving up, the study found.

[tags]Product design, gadgets[/tags]

Experience with socialized medicine

One of the editors over at The Consumerist writes some about his experience with socialized medicine.  The article is in response to an article about California’s plan to institute socialized medicine.  In the end, he seems to prefer paying more for medicine in exchange for better care.  I have no experience with socialized medicine, but folks I know who have had socialized and privatized medicine have all preferred privatized.

I’m torn on this. Ireland has socialized medicine, and it sucks. When I first moved to Dublin, I took my Yamaha Superscooter out for a rush-hour drive and took a spill off it going around 55, breaking both my arms and one of my legs. Luckily, I was right around the corner from the hospital, so I got up from the mangled wreck of my bike, flagged down a taxi, and had him bring me here. When I got to the emergency ward, a scrolling sign chipperly announced that average waiting time was 8 hours. It was 9am on a Tuesday morning.

. . .

The bottom line is that money talks. Whether we’re talking about health care, cars or cellular phone coverage, you get better service the more money you pay. When no one’s paying any money, you as an individual become a statistic and receive the base minimum of care, competence and attention to maintain the aggregate. So making private health care out-and-out illegal seems like a disastrous move for the consumers of health care.

[tags]Socialized medicine[/tags]

Police intimidation in south Florida

(via boingboing)

This is an old story (early February), but interesting and a bit scary.  A police abuse watchdog group went to 38 police stations around south Florida to find out how to file a complaint against an officer.  Only 3 stations provided complaint forms.  Since complaint forms are not something police are required to provide, this isn’t a huge deal.  What is bad, and a bit scary, is the amount of intimidation the tester apparently encountered while trying to find out how to file a complaint.  In particular, one officer made a fairly open threat to shoot the tester.

Partial transcripts are provided on in the story, as well as a lengthy video showing the story that was on TV about the inquiries.  A few weeks after the original story ran, the officer shown on camera threatening the tester sued the television station, trying to block the station from airing the story and video.

[tags]Police intimidation[/tags]

Hella nice LCD TV

Some day, I’ll be able to get one of these.

ultimateTV.jpgTaiwanese Chi Mei Optoelectronics is a name you may not know, despite the company being the third largest LCD TV panel supplier in the world. At CEBIT in Hannover in mid-March, the company will display the world’s first 56-inch LCD TV panel. Perhaps more startling than the size of the mega-telly is the definition which is known as Quad Full High Definition (QFHD) with a resolution of 3840 x 2160 pixels and an astonishing 8.29 million pixels.


[tags]LCD TV, QFHD[/tags]

The cost of a perfect shower

(via TechEBlog) Apparently, it’s about $1300.

Wake up, press a button, and you could have a nice hot shower waiting for you with Grohtherm’s new device. The Wireless Digital Shower lets you set water temperature and flow rate via a control panel. A remote control allows you to turn on/off the shower from anywhere in the house. That’s not all, Grohe’s TurboStat technology instantly reacts to any change in water pressure which prevents the shower from suddenly becoming too hot or icy cold. Cool technology like this doesn’t come cheap, expect to pay $1,306 for this system.

[tags]Shower, gadgets[/tags]