Capitalizing on Micheal Phelps for Linux

The dude won eight olympic medals in Beijing, so even if, like me, you're not a fan of the olympics, you gotta respect that. And swimming is hard!

He's already made millions of dollars, is going to appear on SNL for some reason (which could be good, Wayne Gretzky on SNL was great), and has gotten tons of acclaim for his accomplishments.

But I think the question everyone wants to know is, WHAT IF he was a spokesperson for UBUNTU LINUX.

Yes, that is the question on everyones minds. Well now it is now that I came up with it.

Hey, Microsoft is using Jerry Seinfeld to try to get people interested in poofy shirts Windows Vista, wouldn't it be super if Canonical/Dell could get him to do a commercial for Linux? They could give him a free netbook! Make it waterproof maybe.

Hey, Ubuntu is on version 8, he won 8 gold medals.. it's 2008.. Ubuntu could release a special edition version customized and all that, and it'd sell cause Vista is crap.

I've got it all pictured now. . Phelps says something about Ubuntu blah blah Linux operating system blah blah used in various olympic swimming computers (who knows I dunno), then says "available on dell computers now" then says "Take the plunge" and jumps into the water and then races the linux penguin in the water and beats it and says "I AM THE KING OF THE OCEAN I AM AQUAMAN" or maybe not. But hey, it'd be a great commercial!

Ubuntu Linux 8.0 - Take the Plunge!

I should work in advertising, I Swear. Too bad Linux doesn't have money for commercials.

The Olympics are a @!#?@! fiasco

I have never been a fan of the Olympics. I wasn't born with any sporting talent, and do not possess the qualities that would afford me to acquire them later in life. I'm not incompetent at sports, I just don't possess the ability to take things to a professional level without probably DYING. I despised Track and Field days at school, found them ridiculously outdated in concept and pointless.

I could go into each specific sport and why being in the olympics makes them irrelevant, but I will try to avoid that. What I REALLY AND TRULY hate about the olympics is that they are run by a corrupt international governing body called the IOC that has been involved in bribery scandals, and most recently, the fiasco known as the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

The Chinese government did not deserve to host an olympic event. They are not a free society, they have actually blocked an American olympic athlete from attending the olympics for expressing their free speech rights in other countries (where it is perfectly legal to do so), they have presented an opening ceremony with a lip synching girl, they have censored reporters and people from going around their country. Yes, its their right to do whatever they want in their country, but thats why they should never have been given the olympics. Even the Nazi's weren't such control freaks that they pretended events were sold out so that venues wouldn't be full, in an effort to control the audience. Families of olympic athletes were told events were sold out and they could not attend, but in reality it was the CHINESE GOVERNMENT LYING in a misguided and ridiculous effort at crowd control.

And the IOC says nothing. The IOC is complicit in this farce of a sporting event. However, the IOC, like any unelected government, is largely made up of self-entitled buffoons. How long does the copyright on the Olympic logo last anyways? They were created in 1914.. you'd think they'd have expired by now. Yet the IOC, ever the advocates for FAIR PLAY, issued a DMCA TAKEDOWN NOTICE on a Free Tibet video on youtube. Yes. That is the conclusion. The Olympics piss me off because they are not about fair play, they are about rewarding genetic freaks, cheaters, and people with no otherwise beneficial talents other than the ability to sail a boat or twirl a baton or swim really fast.

Network television is also complicit in this garbage festival of lies. The CBC has frequently poo-poohed protesters or anyone against the Beijing Olympics or speaking out against the IOC. NBC cares only about making money off of Nationalist Jingoism. China's media is using it to pat themselves on the back, Oh look at how great we are, our 13 year old chinese.. I mean our 16 year old chinese gymnasts have won the gold medal! How proud we are that we were the best cheaters! . Yet there is nothing to feel guilty about. Everyone who is at that level is a cheater in some way. Some have more money, so they are able to train harder and have better equipment, or take newer drugs that are as yet undetectable. The attitude seems to be "everybody else does it, so we have no choice" Which is a slippery slope, and China has covered all their slopes with slip and slides. WHICH SHOULD BE AN OLYMPIC SPORT BUT ISN'T. I could qualify for that one. They used to have Tug of War too. Pathetic.

My Stupidist post ever. Also, Linux=Batman.

DC Comics has a weekly comicbook series titled Trinity that I read in the comic shop basically skimmed through it. The premise seems to be tied to Final Crisis, which is another Comicbook that I'm actually buying. Something about Superman, Batman, & Wonder Woman being representative of a God-like trinity or something. I dunno I haven't bought it yet even though I like the writer/artist team of Busiek/Bagley. Basically I found the first story too short, and the Fabian Nicieza stories in the back of the issue to suppliment the comic really uninteresting. Something about a chick with tarot cards. ANYWAYS, that got me thinking about another trinity. The Computer Operating System Trinity.

Originally there was the trinity of Amiga/Mac/PC. There were other trinities of course, but thats the one that came to define that era of computing, everything else was sort of an also ran. Hey, I liked my Commodore 64, but I doubt batman ran his bat computers on a C-64. I'd say Superman would represent the Amiga, batman the PC, and Wonder Woman the Mac.

Good things seem to come in threes. Who would have thought. I guess theres the Firefox/Safari/Internet Explorer trinity of web browsers, theres the MS Office/WordPerfect/Open Office trinity (granted WordPerfect is essentially irrelevant today), levels of government usually have 3 levels. Pyramids have three sides, HOLY CRAP! I CAN GO ALL DAY! THREE! Why have I never noticed this before! Maybe my brain is shutting down I'm suffering a stroke and I'm turning into one of those nutjobs who sees connections where there are none. OR MAYBE I AM GODS PROPHET.


Now there is the operating system trinity of Mac OS X, Linux, and Windows. Mac OS X I give to Superman, since he's a reporter in his day job, Windows to Wonder Woman, and Linux to Batman. Therefore Linux = Batman. Thank you Kurt Busiek for making that clear to me.

So to people out there writing software, Make sure your computer programs will run on every operating system of the trinity. I mean, do you really want to cater your software only to Wonder Woman? It's not really that difficult to create cross-compatible software in this day and age. Get your act together.

Green Lantern used to be a trinity of John Stewart, Guy Gardner, and Hal Jordan, now its more of a four musketeers thing with Kyle Rayner. Damn you Kyle Rayner! You're like a 4th wheel on a 3 wheeled car! COMPLETELY USELESS.

I bet microsoft hates mini-notebooks (aka "netbooks")

They must. It must drive them crazy that there are laptops out there that are encouraging companies to create linux drivers and offer linux pre-configured as a reasonable option instead of XP or VISTA.

I will eventually buy one. I've played around with the Acer, HP, and Asus netbooks that have so far been released. Each of them fall short of what I expect from a mini notebook.

The Asus, the original one just does not offer a sufficient screen size or keyboard that is compatible with me not being frustrated. I'd like a small laptop with a decent screen and keyboard I can lug around with good battery life to write my novel about space dinosaurs. Bluetooth built in is a nice bonus but I do have a Bluetooth USB stick so that's not a deal killer. But basically I need a good keyboard and decent screen. The Asus had neither, therefore I didn't get one. I'd have bought one for $150-$200, but their price points are $100-$200 too high to consider.

The HP mini-notebook has a nice screen and an EXCELLENT keyboard. The trackpad is okay but nothing special and I hate the mouse buttons on the side. BUT it comes with Windows Vista with a free "downgrade" to XP. I just can't justify purchasing something with Vista if theres Linux options out there, sorry HP. I just don't want Microsoft to count any netbook purchase I make towards their "we shipped this many instances of Vista this quarter" lies. We all know everyone with a brain hates Vista. Plus my sister has an HP laptop and a month out of warranty its got issues of some sort. Yes, the piece of crap came with Vista. I'm not a big fan of Microsoft to begin with (I respect some decisions they make from a certain perspective, there was a reason they won the DOS wars and the OS/2/Windows war) and I prefer not to support software with annoying registration keys and DRM. That's just me.

Finally, the Acer Aspire One. It LOOKED nice, the screen was good and the Linux UI was well thought out and simple and it came with a good selection of games. Their version of Tetris (LTris) I thought odd that it was included, and they could have thrown in Solitaire and Minesweeper and Pinball games to be completists (and a kjewel type game) But I digress it wasn't about games. I liked the Acer Aspire One until I used the keyboard, which was insanely convoluted to use. If you're looking to use this for writing out blogs and such, don't. It's not worth it. The Mouse was even worse, it has the same side buttons on the trackpad as the HP mini-notebook, but they're impossible to depress (though they do depress me) . Other than that, I could have been persuaded to buy one if the keyboard was good.

So that leaves me waiting for Dell's entry into the netbook market. The MSI Wind is out of the question, again for the Windows stupidity and also because I only want something with a solid state drive. I'm pretty much sold on the atom processor as well, which is another thing the HP netbook missed. However, there are rumours that Dell's netbook will be missing the F1-F12 keys, which is a bit silly. Surely they could have thrown in some tiny little push buttons to replace the keys (like those keyboard buttons for sleep and music on certain full sized keyboards) to save keyboard space.

Someone should hire me to design the perfect nettbook, cause I would totally. It would have a similar keyboard to the HP though with little cell phone style buttons for certain keys like the function keys, with a decent screen 1200x600 or whatever, bluetooth built in, wifi of course, Atom processor, and 1GB ram. and come with Linux, preferrably ubuntu. and have the most popular mini-diversion games on it like solitaire and tetris and the like. Also it would use a standard sized battery. or Maybe two nokia style batteries. Cheap replaceable batteries anyways, and have an easy charge plug that is retractable to save space. touch screen flip screen wouldn't be bad either. But to save money I'd leave that off cause its not really that useful.

The most interesting thing about netbooks is it shows how much certain retailers are in Microsofts pocket. Futureshop, Best Buy, I'm looking at you. Won't even sell a netbook, what's wrong with you. Think it'l cut into your laptop business? Unlikely. I own a laptop and just bought a new lenovo laptop, and I still want a netbook for putzing around with. And one day I'd like an ebook reader with e-ink technology. I just have to wait for designers to catch up with my expectations. Hopefully my wait isn't forever.

* update - apparently lenovo is coming out with a netbook too, and it looks nice, especially keyboard-wise. If it comes with Linux and a SSD they might have me on board.