In a much rumored move, GM has announced their plans to discontinue the Pontiac brand and focus the company on their 4 “core” brands: Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick and GMC.
Not a wise move in my opinion, as I see Pontiac as a significantly more attractive and promising brand than Buick or GMC, but I suppose that’s neither here nor there as most of us have no intentions of buying any of GM’s vehilces… except for maybe that Camaro…
Monster, known for their overpriced audio/video cables and the like, has an interesting new advertisement display in Fry’s Electronics. Inviting store guests to “See the Monster HDMI Difference,” the setup consists of 2 TV screens: one connected to the source via Monster’s HDMI cable, the other connected via a composite cable. Which do you think looks better?? Questionable advertising at best…
Our car is faster! (than your bicycle)
The Washington Post says,
Deteriorating economic conditions will cause the federal deficit to soar past $1.8 trillion this year
“Conditions” are causing the debt to rise, hu? Not wasteful spending on ineffective “bailouts.” Not endless printing of dollars by the Fed. Not Omama’s decision to send money oversees to assist murderers. Not the running of a global empire. “Conditions.”
What if I said, “High prices have caused my credit card debt to become excessive”? We need to stop blaming conditions and take responsibility for our actions!
So we are all now well aware of what One Trillion Dollars “sounds” like: it gets rattled off casually by politicians will little-to-no concern for the Constitution or sound money. But did you ever wonder what One Trillion Dollars “looks” like?
Have you heard of SlotMusic? No? Neither had I until this week. Per Wikipedia:
slotMusic is a type of microSD memory card developed by SanDisk preloaded with music in MP3 format. They were first available at Wal-Mart and Best Buy stores in the United States in October 2008.
The way I see it, this is a combination the worst of elements of CDs and downloadable music. You get the music in MP3 format, and while I respect their use of 256-320 kbit/s bitrates, it’s simply not CD quality audio. And while you are getting a digital file, it’s delivered to you on a physical memory card, so you miss out on the convenience of downloadable music from services like iTunes and Amazon MP3. Doesn’t make much sense to me…
But I suppose if you aren’t picky about audio quality, enjoy going to Walmart to get your music, and regularly listen to music on devices with a MicroSD Card slot, SlotMusic may be for you.
The Virginia Department of Transportation calls the snow we had here last week a “Snowstorm.” Southerners make me laugh some times!
More than 850 million photos are uploaded to Facebook each month. That’s about 325 photos per second. Each of these is then compressed and sized down to about 600 x 400 pixels. That’s about .24 mega pixels. Considering this ill fate of so many images, it would seem that even a mere 1MP would be overkill for any consumer-level camera. However, 12MP cameras are now becoming quite common and affordable. Being so excessive for mundane use, are these electronic wonders being used to produce works of art to adorn the walls of art galleries? No, most fine art photography is still shot on film and processed in a darkroom. What then, accounts for this? Seems like an excellent example of American consumerism…
By Michael Beitler
Whenever you try to solve a problem you should look at what caused the problem in the first place. In early 2009, the banking system is wrestling with hundreds of billions (if not trillions) of dollars of bad assets, known as subprime loans, marginal loans, or other vague descriptors.
Based on my years of experience as a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) in banking, I can say with confidence, “Bankers are more intelligent and business savvy than government bureaucrats.”
That statement is invariably followed by the question: “So, why did intelligent bankers make so many bad loans?” The answer is government intervention and coercion.
Visit your local Caribou Coffee today between noon and closing to pick up a free decaf cup of coffee! Click here for details.
Dave Cross posted a tutrial for making interesting background images. I took his idea and made this. It makes me dizzy and hurts my eyes, but it’s kinda cool.
