National Geographic has analyzed certain characteristics of the Earth’s approximately 7 billion human inhabitants and offers up some interesting statistics in six categories: Language: 13% speak Mandarin as their first language, vs. 5% Spanish and 5% English Nationality: 19% are Chinese, 17% Indian, 4% American Religion: 33% are Christian, 21% Muslim, 13% Hindu Livelihood: 40%… Continue reading Characterizing the Earth’s Population
Month: March 2011
Best Buy’s Exchange Policy: How to evaporate customer goodwill
I’ve heard a few complaints over the years about Best Buy’s onerous restocking fee for product returns, but at least there’s a bit of logic to the company trying to recoup the overhead of putting inventory back in stock. This evening, however, we experienced a new, illogical, and highly annoying aspect to their policy. I… Continue reading Best Buy’s Exchange Policy: How to evaporate customer goodwill
More Suspicious Gaddafi Sightings
Despite the mental and psychological similarities, and disregarding the proven fact that they’re never seen together, I’ve come to the conclusion that Charlie Sheen and Muammar Gaddafi are not the same person after all. But…Bob Dylan? Well, you tell me.
Random Thursday
A few random observations while silently cursing Apple for yet again making my cool stuff seem old and busted. Speaking of the iPad, here’s another interesting project seeking funding via Kickstarter: LetterMpress is a virtual antique letterpress application. The software is demoed in the following video. This certainly appears to be a beautifully crafted app,… Continue reading Random Thursday
Apple Store Down
You know Apple is up to something big when you see this screen where the Apple Store usually appears: I’m sure this is related to the company’s announcement regarding (we think) the iPad 2 in a couple of hours.
Seagate Announces 1st 3TB Hard Drive
You don’t really need to be a certified geek to appreciation the implications of a three terabyte hard drive priced under $300. That’s about a 50% increase over the previous maximum capacity, and enough storage to hold over 400,000 songs. Or you could store a hundred Blu-Ray movies (at 30 gigabytes each). Unfortunately, many computers… Continue reading Seagate Announces 1st 3TB Hard Drive
Wireless Laser Printer
I retired our almost-eight-year-old HP LaserJet last week, replacing it with a Brother HL-2270DW wireless monochrome laser printer. The HP still worked well, but Debbie was having problems connecting to it via our network, and it was getting low on toner. When I discovered that a new, factory-fresh HP toner cartridge would cost the same… Continue reading Wireless Laser Printer