Noisecast Roundup: Behold Agrippa and Rejoice

So I’m back to doing the round up after a stellar week by Kevlar, followed by Enosone, and then by Ben. They all did a good job, better – funnier – funner than me. But I’m back at the helm so you’ll have to suck it up. Today we have an excellent way to track down your evil twin, an Apple rumor, Jeff Bezos playing the long game, Verizon doing the do (and me taking the opportunity to rant unecessarily, Skype shenanigans, Skydrive changes, and an important issue that is near and dear to the Noisecast’s heart. Also, happy belated Father’s day.

Dogs are better than DNA tests at telling identical twins apart.
This is outstanding news! I’ve recently been hounded and harassed by my alternate universe doppelganger. He is evil and bent on destruction. Up till now, people have been able to tell us apart by his goatee, and the fact that he travels in a dirigible. But then he shaved, and bought a Prius. I was planning on getting a dog anyway. Finally, the plains have been evened.
Apple could be cooking up black Macbook Air.
This is one sexy beast. At heart, I’m an aesthete. Financial responsibility has forced me to force such feelings down, but at the end of the day, there is a piece of me that would shell out the extra cash for something gorgeous enough. The Macbook Air is a gorgeous little filly, but not quite there yet to attract me. Building it in all black would get me there. In fact, it is largely the appearance (and slight price advantage) that makes me prefer the Samsung S9 over the Macbook Air.
Why Jeff Bezos is helping to create a 10,000 year clock inside a Texas Mountain.
Look, if you can understand this, especially the little excerpt in the article, you’ll begin to understand the Mayan 2012 calender a little bit better. Some things aren’t made to predict and end or to have some direct contextual meaning. Somethings are just built to survive us, because at the end of the day, the only immortality, is memory, and memory is fleeting.
New Verizon tiered plans coming soon. [updated with details]
I don’t know why anyone is surprised at this. We all knew it was coming. Make no mistake, the purpose of this is to exact more money from you. There is no data/bandwidth crunch. There is no need for rations. There is just a lack of desire to spend the money to build out, the lack of desire to compete (hence blocking others from building out), and the lack of sufficient societal outrage. We are a plutocracy and a corporatocracy (really the same in this case, since the plutocrats rule through their corporations), and we have gotten far too comfortable with being owned. This was the reason monarchs existed (and still do) for thousands of years, even after the innovation of Democracies, Republics, and the even older system of communal elders. The one thing those systems and this plutocratic system have in common, is that everything happens because we allow it. Alright, so that rant had nothing to do with Verizon. I just used it as an excuse to poke your eye.
Skype fires high-ranking execs as Microsoft deal moves forward.
The instinct is to say, “those Microsoft bastards!” But this had nothing to do with Microsoft. The next thing you say is, “well it makes sense to reduce the payout cost by letting them go before the deal is finalized.” Shut up, psychopath. This was a power play, plain and simple. There is a certain vindictiveness to this act. Clearly, there are those who want to keep a bigger share of the pie to themselves (they still get paid the same total amount by Microsoft, so firing saved nothing). Furthermore, the amount “saved” in payouts is paltry and insignificant. This was clearly personal. Those jerks.
Windows Skydrive ditches Silverlight for HTML5.
This genuinely saddens me a little bit. I love Silverlight. All the power of Flash, none of the memory and cpu hogging. Those of you who want to poo-poo Silverlight, surprise, Netflix runs on it. It’s a brilliant system, and many developers have expended a lot of energy on it. Now it’s being pushed back. That’s the negative. The positive is that Microsoft is getting with the program and aggressively pushing a generally agreed upon new standard. A major criticism against them has been their propensity for closing themselves off from the mainstream. Sometimes it has been for the worse, other times for the better. Some extraordinary things have come out of this seclusion, like .Net but sometimes we’re saddled with wmv. I’m pro HTML5 and quite frankly, for the first time, I might actually take Skydrive seriously from a purely aesthetic standpoint. I just wish I could upload larger than 25Mb at a time.
How hangovers work.
This is a topic that is near and dear to the hearts of almost every Nosiecast member. Actually it’s a little scary how often hangovers happen withing our doors and the whole crew may need therapy. i for one don’t drink so I’m good.