NO TIME TO TALK

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One more cool gift

Photoshop fridge magnets.

Yeah, they're pretty rad if I must say so myself.

Oh, here's something else

Rammstein As An Educational Tool

I don't really have much else to say about this:

The Solution to Your Financial Crisis

And now for something really important that demands America's economic attention as this might save us from the slipping recession that we are in. This cat in Russia begs for money.

The sign reads "need money for meat and fish, bless you." It's owner was adopting cats and found out that she does not have the money to really support them. So she has her cat earn it's money. The cat will actually sit there and guard the money.

I need to rethink my retirement strategy.

Artist Day!

I seem to be writing less and less and posting more links and more links. Oh well. In an attempt to be more timely with these postings, I've decided to ummm... post again. But this time, with more artsy crap!

The Mojito Shoe

I actually think these things are kinda bangin'. It was designed by an architect named Julian Hakes. Apparently he was just scribbling on a sheet of paper and the thought came to him to make a shoe out of it. It's made out of carbon fiber and he assures that it's very comfortable and ergonomic. Sure it looks a little funky at first, but after staring at it for a while, I really want these shoes. I'd probably never wear it in public, even if I did, I don't have the wardrobe to match. But I would find a lady in the most Cindarella-esque way, searching the lands for a woman who can fit the shoe. I wouldn't marry her though, I'd just take a picture of it... and maybe see how ugly this thing really is with a foot actually resting inside it.

But I absolutely love the minimalist design and wavy curves like a crazy straw that was ran over by a steam roller and came out all funny like a cartoon.

Twitter Avatars

This dude Adam Koford took the shape of the twitter icon bird:

and made it into a bunch of other things:

Personally, this to me is like a Shakespearean sonnet. Having to work in tight constraints to achieve something else far greater. I love limitations vs. freedom. I tend to think that whenever someone is given free roam to go about their ideas and do whatever they want, it tends to suck. But shove that person in a world of stilted rules, you can see how creative he/she is and breaks through. Yup. I got all this from a guy making twitter icons.

The Decapitator

This UK based graffiti artist basically goes around cities, and cuts people's heads off. There's actually quite a bit of detail to these things and it surprises me at the amount of this guy's dedication to this.

Playing with Legos

Brought to you by Nathan Sawaya

And you thought those lego star wars kits they were selling on Black Friday for $8 bucks a piece were cool? Check this shit out.

I can't imagine how many times this guy was yelling out "SHIT, WHERE IS THAT PIECE, I JUST SAW IT." while sifting though a giant plastic tub.

Interactive Mirror

Created by Lit Studios, this mirror interacts with your touch and makes stains on the mirror. Of course, you could probably recreate the effects by going to a seedy motel near a radioactive waste facility.

UUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH

Wow, I'm getting pretty bad at this update thing.

Black Friday was a complete success! ... I think. I bought a lot of things. Things I probably don't need. And things I can't give as gifts (how can I gift wrap a paper towel holder in the shape of Yoda with my name engraved on it?).

Anyways, on to more important things.

Looking for cool christmas gifts? Well I've got some pretty nifty ideas (subject lines are the link):

The Severed Horse Head Pillow

Want to send a message to your enemies? Let them know in their sleep that you don't mess around and will cut the head off of their prize winning, life size, stuffed animal racing horse.

$45 Stuffed, $35 Unstuffed.

Cool Retro iPod Nano Cases

They look like tapes! How cool is that!? No? Oh... well then... carry on.

Tetris Ice Cubes

In case you know... ummm, wanna play Tetris in yo drink.

$12

Also, as an aside, check out this cool video:

Speaking of old games:

The Pac-Man Ring Series

OM NOM NOM NOM.

Bottle Opening Shoes

So you can be an alcoholic and be fashionable at the same time! By the way, I know the link goes to hot topic, but I found the shoes from another site, I don't personally shop there... well I would if they had anything that was as functional as this.

Speaking of Women's fashion, Girls have you ever wanted to pee in the wilderness like the guys? Write your name in the snow without your finger? Well I present to you this:

The Go Girl.

....

Yeah, after that last one... I'm kinda done.

Once a week now, huh?

So it seems I've gone from posting multiple times daily, to posting about once a week.

Also, I've become highly addicted to Amazon Black Friday Deals Week.

Where else can I get iCarly DS for $17!?! Also, Dead Space extraction sold out instantaneously

So everyone that matters, this is where I shall be buying your Non-denominational Winter Gift Giving Holiday.

To other techie things:

A lot of talk has been debating the latest Google phone (Droid) vs. the iPhone. The insight from me is that THERE IS NO VS. I don't know why people choose to pit devices against each other and then claim brand loyalty. It makes no sense because each company is faulty and there will be a time when you will be embarrassed by the company you solidly stick behind. They owe nothing to you and they get free advertising from you just talking about it.

On that note, APPLE ROCKS! iPHONE FOR TEH WINZ!

Seriously though, its in the network. There's no use of having a cool app or feature that doesn't work because the coverage isn't strong enough and no wifi hotspot to hijack, isn't a good phone. If AT&T is strong in your area great. If Verizon is stronger, cool, whatevs. They're options; consider them well.

In other Techie news:

THIS

In other Youtube Findings:

I really need to start watching The Wire

Now please excuse me while I try and bid on this Hannah Montana Disney DS game.

Other things

Instead of annoying you with small-ish updates, I decided to lump everything into one large octomom birthing (see, I'm using topical humor to stay relevant. Ocotomom is still relevant, right? Oh God, what happened to my life?) update.

3rd Party Company creates touchscreen capability with iMacs/monitors/Macbooks

Troll Touch Touchscreen created a bunch o slip screens that cover the glass and connect via USB ports. The only problem is that they range from $699 - $1699. This could overall, double the cost of your mac. But it does run quite smooth.

My biggest problem with anything touch screen though, is that it creates more problems than alleviates. Touch screen really only works on something small like on cell phones or portable media devices. When it's applied to a computer like this, it becomes a little daunting to do a simple task, like typing.

Whoever stood at a digital ATM and thought, I'd like to work off of this thing? That's basically what you'd be making your computer. A kiosk. I apologize if that is what you are trying to make, but for the average household, it's not going to fly.

This is really just something cool to show off to your friends, before you remove it and quickly surf the intarwebs faster on your mouse and keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts are also a thing of beauty. Sure, you can replace those with gesture controls and what have you, but it's just not as effective. You'd be straining your arms and it's not exactly the most ergonomic thing you could do for 8 hours, let alone 15 minutes at a time.

My last complaint with touch screen computers is that you can't see what you're doing. Your hands will constantly get in the way of scrolling around or when you are trying to type (in one of the videos, the guy who's demoing the system has to pull up a virtual keyboard, which would take up screen real estate). But meh, whatever, I can still show it off the ladies. Right? Wait till they see my ram board. Hur hur! Nerd jokes.

Bored Programmers use Roombas to Play Pac-Man

The culmination of Man has reached its apex.

PS3 turns 3

Yup.

Sorry for Lack of Updates

I've been busy at work. I've finally had the time to slow down and kind of relax... and waste copious amounts of time with this little thing.

BBAM: Epilogue

I found this nifty bit of internet video and thought that after the strange rant I had yesterday, this would clear things up.

Big Budget American Movies

So, last week, when I said "tomorrow", apparently, I had meant next week. Which is today. Let me not procrastinate any further and provide you with my insight on big budget American movies.

Now to differentiate, I don't consider most comedies and dramas so big budget as they tend to focus on acting/story. What I consider big budget American movies (from here on out BBAM) are mostly action movies, or something so heavily funded that it's ludicrous to think that they spent more money on this piece of crap rather than paying for your college tuition (DAMN YOU, STUDENT LOANS).

Because I'm trying to be timely, the latest BBAMs coming out for this holiday season are 2012 (coming out this weekend) and Avatar (Dec. 18).

These movies offer so much in special effects and visuals that will make your head spin 360 degrees; you'll want to vomit, but you can't because you've twisted your neck and nothing comes out, so you end up having really bad heart burn and being stuck in an uncomfortable situation. There is such focus on the visuals in these movies, that the acting and plot is put on a back seat. Now, some people will say that they just watch movies for fun, to turn their brain off and see some 'splosions.

It's funny how often people come out of theatres wondering what the hell they just saw. When Terminator came out, it had some of the best special effects, but because of its completely shitty story and dialogue, it flopped harder than a drunk sorority girl at Denny's... well... maybe not that hard. Anyways, it was no wonder that Christian Bale was pissed. I would be too if I was on that movie.

My biggest gripe about BBAMs is their complete lack of intelligence and their weak attempts to prove that they are. A BBAM that I can watch is something that has a simple enough story line that it doesn't create clutter and the actors are free to actually perform. Prime examples are Saving Private Ryan (Save a dude. Get out.), Jurassic Park (Dinosaurs go apeshit. Dude from Seinfield gets his face ripped off), J.J Abrams' Star Trek (College in space. Some shit about time travel), Crank 2 (Dude's a motherfucking timebomb of shitscapedes).

Well... Crank 2 is more out of fun because I feel it's self aware and knows what it's audiences want to see. It's not caught up in trying to explain the Iraq war through over glorified Smurfs or trying to have a spiritual reference in 2012. Crank 2 knows it's target audience wants to see stuff go boom and maybe see a tittie or two. By the way, let me take this time to discuss that I have no idea what the correct spelling of tittie is. It could be titty. Anyways, Crank 2 doesn't try to overcomplicate things with great overall meaning. It's just some bad ass paving the streets with blood.

A lot of great BBAMs are never too complicated, or if they want to have great overarching meaning, they give the actors some room to actually act and convey it (not just to pad time either). Michael Bay is a director who wants to do this, but does it very sloppy. He crams in plot elements and tries to make actors love each other after a fart joke or two. Didn't you see the deleted scenes in Pearl Harbor? Dude totally lets a long gut buster out before he proposes to his dead best friend's girlfriend, to which the dead best friend ends up being alive! What the hell am I talking about? Exactly. Don't watch Pearl Harbor. You'll only take the side of the Japanese... and wonder where the hell Cuba Gooding Jr. is nowadays.

Video Art

In the Beginning

I graduated with a BFA (Bachelors of Fine Arts, Cum Laude) in Digital Film Making and Video Production at the Art Institute of Washington DC. Yes, I know, that's quite a mouthful of words, but I present them to you to make myself sound like I know what I'm talking about. I recently had this discussion with a good friend of mine about video art and the differences between that and actual production work.

Picture a color spectrum (you know good ol' ROYGBIV). On one end, you have high end, epic blockbuster movies like Transformers and Avatar. Moving further along, you get into romantic comedies and dramas. Foreign, Indie, and horror movies are somewhere in the middle of this spectrum, and then it dips into music videos and finally video art. Keeping in mind that it is a color spectrum, a lot of times, things mix and you get interesting bold new colors or ugly colors of slop that no one would paint their porn barn with. Oh, by the way, porn is ultraviolet. Invisible to most, but all around us.

Assmaster Cycle

After laying down those ground rules, I'd like to say that I really don't like a large portion of video artists. A lot of them, in my opinion, are really photographers who think that they're larger than life (even more so). Video artists are the pinnacle of that goofy artist that no one understands and wears all black to prove it. They hang out in over-stylized coffee bars that sell $25 drinks of pure decadence. Sure I'm over generalizing a group of people, but they deserve it. Matthew Barney is a perfect example of this.

He has a particular visual style and design that is absolutely stunning. It would just work better if it was photography. There's very little narrative that's going on here that video would be the required medium for it. The pacing is so slow, it might be better for it to be a set of photographs. People would be able to muse over it and gain a better understanding for themselves or zoom through the whole process faster.

Video artists tend to want to take photography concepts and make them into videos that no one really wants to sit down and watch for 8+ hours. People pay a huge amount time and patience for nothing that's nearly as entertaining or causes as much debate as a Michael Bay movie, which is really sad actually.

RESPECT

Now the video artists I do respect are Jeremy Blake and Nam June Paik. Jeremy Blake was like a video version of Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock, though later he turned into a goofy, almost Tim and Eric kinda guy. I've talked about him before though. Nam June Paik, I like because of his actual intervention in the viewing of video within itself.

He mixes ideologies and symbolism in almost real time with when you are viewing it. A lot of it is a head trip, not because you're sitting down watching it, but because sometimes it interacts with you and requires you to be there to view it. It's a form of performance art with TV being the annoying guys dressed up, dry humping you in a rape tunnel. Only it's much nicer and doesn't leave physical stains (the mental ones are always the hardest to remove).

Slowly moving up from video art is the music video or video artists who need money. Michel Gondry and Spike Jonze both started out doing music videos and both have Charlie Kauffman to thank for launching their indie film careers. This is really where things should get started. Even though MTV (all its entities) rarely play videos at times when people are actually watching, people now have access to youtube and such to actually watch these things and have them take off to mild success.

Video art is one of those mediums where I feel it's a cop out to society. It isn't really doing anything that innovative. There's a loss where the artist focuses too heavily on the content that the technical ability of the video itself is just lost. Sometimes they'll focus so much on the technical ability, that there's nothing to see.

When you get into higher budget films, cinematographers are the artists that really drive the look and visual style. The best will compose each shot so that there is nothing that has to be cut away while helping to move the story line further. Conrad Hall was a perfect example of this.

Both images above taken from Road to Perdition

Taken from American Beauty

He focused so much on how lighting was portrayed and how it would add to the scene. You can see how it helps build the drama without having to get in the way of the story telling. It's the perfect meshing of a brilliant artist and an apt screenwriter with a director at the helm to even everything out. Great movies have great teams. It's never really one person that makes the movie great. Video artists need to learn this and work together instead of just being at the helm of every project and proclaiming it their own.

The Future of Video Art

New forms of augmented, virtual, and mixed reality can really make or break video artists. It can really pull off ideas and concepts that were not achievable before. Or, it can really cause headache inducing acid trips that each new video artist will be known for creating and ripping off each other. Either way, something must be done to compel video artists to reach out and try something different by challenging themselves to be normal and see if they are as good as they really are. After all, getting a concept across a large audience is already a hard enough job to do.

If you think I was too hard on video artists, please join me tomorrow where I'll be attack big budget American movies.

Recession Cases for the iPhone

This neat little recession case (only .99 cents for one 14.99 for a 30 pack!) for the iPhone is not new, it was actually released about a month or two ago, but is now announcing a contest where you decorate them. The prize? A 1982 Suzuki FA50 scooter!

Here are a few of my favorite ones posted so far:

Enter now and hopefully you can win! Also, I highly suggest you visit the original site where you can buy one. The specs are quite humorous.

What Happened to Weezer?

So out comes this week another album from a band I used to cherish. In high school, I would drive around in my old 1986 Toyota Corolla listening to Weezer, Catch 22, Sleater-Kinney, and a bunch of other random messes. But Weezer was one of the top bands to come up on my seemingly unending MP3 disk player that I bought with my hard earned cash.

The memories flood of hanging out with friends after a nerdy theatre sports (like who's line is it anyways) and singing along to Weezer. It was a great band that didn't pander to anyone; it just so happened that a lot of nerds liked them. They were lyrically complex when they wanted to and fun when they needed to be.

Raditude in many ways is like the Be Sharps. It's a name that seems funny and witty at first and then gets less so every time you say it. The songs are mediocre for current Weezer standards, but it's still terrible from my standpoint.

It's embarrassing, that now, they feel like they have to suck up to their core audience by almost making fun of their intelligence. Their newer albums tend to smack their old fans in the face. It's just strange because the fans who grew up listening to them, are now much older and don't care for this immature embrace of internet memes and things that were old as the day they started. Don't get me wrong, I like some internet memes every once in a while, but I want those guys to play good music and grow up and stop chasing whatever the flavor of the month is.

Weezer used to be the forerunner when it came to "being Weezer" and now it seems like they try to play catch up with themselves and try to stay relevant by pulling dumb stunts like this:

That is no lie, what you see in front of you. That is indeed an official Weezer Snuggie. This is much worse than "selling out". This is a complete abomination to what you consider your fans.

It's time I step up to memory road and try to forget about what's currently happening.

New Layout

We'll see how this works out, I wanted to give you guys the ability to stretch out the page to fully watch videos, see pictures, and whatnot. I know a few out there read this on iPhones and other mobile media devices, so let me know how it works out. I'm testing it on my BlackBerry Curve it seems to work out alright. Obviously the flash videos don't work though.

American McGee's Alice II

American McGee's Alice is getting a sequel

I really hope that they keep with the stop motion puppetry throughout the game. Or at least keep them for cut sequences. It adds to the creepy element, especially if you've seen Coraline. On the other hand, the models don't look all that great and look like something out of Celebrity Deathmatch.

This is one of those old nostalgia games where I thought it was cool and am now wondering if it really was cool. I'll get back to you on that. Anyways, gothy as it is, I look forward to it with lofty optimism.

New Avatar (James Cameron, not the Air Bender) Trailer

Because it is the Friday before you go out and trick or treat or watch a terrible movie in theatres, you'll most likely be met with the new Avatar trailer. I'll spoil it for you now if you don't want to have your soul taken from you (it makes things more convenient to do it from your comfortable chair/sofa/hot tub).

It has come to my attention that due to the crappy formatting of my blog, you may be missing out on the right quarter of the screen. You can watch it here if you choose to do so.

So ... yeah. It may look awesome... but the story and dialogue are full of shit.

• "You are not on Kansas anymore!"
• Big evil company wants expensive rock. Unfortunately, poor primitive, good natured tribe lives on top of the gold mine. OHHH NOOOEESS!
• "Those savages are threatening our whole operation!"
• The handicapped look for a way to prove themselves/look for a way to be normal again before the "accident"
• "You get me what I need, I'll see to it you get your legs back."
• "Just relax and let your mind go blank; shouldn't be too hard for you" OHHHHH social jab at the military for being dumb!

Anyways, I could go on, but I stopped about there with the trailer. What's sad, is I actually think that Transformers 2 had a more original plot and better graphics. And that's saying something right there.

Now, you can call me out for being a hater and all that, but I expected a lot more from James Cameron. He was, in my opinion, an envelope pusher when it came to visual effects and usually had a pretty decent story line to hold up when the effects couldn't. He clearly drops the ball in both categories.

Other cliche's that make me mad about this movie:

Some people are just evil for the sake of being evil - Really? Corporations aren't entirely bad. They do provide the computer you're using to read this, make the coffee you drink, make the clothes you wear. Unless you live in an amish-like community where literally everything is made by and for you, you have to rely on big corporations to compete and gain your consumerism. That's just how things are. Can they be evil? Sure, but NOT EVERY COMPANY. IN EVERY MOVIE. EVER. It's just very easy to portray something like that and it's completely overused. I'd like to see a movie where a corporation was the only thing separating people from the brink of apocalypse. If there are, then please feel free to send'em my way and I'll netflix them.

The military is full of gun-toting dumb jocks - I've had quite a few friends in the military and it always makes me mad when any branch is portrayed as this. Everyone I've met has been incredibly caring, compassionate, and reasonably intelligent. The people that are the dumb gun-toting jocks are people that are Wannabe military types that have no idea what it's really like or were discharged for being an impairment to the branch. Granted, there are films out there that don't portray the military as this, and for that, I'm glad that it's a stereotype that isn't so prevalent.

Blood for oil/money/precious metals - Precious Metals should be a female hard rock band. Just sayin. Anyways, this kind of runs along the point of evil corporations, but on a more politically charged level. It's an easy point to make that polarizes issues and I feel even the left is bored with the concept. I've never seen a so-called epic movie put it so bluntly as to have someone specifically state their direct objective. At least be more coy with the idea and have it secretly revealed as to what they were really after. Have it be about these "Avatars" secretly infiltrating them, becoming friends with them, only to be after their cool stones this entire time. Even have it only from the aliens point of view. Or reverse it and have the aliens invading us, hunting after our precious earth, after creating human like avatars. And have a bad ass guy with a mullet lead the charge against these invaders, but have no one believe him. I think I just wrote the script for They Live.

Guy alienated by home, feels more at home with aliens - Be they illegal or extraterrestrial, this was already done, to a much better extent with Gran Torino and to a much lower extent Area 51.

I guess the reason I give crappier movies a pass and not Avatar for portraying so called cliches is because Avatar does it, thinking that it's a new idea in the form of over priced computer puppets and not tongue in cheek campy fun (although, I don't condone the watching of Area 51).

Also, Avatar supports furries. If you like this movie, you like furries. Thus, concluding my argument and makes me right.

Long Day and Nothing to Talk About

The oceanic waves of work his now at high tide and may be sweeping me away in a whirl pool of productivity.

Also, nothing too interesting has been happening lately. I'd like to get into certain wave forms of thought that I've had for the past couple days, but I'm not sure I have the time and effort to completely commit to those ideas... at least today.

For now though, I leave you with this comic, to ponder your thoughts.

Provided by Savage Chickens

The Book of Genesis. By R. Crumb

WHAT? this just came to my attention, but R. Crumb just adapted The Book of Genesis into a graphic novel. For those that don't know, R. Crumb was a serious sexual deviant in the comic world who was all for the promotion of various narcotics (mostly LSD).

The above image juxtaposed with his previous art:

He's also known for his work on Fritz the Cat:

I mean, that's not to say that he's not a talented artist. It's just weird to see him do something like this. He's done a few high brow things before, but this is just really out of left field.

To prove that he's actually good.

PS3 Gets Netflix

Picture and news, provided by IGN.

Playstation finally gets to join the game by finally having access to Netflix. If you're wondering why it took so long for this to happen, Microsoft has one of their own on the board of Netflix. This is also why Netflix originally started out with Silverlight (an Adobe flash-like video competitor designed by Microsoft) and Macs couldn't play any streaming video at the start of their streaming days because of this as well.

This was done, most likely because Netflix finally saw PS3 and its network as a feasible marketplace, now that it was the highest grossing system last month. PS3 has basically reinvented itself (and all it did was lose weight... now if I can do the same thing. Then I'd be able to pick up the lay-duhs... siiiigggghhh... ). It has been looked at as overpriced and having a much smaller game library with no exclusives to hold itself up.

I'm glad that Sony's starting to pull out the punches and provide a much needed competition for Microsoft.

Switching Topics to 3D

I'm going to stop talking about technology stuff for a while, because, quite frankly, I'm burned out on it. It's only been two days of Apple and Microsoft, and I'm already bored with them. So, on to a topic that both angers me and fuels me to write originally instead of just "covering" something.

Numerous 3D films are in production and many are still in planning stages (up to 2013). Most of them don't even need to be done in 3D. It's mainly done as a gimmick. Good original stories are being thrown to the sidelines for cheap thrills of "Woooaaaahhh, it totally, like, looks like it's coming at me." Don't get me wrong, it's cool technology and all, but there comes to be a point where it's just sensationalism. 3D doesn't necessarily bring anything to the table and provides more of a hinderance. There's almost a stop in the story, every time they have to "remind" the audience that they're watching a 3D movie. For example, in Monsters vs. Aliens, does the boss really need to stop talking to play paddle ball? Do I really need to see Scrooge get high on PCP and shoom around the screen like a bat out of hell?

It almost scares me to think that kids will grow up on these 3D experiences and look at normal movies as a thing of the past. Every movie by 2024 will have to be chock full of gimmicky sequences of people falling towards you, explosions and a tire comes straight at you, bumper pool from the perspective of of the pool que, it'll even invade the porn sector and we'll have money shots that make you feel in the scene.

The only real innovation that I saw made use of the 3D was Up. When life is happy, things are huge, there's depth, there's saturated color that bursts out, feeding your eyes with nothing but beautiful imagery that you can't cease to take in. But then there are low points in the film. Where the older man just slugs himself around in a very flat, boringly mute color space house. As the film unfolds, so do the visuals. It's a really thought out movie, all the way through and if that's what 3D can do for movies, then I'll take everything back. Unfortunately for Pixar, Toy Story 3, just looks like a half baked idea, that was just being made to fund their next endeavor.

Plot spoiler: You find out that the toys aren't really alive, and that the kid suffers from a severe form of depression where he disconnects from the real world to make up "fathers" that he never had in real life.

Windows 7 Debuts today and Microsoft Sells PCs

The launch of Windows 7 is finally here and I'll be attempting to cover it all day. Check back here if anything newsworthy develops. Most likely, people are just buying it today. No press releases or conferences.

Remember to set up your Windows 7 party.

Also, in a weird turn of events, Windows will start selling PCs Online and will also sell computers at their brick and mortar stores when they open.

This will do one of two things:

1. People won't buy from their online stores because they can most likely find better deals at Best Buy, Newegg, Target, Amazon, Tiger Direct, etc.

2. People won't buy from their brick and mortar stores because they can most likely find better deals at Best Buy, Target, Walmart, Radio Shack (currently changing its name to The Shaq), etc.

An example, using the Acer Aspire Timeline AS4810:

Microsoft, Target, Tiger Direct

Granted, Microsoft does offer a free printer and a second copy of 7 for half off. But if you're just buying it for yourself and you already have a printer? I'd rather just buy it from TD and save $120.

Unless Microsoft feels that they can really undercut the competition. I feel that this is, in part, a really dumb decision, mostly because, not only are they having to compete with other consumer electronic stores, but they are also opening these stores to compete across the street (quite literally in most cases) from Apple stores.

Oh well, I may very well be wrong about all this, and it could be a very big success for Microsoft; a mainly SOFTWARE company. Once again, I'll restate that they should just focus on making great software, instead of trying to peddle out overpriced hardware (Apple has that market cornered already).

Anyways, to anyone who goes for the upgrade, let me know how it turns out. I'm looking forward to 7 and am considering to get a netbook with it loaded in (even though they're cutting out some of the features because of hardware limitations).

UPDATE

This just in, Burger King Japan will be unleashing their own Windows 7 burger!

That's right, 7 patties. It is over about 5 inches in height and costs about 8.55. It'll only be available for one week (get it, 7 days? Those clever Burger King Japan marketers).

UPDATE II

I didn't realize there was actually going to be a press conference after all. Anyways, here's a pic from it, via CNET of Steve Ballmer thanking chinese children for working on their products for them.

UPDATE III

Pictures were uploaded from the opening of Microsoft's new brick and mortar store. I love the expression of the guy on the couch.