Author: luken7

Nothing to comment on here. Just testing the posting capabilities of WordPress on the iPhone.

Or in other words….the consumer has lost their damn mind. We're now so trained that we come to the aid of corporate entities that have systematically run individual businesses in the ground. Instead of these people whining about loosing their Starbucks, how about pooling together and supporting a local small business to replace them. A new indy coffee shop would obviously be sucessful based on the amount of knuckleheads whining about loosing their morning ritual. 

Cities, Customers Launch Save Our Starbucks Efforts – WSJ.com Now that Starbucks Corp. has disclosed the 600 locations it wants to shutter, a phenomenon is taking hold: the Save Our Starbucks campaign. In towns as small as Bloomfield, N.M., and metropolises as large as New York, customers and city officials are starting to write letters, place phone calls, circulate petitions and otherwise plead with the coffee giant to change its mind. "Now that its going away, were devastated," said Kate Walker, a facilities manager for SunGard Financial Systems, a software company, who recently learned of a store closing in New York City. Starbucks Closings: See a map with full listings of the scheduled store closings. Its an unusual twist in the saga of Starbucks, one of the fastest growing retailers of the past decade. For years, Starbucks gained attention when a town didnt welcome it. Independent coffee shops complained about the big-muscled competition, and residents bemoaned the erosion of local character. But ever since Starbucks announced this month that it would close 600 stores by early next year, as its business struggles, the rallying cause has switched to saving these endangered locations.

Nullriver has a program called Connect360, think you all know it. I tried it last night. I had ripped two movies (that I own, thank you, for backup purposes) with HandBrake to the ATV format and put them on my file server. I added them to iTunes and started 360. It runs as a daemon and is controlled through system preferences. Went to the Xbox , selected media, video, source and the Mac showed up. Chose it and it presented both movies. Both worked fine and the resolution was just a little bit less than the DVD, noticed some color artifacts and pixilation. May need to step up the bit rate from 2500 to around 3000 I guess. But it worked flawlessly.

So my new direction (for this week) is to try this approach since the app is only $20 and ATV is ~$300. That and with the news that Xbox will have streaming from Netflix this fall and will someday stream in HD. The main thing preventing me from going with ATV is that Apple doesn’t have a subscription service for movies. After having Netflix, who would go to a la cart? Maybe Apple should do a deal with Netflix, now that would ROCK !!!!

The Netflix catalog, available through the iTunes store as a subscription, in HD, controlled directly from ATV using the iPhone remote….

Finally, after two years the Dems are doing what they were elected to do. While I disagree with the tax surcharge on small businesses to fund greater GI Bill efforts, compromise is necessary. Now, if we had a better national education policy where anyone could go to a state college or university for all four years, the GI education benefits wouldn't be necessary. Here's a thought, for each you of national service that you do, you get one year of college room and board, books and even pocket money covered. National service could be military, community, social or other type of service that benefits the nation. It's a win/win for all.  

House rejects $163B for wars, OKs new GI bill – USATODAY.com WASHINGTON (AP) — The Democratic-led House on Thursday rejected more funds to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as many Republicans angry over the majority party's tactics sat out the vote. It did approve more money for the jobless and an expansion of GI education benefits. In a rapid series of votes on the war funding bill and accompanying components, Republicans withheld their votes in protest, leading to the defeat of the Iraq funding legislation by a 149-141 tally. Nearly two-thirds of the House's Democrats voted against continuing to fund the war. Democrats then forced through a nonbinding plan seeking an exit from Iraq by December of next year by a 224-196 vote that broke along party lines. Thirty-two Republicans joined with Democrats on a 256-166 vote to sharply boost education benefits for Iraq-Afghanistan veterans under the GI Bill — despite an accompanying tax surcharge on the wealthy and small businesses — and voted to provide a 13-week extension of unemployment benefits. The GOP protest kills the war funding component of the bill for now, but it is expected to be revived next week in the Senate.

A speech by Ron Paul with an associated video/photo montage. Great selection of clips to go with the audio.

This video says it all. Sen. Clinton is right, Obama won’t do well with working class whites. Actually, she should have said the whole truth that Obama won’t do well with the bigoted, uneducated, backwards thinking whites of West Virginia, the least educated state in the union. Frankly, watching this video just makes me both sad and angry.

So it really comes down to this you folks from West Virginia. You have a choice to make.

Option #1, you can have a black man as president and in return you can get universal health care coverage, jobs, higher salaries, and a focus on education, and some dignity too.

Option #2, you can have a white president to reflect the name of the whitehouse, but suffer with higher unemployment, loose your homes, have corporations finish stripping your mountain tops, and no health coverage so you can continue to live in debt with no end in sight.

But if you do choose option #2, I’m sure the Klan will help you by providing medical care, soup lines and homeless shelters. After all, they’re known for their giving and compassion.

So basically, I guess what I’m saying is, it’s your decision and you get the government you deserve…

Simple, straight forward advice