Ooh La La

An appreciation of one of the cars from a company I have longed admired. It’s strange, but this eccentric, and ingenious auto manufacturer produced some beautiful machines, and yet one hasn’t been able to purchase a new one in this country since the 1970’s.

Too bad, because along with the DS (I had a ’67), the 2CV, and the Traction Avant, this comany has always proven throughout its long history to be on the leading edge of intelligent design and engineering.

And now for your automotive viewing enjoyment, we present the for you the wonderous SM-

BTW, if you ask me (go ahead), “Paco, what is the solution to the oil shortage, our economic dependence on oil, and how can we free ourselves from enriching a nation of facists that would like to see us on our knees (and beheaded)?”

Why, we should all be driving scooters or motorcycles or small, light cars like the 2CV. Comfy, lively, nearly 50mpg (it’ll best that energy hog of a Prius), so what if it can’t get over 60. You in a hurry?

Tiger Tank, The Lost Manual

What is fascinating is the cartoon nature of the manual. Reminds me of that American made how to torture a Sandinista manual- as- comic- book produced by the CIA for those equivalents of the American founding fathers, the Contras. The difference being the Nazi’s copy had a sense of humor.

Go figure.

Web 2.0’s Very Own Henry Blodgett

Michael Arrington fancies himself a player.

I’ve seen his name or blog mentioned in Valleywag and other blogs, not really knowing what role he plays to get mentioned so often.

Apparently he is reaching a hungry audience, beying wolves getting impatient after the Youtube purchase by Google, hoping to get in on the next bubble (and out before it bursts).

Apparently, he enjoys playing fast and loose with web startups. He promotes them in his blog, and without doing any homework, investors call them up and fork over some moolah.

Nice gig!

Arrington might even be a minor investor if he likes your business model.

He’s even adept at bringing companies together- all in an effort to synergize! (After writing that last word, my sense memory awakened, and I could smell the sizzling aroma of something like fried AOL-Time Warner.)

Well, this riches-to-riches story might have a happy ending, but according to this article in the WSJ, he acts like a whirling dervish, a heavy self-promoter who shows all the signs of a confidence man.

Yeah, kind of like Blodgett.

This excerpt kind of tells you who he is:

“Mr. Arrington is a “very ambitious guy,” says Keith Teare, RealNames’s former CEO, who notes that Mr. Arrington hasn’t stayed at any job for longer than 18 months over the past 10 years. Mr. Teare adds that Mr. Arrington is “extremely focused on money. He wants to be rich.”

This can be Sirius

The National Association of Broadcasters and National Public Radio have been charging hard against satellite radio.

And Howard Stern’s old nemesis, the FCC, is listening attentively.

Turns out Sirius uses terrestrial radio towers to boost their signals.

This of course comes under the jurisdiction of the FCC.

Oopsy.

And everyone knows, the FCC is on the side of buisness and corporate interests, and any time it can screw the American consumer out of alternatives to their corporate masters, it’s so there.

Finally, Something We’ve Been Waiting For

Seagate says they will encrypt hard drives.

How will it work? You will be asked for a password before the OS boots.

Great news for those of us who carry laptops- thieves will find them just as useless as they are (unless they’re qualified techies who can change to a normal, unencrypted drive-unlikely as thieves are by definition lazy no good bums).

And also beneficial for desktops users-

“Even data-recovery specialists would not be able to help if the assigned password somehow gets lost, said Scott Shimomura, a senior product marketing manager at Seagate.”

Brilliant, and I can’t wait.

Oh, one potential downside:Seagate is also testing them for use in digital video recorders; the article does not say toward what end tho’.  8^/

One word of advice: Don’t lose that password!