Peter Graves RIP

Peter Graves, One of my favorite actors has passed away.

I really loved the Mission Impossible TV show and I can remember making sure I was watching it each week.

Mission Impossible  Theme Song

LA Times News Report

Wikipedia Article

Urban Renewal

I got a Tweet today about a story over at BoingBoing.net

Detroit is thinking of plowing under one quarter of the city.

Currently there are many areas in detroit that have vacant, non functional neighborhoods. With the closing of so many auto manufacturing plants the city is left with many abandoned homes and businesses.

Their great idea? Demolish specific neighborhoods and turn them into farm land!

Read the entire BoingBoing Article here.

More information from the Washington Times

I truly love this idea and would love to see more greenbelts on every major city.

MagicJack, where is the magic?

Endgadget.com reports on a law suit instigated by MagicJack against bongbong.net.

For those of you that are not familiar with the MagicJack device, it is a USB dongle that connects your standard landline telephone to the computer allowing you to make VOIP calls for very cheep. OK actually very cheep is a misnomer because MagicJack only charges a yearly fee for unlimited calls.

boingboing.net reported some time ago about a few problems with the Magicjack EULA. The problem seems to be that the execs at MagicJack state that they can examine the numbers you call and that you do not have the right to sue them. These items are stated in the EULA (End Users Licensing Agreement)

The biggest issue seems to be that there are no links to the EULA from the website. No EULA shown to you when the SW installs or when you buy the device. SO, as a user you are expected to know and understand the EULA but MagicJack never gives you the ability to read it.

So, MagicJack CEO sued boingboing stating that the company was subjected to “Hate, ridicule and obloquy (ridicule)”

Thankfully the court system is smart enough to realize these things are wrong and boingboing was right, magicjack lost the suit and had to pay $54k in fees and assessments.

The original story at Engadget

The original story at Boing Boing

“Gonna Torch the Earth” @thatkevinsmith

Wow, everyone in the know, knows 😉

For the rest of us…

Kevin Smith (Director/Actor “Silent Bob” http://www.viewaskew.com/ @thatkevinsmith )was ejected from a Southwest Air @SouthwestAir flight for being Fat. He Twittered to his 1.6m followers and started a storm. Checkout the @twitter.com links if you want to see the madness first hand.

Here is the SWA response http://www.swamedia.com/

Here is Kevin Smiths Response http://www.smodcast.com/smods/smodcast106.html

Interesting to note is both sides of the story seem reasonable. I suspect that something is missing in the middle.