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Information Salad: Episode #21

By Slobokan | December 9, 2006

This week:

Verizon Wireless needs a math lesson, CNet shouldn’t make predictions, and nurses don’t want you to fantasize about them.

Vinny took some awesome photos
Vinny put together some awesome shownotes for the iLifeZone podcast again this week.
Slobokan spent the week tweaking Movable Type
We remember James Kim
Charlotte Wyatt To Be Placed In Foster Care
We discuss the Iraq Survey Group Report and the firestorm from the right of the blogosphere.
Cnet predicts the iPhone will fail. We aren’t taking their prediction too seriously… They also predicted the iPod would fail, so go figure.
Christopher Null had a link to E-week, Half of American Business PCs Can’t Run Vista :

About half of the average business PCs in North America are unable to meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, while 94 percent do not meet the system requirements for Vista Premium.

Within these figures, 41 percent and 78 percent, respectively, require RAM upgrades to meet the minimum and premium system requirements of Vista, says a new study by Softchoice Corp., which is expected to be released later this week.

In comparison, when Windows XP was released, some 71 percent of the PCs met its system requirements, Softchoice services consultant Dean Williams said in an executive summary of the report.
Verizon can’t understand the difference between .002 dollars and .002 cents, and after 22+ minutes, it doesn’t seem any more likely they understand. The highlights of the call? The Supervisor explaining that he’s worked at Verizon for 2 years (obviously not able to calculate hasn’t impeded his meteoric rise to the top) and another person explaining that despite notes clearly stating what the man was quoted, she boiled it down to a difference in opinion.
Stupid Story #1 : Intestinal Turbulence Brings Down Plane

Flatulence brought 99 passengers on an American Airlines flight to an unscheduled visit to Nashville early Monday morning.

American Flight 1053, from Washington Reagan National Airport and bound for Dallas/Fort Worth, made an emergency landing here after passengers reported smelling struck matches, said Lynne Lowrance, a spokeswoman for the Nashville International Airport Authority.

…

The FBI questioned a passenger who admitted she struck the matches in an attempt to conceal body odor, Lowrance said. The woman lives near Dallas and has a medical condition.
Stupid Story #2 : Boy Arrested For Opening Christmas Present

A fed-up mother had her 12-year-old son arrested for allegedly rummaging through his great-grandmother’s things and playing with his Christmas present early.

The mother called police Sunday after learning her son had disobeyed orders and repeatedly taken a Game Boy from its hiding place at his grandmother’s house next door and played with it. He was arrested on petty larceny charges, taken to the local police station in handcuffs and held until his mother picked him up after church.

…

“It was only to teach my son a lesson. He’s been going through life doing things…and getting away with it.”

…

The boy’s case will be presented to Department of Juvenile Justice officials in York County, who will decide what happens to him, Bollinger said. His mother hopes he can attend a program that will finally scare him straight.
Stupid Story #3 : Sexy nurses are getting a rise out of real ones… At a restaurant called “The Heart Attack Grill”:

Several nurses have complained to the Arizona attorney general’s office, and a national nursing group has repeatedly asked Heart Attack Grill owner Jon Basso to stop using the outfits.

“Nurses are the most sexually fantasized-about profession,” said Sandy Summers, executive director of the Center for Nursing Advocacy, based in Baltimore. “We’re asking people, if they’re going to have these fantasies, please don’t make it so public. Move these sexual fantasies to other professions.”

So sexualizing nurses is no good, but sexualizing “other professions” is fine. People, lighten up.
New York City becomes first municipality to ban trans fats. More nanny-statism in action
We talk about reality shows, Amazing Race, Survivor, and Heroes.