Off topic: Subway jumper at 72 St/Broadway

Yesterday, October 11 at the uptown 1 platform at 72 st a young black man jumped in front of an oncoming 1 train.....I happened to be on the scene no more than 30 seconds after the accident.....I will keep the details short...I passed through the metrocard gate and immediately a dozen or so women are running towards the exit screaming to the MTA booth for help....."there is a man under the train!!!"

I go down the stairs and see the front of the train is in front of me, very few people stayed around to see what would unfold...no police at all on the scene for at least a minute...I could only see the feet of the body, they were still moving around. The consensus thus far is that the person died primarily by electrocution on the third rail.


This is where things start to be strange.....


-Absolutely ZERO media coverage of the accident
-After hearing a report from another witness, a bone chilling thought came to my mind....WHAT THE F**K IS GOING ON??? The witness was on the platform and saw the whole thing, she claims that there was a white man filming (with a professional video camera) the entire thing from the platform, from the time before the person jumped, until he was forced to leave, where he resumed filming the event from the opposing downtown platform. Here is the creepy part....I saw the same exact man filming...at the time I was in some shock and only thought to myself "he must be really fucking lucky to get this on tape"....after hearing that he recorded the entire thing something seems very, very wrong. Was this a staged suicide???? If so, who the f**k is this guy with the camera and why is there no media coverage???

RE: Apple.com Tributes Al Gore's Peace Prize Win

Listen, I am in full support of earth-friendly agendas and I think that Al Gore is doing (or attempting) something good with his time and money but this latest shit on Apple.com undid a few screws in my head. I never wanted to be the type of person that buys products based on a firm's politics but this garbage on apple.com really makes me question what the f**k I am doing supporting a company that so openly declares their political affiliation. I do not want this to be an argument about why i disagree with most liberal ideas (I said most because there are some liberal issues I support), I just felt the need to comment on Apple's recent homepage update. No legitimate, publicly-traded company in their right mind would post such a transparent message on behalf of a major figure like Mr. Gore without some type of financial arrangement. Remember, I said "in their right mind".....yea yea I know this is just a fucking rant but perhaps others out in cyberspace share the same sentiment.

Because the utility of the product is what drives me to my decision to purchase from a certain manufacturer, this will not likely stop me from supporting apple in the future; what WILL affect my future apple purchases (getting a little off topic) is their lack of a CONSISTENT quality control in China. I remember having the Original Macintosh and Macintosh II when I was young and first getting into computing and I CLEARLY can recall the EXCEPTIONAL build quality of the units. What is going on Apple??

Official 3rd Part iPhone apps??

According to an anonymous source at 9to5Mac.com, Apple and Electronics Arts (as well as other unnamed sources) are in the process of porting EA's line of iPod games to the iPhone. This latest speculation brings up a number of issues in my head.

When I look at the current lineup of EA iPod-based games (Solitare, Mahjong, Tetris, Bowling, etc) the controls for them are fairly simple, using just the iPod clickwheel and center button as the controls. I am a little skeptical about how fluid the controls will be for anything more complicated than card games and bowling. As we have seen with 3rd party games such as the NES emulator, it is possible to implement decent controls although they are not perfect. The problem is that major video game firms (with the exception of EA) would not dare enter into the iPhone-only game market for the reason that the margins are lousy. I will not pay any amount of money for ported iPod games to play on iPhone and I am positive that 99% of the people whos 3rd party apps were removed in the 1.1.1 update would agree with me. I WOULD pay for fresh, innovative, and more graphically enhanced games from companies other than EA...

Continuing with the official 3rd party app speculation, it is also being reported that Apple will be adopting T-Mobile's sidekick SDK and distribution models. To summarize, the Sidekick model involves 3rd party developers applying for a "key" from Apple, which essentially opens up the iPhone platform for app development, developers test and compile applications and submit only stable and functional concepts to Apple for for stability and compatibility testing. If Apple follows the T-Mobile model, they would at this point release the app for sale.

To me this could go either way for consumers in the sense that it could bring some first class applications to the iPhone and potentially iPod Touch platforms. The possible downside for consumers is that because Apple has the final word in what is released, we could see a slew of Stock and Weather-type iPhone widgets which are nice features, but are in essence more novelty than hardcore app.

All this means very little right now is it is pure speculation but lets just look at two different sides of this issue...

Consumers who have unofficial 3rd party apps (or who lost them in the latest update) will unlikely support anything related to this idea of buying additional apps from Apple. The general sentiment among iPhone customers is that Apple has become concerned only with money. As a side note, do all you people who believe this think that Apple Inc. is non-for-profit company??? I am not going to get into it in detail but Apple Inc. is in business for ONE SINGLE REASON....to produce the largest PROFITS possible for its SHAREHOLDERS. With that said, many people still feel hesitant about giving more money to the Cupertino-based firm with many even feeling betrayed or "gauged" by the price drop last month.

Other users who for whatever reason choose not to jailbreak and load 3rd party apps may be attracted to "official" applications. Although there are a myriad of programs that allow for simple jailbreaking, many do not feel like "de-flowering" their new devices. Still, with this target group, many will be weary of the applications....especially when you factor in that the numerous "hacking" groups will most likely release a hacked for-free version of the apps shortly after the "official" ones are released.

Truthfully...these rumors do not interest me in the LEAST....I personally have no desire to purchase games for iPhone, apps possibly, but not until they are proven to be worth the cost and more importantly if they provide me with some additionally utility that I need with my iPhone.

I am waiting until Apple releases its much delayed and highly anticipated Leopard OS which is reported to have many new UI and infrastructure updates/improvements, many of which are supposeded to be closely integrated with iPhone....

Just a thought

throwing around idea's for stories this morning with Peter, and a concept came up, which lead to a question.

...If Apple were to fire CEO Steve Jobs from the company, would that necessarily be the downfall of the company?...

Through our conversation I think we've come to some conclusions and also opened up some questions to be asked in the future.


Questions:
1. Considering the products currently being released where already in the pipes for the company. So has Steve really innovated anything at the company other then being one hell of a hype machine?

2. Once the product lines get elderly (seriously how long till one iMac just looks like the one next to it?) what new products short of a holographic display system will start the company anew

Who knows what the future holds for this company, i think that now more than ever we must hold some criticism for this company especially as it grows into the future

Conclusions:

Apple will probably do fine with the current market saturation and word of mouth dispersion that if Steve left nothing would change except the company would lose a mouthpiece

Product lines will be continue on track as they have been for the past couple of quarters (this is talking in the sense that Steve has already left) Johnathan Ives gets promoted to head of Product R&D industrial design, Phil Schiller takes over as the CEO of apple and its business as usual.

ibrik 2

cousin peter (a contributing editor) thought this image was much more appropriate (so do i)


in his own words
"i really have no sympathy for people who bricked their phones"

you know what.... neither do I really

except if your traveling to europe... but then you should have the money to pay for the freggin roaming charges seeing as you have to be relativly wealthy to travel to europe now

ibrik

just to rub it in a little bit more....

to those who unlocked


perhaps you should have waited a bit...

whats the problem?

Iphone had an update today from firmware version 1.0.2 to 1.1.1 with it brings a multitude of updates and features.(of wich ill be sure to cover later this weekend)

when was the last time a cellphone had the ability to bring new features to market as they became avaible with simply plugging the phone into your computer, and where able to update on the fly once the phone was plugged into a computer?

new world people.... new world

apple revolutionizing the market with a new concept in what cellphones should be able to do...

p.s- those who unlocked... SUCKS TO BE YOU HAHAHAHA

The Future is now?

its 6:53am on a sunday and I have to go in for work at 8, why would I the lowly TECHbet be up at such an ungodly hour one might ask himself? the answer is actually a question, one that has been asked before but that does indeed bare to be repeated.

where is the future?

what I mean by that is where is the utopian paradise our parents parents told us about in the late to middle fifty's
im talking about video's like this people

the kind where people didnt think about geopolitical hotspots or anything like that but instead decided that the future could be lived in peace....

where he heck did that future go....

I demand my jetpack and I do not mean this little number....


THIS IS THE FUTURE I WAS PROMISED AND BY GUM IT SHALL BE THAT WAY!!!
the kind that a sugar cereal addled brain taught me to see as the promise of tommorow....

on the otherhand....

If we can create a self sufficent system to care of the machine "overlords" then i suppose we dont have to worry about the aformentioned things.....

except then we would have to learn to bow to our eventual robot overlords and enslavers....

too much thought for one night
TECHbet OUT!

iPhone post: thoughts on progressive technology

hello dear readers, today i come to you from a local starbucks and i was thinking about technology. You know, when i think about it and look at students in my school and elsewhere i feel like the progression of technology or at least personal technology is in some peril in the near future case in point. My cousin Sasha is 11 years old, he has grown up and lived in a world where the personal computer was always in existance, he also grew up in a world where the internet was always around, now perhaps of this he is jaded by the consequences of this knowledge, i know that when i was 5 my father bought the first computer for his office behind his studio, a IBM 286, it ran DOS and not much else except for a couple simple tabulation programs and word processing systems. by still contract by the time Sasha was 5 he had his first HP desktop with 800mhz processor and a speedy connection to the internet.

what i am getting to here is this: when I asked sasha what stored a computers data his response was "the DVD player." Our children today, the ones who grew up in and around 1996-2000 are growing up without a knowledge of a system they use every day. and what happens one day when the caretakers of that system (us and our parents) can no longer provide the care we give now...

p.s- you should know Sasha is a certified genius and currently is taking courses for gifted children at SUNY Marymount
if you do not believe me about the above theory, I challange you to the following:

find a kid eleven to 14 years old, and ask them about anything having to do with computers that might be mildly technical that you know the answer to, if they cannot answer you teach them about it, the only way we can fix a problem is to deal with it on a case by case basis. computer education is key, not just learning office and such, but actually aclimating the youth of today to understand how technology works, and its importance not only to the personal lives of many, but to the overal stability of our nation, and world.

thus is the musings of the TECHbet

cheers!

Introducing TechBET blog

Hello,

this is the ingagural post for TechBET blog, the site that will provide you with a view of up and comming technology and new to market products. My name is Sam Rivers, first off you should know I'm a total gadget freak, if its new shiny and has electronics involved in it, I buy it and play with it (usually thereafter take it appart and see whats making it tick). recently i have decided that although most of the tech blogs today do a very good job at reporting new products what they fail to do is provide a very personal view and vantage of technology.

for instance, Engadget has posted alot of information on the Apple iPhone, but what they havent seemed to have done really appropriatly is a review from a users perspective. In the upcoming days I will be posting a couple musings on the iPhone of wich I have the 8 gigabyte model, not so much reviews as general observations that may or may not prove to be interesting to the general public. I also plan on providing speculation on upcoming electronic related news (i have no sources so my speculation is purely that) in the past I have been able to acurately figure out what products are going to be released from both apple and microsoft.

some topics/gadgets that im going to cover

- computer security
- Iphone
- Political Banter

so i hope this project of mine remains fruitful for some time as i want to provide anybody who reads an entertaining journey into the world of consumer electronics