Today's xkcd once again proves that Randall Munroe commands an army. From the alt text of a comic predicting the existence of an "In Popular Culture" article springs that Wikipedia page. Amusing, and soon to be speedy-deleted.

It might be said at this point that xkcd itself has entered popular culture, at least in certain demographics. Which brings me to my point, one I've been meaning to make for a while now. Here goes:

To anyone who feels the urge to quote xkcd:

Please do not begin with, "oh, this is like that one xkcd where...!"

I hear this more and more often, and it's insanely irking. It's probably just me, but this is my blog, so I get to complain about it here. Might I suggest that you discreetly make the reference in an indirect way, such as spontaneously screaming nonstop about velociraptors at the top of your voice. If your reference is wise, people will laugh. They will then either recognize or not recognize the reference, and everyone will then go on their separate ways. This makes life easy.

Thank you for your time.

Here's something to put it all in perspective. Oh my.

[via Sunil Garg, via kottke]

Every once in a while, you see a bit of news that makes you wonder what on earth executives smoke. This is one of those things.

Many of you probably heard of NBC's little spat with Apple. The short version is that NBC pulled all of its shows from Apple (which were making both of them boatloads of cash), claiming that Apple's restrictions were too tight. Apple then came out and informed the waiting public that NBC in fact wanted to charge $4.99 an episode, up from the standard $1.99 that it enforces across the board. NBC, of course, denied until its sales died.

Since then, there have been rumors of the two getting back together. NBC did one right and launched Hulu with Fox, which is an excellent service and which represents a vast step forward in traditional media's representation in the internet world. My only complaint with it is that they no longer have the entire catalogs of shows that are currently running up for stream, which is an egregious error: this is the Internet, why limit content access and revenue?

Well, NBC's chief digital officer George Kliavkoff has done it again. They want to return to iTunes, but they want to prevent anybody from putting their content on iPods.

I'll say that again.

NBC will put their shows on iTunes, but they want Apple to prevent anyone from putting their content on iPods.

What?

The point behind the iTunes Music Store is that the content can be brought with you, that it can be put in your iPod. Most people I know who download television shows from iTunes watch them on the go. Once again, NBC misses the ball. Badly.

Someday, perhaps, a new generation of executives will rise who will understand the Internet and technology and what it's all become. For now, we get to live under the wisdom and guidance of George Kliavkoff.

Much has been made out of Windows Vista's failure, which at this point is rather (and unfortunately) undeniable. One particular topic of debate is the point at which XP will no longer be sold, which may perhaps also be characterized as "the point at which Microsoft starts shoving Vista down their customers' throats." That point is currently June 30th, 2008.

The problem, of course, is that no one wants anything to do with Vista. Downgrades are frighteningly common, and the operating system is simply not nearly as refined as XP is, by virtue of having not existed on the market for quite as long. In essence, in the process of waiting so long to release Vista, Microsoft shot itself in the foot by - directly or indirectly - refining Windows XP to the dreaded "good enough" point. Vista's (lack of) quality, of course, did not help.

So Dell doesn't want to sell Vista exclusively. People don't want it yet, and Vista means more support calls, with questions that may not yet have answers.

Microsoft has the answer: sell XP, but we're counting them as Vista sales.

Yeah, that's right. When your operating system fails to sell, save face by pretending it sold. Here's another idea, Microsoft: get it right with Windows 7. Then we wouldn't have to deal with the highly questionable bookkeeping we're not facing.

[Via Gizmodo]

ASP.NET is wonderful and awful. Some of the conveniences it affords are great, like the control paradigm. However, it's just too convoluted to offer a good experience. Everything in ASP.NET is "yes, you can do this, but..." and nested databinding and event handling is a mess. I've often wondered why such random WTFs such as using empty iframes to provide menu backgrounds arose, but today we find out why. In an obscure error message hidden in the bowels of the Wizard control:

SideBarList control must contain an IButtonControl with ID SideBarButton in every item template, this maybe include ItemTemplate, EditItemTemplate, SelectedItemTemplate or AlternatingItemTemplate if they exist.

Classic Chinese-American grammatical error. So I guess it turns out that Microsoft outsourced ASP.NET to China...

...given that even you couldn't remember half of it.

I won't say much on the matter, since all that there is to be said has been said by better minds than mine. I'll merely leave you with a revealing little Bushism today that people don't seem to have caught on to just yet, which I think really sums up the truth of the matter:

It's sad that we live in a time when a talented and honorable person, like Alberto Gonzales, is impeding from doing important work...

Yes, Mr. Bush, he is indeed impeding. However, I do believe you meant to say "impeded."

Think they're late on the whole iPhone thing at all? Check out the email I just got today:

Touching is believing.
The Apple iPhone is now ready to go. And surf. And play. And of course, talk. Use our online store locator to find the closest AT&T store near you and get your hands on one today.

I signed up for this email in January. Last I checked, the iPhone's been "ready to go" for a while now...

edit: Actually, I've just recieved word that AT&T's marketing department was in fact waiting for Stan Sigman to complete his speech about the iPhone from the MacWorld Expo before sending out the email, but eventually got sick of waiting.