Cost of the War in Iraq

$8.4 Billion per month
$1.9 Billion per week
$275 Million per day
$11.5 Million per hour

http://www.spikedhumor.com/articles/55596/Tim_Ryan_Strikes_Again.html

Prejudice Map

So this is what everyone is up to...

Best Beer Ever

White Buffalo Peace Ale

Apple Revolution Begins

As I was listening to Steve Job's announcement this morning, I was thinking of how much Apple is going to proceed to rule the online media industry in the next five years. Both iTunes and iPod set out some interesting new features in a release that Apple can be proud of, but the really revolutionary idea came as a surprise in the form of iTV.

On its own, it's a great idea, but they can take this concept and transform the entire way people enjoy their video entertainment. Here are a few next steps:

• How long will it be till you can just rent a video from iTunes for a couple of days?
• Digital rights management that is hard-coded into the new intel chips will make it very possible to grant a 48hr. license on media that someone had downloaded.
• No more video rental shops within 6 years.
• When will iPods ship with Bluetooth?
• We'll probably be able to skip the iTV box altogether a couple years after it comes out.
• We saw on the the announcement today that 70% of cars in the US have an iPod compatability option, TV's will come with that as well.
• Plug your iPod into your TV and stream video from your computer, no clunky box (although apple doesn't really make things look clunky)
• While we're at it, why not forget about having cable at all, just pay a monthly subscription and watch absolutely anything you want, anytime you want!!! See where this is going?

Get Rich or Die Trying - Philosophy of Major Companies

Just wanted to post this little graphic I created. The war in Iraq started in March of 2003 and that's represented by the green line. These are the stock charts for Haliburton, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin.

Getting Acquainted with Web Services

So here's the deal...
I'm sitting here signing up for all sorts of new services, trying to catch up with the web, I'm testing, playing, seeing what's out there. Google has the best suite of shit to play with.

I've always had a Yahoo account, but now I've been using gmail and I like it a lot better. From there, I went ahead to set up a little site on Google. It sucks, but whatever, it's a cool option. I've had a few people ask me to put up a site for them for an event they're throwing and no one wants to spend money on hosting so why not just set up a google account with the name of the event and put up a site. I just wish they didn't control the layout so much.

Yahoo has geocities and a beta version of Yahoo 360 that I'm checking out now. I can't get into geocities from China.

I've also seen a few cool myspace sites, but I haven't gotten to that yet.
Yahoo has a briefcase where they give you a whopping 30MB of space.
I can upload up to 100MB on this google page creator alone not to mention all the space available on gmail.
Yahoo mail gives you 1GB, gmail hooks you up with around 2.7GB and someone's even created an app that makes gmail behave like a remote hard drive, check this out: http://www.viksoe.dk/code/gmail.htm
Yahoo has its photos site, but who needs it when there's Flickr?

I'm going to continue testing and I'll update this with more details.

Evening of Drinking and Dialing

I'm not sure why the urge arises every time I get drunk to start dialing up old friends, but last night was especially bad. I had some drinks at work, and then I decided that I would sign up for Skype. I went for the full plan, I got myself hooked up with Skype In and Skype Out and since I'm living in China right now, it's pretty damn useful. I have a number in the states, people can call me up and leave me voicemails whenever. Skype is also now available for Mac users.

On my way home I grabbed a coupled of beers (Qingdao - $0.50 for about 22 oz.) When I got home I cracked a beer and called about ten people back stateside. I put in $10 and now I'm at $7. Pretty freaking good deal if you ask me, I even have voicemails today.