Monthly Archives: May 2005

Slacktivist on “Persecution”

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One of the popular memes on the far right today is the notion that Christians are somehow persecuted in this country — which, frankly, doesn’t even pass what my friend Lloyd used to call the “risibility test.” Fred Clark over at Slacktivist had a grand post about this a couple weeks ago, and follows with this one that includes a truly spectacular bit of satire (which he’s quoting from Merlin Missy). Pick up on it.

Dept. of Paid Shills

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We were saying just Thursday that the “corporate thinktank analysts are devoid of credibility,” and then we see this:

A recent Gartner report gives new meaning to the old saw about “lies, damn lies and statistics.” Trumpeting the “fact” that RIM is the leading PDA vendor, the report gives the BlackBerry-maker a 20% market share, vs. 18% for PalmOne. The problem is, the report doesn’t include smartphones (something that’s mentioned in a footnote), which means that PalmOne’s hot-selling Treo 650 (pictured) isn’t included in that company’s rankings. Confused? It gets even stranger. According to an analysis of the study by Personal Tech Pipeline, Gartner included seven BlackBerry products that include cellphone capabilities. Additionally, the Nokia 9300 and 9500 — which certainly look like smartphones to us — are also included, allowing Nokia to be listed as the fourth-largest PDA vendor, behind RIM, PalmOne and HP. So who really has the largest market share? While we agree with PTP’s Mike Elgan that “the stand-alone PDA market is on its way to irrelevance,” we’d still like to know where each of these players really ranks. But it looks like we’re not going to find out from Gartner.

Was the check from RIM big, Gartner?

We Love Rude Pundit

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From here:

Media On the Run:
Sweet merciful motherfucker, the Rude Pundit is so fuckin’ glad that there’s no more war in Iraq and the soldiers have returned home, the Social Security debate is over, the terrorists are on the run, Tom DeLay’s crawlin’ under a porch lookin’ for termites, the public education system’s been fixed, North Korea’s handed over all its nuclear technology and opened itself up to inspections, Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney are tryin’ to figure out who’s gonna be the top in their shared prison cell (the smart money’s on Cheney), and more, more, so much more, so that we could waste, waste, fuckin’ waste hours upon hours of television news time on a crazy goddamned bug-eyed bride-not-to-be who lied about being kidnapped. Because otherwise, it’d be pretty fuckin’ stupid, wouldn’t it? This time it’s worse – it’s worse than Michael Jackson, Laci Peterson, Robert Blake, and Chandra Levy because it ain’t about jack motherfuckin’ shit, not even a crime, not even a celebrity, not even a politician – it’s about the committing of a misdemeanor by an idiot in order to fool other idiots, but its massive, overwhelming coverage only reveals who the real idiots are. At one point, Sunday morning, all three “news” networks were doing long pieces on who-the-fuck-cares-what-her-name-is, interviewing “experts” about why someone wouldn’t want to get married, why would someone claim they were kidnapped and, no, really, truly, who the fuck cares. Do you think Wolf Blitzer can look at himself in the mirror anymore? Do you think he wants to hock a loogie at his own reflection because he knows, he fuckin’ knows that that’s what he deserves from the rest of us? Do you think he knows how much harm he does or does the bell ring and he just obeys?