Apple TV is a Dud CNN: Why Apple TV is a Dud.

DirecTV Sat-Go DirecTV Sat-Go - "The world's first portable satellite TV system."

It's a receiver, antenna and TV all in one easy-to-carry unit. All you need is a clear view of the southern sky. Very impressive, but too expensive.

Iran Pat Dollard: What No One Is Telling You About Our Talks With Iran. Sure puts a little more military perspective on things.

Terror Dry Run Audrey Hudson: Report Confirms Terror Dry Run. Annie Jacobsen was right, all along. (Video here.)

Google Maps "Street View" Dumbo NYC Blog: Walk Around Dumbo Using Google Maps Street View. Very cool. Those Google guys just never stop.

National Treasure 2 There is now a trailer online for National Treasure 2.

Pirates 3 Review Ryan Stewart: "About seven hours into Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End, someone stuffs a monkey into a cannon, lights the fuse and sends it shooting across the deck to crash into another character. That monkey is like us, the audience -- bruised, confused and unsure what it did to deserve this punishment."

Ouch.

"End of the Microsoft Tax" Jeff Atwood: The End of the Microsoft Tax.

Ubuntu on the desktop. All dressed up and nowhere to go. Resistance is futile.

"Artificially Create a Problem" This is what people do when they have too much free time on their hands and money to burn. Getting your ears pierced is one thing. This, totally different.

Halo 2 on May 31st Halo 2 for Vista will be released on May 31st for $50.

Stolen Bases Baseball Analysts: The Value of a Stolen Base. Summary: It ain't worth it! Still, though, it must be awfully fun to get away with it.

Dell to Sell PCs at Wal-Mart Need a Dell? Go to Wal-Mart. I'm guessing that HP is not at all happy about this move. UPDATE: CNet provides more analysis.

Windows XP SP3 According to NeoWin, Windows XP SP3 is going happen later this year.

Cheetah DVD Burner If you're looking for an affordable, no-nonsense CD and DVD burning solution, please check out Cheetah DVD Burner. I use it for most of my burning needs. It is regularly updated and it handles most of the popular formats. Full feature list here.

Lost Season 3 Finale And just like that, Lost is back to being Grade A, Primetime TV. Giddy-Up!

Matthew Fox deserves an Emmy for this episode. Bravo.

Mississippi Brew Mississippi Brew - "A blog for Mississippians passionate about homebrew and craft beer."

Roosting More chickens coming home to roost.

Season Finales The Season 1 finale of Heroes was a disappointment. The same can be said of the Season 6 finale of 24. ('Company Man' remains the best episode of Heroes, to date. The first four hours of 24 were the best, this season.) Here is an article in agreement with my sentiments on Heroes.

According to the spoilers I've read, Lost will really deliver the goods on Wednesday.

Christa Taylor Christa Taylor - "Pioneering a modest clothing revolution." Modest clothing for teenage girls. A noble goal, for sure.

Get Vista 'Under Control' Techlogg: 20 Ways to Get Windows Vista Under Control - I didn't realize that Vista allows you to resize partitions on the fly. Cool, if it actually works.

Hard Drive Deal 320 GB SATA Drive, $60, Free Shipping - For comparison, $60 might buy an 80 GB drive at Wal-Mart. Here is a decent deal on a Seagate 250 GB External hard drive with a 5-year warranty and free shipping.

Dave's Computer Tips Dave's Computer Tips - Dave's latest free newsletter features a review of Outlook 2007 and many software recommendations.

'The Office' Season Finale It was great. One of the best this year.

New Transformers Trailer Yahoo! has an exclusive new Transformers Trailer. Awesome.

PC World Benchmarks Vista ReadyBoost PC World: "Windows Vista's Windows ReadyBoost sounds too good to be true, and based on our extensive lab tests, it is. The technology promises to let you speed up Windows by plugging an inexpensive USB flash drive into your PC. But we found that while ReadyBoost may speed up Vista a tiny bit, it can also slow it down in some instances."

Top 10 HDTV Myths Popular Mechanics: Top 10 High-Def Myths. The $160 cables are no better than the $16 ones. I actually knew this one, and asked a Radio Shack manager to explain the difference, just for the fun of it, a few weeks ago. I concluded the conversation by telling him that the expensive cables are a rip-off and that he should Google it. Was that mean of me?

Podhoretz: The Case for Bombing Iran Norman Podhoretz: "In short, the plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force -- any more than there was an alternative to force if Hitler was to be stopped in 1938."

He continues, "I find it hard to understand why George W. Bush would have put himself so squarely in the dock of history on this issue if he were resigned to leaving office with Iran in possession of nuclear weapons, or with the ability to build them. Accordingly, my guess is that he intends, within the next 21 months, to order air strikes against the Iranian nuclear facilities from the three U.S. aircraft carriers already sitting nearby."

CBS Fall Schedule Giddy-Up! The Unit is returning for a third season. Jericho is toast, however.

9/11 Conspiracy Nuts Smackdown The Popular Mechanics guys deliver a smackdown to the "Loose Change" nutjobs. (Actually, a more accurate description would be, "Loose Change Folks Illustrate How Completely Insane They Are". Geez. This reminds me of arguments I had in elementary school.)

Top TV Moments? USA Today: 25 Top TV Moments - I made it to #4 (and then #11) and called BS on this list.

The Price of Coca-Cola For more than 70 years, a bottle of Coke was a nickel. What happened? Slate explains. (via Kottke)

Vista Complete PC Backup: Miserable Failure After performing a number of tests on two machines, I've concluded that Vista's Complete PC Backup feature is an embarrasing failure. I strongly recommend that Vista users purchase a third-party complete backup software suite, such as Norton Ghost 12. In my tests, Vista's backup routine failed - over and over, despite a few successes.

Symantec (and others) perfected this technology years ago. If Microsoft cannot deliver a solution in their most expensive version of Vista (Ultimate), shame on them. Unforgivable.

Joost Corey talks about Joost.

So far, my experience with Joost has been negative. The system requirements are too high, the content is scarce and the GUI is awful. However, all of these problems can be remedied, so I haven't given up on it.

Survivor Let's talk Survivor. This has not been a very good season. The final show is Sunday night. If anyone other than Yau-Man or Earl wins it will be a travesty.

My candidates for a future Survivor All-Stars show from this season? Yau-Man, Earl and Michelle, who got voted off much too early, due to a random realignment of tribes.

VMware 6 Supports Vista BetaNews: "VMware this week made available version 6.0 of its desktop virtualization product, which has set a standard for testing and development, and competes with Microsoft's now-free VirtualPC. New features in Workstation 6.0 include support for Vista, dual monitors, and USB 2.0 devices."

Well, since Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 is free and VMware 6 is $189, most people will opt for the free product. However, VMware cannot be beat when it comes to features and support.

You can download an eval version of VMware 6 here.

Switching Back [to Windows] Nik Cubrilovic: "If you are a Mac user try it yourself, install boot camp and Vista and it will feel like you just added another CPU and doubled your RAM - I can’t see any evidence for any of the reports of Vista being slow or power-hungry."

He concludes, "To all my Mac OS X and UNIX using friends, I haven’t left you - but feel free to argue in the comments, but only after you have installed bootcamp."

iHate PC World: 10 Things We Hate About Apple.

Best quote: "So where is the option for a Blu-ray Disc or HD DVD player in the fancy new quad-core and eight-core Mac Pros? They're stuck with the same-old SuperDrive. Mac apologists will no doubt provide you with a complex explanation of why this makes perfect sense, but the fact is that next-generation optical drives are available and make sense for some folks, and Macs don't have them."

Why can't Mac enthusiasts call BS on things that are stupid/inferior? I have no problem telling you about Vista's weaknesses. If you've ever argued with a Mac person, you know how hard/impossible it is to get that person to say anything negative about Macs. This devotion is quite other-wordly in my book. One-button mouse, anyone?

Dann Drinks Beer Dann Drinks Beer - I meant to share this link many weeks ago. Dann is going to drink 365 different beers this year, and then tell us about each of them. (via Blonde)

45 Days in Jail Read this, shake head, keep moving.

Computer Tech Fraud YouTube: Computer Tech Fraud. Enough to make you mad.

Clemons Returns to Yankees Roger Clemens, aka The Rocket, returns to The House that Ruth Built to the tune of $28 million for one year. Indeed, it's good to the Yankees.

Ghost 12 Symantec has released Ghost 12, which is compatible with Vista. I'm testing it now.

Spider-Man 3 It is a bit long, but I enjoyed it at least as much as the 2nd movie. The first film remains my favorite.

Spider-Man 3 Critics are not extremely impressed with Spider-Man 3. The film should still be box office gold, however.

Maximum PC Website Revamped Maximum PC has revamped their website. Highlights include The Forums, Editor Blogs, No "BS" Podcasts and the How-To Section.

I might also add that their print magazine is only twelve bucks per year and it's worth every penny if you own a performance PC or if you're interested in keeping up with the latest PC trends and technologies.

Coffee is Good for You Obviously, this comes as "news" only to people who don't drink coffee.

To quote my Dad, "The only way it will hurt you is if you don't drink it."

Secure Erase ZDNet: How to Really Erase a Hard Drive.

Yahoo! Messenger for the Web Yahoo! Messenger for the Web (Beta) - No need to install the client, just sign into the website. Meebo offered this a long time ago, but for Yahoo! it's new.

DirecTV Equipment Question UPDATE, 5/3/07 - Yes, this dish can receive HD signals. (Thanks to Mike, a professional installer who reads my blog.)

Will someboady please tell me if this dish can receive DirecTV HD signals? (I realize that one needs an HD receiver box and the HD programming package. My question is concerning the dish itself.)

Please email me if you know. I've spoken with DirecTV twice and they won't answer my question. Rather, they insist that the HD package comes with free equipment, so it doesn't matter. It does matter if I want to install my own stuff. It would be very convenient to use the existing dish.

Defending His Farm Passions Stir Over Dog Shooting on Coast - Man protects his livestock by shooting an unleashed dog. Morons without leashes get upset.

Jonah Goldberg: "The idea that I have to offer a considered and lengthy judgment (invariably one that conforms to the opinions of some critic) whenever linking to a third party item is absurd. Part of what good blogs do is call readers' attention to other stuff. Period."

I couldn't agree more, as I often to link to articles/posts without offering an opinion.

Instapundit has more to say on the subject, adding, "If you're not happy, your subscription is absolutely free!". Exactly.

Can '24' Survive? Scott Collins: Is '24' Running Out of Time? - This latest season has been a disaster of poor writing. I'm surprised that key actors have not announced their departure.

Vista Version Madness Shopping for Vista vs. Shopping for Mac OS X - True, funny and maddening, all at once.

DRM Cat Out of the Bag? DRM Lobby Scrambles to Clock HD DVD Crack - "Ultimately the AACS-LA campaign has achieved the direct opposite of its intention. Instead of stopping the crack from spreading, the moves have notified more people of its whereabouts and how to exploit it."

Google Shows Muscle Google to Viacom: Bring It On. Google has officially demanded a jury trial, in response to Viacom's infringement claims.