Militant Geek Custom Shirts

Let’s suppose you’re a major Internet player with $4 billion dollars lying around. The kids used to think you’re cool. However, after repeatingly failing to buy friendship from AOL, MySpace, and YouTube it is that charismatic jock Google that’s getting all the attention. Facebook won’t even return your calls. What do you do?

Apparently, if you’re Yahoo!, you win the popularity contest by beaming a laser into space - from the top of a rented Mexican pyramid, no less. Let’s run through the Bubble 1.0 checklist for stupid wastes of investor money:

1. Exotic Locale - check
2. Useless Display of Technology - check
3. Clueless Self-Importance - check

But wait! It turns out Yahoo! can’t even get a break with the Mexican government! Mexico has retracted its agreement and the laser of Dr. Evil-like brilliance won’t be going anywhere. Mios Dio! Somebody’s gotta be hitting the tequila pretty hard over this one.

There is nothing that tickles our extremely endowed fancy more than a good corporate sense of humor.

The first is a hilarious whiteboard capture from the offices of Google. Sure, it’s extremely introverted - you have to know what the increasingly shallow end of Web 2.0 is all about, the look of gmail, the recent and frequent updates to Google Reader, the rant-ocity of 37 Signals, etc. However, if you can clear those considerable hurdles this is good for a chuckle (via Paul Kedrosky). My mah always told me if it has to be explained it isn’t funny. Oh well. It’s my party.

The second image doesn’t require quite the mental associations, I promise. EA has built a video game empires on a very simple formula. Create a sports game, release it, then release the same game again a year later with only superficial improvements. Why do people keep buying the same games over an over? Because unlike RPGs, RTS’s, etc - the characters (team rosters) keep changing. Penny Arcade’s send up is oh so to the point.

In case you’re just emerging from your cave Google has bought YouTube. Of course what takes people’s breath away is not just that Google has bought another hip company with the kids - it’s that they spent $1.65 billion to do so. Careful analysis here at the Militant Geek headquarters confirms that isn’t an amount you’re likely to find in your couch. Some perspective is needed, however. Just how much is $1.65 billion? With $1.65 billion you could buy:

1. 47 sexy new F35 joint strike fighter planes
2. an advertising slot on TechCrunch for 165,000 months (13,750 years - and you thought you were tired of Marshall Kirkpatrick now)
3. 5,085,999 iPods, a few more than what is needed for iPac’s buy your Senator an iPod campaign
4. 75,034,106 Hacktivist Ringer T-Shirts from a store I’ve heard of
5. Sponsorship for 91,666,666 poverty stricken children for a month

For the record, Google’s already existing video service, Google Video, won’t be going away ever according to Pete Cashmore. Let’s here it for needless spending on redundancy!

That’s write Geeks and Geekettes: The Computer Learning Foundation has declared October Computer Learning Month. It’s time to try new technologies, learn new gadgets, and share what you know with those less technology savvy around you.

Rapid Fire is where we grab all those great stories that have been sitting for way too long in browser tabs and lump them together in one post. What was once great potential outrage fodder for Militant Geeks everywhere as been reduced to an idea dump due to time constraints - ENJOY!

• AOL’s ’savior’ Jason Calacanis claims that attractive women have no business podcasting and should display their assets. *Yikes*. Considering that his Diggification of the Netscape homepage is a bust he’s the last one that should be dishing out Internet strategy, sexist or otherwise.
• The Amazon A9 Death Vigil continues. This week Amazon yanked the A9 toolbar, history, bookmarks, and diary from the search engine that nobody heard about. Even Bezos no longer cares about this one.
• Sony announced a global recall of its laptop batteries. Because, you know, spontaneously exploding isn’t the greatest PR. Some numbers: Toshiba - 830,000, Lenovo (formerly IBM) - 526,000, Dell - 4.2 million.
• Walmart is putting its social networking tail between its legs and closing ‘The HUB’. The crass attempt at showing the kids how ‘wid it’ a place Walmart is only lasted three months. I’m guessing that Walmart doesn’t top the list of designer boutiques that teenagers want to brag to their peers about. Just saying.
• HP - is there a shread of shame left? More charges are pending

Even pure geek n00bs are familar with the power symbol - that round (usually glowing) bit on the front of every computer from here to Ubleckistan. We thought we at Militant Geek would pay this oft forgotten symbol of digital life homage by putting it on its very own shirt. However, not content to just slap it on by its lonesome self, we’re having a new poll competition to see just how to adorn this nobelist of iconographies.

Make sure to make your voice heard - voting ends Monday, October 9th.

The people have spoken! We asked what shirt design Militant Geek readers want to adorn their bodies and they have chosen HACKTIVIST! In response we kept our crack team of underpaid cybernetic monkeys up all night and they produced this great design (maybe there is something to this ‘polling’ thing). Wear your Hacktivist t-shirt with pride at your next programming meeting, gaming hookup, or overhyped cocktail party - the world needs to be set on notice!

There’s plenty of cybernetic monkey shenanigans left. If you’ve got a great idea for a geek related shirt let us know!

Today is October 3rd, the Day Against DRM! Today is to take stock of your digital life, identify just what geek gear you might have about that is destined to die at a corporate whim, and make a change. Wendy, our favorite legal heroine, has this to say:

“DRM isn’t working for you, the purchaser/listener/remixer, but for a publisher who wants you to pay and pay again for multiple viewings of your video, or a hardware maker who wants to lock you into its line of incompatible devices. Acceding to these demands will only a next generation of media devices with even less functionality, even more meter-feeding. Instead, ask for electronics and media that meet your needs, and make sure you’re getting what you asked and paid for.”

Help spread the message; if you blog, urge your readers to have a happy day without DRM. If you create, make something without draconian protection schemes. Make this a day to be aware of pending consumer lock-in.