Nothing could possibly go wrong with this

This sneak peek at Windows 8 would be funny if it weren't so sad.

"There appears to be considerable planning taking place as to how a user will access Windows. Right off the bat, one of my favorites is the following prototype which shows a user logging in via facial recognition! Basically, you enroll your face, then all you should have to do from that point forward is sit down, have your webcam get a look at you and then log you in based on facial recognition"

Yeah. that'll work. Because no technology exists that can make a copy of my face.

Oh, wait...

Variable3.com: Design. Print. Web. Steal.

You know you've made it to the big time as a blogger when people start stealing your material. Variable3.com has ripped off my top ten geek business myths piece.

What really pisses me off about this particular theft is this lame-assed attribution at the end:

Courtesy: RON (not sure where i read it)

I guess the folks at variable3.com haven't heard of Google.

[UPDATE:] I found out about the variable3 post through Hacker News. I posted a comment there about the ripoff and went to write this post. When I went back to Hacker News, less than five minutes had elapsed, but the post had already been killed and the site banned. Now that's customer service! Thanks Paul!

[UPDATE2:] Variable has issued an apology which I've accepted.

AT&T takes suckage to a whole new level

I've known for a while that AT&T sucks but they just took suckage to a whole new level. We recently moved to the Bay Area from Los Angeles, where we had two phone lines. When I called to move our phone service I asked for forwarding recordings to be placed on our old lines. They said no problem. It took us a week to actually get hooked up to our new phone lines (a story for another time), so today was the first day that we were actually able to make calls from our new house. I called our old numbers to make sure that the forwarding recordings were up and had the correct number on them. They weren't. They just said, "You have reached a number that has been disconnected..." So I called AT&T and asked them to fix it. They said that they could only put the recording on one of the two lines.

Say what?

Yes, that's right. It's obviously not technically impossible for them to do it, it's strictly a business decision. Because the two numbers were on one residential account, I can only get one forwarding recording. I can't even pay to get a second one. I have no choice but to have one of my numbers come up as "disconnected or no longer in service."

Un freakin' believable.

On the plus side, this makes it a lot easier to decide whether or not to get a second line from AT&T this time around. I can't wait for my iPhone contract to expire so I can get a Nexus One. I've absolutely had it with AT&T. (I'm none too thrilled with Apple nowadays either.)