Those chaps at Microsoft promised a special edition Zune 80 for Valentine’s Day, but the units have struck a delay and will not reach their destinations on time. That surely blows, but if your sweet was due to receive a Cupid red Zune 80, fret not. Microsoft is doing the right thing—they’re refunding the cash, and shipping the Zunes for free regardless.

“Our goal is to provide a smooth customer experience for ordering, customization, and delivery. We sincerely apologize for not meeting that goal in this specific case. We will be refunding the entire amount of your order, which you should be able to see on your credit/debit card within 7-10 days. We hope you love your Zune and that you will accept our sincere apology.”

You know, I’m still glad my wife didn’t order one for my birthday.

Great Invention Idea? A Musical Condom

United States patent 5163447 is for a Force-Sensitive, Sound-Playing Condom! That’s right, it’s a musical condom! This baby looks and acts like a traditional condom and yet, manages to go a step further by incorporating “a chip-controlled piezoelectric sound transducer (18) which plays a melody or voiced message when during intercourse the contacts of the sound-playing unit are closed and the transducer is activated” by forceful movements. Just think of all the fun you’ll have – besides the sex of course.

The prophylactic works like this: record a song or message, put the prophylactic on, begin your business, then every time you thrust your recording is played out loud.

So here’s a new party game. Pick a person and guess what they would program into their musical condom. Examples:

• Bill Gates – the Windows startup sound
• John C Dvorak – a dozen sound effects
• Leo Laporte – “another TWiT is in the can”
• Steve Jobs – doesn’t matter as long as you bought it on Tunes

ARM Ltd. will demonstrate Google Inc.’s Android on an early prototype device at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, one of several demonstrations of the mobile platform that will occur at the conference…

“ARM will be demonstrating Android on an early prototype device to show how the platform works on their processor,” Google spokesman Barry Schnitt said in an e-mail. “There are a number of other companies that will be demonstrating Android on their hardware in various forms at Mobile World Congress.” He would not name the others, however.

It is logical for ARM to be developing in the Android area, since it designs Linux-based CPUs for mobile phones, as well as CPUs based on other types of operating systems. ARM is the predominant CPU platform for mobile phones globally.

Ready to buy one?

This is an update to a previous post. It started as just a handful of brothels being closed.

Newsweek –

Amsterdam plans to close down its most famous district, citing sleaze, criminal activity and human trafficking. Not everybody is happy about it. Two weeks ago a young Dutch fashion designer named Bas Kosters opened a new store. His colorful and sumptuous creations—skirts, handbags, sweatshirts—merit attention. But the most striking aspect of his new venue is the location. Kosters’s work is on display in Amsterdam’s Red Light District behind two tall windows that until recently were used as a brothel. The ladies have vanished. The red lights and curtains have been removed and replaced by Kosters’s hyper fashionable clothes. Kosters found this studio thanks to an ambitious plan by the Amsterdam city government. Arguing that too many brothels and sex bars are linked to criminality, the authorities plan to all but erase the Red Light District. If the plan goes through, the peep shows, sex shops and prostitute windows that line the small alleys and canals will have to go, giving way to galleries, boutiques and upscale restaurants and bars.

Warren Buffett and friend

The woes in the U.S. financial sector are “poetic justice” for bankers who designed and sold complex investments that have since gone sour, says billionaire investor Warren Buffett…

Buffett, one of the world’s wealthiest people, appeared to see irony in the fact that many of the banks who marketed complex investments which have now crashed are bearing much of the fallout.

“It’s sort of a little poetic justice, in that the people that brewed this toxic Kool-Aid found themselves drinking a lot of it in the end,” he said…

Buffett tends to favor companies with relatively simple businesses, strong management, consistent earnings, good returns on equity, and little debt.

You can see why he isn’t popular with a lot of politicians.

General Motors announced that 3,900 auto dealers who sell GM’s Certified Used Cars will list their entire inventories on eBay Motors, according to industry publication Automotive News…

Mark Matthews, GM’s director of used-vehicle activities, told Automotive News that the certified used-vehicle inventory of dealers who sell GM Certified-brand vehicles will be listed on the third-party classified site starting in the second quarter…

Uh, are you ready to buy a used car on eBay?

I’ll admit it here and now. I, too, threw a pencil or two when I was a kid. Got away with it, too. And look at what kind of person I turned out to be because they didn’t do the right thing and lock me away. After all, as they say, the pen(cil) is mightier than the sword!

13-year-old arrested on a battery charge after he threw a pencil in class

Police arrested a 13-year-old boy on a battery charge after he threw a broken pencil in class that hit another boy in the back of the head, according to a report released Thursday.

The 12-year-old victim, a seventh grade student, on Tuesday came in Oak Hammock Middle School’s school resource officer office and said the suspect threw a piece of a broken pencil that hit him in the head.

Nearly half of British men surveyed would give up sex for six months in return for a 50-inch plasma TV, says a survey — perhaps unsurprisingly carried out for a firm selling televisions…

The firm found 47 percent of men would give up sex for half a year, compared to just over a third of women.

“It seems that size really does matter more for men than women,” the firm said.

Probably the same here in the States. Except it would have to be a 60″ plasma TV.

This is at the edge of Victoria Falls in Africa in what’s called Devil’s Pool.

Wanna see more pics and vids?