Lest everyone think I’m a total Google Fanboy, I’d like to suggest a really, really simple tactic folks like Cyanogen can take to continue Android innovations while complying 100% with the licensing of Google’s “experience” apps.

The crux of the issue is that, without the proper license, it is illegal for Android ROM developers to distribute these apps as part of their ROMs. It’d also be illegal for someone like me to host them myself so that people can simply install them after installing a custom ROM. “Ok,” you might say. “Then how am I supposed to get these applications if it’s not legal for anyone to give them to me?”

Ah, but there’s the catch. There are organizations that are licensed to distribute them. T-Mobile, for instance, is probably the most widely-known, as all our phones will download updates containing the apps whenever a new Android release comes out. Usually there’s a bit of detective work involved, though, in determining the URL for these updates. But you know who else is licensed to distribute them, and makes them extremely easy to find/download? HTC.

What would need to happen is that the user could themselves download the relevant firmware update file from HTC’s website and save it on their SD card — which is perfectly legal. The user could then update to a Google-free firmware from someone like Cyanogen. If this Google-free firmware update happened to check for the existence of the official Google-app-including firmware image as part of its setup procedure, and extracted the Google bits out of it, everyone could have the best of both worlds.

The ROM developer would not be distributing the apps. The organization that is distributing the apps is licensed to do so. Everyone wins.

I’ve noticed a new trend on Twitter lately, one which bothers me a great deal. I’d like to share my thoughts about it now so that you all can help nip it in the bud.

People have been ‘retweet’ing pretty much since Twitter’s inception; that is, they post something on their stream that they saw someone else post. The defacto standard format for doing this is to say ‘rewteet’ (or, more commonly, ‘RT’) followed by the username of the person who originated the message, then followed by the message. Like this:

RT @TeddTheodorLogan Remember the time I asked Missy to the prom?

Lately, however, people have been trying to popularize a new format for retweeting — one which has been largely employed in the blogging world. This new method is to just post the message, followed by (via username). Like this:

The only thing I know for sure is that Joan of Arc is NOT Noah’s wife…(via BillSPrestonEsq)

See, what “(via so-and-so)” actually means, is “I heard about this content by way of so-and-so,” and has been used for years to denote that the link I’m blogging about came to my attention because someone else blogged about it, and is designed to sort of give the person who found the content the credit. This is only used when you’re linking to a story that’s written by someone other than the person you heard about it from — to give sort of ‘scoop’ credit to someone who found it before you did.

When you retweet, in almost every case, you are simply quoting the person who said something. You didn’t hear it ‘via’ them. Your readers are hearing it ‘via’ YOU. (Granted, if you are retweeting a retweet, then ‘via’ could be properly used — but you’d have to say it’s ‘via’ the person who originally REtweeted it, rather than the person who tweeted it — which is of no information to the reader.)

If you really don’t like the ‘RT username: message’ format — and for this I don’t blame you; it’s clumsy and non-intuitive — I suggest you do it the same way people have been attributing quotes since the dawn of written language. Like this:

“Four score and seven BEERS ago…” -abrahamlincoln

With your help, perhaps this gross misunderstanding of the Latin language can be wiped from the face of twitter.

Know what bugs the crap out of me? The skateboard on the cover of INXS’s album “Kick”:

Pretty much everything about that skateboard bugs me. From the terrible comp job to the yellow Greg Proops face on it, it’s just plain bad — not to mention the fact that it’s meant to look as if someone is actually riding it, somehow jumping to that position despite the fact that there’s clearly no understanding of the mechanics of making a skateboard jump on the part of the artist.

Actually, now that I’m getting worked up, it ALSO bugs me that the logo text in the center of the cover is clearly pasted over-top of Michael Hutchence’s hair, yet it’s BEHIND The Hamburgler’s hair, rubble rubble.

This cover is a travesty, and it offends me that someone actually got paid to make it.

So, rather than simply complain about it, I’ve decided to rectify the problems with it. From now on, please use this as the cover for INXS’s Kick:

Fairly large version.

As you can see I’ve replaced the terrible skateboard with an actual action shot of a skater executing a kick-flip — my little addition to making it relevant to the album’s title — and put the logo/title over-top of EVERYONE’s hair. The design is still really awful, but at least the specific problems with it have been addressed.

If there’s any work of art you’d like to see fixed, drop me a line and I’ll see about fixing it for you.

I think I’ve stumbled across the solution to our problem of addiction to fuel of foreign origin and am going to share it with you now.

One of the most promising forms of alternate fuel is biodiesel, in that it requires no significant investment to run in many of today’s cars. There’s one little problem with biodiesel, though: we can’t possibly grow enough plant matter to supply all of our cars’ consumptive needs. Even if we all became vegetarians and stopped farming cattle — instead using all the plant matter we feed to them now to make biodiesel instead — we wouldn’t have enough. In addition, if we all stopped eating PLANTS as well as cattle, all the crops we grow now wouldn’t be enough to power our cars either.

There are many different forms of local, renewable non-oil fuel that have been discussed, be they electric, solar, smug, hydrogen or a multitude of others. The problem with those is that there’s no easy way to quickly convert existing cars to this new, untested fuel.

This means that if we’re going to adopt one of these fuels for use in all our Escalades and Hummers, it’s probably going to involve quitting oil “cold turkey,” buying new alternate-energy-powered Escalades and Hummers. This is a significant hassle. A “deal-breaker,” if I may. Americans are simply not going to want to get rid of their old Escalades and Hummers before their leases are up. This means that a hypothetical switchover will take years and years to complete in a best-case scenario, and more likely will never even begin at all.

It was while thinking of this problem that I stumbled suddenly upon my solution: cold turkey. Every Thanksgiving, billions of American households cook copious amounts of turkey, much of which never even gets eaten. I propose legislation both mandating a minimum size for Thanksgiving turkeys and limits on how much each person can consume, ensuring the maximum amount of leftovers.

Suddenly we have billions of pounds of turkey which can be rendered down into biodiesel to fuel our existing Hummers. You’re welcome, America.

I recently learned that underground coal fires — as depicted in the film “Silent Hill” — release as much carbon into the atmosphere world-wide as do all the cars and light trucks in the United States.  Since we know that all the cars and light trucks (SUVs) in the United States release DANGEROUS amounts into the atmosphere, threatening catastrophe like the one depicted in the film “The Day After Tomorrow,”  this is clearly a bad thing.

Firefighters in China recently put out one such coal fire (that had been burning for more than 50 years) at great expense and risk to the men involved, and several new ones have sprung up here in the States.  This brings up an important issue:  how much money, energy and manpower are we willing to commit to these efforts?  Sure, we need to do whatever we can to stop Global Climate Change, but at what cost?

Like usual, I’ve come up with a solution to this problem.  My plan will cost nothing, require no man-power, and will require literally no change in policy, behavior, or freedoms on the part of individuals.  The plan is simple:  we use water to put out the fires.  The beauty of my plan is that as Earth’s temperature increases the icecaps melt, raising sea levels, and thus bringing nearly endless supplies of saltwater to the coal fires where they’ll be put out naturally.  Then, because the fires are no longer emitting CO2, the water level will slowly raise back down, leaving us with mines containing both coal AND salt ripe for the taking.