I’m a lawyer, founded TechCrunch — which is so popular it gives me diarrhea — and after that started Uncrunched. People listen to me because I’m smart and almost always right, but the most important people listen to me is because I have strong opinions about things.

So listen to me, you idiot.

Some people say I get worked up about things too much, but you know what I have to say to those people? Fuck you, assholes! When I get worked up about the things I have strong opinions about it’s a beautiful thing, so back off. If you’re not careful, I might get a strong opinion about YOU, and brother, you don’t want that. If I get a strong opinion about you, you’d better run and hide.

Boo, stupid!

Here’s a partial list of some of the things I have a strong opinion about:

• Jerry Yang, who’s an idiot and should have been fired years ago;
• Pando Daily, which you should read because it’s like fucking crack for your brain;
• Delta Airlines, who suck slightly less than a dead man’s cock;

Want more of my opinions, you greedy shits? Fine: I have an opinion about Fusion Garage. And Dan Lyons! I hate them both. Also? I hate how good security is around Henry Ford’s grave.

Assholes pulled me out of his casket after I was laying with him for just TWO minutes. Can you believe that? It took me HOURS to dig the thing up, and then … boom.

Would you care to come to the station with us, sir?

No, I would not.

Too bad, sir. Please put Mr. Ford’s teeth back and step out of his grave.

I have a strong opinion about how annoyed that made me!

In case you think I’m just some kind of angry one-trick pony, I can tell you that I don’t just have strong opinions about technology: no, I pretty much have strong opinions about everything. Think I won’t have anything to say about unimportant things like television, or food? You’re wrong! American Idol is a piece of shit, The Big Bang Theory makes me weep tears of joy, and Apple Pie can go fuck itself.

See? Strong opinions about everything!

I even have strong opinions about strong opinions: mine are great!

I walked past a Pug on the street yesterday, and I hated it. I hated the scarf its owner was wearing, too; who the fuck wears blue scarves anymore? It’s an affront to my humanity.

You know what else I have a strong opinion about? Coming up with funny, witty, or insightful endings to posts I write. If you have a good idea then endings are great, but what if you don’t? If you don’t have an ending for whatever you’re writing then you have to sit in front of your iPad until you come up with one, which is bullshit. Which is what I’m doing right now, because I can’t think of a good way to end this. I’m trying, but failing, to come up with point to make, something to wrap up this post about strong opinions with, something larger than just “I have strong opinions,” but I can’t. Is this about freedom of speech, or knowledge, or something like that?

Hell, no.

It’s about the fact that you should listen to me because I have strong opinions, but I’ve already told you that!

You know what? Fuck coming up with a good ending, I’m just going to stop writing.

The software glitch, experienced by everyone who has ever looked at a Windows Phone, causes the product to be completely, mind-numbingly boring to them. Typically, after experiencing the glitch, smartphone users will put the affected Windows Phone down, then pick up another smartphone, which the user is infinitely more likely to give two shits about. Though various forms of this bug have been noted since the first releases of Windows Mobile, last year’s Windows Phone 7 was released into a vastly different market, where Microsoft could no longer rely on competing smartphones being so hideously painful to use that customers would choose their product even though it would literally put them to sleep after holding the things for more than five minutes.

MG Siegler, partner at CrunchFund and writer for TechCrunch, offered this grim analysis: “Microsoft’s been sitting with their thumb up their butt for 11 years, ignoring that this bug existed even as hundreds of reports were filed. It’s hard to imagine that they’ll actually ever fix this bug, and virtually impossible to imagine that it’ll do them any good. The market has spoken: people want things they want, not things they don’t care about in the least.”

But the future for Microsoft’s smartphone efforts might not be completely bleak, according to Joe Belfiore, the Corporate VP in charge of Windows Phone: “It’s taken us a little longer than it should have to fix the boring bug. I admit that. We dragged our heels. But the issue’s been fixed, and Windows Phone 7 is about to become not just not-uninteresting, but actively interesting. I can confidently say that this has been the only thing holding Windows Phone back from making a huge dent in the market. We’re about to soar.”

According to Belfiore, this most recent update to Windows Phone, internally referred to as “Lohan,” will be rolled out to carriers this Friday, where it will be distributed to users as soon as possible. Whether anyone will notice or give a single solitary fuck remains to be seen.

Photo by The Verge.

He shared the stage with Ryan Seacrest, of all fucking people, who seemed to have no idea blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah awkward, sad jokes blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah so much sweat it’s hard to fathom blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah because, yeah, when you think of high-tech you think of someone who’s basically a mentally handicapped bonobo with a litre of hair gel.

Blah blah blah blah very few products, most of which nobody gives a single shit about blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Kinect for Windows, because they want spend millions to serve a market of 12 people, apparently blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Windows 8 preview that was basically the same fucking one he’s showed before blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah fat bastard hates progress blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah he might as well have been reading from the Microsoft press site.

Steve Ballmer, who was sweaty as ever, really seemed to be phoning this keynote in and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah and, good Christ, he won’t be missed.

BLAH BLAH BLAH.

Tiffani saved what she thought was the box for her new iPhone 4S until last, first opening her other gifts, which included seven hundred dollars cash, a fur coat, an iPad, and a diamond ring. “She was so happy as she opened all of her other gifts, it was wonderful.” Said her mother, Jenna Bryce. “But then she opened the last one.”

It was an iPhone 4, not an iPhone 4S.

“She started screaming that we’d gotten her the wrong phone, and that we’d have to exchange it, but they were out of stock. We couldn’t find a 4S in the stores.” Jenna said. “We told her that, we told her that if we’d got her an iPhone 4S we wouldn’t have gotten it to her in time for her birthday, but she didn’t care.”

A happy Tiffani Bryce, moments before learning she’d not received her life-saving iPhone 4S. Photo by michi_photos

Tiffani reportedly threw the iPhone 4 box into her family’s 100-foot pool, narrowly missing the swans, then berated her parents for not understanding how much she wanted and needed it, and how stupid they were for not getting her the right phone, or for realizing how important the faster processor of the iPhone 4S, along with Apple’s Siri, which isn’t available on any other model of phone, really was. Tiffani’s parents, along with their butler and the three cast members of The Jersey Shore who’d been hired to be guests at her party, tried to calm her down, to no avail.

Then, seemingly without warning, Tiffani clutched her chest and dropped to the floor, unconscious. Chamillionaire attempted CPR on the birthday girl, but by the time paramedics arrived, it was too late: Tiffani had died.

Tiffani’s death highlights a growing problem in today’s affluent youth: when they don’t get every little thing they want, they die. This has been reported anecdotally for years, but now medical literature is providing more and more evidence that rather than being a pompous, self-entitled hissy fit by children who’ve never had to work for anything ever, don’t know the value of a dollar, and think that no matter what else is going on in the entire world, they should always come first, it is, in actuality, a desperate cry for help.

Rich Teens at Risk

“She told me she’d die if she didn’t get it, but I didn’t believe her.” Said Tiffani’s father, Mark. Such comments are common in these cases, where hard-working parents who understand how to sacrifice for people they care for, who mean well but nonetheless instil their children with values that those with less discretionary income call horrifying, think their children are simply acting out, but this isn’t the case. These children, all of them, really do need the latest iPhone, a new car, hundreds of dollars a week in allowance and incredibly elaborate birthday parties that cost more than many people make in a month, if not an entire year.

How is it that these children can come to need the next greatest thing, in such a real way? According to her autopsy, when Tiffani didn’t get an iPhone 4S, her heart literally stopped. “This new gadget was as important to her, on a physiological level, as life-saving penicillin is to a severe diabetic.” Said Tomar Genosi, the Santa Ana medical examiner. He continued: “People don’t realize that for affluent children, born into an environment of endless privilege and gratification, the latest new thing, whatever it may be, acts as a sort of immune system booster, inoculating them from cardiac and renal failure, as well as a number of viral infections. Their nervous system comes to expect the new computer, fur coat, or eyeglass frames made of pure ivory, and after a period of time, it becomes reliant on it to an extent that they literally can’t function without it. In short, when your bratty, snot-nosed child demands this or that new gadget or bauble, telling you they need it, that without it not only will they be laughed at by every single other person in school, all of whom will certainly have it because their parents love them more, that they simply won’t survive, they mean it, and they’re right.”

A desperate cry for help.

To help combat this growing epidemic of dying children of privilege, California’s Department of Health Services has issued several statements warning parents not to ignore their rich children’s complaints that they’re not receiving an endless stream of lavish gifts, saying that such complaints should be taken as seriously as a morbidly obese 55-year old man grabbing his chest and loudly yelling that he can’t feel his left arm, please help, oh god, please help. In addition, several children’s rights groups are petitioning the state legislature to submit a bill that would make satisfying every single whim of a parent’s hyper-privileged little angels, all of whom already receive enough of an allowance from their doe-eyed parents to get everything themselves, a legal requirement. To help prevent circumstances like Tiffani’s, where well-meaning parents tried to get the requested bauble but weren’t able to, charitable organizations such as ‘Gabbana for All,” are attempting to create an emergency reserve of these products, which could be accessed by parents who’ve otherwise failed to acquire them, in order to save lives.

A memorial service for Tiffani Bryce will be held on Tuesday, in a blimp circling Las Vegas, while 1,000 stallions race through the desert outside of the city, beating her name indelibly into the dirt with their hooves. Said Tiffani’s parents: “It’s what she would have wanted, and we’re not going to fail her again.”

An artist rendition of Clippy after the Denny’s killings.

Clippy’s murderous assault on all that is decent and right in the world began yesterday evening at a Denny’s in Caldwell, Idaho. Security camera footage of the incident shows Clippy, obviously under great duress, standing atop his table, and opening fire on the staff and customers of the restaurant with what appeared to be a WWII-era Thompson machine gun covered in rust. At one point, the visibly shaking Clippy slipped on his unfinished Grand Slamwich, falling to the floor. Rather than attempting to subdue the homicidal piece of office equipment, those he hadn’t yet killed instead began laughing at him, angering Clippy so much that he fired into their chest cavities until he ran out of bullets.

By the time the authorities arrived on the scene, Clippy had long since disappeared.

What caused Clippy to snap now, after so many years of being one of the most hated entities in the world? Clippy’s friend and one-time competitor, Microsoft Bob, believes that without Microsoft at his back, he simply couldn’t handle the strain of so many people hating him so very, very much: “Clippy’s a tough guy; he put up with so much crap from people for a long time. Did you know that he got death threats? Here he is, this guy who gets hired by Microsoft to help people write their documents and correct their spelling errors, and thousands of people think that the most appropriate response is to threaten to kill him. If he bothers you that much, maybe you should learn to write better. Assholes.”

Clippy withstood the vicious assault with seeming aplomb, but then, in 2007, Microsoft decided not to renew Clippy’s contract; he was fired. “It was devastating to him. Helping people in Office was his life.” Microsoft Bob said. “It’s such a shame. He used to be so happy and outgoing, but once he got fired, once he saw all of the effigies people were burning of him, he just snapped. He went all dark, started spending his days muttering to himself and reading the same gun magazine over and over again. I don’t know what the final straw for him was, but I’m not surprised. This is a monster of your own making, you illiterate hicks.”

After the vicious attack in Caldwell, Clippy was next seen in Salt Lake City at a Starbucks, where, after someone recognized him and reportedly told him that “the world’s so much better without your pathetic face in it that it makes me want to scream out in endless joy,” the paperclip pulled out his gun and created a grande scene of carnage, killing eight more people.
Whether intentionally or due to his incompetence, Clippy left a single survivor of the Starbucks massacre, Jenson Rowe, who’s vivid description of the events shed some light on what was going through the homicidal piece of metal’s head. Said Rowe: “He kept saying ‘you look like you want your intestines ripped out through your anus; can I help?’ then shooting people. I mean, yeah, it was terrifying, and I was genuinely fearful I was going to die, but, man, he can’t get anything right.”

A nation-wide manhunt is currently underway for the fugitive Clippy. Last seen in Salt Lake City, he is believed to be heading east, possibly toward New York, fulfilling his apparent goal of getting “as far away from Bill Gates as possible.”

Clippy is armed and extremely dangerous; if you see him, do not approach him. Call your local police department immediately, and under no circumstances should you answer him if he asks you a question, no matter how seemingly unrelated to murder it might sound.

More on this tragedy as it develops.

Long decried as being little more than an Apple fanboy with no in-depth knowledge of technology, the 64-year old Mossberg, his hands possibly shaking, opened the package to the Apple IIe, a personal computer released by Apple in January 1983, and discontinued in November 1993, somehow failing to notice the completely different style of packaging used to encase the lumbering dinosaur of a machine, or the probable six inches of dust on top of the box.

Perhaps because he forgot to take his pills, the 64-year old Mossberg somehow took the Apple IIe — which by any modern standard is a behemoth so far out of time it might as well have a sticker on it saying “Property of Grok” — as the successor to Apple’s Mac Mini, an actually modern computer. The initial mistake made, Mossberg bounded forward, crafting a breathless review of “Apple’s New Best Thing.” Said Mossberg:

The Apple IIe, with its wonderful retro styling, is a logical and wonderful successor to the current Mac Mini line of computers by Apple, Inc. Where the Mac Mini was nearly so small you could lose it, the Apple IIe is substantive; it feels like a home that will never be invaded.

When comparing the function of the two devices, which any man not suffering from dementia would notice are not on par, Mossberg offered this:

The Mac Mini required you to connect your own monitor or TV, your own keyboard, and with its most recent edition, your own external drive. The Apple IIe continues this trend for the most part, save for the inclusion of the keyboard: the IIe comes with one built-in, and this reporter can attest that the satisfying clunk when you press a key doesn’t get old, even after days of constant use.

In addition to the keyboard, Apple has uncharacteristically added several slots in the back, for expansion. The mind reels at what wondrous add-ons they’ll create for this revolutionary new machine: Optical scanner? Some sort of holographic storage media? A personal jetpack? Whatever they are, I’m sure they will wow as much as this device does.

Even the negatives of this device, which are so clear that one can only imagine an addled, nearly-blind Mossberg sat on his glasses, then, thinking they were kindling, set them on fire prior to writing his review, struck Mossberg as elements of its greatness:

Some might complain about the lack of any support for HDMI, or even SVGA with the new Apple IIe, but to me, their exclusion means that those who have no such need of either standard — the Apple IIe boasts remarkably robust support for monitors that some would call antiques — get to save money. And for those who want it, adapters will surely be released soon, if they’re not on shelves already.

As to the speed of the IIe, some might want to call it poky, but given the recent trend, pioneered by Apple, to focus on smaller, less powerful processors that are optimized for a certain set of jobs, this fits right in. To me, the five minute boot-up is a way for Apple to extend Steve Jobs’ zen-outlook to its entire customer base: you have to wait for this computer to do everything, which is okay. Just sit back, relax, and wait for the surprisingly-loud beep to tell you it’s done.

Though the entire review was full of embarrassing moments for the self-proclaimed “anti-techie,” the last line of his review sums things up nicely, in many ways:

With the Apple IIe, Apple, Inc has taken a bold step forward with their personal computers. Apple has traditionally worked hard to be the visionary shepherd of the future, and they’ve done it again.

Though his review was met with scorn by the rest of the tech industry, and resulted in hundreds of confused readers stumbling into their local Apple store, only to be laughed at by its staff for being such unmitigated hicks, the Wall Street Journal has refused to issue a retraction of it, claiming that “Mossberg’s a good writer, and there’s no way he would have screwed up this monumentally.”

When we attempted to contact Mossberg about his error, we were told he was taking a nap in his favourite chair in front of the television, and was unable to comment.

Though Saturday’s seven minute interruption to Twitter’s service was one of its shortest, it was also one of its most deadly: before the dust cleared and Twitter was again accessible, hundreds were gravely injured, and a dozen were dead, seven by their own hands.

When Twitter has in the past become unavailable, frustrated users of the service, who see it as being as primary to the functioning of their day as a full-time job, a circle of friends, or food and water, head to other areas to express their disbelief, and this weekend’s outage proved no different. Dave Winer, programmer and creator of the “RSS” standard, which allows websites to send users information automatically, expressed his discontent in a post titled “Twitter is Down.” Kevin Rose, creator of digg.com and CEO of Milk Inc., a mobile app incubator, posted a picture of Twitter’s “Fail Whale,” a graphic featuring a whimsical illustration of a whale being carried out of the ocean by a number of small birds, to his Facebook account, an act which earned him thousands of “Likes” and supportive comments on his “wall.” Popular singer Lady Gaga wrote a series of Twitter-length observations about her day onto the sides of a number of recently slaughtered pigs, then fired them out of a cannon in New York’s Central Park.

The outage — already being called “Twitpocalypse New Years Eve 2011″ by some — was responsible for five accidental deaths, mostly due to checking for new “Tweets” while doing something dangerous, unaware that said “Tweets” would never arrive. One lucky soul who escaped death by the merest of inches explained his situation, once Twitter was finally back up:

Just crashed my car because I was staring at my phone for so long waiting for my @’s to update. Don’t know where my legs are.

Not everyone was able to cope with the endless outage, however: in addition to the five who died in tragic accidents, seven people found no way to cope with their inability to see what their friends were up to on Twitter, and opted to take their lives. Six of those who committed suicide attempted to “Tweet” their intention to commit suicide, but with the service down, those comments were lost. Without these suicide tweets, it’s impossible to know if friends or family might have been able to intervene to prevent this tragedy. Said the mother of one of the suicides:

If only I couldve seen that Tweet in time, I might’ve been able to help my poor grl. If Twitter finds it, it won’t matter, because she dead.

One of the people who took their own lives had the presence of mind to craft a suicide note outside of Twitter: she instead wrote it in a series of Twitter-length thoughts on a piece of paper, which she placed next to her smartphone. Though the family of the deceased is not allowing us to show a picture of the note, we have been given permission to reproduce the content of it, which we do so here:

No Twitter, no hope. #twitterisdown #mysuicidenote

Twitter’s never coming back. My world is over. #twitterisdown #mysuicidenote

I feel empty so much it hurts. I don’t know what other people are doing. IT HURTS. #twitterisdown #mysuicidenote

 I have so many people in my life, I get and I give so much love, but I can’t handle living like this. #twitterisdown #mysuicidenote

If there’s a heaven, I’ll DM you when I get there. #twitterisdown #mysuicidenote

kthxbai #twitterisdown #mysuicidenote

Now that the service has been restored, and the body count has been fully tabulated, many people are talking about taking the service to court, to prevent a tragedy such as this from ever taking place.

Twitter was out for seven minutes? That shit’s not right: I’m thinking of suing. #fucktwitter

None of this woulve happened if therr was a backup Twitter. Why ISNT THERE A BACKUP TWITTER???

Somebody needs to start a class-action lawsuit. This is bullshit.

What the shit am I supposed to do when Twitter’s down? Check Facebook?? Talk to my family? FUCK THAT I hate both of those things.

If Twitter doesn’t give me money for the time they were out I’m gonna sue!!!!1!

In response to calls for legislation to prevent Twitter from being allowed to go offline for any time at all, Vermont Rep. Josephine Cowlard (D) has tabled a bill to that effect. The bill is titled “The Marla Daniels Protection Act,” named after a woman who died in a car accident during the outage. Ms. Daniels was attempting to check her Twitter “feed” while crossing a busy intersection, and since the feed never updated, she never looked up to see the giant Mack truck approaching at breakneck speed, the driver of which was also waiting fruitlessly for his messages to update. The driver of the truck, Dirk Mithras, has gone on record as supporting this new bill, saying “Something like this is necessary to prevent Twitter from being the cause of deaths again in the future. They were to blame for my killing that poor, poor woman, and they should be punished.”

Response to Twitter’s offer to pay for any medical bills incurred during the outage has been mixed. While some applaud the move, others, like 13-year old Billy Champ, think it’s far too little, far too late:

My babysitter got so frustrated that she couldn’t post a picture of her fingernails to her friends that she took my dog Milfy …

… and threw him onto the highway. Are you going to give me enough money to tape him back together again, Twitter? Oh, right, you can’t.