Uh-oh. DE contributor Bryan Larrick is back with the October Horrorshow:

October is here. Rejoice! For this is the best month in which to watch horror films. Summer has just died and the month ends with Halloween. The chill that has suddenly arisen in the air portends the coming cold slumber of winter…or the passing whisper of a phantom. To celebrate, Missile Test once again dedicates the month to reviewing horror films. The good, the bad, or the putrid. It doesn’t matter. If there’s blood, it gets a watch. Welcome to the fifth annual October Horrorshow. First up is a real winner.
He’s going to be posting a new horror film review each day this month.
The first is a real winner, Resident Evil: Retribution:
As for the casting choices, it’s rare to see an ensemble this uniformly bad in a movie that doesn’t have the words “fast” and/or “furious” in its title. Or, to put it another way, how does a cast get worse AFTER it loses Ali Larter from one film to the next? The answer: it adds Sienna Guillory.

The single worst acting I have ever seen in a film was turned in by Robbi Morgan in the original Friday the 13th. With her performance in Retribution, Guillory has seized the crown. It was a stunningly inept performance, on par with a class of kindergarteners putting on a Christmas pageant, or the awkward openings of porn scenes. Although, I’m pretty sure Sasha Grey or Traci Lords would have been better in this movie. I will never forget how maliciously Guillory butchered the art of acting for as long as I live, unless some other brave soul surpasses her level of futility in some future project.
Grab the popcorn.

—Billy Beane, Moneyball
…and you know about loss aversion, even if you don’t know the term.

From the Verge:

Intel promised to unveil an internet TV service by the end of 2013, but with just months to go, the project’s prospects may be floundering. According to All Things D, Intel needs additional funding to keep the project going. It’s reportedly spoken with both Amazon and Samsung about the possibility of them pitching in money or distribution services to help keep the internet TV project alive. But if Intel can’t find a partner, that may be the end of the line: ATD says that the project could simply be scrapped.
How about this: Don’t talk before you ship.

BGR: Samsung exec reportedly admits Galaxy Gear smartwatch ‘lacks something special’

The last thing you want to do when entering a new product category for the first time is launch something that isn’t your best effort. According to a report from The Korea Times, however, a Samsung executive may have admitted that the company is doing just that with the Galaxy Gear smartwatch. “We’ve acknowledged that our Gear lacks something special,” an unnamed Samsung official is quoted as having told the site. “With more investment for user interface and user experience, Samsung devices will be better in terms of customer satisfaction.”
Give ’em some time.
As soon as they see what Apple has planned for the motion-tracking capabilities in their M7 chip Samsung will have a clear picture where they need to take their smart watch.
The expression, “lead, follow or get out of the way” comes to mind.
In the realm of mobile computing innovation we have Apple leading, Samsung following and Blackberry, well, getting out of the way.

The wealth inequality in the US goes beyond being a Democrat or a Republican.
This is not an equal playing field.

via Upworthy

Eric Chemi at Bloomberg Businessweek puts things into perspective for the iPhone haters:

If [the iPhone] were its own company in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index, IPhone Inc. would outsell 474 of those companies–ranking between Wells Fargo (WFC) ($90.5 billion) and Marathon Petroleum (MPC) ($84.9 billion). The iPhone’s $88.4 billion in annualized revenue tops 21 of the 30 component companies in the Dow Jones industrial average–it would be the ninth-biggest stock in the Dow 30
That’s a big Twinkie.

Bill Gates on the legendary Control-Alt-Delete:

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has finally admitted that forcing users to press the Control-Alt-Delete key combination to log into a PC was a mistake. In an interview at a Harvard fundraising campaign, Gates discusses his early days building Microsoft and the all-important Control-Alt-Delete decision. If you’ve used an old version of the software or use Windows at work then you will have experienced the odd requirement. Gates expains the key combination is designed to prevent other apps from faking the login prompt and stealing a password.
Before Control-Alt-Delete was used to log into Windows machines it was how you restarted the whole computer. My father taught me this back in the pre-Windows days of the early 80s.
In middle school I taught this trick to my friend Dave. When we went to the mall we would reboot all the computers on display in Sears and then run out. The sales people on the floor were usually computer illiterate and had no idea what we had done.
It didn’t take much to keep us amused back then.

— seen in Kurt Vonnegut’s Timequake, but thanks goes to sharp-eyed reader Patricia Miller, who correctly attributed these lines to Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart.

Ballmer’s thoughts on Microsoft’s inability to gain significant market share with Windows Phone:

Speaking at Microsoft’s financial analysts meeting today, CEO Steve Ballmer was refreshingly realistic about the company’s struggles in smartphones and tablets. “Mobile devices. We have almost no share,” he admitted on stage, before noting he didn’t know whether to be enthusiastic over his admission or uncomfortably tense. “But I’m an optimistic guy, any time we have low market share sounds like upside opportunity to me.” That upside opportunity is the key reason Microsoft moved to secure Nokia’s phone business.
Stevey-Steve, this isn’t a matter of optimistically seeing the glass half full. Google, Apple and Blackberry drank 96% of the milkshake in US and that’s after Microsoft trying to fill it for 3 fucking years.
Or perhaps the glass was completely full and Ballmer took a BB gun and shot a bunch of holes into it.
Or maybe It’s last call, Ballmer’s hammered stupid and the bartender isn’t serving him anymore.
Ok, I’m done with the glass analogies.

taken from Alice in Wonderland

—Thomas Edison