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November 30
third times a charm.
after three different deadlines, two different formats, and a partidge in a pear tree, i'm still not sure if my entry got through. it's true, writers get no respect
posted by ethylene at 10:01 PM PST - 8 comments
Big Changes for the Web-Slinger and Children of the Atom!
In an effort to lure kids back to the quiet, almost antiquated pastime of reading paper magazines filled with stories about do-gooders, Marvel Comics announces an AMAZING re-organization of the X-MEN and SPIDER MAN. Yes, loyal arachno-fans, Peter Parker is going to start life anew as a "webmaster" for the Daily Bugle! The X-Men will go back to high school ... for MUTANTS! (PS: Captain America to be laid off.) Marvel's editor in chief announces other
changes.
posted by rschram at 2:51 PM PST - 11 comments
Wired News reports on the upcoming DMCA review.
Via
Linux Weekly News:
"When music is streamed, webcasters are required to pay a performance royalty. In order to generate smooth playback of incoming streams, computers temporarily store some of the data in memory in a RAM buffer. Music publishers have stated that the data in this buffer should be considered a physical creation that would require webcasters to pay a mechanical royalty, similar to what they pay for downloads or CDs."
Anyone need any more on that? Time to get your congressman on the phone...
posted by baylink at 12:02 PM PST - 3 comments
When headlines go bad (Part the Nth)
With a headline like, "Daredevil Carried From Ice Cell After 2-1/2 Days," you'd think it was about Matt Murdock, Marvel Comics' Man Without Fear (tm), after a fight with Mr. Freeze... But no, just some guy in an ice block for a publicity stunt. Shame, really...
posted by aurelian at 10:42 AM PST - 4 comments
Read
Dark Dungeons and want to know what the fuss is about? Feeling left out when the cool kids argue about whether a storm giant could take a green dragon? Never fear!
Wizards of the Coast, a division of multinational fun conglomerate Hasbro, is making some soul-corrupting old D&D stuff available as
free downloads.
posted by snarkout at 7:43 AM PST - 9 comments
A salon link?
"It's [Salon] become boring. Way too safe and predictable with its left-leaning bias,"
posted by tiaka at 5:54 AM PST - 2 comments
One Year After Seattle
-- "A year has passed since the World Trade Organization's "Millennium Round" collapsed under clouds of tear gas in Seattle," writes
Mark Weisbrot, in this useful overview of what was -- and is -- at stake. "The debate over globalization has been altered, perhaps permanently, to include some of the concerns of civil society: poverty and inequality, economic instability, and the environmental costs of globalization...."
posted by johnb at 12:47 AM PST - 30 comments
November 29
The Million Prayer March
was set up to collect one million prayers for peace in the Middle East. James Twyman, author and Peace Troubadour, set up this website after Arafat said that peace will not come to Middle East without a million strong prayers. Once the site has collected one million prayers, Twyman will travel to Israel with all the prayers to present them to Arafat and Barak.
I was
prayer no 78536.
posted by tamim at 11:59 PM PST - 9 comments
"Download
the new Snoop Dogg DeskPlaya
and kick it with Snoop Dogg all dizay on your desktizop!"Aaaw
yeah. Now if only every new tech release could have descriptions like that...
posted by NickBarat at 8:08 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Rent-A-Riot,
or, "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Mob"... Taking my cue from the Repubs themselves I say, "Where's the outrage?!"
posted by m.polo at 7:35 PM PST - 1 comments
Chicago to enlist graphic designers for friendlier ballots.
[free reg may be req'd] There's been a bunch of discussion about the usability problems with various voting systems, notably punch-card ballots. Chicago didn't have anything as dramatic as a "butterfly" prexy ballot or two pages' worth of candidates, but we still had
close to 120,000 discards from 2.1 million votes -- and when compared with jurisdictions using other systems, there's little evidence to suggest that voters are skipping the presidential ballot. That's just how bad manual punch card technology is. Even if we can't get rid of them just yet, at least we can make sure they aren't confusing.
Did I just post the
twenty-sixth link on Metafilter today? GO AWAY. METAFILTER IS FULL. :)
posted by dhartung at 7:27 PM PST - 24 comments
"One of the most esteemed documents of modern paleontology is Stephen Jay Gould's doctoral thesis on shells. According to Gould, the fact that there are thousands of potential shell shapes in the world, but only a half dozen actual shell forms, is evidence of natural selection. Not so, says Wolfram. He's discovered a mathematical error in Gould's argument, and that, in fact, there are only six possible shell shapes, and all of them exist in the world. " A must-read article.
posted by costas at 6:28 PM PST - 14 comments
Greenspun on Neilsen.
Damn if that don't sound like the Thrilla in Manila. I just stumbled over this piece on ArsDigita's Systems Journal site, formerly Web Tools Review. If you enjoy watching one so-called expert pick apart the opinions of another, you'll probably enjoy this.
If you're sick unto death of both of them... skip it.
posted by baylink at 6:19 PM PST - 1 comments
<drool>
Oh boy, do I want one of these. Unless, of course, the idiots at Kyocera/Qualcomm blew it again, and *didn't* make it capable of using CDPD to get to the Internet. [calls, gets wrong answer, screeches loudly enough that everyone on MeFi can hear...]
posted by baylink at 5:55 PM PST - 17 comments
campusnut.com
is using a dirty way to draw traffic to their site. Do your part and send a nasty email to the "CEO" of campusnut.com.
posted by cmicali at 5:42 PM PST - 8 comments
The New Trailer
for Final Fantasy triggered my drool reflex. The summer of 2001 is when it comes out. The next likely game company to make a movie seems like Blizzard after watching all the mini-movies in Diablo 2.
posted by john at 4:05 PM PST - 7 comments
Free Jack Chick comics online
I only post this because I am always surprised how many people have never heard of the man. There is only one way to salvation, and Jack wants to show you. Some favorites are
Bewitched and the discontinued anti-D&D classic
Dark Dungeons.
The Poor Little Witch" will twist your brain too. Did you know Roman Catholics are not Christian, and that Christian Scientists cannot get into heaven?
posted by thirteen at 2:14 PM PST - 34 comments
That dude that's been doing the Gore vs. Bush graphics for CNN has
outdone himself. It looks like Gore is actually trying to bite Bush's head... Egads!
posted by Niccola Six at 1:46 PM PST - 16 comments
I looked at the Green Party platform
for the first time today, as a followup to the Nader discussion below. I like the ideas, in general, but how would we fund them? I don't like current economic policies, etc, but the money sure seems to flow. A lot of us seem to be Greens. How's it work?
posted by Sean Meade at 11:49 AM PST - 46 comments
Clinton opts
not to become the first prexy since Garfield and Harding (who? kidding) not to visit Nebraska during his term in office. Obviously, he's trying to avoid the dreaded curse: "Both Garfield and Harding died before completing their terms." Coincidence or Illuminati subterfuge?
posted by highindustrial at 10:48 AM PST - 8 comments
Lettuce ladies want to slim (clap) you up!
I didn't know Elizabeth Berkley was the original lettuce lady. Heck, I didn't even know they existed at all.
I noticed the site has some false advertising, though -- on the front page, it says "wearing nothing but strategically placed lettuce leaves..." but how in the world would those tops stay on with straps of lettuce? I guess "wearing nothing but lettuce and green colored underwear" doesn't have the same ring to it.
posted by jragon at 7:44 AM PST - 11 comments
Not a terribly serious topic, but I saw the Grinch movie on the weekend and hated it savagely. Just deplored it from beginning to end. And as time has passed and I've thought more about my extreme reaction, I've grown to hate it even more. This dude at Entertainment Weekly makes a
pretty good case for why this blockbuster is a big chunk o' crap. Thoughts?
P.S. I did see
Quills last night however, and it was amazing.
posted by Niccola Six at 7:20 AM PST - 17 comments
Samuel Mockbee
is my new hero. As the creator of Auburn University's
Rural Studio and winner of a
MacArthur Fellowship, he has his undergraduate students design and construct buildings. Not only are the structures they build attractive and functional, they are built in one of the poorest areas of the country, using discarded and recycled materials.
posted by Aaaugh! at 12:11 AM PST - 2 comments
November 28
Capitalism to the extreme in Russia.
A Russian Grandma was caught trying to sell her grandson for $90,000. No she wasn't selling him to some adoption agency so he could go to a 'caring family' somewhere in the west. She was selling him for his
organs. She even rips off her other son (the boy's uncle). His excuse, "
I wanted to buy a house and a new car and some clothes. It was my dream." I'm sure it was his nephew's dream as well to be sold for his organs.
posted by jay at 9:32 PM PST - 11 comments
What went wrong for Ralph?
Now that the whining and accusations has died down a little, it's time to finally ask the hard question:
So why did Ralph Nader do so badly?. Did his campaign drift too far left? Was Winnona LaDuke the right running mate? Did the Green party help or hurt him? What did Nader himself do to screw his own campaign.
posted by lagado at 8:36 PM PST - 16 comments
TiVo schadenfreude!
ReplayTV drops 40% of its staff (including a former TV Network Bigwig) and drops out of the retail "box" business. Gee, they're giving up without even asking for a recount of the sales figures from the Palm Beach
Best Buy
Now, if TiVo can just keep
Microshaft from squishing it like a bug.
posted by wendell at 6:00 PM PST - 2 comments
CNN
(Clinton News Network) to become...
GNN (Gore News Network)!!!
posted by da5id at 1:58 PM PST - 5 comments
Is this annoying to anyone else?
I usually get most of my news from either ABCnews.com or CNN.com, then this morning I noticed that every time I load ABCnews, an annoying ad banner pops up for AT&T over the browser toolbar. I know that big sites have used popups before (usually as announcements or something else), but an ad popup on such a major site seems like an even further blurring of that line between media and advertising. I guess I'm switching news sources.
posted by almostcool at 1:24 PM PST - 18 comments
I'm sure this must have been MeFi'd before (and my apologies if it has) but
Jesus, look what the Son Of God is up to now! To each their own I suppose, but I wouldn't get in a bathtub with him.
posted by Niccola Six at 1:20 PM PST - 18 comments
YAWA...
Yet Another Weblog Article...it's amazing how writers always manage to talk about the same seven (or so) weblogs in every article I've seen on the subject.
posted by Succa at 9:55 AM PST - 13 comments
Waiting with bated breath for the conclusion of Stephen King's online serial?
Touck luck. Even though I don't care that much for King, I'm disappointed that this experiment failed.
posted by harmful at 8:47 AM PST - 3 comments
"I dated Yumi for awhile, and I have to confess I became very attached to her. Yumi could get very angry over small things. She would yell at me and ignore me the exact same way as all my other girlfriends have.
Finally I decided to stop the relationship. It was too draining for me. It was hard sometimes to remember that
Yumi wasn't real."
posted by sudama at 8:41 AM PST - 13 comments
Need something to wash down your Turducken? Try a
tapioca
milk tea. "A popular import from Taiwan, the frothy beverage is
a mix of tea, milk, sugar and giant black tapioca balls served hot or cold.
" Guhhh! Imagine slurping on your beverage and then... GLUCK!... a
big ball of gumminess gets shlucked through your straw. Gluck, gluck, gluck!
Bubble Tea, will
it catch on?
posted by ljc at 7:54 AM PST - 28 comments
i did some snooping around on the cbc website and i found
this and
this. the first is the graphic that they used after the liberals won, the second is the graphic they had ready if the liberals lost.
hmm, chretien looks more tired in the second one. perhaps he is looking to some martin supporters on his left, waiting to pummel him? hmm...martinites attacking from the left just doesn't make any sense!
posted by will at 7:42 AM PST - 10 comments
Scientists discover possible microbe from space.
Scientists has recovered microorganisms in the upper reaches of the atmosphere that may have originated from outer space. The living bacteria, are unlike any known on Earth, but the astrobiologists want to keep the details under wraps until they are absolutely convinced that these are extraterrestrial. Do not adjust your set...
posted by lagado at 3:14 AM PST - 4 comments
November 27
The first step in setting up a parallel government?
"Republican vice-presidential candidate Dick Cheney said if the General Services Administration will not assist George W. Bush's transition to the White House, the campaign is prepared to go ahead on its own. 'We will proceed drawing on other sources,' Cheney told reporters in Washington on Monday." Yeah, I just bet they will.
posted by tranquileye at 2:04 PM PST - 18 comments
Is
this what's often reffered to as shit hitting the fan?
posted by tiaka at 11:37 AM PST - 11 comments
Did you get enough to eat this Thanksgiving? If not maybe next year you should
try a
Turducken!
Its a dinner inside a dinner. A chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey!
This guy loved his. Scarey
yet strangely appealing.
posted by ljc at 11:06 AM PST - 23 comments
With all the recent MeFi Flash-trashing and usability-ranting in mind, I am just now getting around to the viewing the website for Darren Aronofsky's
Requiem for a Dream (Flash required).
Aronofsky defends the site in a brief interview with the online version of print mag Entertainment Weekly. It certainly could be classified as annoying, but then, that appears to be Aronofsky's point. Coming from anyone less talented than he, I'd say it was just posturing; here, I'm not sure...
posted by m.polo at 10:43 AM PST - 5 comments
The Coalition for Jubilee Clemency
A national coalition of faith leaders is petitioning President Clinton to release on supervised parole those Federal prisoners serving unconscionably long sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug offenses.
posted by snakey at 10:16 AM PST - 5 comments
Trial By Combat
- Since it seems that neither counting the votes nor suing in court is going settle this election. I suggest taking a more direct and final approach. A fight to the death with broadswords.
posted by y6y6y6 at 10:11 AM PST - 3 comments
I wonder how many people
went hungry so this monstrosity could be built? And mom always said to not play with your food....
posted by Arvid at 9:22 AM PST - 11 comments
The _real_ next President is chosen
... well, of the Fortune 500, anyway. Today, Jack Welch tapped his successor as CEO of the worldest largest and most profitable public corporation, General Electric. As expected, he chose an executive in his early 40's which (with luck) will give GE another king with a 20+ year reign.
posted by MattD at 7:33 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
I win my office pool. Robert Downey Jr.
fell off the wagon right after November sweeps.
I still have dibs on him for the dead pool.
posted by thc at 6:13 AM PST - 8 comments
The World at Night. This amazing
image (warning 500K) is actually a composite of hundreds of pictures made by the orbiting DMSP satellites over regions of the world at night. You can clearly see the Nile river, Hong Kong, Hawaii and probably, if you look close enough, the town you are in right now. From
Astronomy Picture of the Day
posted by lagado at 4:43 AM PST - 18 comments
November 26
Macromedia Purchases Clue
Looks like the folks at Macromedia have finally come around to the fact that Flash is getting a really bad usability rap. They have launched a token usability section on their site. I thought the four sites they picked as '
Usability examples' were very telling of their understanding of the issues. [via
Flazoom]
posted by DragonBoy at 10:07 PM PST - 2 comments
Stockwell Day
and his racist pals. No wonder the Canadian Alliance fields the kind of candidates who talk about an "asian invasion".
posted by will at 10:05 PM PST - 19 comments
A Modest Proposal
for preventing the tongues of the American people from being a burden to their owners and country, as well as encouraging them to become more beneficial to the public interest.
I still hate guns, but dear old Jon would have been proud.
posted by ZachsMind at 7:55 PM PST - 6 comments
Melanie Griffith
is my favorite weblogger. This merging of flowery, trashy romance novel-esque graphics and Melanie's first-hand tales of love, pain and addiction warms the heart. Not only am I going to sign her guestbook, I'm going to order oodles of products through her Godess Collection banner ad.
posted by sixfoot6 at 4:06 PM PST - 9 comments
Fuckwits.
And we were arguing about unclear ballot papers and the inability to follow written instructions? The Palm Beach canvassing board sends its counters home for Thanksgiving, comes back on Friday to find an extra few thousand votes to go through, and can't get its numbers in on time, so Ms Harris disregards them. Really, the people in charge need horse-whipping.
posted by holgate at 3:07 PM PST - 1 comments
This site
sent spam offering to help fund an effort "to bring electronic touch-screen computer voting to every county in the U.S.A." Problem is, it looks like fraud.
Google cache to the
rescue. Turns out there's not enough money in gay porn. More below...
posted by Mo Nickels at 1:25 AM PST - 5 comments
November 25
The Greenwood Position.
Partisan perhaps, but will Peggy Noonan's latest OpEd in the WSJ be a rallying cry for frustrated conservatives? She offers compelling arguments and solid suggestions for proactive redress. Talk amongst yourselves.
posted by netbros at 7:51 PM PST - 6 comments
ISSNs for your blog?
Joe Clark looks at the process, and urges authors to sign up, which puts your blog officially in the worldwide standardized encyclopedia of periodicals. It sounds like a good idea, and could help people using the periodical databases for research, since many blogs cover the same things magazines do.
posted by mathowie at 7:47 PM PST - 7 comments
Just the ticket...
A 500,000 markka (£50,000ish) fine for speeding? If you're a dot-com millionaire in Finland, sure. Though you have to wonder whether it's about time to slap a ban on this speed merchant. (The debating point: should fines be related to income?)
posted by holgate at 6:15 PM PST - 10 comments
Maybe ICANN really can't.
There may be a revolt among all those Europeans who think that they own their parts of the Internet. (Who do they think they are, anyway? Don't they realize that they're just electronic colonies of the US?)
Actually, I'm with them; I think ICANN is getting just a little too full of itself.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:14 AM PST - 2 comments
November 24
Mad Cow disease spreads through Europe.
Now as I understand it, cattle get it by eating food which contains parts of other cattle or sheep who had the disease.
The solution seems straightforward enough: stop using animal-derived ingredients in the food fed to cattle. SO WHY THE HELL ARE THEY STILL DOING IT? Why is this so complicated? Is there something I'm missing here?
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:47 PM PST - 18 comments
"Blame Florida! Blame Florida!
...with its stooges and its chad, the whole election's just gone mad..."
(Yeah, it's Salon: but Talbot has a point. Had this been outside the US, with Jimmy Carter and the other observers, the last few days' lunacy would have left no-one in any doubt that the state couldn't organise a pissup in a brewery.)
posted by holgate at 7:01 PM PST - 10 comments
The body that regulates cable in Canada, the
CRTC, is licensing 283 new channels. All will be available only through digital set-top boxes.
Along with the expected Biography, Mystery, and ZDTV channels, in the mandatory tier we're getting Book Television from CHUM, a gay and lesbian channel, a documentary channel, and Land and Sea, a rural service from the CBC. If that wasn't wacky enough, the optional channels will include BBC Canada, the Wine Television Network, two wedding channels, several hockey channels, and channels dedicated to theatre, poetry, jazz, dance, pets, South Asian culture, international film, horses, law, martial arts
just about anything you can think of, actually.
While I don't expect they can all survive, it should make for an interesting six months.
posted by tranquileye at 2:30 PM PST - 7 comments
My Real Baby
Probably the most sophisiticated and artificially intelligent baby doll ever created. Are you going to buy one for your daughter? Better hurry - they are going fast. I cant wait to see how people hack this toy's operating system.
posted by triptych at 11:15 AM PST - 15 comments
"They're closed"
- After seeing millions of dollars worth of commercials for Amazon.com where they make fun of brick and mortar stores for closing at night, I go to their site today and find...... They're closed. Here's a
screen shot in case they open today. Sure, sites go down, but the wording seems a little odd considering....
posted by y6y6y6 at 8:47 AM PST - 8 comments
November 23
I wanna easter egg
After seeign the Spider-man easter egg on my new X-men DVD, I was excited to see what other easter eggs my DVD collection has. Well, thanks to the good ole' Web I found this page wich documents them all!
posted by DragonBoy at 10:28 PM PST - 7 comments
The Polynesians were, undoubtedly, the greatest navigators of the ancient world. Using outrigger canoes, they were able to colonize lands spread as far apart as Madagascar and Easter Island and as far south as New Zealand. But where did they originally come from?
Jared Diamond demonstrates how, by using linguistic and archaeological evidence, it's possible to reconstruct their journey from China and Taiwan to the Philippines, from there on to Borneo, Indonesia, Malaysia, New Guinea and out to the Pacific one way and Madagascar in the other. As an exercise, try comparing
the numbers 1 to 10 in all Polynesian and Indonesian languages, to see how the language gradually changed as they hopped from island to island.
posted by lagado at 8:45 PM PST - 4 comments
"They appear to have been skilled workers capable of stupendous productivity under harsh circumstances. When they failed, it was not from lack of inventiveness, but because of poor leadership, bad luck or the inherent instability of all-male commercial ventures."
It sounds like the writer is describing the typical failed dot-com. Actually, he's writing about 17th Century commercial colonization of North America. The similarities are quite amusing. Read on...
posted by ratbastard at 6:49 AM PST - 1 comments
The gopher manifesto.
This is actually an idea I've been toying with for some time - bringing content back to gopher sites. My love of gopher was rekindled the day I got a WAP-enabled phone. I realized the new wireless web was nothing but menu after menu of hierarchical information. I know for a fact that Blogger can publish text files for gopher sites as well. I'd still love to launch a gopher site for essays and the like, if I could ever find a decent gopher server for windows or linux. (stolen from
/.)
posted by mathowie at 12:54 AM PST - 20 comments
November 22
Notice of Revocation of Independence
appears to be spamming all over email. I found it in several listbots and
egroups, and after some intensive searching I think I
may have found
the original source but
I'm guessing and may be wrong. Very funny, very telling, and with more than a grain of
wake up call to it. Considering how we take our freedom for granted in America, I question whether or not we really deserve it any longer.
posted by ZachsMind at 8:49 PM PST - 15 comments
Any ideas
how this happend? No matter how you slice it, this is what my mom used to call "creepy-ass shit."
posted by Niccola Six at 12:58 PM PST - 28 comments
Most of the world rejects
the USAmerican attempt to end-around-run the Kyoto protocols. Surely we'll get our way (I use the pronouns reluctantly in this case). Who can stop us? Besides, who cares? Not President-elect (de facto) Bush. Add the guiltless bloodshed in Israel/Palestine to this and my last post and it's hard to be thankful at the global level.
posted by Sean Meade at 11:43 AM PST - 3 comments
Looks like the end is in sight.
And I'm glad. I'm so sick of the political rhetoric I could puke. I wish more people could address these issues with clear thinking, instead of defaulting to the rhetoric of the side they tend to favor. If anyone else says 'The American people want...' I will puke. Looks like Bush is going to win. Who cares? Nader is right: they've both been bought and sold. People who harp on 'the very clear policy differences' aren't making enough allowances for the other dynamics.
posted by Sean Meade at 11:38 AM PST - 12 comments
Usability is dead?
Frogdesign's creative director says: "There's no merit to focusing entirely on usability". Anyone who says that shouldn't be designing websites, IMHO. [from
kottke]
posted by owillis at 10:59 AM PST - 17 comments
Problem.
Proposed solution : nominate a few films, Gladiator, Erin Brokovich and so on. And let Stanley Kubrick's disowned Sparticus take the top 5-6 Oscars. Just shows that god's worst film is still better than tripe created today.
posted by tiaka at 7:10 AM PST - 37 comments
Wasn't there a conspiracy theory going around about
this happening? Isn't John McCain supposed to step in? Is the Neiman Marcus cookie recipe involved?
posted by thc at 5:43 AM PST - 8 comments
Well now if I'd known
this I never would've signed up with them last summer. My three months are up anyway. Bad move,
emusic.
posted by aflakete at 1:50 AM PST - 8 comments
November 21
Nick Hornby on Hollywood.
The author of
High Fidelity talks about its movie adaptation: "It is not possible to extract from the novel its central high-concept idea and chuck the rest away, simply because there is no central high-concept idea. Anyone attempting to do so would find that they had spent a reasonable amount of money on a story about a guy who works in a record store and splits up with his girlfriend."
posted by lbergstr at 9:46 PM PST - 4 comments
Poisons spam bots dead!
"Wpoison helps to combat the junk e-mail problem by effectively thwarting the efforts of junk e-mailers who regularly scan web pages, looking for target e-mail addresses to harvest, which they then send junk e-mail to. "
Wow, does this really work? Has anyone tried it or something silimar?
I hope it does work, I really hope it does.
(sorry if its been posted already)
posted by Hackworth at 4:56 PM PST - 14 comments
I kill you-
through your email. Battlemail claims to be the worlds first free multiplayer email games system.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 2:40 PM PST - 2 comments
Jason
put up a link to the
New Yorker article that mentions himself, Meg, Pyra, EV, etc. It also mentions MetaFilter and myself. I find this funny in a way, all of of these people that never would have known anything about each other are all interconnected. Why? Because Ev and Meg started Pyra. Because I read an article about the original Pyra app. Which led me to Blogger. Which led to Ev, Meg, Pb, MetaFilter... whcih led to Kottke, Haughey, etc. Ahhh the good old days
posted by monkeyboy at 6:44 AM PST - 36 comments
It's a tribute
to our system of government that no matter how screwed up the election is or how these folks get jerked around, we don't worry about them taking things into their own hands.
posted by CRS at 6:36 AM PST - 11 comments
November 20
First UK TV Millionnaire
comes, by coincidence, on the same night that another network shows the last episode of its most popular sitcom, in which the main character dies.
Gosh what a coincidence! Or is it a fix?
posted by nico at 11:38 PM PST - 11 comments
I see the Good Doctor is back on
form--following his own Old Testament prophet tip. Thank Fudd there's little mention of sports.
posted by aflakete at 11:33 PM PST - 2 comments
Joel
's a little smug when he says "
Netscape Goes Bonkers and I'm very thankful, because Netscape 6.0 has been a terrific illustration of so many of the points I've made in Joel on Software over the last 6 months. Unfortunately, it's usually an illustration of what not to do." Too bad he's right.
posted by lagado at 8:39 PM PST - 15 comments
a work of art?
this site confused me at first, until I saw the drawing section. you can create works of art using shockwave and your keyboard. feel free to create your own and let me know! doodling has become fun again!
posted by aekastar at 6:12 PM PST - 3 comments
Day without Weblogs
is coming up.
Blogger linked it on the front page. I have not been able to post anything through Blogger today, So today is my official observance of the event. You taking part? Is Metafilter?
Day without Metafilter would really hurt.
posted by thirteen at 1:00 PM PST - 16 comments
Beaver College has changed
its name to the more dignified Arcadia University, after bearing the brunt of countless jokes and having their websites blocked by filtering software. I guess they made the announcement during a surprise student pajama party only to give the late night talk shows one last punchline.
posted by ewagoner at 11:03 AM PST - 9 comments
CAUTION: VERY NAUGHTY WORD AHEAD
(Via Obscure Store) You can't say I didn't warn you. This is perhaps the funniest "news" story I've read all year. I have to believe the (female) reporter was cackling madly as she wrote it.
posted by Skot at 8:56 AM PST - 28 comments
November 19
It's officially the 20th of November (some places) and the P4 NDA's have lifted. Here come the reviews!
Anandtech gives it poor marks. On a lot of tests it gets creamed.
HardOCP is more kind, but does a much less comprehensive test against a must less formidable competitor.
GamePC gives it a "thumbs down".
I'm still waiting for Tom Pabst's review; I expect it to be brutal.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:37 PM PST - 6 comments
Some of us made jokes in the days after the election about "Gore stealing votes from Nader", to ape those who said the reverse. But we didn't read
the Libertarian Party's press release, wherein they said the same thing, and they were both serious, and believable. [quote inside]
posted by baylink at 8:45 PM PST - 5 comments
"I am concerned about the world's silence and co-operation with this massacre. Maybe if people at grassroots act, governments will follow." Neta Golan, 29, Israeli ctizen and voluntary
human shield.
posted by lagado at 7:00 PM PST - 6 comments
You can own art by Dr. Suess.
It seems that Theodore Geisel (Dr. Suess) in addition to turning out dozens of books beloved by children (and not a few adults) was also a serious artist, but he kept all the serious art in his home. He did this work just for his own pleasure, and for no other reason.
His widow has now offered much of that art for sale as lithographs and this link shows what is available. It is recognizably the same artist, but equally it is dramatically different.
Available also are pictures from the books.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 6:59 PM PST - 6 comments
"Utopian Architecture"
is where it's at. Unfortunately, despite how many people seem to be interested in it, there's very little documentation concerning the subject. The only books I can think of are Yesterday's Tomorrow (1984, MIT Press), Metropolis of Tomorrow by Hugo Ferriss and Impossible Worlds by Stephen Coates, and I don't know of any website on the subject.
posted by Kevs at 3:21 PM PST - 20 comments
Where's my Metababy?
Damn it - I've waited a month! It's supposed to be back today,
but it's not there. Crikey! When will I get my Trinity/Katie Holmes/suck it fix??
posted by dogwelder at 2:22 PM PST - 7 comments
George W. Bush is wearing a
ZZ Top hat this morning. I wonder if he's a fan of the band's 1976 song
Arrested for Driving While Blind ... "When you're driving down the highway at night/And you're feelin' that wild turkey's bite/Don't give Johnny Walker a ride/Cause Jack Black is right by your side/You might get taken to the jailhouse and find/You've been arrested for driving while blind."
posted by rcade at 10:16 AM PST - 12 comments
We the Public Press..
In order to form a more perfect newsmedia, establish reader distrust, avoid few legalities, provide for the common deafndumb, promote the grocery store impulse buy kiosks, and secure the Blessings of Boldfaced Lying to ourselves and our Readership, do completely avoid and ignore this annoying Code of Ethics...
posted by ZachsMind at 6:37 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
November 18
When asked, Apple said "Of course we're going to sue
them, what sort of silly question is that?"
posted by baylink at 5:23 PM PST - 19 comments
Reporter Road Rage
Fox News Channel anchor ran over another reporter with his car at the Florida State Capitol. Anything to cover the "Battle for the White House"...
posted by owillis at 4:19 PM PST - 10 comments
Who are these guys? And why have they registered a thousand or more domains, only to have them all point at the same generic portal? I bumped into them three times today while doing searches for
DHTML,
Budd Uggly, and
boxing. No banners, no logo, no company info, and search results are a framed page from goto.com. Strange.
posted by nikzhowz at 2:08 PM PST - 12 comments
Frygate!
- Who needs Craig T. Nelson to impose order in The District? DC Metrocops seem to have it all in hand. They sure taught this 12-year old girl a thing or two...
posted by kevincmurphy at 10:44 AM PST - 8 comments
It's that time of year again...
Here's a friendly reminder. When you go caroling this holiday season, be sure to get all your copyrights in a row before venturing about the neighborhood. You never know when someone might turn you in.
[caution, the preceding was laced with sarcasm]
posted by ZachsMind at 7:42 AM PST - 1 comments
November 17
More dating webloggers.
Online journallers, really:
Stephanie polled her readers as to whether she should go out with
Mike. They voted overwhelmingly in favor, and now she's traveled from Detroit to Columbus to meet him. Everyone's watching with bated breath. Well, every one of their readers, anyway ... but
five thousand people voted in her poll.
posted by dhartung at 2:23 PM PST - 22 comments
The AAA
is best known for free maps, 24-hr towing, jumpstarting cars, and now,
ruining the environment. Opposing auto pollution controls? Funding highway construction lobbying groups? Against airbags? Did
you know what the AAA was really up to?
posted by mathowie at 11:47 AM PST - 10 comments
Gore good, pull down menus bad.
Jakob no likey drop down menus. I searched and could find no reference to the newest Alertbox. It may not necessarily be a hot topic but I have to agree with Mr. Nielsen. Pull down menus suck especially the ones created by CSS. Web design should not try to function like an operating system interface or a republican political campaign.
Did I include enough politics for this post?
posted by Brilliantcrank at 11:30 AM PST - 18 comments
In the other important election still to be decided:
The Canadian Alliance Party and their creationist leader, Stockwell Day, is proposing that if 3% of the Canadian electorate request it, the government should be obliged to hold a referendum on just about any issue. Up until now, many Canadians had been concerned that under a Alliance regime they would be facing endless referenda on limiting abortion rights, immigration, banning gay marriage, native rights, and so on. It was a sad, depressing prospect, as anyone living in Quebec knows.
Last week, however, the CBC television program This Hour Has 22 Minutes found a "hidden issue" I and many other "silent Canadians" can support: changing Mr. Day's first name from Stockwell to Doris.
If you are a Canadian citizen, add your name at the 22 Minutes Web site.
posted by tranquileye at 8:00 AM PST - 20 comments
The end is near.
Judge Terry Lewis rules that Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris can disregard recounts in Florida counties.
posted by m.polo at 7:45 AM PST - 10 comments
With winter and the holiday season fast approaching, let's get the annual
snowcraft link out of the way. Shockwave plug-in required.
posted by alan at 6:57 AM PST - 4 comments
Irony is out; sincerity is in.
Is it true? Is irony dead? Is sarcasm passé? Have we finally snarked out once and for all? If so, what place will our beloved ironists (and sarcastinators) have in this new Age of Earnestness?
posted by Byun-o-matic at 1:20 AM PST - 31 comments
November 16
More Fun With the Electoral College!
What's most disturbing isn't that it may be weeks or months before we actually know who won the election. I mean who cares? Neither of these guys represent
you. They both suck. The disturbing part is that it is actually possible the voices of hundreds of thousands of Florida voters
might not be heard at all!
posted by ZachsMind at 10:38 PM PST - 14 comments
from the front page of CNN:
"....Circuit Judge...has scheduled a....hearing to issue a ruling on whether Florida Secretary of State....used her best discretion in deciding...." And my question for the legal experts here: how can a judge rule on matters of discretion? I thought Marbury vs. Madison dealt with a similar situation and that courts didn't decide political matters.
posted by greyscale at 9:39 PM PST - 9 comments
More nonsense
from everyone's favorite biased
website.
They screw up their own point of course:
"The surge of presidential candidates in the wake of Revision 11 had little impact on counties that use more sophisticated voting procedures and don't have to worry about crowded ballot space."The problem is with the outdated voting procedures, not with third parties.
posted by Mr. skullhead at 8:17 PM PST - 5 comments
ICANN announces new international TLDs
Apparently they resolved the problem of businesses buying up their domain names in the new namespaces by choosing TLDs that
no one would want. Visit me at www.rattanchairs.info! My personal web site is www.ryan.name...
posted by rschram at 5:10 PM PST - 12 comments
union.amazon.com ?
Customer service reps at Amazon.com are trying to form a union. Amazon says "We don't have unions at Amazon and don't really need them".
posted by owillis at 2:01 PM PST - 8 comments
New dinosaur named for Michael Crichton
Chinese researcher Dong Zhiming named a newly-identified Jurassic herbivore "Crichton's Ankylosaur". Jurassic Park is responsible for a great deal of the current interest in palaeontology, so this seems appropriate.
posted by Mars Saxman at 1:56 PM PST - 5 comments