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July 2001 Archives
July 31
How many recent metafilter threads can you spot in this story? It seems no matter you become famous (or infamous) you need a spokesperson. Just in case you are ever sans spokesperson and standing naked before the ravenous third estate this article gives you a few canned sound bites.
Look in a mirror and say these six lines with a straight face:
"The best thing for everyone involved is to achieve closure and move on..."posted by rdr at 10:36 PM PST - 2 comments
john cusack for president Why Shouldn't John Cusack be President?
He made the tough decisions in Grosse Pointe Blank.
He couldn't be bought in Eight Men Out.
He's cooler than John Malkovich
And we like his politics so far.
interesting. what actor do you think should be president? and why?
posted by bwg at 10:26 PM PST - 57 comments
PacBell seeks to secure a monopoly Californians urged to contact the PUC to put the brakes on PacBell's plan to kill the independent ISP.
Should they be allowed to take their toys and go home or be forced to share? And, what effect will this have on the future of tech companies if PacBell is able to lock out DSL competition?
posted by sillygit at 9:06 PM PST - 6 comments
B&O goes virtual : Beoplayer 1.0 is a Windows application that sits on your desktop and, like everything Bang, works in a sleek, elegant, unintuitive manner (until you learn what the icons and doodads do, then you can show it off for all your friends). Guaranteed you've never seen a music player like this one.
posted by honkzilla at 7:32 PM PST - 14 comments
Cheat! Win a new car! Ford's website tie-in to the NASCAR race series looks fairly normal on first glance. It's a contest that offers prizes (Grand Prize a new Taurus) based on picking the top Ford finishers in each week's race. However, the website is riddled with issues. Enough issues that no one should win a prize when all is said and done. More inside:
posted by machaus at 5:44 PM PST - 4 comments
Pity The Poor TV Broadcaster It was obvious that Personal Video Recorders (like Tivo) were going to make it way easy to skip advertising. What I also realized, though, when talking to
Lane about how
Buffy is moving from the WB to UPN, is that folks who watch
Buffy via a PVR could care less what channel it is on--they just tell the machine to "get me
Buffy" and it does the rest. This study seems to affirm that, for a significant portion of the audience, this is true.
posted by peterme at 4:48 PM PST - 24 comments
Stories like this one always seems to bring a smile to my face. For the record, this is the second time in the last few years that some stupid (or very desperate) criminal has tried to rob a doughnut shop in the Chicago land area. You'd think that the concept alone would stop a would-be assailant, but I guess truth
is stranger than fiction.
posted by Bag Man at 4:26 PM PST - 15 comments
Netninja Photo Contest There's a little more than a week or so left in the contest, and I doubt it's going to be the next All Your Base, but it looks like fun. Hell, I'm entering.
posted by dincognito at 3:56 PM PST - 2 comments
Scient and iXL Merge ...and I'm wondering who thinks this is a really good idea. A big part of the problem these "iBusiness" consultancies have is that they're too big. Remember all those layoffs? It's in large part because of big overhead, which is a big problem in a tight market. So what problem is being solved by making these two companies into one bigger company?
posted by peterme at 3:48 PM PST - 14 comments
The War on Drug Wars. "Ashkan Sahihi is a photographer who is infuriated by the hypocrisy of the war on drugs. It is this hypocrisy that inspired Sahihi to take eleven people out of their daily environments, get them high, and photograph them."
Does this project warrant attention as a political statement, as an art project, as all of the above, or as none of the above? Please explain your answer. Partial credit will be given.
posted by conquistador at 12:07 PM PST - 23 comments
The Bush Dyslexicon Ever since the presidential campaign, George W. Bush's adventures in the English language have alternately amused and horrified the nation. But according to media scholar Mark Crispin Miller's scathing new book, The Bush Dyslexicon, to conclude merely that Bush is dimwitted would be a grave mistake. The President's linguistic fumbles, argues Miller, mask a deep and shrewd political vindictiveness; at the same time, the shallowness revealed in Bush's unscripted remarks has been largely ignored or coddled by a national media more interested in soundbites than in political substance.I don't know what is more frightening: that this guy is right, and we have much more to fear about Bush, Jr. than we thought...or that he is wrong, and we do indeed live in a land whose president is an imbecile.
posted by mapalm at 11:23 AM PST - 54 comments
Special Delivery Like a plot out of a movie (or TV show):
"You know, my daddy's name was Johnny Johnson," Simmons said, figuring that it was little more than a coincidence.
The man paused for a moment and then asked Simmons what his name was. When Simmons told him, he saw tears well up in the man's eyes.
"David, is that really you?" the man asked, his voice quivering.
Link courtesy
Obscure Store.
posted by internal at 10:56 AM PST - 13 comments
He sees dead people. (NYT link) John Edward, host of Sci Fi channel's "Crossing Over", can "read" his audience and pass messages from the deceased. Or is it just like a game of 20 questions? After a few questions he can make guesses and be close enough to right that people believe it. Have you ever seen the show, and do you believe him? Have you ever been read by a psychic? Do you have psychic powers yourself?
posted by msacheson at 9:59 AM PST - 60 comments
Taliban seeks "friendship" with the U.S. Despite their myriad human rights violations and long-standing involvement in a brutal and bloody civil war, the Afghani Taliban government wants to open diplomatic relations with the U.S. Is there really anything to gain by having friendly relations with a nation under UN sanction which treats their own with brutality and has threatened and defied us at every turn?
posted by Dreama at 9:23 AM PST - 15 comments
New web site helps Venezuelans emigrate. The website
www.mequieroir.com, which means "I want to leave" in Spanish, offers advice on foreign visa regulations, work permits and even culture and climate for citizens of whatever age who are considering emigrating. Its pages cite recent opinion polls that show that more than 30 percent of Venezuela's 24 million inhabitants would emigrate if they had the opportunity.
posted by 120degrees at 9:21 AM PST - 5 comments
July 30
The Agony and the Ecstasy It's a thin line between torture and titillation... these exhibits always get tremendous audience turn out. How many people have a little de sade within, I wonder?
posted by christina at 9:05 PM PST - 11 comments
Jordanian king pulls a Princess Jasmine. According to the report, King Abdullah II occasionally dons a disguise and slips out of his palace to mingle with the plebes and check up on the efficiency of government offices. What a cool idea. I picture George W. disguising himself as a migrant farm worker and applying for welfare.
Nah...the Bally loafers would probably give him away...
posted by Bixby23 at 8:33 PM PST - 4 comments
Should Election Day be a holiday? Vote, then do some barbecue and watch fireworks... Will this be the development that could increase voter turnout, or will people just waste the day away? How else could voter turnout be improved?
posted by owillis at 5:14 PM PST - 63 comments
Microsoft vs. AOL Gee, who do you root for in this one? Personally, I'd love to see a Pay-Per-View kickboxing match between Steve Case and Bill Gates.
posted by Rastafari at 3:22 PM PST - 3 comments
The Princess Bride... "In the 1980s, a timeless story was brought to life... after over a decade, it has returned... the most anticipated remake in a generation... in a way it has never been seen before."
And that's an understatement.
posted by silusGROK at 2:14 PM PST - 29 comments
In some places on this planet, even 'Tolkienists' are being arrested Tolerance for alternative lifestyles is apparently non-existent in Almaty, Kazakstan. "Almaty's police are resorting to torture in their war against Kazakstan's burgeoning bohemian counter-culture. Their targets are a growing army of street musicians, alternative artists, a cult devoted to Tolkien, anarchists and gays, whose unconventional lifestyles infuriate them."
Go here for more on the
Tolkienists.
posted by Lynsey at 2:06 PM PST - 10 comments
A major advance in genetically modified foods. Developed with government funding, and intended eventually to be given away to farmers, there has been a major success in the use of salt water to irrigate crops. They've developed a tomato which grows fine in salt water or on salty soil. Thousands of lives will be saved in parts of the world where fresh water for irrigation is scarce, including up to one third of the arable land in India where salt has been accumulating. Interestingly, these tomatoes are so good at what they do that they remove salt from the soil, improving it. The genetic modification which was done to these tomatoes should be possible with many other crops, including especially rice (on which major effort in Egypt is underway now).
posted by Steven Den Beste at 1:28 PM PST - 39 comments
Marijuana use legal for terminally ill "Canada became the first country in the world on Monday to allow terminally ill patients to grow and smoke their own marijuana, overriding protests from doctors who said the decision could put them in an awkward situation."
posted by sylloge at 12:46 PM PST - 6 comments
Geocaching is a way to put your useless GPS device, and your lazy internet to work for your important fun needs. People hide Stuff on earth, and mark the spot. Publish the coordinates, and you go find the stuff. Sometimes toys and cameras are involved. Link via my good friend
J.Bu, who probably did not realize he was giving away a perfectly good Old School style MeFi post.
posted by thirteen at 11:14 AM PST - 26 comments
Slate's Mickey Kaus and the
Washington Post ask the question: For all the claims of illegal monopolies and unfair advantage, is the tech industry counting on Microsoft and Windows XP's Oct. 25 release to save its bacon?
posted by rcade at 8:30 AM PST - 19 comments
Another blog-tracking tool... Although I am braced for mefi attack for posting this one ("non-story - there are other web log trackers" etc, etc), I'm interested to hear what me-fier's think about the ultimate viability of such a product. Is a comprehensive weblog crawler a viable product? Would google-like algorithms work? What would this mean for said "memes" and their proliferation on the net? Further, is there a potential for a "commodification of the meme?" Would the corporates, in the style of
viral marketing gimmicks
("I Kiss you!"), use such a "meme tracker" to identify and exploit net culture
"hot spots?"posted by preguicoso at 7:31 AM PST - 23 comments
This NYT article on the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), written by Prof. Lawrence Lessig (author of an excellent
book on copyright law and policy in the digital age), raises concerns that were academic prior to the recent
arrest of a Russian software programmer at a Las Vegas computer security convention for violation of the act's
Sec. 1201(a)(1)(A)'s anticircumvention provision.
Is Lessig right that Sec. 1201 essentially makes coders (and their employers) into
de facto lawmakers and, if so, is this a bad thing? If Sec. 1201 is bad policy, are there any more reasonable alternatives for effectively protecting access to software and/or providing negative incentives for the unauthorized use of software? (NYT article, registration required)
posted by estopped at 7:19 AM PST - 16 comments
I guess we'll walk. Much of eastern Canada is currently in the grip of one of the worst summers for smog on record, and a recent poll showed that 58 per cent of Canadians support the idea of limiting car use on smoggy days. However, just 37 per cent said they were willing to pay more taxes in order to improve public transportation.
posted by tranquileye at 5:02 AM PST - 14 comments
Did the Viking landers find life on Mars 25 years ago? Some scientists think so. I have too much faith in planetary scientists and
the newly minted field of exobiology, to believe this is a just a ploy to
rekindle waning public interest in space exploration. I think this is
genuine 20/20 hindsight coupled with better scientific understandings of life
existing in the extreme hinterlands of possibility. . .
posted by crasspastor at 12:00 AM PST - 29 comments
July 29
So bad its good? Or just a crime against humanity? Its the Star Wars Holiday Special, starring Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill and Beatrice Arthur(!!). Also starring Chewbacca's father Itchy and his son Lumpy.
posted by BoatMeme at 8:02 PM PST - 12 comments
Murder on Swan's Island Not a Stephen King story or a
Murder She Wrote episode, but a real tragedy in a real small town in Maine (not far from my home town) where the deaths of two people change the lives of an entire community forever. It set me thinking ... how would this story be different if set in Boston, or LA, or London? Would the pain and loss for those who knew Jamie and Stacy be the same? Or is it magnified by the close-knit family that makes up a rural island township?
posted by anastasiav at 6:45 PM PST - 4 comments
'If I didn't save this music no one else would' Fascinating story of one man's fight to preserve to music of an entire continent. Imagine if the
American or British music of the 1940s and 1950s, so beloved by movie producers and commercial makers hadn't been available since then. 'Blue Velvet' stuck in a basement somewhere covered in dust. The only copy of 'Sixteen Candles' in a junk shop somewhere slowly warping in the sun. It really doesn't bare thinking about...
posted by feelinglistless at 6:39 AM PST - 6 comments
July 28
The Economist calls for the legalization of drugs in this editorial. Plus these
articles [per A&LD]. We are always led to believe that only fringe (read criminal and self-interested) elements favor this course...does anyone know any other "mainstream" groups/people with the nerve to publicly state their support? Or better yet, an online list of same.
posted by rushmc at 11:39 AM PST - 20 comments
U.S. Gov't: IF communists attack THEN GOTO communism: The plans that the federal government had developed for salvaging the state in the event of a nuclear attack on the United States by the Soviet Union would have added mass starvation and social extinction to the mass devastation of nuclear war by imposing martial law and a federal dictatorship running the country from the top down.
posted by dagny at 11:09 AM PST - 13 comments
Best. Quote. Ever. "Only a man can be a woman the way a man wants a woman to be." I was looking at
FilePile, and it seems to be not working right now, so I went to Google's
image surfer for an image of a bone, because FilePile is "boned", right? And that found, among other things, "big-boned", which led to a
transvestite supply site (because some transvestites are a little big-boned, I guess), which led to that choice quote. Man, the internet is all, like, connected and stuff.
posted by RylandDotNet at 8:23 AM PST - 7 comments
They've got it all: "Pro-White America First" candidates! The VP candidate in her underwear! The man Pat Buchanan denounced as ''crude, obscene, vile and bigoted in the extreme''! Yes, kids, the Reform Party is alive and kicking, and holding their convention in my hometown. Hold onto your hats.
posted by ChrisTN at 7:41 AM PST - 7 comments
July 27
House votes to restore water arsenic standards. Gee, I don't know. Whose opinion might be more valid, the Republicans or the National Academy of Science? Not that the NAS is suddenly perfect but the recent attempts to put major spin on science, especially in global warming, is an unsettling trend.
posted by skallas at 8:51 PM PST - 5 comments
It's like a paycheck advance, not a rebate. You thought the great tax relief of 2001 was a rebate on those huge surpluses the US gov't didn't know what to do with right? Nope, it's merely an advance on the refund of taxes you'll file next year, and here's the kicker: you may or may not be getting any refund at all next year. Tax relief? Tax rebate? Simply owing the $300 back next April? Who came up with this stupid idea? (truth courtesy of
Megnut)
posted by mathowie at 6:50 PM PST - 44 comments
Stolen shamelessly from
Tom: a charming
clock, reminding us once again that "time" is an intellectual concept meaningless without human participation... (Don't miss
the webserver, either.) Considering the depth and breadth - and apparent copious free time - of the MeFi community one would hope we'd be able to
help fill in some of the still
unphotographed minutes.
posted by m.polo at 6:29 PM PST - 3 comments
400ml Graffiti - great graffiti art from some of the best taggers the world has ever known. how on earth did they do
that with
spraypaint? absolutely incredible.
posted by mcsweetie at 3:13 PM PST - 6 comments
Tron returns with a vengeance. With a theatrical sequel, a 20th anniversary DVD and a first-person PC shooter, you have to wonder why Disney is rollling out the red carpet all of a sudden.
posted by ed at 1:51 PM PST - 34 comments
higher IQ = longer life span A study in the British Medical Journal shows a link between IQ and longevity. 2200 children were tracked from childhood to the age of 76. A 15-point disadvantage in IQ meant the child was only 79% as likely to be alive at 76. A 30-point disadvantage reduced the odds to 63%.
*link found at darwin awardsposted by bwg at 12:18 PM PST - 12 comments
Colin Powell in cabaret performance in Viet Nam. "As Powell acted out his death throes at the end of the song, [Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko] Tanaka - in traditional Vietnamese dress - flung her arms around his prostrate body and kissed him on the cheek." Apparently these kinds of performances are regular occurences at these things.
posted by donkeymon at 11:20 AM PST - 16 comments
Who did it? Probably the only reality show with a bit of a brain,
Murder in Small Town X has a group of "investigators" who must find a murderer by way of searching for clues and interviewing the townspeople. The first episode comes on again Sunday.
posted by owillis at 10:23 AM PST - 8 comments
What? The sky isn't falling! It's just an acorn! John Kelso, Austin's foremost professional Texan, writes today about the Austin-California grudge match. (In Austin, it's
de rigeur to blame the Cal-dot-commers-cum-Texans for the city's growing pains. It's also a tad accurate.) He also gripes about a silly SF gate
Flash site where you can
turn the lights out on Austin. The guy's a crank -- and he can't write a column without mentioning Bubbas, chili, or vegetarians -- but this is a perfect example of Texas' head-in-the-sand attitude towards a possible energy crisis. And the rest of the country's, maybe.
posted by mudbug at 9:53 AM PST - 23 comments
Another stupid parent story, without which your day just wouldn't be complete. Mother and Stepfather, who lobbied for a stricter definition of 'rape' in Ohio, are charged with raping their daughter (via artificial insemination). I hate people.
posted by mudbug at 9:40 AM PST - 22 comments
paris is a mess this year and anyhow, everyone goes there, and all you meet are more americans. I recently discovered the
Allier region, and it's got wine, castles, beautiful scenery and hardly any tourists. What is your favorite "hidden" travel spot?
posted by christina at 8:16 AM PST - 15 comments
The Day My Car Ratted Me Out. Dear Winston Smith,
Your 1984 Corvette has informed us that over the past month, you have failed to obey the speed limit 36 times, at times reaching speeds exceeding 130 MPH. As A result, we feel that we can no longer provide you with coverage. We have also supplied this information to the proper authorities, their jackbooted thugs should be in your driveway momentarily. Thank you.
INGSOC Insurance
First it was the rental car companies, now it is GM and the Insurance companies. This is the top of a very slippery slope of privacy issues and technology, specifically GPS.
WAR IS PEACE, FREEDOM IS SLAVERY, and, IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.
posted by hotdoughnutsnow at 7:45 AM PST - 45 comments
Turn your webwasher off for
this link.
I hate banner ads, which is why I use webwasher, they're annoyingly large, wasteful, and don't work. The reason they are dying and taking the rest of the dot-com industry along with them.
I don't know much about Hondas or cars all entirely, but prius seems like a good idea, better fuel efficiency saves on money and doesn't pollute as much. The reason I like the ad though, is it's not intrusive, it doesn't have a 200k gif of a windows alert box telling you 'your connected is too slow. CLICK HERE to make it faster OK', it doesn't blink or use flash. It is tailored to a specific audience, people that look up directions and drive their cars, the product that the company sells.
I hope this is the future of advertising on the web, but then again, how exactly are you suppose to fish out people to buy your 'ultra small hidden bathroom cameras'?
posted by tiaka at 7:08 AM PST - 21 comments
M.I.T. Physicist Says Pentagon Is Trying To Silence Him. (NYTimes, registration required) So, it appears that the Pentagon commissions a panel to "review" ("refute"?) a contrary assessment of antimissile technology, but when an unintended byproduct of that review is
more criticism of said technology, they pull this little snow job? I guess we've heard this song before, but it's still laughable. Interesting comment from the Brass: "just because it is made public doesn't mean it's declassified." I guess he must mean "authorized", because for my money, that's
exactly what it means.
posted by topolino at 1:06 AM PST - 13 comments
July 26
Tom Lehrer Retires – Tom Lehrer has finally hung it up as a math lecturer at my alma mater, UC Santa Cruz. I couldn't find a web link specifically about that, but thought it was OK to use a link about the man himself. My Banana Slug Bulletin said he retired so it must be true.
posted by Kafkaesque at 10:09 PM PST - 10 comments
Kiss your Porn-E-Okie goodbye! Chicken John, one of San Francisco's leading promoters of cool underground happenings, recently purchased the Odeon Bar. His idea? To provide a space for artistic, creative performances that don't fit in with the mainstream. One of his successes has been Porn-E-Okie, outlandishly cheesy karaoke performances accompanied by custom-edited porn videos. It's an experience that is part comedy, part performance art. It certainly puts songs like "
Hit Me With Your Best Shot" in an entirely new light...
Well, thanks to the efforts of the SFPD, Porn-E-Okie is now a felony crime in San Francisco. To obtain his liquor license, Chicken John had to sign a paper promising to never do Porn-E-Okie again as it constitutes "willful and wanton disregard of public welfare and morals". In San Francisco? Are you kidding me?! The police must *love* the Castro...
I might as well add Mayor Willie Brown and President of the Board of Supervisors Tom Ammiano to my address book, because this kind of SFPD stupidity still seems entirely too common.
posted by insomnia_lj at 8:34 PM PST - 9 comments
Windsor McKay (of "Little Nemo in Slumberland" fame) and
George Herriman (of "Krazy Kat" and "Archie & Mehitabel") weren't just innovative, influential cartoonists; they were also pioneering animators. The Library of Congress'
Origins of American Animation project has downloadable short films by McKay (including his celebrated
Gertie the Dinosaur) and Herriman as well as others from the early, early days of animated film.
posted by snarkout at 3:57 PM PST - 7 comments
You go, Tom!
"The roll call was a feather in [Tom] Daschle's cap as he managed to prevail in his first effort as majority leader to stop a Republican filibuster."
Senator Tom Daschle (from South Dakota, no less), one of the only Democrats who still has guts. (Where are ye, Harkin? Where hast thou gone, Wellstone?)
posted by mapalm at 2:56 PM PST - 11 comments
German satanic couple held after ritual murder Nothing better to create hits than this.
It has: devil-worshipping, satanic killing, with 66 machete and hammer wounds, "The victim was no longer recognisable", DNA analysis to discover his identity, black oak coffin, upturned crosses, Nazi SS rune stones, Count Dracula's castle, walls were covered in black cloths, "When Satan Lives", July 6, a date supposedly chosen for the satanic symbolism of number six, The shaven-headed, body-pierced Daniel and his pink-haired, leather-clad bride Manuela, occult chat-line....
I'll stop now, but there's more....
posted by nonharmful at 2:20 PM PST - 11 comments
Imminant death of net predicted. Good, the fad-followers can go on to whatever's next and the real geeks can take their Jolt back to their cubicles and go back to arguing about the One True Indentation Style.
posted by jfuller at 2:10 PM PST - 9 comments
The Hindu nationalist group Bajrang Dal name a puppy George Bush. This isn't meant to be a complimentary act... it's in reaction to their discovery that the Bushes' cat's name is India (short for India Ink). They've taken this as an insult to the nation, and have retaliated with the puppy.
I'm kind of curious about what this tells about Indian naming practices and significances, as compared to those in the US. Could someone more familiar with Hindu/Indian culture please enlighten me as to why they'd feel so insulted?
posted by jason at 10:22 AM PST - 36 comments
Net Detective 2001 can help you find "EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about your friends, family, neighbors, employees, and even your boss! You can even check out yourself. It is all completely legal, and you can do it all in the privacy of your own home without anyone ever knowing. It's even better than hiring a private investigator."
A friend of mine who is still unsure of the security of the Internet was curious about a spam he received and forwarded me. I wrote it off immediately as typical rubbish spam but decided to investigate it. I searched for it in Google only to find the same web page on many different sites.
I haven't tried installing it, just seems a bit too dodgy and I don't want to risk my computer's security, but has anyone heard about this program? I assumed it was some sort of scam but couldn't find anything about it in that sense.
posted by Jase_B at 6:21 AM PST - 14 comments
T new that "Niggaz" stuff would lead to no good.... "
And now, flush with grant money from a fellowship supported by Jewish big shots like Steven Spielberg, Charles Bronfman and others, Ms. Bleyer and her post-collegiate buddies are busily working on bringing this new cool-Jew magazine to life. The first issue is due in January. They have assigned some articles and taken some photos, and they also have a title: Heeb, as in the old ethnic slur, short for "Hebrew." "
posted by BGM at 12:23 AM PST - 27 comments
These two teachers had the nerve to expose more kids to AP English classes, their reward? Removal from the program by a principal. How can teachers persevere when the parents and/or administration are both set against them?
posted by owillis at 12:17 AM PST - 19 comments
July 25
D.A.R.E Essays: 20 Years In the Future. "After getting addicted to marijuana, I tried angle dust, heroin, and other dangerous drugs that could kill me. A couple of days after my 17th birthday I joined a gang. Well anyway, the way I got killed was in a gang fight. P.S. If you ever read this I hope that you never go down the same path I did. You should stay in school and don't do drugs." Right.posted by Mark at 7:17 PM PST - 27 comments
Music as heard in commercials
Debate over whether the artists are selling out or not aside, there are some fairly great and obscure artists featured in TV commercials these days. As has been pointed out before, it's a sad thing when I'm consistantly hearing better music on MTV during the commercials.
posted by GriffX at 6:47 PM PST - 60 comments
AMTRAK still off-track (NY Times link) Even before living in France I loved trains. So it pains to read that AMTRAK is
stillheading towards its last run. Do you progressive, SUV-hating Mefi people have any thoughts on how AMTRAK might get its act together (or whether it's all SUV-futile)?
posted by ParisParamus at 5:58 PM PST - 32 comments
Iceman the Bronze Age hunter whose 5,300-year-old frozen body was discovered in the Alps.. cause of death found.. ``Maybe there was a combat, maybe he was in a battle. There is a whole series of new implications. The story needs to be rewritten.''
posted by stbalbach at 4:07 PM PST - 5 comments
Senator wants two-drink limit on planes Air lines and flight attendants opposed even if it might slow down air rage. I guess that, like sporting events and the movies, this is a great was to pull in big bucks. If thiws bill passes in congress, Iwill never fly again!
posted by Postroad at 2:50 PM PST - 23 comments
NY Senator wants XP's release delayed and
The Register writes a somewhat humourous article about it (as usual). Excerpt:
"It appears that Microsoft intends to maximize its monopolistic power, using XP as a platform to enter new lines of business while encumbering competitors," Schumer said, rooting deep into the 'I just sussed out Redmond's business strategy; let's arrange a press conference' archive.posted by DyRE at 12:48 PM PST - 1 comments
Condoms don't really work? According to this study conducted by a panel of 10, 000 physicians,
while condoms are 85 percent effective in helping prevent the spread of HIV, they offer less protection against sexually transmitted diseases such as gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis and genital herpes. The worst part? They claim the CDC has known this for years.
posted by summer1971 at 11:37 AM PST - 45 comments
The Incarceration Atlas. Everyone's probably familiar with the usual stat that America has the world's highest rate of incarceration, but there are some other pretty interesting numbers here too, touching on some Metafilter favorites - race, education and drugs.
(more inside...)posted by stavrosthewonderchicken at 12:53 AM PST - 12 comments
July 24
Man goes to jail for writing pornographic thoughts about children in his journal. Read carefully and you'll notice he was on probation. Even so -- doesn't this go too far?
Yes, says Philip Jenkins over at nerve.com. (Found on
A & L Daily.)
posted by argybarg at 11:10 PM PST - 33 comments
Gauguin the one who cut off Van Gogh's ear? Favorite line: "When Gauguin, then aged 40 - and still the only other colony member - announced one evening his intention to leave, Van Gogh, 35, was livid. They appear to have had a blazing row, fuelled by absinthe and other alcohol."
Sounds like an episode of "Cops," only in 1888.
posted by sassone at 9:54 PM PST - 33 comments
My house's windows just rattled from a sonic boom, so that means
the space shuttle's home again. I kind of forget about these things until a little visceral something like that brings you back in touch. Int'l Space Station that much closer to completion. Living in the future is cooooool.
posted by logovisual at 9:43 PM PST - 8 comments
Quid pro quo anyone?
Secretary of State Katherine Harris, who was at the center of Florida's disputed presidential election last year, will run for Congress in 2002, a top Republican official said Tuesday.posted by dchase at 5:03 PM PST - 16 comments
It's not up to the standards of the beating that Rodney King took, but it seems less called for than the punch
John Prescott threw. A policeman in Wakefield (UK) is videoed applying some, uh,
instant justice.
posted by Cuppatea at 3:28 PM PST - 2 comments
Female athlete to pose nude. Suddenly popular. Lisa Harrison is unknown outside of basketball until she wins "Sexiest Babe in the WNBA" contest at Playboy.com. What is the worst aspect of this story?
(1) That Playboy.com actually has a "sexiest babe" contest;
(2) That the WNBA has a "morals policy" in every player contract that prevents them from upsetting the "family values" image of the league; or
(3) That Ms. Harrison is considering posing for the magazine because the money she will make is likely to quadruple her annual salary. Or, is all of this just "adults being adults" and nobody should care?
posted by conquistador at 2:51 PM PST - 18 comments
teoma is an interesting new search engine (via
boingboing). However, if
this is any indication of its searches, count me out (check out the first result).
posted by bison at 2:35 PM PST - 8 comments
(In)famous anti-gay site hacked (
copy) - The defacement says, in part, "
nothin against 'First Amendment hosting' we support u just not some of ur sites". So if I understand correctly, they support the first amendment as long as they agree with what is being said? Doesn't this seem a poor form of protest?
posted by revbrian at 9:23 AM PST - 24 comments
Cables, Cables, Cables
I got to thinking last night about all those cables lying along the ocean floor.
This is a fascinating article on the history of telephonic cables; while
this one adds a bit more color, and several interesting paintings.
"As history shows, the demand for undersea network capacities will only increase. There's no such thing as too much cable."
posted by mapalm at 8:45 AM PST - 18 comments
The Googlematic AIMBOT will only work for those of you with Instant Messager installed, of course. A profoundly useful little widget knocked together by
Matt Webb allows you to do
very quick and easy
Google 'I feel lucky' searches from the comfort of your own Buddy list. Launched yesterday, I think it's a hell of a lot more useful than either
SmarterChild or
GooglyMinotaur as well as rather better conversation than any of the AIM chatbots I've found to date...
posted by barbelith at 5:29 AM PST - 52 comments
July 23
UnderEZ by UnderTec Under-Tec Corp presents a new product to eliminate the foul odor caused by flatulence. Under-Ease are a patented protective underwear with a specially designed pocket with replacable multi-layered filter.
certainly seems to be a marketable product. i'm thinking that beyond the geriatric set this appears to be aimed at, it might be useful for those sunday afternoon football games, when all the guys are huddled around the t.v., drinking beer and eating doritos...
posted by bwg at 11:04 PM PST - 7 comments
Megawati is in, but Abdurrahman Wahid is not out...yet. News from the world's fourth most populous nation.
With two bombs planted in churches in Jakarta this week injuring 60 people and Wahid likening his struggle with parliament to a "jihad"...I have to confess that my, er, decison to take the family to Bali next month is looking a tad iffy at the moment.
posted by lagado at 7:31 PM PST - 11 comments
Scientists are making DNA that uses letters other than AGCT
Underlying the chemicals is a code. DNA is composed of pairs of four types of proteins. This project at Scripps Research Institute is attempting to design a DNA which uses different proteins to convey genetic information. The ultimate goal would be to have a functioning organism with a genetic code that uses a different "alphabet" to "communicate" the same "message" You know what this means? If they can get it to work, language wins! The world will truly be proven to be a "discursive" formation. (The language metaphor comes courtesy of the
NYT, but I believe it is more than apt.)
posted by rschram at 6:21 PM PST - 16 comments
Ok, who's the wise guy who decided to crush-link me? And do you prefer i set you on fire before or push you off of a cliff?
i figured i'd try to find out who it was... i entered about 20 e-mail addresses (support@microsoft.com, asdf@asdf.com, webmaster@goatse.cx... et al), and i had to sign up for 'netflip' and 'start earning cash on the net', and what did i get? two hints. my crush's first name has 6 letters, and their last name has 5. ugh. anyone know how many e-mails you have to feed this thing?!?
posted by jcterminal at 12:15 PM PST - 21 comments
Dan Rather vs. The World (NY Times link) -- While the
conspiracy theorists and much of the mainstream media were jumping down Gary Condit's throat, Rather and company held firm and kept the "news" off the Evening News. Despite airing a few reports, they intend to keep a comparatively low level of coverage in the future. Is this how we'd like to see the media behave, or is this just a more notable example of The Media's Liberal Bias™ showing through?
posted by mrbula at 10:22 AM PST - 31 comments
Seventh seal opened, nytimes.com has a web log
Or is it...? This list of links in a section entitled "According to the Times" is a "Web-only feature highlighting facts and figures culled from the week's news. It appears every Wednesday." It seems to be a scanner of news stories by the NYT, not offsite. I used to think they were cool, but this dogged resistence to trends is making them seem aloof, no? (well, more so than usual...)
I miss CC...posted by rschram at 8:59 AM PST - 5 comments
A Funky little art link. An interesting little page about art by an artist. Read everything on this page and you will slowly walk into the mind of an Artist. Creative, funny, and odd.
posted by aj100 at 7:41 AM PST - 2 comments
Goose-killers suddenly notice absence of golden eggs? With Napster neutralised, the distributed alternatives thriving, and their commercial schemes mired in technological and political difficulties, many record industry execs are quietly wishing they'd done things differently. Should we regret the lost opportunity, or celebrate it as a self-inflicted step towards breaking the stranglehold of the major labels?
posted by holgate at 7:17 AM PST - 19 comments
NTIA to sell admin rights to .us domain Flying mostly under the radar of the mass media, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration is getting ready to sell off admin rights to the .us domain, which has largely been the province of state and local governments and their various departments. Libraries, schools, etc. argue that the namespace is a "public trust" and should not be turned over to the highest bidder for commercial interests.
posted by briank at 6:06 AM PST - 8 comments
July 22
Playing computer games makes kids smarter? Although it reads like a headline from
The Onion, a British study funded by the ESRC has come to that conclusion. "They seemed able to focus on what they were doing much better than other people and also had better general co-ordination. Overall there was a huge similarity with top-level athletes."
Gotta go and show this to my boss...
posted by jedrek at 11:41 PM PST - 11 comments
Avi Ben-Abraham, man of a thousand and one faces: 43-year-old Ben-Abraham . . . has spent the past two decades surfacing, disappearing and resurfacing in the company of presidents, prime ministers, Hong Kong billionaires, European royalty, Hollywood moguls and members of the Kennedy family.
posted by aladfar at 9:37 PM PST - 16 comments
Ashcroft launches C.H.I.P. Computer Hacking and Intellectual Property units to make sure all your licensing is in order, don't have a copy of the DeCSS song, and keeping webpages de-facement free.
posted by skallas at 3:23 PM PST - 14 comments
As a soon to be minted threehundreddollar-inaire, I'm one of more than 90 million Americans who has received notice of my tax rebate on the way. But some 32 million Americans are due no tax rebate, and are now receiving notices in the mail to this effect- a letdown that Democrats are trying to capitalize on. Is the tax break going to backfire on Bush and the Republicans... ? << more inside >>
posted by hincandenza at 12:43 PM PST - 79 comments
This proves my theory that in reality
Fargo is much stranger than the Coen Brothers movie. This is the new way to get people to come to North Dakota: Drive from Florida to knock-over a Super8 motel using, as your threat, an imaginary bomb in a Winnie the Pooh backpack---do all of this to fufill your request to spend the remainder of your life in the country's safest jail.
posted by nathan_teske at 12:10 PM PST - 13 comments
AMC to add commercials? American Movie Classics, a cable TV channel which has for sixteen years been showing classic films without commercial interruptions, is considering adding commercial breaks to movies as early as this year. (The channel already shows commercials before and after movies and in its documentaries, but until now has kept the movies themselves intact.) If you're a movie buff and are distressed by this possibility,
let AMC know about it. (Personally, I think this is a bad idea, if only because it will likely cost them lots and lots of viewers.)
posted by kindall at 9:59 AM PST - 18 comments
Bush, Putin agree on missile talks "GENOA, Italy -- U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin have agreed to tie U.S. plans for building a missile defence shield to talks on reducing nuclear stockpiles. " Arms race averted?
posted by nicolotesla at 9:32 AM PST - 14 comments
Reckless or right? The family that gave birth to septuplets lives in a two bedroom apartment, and the father works as a high school teacher. Was this an irresponsible act on their part? I don't believe only the rich should have children, but shouldn't society expect you (and only you) to have the means to support children you give birth to (within reason)?
posted by owillis at 9:20 AM PST - 45 comments
Italian Police raids Italian Indymedia.org and Genoa Social Forum More information and/or pictures can be found at these links:
MSNBC
CNN
Il Nuovo
Corriere della Sera
According to protesters radio, the Genoa Social Forum is going to release a video that shows police
infiltration in rioters and more police abuse pics.
I believe there that must be no space for violence, unless one is subject to violence against his will.
That's why I believe that policeman had the right to attack protesters to defend themselves and to
defend peaceful protesters. But I think that's it's very difficult to understand what really happened
in this situation.
Apparently one indymedia reporter from UK is now in coma after being beaten from police, and more then
50 protesters were seriously harmed. The police were looking for unsual weapons like maces and usual
weapons like knifes. Police also accused Genoa Social Forum of being a "cover" for the violent protesters.
What do you think about fitting a mini-recorder in every policeman armor ? I think police activity needs
to be recorded because they're the only ones authorized to use violence when necessary but they can also
abuse this power easily when no camera is around.
Remember the police chases scenes you can see on tv ? They're usually made from TV helicopters. I've seen
more then one chase ending with police professionally stopping the chased offender, without doing them
any harm, even if pointing a gun at them. While sometimes I've seen police beating people senseless without
any good reason ; and giving a punch to a policeman, while completely wrong, isn't an action that deservers
over-reaction when 3-4 cops kick the hell out of the offender.
Waiting for your ideas and comments...
posted by elpapacito at 9:20 AM PST - 26 comments
The ultimate online community: a massively-multiplayer online
sex game. Be a dominatrix! Experiment with whips and chains! Sleep around in a place where everyone is beautiful and willing and there is no disease! Pick your own body: you can be the stud or babe of your dreams! Ah, the virtual life for me. (Why are all the samples heterosexual?) (Via
Lum the Mad)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:09 AM PST - 19 comments
July 21
Apple ][ font : The ultimate in retro bitmap. It even includes the mouse text characters so you can "draw" Apple ][-style windows. Neat.
posted by nathan_teske at 4:10 PM PST - 8 comments
"We are a nation of business people, and we find art and artists threatening. Copyright exists, according to the Constitution, 'to promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.'
...the point of copyright is to serve the public good, to make our country a better, more interesting place by giving artists and scientists a financial incentive to keep doing what they're doing. When you get down to the Constitution, artists aren't scary freaks, they're all-American. We just have to keep reminding the courts and Congress of that."
-Nancy Updike, in LA Weekly.
posted by thebigpoop at 2:23 PM PST - 16 comments
I send you this file in order to have your advice. The Sircam worm is spreading at an unbelievable rate, with two interesting bonuses. First, it mass-mails itself to e-mail addresses located in browser cache files (so webloggers with e-mail addresses on their sites are vulnerable). Second, it infects and attaches a random document to the e-mail. If you're careful, this makes it the most entertaining worm yet.
(More inside...)posted by waxpancake at 8:46 AM PST - 50 comments
Blogdex at media.mit.edu (The link may not work, I've gotten through twice now, both times between noon and 4pm PST, but every other time I've tried I've gotten server not available errors.)Does anyone know what this is? The times I got through it looked like an interesting cross tabulation of what is being covered in the web log world, like a handy index for people looking for entries on a certain topic. It was not complete looking when I got in last, the site mostly consisted of the front, and an "about" section, but the front page did have a list of the top ten links being talked about on currently indexed blogs. I found the link in my referer log.
posted by Nothing at 12:22 AM PST - 15 comments
July 20
Are we too tough on crime? "Nationwide, crime rates today are comparable to those of the 1970s, but the incarceration rate is four times higher than it was then. It's not crime that has increased; it's punishment." Yes, of course, people who do bad things should be punished. But is the current system worth the social and economic cost? Is there any better way to go about this? (Note: Lots of interesting internal links within the article.)
posted by edlark at 8:02 PM PST - 27 comments
The EFF gets a meeting with Adobe, but does it come quickly enough? I, for one, am not ready to easily forgive and forget the company's actions, regardless how
strong Adobe's case against him. Keep your eye on the
ball and maybe we'll see a bad law overturned and an injustice corrected.
posted by Kikkoman at 7:17 PM PST - 20 comments
Another flash movie attempts to be both 'witty' and 'clever'. Remember kids, friends don't let friends make crappy flash movies in hopes of becoming the next AYBABTU.
posted by jcterminal at 3:28 PM PST - 23 comments
Nurses have to be virgins. Turkey's health minister says high school girls studying to be nurses must be virgins and the virginity tests he is authorizing will protect the nation's youth from prostitution and underage sex.
posted by nonharmful at 12:02 PM PST - 9 comments
Powell won't serenade his peers at Asian meeting The U.S. Secretary of State has finally found something that's above and beyond the call of duty. And it's a shame, really. I mean, what would his singing voice sound like? I must know! Would it put Vietnam Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien's folk song to shame? Would he have a dusky, husky Barry White purr or a silky Harry Belafonte rasp?
posted by allaboutgeorge at 9:50 AM PST - 7 comments
From The Smoking Gun comes a couple of fabulously funny court orders courtesy of the Honorable Samuel B. Kent of Texas.
First, we have a order denying a motion to transfer (the good stuff starts on page 2, second paragraph). My favorite line:
Defendant will again be pleased to know that regular limousine service is available from Hobby Airport, even to the steps of the humble courthouse, which has got lights, indoor plummin', 'lectric doors, and all sorts of new stuff, almost like them big courthouses back East. The
second one is an equally funny Order or Transfer for the Republic of Bolivia vs. Phillip Morris.
posted by internal at 9:00 AM PST - 17 comments
Germans to build Dracula theme park "German investors and the Romanian
government are planning to develop Dracula Land, a "terror" theme park in Transylvania that officials hope will boost the country's ailing tourism industry"
posted by christina at 7:42 AM PST - 8 comments
Slumping Sales. The RIAA appears to be losing money so far this year because people aren't buying as many cd's and aren't going to as many concerts. It's hard to tell if there's some correlation between the demise of napster and the falling sales or if the numbers are down because the new album's coming out aren't really that good. Personally, I'd say a little bit of both. I haven't purchased many cd's this year, although there are one or two that I plan to pick up in the coming months (only because I've already downloaded the songs and know that it's worth the money).
posted by dave at 6:05 AM PST - 37 comments
Want to Live Rent Free? Get sick. What is a landlord to do when they have the legal right to evict a tenant, follow all of the legal procedures to evict a tenant, and then the judge forces them to allow the tenant to stay, rent free, for an unspecified length of time? How is it that this man's landlord suddenly has to pick up the slack/cost left by government sponsored social services, at a steep personal cost?
At what point do you become responsible for other people's survival?
posted by kristin at 2:01 AM PST - 41 comments
July 19
The Ugly American is becoming harder to distinguish among its European counterparts. What does an American look like, anyway? If you were in a foreign county, could you recognize an American, and if so, how?
posted by Oriole Adams at 3:37 PM PST - 150 comments
Demo Design is neat. Lots of flash to
entertain you. Try the sound section; I feel like I'm Ross from Friends wigging out on my ancient synthesizer, but with modern drum loops. And dig the clock if you click on the middle or right symbols that appear if you click on video.
posted by moz at 3:28 PM PST - 4 comments
The New Sins (Los Pescados Nuevos). A new book/art project/philosophical exploration/satire from David Byrne, in collaboration with McSweeney's. I can't wait to check it out.
See how the whole thing came about. Fawn over Byrne's endless creativity. Rave at more brilliance from the good folks at McSweeney's.
posted by conquistador at 12:23 PM PST - 5 comments
Low Brow is really fun. Sit there and hit the reload button to hear people's tales of woe, misery and wild times. Some pretty funny tales there.
posted by milnak at 12:12 PM PST - 8 comments
Taliban Bans Neckties, Lipstick, Chess
The radio quoted the leader's order as telling border guards and security agencies to seize the banned items and hand them over to the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which acts as the Taliban's religious police.
oh yeah, it has long been known that chess is an evil, evil game...
posted by bwg at 8:56 AM PST - 23 comments
Say, are you looking for some Wacky Zany Goodness? Then try the
Fulifier, which will instantly make
any web page look like it was designed by a 4 year old
or almost anyone in 1996. [
twist of fait]
posted by hijinx at 8:52 AM PST - 4 comments
G8 Backs Middle-East International Observers With the US onboard for the first time, it seems an international monitoring force will be sent to the Palestinian territories to observe the "ceasefire." Positive step towards calm or just another feeble diplomatic attempt from the international community to stem the tide?
posted by chaz at 7:55 AM PST - 8 comments
Archer sentenced to 4 years... This may not mean much to those from outside the UK but there will be celebrations in much of England tonight as the 'Teflon Tory' finally takes fall. Sometimes justice
is done, even to politicians with immense arrogance, money and no apparent morals. The scale of the web of deceit is fascinating and the
ending quite poetic.
posted by Mr Ed at 6:57 AM PST - 19 comments
Graffiti or art Where is the line, and if it was in your street would you mind? - watch out this is flash intensive but well worth it.
posted by kramer_101 at 5:03 AM PST - 56 comments
This is truly awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.
Just the best use of flash, collaborative model/data building and use of interactive interface to explain a complex issue... i.e. the interconnections of money, influence and power in boardrooms of the global economy.
Conceived designed and built by Josh ON and the FutureFarmers
I think it's going to move to a more permanent and snappier URL once it's fully ready for prime-time... I hope Josh and the gang don't mind me posting it here... but it's just too good not too... It genuinely deserves a lot of praise and attention, IMHO.
posted by blackbeltjones at 2:43 AM PST - 24 comments
Hello??? McFly???!!??? Tiny, but remarkable Pro-Bush/global-warming-as-myth protest in Bonn as reported by The Times. 40 deluded rich american kids against the world. Literally. And, no it's not a new reality TV series...
although... I can see it now.... "Protester"(tm)
posted by blackbeltjones at 12:55 AM PST - 44 comments
July 18
You dropped a bomb on me... The movie "
Above & Beyond" was on TCM last night. It is about Col Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb. Surprise: Col Tibbets is still alive, making
appearances & speeches. What do you think goes through his mind when he recalls that fateful day? Would YOU have been able to drop the bomb that ended World War II?
posted by davidmsc at 3:12 PM PST - 92 comments
Prison riot imminent. Film at 11. "Many inmates are heavily invested emotionally in the routine availability of certain types of food," wrote Jovero, a member of the state Food Task Force for prisons. "Prominent among these foods is peanut butter and jelly for religious and vegetarian inmates."
posted by swell at 2:31 PM PST - 14 comments
GAO to Cheney: "Show us what you got!" Ok, well it wasn't that dramatic, but this "demand letter" is one step away from giving the Veep a subpeona. Even right wing attack dog Judicial Watch is getting in with some hot lawsuit action.
posted by owillis at 1:13 PM PST - 4 comments
Amelia Earhart found? TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) has put together an interesting package of evidence, including recent satellite photos, to bolster their claim that Amelia Earhart didn't crash into the sea as previously believed. Do you think that history's mysteries can be solved with circumstantial evidence decades, or centuries after the fact?
posted by headspace at 12:00 PM PST - 8 comments
Jurassic Park III comes out today and is getting surprisingly good reviews (
I'm going to see it in a couple of hours)! Most seem to have the tone of "
Not great cinema, but a fun popcorn-chomper summer movie". Thank god, because this has been a mostly sucky year at the movies so far...
posted by hincandenza at 11:56 AM PST - 41 comments
Warning labels, the volume knobs on small infants, Death By Vending Machine. It's an ever-shifting line in the sand of human stupidity, a vague cultural boundary defining how much we expect our products and corporations to protect us from ourselves and how much we're willing to be answerable for our actions, a line dividing how logic-impaired we're willing to admit we sometimes are and how responsible a given corporation should be for dumping shoddy and/or dangerous products on the market without warning.
Is excessive labeling a release from liability? Is it killing off common sense or the need to have common sense?
posted by th3ph17 at 10:57 AM PST - 52 comments
Compassionate Conservatism? George W Bush has called on the World Bank to
offer more grants (as opposed to loans) to
developing countries. "The needs are many and
undeniable, and they're a challenge to our conscience
and to complacency. A world where some live in comfort
and plenty while half of the human race lives on less than
$2 a day is neither just nor stable." Copied from the always-excellent
NextDraft. NYT registration required.
posted by gd779 at 9:46 AM PST - 11 comments
What if Dubya ran football? Yup, it's another piece of Dubya-bashing. This however, makes no pretence to be anything other than silly. How would Dubya run
your favourite sport? For the intellectual snobs - move along, nothing to see here!
posted by salmacis at 8:59 AM PST - 3 comments
Need free Internet Access? Head to your local library or community center. This page allows you to type in a zipcode and find out where you can access (or learn about) the internet, usually for free. If you know someone in your neighborhood who isn't connected and might like this info, why not print out the page and give it to them?
link spotted at follow me here
posted by chaz at 8:40 AM PST - 6 comments
There was not a cloud in the sky. Scary things afoot near Hartsville, TN. Electric bulbs light in your hand. Birds fried by electric surges midflight. Mysterious police dressed in black. Blown out transformers. And -- a Bigfoot.
posted by jfwlucy at 8:24 AM PST - 16 comments
That's it. No earth-shattering news, no new enclosures, nothing to phone your friends about (unless an unreleased iDVD2, boring-looking [but spiffy]
new G4s and an OSX update 2 months away floats your boat).
Apple CEO Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo keynote
leaves everyone just a bit disappointed.
posted by Marquis at 8:18 AM PST - 31 comments
Take that, web-standards maniacs! "After Windows XP is launched in October, users will be directed to download a plug-in from Microsoft's Web site (www.microsoft.com) to make Java-based programs work. Without this step, 'any Web page that contains Java applications will not run -- it will be a dead page'" Put that in your "this page viewable in v5.0 browsers or later" crackpipe and smoke it. (Shamelessly swiped from that Other Site...)
posted by jfuller at 8:11 AM PST - 21 comments
"New Media, New Arse." BBC News Online is running a week-long series highlighting days and events that signalled the UK's dot-com downturn. (Slightly ironic, as compared to the US, the boom didn't even get started here.) But do you have your own particular moment that sums up the point where boom turned to bust?
posted by holgate at 6:34 AM PST - 13 comments
Loosening the noose... but still leaving the rope around the neck.
"Far from hastening its own demise by allowing the Internet to penetrate its borders, an authoritarian state can actually utilize the Internet to its own benefit and increase its stability by engaging with the technology." An interesting - if not entirely expected - report on Internet access in Cuba and the People's Republic of China.
posted by m.polo at 4:59 AM PST - 2 comments
"Project Echoes Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island" the headline goes. Looks more to me like it echoes "Planet of the Apes."
Nice idea, but can we get a different design, please?
posted by Bixby23 at 12:55 AM PST - 10 comments
Pre-sliced peanut butter: "It's all about convenience." Is this the ultimate in excessive packaging? Or is it a hoax (peanut butter culture not so ingrained in the UK, so I might have missed the clues)?
posted by jonathanbell at 12:31 AM PST - 38 comments
July 17
Behind the Lizzie Grubman story Publicist with clients including Britney Spears
runs SUV into crowd of 15 outside a club. Her dad is a major recording industry attorney, representing Michael Jackson, Sting, Elton John and Bruce Springsteen. But it's not a good enough story to take national? "Missing interns, shark-bitten 8-year-olds and murdered wives of has-been stars are OK, though."
posted by raysmj at 5:21 PM PST - 9 comments
More Bush Bashing Do we really want tweens turning to the
internet for their sex ed
answers. Seems to me after the recent MeFi post on UK kid's misconceptions, the dollars could have been spent on reality, rather than Bush's archaic ideals.
posted by remlapm at 1:00 PM PST - 4 comments
It's that time of year again! Yes kids, it's time once again for the
annual introduction of the Flag-Protection Amendment, currently being debated in the House of Reps. Last year the bill passed the House 305-124 and was defeated in the Senate by only six votes. It's again expected to pass the House and again expected to get shot down in the Senate, but considering the zany sitcom that 21st century American politics has become, who knows what that wacky Legislative branch will do?
posted by Shadowkeeper at 12:29 PM PST - 26 comments
Win XP's Product Activation as a breeze to hack. Provided that RC1 still ships as is and you keep your RAM locked at a fixed number of sticks, it's simply a matter of keeping a backup of a DBL file. For all the ballyhoo, it's amazing that something this obvious slipped under the cracks. With WPA this sloppy, is this the only half-hearted facet of Windows XP?
posted by ed at 12:04 PM PST - 36 comments
Why take vitamins, when you can
wear them? A Japanese company says people will soon be able to get their daily dose of Vitamin C simply by wearing a T-shirt. A T-shirt made out of fibre - called V-up - would have the equivalent vitamin content of two lemons and remain effective after 30 washes.
posted by 120degrees at 11:36 AM PST - 21 comments
Le Tour So, is there any chance the Tour De France will become more popular with US viewers? Or even that our own Tour will reach the interest levels displayed in Europe? I was absolutely on the edge of my seat during Armstrong's rush today, and I'm nothing of a biker.
posted by Kikkoman at 9:38 AM PST - 36 comments
You're Never Too Old to Get HIV!! People over 50 account for 13.4% of 1999 newly diagnosed AIDS cases. But because seniors, who don't think they're at risk to begin with, don't get tested -- the problem may be much bigger than number suggest.
Misconceptions about STDs, multiple partners, and the belief that condoms aren't necessary since pregnancy isn't possible, (and perhaps Viagra?) are contributing to the escalating rate.
posted by jennak at 8:51 AM PST - 3 comments
SynchIt is a bookmark manager that allows you to access your favorites list from multiple machines. However, their server does not seem to be responding.
Since I was out of town (and away from my machine) for all of last week, can anyone tell me what the deal is?
posted by Irontom at 8:50 AM PST - 12 comments
Gay Games VI Under the Gun “What has sparked the concern is a three-page E-mail from the
executive committee of the Federation of Gay Games two weeks ago that
raised the possibility of the 2002 Games being moved or forfeited. The
executive committee of the Federation will visit Sydney from July
21–28 for a status report that will be critical. [...] Also, he said a comparison of Sydney's budget to Amsterdam and New
York is flawed, because using the exchange rate doesn't matter.
‘We're not buying any of our goods and service in the US.... $11 million Australian is still $11 million
Australian.’ ”
posted by joeclark at 8:00 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Smoking creates "indirect positive effects." A report from tobacco giant Philip Morris concluded that the Czech government saved money because of the "indirect positive effects" of the early deaths of cigarette-smokers. PM makes about 80 percent of the cigarettes smoked in the Czech Republic.
Said a Philip Morris spokesman: "Tobacco is a controversial industry, but we are still an industry and sometimes we need some economic data on our industry."
posted by tranquileye at 6:58 AM PST - 39 comments
Surviving your ISP’s Darkest Hour Geoff Duncan: “I’m a somewhat extreme example of this
group, since I not only do everything myself (all the way down to
DNS), I create and sell custom online services to clients. So when
my connection died,
everything I do went with it.”
posted by joeclark at 6:50 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
He's GOT to be kidding -- Citing "the fluctuating and unpredictable nature of utility costs," Cheney lobbies for the Navy to foot his power bills. This from the same guy who's been, shall we say, less than sympathetic to those of us who've been dealing with the exact same problem.
posted by shauna at 5:30 AM PST - 25 comments
Remember the Kursk? It was discussed in length here last year. Now the Russians are going to haul it up, because they don't want US salvage divers to see what their best technology looks like. But the people involved in the rescue attempt last year charge that the haste is risky, and could lead to serious consequences if those reactors were to rupture.
posted by Ezrael at 2:20 AM PST - 15 comments
July 16
Underground marketing shills "put it in your life". Big Fat co. sends 18-34yr olds into the world to act out ad dramas promoting products. "I feel so great, so real." (I'm not sure what the writer means by "facially attractive, in that asymmetrical sort of way," though.)[via
null device, NYT reg. req.]
Ten-day Ubik deodorant spray or Ubik roll-on ends worry of offending, brings you back where the happening is.posted by aflakete at 10:46 PM PST - 12 comments
Tanzania 9th most corrupt country , of course the word here is that they bribed transparency international to place them above kenya.......
according to the director "HIV AIDS is killing millions of Africans, and in many of the countries where AIDS is at its deadliest the problem is compounded by the fact that corruption levels are seen to be very high. While it is imperative that richer countries provide the fruits of medical research at an affordable price to address this human tragedy, it is also essential that corrupt governments do not steal from their own people. This is now an urgent priority if lives are to be saved."
local traditions don't help either. what this story does not say is that 4,000 girls will be circumsised at this ceremony and the govt/police won't interfere.
posted by quarsan at 10:34 PM PST - 5 comments
Countless
people
have had problems with their
Apple
Airport wireless base stations failing shortly after the one year warranty
ran out.
Adventurous
folks figured out that there was a faulty capacitor in the power
supply, got out their soldering irons, and drilled some ventilation
holes.
Apple is aware
of the issue, and is quietly replacing ABSs that fall within a
specific serial number range, but only if they have failed. So other folks have to wait until the damn thing dies before it can be
replaced. This corporate behavior isn't just limited to Apple. What
other vendors are guilty of lack of disclosure for faulty products,
and only change their tune after public outcry?
posted by machaus at 7:09 PM PST - 18 comments
Smart Tags Redux a company called ezula is taking the idea of smart tags and running with a product variously called TopText or HotText.
posted by mutagen at 6:50 PM PST - 7 comments
The Destination Matters More Than The Journey is a well-written tutorial on typesetting and other matters typographical having to do with the web authored by
Dean Allen. It's a good read, especially coming from someone who has absolutely no design background but who pretends to be one nonetheless. How much attention do you pay to letter spacing, line height, and the like on your websites?
posted by moz at 12:55 PM PST - 6 comments
"I'm here today with something of an apology,'' said Silicon Valley VC guru John Doerr. In his speech ... Doerr offered a revised version of his Internet quote. He projected a slide on a screen that described the Internet as "the largest legal creation (and evaporation) of wealth in the history of the planet."
posted by msacheson at 11:06 AM PST - 9 comments
Lido STF is a freeware serif font of sufficient quality to be used instead of Times. Are there any other worthy freeware alternatives to the main system fonts?
(via Lines and Splines)posted by ecvgi at 11:03 AM PST - 19 comments
A picture of the internet.
"A bot is out on the internet every half hour and looks for images which it puts together to a giantic picture - the picture of internet. This is samples from all over the internet. The bot surfs pretty strange and takes strange ways to spread out its ways as much as possible. Sometimes it follow links that it doesn't should visit... but that doesn't happen too often."posted by o2b at 8:29 AM PST - 15 comments
highest-paid voice "The deal represents a stunning triumph over the establishment by an outsider who connected with and captured the spirit of the nation’s heartland." -- Drudge
posted by drunkkeith at 8:17 AM PST - 59 comments
Buckley (Heart) Elvis? No, it's not a liberal v. conservative thing. Writing an
Elvis book just does not fit the William F. Buckley image. Ontime spy novelist. Erudite PBS show host. Shows up in places like House Beautiful, waxing witty about homes and home decor, with references to the Metropolitan Opera and such. I too love the Big E, but
this is baffling and hilarious. He apparently discusses his E fixation in the upcoming (and usually outstanding) Southern Music Issue of the
Oxford American. Thoughts? Is the new American literary dream to retire and write an Elvis book, as opposed to the Great American Novel?
posted by raysmj at 7:50 AM PST - 22 comments
July 15
Your worst nightmare come true. "Bound hand and foot and gagged, a 27-year-old English woman tourist cowered for seven hours in the vast loneliness of the Northern Territory night, stalked by a gunman who is feared to have killed her companion."
posted by Neale at 7:39 PM PST - 22 comments
"Her using that word shows you that she doesn't care about black people..." In a remix of "I'm Real," J.Lo sings lyrics written for her by Ja Rule that include the N-word. Boycotts and petitions are being organized, and some former fans are calling her racist. Says the WP: "The tempest over Lopez is clearly an illustration of how public reaction to the word continues to depend very much on who utters it." (more inside)
posted by jennak at 11:27 AM PST - 114 comments
July 14
NYTimes: "How Bush Took Florida: Mining the Overseas Absentee Vote" "Their goal was simple: to count the maximum number of overseas ballots in counties won by Mr. Bush, particularly those with a high concentration of military voters, while seeking to disqualify overseas ballots in counties won by Vice President Al Gore.
A six-month investigation by The New York Times of this chapter in the closest presidential election in American history shows that the Republican effort had a decided impact. Under intense pressure from the Republicans, Florida officials accepted hundreds of overseas absentee ballots that failed to comply with state election laws. "
posted by owillis at 9:44 PM PST - 71 comments
The end of an era, and now I can't trust *any* of my neighbours.
"After 33 years, PBS' longest-running series, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, is signing off. Fred Rogers, one of TV's most familiar faces, says it's time to say goodbye. "
Thank god he's going into syndication. The world will always need a beacon of positive thought.
posted by jcterminal at 5:17 PM PST - 17 comments
So maybe rolling blackouts are a good thing. "Light pollution" means we don't see the universe today that we saw it when we were kids. What's the balance between being able to see that hazy something we know as the milky way (aka "us") and safe streets, aesthetics and convenience?
posted by dchase at 5:13 PM PST - 9 comments
These guys are still around, but it seems they're the exception to the rule.
Suck, etc seem to be with the vast majority. Does anyone know of any
commercial independent web content ventures that are still kicking?
posted by owillis at 1:07 PM PST - 16 comments
What do you want? We keep hearing about this "who owes what to whom" now that
Assembler has closed, and
Kaliber and
Dreamless are closing.
But what of it? What does it mean? Are we so closed minded to think our Web world is the only one and that somehow the rest of the universe revolves around those of us privileged enough to be able to embark on it as a daily journey?
All of us feel one way or another towards this debate. Either we hate it, or love it, and what of that too? What *do* each of us want from this virtual world? Is there something here worth redeeming and at least arriving at a point to agree to disagree? Discuss?
posted by sixandone at 11:46 AM PST - 10 comments
I for one am getting fed up with ICANN's bureaucratic muddle and the slow pace at which they do everything, not to mention their fundamentally anti-user attitude towards things.
Now they've declared that they're in charge. Horseshit! It is the
users who are in charge of the Internet. You don't have to limit yourself to the top level domains that ICANN is dribbling out; you can go to
new.net and install their plugin (Mac version available), and enable such domains as .travel, .mp3, .sport, .club, .tech and (hoo-hah!) .xxx. Strike a blow for freedom, and tweak ICANN's nose! They need to learn that they'll have to move fast or become irrelevant.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:21 AM PST - 11 comments
This sad chronicle was just emailed to be by a friend. I found it interesting reading the day-by-day account of the horrible ordeal this kid is going through. Cancer is a terrible thing :(
posted by Maxor at 8:17 AM PST - 5 comments
July 13
Is your kitty an exhibitionist? Show your cat off at Cat-scan.com.
Um... Wait. Does this remind anyone of
another post?
It even reminds me of
another post...
Why, it must be
Metafilter's birthday again!! (And possibly Cat-scan's, but I don't know about that...)
Hope I didn't step on any surprises, but it was too good not to post.posted by o2b at 8:15 PM PST - 26 comments
Hands where I can see them, and turn off that tape recorder! Today the Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a man for violating the commonwealth's electronic surveillance law when he secretly recorded police who pulled him over in a traffic stop. While it's generally bad to tape people without telling them, should there be an exception w/r/t to recording public officials acting in their official capacities? Or is wrong just wrong?
posted by dchase at 5:17 PM PST - 22 comments
Emoticons creep closer to being officially considered writing
You have to scroll down a ways ... I don't mean to sound elitist. I believe language is a living thing, and can grow and change and grow up to be a ballerina, if it wants to, even if that seems like an innocent child's dream right now, and is not to be taken seriously really. Seriously though, don't you have a kind of sick feeling that a version of the OED is giving recognition to the idea that punctuation and numerals are making entry into language?
posted by rschram at 5:05 PM PST - 15 comments
Pro-abortion? "I'm getting fat because I'm eating a lot," said the 12-year-old with a mental age of 8, who conceived four months ago after being raped by her father.
Anyone against abortion?
posted by nonharmful at 2:47 PM PST - 75 comments
July 17th - The Day That Counts. These people have a plan to make their feelings known on the issue of public money being diverted to religious organizations. I had no idea that the atheists were so organized! Is this sort of thing a tremendous waste of time, or do you think it can, or will affect policy discussions?
posted by kristin at 2:35 PM PST - 11 comments
Road rage man gets sentenced to 3 years. The man who threw the fluffy white dog into oncoming traffic is sentenced to 3 years in jail -- the maximum jail time allowed. Is this appropriate? Extreme? If there wasn't such media attention to this case, or if the dog wasn't so cute, would the man have still gotten maximum jail time?
posted by jennak at 12:47 PM PST - 40 comments
What's your story? That's the question that the site EatTheseWords asks. In nature, it's quite similar to
{fray}, only not as focused. Which format do you prefer--that of {fray}'s, or the more general purpose approach seen at ETW? Find any particularly interesting stories there?
posted by moz at 9:31 AM PST - 10 comments
Publish someone else's copyrighted book, DON'T go to jail. (I can't believe no one else has posted this yet: at least, I couldn't find anything that looked relevant).
"A U.S. federal judge has rejected Random House's request for a preliminary injunction to stop an online publisher from selling electronic versions of Cat's Cradle, Sophie's Choice and six other books. U.S. District Judge Sidney Stein ruled on Wednesday that the right to print, publish and sell the works in book form in the contracts at issue does not include the right to publish the works in the electronic format."
posted by maudlin at 9:29 AM PST - 7 comments
The end is neigh.
This wonderful little company is just about to unleash an ISP filter system that will allow content providers to decide which users get access, namely, those who have paid them a fee. Your ISP will soon have to pay individual fees to offer you anything. Your rate will go way up, your choices will go way down.
Web surfing as we know it, is dying.
Check the
Slashdot freak-out.
posted by dong_resin at 7:28 AM PST - 24 comments
July 12
Amazon is essentially going against the will of the MPAA by
offering (followed the link from the
Thirteen Days dvd) information regarding a work around to RCE (which prevents Region 1 dvd's from being played on region free dvd players). It's funny how the MPAA has
taken 2600 to court because they posted links to DeCSS but they haven't made any moves against Amazon. CSS isn't protection against copying, it's really just used to
prevent people from importing dvd's.
posted by dave at 9:47 PM PST - 6 comments
Lunatic : A hotel and resort destination on the Moon. Check out the
Interior Design. You will be able to skydive inside the tower
!!
Do you think civilian flights to space will start by 2010 ? I sure hope so. I can't wait to see this planet from the outside with my own eyes.
posted by sikander at 9:28 PM PST - 7 comments
Design site K10K and and design discussion site
Dreamless to
take a summer vacation. "KALIBER10000 is closing its doors for the summer on Monday, July 15th (which, incidentally, is the same date that community discussion board Dreamless.org also shuts down)." As
Zeldman said, "Lately we feel like Smokey the Bear—and the forest fires are winning." Has the
F----d Weblog virus struck the design portals?
posted by timothompson at 6:14 PM PST - 23 comments
Combining two freakish legends in one story ... Farm accident and self-surgery with uncoventional tools! All it needed was a little sex and it'd be CNN material fer sure. The highlight:
"He said he thinks he'll be able to continue farming, 'but not like I really want to.'"
posted by foist at 3:30 PM PST - 6 comments
The Economics of Aesthetics Warning, free registration is required
This article points out an interesting problem with calculating how much a product is worth... How much is aesthetics worth to the consumer? How do you even calculate that? (via
Signal vs. Noise.)
posted by chason at 2:30 PM PST - 1 comments
No soup sex for you!. President Daniel arap Moi has urged Kenyans to abstain from sex for at least
two years to try to curb the spread of HIV. The government announced plans on Wednesday to import 300 million condoms to fight AIDS.
posted by 120degrees at 12:36 PM PST - 18 comments
Question concerning the notion of the
social construction of reality. If enough people cease to believe in the Holocaust, or if enough of them have just never heard of it, as detailed in
another MeFi thread, does that mean it didn't happen?
If it only means "well, as far as those people are concerned it never happened" then that's a truism and hardly worth any hoo-hah. But does social constructivism, if I can call it that, go on to make the much stronger claim that if the millions cease to believe in it, or forget about it, then it reallyo-trulyo never happened?
posted by jfuller at 11:49 AM PST - 9 comments
News You Can Use! IsDickCheneyDeadYet.com has more than three dedicated staffers who surreptitiously check the Veep’s vitals every five minutes, round the clock, 24 hours a day. Just so you can rest a little easier. Check back often and "
Be the first to know, when Cheney goes..."
posted by dogmatic at 11:43 AM PST - 6 comments
Gharlane of Eddore is dead. I wish this were only a rumor, but it doesn't look like it. One of USENET's legends, a man known only by a
nom de plume borrowed (with permission) from an E.E. "Doc" Smith character, is gone. Read the
USENET discussion following the announcement.
posted by webmutant at 11:05 AM PST - 5 comments
"I think that first world environmental groups (who oppose development of genetically modified crops) should put on the hat and shoes of farmers in Mali who are faced by repeated crop failure." -- Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, lead author of the U.N. Development Programme's annual Human Development Report. (Here's
another report on the same issue which includes a great deal of background information about the problems which still need to be solved, and why genetic modification of food crops is an essential part of the solution.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:50 AM PST - 35 comments
George W. Bush's Handwriting. handwriting analysis reveals: If you want something from George W. Bush, tell him how much you like what he's done so far. Tell him quickly. And don't try to push him around.
You hear that Cheney?
posted by brucec at 10:24 AM PST - 35 comments
Taiwan's ruling party receives some
very controversial assistance. 'The commercial opens with a 10-second clip from a Nazi propaganda film, showing Hitler raising his arms and putting his hands on his chest.'
"Hitler was chosen as one of the four leaders because he dared to speak his own mind,'' Juan said. Among former Taiwanese president, Castro & JFK are featured in the commercial. AP notes that Taiwanese lack a deep understanding of the Holocaust and at the same time are suprised to that Mao Tse-Tung is used as a pop symbol in the West...
Is this a case that warrants cultural relativism ?
posted by noom at 10:05 AM PST - 13 comments
As a sort-of follow up to
yesterday's discussion of "whatever-happened-to-the-Big Brother (UK) Housemates",
here's a funny little story about what Rudy Boesch is up to these days. We all (may) remember Rudy as the politically incorrect ex-Navy Seal from the first edition of Survivor (US), won by Richard Hatch. Nice to see fame hasn't changed him.
posted by msacheson at 9:15 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Latest NetSol Innovation Back Ordering Domains Matt, were you planning on renewing metafilter.com in 2003? If not, I can always just back order it now so that when you let it lapse, it will all be mine... (evil laugh).
Or how about we backorder microsoft.com, aol.com, etc.
Makes you wonder how NetSol's policy on lapsed domains will be changed. Will they give you the several weeks/months of leeway they used to (just because they were lazy) or will they re-sell on the day it's expired?
Related note: did you notice how dotster.com (which I believe metafilter is registered under) takes control of your URL during that leeway period letting the world know you haven't paid yet.
posted by matte at 7:41 AM PST - 19 comments
New Cautions Over a Plant With a Buzz - NYT article about
Salvia Divinorum, an apparently legal, unscheduled hallucinogenic plant which is getting increased attention from both drug users and DEA agents. Has anyone actually used this stuff- is it all hype or does it really work? And how long before the DEA works to make it illegal?
posted by hincandenza at 2:11 AM PST - 27 comments
July 11
WhatIs - Definitions for thousands of the most current IT-related words.
Not everyone knows about this site. It is pretty helpful for a quick lookup for anything computer related.
posted by sikander at 8:54 PM PST - 3 comments
Modern computing born... film at 11. "On December 9, 1968, Douglas C. Engelbart and the group of 17 researchers working with him in the Augmentation Research Center at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, CA, presented a 90-minute live public demonstration of the online system, NLS, they had been working on since 1962. The public presentation was a session in the of the Fall Joint Computer Conference held at the Convention Center in San Francisco, and it was attended by about 1,000 computer professionals. This was the public debut of the computer mouse. But the mouse was only one of many innovations demonstrated that day, including hypertext, object addressing and dynamic file linking, as well as shared-screen collaboration involving two persons at different sites communicating over a network with audio and video interface."
posted by pascal at 11:17 AM PST - 5 comments
What internet uses want (at least according to the Markle Foundation.) The best part? The study asks for people that internet users would like to see on a board of net governors. Among the nominees were Bill Gates, Oprah, and the Pope.
posted by goto11 at 10:59 AM PST - 4 comments
Gnucleus - The New Napster First I've heard of this, although apparently it's been around for almost a year at least. Is this just a bunch of hype? How is it an improvement over BearShare, Limewire and other Gnutella clients? Any user feedback?
posted by ideola at 10:45 AM PST - 28 comments
A.I.'s chatbot from the movie's website is pretty nifty, even if it doesn't know David or recognize any other obvious questions about the movie.
posted by Zebulun at 9:39 AM PST - 41 comments
Yet another case of zero intelligence. Two days after Tiffani Ann Alvera notified her public housing resident manager that she had obtained a restraining order against her husband for domestic violence, she received
a notice to vacate the apartment within 24 hours. The notice said, "You, someone in your control, or your pet, has seriously threatened immediately to inflict personal injury, or has inflicted substantial personal injury upon the landlord or other tenants," and specified her husband's assault.posted by jameschandler at 9:03 AM PST - 4 comments
The most annoying email I've ever gotten Apparently, someone has a crush on me. That's what the email said. Give crushlink valid (they check) email addresses and you get lame hints as to who sent the email to you. I've never seen a better email harvesting system than this. Pure evil!
posted by fnirt at 7:58 AM PST - 20 comments
Media Deception and Iraq An interesting quick story-- one journalist smells a rat in an AP report about Iraq using money to buy weapons, investigates the genesis of the story, and finds more deception. Meanwhile statistics on children dying from sanctions go unpublished.
posted by chaz at 7:33 AM PST - 8 comments
I am really, really,
really tired of the popups for the
Tiny Wireless Video Camera - the ad that always has a picture of a hot chick and trumpets "FITS ANYWHERE" (
in the girls' bathroom, wink nudge.)
If there are any browser coders listening, here's a feature I long for: an anti-bookmark list. Stumble on a page that pops up garbage like the above, add it to your anti-bookmarks list and it's locked out instantly and forever, no forgiveness, no rehabilitation, capital punishment for bad web pages. Yes, yes, I know about junkbuster and webwasherand hosts files. But at this late date crap lockout should be part of the browser the way kill files were (and are) part of newsreaders. Sic 'em, Fang.
posted by jfuller at 6:57 AM PST - 30 comments
July 10
So I was checking out
Andre's
FilePile, and I noticed the new page title: "ROR Alucard". A
search at Google turned up over a hundred results...few of which really explained anything.
This ASCII file was the most promising explanation. So what is it, who started it, and where did it come from?
posted by canoeguide at 11:46 PM PST - 18 comments
I wish I lived in Europe, if only for the month-long summer vacations people get on the continent. But I'm here at work in the U.S., surfing the net, only to find two of my favorite sites,
The Onion and
Satire Wire, are taking siestas at the same time. I wish I could get July off.
posted by msacheson at 2:49 PM PST - 21 comments
The Jim Morrison Simulatron
Sometimes,
Modernhumorist can still make me laugh.*
"THIRTY YEARS AGO last week, Doors frontman Jim Morrison mixed drugs, alcohol and asthma to ascend to the big Whisky A Go-Go in the sky. Here in the virtual world, though, Modern Humorist has reanimated him in the form of lines and lines of programming code."
*Warning: Stupid Flash game
posted by GriffX at 1:40 PM PST - 9 comments
More
painful than a Ricki Lake Show marathon? I'll take an afternoon with King Phalari, thank you very much.
posted by donkeysuck at 1:35 PM PST - 1 comments
Americans want self-regulated Internet - or do they? A Markle Foundation survey out today seems to contain contradictory responses: 60 percent say rules for governing the Net should be developed by non-governmental organizations. But 64 percent also say that government "should develop rules to protect people when they are on the Internet, even if it requires some regulation of the Internet." Um, so which is it?
posted by thescoop at 12:39 PM PST - 3 comments
Princeton president pines for peculiar persons. "Princeton University's new president, Shirley Tilghman, says her campus has a problem: not enough weirdos. 'I would like to think we could begin to attract students with green hair. We will take pink and blue and orange hair, too.'" The rest of the article is pretty bland, but that quote is hilarious.
posted by jeb at 12:37 PM PST - 9 comments
JAVE is an tool that helps ease the pain of creating ASCII art. In the days before GIFs, ASCII art
roamed the plains of the Internet; people created
hundreds of text-based pictures. Some
spectacular examples are out there, but the rise of the graphical web has put a crimp in this art form. Perhaps tools like JAVE and
FIGlet can help stave off
the end.
posted by snarkout at 12:17 PM PST - 13 comments
Who benefits from this one?
It seems to me like Bush is doing crap like this just to see what he can get away with.
Is there something I'm missing about this decision that makes it a good thing? I hope so.
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger at 11:32 AM PST - 47 comments
Bush is at it again.
Is the fact that he is able to get away with things like this an indication of a backlash against the more
open years of Democrats in the White House?
Is this secretly what the American public wants?
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger at 10:38 AM PST - 48 comments
It's all over, boys, we're obsolete A team of Australian scientists has announced that they've found a way to fertilize human ova with somatic cells instead of sperm. No actual living babies have been produced yet, but they expect results within the year.
posted by briank at 6:46 AM PST - 43 comments
Do Republicans dream of electric sheep? A new study concludes that Republicans have scarier and more frequent nightmares than Democrats. As usual, the explanation for this is split among party lines:
"What do you expect after eight years of William Jefferson Clinton?" -- Kevin Sheridan, Republican National Committee deputy press secretary.
"If George W. Bush were the leader of my party, I'd have trouble sleeping at night, too," -- Terry McAuliffe, Democratic National Committee chairman.
Wow... deja vu
all over again.
posted by Dirjy at 6:03 AM PST - 11 comments
Rioting in Jamaica. This one hits
very close to home, as it's where my family is from and where I partially grew up. While the immediate effect of people dying is terrible, the long term effects of this news on tourism (Jamaica's top industry) will probably be devastating to an already poor country.
posted by owillis at 12:45 AM PST - 7 comments
July 9
Jumping on the infamous Interschool Ho voting booth story Salon is currently running a
4 page article charting/attacking the rise of 'cyber-bullying', a phenomena defined by students (mostly?) slandered their peers online. In the opening page of the piece the author, all orifices throthing, offers several graphic examples of the trend and gives not only details of the full name and school of a female sophomore victim, an extensive barrage of quotes of what ugly, retarded, hurtful stuff was written about her by some severely mentally unstable individual, but also a relatively prominent, in-your-face link to the smalltime message board in question causing them to replace it with the whimpering redirect message '
Unfortunately, due to an article posted on salon.com, the LHStudents.com website traffic has exceeded maximum capacity and we have no other option but to create a new LHBoard on a different server'..
posted by Kino at 11:28 PM PST - 16 comments
Buddyhead has its famous gossip site, replete with Fred Durst's phone number. But what happens when someone fakes a submission?
This does, apparently, and the tale comes complete with
celebrity interview. You gotta admit, though; she has
nice eyes.
posted by Marquis at 7:11 PM PST - 4 comments
And I thought Florida only had this problem. The Chicago Tribune reports that nearly 8% of votes in Illinois' 1st Congressional District went uncounted in the 2000 presidential election. It also adds:
voters in low-income, high-minority districts nationwide were more likely to have undercounted ballots than were those in affluent, predominantly white districts, the study showed. Is there a nation-wide epidemic of undercounting? Or is it a problem limited to few localized areas? Or is it an underhanded way to deny the underprivileged of their vote? From the looks of it, at least additional investigation needs to be done.
posted by Bag Man at 7:03 PM PST - 15 comments
Sorry, but where do you live? The RIAA/CRIA, seem to be a little overzealous in stopping the spread of "napster like services" by quoting laws/court desicions in C&D letters to ISP's in other countries.
I'm not saying that thet're wrong to protect their copyright, but surely
IRMA could have directed member countries to contact the ISP's?
posted by X-00 at 5:47 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Real Doll --The world's finest love mate Realistic, life-size and beautiful. Elastic flesh, an articulated skeleton and sexy features like no other love doll in the world. Most love dolls are made of cheap, inflatable vinyl. They look pathetic and laughable -- not loveable. Check these out, and for a paltry $7000 you've got the ideal mate.
posted by semmi at 5:42 PM PST - 20 comments
Job opportunity: must be willing to...? In light of
recent events, would it be appropriate for Rep. Gary Condit to remove this page from his official website? Even if he has nothing to hide, do you think it would be the
sensitive thing to do? And what of his future - or does he have one in politics (at any level)?
posted by davidmsc at 5:09 PM PST - 14 comments
Unstable genes make normal clones unlikely. Dolly the sheep celebrated her fifth birthday yesterday. Most cloned animals aren't so lucky: they rarely reach adulthood, or even birth. Another reason why cloning humans might not be a good idea, "one can't expect to have normal clones - even if they appear healthy, they may have abnormal gene expression."
posted by lagado at 4:39 PM PST - 6 comments
14 year old boy dies at "tough love" boot camp for troubled teens, after becoming so delirious that he believed indians were chasing him. he passed out from dehydration in above 40 heat and died of suspected heart failure. earlier, when he screamed that he wanted to go home
"they put some mud in his mouth and kicked him". are these increasingly popular boot camps justified?
posted by will at 3:33 PM PST - 20 comments
I like to eat. Chowhound has regional restaurant message boards with varying degrees of detail. The New York Boards are particularly active with dozens of people offering their favorite soup dumpling purveyor/ramen shack/barbecue hut.
What other regional or
cuisine-specific food sites / online communities have you found?
posted by sfz at 2:44 PM PST - 11 comments
Zero Tolerlance The ACLU calls it "Zero Intelligence": The Las Vegas Weekly reports on the story of a 14-year-old middle school student being jailed for ten days and then expelled from school for making the wrong offhand remark and fitting the wrong profile (i.e. well-groomed, well-liked, and gets good grades).
Unfortunately this is not an April Fools' joke.
posted by Postroad at 2:10 PM PST - 40 comments
No clicky no more On Monday the finance Web site will stop providing "click through" rates to its advertising clients and will urge them to consider other ways of measuring the effectiveness of their online ads.
In shifting the focus away from click-throughs, MarketWatch is trying to convince companies that their online ads work by building general brand awareness even when the consumer does not actually click the ad to get more information.posted by keith at 11:31 AM PST - 16 comments
CBS changes their mind!!! I was one of the few people who was considering paying the $20 to watch the Big Brother feeds all summer long. I figured that I spend at least that much money on beer during a night out that three month's on entertainment for $20 seemed like a bargain.
However, CBS apparently listened to all the complaints and now instead of a "Free Trial", they are giving the internet feeds away for free.
Good CBS. Now expose Will, Justin, and Mike as the jerks they are on Tuesday's episode and you'll have a happy camper.
Okay, and give me Hardy's phone number as well.
posted by Pinwiz at 11:04 AM PST - 19 comments
Amazon Stops Free Shipping. After only 2 weeks, Amazon.com stops free shipping for orders with two or more items. (At least they rememberd to lower the prices they raised in order to be financially able to offer this promotion.)
Amazon stopped their free shipping promotion right as Barnes and Noble's website offered a similar offer. Is Amazon going to be able to compete with B&N? Is the end near for Amazon? Or is Amazon sufficiently love-marked enough to withstand shipping costs?
posted by jennak at 10:20 AM PST - 11 comments
Douglas Rushkoff is writing
an open source novel that readers are encouraged to leave footnotes on. These footnotes can contain comments, suggestions or discussion about other footnotes. Is this the future of publishing or a cheap gimmick?
posted by mathowie at 8:40 AM PST - 23 comments
Those darn airmen in their flying contraptions... Interested in hearing other's opinions on this. If I have an airplane should I be able to fly wherever I want to, or should property owners be able to erect an invisible fence 40,000 feet high around their property to keep airplane owners away?
Also, if I can keep people with noisy airplanes from flying close to my house, can I also outlaw people with noisy motorcyles from riding on country roads near my home?
posted by fluxcreative at 7:32 AM PST - 28 comments
Bye bye Webvan. "Although Webvan would be just one of hundreds of dot-com companies to go out of business, its story is somewhat unique. Webvan was one of the most well funded of all the dot-com companies, having raised, and burned through, around $1 billion in financing."
posted by maura at 4:12 AM PST - 56 comments
July 8
I love looking around when I'm in public places and trying to pick out the people that I think smoke pot. Its fun because statistically there have to be a few people in every crowd that smoke, even if they don't look like they do. I've noticed quite a few drug related threads on Metafilter lately and I've been dying to ask this question: How many Metafilter users smoke marijuana or use or have used other illicit substances regularly. I do realize that I'm supposed to post a link, but I just had to know.
posted by bytecode at 11:10 PM PST - 98 comments
Shark bites off boy's arm and it's reattached! I know it's a Yahoo! link, but this seems incredible. The boy's uncle wrestled the shark to the beach where it was shot and the limb was retrieved from the shark's mouth. Is there anything science and strong uncles can't do?
posted by megnut at 9:16 PM PST - 18 comments
Yet another reason to avoid the Battlefield Earth DVD: A brand new "feature" called Regional Coding Enhancement, or RCE. Having the word "enhancement" in the title might make us think that we, the consumer, might actually benefit for this technology, but that isn't the case. The only people to benefit are the movie studios who, not content to gouge us on DVD prices (DVD's are cheaper to press than video tapes) have made it impossible to backup a DVD, or play a foreign DVD on a North American DVD player. Now, thanks to RCE, if you own a region-free DVD player, guess what? You can't play Battlefield Earth on it!
posted by johnnydark at 7:58 PM PST - 30 comments
For Gosh's Sake, Stop Rockin'! Featered here are excerpts of
Rock Til You Drop, an intentionally provocative slam of the notion of rockin' into old age. I'm not sure if author John Strausbaugh has an age limit (he suggests, but doesn't outright state, one's early 30s). But it's clear that he thinks any fake version of an old band should call it quits (Steppenwolf), as should any playing casinos (Yes) or rockers who have had, say, hip replacement surgery (Eddie Van Halen). And he apparently thinks the Stones should've called it quits in, say, 1972. A cruel hack job, or on-the-mark? Somewhere in between? And what rockers
should retire?
posted by raysmj at 6:34 PM PST - 36 comments
ASFRecorder Pull those streams right off of the Internet in Windows Media Format. Songs that are streamed form band websites where there are no singles or the new album yet, just grab it down.
posted by benjh at 5:38 PM PST - 19 comments
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry... The coolest/funniest BlogSpot blog I've ever come across — for those of us who don't watch a lot of TV, we can still get our Springer fix.
posted by o2b at 11:03 AM PST - 3 comments
From 1972 to 1998, the number of American voters claiming to attend church regularly has stayed stable at 37%. The number who say they never attend church at all has risen from 14% to 33%. What affect will this have on American politics?
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:08 AM PST - 31 comments
Fish or Folk? Farmers along the Klamath took matters into their own hands last week, opening an irrigation floodgate that had been closed to protect local fish. It isn't just about fish, but also fishermen. A complex issue of humans v. the environment, broken promises, and a big ole' sense of entitlement.
posted by frykitty at 8:11 AM PST - 5 comments
Describing a New Entropy A reformulation of Boltzmann-Gibbs entropy by one Constantino Tsallis is causing quite a buzz/stir in the theoretical physics community. It was originally published in 1988, but it sounds like it's only recently hit its stride. There's going to be
a conference on "Tsallis entropy" in October co-chaired by Murray Gell-Mann!
posted by kliuless at 6:19 AM PST - 2 comments
Americans less supportive of 1st amendment. Roughly four in 10 people (41%) said the media have too much freedom. Four in 10 respondents (39%) believed the First Amendment goes too far in guaranteeing rights. 71% said it was "very" or "somewhat" important for the government to hold the media in check.
posted by frednorman at 2:20 AM PST - 17 comments
July 7
B.C.'s top commodity: marijuana New police statistics suggest marijuana has become one of B.C.'s largest industries -- even bigger than logging -- with annual production valued at $6 billion.
...Imagine 6 billion in lost tax revenues...
posted by cburton at 10:58 PM PST - 27 comments
Hometown band makes good. Albuquerque band The Shins release an album on Sub Pop. (I absolutely recommend their song
New Slang, a sweet poppy ballad.) Maybe this is so exciting because it's not every day a bunch of kids you've seen a trillion times get to be ON THE CHARTS. What bands have come from your hometown and made it big? (more inside)
posted by sugarfish at 1:33 AM PST - 60 comments
July 6
Talking the talk: An interview with John McWhorter Speaking of
linguistics and whatnot, I've been thumbing through the new-look
East Bay Express. I read this, and I feel like
McWhorter's never gotten over some black people wrongly labeling him as an Oreo cookie (never had someone assure him, in response to epithets like those, that there are 35 million ways of being African-American -- and that many of them involve fluency in "totally ass-kicking SWE," to reference
David Foster Wallace's essay on Bryan Garner's new usage book in Harper's a couple of months ago).
I appreciate his iconoclasm (hell, like myself, he voted for Nader) and I'm willing to concede points of his basic argument and that I agree with him on some (the whole "niggardly" thing; the Ebonics controversy) points.
But after reading this, I wound up feeling irritated with him -- and especially put off by allowing himself to be
misrespresented marketed as a conservative and, despite his vaunted speaking ability and academic credentials, his inability to get his points across in the media.
posted by allaboutgeorge at 10:43 PM PST - 13 comments
Intellectualism's Hottest Ticket? (New York Times link; my apologies) According to the cultural arbiters at the NYT,
this book is picking up heat as one of the most important philosophical works of the new century. As near as I can tell, it's about the cultural and sociological impact of globalization, creating the new political state they call "Empire." Anybody heard of this, or read it yet? Wank or insight?
posted by logovisual at 10:31 PM PST - 19 comments
Webzines. Independent magazines published on the web in the same vein as "old school"
printed ones. Sort of the step between a blog and a full blown Salon (as in
MetaFocus?). I'm thinking about doing one, any you can recommend?
posted by owillis at 10:29 PM PST - 16 comments
Scientists Offer Cash, Possible Immortality The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is conducting a contest for the best "Plutonium Memorial" design. Are you ready to think out of the box? Make sure to incorporate classic design elements, as the contents will have a half-life of
24,000 years. It would be a shame to have our distant descendants mock our architecture. P.S. I encourage residents of the
Denver metropolitan area to enter the contest.
posted by JDC8 at 7:06 PM PST - 5 comments
China has sent a bill to the US for $1 million to pay for the time that our spy plane spent sitting on the tarmac in China, waiting for the Chinese to grant permission to get it out of there.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 5:15 PM PST - 29 comments
Astrologer Defends PhD Thesis in Sociology at the Sorbonne
Elizabeth Teissier, astrology columnist and PhD candidate, successfully defended her dissertation in sociology, entitled "The Epistemological Situation of Astrology in Relation to the Ambivalent Fascination/Rejection of Postmodern Societies."
Over the last few weeks, fueled by fresh revelations — like Ms. Teissier's having referred to Max Weber, one of sociology's founders, as a "pragmatic Taurus" — the debate has only gathered steam, pitting sociologists who insist that the case concerns a thesis that fails to meet minimum academic standards against those who argue that
the real target isn't Ms. Teissier but a maverick strain of sociology that has failed to win establishment approval. I don't know which is funnier, that there were fresh revelations, or that there's a pro-astrology strain of maverick sociology.
This is also hilarious.posted by rschram at 4:55 PM PST - 28 comments
In Their Own Words: Why Americans Approve or Disapprove of Bush. Sample quote from one who approves: "Because he's from Texas & so am I." Sample from one who disapproves: "Because Bush is a weenie."
posted by acridrabbit at 4:46 PM PST - 31 comments
Disassembled. Assembler.org ("making art with machine code") is no more. Quoth the
Zeldman: "Lately we feel like Smokey the Bear - and the forest fires are winning."
posted by fraying at 3:16 PM PST - 74 comments
The giant list of classic computer programmers takes you back to a time when one person could realistically author a computer game and have it published. Of course most of the people on this list will have worked on small teams to produce games, but the diversity of the games on these people's resumes is awesome. In particular, I notice Michael Cranford (responsible for The Bard's Tale I and II, the Centauri Alliance, and ports of Donkey Kong and Super Zaxxon) and Robert Woodhead (Wizardry 1-5). As an interesting sidenote, Robert Woodhead went on to
Animeigo, a japanese animation publishing company in the US. What memories of these old sk00l games do you have?
posted by moz at 2:11 PM PST - 34 comments
Just because we can we should? Is this another case of rabid technology or will it really be useful? Can't the $225 per playstation-console be used to oh, say... clean up their water... or.. send a real life human being to their country to properly educate them?
posted by tsidel at 11:02 AM PST - 18 comments
Last night's Brass Eye special was mysteriously pulled from the schedules, seemingly because it concerned "an army of paedophiles". Apparantly,
this is not the caseposted by Grangousier at 9:46 AM PST - 15 comments
Okay, so the tabloids take the eroticization of female tennis players to the extreme, including The Mirror, which has
paid Barbara "Babsi" Schett 50,000 pounds to promote her as the next Anna Kournikova. Last fall we
talked about women sports players being on beauty,
not talent; while the beauty judging goes on, they forget to even mention player
records. There's
Babsi, Anna,
Jelena Dokic, and the supposedly beautiful Krasnoroutskaya who
says of Kournikova what everyone keeps saying about good-looking female players in general: "She makes the beauty of tennis. She started it. Now tennis is very popular. People come to watch her. That helps everybody."
posted by Mo Nickels at 9:37 AM PST - 48 comments
Google Zeitgeist charts the popularity of certain search queries on Google
(via Slashdot). Of course, it'd be more interesting to track your own keywords, and
you can. I stumbled across this partially hidden Google feature last night.
(More inside...)posted by waxpancake at 8:29 AM PST - 23 comments
Whoops! Is it just me, or is anyone else having trouble looking at SAAB's US homepage in IE 5.0?
posted by bgluckman at 8:29 AM PST - 16 comments
Absolute Director Move over Steve, iMovie just got some competition. The creative distiller creates the killer Shockwave app. that lets you edit and create your own movies using old Japanese monster films.
posted by Brilliantcrank at 8:20 AM PST - 8 comments
The movie censored in France opens in the US this week. Base-Moi is being translated by the newspapers as "Rape Me" but a better translation would be "Fuck Me," which better indicates that sexual power that the main female characters have. They use sex as a weapon, as the gateway firearm to murders and massacre. Violent, bloody, aggressively sexual, even pornographic, filled with "chic amoralism," as the
New York Times says, and perhaps difficult to redeem. Gratuitous everything.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:34 AM PST - 18 comments
China is on an
'execution frenzy' executing more people 1750+ over the past 3 months then the rest of the world combined over the past 3 years.. according to Amnesty International. The parades and stadiums add a nice Roman-era twist.
posted by stbalbach at 5:51 AM PST - 34 comments
July 5
Not just the fratboys anymore... "It was once thought that humans were the only animals to engage in ritualized hazing. As it turns out, squirrels have been engaging in the practice since the birth of their species." That's right, squirrel hazing is more widespread than one would think....
posted by Espoo2 at 10:28 PM PST - 7 comments
Active Buddy is final Active This link was posted before, but ActiveBuddy finally has a beta version of their AOL IM interactive agent. Simply add 'smarterchild' to your buddy list and send the message 'hello'. This service gives you news, weather, and movie times through Instant Messager.
posted by wsfinkel at 9:11 PM PST - 15 comments
Optimism: Was the bust really a
Bust (See below)? Douglas Rushkoff doesn't think so. But then, he's a pretty optimistic guy, if you ask me. (Warning, his article links to MetaFilter... Does that count as a self-link?)
posted by LAM at 5:21 PM PST - 6 comments
This site will burn anything you can point them to on the web onto a CD. Won't that violate a TON of shareware/freeware licenses? Will they do warez sites?
Link via
FilePile.
posted by Spanktacular at 5:03 PM PST - 4 comments
No link here. Today I saw for the first time March 2000 referred to as the Bust. With a capital B. And then I started thinking that the web in the last few months feels a little less exciting; fewer things going on, less stuff to talk about. Is it just me? Has anybody seen/read something promising and exciting on the Web or about the Web in the last 6 months or so? Do we really need the promise of riches to take risks and/or to innovate?
posted by costas at 3:14 PM PST - 44 comments
Drug Terms the President may not already know. Maybe the Pres is just trying to stay current on the lingo in case he falls off the wagon.
via supersquishposted by rev- at 12:02 PM PST - 17 comments
A.J. Arrested -- for real! The actor that plays Anthony Jr. on the Sopranos was arrested for boosting another kid's bag of weed on a street corner. It's one thing when you start to believe your own hype, but when your doper buddies do -- watch out!!
posted by victors at 9:39 AM PST - 15 comments
Radiohead to appear on South Park! Insert unfunny South Park quote here. Suggestions: "Looks like Thom Yorke got sand in his vagina." "Why hello, children. Allow me to sing you a chilling apolcalyptic ballad about the future when we'll all be robots." However, anyone who mentions "Oh my god, they killed Thom Yorke!" will be kicked in the balls. I'm serious. None of that.
posted by tweebiscuit at 8:18 AM PST - 69 comments
Why the New York Post is a crappy newspaper: A 672-word story about a 15-year-old television actor getting busted for a $40 theft merits this byline: "By LARRY CELONA, MARIA MALAVE, ED ROBINSON, CLEMENTE LISI, HALLIE LEVINE, ADAM MILLER, LEONARD GREENE, IKIMULISA SOCKWELL-MASON, LINDA STASI, ALISA CONABOY, BILL HOFFMANN and CATHY BURKE." The
Post's priorities are clear.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:54 AM PST - 28 comments
Windows XP won't work unless you tell Microsoft what it wants to know. In Microsoft's valid attempt to prevent people from installing single copies of XP on multiple machines, they've created a scheme where XP will shut down in 30 days if you don't tell MS the configuration of the system on which it is installed.
If you don't allow Microsoft to collect this information, your copy of Windows XP will simply stop working in 30 days. And even if you comply, your copy of Windows XP might still stop working at some point if you make a lot of changes to your PC's hardware... The company says its database of PC configurations won't contain any personal information, and will be encrypted so that nobody can misuse it. But Microsoft's bully-boy behavior in the marketplace hardly inspires confidence that it won't somehow exploit this information. Walt Mossberg must be becoming one of Microsoft's greatest nightmares - a non-geek respected by non-geeks in power lobbing serious digs from a highly visible and respected platform.
posted by dchase at 6:39 AM PST - 70 comments
July 4
Buying muzak is cool with busy boomers. "Oh I listen to Victoria's Secret brand muzik." This is creepy if you generally self-identify with music, but in another sense perhaps just marks another way music is increasingly just a design choice for many people. After all, I see a lot of brand logos on t-shirts, so? Somehow this ties in with digital music and the equalizing of the artist/audience relationship, too. (Music is rarely foreground for me, but I'll mix my own sets, thank you very much.)
posted by aflakete at 5:18 PM PST - 11 comments
Obscene Interiors From Porn Pics (
and more) "Amateur porn photography is one of the rare instances where everyday people expose their naked bodies to the public. Seeing your neighbors nude my be shocking, I, however, am more frequently disturbed by the gross display of amateur interior design found in these photos." (There's no naughty pics, so don't worry)
posted by wackybrit at 2:00 PM PST - 9 comments
The Libera Manifesto is something to mull today. How many of us build sites (like Metafilter) for the pure enjoyment and fun of it. Thanks Mattowie for some great work and thanks to all those of you out there who are building free sites just because you think that giving back is important.
posted by TNLNYC at 12:48 PM PST - 10 comments
While Americans celebrate history by eating (I have two cookouts to attend tonight), take a look at
history you can eat. The Garden State Heirloom Seed Society is trying to make sure we don't lose the thousands of varieties of vegetables and fruit developed over the years.
posted by ewagoner at 12:34 PM PST - 1 comments
Big Brother 2 goes pay. They're tripping on themselves before they even get out of the starting gate. At the
Official Site they've recently reported they will charge for live Internet feed access after the first few days. The obsessed and addicted are none too pleased. What do you think? Shrewd business move or greedy reaction by clueless network executives?
posted by ZachsMind at 10:34 AM PST - 21 comments
America @ 225. We're still working out all the kinks, but the "Gang of 50" keeps on chugging along. The
Fourth of July for me is the day where we can extol the virtues of nationalism unabashedly...
posted by owillis at 1:07 AM PST - 53 comments
July 3
Review of Nissan Car Loans Finds That Blacks Pay More A statistical study of more than 300,000 car loans arranged through Nissan dealers from March 1993 to last September — believed by experts to be the largest pool of car loan data ever analyzed for racial patterns — shows that black customers in 33 states consistently paid more than white customers, regardless of their credit histories.
(
Need free sign up access to NYTimes.com)
posted by Rastafari at 10:10 PM PST - 21 comments
West Wing Web War! Mickey Kaus shows you how to personally bother Aaron Sorkin and get him to reply to you. This particular pissing match is about writers' credits and compensation, but I'm posting it because it highlights one of the truly unique things about the net/web: It provides a way for celebrities to come out and interact with their fans (or foes) without giving up any of their privacy. Have you ever found yourself keyboard to keyboard with a Big Name? Or know where any of them hang out?
posted by aaron at 9:36 PM PST - 18 comments
Yes sir, that's my cloned alien baby! I was concerned about this article from cnn about Clonaid going ahead with cloning a human. And then I found out Clonaid was stared by a religious group that believes ETs used genetic engineering to create life on earth. Legitimate news item or bad X-files script? (posted by Miss-Lapin)
posted by miss-lapin at 8:26 PM PST - 4 comments
Hooray for cybernetics! Surgeons from the University of Louisville have implanted the world's first battery-opertated mechnical heart in a paitent who was terminally ill. How cool is that?
posted by Hackworth at 4:28 PM PST - 11 comments
Left-handed smoke shifter and other objects to send a novice out to find. Notably missing is the spaghetti straightener. My grandfather told a story when he worked in the label printing division of the Continental Can Company. He sent a guy to the stock room for a bucket of halftone dots. The sucker^H^H^H^H^H^Hemployee got bounced from department to department trying to find who got the last bucket...
posted by plinth at 3:01 PM PST - 16 comments
"Biggest flame war of all time: Danny Boy - sentimental Irish favorite, or stupid song decried by true Celts everywhere?" A link to a discussion in another forum about how one prevents the banal from driving out the profound in online public-participation forums. (Their conclusion: ruthless and efficient moderation.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:40 PM PST - 4 comments
It's about time. "Canada and the 33 other governments negotiating the proposed hemispheric free-trade pact finally released a draft version of the deal on Tuesday, almost three months after they made a promise to do so... At a trade ministers' meeting in Buenos Aires the first week of April, Canada pushed for the release of the document, which contains many bracketed sections, or areas on which there is no agreement."
posted by tranquileye at 1:12 PM PST - 1 comments
Trouble for New Jersey GOP candidate... A candidate's nightmare: a person jumps into the race whose name sounds like theirs? A week after the conservative mayor of Jersey City, Bret Shundler, surprised the experts by winning the GOP primary for governor, it's now clear that a state senator named
Schluter will also run as an independent, draining votes from Republicans and, IMHO, delivering the New Jersey statehouse to the Democrats. Schluter is a quirky gadfly at best -- but this is a state where 10-20,000 votes can decide an election.
posted by brucec at 12:01 PM PST - 4 comments
Mordecai Richler dead at 70. Noted Canadian man of letters, political commentator, frequent imbiber and author of "The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz," "Solomon Gursky Was Here," "Oh, Canada! Oh, Quebec!," and "Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang." He was undergoing cancer treatment.
posted by galachef55 at 9:31 AM PST - 5 comments
Not embedded in your hand, just your credit card. Your Providian VISA with Smart Chip Technology comes with a smart chip that's embedded on the front of the credit card. Soon, a smart chip will let you store information and applications that make shopping easier and more secure. Anyone here a little leary of this kind of "smart"ness? Thoughts?
posted by thunder at 9:30 AM PST - 23 comments
The government is tracking your movements by using metal detectors and store security devices to scan anti-counterfeit threads woven into your money.
Fiction or
Factposted by willnot at 9:19 AM PST - 7 comments
I just want to know when I will get my hoverboard. On July 6, 2001 Transdimensional Technologies, LLC will unveil the next evolutionary step in propulsion. A small prototype "lifter" will rise to the height of four feet without an engine, moving parts, conventional thrust, or propellant. Application of this technology is possible within one year, and a vehicle that is lifted and propelled by this force is possible in three years.
Video clip here.posted by fluxcreative at 8:25 AM PST - 23 comments
Car rental GPS speeding fines illegal. As discussed
earlier on MeFi. The state of Connecticut's Department of Consumer Protection has determined that "There is no legal ability for them to charge a penalty when there has been no damage." Win one for the little people.
posted by da5id at 5:10 AM PST - 36 comments
July 2
Excuse me Officer, do you have a light? The topic of Lambeth (a London Borough) taking a softer stance on cannabis use was
discussed on MeFi a few weeks ago, but now someone has actually tested it out. The respondants seemed pretty typical of the people in the area (Brixton), but it seems that the Police just completely ignored the reporter as she became increasingly bold in her attempts to get a rise out of them.
posted by davehat at 10:16 PM PST - 10 comments
Ho Hum, just the remains of another four thousand year old city discovered on the ocean floor. This one is
Harrapan of the Indus Valley which was home to the
largest of the four ancient urban civilizations of Egypt, Mesopotamia, India and China. The ruins extend for 9 kilometers and located around 40 metres below the water surface. "Due to geological processes and tectonic events, the entire [Gulf of] Cambay was faulted — taking down with it the then existing part of the river sections and the metropolis"
posted by lagado at 9:50 PM PST - 3 comments
Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking has rescued
12,801 people worldwide. It's one of those deep (governmental) web sites that are brief, interesting and ad-free. A sample: "On March 31, 2001, the Cospas-Sarsat system detected a 212.5/243.0 MHz distress signal south of Punta Gorda, CA. A single engine Cessna 150 aircraft had crashed. CGD11 launched a helicopter and located the aircraft, nose down in 5-10 feet of water."
posted by Mo Nickels at 6:43 PM PST - 1 comments
Microsoft bans use of Open Source with its wireless internet tools. Will this be a huge PR blunder, or will people accept MS' hardline stance against this so-called "potentially viral" software?
posted by moz at 1:49 PM PST - 25 comments
Has The Entire American Media Been Bought and Gone To Sleep? United has decided to call off merging with US Air for fears of Antitrust (competition) objections (from the USDOJ; perhaps the EU as well?). This sort of obvious realization came after months and months of, presumedly, attempting to work around the problem. What I want to know is, when the proposed deal was first announced, where were the objections from commentators and consumer advocates? It's sort of pathetic that United is the first one to speak up on the issue, no?
posted by ParisParamus at 12:36 PM PST - 12 comments
When arrogant web-masters attack. First it was specifying browsers, then came specifying screen dimensions, and now...
Ok if you are having trouble reading my text on my site, i do appologize. But i cannot customize for the entire world!... I dont have a problem reading my text and neither do most people. Like i said before usually adjusting your contrast helps tons. Unless you are one of the few "important" people out there who have your contrast already set to some "wysiwhatchamacallitwig" or whatever :). And for those people there is yet a solution for you 2! ... read the view source. :).
posted by jcterminal at 11:31 AM PST - 24 comments
Australian Man Patents The Wheel This story reads as if it was meant to be in
The Onion instead.
Freelance patent lawyer John Keogh was issued with an Innovation Patent for a "circular transportation facilitation device" ... in May. But he has no immediate plans to patent fire, crop rotation or other fundamental advances in civilisation.
posted by wackybrit at 10:06 AM PST - 9 comments
You Stupid #@$! In England, children are learning how to swear. What the #@%&? Aren't they learning enough of this #@&! on the street? I believe that the standards for streets smarts have really slipped over the years. Children should be learning their four letter words at the same place they learn about sex, on the street!
posted by aj100 at 10:05 AM PST - 9 comments
Google offers a new service. New for them anyway.
How does everyone think it compares to Yahoo! and other, similar services?
posted by TiggleTaggleTiger at 9:53 AM PST - 12 comments
Stripper, Reinstated. --
The stripper who posed for Playboy and went on national TV after she was kicked off the Cal State Fullerton cross-country team has been offered the chance to wear a Titan uniform once again.posted by fooljay at 4:49 AM PST - 10 comments
July 1
Jack Parr is, but Tito Puente isn't. Ever wonder if that famous person is dead or alive? Here is the place to look it up. Sorted by name or general occupation, it makes it easy searching for people from the Watergate scandal or the remaining Little Rascals.
posted by Grum at 11:38 PM PST - 4 comments
"Several months ago I wrote a letter to WisDOT requesting your agency consider recalling the vanity license plate IH8GOP that I noticed on a vehicle in the Columbus area.
My reason for requesting the recall of this plate is that the message is obscene to those of us who are members of the Republican Party (GOP) and who subscribe to the conservative principles of the party.
I never received a response to my letter..."
Political correctness, Hate Speech, Free Speech and the problem of vanity plates at Wisconsin's Department of Transportation.
posted by lagado at 10:07 PM PST - 38 comments
World's Greatest CEO? Comparison shopping site MySimon.com had its namesake character animated by Blur studios, and placed into a live-action commercial where he goes to a party and tells everyone how much cheaper they could have gotten various items in attendance. Apparently Frank DiMauro of Chapel Hill, NC didn't like the commercials and told the CEO of the animation studio who
really could've cared less what Frank thought. I wish all CEO's had the nutz to reply to jerks like this guy. (Thanx to the Digital Pimps at
BadAssMofo for this story and link).
posted by suprfli at 9:17 PM PST - 30 comments
Death in threes? Jonno pointed it out about six weeks ago, and I thought to myself that he was right. But man, the deaths are coming thick and fast now. The score, for those of us playing along at home, is: Musicians' deaths, 3 (
John Lee Hooker, Chet Atkins and
Joe Henderson), actors' deaths: 2 (
Carroll O'Connor, Jack Lemmon) and Net folks' deaths, 2 (
Jim Ellis and
Michael Hauben. (Boozoo Chavis' passing, noted by
fooljay, could be totted up in the musicians' column as well. Anthony Quinn and Joan Sims could go in the actors' column, if (like
harrycaul and
wackybrit, you were so inclined.)
posted by allaboutgeorge at 5:32 PM PST - 5 comments
Mortimer Adler Dies at the age of 98. He founded the Great Books programs that many colleges adopted and believed that ones education never stops.
posted by vanderwal at 5:20 PM PST - 8 comments
Monster.com parent buys HotJobs. TMP, the parent company of Monster.com, has acquired HotJobs for $460 million in stock. Although they plan to maintain HotJobs as a "stand-alone brand" the jobs and resume databases will be merged.
I'm really skeptical -- virtually everyone I know searched both Monster and HotJobs, and posted resumes on both places, so what are they really getting but duplication? (HotJobs used to have a very distinctive approach -- no headhunters, in short -- but it had backed off of that recently.)
posted by MattD at 3:51 PM PST - 5 comments
Make love not war. Amoung humans closest relatives, these monkeys solve conflict by makeing love. A lot. Female dominate society they have no homicide and tensions in the group are non existent.
posted by stbalbach at 11:47 AM PST - 17 comments
$145 million in a search for evidence of Big Bangs! So far the popular vote indicates most are in favor of the spending--whatever the cnn data is worth. Am I the only one who'd prefer it spent on my undergrad work, or even biosciences research?
posted by greyscale at 10:21 AM PST - 21 comments
Evolutionary psychology anyone? It seems that more males are born during (and just after) wars and more females are born during peacetime. Adaptive group evolution or just speculative extrapolation? Jim Holt of Lingua
franca explains.
posted by kliuless at 9:36 AM PST - 11 comments
Grammy winning saxophonist Joe Henderson Dies Truely a one of a kind player, Joe Henderson died Saturday at the age of 64. Having had the honor to play with Joe Henderson a couple times while in college, he was truely gifted. He could say something profound in two notes, and you'd go "yeah, that's it". You'll be missed Joe.
posted by ericdano at 6:19 AM PST - 2 comments
FEMA for kids! Let Herman the spokescrab guide you through the catalog of potentially civilization ending disasters. Education is great. Entertaining your kids on cabin fevered summer days is better. I have friends that when they bring their young buck over send him to my computer to play the kiddie offerings at nick.com (sorry dead link this time o' night it seems).
But I can just hear the sunburned Minnesota five year old who's been overly femafied asking mommy after her bedtime story, "August is hurricane season. Is it windy now because we're going to have a hurricane?"
Mom strokes child's hair, "No, here we're only prone to devastating thunderstorms, tornadoes, floods, kidcicle causing cold and blizzards. Now you have sweet dreams and quit worrying about ridiculous things like that. 'Night."
Like of course, a kid that age would really find the FEMA website riveting to begin with. . .posted by crasspastor at 4:11 AM PST - 9 comments
