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And you thought you had a bad day.
posted by aaron at 10:33 PM PST - 3 comments

AOL Buys Quack.com That Enables Access with Voice   <— this is the worst headline I have ever seen.
posted by sylloge at 5:20 PM PST - 4 comments

Isolating the gene responsible for caffeine is expected to lead to decaffeinated beans, and a higher-quality coffee product, all-around... But are they considering other applications? With a bit of gene splicing, anything is possible. Caffeinated oranges, anyone?
posted by Jairus at 3:24 PM PST - 35 comments

This Salon article on the state of web sites aimed at women asks some interesting questions. Women-centric sites set out in 1997 and 1998 to start a revolution, and instead we have relationship quizzes, diet plans, TV reviews, and horoscopes. What went wrong? Are women really interested in these things? Did the sites start out edgy and adapt to the audience? Would anyone expect online magazine/lifestyle properties to be much different than their offline counterparts? I also wonder what anyone that has ever seen and/or used iVilliage, Oxygen, and Women.com think of each site's content? Is it enlightening, or pure fluff?
posted by mathowie at 2:51 PM PST - 12 comments

Pigs seem to be featured a lot in medical news as of late. Whether it be cloning them or using their cells to repair nerve damage in mice, the ultimate goal of all this is to transplant these organs and cells into people who need them. Personally I have no problem with this but I wonder if there are any religious objections to this sort of thing. I know Muslims and Jews can't eat pork, but if they needed a liver transplant would they be able to take it from a pig or would they have to refuse and risk death?
posted by Nyarlathotep at 11:41 AM PST - 8 comments

One part "a long time ago", another part "a galaxy far away" Ever wonder where the Imperial troops went to wind donw on the Death Star? The Death Star Disco of course.
posted by DragonBoy at 11:02 AM PST - 1 comment

AOL + Eliza = AOLiza Some amusing AOL IM conversations using the old Eliza program. Via Yuppie Slayer
posted by chaz at 10:17 AM PST - 7 comments

If you can't beat em... Pearl Jam join the bootleggers. Makes me wish I was into them. Hope other bands will follow suit.
posted by prolific at 7:40 AM PST - 5 comments

Episode II loses the 'humanity' of R2-D2 Artoo to be totally computer-generated? Kenny Baker smells a rat as the Industrial Light and Magic boys wire up a dustbin for motion capture...
posted by blackbeltjones at 6:58 AM PST - 10 comments

ESPN redesigned.
posted by tamim at 10:44 PM PST - 9 comments

when was the last time you looked at a cute baby page? the oldest tricks on the web, when done with wit and love, still work. the proud father in question is a writer for the economist, i believe. and quite the hottie.
posted by patricking at 10:27 PM PST - 9 comments

The enemies of globalisation are readying to march on Melbourne. The irony, is that it's the Net that's bringing them together. Find out More
posted by murray_kester at 10:04 PM PST - 3 comments

copyright your DNA and do it now... before it's too late!
posted by raedyn at 9:57 PM PST - 2 comments

Not seen on TV! Survivor Episode.
posted by tamim at 5:58 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Some are just lucky (via Donkeymon), others, not so.
posted by tamim at 5:44 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Sony: "Oops."
posted by baylink at 3:51 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Politics and strange bedfellows It's like slowing down to watch a car wreck, but more compelling. It's the scene from "Waiting to Exhale," when Angela Bassett took a match to her husband's belongings, writ large. It's probably not the start of a take-no-shorts stance from more political wives, as exemplified by the Giuliani/Hanover ruckus in New York, but it's still noteworthy: I never heard of Coretta Scott King, Effi Barry, Jackie Jackson or any other African American political wife doing something like this before.
posted by allaboutgeorge at 1:12 PM PST - 8 comments

Geeks are alive and well. You too can build a stand-alone web cam for $55 to pair with your $25 web server.
posted by plinth at 11:15 AM PST - 6 comments

Is online journalism dead? Good points, but don't know if I buy the whole argument
posted by owillis at 9:30 AM PST - 4 comments

I Have A Cunning Plan, My Lord... - According to Al Fayed it was Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, who masterminded the plot to kill Diana and Dodi and now he's gotten the CIA to help with the cover up. Perhaps he's been watching too much Blackadder or something.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 9:12 AM PST - 15 comments

Yahoo now has a PayPal-style service. What is Yahoo not doing these days? And how does this relate to them being a media company? They've got the directory, bill payment, auctions, bookmarks, and a music player, among their many offerings. It seems like they've copied many major internet applications and put them in one place. Are they the "Microsoft" of the web in terms of innovation?
posted by mathowie at 9:05 AM PST - 14 comments

Blogger/Pyra is getting into hosting?

Blog*Spot.com is run by Pyra, it's obviously not done yet, but it looks like it'll be an easy-to-setup microhost for blogs, complete with templates.

On a semi-related note, is anyone using WrapZap as an ASP for forms on their blog? Seems like integrating that with Blogger would be a nice little bit of advanced functionality for Blogger Pro.

posted by anildash at 7:48 AM PST - 21 comments

Go Nessie Go! I'd bet the ugly reptile is laughing his ass off :-)
posted by joedrescher at 6:39 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

SURVIVORblog. . . It had to happen eventually.
posted by iceberg273 at 6:22 AM PST - 1 comment

Immortality Protein May Offer Cancer Vaccine. You know, I'm glad they're making progress, but once the 'cure' is found, I can't daydream about being this smart, intelligent doctor, (something right out of a soap), that creates the cure for cancer, and woos all the la-a-dies... then again there is always being that evil-twin and start cloning, with that, you won't need to wooo anyone, they're your toys! mwahahaha!
posted by tiaka at 6:00 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

"LAPD Can Be Sued As Racketeering Operation" Well, duh. Next thing you know, you'll tell me gravity still works. Sheesh...
posted by aurelian at 12:20 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

THE REALLY BIG BUTTON... This for what ever reason seems to have kept people ammused...I did me!
posted by pehtes at 12:13 AM PST - 10 comments

Will they come for you next? Warning to all parents:, THEY are watching you....
posted by brent at 7:06 PM PST - 9 comments

Bush Evades Prime-Time Debates. "Gore spokesman Chris Lehane said Bush's 'idea of the perfect debate is on Austin cable access during the Olympic finals women's gymnastics.'"
posted by lbergstr at 1:52 PM PST - 21 comments

When colleagues in countries outside the U.S. attempt to get me to understand how the rest of the world could loathe us quite as much as they do, this is what they are talking about. "Well, shee-oot, they don' even speak English down there, howthehell they gonna know them tires is not safe? Just slap a little ol' label on 'em and say they're safe.... Oughta be good 'nough!"
posted by m.polo at 12:05 PM PST - 16 comments

It is the first week in school for a lot of students. What can I say - some obviously handles the change better than others ;-)
posted by joedrescher at 11:50 AM PST - 9 comments

Gustavus Adolphus must be smiling. The Stockholm Stock Exchange has launched a hostile takeover bid for the London Stock Exchange. My Swedish in-laws must be so proud. Or, um, not...
posted by aurelian at 10:29 AM PST - 11 comments

"The world is turning into a cesspool of imbeciles!" "I don't want your input! You wanna input something, write your own goddamn story, moron!" "There's no amount of money in the world that could get me to do a commercial for McDonald's toadburgers." Choice quotes from a hilarious, scathing interview with Harlan Ellison. (From the "AV Club," one of the few non-parody/baloney sections of the Onion.)
posted by Tubes at 9:13 AM PST - 16 comments

I haven't seen a real election-related post in a couple of days, although we were talking about religion. Thus...

The ADL asks Joe Lieberman to shut up already. Funny how nobody's mentioned that to Dick. I guess the rules are different for war profiteers.
posted by dcehr at 8:35 AM PST - 11 comments

WWBBD? [from harrumph]
posted by plinth at 7:57 AM PST - 9 comments

The Leaning Tower of Pisa now has the mother of all competition.
posted by aaron at 10:52 PM PST - 3 comments

chelsea.clinton@ox.ac.uk? The Times is reporting that Miss Clinton is planning to follow in her father's footsteps. Though probably not too closely... I'd imagine that it'll be easier for her to fit into the college environment once she doesn't have the Secret Service in tow, but I'm still intrigued how she'll get on here...
posted by holgate at 10:27 PM PST - 13 comments

Jason found a pretty cool javascript/CSS hack so I took a stab creating a bizarro kottke one (bookmark and try it at kottke.org). I think it improves the page :). This might be a killer hack for usability tweaking. If you set your backgrounds dark with light, 28px text for easy reading, few web pages follow that convention. Here's your chance to see things your way. Can anyone think of any other uses for this?
posted by mathowie at 9:37 PM PST - 24 comments

Rubbernecking or autopsy?
posted by highindustrial at 9:30 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Sorry guys, but birth is women's business. Call me a stickler. But the notion of male involvement in the nine very long months of pregnancy has, in some circles, gone way over the top.
posted by murray_kester at 8:04 PM PST - 9 comments

The Smoking Gun has a copy of the wedding video mentioned on Drudge with George W. Bush. Bush tries to be sarcastic and funny. I certainly wouldn't say he's obnoxious or drunk at all.
posted by gyc at 7:16 PM PST - 5 comments

Intel botches one bigtime. They recalled their 1.133 GHz P3 the very same day that AMD started volume shipment of the 1.10 GHz Athlon. (More inside)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 5:26 PM PST - 4 comments

For those of you who don't want to violate the law by linking from your website to the DeCSS source code, you can now link to a [semi-]dramatic reading of the source code (3.5MB MP3), and this semi-alternative sort of Dylanesque folk song of the code (6.3MB MP3).

And no, I'm not making *any* of this up. Thanks to Dave at The Stuffed Dog. He can't blog it, but *I* sure can. :-) [Amazingly enough, they're both pretty good, although the song is a bit over driven. ]
posted by baylink at 3:19 PM PST - 2 comments

You've got to hand it to the British. First they create the world's most dangerous joke, and now they've created the world's deadliest exam. When headlines go bad.
posted by aaron at 3:05 PM PST - 4 comments

How cereal creators die.
posted by gluechunk at 1:06 PM PST - 4 comments

Letter to "Dr." Laura since laura schlessinger can make biblical pronouncements on gays and lesbians, perhaps she can clear these things up as well. [and i refuse to call her doctor seeing as how she doesn't have a medical licence. but that's another discussion...]
posted by raedyn at 11:39 AM PST - 35 comments

Loudon Cty needs an AOL detective (via WP.com)
Confirming my suspicions that AOL users are all criminals. It seems that the only thing about AOl I hear nowadays is this-or-that criminal, or this-or-that victim, a.k.a. "sexiecxique129" or "discostude09" in the AOL chatrooms, was brutally defrauded of identity by someone calling themselves "When_This_Story_Breaks_Everyone_will_Judge_me_by_my_ridiculous_AOL_Handle56171:)"
posted by rschram at 9:47 AM PST - 3 comments

Code Name Mainstream (via NYTIMES)
One of those dumb MF posts that most of you would've found in your daily clicking reports on the strides in acceptance made by opensource advocates. Posted merely for initiating discussion, of course.
posted by rschram at 5:49 AM PST - 4 comments

Censorware gone wrong.
posted by plinth at 5:31 AM PST - 6 comments

TV out in Moscow, due to fire in landmark tower. So, am I just too much of an old Cold Warrior, or is anyone else a bit twitchily nervous that after the TV press hammered Russian President Vladimir Putin over his handling of the Kursk disaster, now the TV just happens to be knocked out? Oh, and that Putin is saying how this incident shows that the whole economy needs more "security"? Hmm...
posted by aurelian at 2:04 AM PST - 3 comments

China puts '700,000 troops' on Sudan alert. "The Chinese have been brought in by aircraft and ship ... We've all seen the Chinese being brought in and can only pray about what's going to happen next." I am quite suprised I haven't heard more about this in the western media.
posted by cmacleod at 12:15 AM PST - 4 comments

Ethnic humor? So am I suppose to be entertained by this or should I be shocked that ethnic humor is becoming popularized by the net sophisticate? Someone please help this poor luddite realize how trendy it is to mock an ethnic culture. Peace out.
posted by dangerman at 10:39 PM PST - 9 comments

This brings taking revenge on your compute to a whole new level. Like twelve kilovolts.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:38 PM PST - 1 comment

I want one. There's absolutely no reason I'd need anything like this, but I still want it. Maybe it's a good thing they won't be sold in this country...
posted by Aaaugh! at 7:57 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

This may be too good to be true. Drudge says there's a home video of a possibly drunk GW Bush acting the smartass.
posted by nikzhowz at 7:29 PM PST - 9 comments

"Fucking-bomb, it's Dolby, man."
posted by tiaka at 6:45 PM PST - 3 comments

ABC Mistakes Onion Story for Real News. Hilarity Ensues!
Couldn't resist... the "dummy" story even vaguely resembles my "White House Staff Eats Its Young" headline...
Now, compare and contrast with the handling of John Stossel's bogus lab results, or CBS' Craig Kilborn "sniper" sniping, or the Bryant Gumble mumble, or any other recent major media screw-up...
True credit to ROMENESKO'S MEDIA NEWS
posted by wendell at 1:39 PM PST - 12 comments

Color me surprised. My annoyance at Tom Clancy for the shoddy quality of Rainbow Six is well known. I had expected to give up on him entirely; I didn't even plan to buy the new one in hardcover without reading it first...
posted by baylink at 12:23 PM PST - 2 comments

The fish thought they died and went to heaven.
posted by tamim at 4:28 AM PST - 6 comments

So Nixon supposedly took drugs and beat his wife? If that's true, he was really going for the trifecta with the whole Watergate thing.
posted by muffin at 12:21 AM PST - 1 comment

As if we needed it, another reason not to participate in the "stupidity tax" here in the States.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:15 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

R.I.P.: Comic Book Pioneer Carl Barks
Anybody can do superheroes... Carl made Disney cartoon characters into action comc stars.
I devoured these as a kid; bought foreign-language versions from the Disneyland Main Street bookstore; to this day, the only "jillionaire" I can trust is Scrooge McDuck.
Now, if only HE had done the "Backstreet Boys" comic instead of Stan Lee...
posted by wendell at 10:49 AM PST - 1 comment

Star Wars + Gangsta Rap = fun Saturday time waster
posted by owillis at 9:16 AM PST - 2 comments

Just for the record, I am NOT Wendigo, I am not related to Wendigo, I'm not even sure what a Wendigo is (or El Wendigo, for that matter), and I am NOT suing a cybersquatter for the Wendigo.com domain name.
Thank you, MetaFilter, for allowing mne to get that off my chest. And anybody who calls THIS self-linking is cruisin' for abusin'.
posted by wendell at 1:36 AM PST - 13 comments

Go NOW! Turn up volume!
posted by grumblebee at 8:50 PM PST - 9 comments

freshman teen if you've ever wanted to know what goes on in a teens mind, this is for you.
posted by worth at 4:08 PM PST - 39 comments

Oh shit, oh piss, oh dear. Judge rules domain names are not property. We had enough problems with this in the last decade with 800-numbers. <sigh>
posted by baylink at 2:03 PM PST - 12 comments

Moron alert! For those missing J. Danforth Quayle, your best bet for continued hilarity in the executive branch of the US government would be to vote for George W. Bush. Although some of the quotes listed in this link are simply Shrub getting tongue-tied, others are truly fascinating. Apologies for linking to the evil Slate.
posted by norm at 1:39 PM PST - 13 comments

Is it just me? Or does Mark's new design "element" just seem a tad phallic? I hope it's not just me.
posted by silusGROK at 1:19 PM PST - 24 comments

Good luck with the new book, Derek. You will be missed at Pyra HQ.
posted by 120degrees at 11:43 AM PST - 13 comments

From today's Asimba.com newletter: "Like most people, you're probably bored with your teeth. Every day the same old incisors and molars. Cheer up! Soon you'll be able to grow new teeth thanks to genetic engineering. Order now and receive a second row of teeth free."
posted by Tubes at 11:12 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Newest Olympic Event: Torch Stealing! "The Olympic torch relay survived another sabotage attempt Friday when a teen-ager tried to steal it from a torchbearer. "
posted by Outlawyr at 9:57 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

It's like something right out of a horror movie. This is easily one of the most bizarre and sad news stories I've ever seen. Words can't express the grief and terror this family must feel. The followup gives more disturbing details.
posted by ahughey at 9:40 AM PST - 3 comments

i heart parody. especially if it's a parody of really hateful folks...
posted by patricking at 9:26 AM PST - 1 comment

The weezils at AllAdvantgae.com are up to no good. - First of all, who thought paying people to surf was a brilliant way to make money? AllAdvantage is now seeing the error or their ways and is switching all members over from the Pay to Surf plan to a new Sweepstakes plan regardless of whether their members want to switch or not. Apparently those who have bothered to read the email they sent out about the switch are getting pissed.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 8:03 AM PST - 4 comments

"He recalls his early, naive acceptance and even admiration of Hitler..."
A rather interesting perspective of that time from a man about growing up Black in Nazi Germany.
posted by tamim at 7:47 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

(Almost) What you wanted for Christmas. A lightweight browser using the Mozilla rendering engine, solely to browse webpages, minus all the smoad of bloat thats making Mozilla so un-usable at the moment. It is just work in progress though, so some important practical features aren't implemented yet, but something to look at nonetheless.
posted by aki at 7:28 AM PST - 4 comments

This reminds me of a quote, or, well, there are different version of this. "If dolphins are so smart, why don't they get a job?" Was it on Simpsons? or? Ohh well.
"Janik, a Scottish biologist now at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in Massachusetts, said that the signaling pattern of the dolphins is similar to what experts believe happened when ancient human beings first began organized speech."
posted by tiaka at 6:39 AM PST - 4 comments

I'd still like someone to explain to me what a "Britney Spears" is. Is it synthetic? Created with Lightwave?
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:25 PM PST - 4 comments

First Bicentennial Man, now this. Shudder.
posted by highindustrial at 7:24 PM PST - 1 comment

Aw, for the love of Kee-rist, can't anyone quit screwing with stuff?

Columbus plans to shoot parallel versions of the first film -- one for the U.S. market and one for Britain. His plan is to shoot two or three alternate sequences for each film and to give the British film the first novel's original British title, "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone." The American film will be called, "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone."

posted by baylink at 7:01 PM PST - 12 comments

John at Genehack sez: "The music industry is a drug dealer. Napster is drug legalization." I think he might be right.
posted by baylink at 6:49 PM PST - 5 comments

This piece on comic genius Jonathan Winters makes me sad.
I would have expected that this master improvisor would have come up with a more creative analysis of the current state of entertainment than trotting out the usual suspects of "freak shows" and "political correctness".

BEGIN RANDOM BLATHERING: Then again, the current media environment must be awful, if the Miss America pageant can't seem to get publicity for its Miss America Instant Celebrity Judge Contest. (One caveat: this is NOT the competition where Big Brother's Jamie won Miss Microsoft State -er, I mean Washington State) And how did the premiere of Battlebots slip below my personal radar? And what IS the All-star Newspaper all about? Can I get Dan Gillmor or Aaron Barnhart trading cards now? And why did I need PRNewswire to find out the old rock band Survivor was suing the TV show of the same name? What's going on around here?!?!? END RANDOM BLATHERING
posted by wendell at 6:11 PM PST - 12 comments

I want one of these "Bush and Gore make me want to Ralph" T-shirts!
posted by veruca at 3:04 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Aha! Telemarketers ARE the Devil Incarnate. I always suspected as much...
posted by quonsar at 2:51 PM PST - 6 comments

"Ask Maxwell" -- Microsoft's New Support Database Am I the only one who finds something a tad sinister about this thing? He looks a bit odd, and considering it's supposed to be automated support, this profile of him is damned creepy. By the way -- the profile states that he/it is an English major. Uh, Bill? -- wouldn't it have been a smoother move to say that the "guy" was a Comp Sci major? Geez...
posted by metrocake at 2:26 PM PST - 10 comments

Is it still "file sharing" if you don't share? According to a Xerox Parc study, 70% of Gnutella users are downloading music, but they aren't sharing with others. Some Gnutella developers say this is a self-correcting problem and that new users will step up to fill the gap. Others think this is the start of a growing trend and the whole copyright infringement issue might go away if the greed of users in a peer-to-peer network prevents it from succeeding in the first place.
posted by honkzilla at 1:07 PM PST - 8 comments

"It cannot be every man, woman and child out for themselves in the wild, wild west" :HP's Fiorina Backs Net Regulation Once again a behemoth corporation and the Federal Government must implement regulations because the flock is way too stupid to think for themselves.
posted by chiXy at 12:30 PM PST - 4 comments

John Gray wants to change the world "But I have no interest in politics right now," he says. "The world is not ready for my messages. I've got a whole -- it has evolved. If you get me talking about it, which I won't do because it's too distracting, I have a whole agenda, a whole political party -- what to do about poverty, what to do about drug addiction, what to do about economics, what to do about welfare, what to do about health policies.
posted by john at 11:34 AM PST - 17 comments

Sometimes, I'm proud to be a commie, heh. well, a russian. whichever. ohh, and here is photo 1, and photo 2 too.
posted by tiaka at 10:22 AM PST - 4 comments

Buy your kid a new doll you cheap bastards! - Apparently barbie dolls and other plastic toys made in the 1950's have recently been found to secrete a sticky chemical film that could cause developmental problems in children.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 9:01 AM PST - 4 comments

{{{Spoiler Alert}}} The exercise in broadcast shame has crowned an evil queen.
posted by Awol at 10:18 PM PST - 6 comments

Happy birthday to ya! The Best Web App still alive turns 1 and doesn't look like slowing down. Now it's found it's legs, it seems like time to take pyra out of diapers and potty train the little guy (you can tell what's happening in my house at the moment).
posted by Neale at 7:12 PM PST - 9 comments

Remember, kids, make the most of every day, because you never know when you might be crushed by a flying elk.
posted by jjg at 3:08 PM PST - 17 comments

Sopranos to whack Napster. The story behind the cartoons is only mildly interesting, but the Flash animations themselves (courtesy of the "Napster Bad" Metalli-toons guys) are worth checking out (you can also go right to the mirror site here).
posted by NickBarat at 1:40 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Mastercard Wants to Silence Nader If you thought Ralph Nader's views on too much corporate power were too far out -- click this one. The corporate thugs are trying to shut him down.
posted by snakey at 11:52 AM PST - 6 comments

Schadenfreude is such a wonderful word; too bad English doesn't have any equivalent. If it's scrolled down, look for August 22 with headline G4e still stumbling, competition massing . Critical quote inside.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:42 AM PST - 21 comments

Texas Scientists achieved 20 minutes of invisibility on 10 mm of skin of a rat. I know this is a great advance in medicine and all that stuff, but what concerns me is this may be also a new generation of spies, terrorists and thieves...or am I just paranoid?
posted by neo at 10:54 AM PST - 16 comments

Woman charged with statutory rape When laws collide. They were married too late
posted by Outlawyr at 9:54 AM PST - 10 comments

Amazon.com to offer online car-buying service. I guess this explains why they've changed their navigation once again. A little more information for those hungry for it. I wonder if I can 1-click a car? Will it be shipped within 24 hours? And I don't want any damn bookmark!
posted by jdiaz at 9:24 AM PST - 1 comment

Content Protection at the Hardware Level. Sounds silly, doesn't it? The further you read, though, the scarier it is. What if your speakers refused to play non-watermarked audio? Followup to the Sony VP's speech.
posted by lbergstr at 8:50 AM PST - 2 comments

Bake Cookies for your Visitors with Flash. Another spot on editorial from the folks at Flazoom.com. You know, if Flash developers would practice what Flazoom has been preaching for the past few months, my IT department would never have banned SWF files from our firewall. Gahh...
posted by DragonBoy at 8:16 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

"And you're little dog, too!" (via Taken Outtacontext in an unrelated post). Finally someone puts this whole Survivor nonsense into terms I can understand. The PC-types are going to be all over Stuever on this one, but damn it's funny!
posted by m.polo at 7:18 AM PST - 4 comments

O'Reilly investment in Pyra disclosed by Dave Winer on the FoRK mailing list. Was this a secret?
posted by rafeco at 6:26 AM PST - 15 comments

You go, girl! [via fark]
posted by plinth at 6:24 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

47 MPH Fastballs and a Catcher as the winning pitcher. It was one fun day in the ballpark. Besides a weird box score, the Atlanta-Colorado game also featured a brawl.
posted by tamim at 3:04 AM PST - 3 comments

iFeel your pane
Logitech comes out with a mouse that has a sense of touch. Called the iFeel mouse, it has the potential to do some interesting things with games, but does anyone see the use it could potentially have in UI usage? Would it be easier to navigate GUIs if you got a subtle bump when you hit certain clickable spots?
posted by daveadams at 12:21 PM PST - 18 comments

Tim Berners-Lee on Web Page Design in 1991: "Yes, Good home page design is an art..."
posted by leo at 12:06 PM PST - 6 comments

Anyone want to see the inside of a Power Mac G4 Cube? Look at the size of that heat sink! (Scroll down a bit.) I guess that's what you have to do in order to avoid fans.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 12:04 PM PST - 4 comments

"When we carry Iowa in November, it'll mean the end of four years of Clinton-Gore."
~gWb
posted by tamim at 8:31 AM PST - 30 comments

Big Brother may be even more Orwellian than I thought. It may not be so much about constant surveillance, as about manipulating public perception of events.
posted by harmful at 7:25 AM PST - 9 comments

AltaVista lies to England about free net access. I am shocked that a company in the honorable net industry could think of such a scam! Shocked I say!
posted by Mick at 5:55 AM PST - 6 comments

warning! addictive stuff!

Pictionary. IRC-like chat. Mix both ingredients. Serves up to 10 people confortably. Addictive when some colleagues in the same room are playing with you. Last warning : this will make productivity rate in the US economy go down (and possibly the interest rate will go up...) B.
posted by Baud at 1:15 AM PST - 5 comments

Roger didn't last long. You may remember him from a few weeks go.
posted by gluechunk at 8:51 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Heeeeeeeere's Harry!
posted by honkzilla at 8:16 PM PST - 18 comments

Deepleap goes into deep sleep. What's the backstory, guys?
posted by endquote at 7:59 PM PST - 45 comments

To paraphrase George Carlin, don't you find it just a little strange that Linux Daily News is running stories about Dynamic Probes right next to stories about Brown Orifice?
posted by baylink at 7:48 PM PST - 2 comments

The FCC is upset about the recent rash of on-air "threats".
posted by owillis at 5:06 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

iCab 2.1 is out The fabbest little Web browser for adherents of the Macintosh religion, iCab, is now out in version 2.1. It lacks any CSS support, and JavaScript support is very poor, but for a program written from scratch by one or two people (Alexander Clauss seems to be the lead), it's astounding. Absolutely full support for HTML 4 – every extended character (iCab seems to use its own font), weirdo tags like LONGDESC, ACRONYM, and ABBR, TITLEs on everything (no popups: text appears in status line). Filter out ads automatically. Only browser other than Lynx that handles metadata like LINK REL="next". The damn thing validates your code for you (click the smiling or frowning icon at the right of the address bar). And so on. And so on. I love this program. And yes, I'm in the minority. What else is new?
posted by joeclark at 4:10 PM PST - 4 comments

USA Vice President Al Gore really put his foot in it this time. Seems he urged students to drive drunk responsibly. That makes as much sense as urging people to participate in safe sex without protection. Smart Al.
posted by jaxomlotus at 3:55 PM PST - 7 comments

Breaking up is hard to do. Far be it from me to encourage celebrity gossip, but Anne Heche, formerly one-half of the Famousest Lesbian Couple Ever, was found in a Martin Lawrence-like state, confused, addled, and ringing strangers' doorbells. Just a nice little "WTF?" item for your day.
posted by solistrato at 1:43 PM PST - 10 comments

Airport BodySearch may reveal more than passengers know
Does anyone really care if the lonely airport security guards have a look under your clothes?
posted by chiXy at 1:41 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

In honor of our FAVERite spammer, mspansel, we hardly knew you...
posted by Avogadro at 12:54 PM PST - 1 comment

Gnutella not really distributed, de facto "servers" more vulnerable to lawsuits
How's that for a grab-ya headline? It's only part of the speculated dangers to Gnutella users postulated by Eytan Apter et al. in this Parc Xerox Department of Information Ecologies paper. Gnutella purports to be a legal alternative to Napster, since it's a distributed, anonymous, peer-to-peer network, as opposed to a central clearinghouse owned by a group of managers. The authors of this paper have measured soem download and usage patterns and conclude that some de facto servers have sprung up by virtue of the fact that most Gnutella users take out more than they put it, many don't make any files available to the network, and the typical user is more likely to download than upload. Those few people who make large collections available to all end up serving practically all the queries. (And, since they already have a big collection, are less likely to download as well.) The authors also conclude that the imbalance of "free-riders" (or, users who download more than the upload) threatens to make the network more sluggish, more vulnerable to crashes.
posted by rschram at 9:43 AM PST - 6 comments

"But officer, I don't even HAVE an Pornograph!" Or, "Why we need some kind of indentification technology when it comes to registering domains."
posted by kristin at 9:28 AM PST - 8 comments

This headline hasn't exactly gone *bad*... but it's starting to smell a little. [actually, I thought it was hilarious, though I couldn't quite tell you why.]
posted by baylink at 6:35 AM PST - 5 comments

Finally a new episode of 0sil8.
posted by tamim at 4:47 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

I musta slept though a lot, since there's a buttload of new movie trailers over at quicktime.apple.com including Disney's Summer 2001 animation offering as well as their Christmas release with voices by David Spade and John Goodman, and MGM's Silence of the Lambs sequel, Hannibal, (a lame pre-preview width nothing to it at all, really), the newest Highlander film which I didn't even know was coming out on September 1st, and the full-length Final Fantasy preview which, may I add, looks kick-ass awesome! And the only reason I went there was to get another look at the Charlie's Angels preview I caught on the front of a showing of Godzilla 2000. Mmmm, Cameron Diaz. I see you baby, shakin' that ass.
posted by honkzilla at 12:42 AM PST - 3 comments

God is said to be tired of everything and planning the final destruction of the world.
posted by joedrescher at 9:55 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

I am sitting here watching a grown man cutting raw potatoes. Yes I have no life. Do you watch, or am I more pathetic than usual? [more]
posted by ZachsMind at 7:31 PM PST - 9 comments

And you thought that europe was relatively patent-sane... Advogato is carrying an interesting article on the EU patent office planning to allow patents on anything, instead of the current no algorithms, no blah, no foo policy. (Fill in blah and foo for yourself, I can't think of anything).
posted by fvw at 3:29 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Simpsons movie, coming to a theater near you? If this movie sucks, heads will roll.
posted by muffin at 11:07 AM PST - 5 comments

Web art is more than just pictures - take this cool site for instance, with its strange sounds and flash movies. What I really like about this one, as well as eneri.net is the the emotional aspect, which is very rare on the net. Especially, I recommend you to check out the "contagion" link.
posted by joedrescher at 5:06 AM PST - 1 comment

"They’re just hanging out," said Cathie Levine, a spokeswoman for the first lady’s campaign. Does she mean the family, Bill's tongue, or...?
posted by quonsar at 1:48 AM PST - 8 comments

You're not going to believe this... but it looks like Newt Gingrich had more than one partner while Speaker of the House. (more inside)
posted by aurelian at 12:01 AM PST - 21 comments

AOLiza: Funnier than a wombat on meth.
posted by fable at 11:22 PM PST - 2 comments

Just what the church needs... More excellent publicity. Two churches using the quarters that Catholic schoolchildren put in the collection plate to have a legal pissing contest over who has the right to use the name of a woman who spent her entire life trying to feed poor people one cup of rice at a time. I wonder how much rice each of those quarters would buy?
posted by Skylark at 10:06 PM PST - 3 comments

Publishers' Worst Nightmare : Information for Free. There are people working night and day on putting a meter on the information we either want or need. While they're well within their right to do so, it's refreshing to come across an alternative approach.
posted by leo at 7:48 PM PST - 2 comments

Face it: Gore doesn't have a chance. -- So what is going on? In an illuminating essay, Bijan Parsia suggests a cheap way that Gore might 'soften his anti-progressive image', but then concludes wisely that 'that image isn't merely skin deep'. Barbara Ehrenreich argues along similar lines. So will Gore lose because he has permanently alienated the progressive vote, or for other reasons? And regardless, what will a Bush victory mean for progressives? (more inside...)
posted by johnb at 6:30 PM PST - 39 comments

Fred Moody bashes linux programmers Fred had me on his side of the argument until he started generalizing linux programmers as misanthropic, talentless hacks. I find that arguments are more effective if you stay away from personal attacks, but that's just me.
posted by jgooden at 2:19 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Def Leppard , the reason why Q Prime came into existence, are offering a live mp3 for download on their official website. It's ironic, that their mangement Q Prime, are the same people who are helping their other clients like Metallica sue Napster.
posted by riffola at 11:24 AM PST - 2 comments

Fortunately, no one died when trying to rescue this poor guy who got stuck in the bottom of his outhouse for three days. He later described having hallucinations, and being trapped inside with rats, snakes and various other lovelies. I'd have to agree that comparing his ordeal to "Bible's Hell" would seem appropriate enough. ugh
posted by ookamaka at 10:00 AM PST - 3 comments

They're dead. They're all dead. Buf if the rear section has been flooded with high pressure water, and if the British mini-sub latches on and opens the hatch, the mini-sub will instantly fill with water and the entire crew of the mini-sub will die. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. Now I hope they can't latch on.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:44 AM PST - 19 comments

Artic Ice Cap is now perfect for slushballs and snowmen
Once the North Pole was covered in that kind of hard, dry, icy snow that you couldn't pack. Now sping is here! Robin red-breast and the Easter Bunny can't be far behind. Let's pelt each other with snowballs and build a fort before it all melts away, and the long summer of human-made Armageddon melts us all. What a world, what a world. Not that we haven't seen it coming.
posted by rschram at 7:43 AM PST - 2 comments

Netsape 4.75 released as an answer to brown orifice, not the WSP...
posted by Dean_Paxton at 7:23 PM PST - 3 comments

If you haven't already read "The Heavenly Jukebox", you should really check it out. The Atlantic Monthly recently posted this great article subtitled "Rampant music piracy may hurt musicians less than they fear. The real threat -- to listeners and, conceivably, democracy itself -- is the music industry's reaction to it". While somewhat long, it's a very interesting read, going into the original copyright lawsuits in England over a hundred years ago to today's ordeal pitting the RIAA against the millions of people downloading Metallica mp3s off of Napster. Well worth reading.
posted by ookamaka at 4:10 PM PST - 1 comment

When Headlines Go... OVERT? (the surrealist headline generator strikes again)
posted by wendell at 3:42 PM PST - 4 comments

When headlines... Those sadistic Russians.
posted by owillis at 12:27 PM PST - 4 comments

In other news - Spielberg hijacks project (A.I.) from Kubrick's grave, hacks it and Casts Robin Williams....
Williams? Williams? I'm going to go out and kill SS myself.
posted by tiaka at 12:25 PM PST - 11 comments

Roll Your Own Curses in Gaelic
Confirming my long held suspicion that the best the Web can do is automate and diversify Mad Libs functions.
posted by rschram at 11:56 AM PST - 1 comment

'An investor has obtained permission to operate a discotheque in a former tannery where Auschwitz inmates worked and died, an official said yesterday, and a TV report said it was already open for business.' I'm not even outraged by this. it just makes me numb.
posted by rebeccablood at 10:59 AM PST - 14 comments

Eggers On Criticism and 'Keeping It Real'. Really interesting and well-written, of course. But also, sometimes, infuriating. More inside. (via kottke)
posted by lbergstr at 10:48 AM PST - 6 comments

Last week, Bush was up by 16 points. Today, Gore is up by 3. Who are all of these “swing” voters that can't make up their minds in the face of clear differences between the candidates?
posted by quirked at 9:37 AM PST - 19 comments

iToke - Just place an order through any WAP enabled device and the folks at iToke will deliver you all the marijuana you want. And in less than a half hour guaranteed! Sorry. Amsterdam only. The way the sites designed you'de think they had a secret alliance with Apple.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 9:30 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

radio asatru is what happens when it gets dark at the renaissance faire and the wizards and wenches start getting loose. madmartigan! madmartigan!
posted by subpixel at 8:53 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

The "dickie game" is a new feature on the public danish newschannel "DR". Yes - it is a publically owned and funded channel. The rules are pretty simple: press the "start spillet" button and try to guess what dick belongs to which dude. Have fun!
posted by joedrescher at 8:20 AM PST - 2 comments

Panel backs human cloning research - One word about it: worrying.
posted by kchristidis at 8:02 AM PST - 19 comments

Out of more (kinda) sad news, a possible ray of hope.

Maybe love can build a bridge between these two now...
posted by chicobangs at 6:59 AM PST - 1 comment

two words : $|<1|\|Z C0|\|T3ZT !!!. whoo! so 3||3t3, you'll spray your shorts.
In other news, microsoft announces a wallpaper contest. Microsoft commented that they're "fuckin tired of seeing that sky thing, We want all those design kiddies to create us some cool shit, like with that small danish pixel font, aww yea..."
posted by tiaka at 4:52 AM PST - 3 comments

So farewell then, Nasty Nick! Or was he a stoolie all along?
posted by Mocata at 3:11 AM PST - 8 comments

Another fun site to watch re the capitalist giddy switch along with the old faithful. (ripped from Bifurcated Rivets)
posted by aflakete at 2:26 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Respect to Pimpshiz for defending the freedom of speech online! This guy is more than a hacker...
posted by joedrescher at 1:57 AM PST - 5 comments

DICK. The only choice for godly, right-thinking folk.
posted by Optamystic at 11:37 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

everyone found their glam name yet..?
posted by patricking at 11:13 PM PST - 9 comments

I was reading cryptonomicom last night ..and awoke this morning to read this online.. Deja vu, Datahaven! I'm glad they found good use for that antiaircraft deck.
posted by dabitch at 6:37 PM PST - 2 comments

horny housewife What the hell is this
posted by worth at 5:39 PM PST - 4 comments

Something Awful is one of my favorite game-related sites, full of goofy immature humor, game reviews, bad movie reviews and more. But the webmaster is having a hard time getting paid for the ads he hosted as part of the Gamefan / Express.com network... (more)
posted by wiremommy at 5:25 PM PST - 2 comments

Another corporation shoving dioxin-contaminated food down the throats of unsuspecting consumers. In this case, more than 2200 times the amount allowed to be in a refinery's waste water. Obviously, Ben and Jerry's must be stopped.
posted by aaron at 5:03 PM PST - 12 comments

Source Code != Protected Speech
posted by quonsar at 3:40 PM PST - 9 comments

Clinton Grand Jury Probe What a convenient day for the Republicans to leak this. When wil they learn? What will it take?
posted by owillis at 3:22 PM PST - 9 comments

The ultimate in online gaming? But seriously, if there isn't anyone home and in danger, there is no justification for the use of deadly force. And, you'd better be able to take cover quickly in the event of a crack...
posted by quonsar at 3:15 PM PST - 2 comments

Bill Gates is posing nude for Fortune Magazine. Aparently he's finally letting his financial woes get the best of him. He's doing the spread for the money.
posted by jaxomlotus at 2:27 PM PST - 2 comments

And you thought those Russians in the submarine had it bad. I'm trying to decide which of the two would be the worse way to snuff it. Yuck.
posted by ookamaka at 1:15 PM PST - 10 comments

Short films have become a pretty standard propaganda tool in modern American presidential campaigns. When Al Gore set out to make his 2000 campaign film, there was only one guy he wanted for the job -- Spike Jonze.
posted by jjg at 11:39 AM PST - 8 comments

Eddie Breen is one cool artist. He takes paintings bought at garage sales and flea markets and makes them better. I can't put my finger on exactly why, but I love this piece and everything on this page.
posted by mathowie at 11:03 AM PST - 2 comments

The White House redesigns its web page
Spin up front, navigation off to the side. Reminds me of a weblog. I always thought the original deisgn looked too much like the Vatican web site.
posted by rschram at 8:59 AM PST - 11 comments

"Road House" the Cheesiest movie according to new book by MST3K's Mike Nelson. Nelson said in an interview. "It takes itself very seriously. At least all the actors weren't in on the joke, unless they were pulling off a really, really good joke"
posted by Outlawyr at 8:28 AM PST - 3 comments

Buy My Vote!!! Obviously a statement or joke, this could spell trouble for the involved party. I had the original URLs for eBay, but can't seem to find them now :-(
posted by da5id at 5:41 AM PST - 6 comments

Seattle's "Alternative Weekly," The Stranger has no actual articles in it this week. Instead, they replaced all of the words in the articles that would normaly be there with a novella. All the normal formatting is there, right down to the letters to the editor and the little news bits. Really clever idea, and from what little I've read so far, a neat story too. Unfortunately the clever layout doesn't translate to the Web site, but the story does just fine.
posted by endquote at 1:34 AM PST - 5 comments

Two independent research teams have successfully cloned pigs. The importance? Due to their comparable organ size, pigs are good candidates for farming transplant material. Pork bellies may be more than a commodity...
posted by Awol at 8:02 PM PST - 4 comments

Remarq.com has been acquired and squashed by Critical Path. "Critical Path will continue to offer RemarQ services" but "Critical Path will no longer provide free, Web-based access to newsgroups at RemarQ.com. " Augh! The best web-based usenet service is no more! I *loved* their convenient and fast interface. Now I'm back to awkward & clumsy Deja.com for free web usenet... unless anyone has a better idea?
posted by Tubes at 1:32 PM PST - 9 comments

"Keeping track of the kids is easy in this smart kidswear concept which incorporates GPS-driven locators and miniature camera's allowing parents to ensure they're safe, while a computer game console worn on the sleeve keeps the kids happy." As a parent, I would pay any price to avoid actually watching or playing with my child. Where do I order?
posted by rcade at 12:37 PM PST - 20 comments

Yes, Mr. Gore, I Believe in God, and Other Wack Tales From the Culture Wars: Record label CEO Danny Goldberg has some interesting things to say on the Gores, Lieberman, and the moral watchdog-ism that permeates the current electoral farce.
posted by NickBarat at 11:44 AM PST - 6 comments

Whitehouse staff jailed for being porn-dogs. I'm glad I live in Canada.
posted by Bane at 11:42 AM PST - 21 comments

Let's rope 'em in while they're still young.
posted by 120degrees at 11:03 AM PST - 10 comments

Now I'm depressed. I'd seen The Fabulous Ruins of Detroit site before, but never really looked around. It was well worth the hour I spent there. Then I wandered over to Modern Ruins. We're a destructive species, aren't we? We don't even value the things we create...
posted by Aaaugh! at 10:18 AM PST - 6 comments

Twist up a joint before you drive It could save your life
posted by snakey at 10:11 AM PST - 7 comments

Tipping at McDonalds *this* is what a private citizen does? This entire "spontaneous" stop seems awfully contrived to produce warm fuzzies on the part of the public. I mean, how often does one of us 'normal' folk leave a twenty dollar tip or go behind the counter for pictures at a fast food place?
posted by tsitzlar at 9:52 AM PST - 18 comments

Michael Lynch characterizes the D2KLA (or whatever they're calling it) protesters as idealistic and irrational. Also there's some interesting quotes and tactics discussion from the LAPD.
posted by dcehr at 9:25 AM PST - 20 comments

John Seely Brown interviewed by Wired. The former head of Xerox Parc. There were two really insightful quotes I came across in this article;

Lurk is the cognitive apprenticeship term for legitimate peripheral participation. The culture of the Internet allows you to link, lurk, and learn. Once you lurk you can pick up the genre of that community, and you can move from the periphery to the center safely asking a question.

Sort of like Metafilter =) And...

Bob Metcalfe has it all wrong: The power of a network isn't the square of the number of people - it's the number of communities it supports. If you look at n people, there are potentially 2**n communities.

I've actually wondered about Metcalfe's law. This n^2 has always seemed metaphorical to me, but it seems a lot of people mention it as if it were a literal relationship. What is the "value" of a network anyway? Anyone know of research on this?
posted by lockecito at 6:02 AM PST - 2 comments

Kids click on banner ads most according to a research held by Nielsen/NetRatings. What this means, is that we'll now be seeing ads like 'click here to win a free Barbie doll!' or 'Subsribe to our newsletter to get your free Pokemon'...
posted by kchristidis at 1:27 AM PST - 5 comments

The Burning Man website has undergone a massive redesign, it seems. Much better than before, and with only 12 days left to BM2K. I could cry, really... I can't make it this year, nor did I make it to Defcon, H2K, or any other gather. Bring back stories from the fire for me, people.
posted by Jairus at 8:56 PM PST - 10 comments

The Head Lemur's campaign for the ICANN Board of Directors enters the next phase. During the month of August, there is a member nomination period, in which individuals can win a place on the ballot by attracting the support of 2% of the activated members in his/her region, up to a total limit of 7 nominees per region. From now until August 31st, all activated At Large members will be able to "endorse" a candidate for member-nomination in their region. The list of candidates, including Alan Herrell (The Head Lemur), have been through the nominating process. Please keep your membership number, your password (sent via email), and your PIN number (sent via postal mail) handy, because you will need to use them to endorse any candidate for member nomination, and to vote in October.
posted by netbros at 7:20 PM PST - 2 comments

Will the Russians let national pride stand in the way of saving a hundred men's lives? I sure hope not. I hope they ask for help. I don't give a damn about national pride, but I want those men back. The DSRV is the modern descendant of a diving bell which was used in 1939 to rescue much of the crew of USS Squalus, which sank during a test mission. It was the first time in history that men had been saved from a sunken submarine.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 6:27 PM PST - 34 comments

Microsoft has never made a good product , and is therefore a Bad Company, says baylink.
posted by cCranium at 5:27 PM PST - 29 comments

Ted Nugent reccomends more guns for students. Through his new book, Nugent uses the Columbine massacre as a tool in pointing out the need for more people to be allowed to carry concealed weapons.
posted by tomorama at 5:11 PM PST - 25 comments

When headlines go wrong... This ain't gonna leave a lot for the rest of us, is it? Seems to me that this ranks as the biggest acquisition in history.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 5:03 PM PST - 3 comments

Real goes subscription. A decent business model, IMHO. But with two lacking elements: 1) Too expensive ($3-5/month is better), 2) More compelling content (needs more name brands). I think a flat rate type content model could work well for video/multimedia content (the porn industry does well with it).
posted by owillis at 3:19 PM PST - 8 comments

"Ahhhhh the atmosphere" should get at least a giggle out of you. Commercials at their best.
posted by physics at 2:30 PM PST - 4 comments

Atari Confidential Design Documents Now you too can read the hardware specification for Gauntlet. Add a C compiler or assembler and a dash of MAME and you can write your own game.
posted by plinth at 1:35 PM PST - 1 comment

indieshite exposed! yawn. let us never speak of them again.
posted by wisdom at 12:51 PM PST - 7 comments

Admittedly, this is nerdy-precedent cool, but methinks it will yield celluloid hemlock. Although, if it does work, maybe they can start augmenting the often less-than-lifelike performances of certain flesh-and-blood starlets (who are usually already augmented in other ways). HOO-ah! indeed. Brave new world, and all that.
posted by highindustrial at 11:48 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

What do you get when you cross the greatest Atari 2600 game ever made with the greatest musical parodist of the 20th Century? Welcome to Weird Al's Great Adventure.
posted by jjg at 11:45 AM PST - 10 comments

Napster and convergence again. I suppose, like Lance, I can't get tired of this conversation much, either. I mean, my head might explode as I try to run down all the ramifications and possibilities, but I doubt I'd get tired of trying to work it out. Although, it would probably be better to stop just talking about it and jump out in front and start doing things with those thoughts. But, this isn't a 'damn Napster' point. It's a convergence thought. Will people buy a server and storage medium when they hbuy a house, lke we buy a new fridge today so they can network their lives? What's going to be the new compensation plan for content? How can infomration be guarranteed?
posted by rich at 9:03 AM PST - 15 comments

D2KLA: The fun begins.
posted by aaron at 8:53 PM PST - 5 comments

Enough of these pansy-assed candidates. Gore? Bush? Nader? Feh on them all, clueless newbies, no real experience. It's time for a candidate who's been there. A candidate who's a true stateman. A candidate who is tan, rested and ready! It's time for us to rise up and say Nixon 2000!
posted by aaron at 8:44 PM PST - 9 comments

Music Industry to back down on Work-For-Hire. If you read the Courtney Love stories last month, you'll have heard that they snuck one across the plate in a satellite TV bill. Everyone screamed, and they've apparently decided to fight other battles. [spotted on Jerry Pournelle's mail page]
posted by baylink at 8:28 PM PST - 1 comment

Jay Gatsby, closet homeboy.
posted by Optamystic at 5:09 PM PST - 2 comments

Contentville is selling copies of over 1.5 million college dissertations and theses published since 1871. Contentville claims that authors will be paid royalties if their works are sold, but somehow I don't think they contacted most of those authors for permission to put said works up for sale in the first place.
posted by phichens at 5:05 PM PST - 15 comments

Attention trial lawyers! Miss out on your chance to get rich off a piece of Big Tobacco? All your buddies already sliced up the potential Firestone pie? Well, have we got a cutting-edge trend for you: Aim for Big Soda! Johns Hopkins claims soft drink companies use caffiene to addict consumers.
posted by aaron at 4:34 PM PST - 15 comments

Wow... whether it's someone playing with video editing or the real thing, this is pretty freakin' cool: footage of a jet liner triggering a lightning strike. The page takes a bit to load, but for all of you lightning freaks out there, you'll dig.
posted by RakDaddy at 3:12 PM PST - 1 comment

Searches just got fun again.
posted by TractorInc at 2:37 PM PST - 15 comments

Doorway and corner to sublet, SOMA... Oh, the wonderful world of Craig's List. It would be funny if it wasn't so damn depressing.
posted by judith at 2:37 PM PST - 3 comments

Ms. Thompson, can Hunter come out and play? What? You mean he doesn't wanna? But it's an election year! Aw shucks! And Jann Wenner was going to let him play whatever position he wanted! (pouts, kicks ground listlessly) -- (this link courtesy of Romenesko at the Poynter Institute)
posted by allaboutgeorge at 1:44 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Because nothing says "You Suck!" quite like a website. "Sucks sites" and how to run them without getting sued...
posted by baylink at 12:41 PM PST - 1 comment

YEEEEOUCH!!!!! - "...writhed in pain, teeth bared as he saw all the treasures he had carefully preserved for the big day drop to the polythene bag he was standing on,"
posted by Nyarlathotep at 11:17 AM PST - 2 comments

Microsoft Reader is out. Did MS finally make a decent product, to really spark ebooks. Or is it more of the same?
posted by owillis at 11:07 AM PST - 17 comments

How To Blend In [from memepool] The site is a bit slow, but the concept is truly inspired. This might be the source of my 2001 calendar.
posted by plinth at 11:00 AM PST - 1 comment

CatchPhrase BuzzWord of the NanoSecond - issue terrain i.e.: "The issue terrain favors us enormously." LOL! I can't stop laughing! issue terrain! What? They have men sitting in little smokefilled rooms coming up with these things? "The political climate is bad for Gore (brrr!), but how about his issue terrain?" "Oh that's good! No one knows what that is yet cuz we haven't defined it, so naturally his issue terrain is good!" ROTFLMAO!
posted by ZachsMind at 10:05 AM PST - 4 comments

Benoit's article on hip hop slang and mass media poses some interesting questions, albeit briefly. There's certainly no reason the two can't coexist...
posted by NickBarat at 9:23 AM PST - 3 comments

Corporate Crackdown is Adbusters' cover article this month. The story exposes the development of these legal fictions that are becoming more powerful than nations and suggests ways to bring them back under civil control.
posted by sudama at 8:00 AM PST - 13 comments

This story isn't an excerpt from the new Tom Clancy novel; it just reads like it.
posted by harmful at 5:57 AM PST - 2 comments

He relied on God... Okay so now we have the transcript. And now we still haven't the slightest idea. What's with all the thumping?
posted by ZachsMind at 9:10 PM PST - 11 comments

Last One Standing. Now this is reality tv. Just came on at 8PST on USA. About 10 people have to keep a hand on a car in order to win it. After 3 days awake, they started losing their wits and begin to imagine that they're being plotted against. What Big Brother should have been.
posted by owillis at 8:57 PM PST - 11 comments

Amazon.com's new navigation Opened my mailbox and lookee-here, a message from Amazon.com's Jeff Bezo's for me? Yup. Looks like he's not only trying to push every product under the sun, but also acceptance of his company's new navigation.
posted by Christopher at 7:21 PM PST - 6 comments

M.E.F.I: Machine Engineered for Fighting and Infiltration
What's your cyborgesque acronym?
Some other examples: B.L.O.G.: Biomechanical Lifeform Optimized for Gratification & K.O.T.T.K.E.: Kinetic Organism Trained for Terran Killing and Exploration. [Via Three.Oh]
posted by riffola at 4:05 PM PST - 4 comments

We need a Great Pyramid. I mean, come on, what is America's great constructional feat? The Empire State building? The Sears Tower? What relative pieces of shit. We need a pyramid to show we're at least as good as the Egyptians!
posted by muffin at 2:15 PM PST - 17 comments

Three good pieces from the Sunday Times: New York as viewed through foreign tourist guidebooks (big surprise, the French books are the ones that spend the most time pointing out American inferiority). Jerry Nachman on journalists' overwhelmingly one-sided ideology and their rapidly-decreasing ability to hide it. And Michael Lewis on how TiVo and Replay are going to destroy television as we know it, eek! (And don't miss the videos showing how they blew up the TVs and Kellogg's boxes to get the photographs that accompany the article.)

I don't think the Nachman link will live beyond 11 pm Eastern on Sunday; I couldn't find a longer-lasting link to it. I guess opinion pieces aren't important to the Times.
posted by aaron at 10:29 PM PST - 9 comments

Do you take this blogger to be your lawfully wedded geek? I want to know why Matt and Kay haven't set up a link to their deepleap wishlist wedding registry yet.
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 9:17 PM PST - 3 comments

Nader Reacts To Gore's VP Candidate Choice. "You want politically correct, top this..."
posted by quonsar at 7:55 PM PST - 3 comments

Dallas NAACP president Lee Alcorn on Joseph Lieberman: "So I think we need to be very suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with, you know, money and these kinds of things." Right on, boy!
posted by ericost at 7:14 PM PST - 4 comments

Madonna has another child. Does anyone else think she's still pretty not-bad looking? A MILF in my book, at least.
posted by muffin at 4:46 PM PST - 6 comments

So you wanna be an indie-rock expert? [Courtesy of Peterme.]
posted by baylink at 2:35 PM PST - 3 comments

This is absolutely one of my favorite web sites. I've had this URL bookmarked on my computer for well over a year (maybe two?). It's simply one of those weirdass web things that defies explanation. It simply cannot be appreciated without seeing it. The page is truly demented. What are you waiting for? Geez!
posted by ookamaka at 3:15 AM PST - 14 comments

judge orders police to stay out of convention protest headquarters... without a search warrant or urgent circumstances. so far, so good. let's see how it goes....
posted by rebeccablood at 9:52 PM PST - 2 comments

Da Hip Hop Witch Eminem and Vanilla Ice in a Blair Witch Project parody... what more do you need to know?

err... other than "Why?"
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 7:47 PM PST - 4 comments

The first autonomous, two-legged robot with artificial muscles and an energy-consumption lower than that of a human being.. ...and, wait for it, it's Dutch!
posted by prolific at 3:02 PM PST - 1 comment

Public Broadcasting Gets Funky
The CBC (sort of like NPR, but Canadian, federally-funded and with TV too) has a stealth project, 120seconds. They are planning to embrace new media in a big way and this is their start: stories, music, film, experiments. Not bad.
posted by sylloge at 1:05 PM PST - 3 comments

Death Row Marv lets kids play at being executioners.
posted by crawdad at 12:50 PM PST - 2 comments

Nader does good ad. Pair of talking heads on Nader's upcoming TV ad. Interesting analysis, and links to either a transcript or a Windows Media file of the ad.
posted by aurelian at 12:49 PM PST - 2 comments

Disney found guilty of theft? The house that Walt built loses in court to a complaint that they stole an idea. Here's the backstory to the $1.5 billion dollar lawsuit.
posted by owillis at 12:09 PM PST - 1 comment

When Headlines Go… HUH?!?!?
"Clock Reset in French Yahoo Nazi Sales Battle"… Yes, there's a relevent story about web freedom in there somewhere, but the headline looks like output from the Surrealist Compliment Generator.
posted by wendell at 11:54 AM PST - 2 comments

We all knew eventually TimeWarner would exert some pressure on AOL for owning/running winamp.com as a portal to steal TimeWarner artists' work. Yesterday, winamp took down their search engine (here's the current result for all searches). Is this just the first step by TimeWarner? How long will winamp continue to last?
posted by mathowie at 10:37 AM PST - 2 comments

This is for those of you running Windows, but wishing you still had a Mac. (novelty purposes only)
posted by thirteen at 9:50 AM PST - 3 comments

LifeFX This company claims to have made 3D models of faces that are indistinguishable from the real thing. If I didn't know before hand, the few examples they show would have fooled me.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 9:47 AM PST - 1 comment

Naked Co-Pilot Caused Crash? Is this why it's called a cockpit?
posted by Outlawyr at 8:44 AM PST - 3 comments

Convergence. Dave Barry does a bang-up job tying together the recent threads about Harry Potter and Stephen King.
posted by baylink at 8:14 AM PST - 4 comments

K through 5th graders in LA are being taught to lock themselves inside their school in case the police start rioting next week like they did in Seattle.
posted by sudama at 7:56 AM PST - 48 comments

Excellent. Massachusetts judge allows lesbian couple's names on original birth certificate. One supplied the egg, the other, the womb. The sperm were anonymous.
posted by baylink at 7:52 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Man kills self and injures fiancée in wood chipper. (reg req) Phoenix police said Rodriguez told his new fiancée he had a surprise for her early Wednesday, drove her to the central Phoenix landscaping business where he worked and asked that she close her eyes and lie down. Then he lay down beside her, on what turned out to be a conveyor belt, and fed himself into a wood chipper .. more
posted by chrish at 6:04 AM PST - 16 comments

John Stossel Reprimanded but not Fired by ABC - It is not exactly new information that Stossel has a habit of distorting facts and misleading the public. However, in this case he apparently thought he could get away with fabricating two complete sets of lab results related to food safety. Willingly disseminating false health information strikes me as a serious breach of journalistic ethics. In any case, ABC thinks a slap on the wrist will suffice, and tonight Stossel is expected to make an on-air apology. Will he admit he lied or blame an intern?
posted by johnb at 2:52 AM PST - 11 comments

RealityRun is apparently real; 'Roger', the world's first 'Reality Runner', starts evading the masses on the 14th of this month. He has a 10K USD bounty on his head.
posted by dplanet at 12:02 AM PST - 12 comments

Love those open instant messaging standards. Rather than use their own servers or a decentralized approach, Aimster offers peer to peer file sharing services by using the existing AOL and Microsoft Networking infrastructures.
posted by alana at 10:19 PM PST - 4 comments

God Damn it, Clancy... I thought I told you to stop trying to buy football teams, and start *writing* books. And to let your editors edit...
posted by baylink at 8:52 PM PST - 2 comments

Adobe sues Macromedia over infringement of their patented tabbed palettes.
"Adobe filed a lawsuit against Macromedia® alleging infringement of our intellectual property, specifically our patented tabbed palette, which is a key user interface element and method invented by Adobe and incorporated into our products."
posted by captaincursor at 3:50 PM PST - 15 comments

"I was there!" If you read the comments about Bob Doran's death threats against Clinton in this thread, you may get a kick out the photo of him "marching with Martin Luther King Jr." that's on Doran's site.
posted by gluechunk at 3:05 PM PST - 7 comments

Would you believe...?
Considering the popularity of the "Get Smart" shoe phone at the exhibit, I'm surprised somebody isn't trying to market one today. It could be cooler than some of today's strangely designed phones... or shoes.
posted by wendell at 2:34 PM PST - 3 comments

You must witness this... Dig deep, kids! Imagine the brain expense that has has gone into this site. I wish it were real.
posted by ooklah at 1:32 PM PST - 1 comment

Do you see what i see. Anyone work on web projects funded by the Department of Education, or any other organization which is now requiring websites be Bobby Approved?
posted by milhous at 1:14 PM PST - 10 comments

The first weblog rallye ever. You may not have noticed it because it is in German language. All you have to do is signing up and following the links on top of 26 German and Austrian weblogs. Can you be faster than 36 seconds? The competition closes tomorrow at 2PM Berlin time.
posted by arf at 11:24 AM PST - 3 comments

Ha ha.
posted by evilmaryellen at 9:31 AM PST - 15 comments

Canadian Imperialists Unite! Watch out world, soon you will feel our power. No more Mr. Nice Guy!
posted by kaefer at 9:17 AM PST - 4 comments

Nethack 3.3.1 released today. This wonderfully addictive game has been under development for 15 years. That fact alone is major bonus points. Also, a quote from the d/l page: "This version might work on a 286 machine, but it has not been tested on one." Heh. 'cause they probably can't find one to test on. Well, the consolation prize is that it does run on Atari and Amiga.
posted by syn at 8:19 AM PST - 4 comments

"Capitol Ill" - Because it's time for a dose of the "Vitamin G" (presidential candidates rapping - flash required)
posted by sawks at 4:32 AM PST - 2 comments

Space 'Survivor'? Gotta admit, it sounds cool.
posted by owillis at 10:25 PM PST - 5 comments

Craig Kilborn calls for the assassination of George W. Bush on national television. "Just a little joke, of course. huh huh huh." Yeah, sure, maybe, though not at all funny, and also wildly illegal. CBS and Worldwide Pants have been forced to apologize, and the Secret Service has an active investigation. It should be noted, though, that this aired last Friday, and CBS and Worldwide Pants said and did nothing until this got talked about on a New York radio show yesterday. Why do I get the feeling that if, say, Regis got on his show and made the exact same "joke" about Al Gore, he'd be fired before 10:30 am and be blackballed for the rest of his life?
posted by aaron at 9:24 PM PST - 28 comments

Google: advanced search — this is new, no?
posted by sylloge at 5:18 PM PST - 8 comments

Surveillance of political undesirables continues. Round up the usual suspects. The sad thing is that this is not the least bit surprising. I honestly believe that the Dem. convention protests are going to get unbelievably ugly. Here in LA, the cops are beginning to behave even more thuggishly than usual. And that's saying something, my friends. So here's my question....I'm a liberal who feels that the Dem Party has lost its way, and I'd like to register my dissatisfaction with a peaceful protest. However, such a protest carries with it the very real chance of a billy club beatdown and a far from pleasant stay in the luxurious LA County jail. Do I follow my conscience, or my common sense?
posted by Optamystic at 5:16 PM PST - 14 comments

Disney.com launches Surf Swell Island: Adventures in Internet Safety
What is Goofy doing on The Cliffs of Mean Manners? Will Donald get lost in The Virus Caves? Is Minnie safe on No Privacy Beach?
posted by dan_of_brainlog at 12:53 PM PST - 4 comments

Government-sponsored cyber-terrorism? A few days ago somebody hacked a website that's been pretty outspoken against US intervention in the Balkans. Evidently it wasn't the first time.
posted by dcehr at 9:30 AM PST - 1 comment

Study: Women Outnumber Men on the Web in America. I wonder in what ways will these changing demographics affect the web? And in the blog community, do women and men blog differently?
posted by BoyCaught at 8:58 AM PST - 19 comments

In polls, the Separation of Church and State does not rank as one of the top election issues for many Americans. However, with recent Supreme Court rulings on the posting of the 10 Commandments, aid to religious schools and school prayer, the debate has been very contentious with numerous groups both for and against. Now as the election approaches, Bush is for more Church in our State and Gore generally is for the continued separation.
posted by quirked at 8:05 AM PST - 16 comments

I should like to purchase this sexy phone, but am I gonna get a brain tumor if I do?
posted by aladfar at 7:21 AM PST - 15 comments

Well, I didn't like boys anyway. Small loss.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:53 PM PST - 4 comments

Pete's Compendium of Knowledge "It was then that a large number of ducks (each with their own special little bar-coded death-ray machine) swarmed the supermarket, their eyes burning with the fury of sweet, sweet love. They knocked over the Post Toasties display, sending fruit-filled pastry wannabes flying everywhere. The TV newscaster commenting on the event blew chunks of roast beef around with an old run-down snowblower. Go figure."
from Attack of Torvas the Terrible.
This site has lots of fun literary toys to play with. The above quote comes from a collaborative story writer in which anyone can contribute a few words at a time.
posted by lagado at 9:56 PM PST - 1 comment

How Culture Molds Habits is a fascinating article. Read this article, tally another point for nurture. I've long thought this was true, but Nisbett's supposedly gathered rather a lot of data proving it is so. The article raises some interesting parts of the study, but I think the ramifications bear some considering. I'd be interested in reading the full study when it's published, but I haven't a clue where to get the Psychological Review. And can you imagine what the advertising execs will do with this stuff? Ads tailored to the way you think. Wheee. It does, of course, raise some fun questions about religion and politics.
posted by fable at 9:37 PM PST - 4 comments

The Surrealist Compliment Generator is one of the better computerized sentence generators. It produces weird compliments which are nearly always funny. Link courtesy of tbtf log.
posted by lagado at 7:21 PM PST - 1 comment

Trust me. She's good. And depending on where you are in the world, she might be in your area very soon. [more]
posted by ZachsMind at 7:11 PM PST - 5 comments

There have been some, uh, interesting remarks made by people regarding the rights of protestors and the rights of police in Philladelphia. Bijan Parsia has written an informative piece on Monkeyfist about what exactly is happening there, from a legal standpoint.
posted by queequeg at 4:19 PM PST - 11 comments

A retarded man in Texas is set to be executed tomorrow. Is this what "compassionate conservatism" is all about? Bush does not support laws that prohibit the execution of retarded people, even though such laws exist currently in 12 other states. Oliver Cruz commited a heinous crime, but isn't killing him tomorrow pre-meditated murder? Are we a better society after we kill Oliver Cruz? Does it send a message to other would be mentally-retarded killers that they will hear and will it convince them not to commit similar crimes?
posted by mathowie at 3:47 PM PST - 50 comments

28 states have filed suit against the five big record companies and two music retailers for conspiring to fix CD prices. Perhaps sometime in the near future I will actually be able to afford new compact discs. Until then, I'll have to amuse myself by laughing at the RIAA.
posted by sixfoot6 at 3:02 PM PST - 6 comments

Rewriting of history. Now, I don't really approve of what Pinochet did, but in the same process, those in charge are raising up Allende as some sort of great humanistic leader. All in all, I consider what happened to be part of war. IT has to be looked at in context. If Pinochet didn't do something about Allende, what would have happened to the people of Chile? It's not so black and white.
posted by rich at 1:41 PM PST - 16 comments

Apophallation and you - The ex Mrs. Bobbit has nothing on the garden slug, who sometimes must preform apophallation to end the reproduction ritual. Movies like 'Lair of the White Worm' used the imagery of apophallation to scare the crap out of me when I was 14.
posted by DragonBoy at 1:05 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

I have one, and so does Marky Mark Finally there is a support group for all who have a supernumerary nipple. Most of us are still getting over Chandler's removal of his on Friends, so we need all the support we can find as a group. Please visit this page and see just what 1.5% of the population is experiencing.
posted by DragonBoy at 12:38 PM PST - 2 comments

Old time hockey, eh? I always wondered what companies are targeting me as a market. Well, Spawn nailed me good for Hanson brother and Dr. Evil dolls^H^H^H^H^Haction figures. Their site's a wee bit pokey, but it makes me drool over their offerings. Of course the true Hansonites already know where to go, right?
posted by plinth at 11:27 AM PST - 5 comments

In the UK, it seems marrying the wrong guy strips you of political expression. Cherie Blair, Tony Blair's wife, apparently had the nerve -- the nerve! -- to write an article about her professional field, which is employment law. Jeez, next thing you know, she'll be asking for UK citizenship, or the vote, or something.
posted by aurelian at 9:34 AM PST - 5 comments

Network Solutions has denied Amazon.com's request for the renewal of their domain. Read the letter to Jeff Bezos here.
posted by DragonBoy at 8:25 AM PST - 5 comments

Malasia's attitude to sodomy and politics is brought into graphic focus by this bizarre news story in which an ex leader of the country has been sentenced to nine years in prison for sodomy. His brother has been sentenced to six years and four lashes with a rattan cane. Human rights violations literally up the wazoo...
posted by barbelith at 4:10 AM PST - 3 comments

Ethnologue Languages of the World is a comprehensive online resource detailing all of the languages spoken in the world today. It has indexes based on language name, language family and country as well as a search facility. Also covered are creoles and deaf sign languages.
posted by lagado at 12:48 AM PST - 10 comments

The Village Voice is doing a great job covering the RNC protests (isn't it a little odd that these stories aren't all over the place?) and to top it off their new design features snazzy dHTML navigation.
posted by sudama at 9:05 PM PST - 35 comments

Revolution or... vodka? The photographer who took the unforgettable (and much imitated) picture of Che Guevara, which still covers the cracks on many a student wall, may have to travel from Cuba to London to prevent an ad agency from using it to sell Smirnoff. "Che was not a drunk," he says. Not the first time that the revolution has been appropriated by the capitalist running dogs...
posted by holgate at 7:28 PM PST - 2 comments

Has the nytimes login workaround http://www10.nytimes stopped working as well? I'm getting a login page. First partners.nytimes, now www10... what's the world coming to?
posted by Neale at 5:19 PM PST - 17 comments

The Background image is a little off, but.... here's a page created entirely on a Commodore 64. Nice to know that everyone's in the web design loop.
posted by Cavatica at 12:54 PM PST - 7 comments

Ok, here comes the firestorm. Joel on Software has some very good things to say -- though, like most user-interface-design mavens, I think about 50% of the time that he hasn't comprehended what the problem really is... but in this piece, he's wrong.
posted by baylink at 12:26 PM PST - 17 comments

Jesse Jackson Slams US Drug War Man, if Al would have picked Jesse for veep, I might not be voting for Nader after all.
posted by snakey at 11:44 AM PST - 18 comments

Grrrrr! Space.com is a relatively high-profile site that usually promotes science. That is until today when they started listing horoscopes. I guess after securing $50 million in second round funding, they will do anything for hits.
posted by quirked at 11:40 AM PST - 4 comments

Wow, talk about an insult to the victims of the Holocaust. What a nutcase!
posted by tomcosgrave at 11:17 AM PST - 10 comments

I approached this review expecting it to be of the "major media providers are the problem, not the solution" sort, but discovered something somewhat different: "It’s not that the medium of the modern political campaign–television advertising–failed to do justice to men of substance, but that men of substance failed to adapt to television advertising..."
posted by dcehr at 9:19 AM PST - 3 comments

Big Brother, around the world... Like Survivor, it started in Holland and Germany, then spread across continental Europe, and finally to the UK and USA. And like Millionaire, the duplication of the format is a good way of distinguishing cultural differences. The British version seems more candid than its American cousin, in keeping with Channel 4's character; it's also a lot less chummy. Anyone else keeping track of the two different houses?
posted by holgate at 8:53 AM PST - 11 comments

Monday morning quarterbacking: Gore/Lieberman '00 I could've sworn it was going to be Massachusetts' own John Kerry. With New Hampshire Gov. Jeanne Shaheen and Missouri's Dick Gephardt removing themselves from the running, this was probably the most courageous choice, and makes Cheney look even sillier than before. The downside is that the Connecticut senator's disapproval of Clinton during the Monicagate scandal may wind up calling more negative attention to Gore than positive. And then there's the bigotry, both veiled and unveiled, that no doubt is already on the way in ads, whisper campaigns and so on. I wonder to what extent was Gore's choice rushed by Bush's huge post-convention bounce. Did I miss any ramifications? Anyone care to play Dennis Miller here?
posted by allaboutgeorge at 8:11 AM PST - 17 comments

"You've got to be careful with midgets in Spandex."
posted by harmful at 7:34 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

CBS said NO! Reebok said yes.

If you have watched survivor, many of you may have noticed the ads for Reebok that push the limits of your imagination... somewhat. Now, watch the ad that CBS won't air. But Reebok has kindly put up on their website.

Is this a new low for TV? Or just another barrier being breached?
posted by da5id at 6:17 AM PST - 1 comment

The Mummies of the Tarim Basin were discovered fifteen years ago by Chinese archaeologists working in the salty deserts of far western China. These bodies date from between 3,000 and 4,000 years ago and have been preserved so well in the extremely dry salty conditions that some of them look like they're still alive. Even more remarkable is that their clothing is still intact including tapestries and tartans. Finally these people were six feet tall, had long noses and fair hair and there is strong evidence that they spoke a language whose closest relatives are Celtic and Latin.
posted by lagado at 5:37 AM PST - 10 comments

Al Gore has decided on Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-CT) as his VP nominee, sez someone who ratted to the AP. I suppose there's a small chance they're just leaking this now to test public and media reaction before making a final fianl decision, but I doubt it.
posted by aaron at 5:33 AM PST - 11 comments

freespeech Find out what really happened during the republitilian convention. The people showed up, on the streets!! Unity and diversity!!
posted by meme at 9:09 PM PST - 1 comment

"Use the force, Luke" Of course, Sir Alec Guinness hated being typecast by the Star Wars films. But his death seems to mark the end of an generation of British actors who straddled the differing demands of stage and screen. Who will take their place?
posted by holgate at 6:26 PM PST - 13 comments

Well here's why Ralph is running. Do the other guys have anything this succinct and clear-cut? I can't find on the 'Net any page, nor have I heard in any of their speeches, where Bush or Gore come straight out and state exactly why they're running.
posted by ZachsMind at 5:42 PM PST - 20 comments

ëb tvoju mat'!
posted by quonsar at 10:35 AM PST - 11 comments

"a family spent three months living as Victorians, and THE 1900 HOUSE chronicles their experiences." Personally I find everything from Real World to Big Brother to Survivor disappointing, and only occasionally more entertaining than dog food commercials. The 1900 House takes the idea of 'reality-based' programming to an unprecedented level of maturity and elegance. I wish we had more shows like this one.
posted by ZachsMind at 7:52 AM PST - 3 comments

Great headline, incisive commentary. The Welsh have all the luck.
posted by quonsar at 6:36 AM PST - 2 comments

Castro: Bush and Gore the two most 'boring and insipid' candidates possible. Finally, a political commentator who doesn't mince words.
posted by chaz at 3:46 AM PST - 9 comments

Go to this site repeat Go to this site
posted by lagado at 6:47 PM PST - 11 comments

Mom who laughed as she threw child off 14th-floor balcony sentenced ... to five years in prison. I'm definitely committing all my murders in Scotland from now on.
posted by rcade at 1:11 PM PST - 2 comments

I can Dance if I want to! Note to Ben Brown: Before you have a heart attack again, I don't know if this has been posted before, but I think it's funny. =0P
posted by skizz at 7:36 PM PST - 4 comments

AOL's Netscape division is being sued by an NJ photographer over their SmartDownload feature, which allegedly allows surveillance of activity between websites and you. He claims "[SmartDownload] secretly transmits to Netscape the file name and location, along with an identification string unique to that Internet user.''

"...we've never used or accessed any information about SmartDownload users or files..." - AOL
posted by tomorama at 6:35 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Sometimes, I just want to throw my hands up in the air, cry out in disgust, and give up. Apparently, these people in Britain have never heard of NTP, the Network Time Protocol, clients for which have been available for Win9X for *years*... and which *works*

Can we *stop* inventing the wheel, now? It rolls, already.
posted by baylink at 2:37 PM PST - 2 comments

Constitutional Violations Persist in Philadelphia Prisons. Allegedly bad stuff going down at the convention. Did Tom Brokaw mention anything like this before last night's rerun of "Ally McBeal"?

"You just enjoy your television shows, son, and let us run the country!"
posted by dcehr at 12:57 PM PST - 26 comments

I was astounded, but maybe I'm just naive. According to a Beyond 2000 article, low oxygen content in aircraft cabins, which contributes to the majority of air travel woes, is mostly due to penny-pinching. Great, skimping on air! What's next? ... umm ... ahhh ... Oh gee, I have nothing worse to compare it to!
posted by quirked at 10:29 AM PST - 23 comments

Bill Gates and Standards. Pour yourself a fresh coffee before starting this one: 14 pages between Gates and one gutsy reporter. Discuss.
posted by Zeldman at 10:10 AM PST - 9 comments

John Scopes, the defendant in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, was born 100 years ago yesterday, but teaching evolution 76 years later is still considered controversial. Are we ever going to stop having to defend evolution?
posted by mathowie at 10:08 AM PST - 40 comments

Michael Moore is my hero. Love him or hate him, ya gotta admit he's pretty sharp.
posted by Optamystic at 3:41 AM PST - 61 comments

Why I Do Porn Even Though I'm Very Bright And Could Have Done Anything I Wanted. Apropos the earlier thread on women and promiscuity, here's an essay by Asia Carrera, Unreal skin maker, webmaster, and porn star, explaining why she chose to make adult films as a career.
posted by wiremommy at 9:27 PM PST - 8 comments

Dack provides a pointer to the growing backlash in the US against cell phone use. While "conspicuous" phone use can certainly at times be annoying, the general level of distaste and phone rage seems to be a phenomenon confined to the United States.
People in Europe, Australia and Asia, took to mobile technology like the proverbial ducks to water and haven't developed anywhere near the same irritation levels.
Is this just a difficult transition for a country slow to adopt a technology or says something deeper about the American psyche? Afterall, we are talking about the country that invented Dick Tracy and Maxwell Smart.
posted by lagado at 7:48 PM PST - 14 comments

Why is George W. Bush the best candidate? Because he can deliver speeches from three hours into the future! When the Associated Press Goes Bad.
posted by aaron at 5:03 PM PST - 2 comments

Godzillaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
posted by alana at 4:54 PM PST - 11 comments

This commercial looks familar. Didn't some other computer company do something similar back during the 1984 Super Bowl? I suppose imitation is the last refuge of the scoundrel.
posted by fpatrick at 4:18 PM PST - 14 comments

Science on the cheap! Now this is cool. (more inside)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 2:20 PM PST - 2 comments

This from the no-graphics page of the Progressive Review: "DAVID LETTERMAN has recently expressed interest in hosting a presidential debate and has not decided whether or not to include Ralph Nader. To express your view on this matter call the short at (212) 975-5300 and ask for Art."
Sounds like fun to watch if it's true, if it even plays out.
posted by dcehr at 1:05 PM PST - 2 comments

DaimlerChrysler is taking the Webmaster of DodgeViper.Com to court after he tried selling it on eBay. What gets me is that the owner of the site claims he had to defend himself, because he couldn't afford an attorney, yet he says he owns a Dodge Viper? Just another dispute on who can own what domains, and what they can do with them.
posted by Mark at 1:01 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

This isn't anything new, or really all that interesting, it's hardly a link, but, Steven posted similar material, and this is certainly not some bait. Just, it might be interesting to hear your opinion. Ohh, and I apologize for it being this long.

While trying to find when the kubrick festival thing at the music box will be, I found they were playing Sex: The Annabel Chong Story, below they also had a quote :

"A man shags 251 women on camera and he is proclaimed a stud. He is admired. Why am I not regarded in the same way? I am a stud!" - Annabel Chong"

My immediate thought was, well, confusing. Where I wouldn't exactly call someone who just "shagged" 251 women a "stud", I wouldn't really look all that much down on him either. I'm not implying that Ms. Chong is the scum of the earth or anything, but I would certainly think just that much more of the man.

Is it me? I checked imdb's page, and a lot of the reviews had the same questions,

"I didn't know quite what to expect from this film. I didn't expect light and fluffy, but this movie, which documents the life of one weird nymphette, was less enjoyable than I could have imagined. Ms. Chong (not her real name) had a very decent middle class upbringing. The question I asked myself was why she turned out the way she did"
And many more such reviews, which I won't cite, since I'm already taking up half the page, but you get the point.

Why? Our standard of women higher? Or, are we (some of us) (men), just can't stand for this sort of a thing, because we envision any woman as a mother, as maybe a wife? Easy answer might be Morals and Ethics, that it's simply not very, ahmn, in a lot of people's opinion, it's not right (it's dirty). Ok, going too far ahead here.

What are your thoughts on this?
posted by tiaka at 12:33 PM PST - 22 comments

The flip side of the DejaNews linking fracas. Here's a story about YellowBrix (love that name) who supply a news feed with appropriate words pre-hotlinked to your products. This isn't exactly the same problem as the Deja thing for a couple reasons, but the original newswriters *still* didn't know their words would be linked. It's not as bad... but is it acceptable?
posted by baylink at 12:04 PM PST - 4 comments

Female iMac owners rejoice!
posted by skizz at 11:28 AM PST - 7 comments

Distortions is generally a pretty silly site. This guy uses image-editing software to "distort" celebrity's faces. Sometimes they hit, sometimes they don't. This week is very funny and maybe a bit scary, Dick Cheney and Dubya Bush as Beavis and Butthead.
posted by edjo at 10:21 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

One of the best media manipulations of modern times: CBS and Mark Burnett fool everyone about the ultimate Survivor. For weeks now, it's been more or less common knowledge that Gervase was going to be the last one standing on the island. Why? The two main reasons: An unused graphic discovered in the bowels of CBS.com's site showing all the contestants with Xs over their faces, except for Gervase; and a quick snippet of a Tribal Council in the opening credits a few weeks back showing only four people, one of whom was Gervase. There have been other bits of evidence conveniently popping up lately, such as reports that Gervase has been seen driving around Philly in an expensive new sports car. So guess who got voted off last night?
posted by aaron at 7:53 AM PST - 13 comments

No more suspense. Now we get to find out for real just what they've been collecting off the net. I predict disappointment as to the sheer mundanity of it all.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:19 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Some people have way too much spare time on their hands.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:08 AM PST - 2 comments

E-pest trading cards I suppose they should put "spurious metafilter poster" in there too...
posted by mecran01 at 6:10 AM PST - 4 comments

Here is the last phrasebook Americans will ever need when they go overseas. Packed with useful little snippets like:

I wish to complain.
Je veux porter plainte.
Protesto.

Don't "imperialist pig" me, my good man.
Fichez-moi la paix avec votre "cochon impérialiste", mon petit bonhomme.
¡Váyase usted al cuerno con su "cerdo imperialista", hombre!

How do I get Letterman?
Sur quelle chaîne je peux voir Letterman ?
¿En qué canal puedo ver Letterman?

posted by lagado at 5:56 AM PST - 5 comments

Would you pay to have your picture taken while drunk, high, and badly lit, and then posted on the Web with the witty phrase of your choice? Apparently lots of people would, and it sure is amusing to see.
posted by endquote at 9:33 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Now from the producers of Read My Lips, iknowwhatyoudidintexas.com! Paid for by the Democratic National Committee. Sad and sickening or funny as hell?
posted by argus at 9:16 PM PST - 4 comments

The couple had been married for 37 years and had no children. Why are we not surprised?
posted by quonsar at 7:24 PM PST - 3 comments

C|Net gives DeepLeap some much deserved props.
posted by dilok at 5:48 PM PST - 4 comments

Perhaps Lance was right. No maybe Peter was right. Regardless, the wheels of progress continue to turn, this time it's a p-to-p app that allows the swapping of console video games napster/gnutella-style, with the 17 year-old creator saying this about the possibility of getting shut down: "Sure, it is a concern that they may try to shut us down, despite the fact that we don't permit piracy, but I am confident in the law and believe we will prevail." Riiiiiight.
posted by mathowie at 5:28 PM PST - 11 comments

Online Caroline Join up, be her friend, the webcam changes every day and she develops a "friendship" with you. Interesting entertainment from across the pond.
posted by owillis at 5:22 PM PST - 9 comments

This is just sick and wrong. Convention Barbie? Do you really want to support a party with lame merchandising tie-ins like this? Sidenote: does this make Bush pro-Mattel and anti-Matt L?
posted by mathowie at 5:05 PM PST - 8 comments

When Headlines Go Bad (and we mean it this time)
A suggestion of political causality?
posted by wendell at 4:40 PM PST - 2 comments

No more Mister Nice Guy. They've built a web crawler looking for piracy sites. It should be interesting. I wonder how many computers and how much bandwidth they're assigning to the job?
posted by Steven Den Beste at 3:16 PM PST - 5 comments

Man, I love Ontario. Monday afternoon, an amazingly significant court trial ruled that possession of marijuana being criminal is unconstitutional, and that new laws need to be written.
posted by cCranium at 1:18 PM PST - 9 comments

Monster.com , careerpath, hotjobs.com etc, etc... While these sites offer tons of jobs, I wonder if I will actually be able to find work through them. Does anyone have experiences they'd like to share about finding internet jobs through the inernet? How about smaller, more focused sites, especially regional ones?
posted by chaz at 12:38 PM PST - 15 comments

Time looks at Dubya's Veep choice. Here's what's interesting: "In fact, by (the time of Sen. John Danforth's interview) Bush not only knew he wanted Cheney to be his Vice President; he also knew Cheney would say yes. But that was information that neither man shared with Danforth. He and 10 other would-be running mates had laid themselves bare before Cheney and his vetting team." Why would Bush continue to put people through an exhaustive screening process after he already made up his mind... Unless he was digging for dirt on rivals? J. Edgar Hoover lives.
posted by aurelian at 11:36 AM PST - 15 comments

Submethod gets a facelift. Creepy, but nice as always.
posted by skizz at 9:27 AM PST - 3 comments

A situation similar to the story below. What is it with Car Dealers? Why can't they just do the right thing?
posted by da5id at 9:26 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Evolution resumes in Kansas. Two of the three state school board members who de-emphasized evolution in the science curriculum have lost in primary elections. Survival of the fittest is a bitch, ain't it?
posted by rcade at 9:17 AM PST - 2 comments

Yikes. What the hell is wrong with some people?
posted by evilmaryellen at 8:33 AM PST - 4 comments

Rubberburner.com has been making the rounds via email and weblog, as has supergreg.com. They both look a little too "perfect" to be true, don't they? Turns out they're both carefully crafted ad sites, designed to sell us Lee jeans. Will we be seeing more of the Mahir ad model? I wonder how they went about spreading it initially....
posted by jkottke at 8:13 AM PST - 29 comments

Babe in a Bottle? One could only hope so!!! Will Jenna from survivor pose nude for Playboy? Will Colleen change her mind from "no" to "yes"??? Who would you like to see in Playboy??? Does anyone here besides the sexist men care?
posted by da5id at 8:12 AM PST - 7 comments

blogger + news = newsblogger the boys and gal at blogger launched a new site newsblogger.com that combines the feeds from moreover.com and blogger nice job... clickfeed does a similar thing but eases the creation of an email blog
posted by efader at 8:05 AM PST - 4 comments

Alarming example of consumer vigilante-ism! What do you do when the car dealership reneges on their financing and won't reimburse you for the car alarm you had installed? This is hilarious.
posted by mecran01 at 7:45 AM PST - 2 comments

Take one reality based TV show, add one 'angry black man', and stir. Are reality based TV shows like "Survivor", "Big Brother" and "insert-the-name-of-any-Bunim-Murray-production-here" guilty of resorting to stereotypes when casting African American males? One critic seems to think so.
posted by likorish at 5:02 AM PST - 6 comments

Joel on Software has got a good piece on .NET called Microsoft goes bonkers. In it he says that although it's being heralded as a 'revolution', .NET is worse than vaporware, they didn't even bother to provide the vapor. There is also as an interesting response from a Microsoft employee.
posted by lagado at 4:45 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

A survey on Gender Bias recorded that America's largest survey of sexual activity asked, "What is the best moment of intercourse?" Of the top three men's answers, the MOST popular single response was "my partner's orgasm." Feminists complain that men are preoccupied with performance rather than intimacy ("my partner's orgasm" did NOT make the top three list for women). If things were reversed and men's favorite moment was their own orgasm; (a) Feminists would complain that men were self-centered. (b) Feminists would complain that men didn't care about satisfying women.
posted by murray_kester at 3:52 AM PST - 11 comments

Spelling Bee has a sting in the tail... The highly influential Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung has abandoned the much-heralded German spelling reforms, arguing that the attempt to simplify and "democratise" the language has been a costly mistake. At the same time, though, the new Duden is accused of including too many English words such as "downloaden, Wellness and chatten, Backstage, Smiley and Trash", allegedly indebted to "advertisers and cyber geeks".Given that MeFi readers are, generally, from the two cultures separated by a common language, it's an interesting case study of state intervention gone wrong...
posted by holgate at 3:33 AM PST - 4 comments

When did Claudia Schiffer become an expert in computers? And why would I care what she thinks should be installed on one? (Light and casual: jokes. That's the way, now.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:42 PM PST - 3 comments

The RIAA's unhappy that you've stolen music? Well, give those MP3's right back to them, then. Another delightful approach to civil disobediance, courtesy of John at Genehack.
posted by baylink at 8:02 PM PST - 1 comment

What's the right answer? FEMA's plans to use the Army to quell serious civil disturbances that might crop up during the Republican Convention almost certainly violates Posse Comitatus... but can the Army National Guard cope with the stuff? And can it chop to FEMA in the first place?
posted by baylink at 4:12 PM PST - 3 comments

AHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!! (flash game)
posted by Bane at 3:12 PM PST - 2 comments

The Napster of Needlepoint? "They're housewives and they're hackers" say Pegasus Originals who are beginning legal moves to stop online sharing of needlepoint patterns. (Via Crummy.com)
posted by Foaf at 2:44 PM PST - 4 comments

The classic woman archetype is an endangered species. This is a continuation of this thread.
posted by ZachsMind at 1:43 PM PST - 28 comments

Somewhere, people are saying, "This never happens to Alan Greenspan."
posted by Aaaugh! at 1:32 PM PST - 3 comments

Another thwack at answering Fermi's question. Which is, after scribbling a fairly convincing equation on the blackboard, "If there's intelligent life out in the universe, where are they?" An interesting sidelight is the principal donors: Paul Allen and Nathan Myhrvold of Microsoft... Both of whom are known for unverifibly abstract big-picture thinking, but maybe it'll pay off this time...
posted by aurelian at 1:00 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Happy birthday, theobvious.com! Five years on the web is a hell of a long time. A round of applause for Michael!
posted by fraying at 11:56 AM PST - 3 comments

Giant Flaming Gerbil Shooter [from memepool] Three words: Oh. My. God.
posted by plinth at 10:09 AM PST - 3 comments

Not just a deranged, hateful old man with a gun... a drunken deranged, hateful old man with a gun... (I personally attended an event at one of these "various universities" - social drinker my ass...)
posted by m.polo at 4:57 AM PST - 37 comments

If you choose to accept this music file, Mr. Phelps, it will self-destruct after one listen. If you attempt to tamper with or share this file, it will also self-destruct. Thank you for your attention. End of Line.
posted by aflakete at 2:18 AM PST - 3 comments

Will people in the future have souls? Or will our souls pass into the machines?
posted by sudama at 12:43 AM PST - 10 comments