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Lance Log has been redesigned. And with a big scary lance face on the side!
posted by corpse at 11:40 PM PST - 3 comments

Salon changes back!
posted by costas at 10:43 PM PST - 14 comments

My Winamp Locker appears to be a free online storage space for your music files, hosted by Winamp. At 3Gb, and the offer of sharing and listening to your songs anywhere, how on earth do they expect to A) make any money back from all the server hardware they'll buy to support this, and B) not get sued by the RIAA? I thought it'd be a great service to exploit for my personal 2-3Gb collection, but it turns out you have to upload your files one at a time. ugh.
posted by mathowie at 9:39 PM PST - 6 comments

Phonological Atlas of North America, interesting.
posted by sonofsamiam at 7:18 PM PST - 2 comments

A Scourge of Small Arms "The root causes of ethnic, religious and sectarian conflicts around the world are of course complex and varied, typically involving historical grievances, economic deprivation, demagogic leadership and an absence of democratic process. Although small arms and light weapons are not themselves a cause of conflict, their ready accessibility and low cost can prolong combat, encourage a violent rather than a peaceful resolution of differences, and generate greater insecurity throughout society--which in turn leads to a spiraling demand for, and use of, such weapons."
posted by Calebos at 6:45 PM PST - 7 comments

One reason Microsoft isn't so bad... (well, depending on how you see things)
posted by cadence at 6:38 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Am I the only one that finds this incredibly creepy? With the recent advents of such wonderful shows as "Who Wants To Marry a Millionaire," and other such beauties, what is primetime TV coming to??
posted by Zosia Blue at 5:35 PM PST - 21 comments

amazon patents personalized recommendations. here we go again...
posted by mmanning at 3:57 PM PST - 8 comments

Motley disses Metallica Mister Sixx and pals give their response to Lars' crew, on the whole mp3/napster issue. Sounds like 2 groups of people are benefitting from all these lawsuits, lawyers and flash-cartoonists...
posted by nomisxid at 3:23 PM PST - 4 comments

Hmmm... perhaps I've been wrong. It would appear that the federal courts *have* been being strict about the 'militia' interpretation of the Second Amendment. That may change, however, thanks to a Federal Appeals Court judge from, no surprise, Texas.
posted by baylink at 3:22 PM PST - 18 comments

Happy Birthday 0sil8!
0sil8 turns four today. Surprising ain't it that two of the coolest sites on the web share the same birthday?
Congrats Jason!
posted by riffola at 3:19 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

are webloggers male or female? i'm doing a poll to try and discover the gender distribution of webloggers. someone recently asked this of me, and i had no idea if anyone had gathered that info.
posted by brig at 2:59 PM PST - 22 comments

Break it down. Shockwave grooves and beats.
posted by Mo Nickels at 2:30 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Huy Fong rules. In the IT department of the ad agency I'm freelancing for the boys use a bottle a week, putting it on dern near everything. Check out the letters.
posted by Mo Nickels at 11:36 AM PST - 1 comment

Stupid new marketing word of the day: "Advertorial" (spotted on this NY Times page). Here's a screenshot - what exactly are they trying to say? Do their advertisements now contain editorial copy that should help shoppers make a more informed decision, or are they just trying to fool us into thinking these advertisements have more credibility because they are "editorialized"? (disclaimer: I hate marketing BS)
posted by mathowie at 10:12 AM PST - 14 comments

Ecstasy.

What's your view? Time has an interesting article on the drug...
posted by meaning at 8:39 AM PST - 22 comments

Does God exist? In a day and age where people are somewhat better educated (than say 500 years ago), we are taught to think freely and form our own opinions. As a result, it is no surprise that Christianity is nowhere near as strong as it was back in its glory days. Here are some good debates between University professors over the existence of God. Very good arguments from both sides. Very thought-provoking stuff. I, for one, believe there are far too many people who blindly believe in a religion because it is the easy way out. Tell me what you think.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 3:50 AM PST - 38 comments

Now this is really stupid.

14-year-old Francis Di Masi's petition to have his name legally changed to "Frank" because he gets teased mercilessly in school about it was rejected. The judge said in his decision that "Learning how to deal with these taunts [is] part of growing up."

My first name, family name and nicknames have always given other people trouble when it comes to spelling and pronounciation, so I know what it's like to grow up getting name-related grief every single day of your life; "tedious" doesn't even begin to describe it.

So while I don't think "Francis" is altogether a bad name, why shouldn't the kid get to legally call himself whatever he wants? I mean, if some moron can change his name to DotComGuy without a hitch, why not Frank?
posted by lia at 3:43 AM PST - 21 comments

Happy Happy Birthday to Zeldman Presents. Five years old...wow. Hugs for Jeffrey, my favorite link guy :)
posted by the webmistress at 12:40 AM PST - 10 comments

Woohoo Metafilter! 1000 members and counting! Long live The Haughey!
posted by Neale at 11:13 PM PST - 14 comments

Random Hells. I remember some guy was selling Hell.com for about a billion dollars. Whoever bought it did a nice job.
posted by Nyarlathotep at 10:41 PM PST - 5 comments

Tahni reacts if you touch her or move her around the screen with your mouse. If you leave her alone, she will amuse herself and entertain you in the process. (Is there any way that doesn't sound dirty?)
posted by endquote at 9:58 PM PST - 3 comments

Zimbabwe is too important not to blog My pal, technical saviour, and usurper in the race toward pessimism and gloom Luke Tymowski has quietly beavered away producing a Tomalak's Ream-esque daily digest of Zimbabwe news. Benighted Jakob Nielsen just finished saying that Web writing like this is the only way to go. Does he read Luke? He oughta. A lotta people oughta.
posted by joeclark at 9:04 PM PST - 4 comments

I'm giving $30 to some Metafilter user. I'm stealing this idea from the Shiny Thing giveaway that usr/bin/girl held a while back. I liked her contest, but I would have liked it more if we got to see everything people asked for. So here goes.
I will buy one lucky Metafilter user something off of the Web of a $30 value or less (I will pay shipping and taxes).
To enter: add a comment to this post. The comment must link to the thing you want and provides a bit of contextualizing commentary. (I'd prefer it if the link pointed to something that has at least a semi-permanent home on the Web, no eBay please.) I will choose and announce a winner within (roughly) the next forty-eight hours.
This winner will be chosen based on a single criteria -- "coolness." Whatever item I find the most "cool" wins. I make no claim that my definition of what's "cool" will match any commonly socially-accepted definitions (or your own personal definition, for that matter). Decision of judge is final.
I set the bar here: in order to win, your item must be at least as cool as this; otherwise I will declare myself the winner.
Have fun. Play fair.
posted by jbushnell at 7:11 PM PST - 61 comments

Wouldn't it be cool to live here.
I already posted this link in the car free city discussion, but it is buried, and deserves to be seen.
posted by thirteen at 6:44 PM PST - 5 comments

could we have expected anything less? man, visualize whirled peas (one whirled, one browser)...
posted by cadence at 5:27 PM PST - 8 comments

Final meal requests . Is the Texas Department of Criminal Justice a bit sadistic or what?
posted by tremendo at 4:24 PM PST - 18 comments

Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Lathe of Heaven" is being offered to local PBS stations in the month of June. It hasn't been broadcast in about 20 years. VHS tape and DVD due out in September. Both KQED (San Francisco) and KRCB (Rohnert Park-Cotati, CA) aren't going to broadcast it. I guess Suze Orman needs the airtime...
posted by paddbear at 4:20 PM PST - 2 comments

On the topic of cars , I've known about this city for awhile, and it looks like heaven. It's actually a law to have a picket fence, and there's no cars, because well, there's no roads! But, at around 500k at least for a house, I think it's a bit out of my league
posted by starduck at 4:20 PM PST - 9 comments

If this is what spare time is for I am not so sure that I need more. It seems that people in England are actually using themselves in a giant human Trebuchet.

This also brings to mind that the Monster Raving Looney Party is in need of a new leader.
posted by DragonBoy at 3:01 PM PST - 2 comments

(close-up on my face, quickly zooming out to an overhead shot as I yell) Noooooooooo!!!!! TicketWeb, one of the last places you could buy a ticket to a concert that wasn't Ticketmaster, just got bought out by Ticketmaster. TicketWeb's slogan is "The Online Ticketing Alternative." Not anymore....hello, monopoly anyone?
posted by mathowie at 2:12 PM PST - 7 comments

Looking for a real renewable energy source? Feces powered cars: the future of transport?
posted by chaz at 2:05 PM PST - 4 comments

Anyone else joined up for this? With all the grief that ICANN & NSI seem to be causing these days, I'm curious how many other people out there have joined the ICANN Member-At-Large program, and if anyone has posted any comments yet. To me, requiring someone to get 10% of the Asian region, to be self-nominated, seems most improbable.
posted by nomisxid at 1:39 PM PST - 4 comments

The people responsible for sacking the people who were sacked, have been sacked.
posted by alana at 12:22 PM PST - 5 comments

PDAs & the eye module... Do you have a PDA? What kind? Is it useful? If you have a Handspring, do you have an Eye Module? Would you recommend it? Or would you rather have a regular digital camera? Inquiring minds wanna know...
posted by wiremommy at 11:59 AM PST - 3 comments

THAT'S a speeding ticket... Scientists push light up to 300 times the SPEED OF LIGHT. I just got a floaty-glowy feeling. Some interesting interesting stuff is happening in our world. My favorite quote from the article: "That is so fast that, under these peculiar circumstances, the main part of the pulse exits the far side of the chamber even before it enters at the near side. " [Note: link is for NYT, free registration req'd]
posted by cCranium at 11:42 AM PST - 12 comments

And you thought guns were only useful for shooting *people*.
posted by baylink at 9:41 AM PST - 8 comments

"This function could be used to see if the nanny was beating your kid while you were at work..."

Just "another cool thing that webcam software could do," at least according to Jimmy's Webcams Resource Center.

Um. I don't know about you guys, but that's not really one of the reasons I decided to buy one. How about the rest of you?
posted by lia at 8:05 AM PST - 8 comments

This information was supposed to be private, wasn't it?
posted by thirteen at 10:48 PM PST - 12 comments

Car-free Cities
Would you like to live in a city where everything you need is within a five-minute walk? Where you can get from one side of a city of a million people to the other in less than thirty minutes? Where the air is clean, people are healthy, children and the elderly aren't dependent on others to get where they want to go, and life is beautiful? You can have it all--just ban cars.
posted by daveadams at 10:01 PM PST - 50 comments

Look! I got banned. And all for spite. I thought it'd be nice and irritating to download his stuff after he started a dispute. I did the same with Metallica. After hearing their music, I'm surprised they have the balls to defend such crap. It's like kicking a garbage can full of screaming monkeys down the stairs.
posted by madglee at 8:26 PM PST - 3 comments

Another perspective on the Napster debate - this time, from independent label Tommy Boy
posted by SilentSalamander at 6:14 PM PST - 6 comments

Today is Memorial Day
posted by aladfar at 1:10 PM PST - 18 comments

Jeremy's CyberCafe and Beer Haus is up for sale, but what's really cool about it is that it is located just outside of Joshua Tree National Park in the Southern California desert, and they have a full T-1 line that they're selling along with the business. Hmm...T-1 access plus nearby national park? Maybe we should take up a collection and buy it ourselves? :)
posted by mathowie at 11:20 AM PST - 2 comments

Discussion:
What's a reasonable amount of time, for you, to expect someone to reply to an email?
[More inside...]
posted by baylink at 9:59 AM PST - 38 comments

Powazek says: "Remember that personal sites are digital stand-ins for real people."

Well said, bro! (And hang in there!)

posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 11:38 PM PST - 39 comments

Flame Warriors! (Recognize yourself? I did...)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:52 PM PST - 5 comments

Your site in Chinese. I picked this one up out of my logs. Enter your URL, hit return, wheet, there it is, your site in simplified Chinese. Dunno how accurate it is, but goddamned, it's the coolest thing I've seen in, oh, almost 16 hours.

You need to be running a browser and OS that handles Chinese characters for this to work, by the way. Mac users can install the appropriate freebies off of their OS 9 or 8.6 disks; it's a custom install. Windows users can download some big software turd. At least Internet Explorer on both platforms will display Chinese characters correctly once the system extensions are installed.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:59 PM PST - 1 comment

THE ROBINSON REPORT: "A Complete Report to the Citizens of the Commonwealth on the Personal Background of a Candidate for the United States Senate" -- written by the candidate, in the spirit of full discolsure. [more inside]
posted by palegirl at 1:14 PM PST - 6 comments

Apparently, there's a link between today's television programming and promiscuity in teenagers. I'd say its because overly-censored American tv is so boring that most teenagers would prefer to have sex rather than watch that crap.
posted by sammy at 12:07 PM PST - 1 comment

The open bookmark project Hi: I have started a pitas site covering bookmarks. The goal of this project is to receive the bookmark and favorites files from people around the world and learn what sites he/she bookmarked and how they organized them.
posted by efader at 11:25 AM PST - 5 comments

Hey, kids! Be the first one on your block to own one of these! Your very own fully-automatic gatling BB-gun!
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:02 AM PST - 7 comments

The Spyware Infested Software List. All programs on this list surreptitiously report back to a server telling either what you've been doing or what is on your computer. It's quite a list. I don't understand why Navigator isn't on there, though. Navigator's "What's Related" feature does exactly the same thing.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:55 AM PST - 7 comments

Make CD Covers for your napster grabs Good quality scans of CD covers suitable for printing. Cool.
posted by Dean_Paxton at 9:27 AM PST - 2 comments

I'm not nearly cool enough to own any of their products, but the Korg site is showing off freaky things like the KAOSSPAD very nicely.
posted by endquote at 8:31 AM PST - 1 comment

"our country has failed to make veterans, especially disabled veterans, a monetary urgency. Congress' attempt to honor and recognize our freedom fighters during their aged years must include the backing of the entire country."
posted by Mick at 8:29 AM PST - 1 comment

Where did CC go? Is it true the editorial cabal at the Aged have censored CC following postings on MeFi? It's Sunday night and she's not blogging ... Has Casey been exposed as a Rocky regular and management have dumped her? Did palegirl kidnap her? Bring back CC you bastards!
posted by beergirl at 5:54 AM PST - 2 comments

yahoo doing some small re-designing , and I say it's about time, I was never implying they should have a flash intro or something, just something newer. It's a pleasure anyway.
posted by tiaka at 10:21 PM PST - 5 comments

Interactive Camtoon contest. Dan sure loves his toys.
posted by corpse at 10:20 PM PST - 2 comments

Higher Education? NOT! The lawgivers have decided young economically challenged drug users should be punished by denying them knowledge.
posted by PaperCut at 8:22 PM PST - 6 comments

Design is kinky tshirt comp is pretty cool.... these guys seem to be always trying to do something for the visitor rather than just spouting about how good a designer they are like most design related sites. Makes a nice change!
posted by fergus at 6:14 PM PST - 1 comment

So, is it illegal to buy underwear from teenagers?
[ Courtesy of Beth's Bad Hair Days, to whom I owe a link for pointing out The Breast Chronicles to me. ]
posted by baylink at 4:49 PM PST - 4 comments

Freedom of Art Dept.:
In a previous topic, captain cursor said: "It's actually better to have a weak artistic piece when arguing aspects of law. Since the law should apply to all works, good or bad, you don't want to be distracted by the merits of the work.". So what happens when a very popular image is "censored"?

A commercial mural painter in L.A. wants to paint a big Statue of Libery on the side of a building (nobody's paying him to do it). Big murals need permits, the local city councilman doesn't like big murals, the painter starts painting without a permit, gets arrested, puts up a web site. (At least he gives one page to the councilman's reply.)
So, MeFi opinion leaders, is this painter a First Amendment hero, an opportunistic promoter or what?
posted by wendell at 4:18 PM PST - 7 comments

Mass-marketing e-mail spreads virus Shoppingplanet.com sends out 50,000 copies of ‘kak’ with its subscriber newsletter
posted by palegirl at 4:03 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Pop Culture Alert: B. Kliban® Cat is making a comeback!
posted by wendell at 3:08 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Advertising on Your GPS Reciever It looks like advertisers are already dreaming up new uses for the higher quality GPS signals.

"You're walking down the block, your phone goes off as you pass every store and tells you that there's a 50-percent-off sale." Someone remind me why it was a good idea to deregulate the GPS?
posted by darainwa at 9:54 AM PST - 4 comments

A Word An iMac in Spanish Apple is finally getting with the program on localization (after ausgeficking badly in the last two years: cancelling English and Quebec French variants, for example; failing to upgrade system software in major languages like Spanish; considering Puerto Rico a foreign country; refusing to sell foreign-language keyboards even as aftermarket items) and selling iMacs in Spanish in the U.S. (Hmm. What system version?) However, some unilingualists see it as symptomatic of the cancerous breakdown of their beloved Republic. You Americans.
posted by joeclark at 8:51 AM PST - 13 comments

Next time you get a blue screen, think to yourself: "It could be worse."
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:28 AM PST - 5 comments

Homemade parachute, eh? That sounds dangerous to me.
posted by sylloge at 2:09 AM PST - 2 comments

Dance the night away. First Sissyfight and now this. Multi-user shockwave has some cool possibilities.
posted by sylloge at 1:32 AM PST - 4 comments

The laughing bandit strikes! Now this is how crimes should be committed... I gotta say, if you're going to rob a bank, I heartily approve of having fun with it.
posted by Ezrael at 10:33 PM PST - 3 comments

Goodbye, Andy!
posted by chaz at 9:51 PM PST - 2 comments

Another victim falls to the tyranny of Mattel. What's really strange about this is that, to my knowledge, Barbie is a name. If someone names their kid Barbie, will they too receive a C&D from Mattel? Hmm...

Well, if you want to read the C&D its here.
posted by deckard at 9:48 PM PST - 7 comments

Yahoo released their mp3/CD/other media player today, complete with skins. How long until there is a Yahoo! browser?
posted by mathowie at 4:44 PM PST - 8 comments

"Open the pod bay doors, HAL."
"Yes, Sir!"
posted by wendell at 4:16 PM PST - 6 comments

Sweet mother of... I don't think it's the video games doing it folks, I think it's toy guns that need a tripod to hold steady...it's like a mobile hose...
posted by starduck at 4:06 PM PST - 7 comments

Teacher shot and killed by student in Florida. Details are still sketchy, but he was a student of the middle school. A truly sad event.
posted by hijinx at 2:42 PM PST - 14 comments

Internet Explorer too hard for you? Confused by all the choices in Netscape? Like AOL? Maybe this this browser is more your speed.
posted by mathowie at 11:35 AM PST - 16 comments

What a horrible way to go...
posted by meaning at 10:47 AM PST - 3 comments

Tim Burton rules... Tim Burton's latest directing gig is for Timex, and I'm thrilled to see that his dark mind isn't stifled in 30 seconds. The commercial is just as edgy and tasty as you'd expect.
posted by schmarley at 10:15 AM PST - 8 comments

Here's a story...about a site named Brady.
posted by plinth at 6:12 AM PST - 1 comment

Indescribable... Indestructable! Nothing can stop it! (and yes, some of these were childhood favorites)
posted by plinth at 6:10 AM PST - 1 comment

Is it me, or are things getting entirely too self-referential around here?
posted by baylink at 6:06 AM PST - 21 comments

Salon's Editor answers his (many) critics but he doesn't seem to be backing down at all.
posted by Markb at 4:53 AM PST - 3 comments

Put the keyboard down, and back away from the MetaFilter... and you thought coups only happened in Fiji. Via wetlog, of course.
posted by rory at 11:33 PM PST - 1 comment

I love this schidt. Courtesy of /usr/bin/girl, "Things You Would Never Know Without The Movies". [Skip this if you've already seen it in your mailbox :-)]
posted by baylink at 10:48 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

the age weblog [via wetlog, of course]

it's pretty obvious she's reading MeFi [and memepool] -- but not linking to them.
posted by palegirl at 9:02 PM PST - 22 comments

queer by choice: "this web site exists in order to promote, condone, encourage and recruit individuals to explore their homosexuality. it is a site dedicated to thoughts and ideas not available in the mainstream of current thinking on homosexuality."
posted by palegirl at 8:48 PM PST - 11 comments

.ca slightly less tightarsed En tout cas, the Canadian domain administration has "streamlined" its application process (like an NSI manqué), but hasn't improved its Victorian-era rules (one domain per entity, hard to get a .ca, etc.). But searches now only show if a domain is or isn't available, not who owns it. Ewww.
posted by joeclark at 5:25 PM PST - 2 comments

Salon Kvetch-o-Rama I admire Jim Romenesko and his now-famous Medianews site. Tremendous conciseness, relevancy, good taste, apt use of <B>. (Glowing article in New York not online. Spectacular accompanying photograph. In effect, Jim is paid $80,000 annually to blog for a living.) Jim actually covers the Salon redesign of recent infamy (here), and mentions it en passant on his homepage. I had alerted Jim to our discussion here, but it looks as like Medianews and Metafilter are parallel universes on this. I wonder if combining discussions would make sense here and elsewhere. (Was that less than 500 words?)
posted by joeclark at 5:21 PM PST - 3 comments

There, now, don't you feel safer?
posted by Steven Den Beste at 4:37 PM PST - 2 comments

If it looks like a duck and it smells like a duck and it sounds like a duck it's a . . . . Holy Union?
posted by alana at 3:10 PM PST - 3 comments

Maybe there are some things you can't sell on eBay after all...
posted by wendell at 2:14 PM PST - 4 comments

Is nudity art? Or is this USF student just a flake?
posted by baylink at 12:29 PM PST - 13 comments

Lose your camera? Maybe you swallowed it.
posted by jeremy at 11:56 AM PST - 4 comments

Books In Chains, an excellent literary/etext/hypertext resource.
posted by sonofsamiam at 11:33 AM PST - 2 comments

The boo.com team is now available for hire. If anyone wants to blow through another US$120M, you can now hire the boo.com web team at postboo.com. Oh yeah, Flash 4 required.
posted by camworld at 7:35 AM PST - 3 comments

I used to go to Edmund for my neato geek hack supplies, but then I discovered American Science And Surplus (formerly JerryCo). Between them and All Electronics, my geek needs are satiated.
posted by plinth at 7:07 AM PST - 1 comment

National Park Service removes the Lonely Phone. Thousands mourn.
posted by baylink at 6:51 AM PST - 1 comment

CD sales down near college campuses?
A new study shows that despite growing music sales overall, independent stores near the campuses of colleges that have banned Napster report a 7% decline in sales over the past two years. [more inside...]
posted by daveadams at 6:23 AM PST - 10 comments

Deepleap.org is up. No one mentioned this yet, so I figured i would. Everyone go whine about the reload button not working.
posted by alana at 5:51 AM PST - 9 comments

Can I use Priceline.com to name my own price for a professional assassin to do a hit on William Shatner? Just wondering...
posted by wendellseviltwin at 3:35 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Greg Knauss's Entirely Other Day makes a return, and none-too soon! Yay, yay, yay!
posted by honkzilla at 1:05 AM PST - 4 comments

"Would you like a bag of cold, dead fingers to go with that?" (Who says pro-gun people don't have a sense of humor...? :-)
posted by baylink at 9:00 PM PST - 7 comments

The Poincaré Conjecture: If we stretch a rubber band around the surface of an apple, then we can shrink it down to a point by moving it slowly, without tearing it and without allowing it to leave the surface. On the other hand, if we imagine that the same rubber band has somehow been stretched in the appropriate direction around a doughnut, then there is no way of shrinking it to a point without breaking either the rubber band or the doughnut. We say the the surface of the apple is ‘simply connected,’ but that the surface of the doughnut is not. Poincaré, almost a hundred years ago, knew that a two dimensional sphere is essentially characterized by this property of simple connectivity, and asked the corresponding question for the three dimensional sphere (the set of points in four dimensional space at unit distance from the origin). This question turned out be be extraordinarily difficult, and mathematicians have been struggling with it ever since.

...but if you can prove it, [or any of six other 'millenium prize problems'] the clay mathematics institute wants to line your pockets with $1M
posted by palegirl at 8:11 PM PST - 3 comments

As addictive as heroin, but without the needle tracks. If you spent days on end playing tetris, don't even think about playing this game. It's too late for me, I'm already dead.
posted by plinth at 6:22 PM PST - 12 comments

weirdass retraction from south african president thabo mbeki who's now claiming, like a younger brother, that he knew it all along...'I never doubted HIV-AIDS link' ... uh... ... um...
posted by palegirl at 6:15 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

So I stumbled upon this Britney Spears Auction at Yahoo (yeah, right, just like I stumble upon episodes of Dawson's Creek or 90210 - I swear I was just flipping channels!) and there's two notable things up for sale. This action figure/doll scares the bejesus out of me, there's something just plain wrong about a doll sporting a bare midriff, pigtails, and a short skirt (and did ya notice that she dots her "i" with heart? ugh.). Then this outfit from the Saturday Night Live episode is kinda creepy too, what on earth would someone do with her outfit? Put it up on the wall or let people rent it out for halloween?
posted by mathowie at 4:55 PM PST - 11 comments

links open windows is a bookmarklet I wrote which evolved from my 'links open windows' checkbox. Drag this to your toolbar (like you did with deepleap) and with a click you can cause the links on any page to spawn new windows. In a few cases (like the Guardian weblog) you might want to do the opposite, and follow links in one window. Enjoy.
posted by sudama at 1:19 PM PST - 11 comments

First BlogBowl Get-Together In the interest of putting more names to faces, David Wertheimer, Brigitte Eaton, and I have quickly organized a bowling get-together for people in or near New York. If you want to see Cam in his bowling shirt, you gotta RSVP and come on by tomorrow night for some drinks and good, old-fashioned bowling fun.
posted by camworld at 12:31 PM PST - 9 comments

China, our new buddy It seems like history may be made today. I hope that if China does receive favorable trade status that it will go to improve human life in that nation and improve ties between our countries. I'd like to buy China a Coke...
posted by Brilliantcrank at 9:57 AM PST - 7 comments

OS Deathmatch: MacOS9 vs. Corel Linux.
A nice, rather unbiased, comparison between the two operating systems.
posted by darainwa at 9:10 AM PST - 3 comments

dot-god domains now available! Don't get too excited yet, though. You can register, if you're lucky, because the server's overloaded. And once you do register, you can't actually use the thing until July. But still, get in now, while the getting's good. Full details are available in the email from the registrar.
posted by endquote at 7:29 AM PST - 9 comments

'Murrican 101.
[ via Twernt, who's been even twerntier than usual, lately. ]
posted by baylink at 9:22 PM PST - 2 comments

A former Boo.com employee describes some of the challenges they faced . Multiple currencies, multiple languages, on-the-fly tax calculation, integration with multiple fullfillment partners, no development plan, and ignorance of technology issues on the front end. Blech.
posted by Calebos at 9:16 PM PST - 10 comments

Insert George W. Bush joke here...
posted by wendell at 6:02 PM PST - 1 comment

Man who helped save Elian says raid violated civil rights, sues for $100M. The title says it all...crazy. I wonder if Elian's father could sue the extended family for kidnapping Elian and holding him hostage?
posted by mathowie at 5:42 PM PST - 9 comments

there must be more than one of you, jeffrey Another outstanding piece on the state of the web from Mr. Z...does this guy ever sleep?
posted by jenett at 4:56 PM PST - 8 comments

"It's just imprudent to put a product as manifestly hazardous as asbestos in material such as crayons." Uhhh...what he said.
posted by ajh at 3:52 PM PST - 5 comments

I needed a Flash-detect script for a project, and finally found one that actually works properly.
posted by endquote at 3:31 PM PST - 3 comments

Discussion: I'm a blogger, he's a blogger, she's a blogger...
[ more inside... ]
posted by baylink at 3:24 PM PST - 25 comments

Coming to a toy store near you: Cease and Desist Barbie. Very funny stuff Justin, I expect you'll be getting a letter soon.
posted by mathowie at 3:15 PM PST - 6 comments

Mötley Crüe offers their new single "Hell On High Heels" as a free MP3 download...promoting their upcoming album "New Tattoo", hitting stores, June 20th.

See guys...*that's* how it should be done.

posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 3:07 PM PST - 8 comments

inside.com goes live. Inside.com is the latest attempt to have people pay for non-porn, non-financial information on the web. The site is currently in "Sneak Preview" mode and is the brainchild of Kurt Anderson (of Spy Magazine fame).
posted by icathing at 1:18 PM PST - 3 comments

Court orders Yahoo to block French access to Nazi memorabilia. Does it bother anyone else that the French courts think they can regulate an American business? I dislike Nazis as much as the next guy but this seems to be a bit much on the part of the French.
posted by darainwa at 11:29 AM PST - 15 comments

Now it all makes sense! Jon-Benet Ramsey, and Waco, and the JFK Jr. plane crash? They're all related events!
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:42 AM PST - 6 comments

Yet Another Domain Name Dispute Develops (YADNDD): chunkymunky.com gets a Cease & Desist from chunkymonkey.com. One is a windows software site, the other a fan site about a cartoon character. Is there any cause for confusion on the part of users wanting to visit either site (actually, one would have to misspell "monkey" in order to get to the windows site)? Should the chunkymunky.com site owner have taken down his/her site? Who is going to protect domain owners from future things like this happening?
posted by mathowie at 10:07 AM PST - 21 comments

Builder.com cosmetically improved? Builder.com refines their site with a better homepage and category pages... but as far as I can see, no change to the actual article layouts themselves. What do you think - anyone read Builder.com anymore?
posted by williamtry at 8:30 AM PST - 4 comments

Is it just me or has Roger Ebert gone fully looney? I was reading his review of "Dinosaur" and came across this criticism: "A dinosaur, even one that spoke English, would be unlikely to know what that line implies." What? Do you mean.... uh.... What? The whole review is like that.
posted by y6y6y6 at 7:45 AM PST - 47 comments

Ever wondered how much it would cost to have your listing pop up on a particular MSN search? According to Micros~1's keywords.com (as of a few minutes ago), you can get sex for $795.20/month, mp3 for $175.66, and Bill Gates for a mere $8.96 a month!
posted by tregoweth at 1:48 AM PST - 3 comments

As if those "God billboards" weren't bad enough, "God" now wants to speak to the youth of the world via WuzupGod.com.
posted by tregoweth at 12:45 AM PST - 11 comments

Flasher's get thier own blog and I'm not talking about raincoats. A blog all about Flash sites - something I needed now that I have DSL. Tell me, do all Flash sites have to use techno or house music - what ever happened to polkas?
posted by DragonBoy at 9:37 PM PST - 3 comments

Ugly, ugly ugly. The Salon.com redesign is finally - and unfortunately - live. It's not a magazine - it's a portal! Mignon Khargie - wherefore art thou? Blegh.
posted by gsh at 8:50 PM PST - 55 comments

The Clinton Legacy Grows The state of Arkansas began disbarment proceedings today. I've already blogged it but figured everyone else would want to know.
posted by mikewas at 8:15 PM PST - 1 comment

Supreme Court to America: unscramble the smut! Actually, this decision seems to say what most sane people have been saying all along: it's not the government's job to regulate what what kids watch; it's their parents' job.

Whatever. Adolescent boys across America rejoice!
posted by RakDaddy at 5:31 PM PST - 1 comment

Damn, but this site is pretty. Nice, understated, good writing, not too much fluff, good copyediting (a weak spot on the web -- separates the women from the boys), and a design that fits on my monitor.

If you helped Free Willy, check OceanFutures out.
posted by baylink at 5:23 PM PST - 5 comments

What a wonderful world we live in. A pair of 34DD breasts that has its own weblog. Where were websites like this when we were growing up and *needed* them?
posted by baylink at 12:51 PM PST - 36 comments

Napster finds financial support Venture capital firm Hummer Winblad are pumping $15m into Napster, effectively taking over the company by placing co-founder John Hummer on Napster's board.
posted by prolific at 12:49 PM PST - 3 comments

An interview with the lawyers from Napster and Metellica. Good points, both.
posted by Mick at 10:30 AM PST - 6 comments

"Real" has done it again. For the third time they've embedded surreptitious monitoring capability into one of their programs.

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." What do we do for the third time? (A tactical nuke seems indicated.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:48 AM PST - 16 comments

Occasionally you find an absolute treasure on the web. And I felt like sharing this one, though it's not topical at all. It's free and it's supercool. (So I'm a nerd. So sue me.) Requires WIN32 and a fast computer and OpenGL. But just the page itself is worth visiting even if you can't run the program.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 7:32 PM PST - 13 comments

360-degree video appears to be just like QuickTime VR, only it moves. There's a trippy demo over at Atom Films that uses the technology to put you in an old-folks home. But the downside to 360-video? Lower framerates, and the need for a special camera.
posted by endquote at 7:25 PM PST - 1 comment

blog nicely!
posted by efader at 4:22 PM PST - 179 comments

Have you seen what they've done to riothero? oh, my God. :)
posted by rebeccablood at 11:18 AM PST - 8 comments

Look at the silly boys with their cute little grindcore band names. Oooh! I'm threatened! I'm quivering! I'm shocked and saddened, saddened and shocked! So scary.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:41 AM PST - 3 comments

Does anyone know what happened to GirlText? Elizabeth was supercool, but for the last week or two, there's been a "denied access" page. Bummer.
posted by delfuego at 7:40 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Silly laws by state. Probably some of these are apocryphal, but they make fun reading anyway.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 5:48 AM PST - 1 comment

Something very bad seems to have happened to Barbelith.
posted by jjg at 11:53 PM PST - 5 comments

Congratulations Matt and Kay!
posted by CrazyUncleJoe at 11:10 PM PST - 14 comments

Camworld points to the [second page of] the Encyclopedia Brown piece (like everyone *else* who didn't actually *read* it; *Busted!* :-) and also to Comma Separated Values Considered Harmful, a treatise that the vertical bar character ("|") is a better field separator in tabular text data files than the comma or even the tab.

Is that really news? It wasn't to *me*...
posted by baylink at 10:20 PM PST - 13 comments

At the bottom of this article, it says "any questions about Cruise's relationship with Scientology will be the last question [the interviewer will] get to ask." It sounds like Tom's taking to heart the lessons of Frank "T.J." Mackey to me...
posted by dogwelder at 10:18 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

"The ROMP is a freewheeling entertainment destination cut from the unruliness and irreverence of the Internet. Our no holds barred animations, videos, and games give voice to a new generation of artists both inside and outside Hollywood. The ROMP allows users to set the limits, break them, and get a good laugh out of it. But don't take our word for it." (i.e., they have a game where the object is to get laid.)
posted by endquote at 7:36 PM PST - 2 comments

byron smith of the current canadian everest expedition has made it to the summit! he was going to send a live broadcast from the summit, but unfortuantely the conditions have prevented that from taking place; so the team is going to descend to camp IV and try to broadcast from there. stay tuned for it, it should prove interesting. --Everest 2000 - Daily Dispatch
posted by palegirl at 6:34 PM PST - 3 comments

New Microsoft Bug Found This one's pretty serious. Because it affects the whole world.
posted by PaperCut at 6:21 PM PST - 13 comments

Guns save lives? (I suppose it's the bullets that kill people) The NRA today staged the "400 Man March" to show their support for guns and opposition to last week's Million Mom March. On CSPAN today, I also caught a bit of their convention, where they were openly talking about Bush being "their president". I don't know what scares me more, seeing the speeches from their convention on TV, or someday going to an NRA-themed restaurant ("I'll take the saturday night special please, with armor piercing sauce on the side.").
posted by mathowie at 11:57 AM PST - 57 comments

garageband.com is fun! I've uploaded three songs so far!
posted by veruca at 11:03 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Did anyone see this? Very interesting indeed.
posted by Dean_Paxton at 10:54 AM PST - 12 comments

Even more proof... that your government is as dumb as you think it is. Anyone wanna start on the conspiracy theories concerning LoveBug 2?
posted by baylink at 10:24 AM PST - 1 comment

Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Pirated MP3's... Written in true Encyclopedia Brown style @ the Modern Humorist
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 1:00 AM PST - 3 comments

"So who taught YOU how to do heart bypass surgery, Mister Smartydoctor? Could it be... SATAN???"
posted by wendell at 12:18 AM PST - 1 comment

MS Cookie Patch Breaks Some Images - We noticed something odd today. Those of us with IE 5.0 who installed the patch to close the cookie security hole can no longer see many of the images on the Washington Post site. People who installed the patch on IE4 still can; and IE5 users without the patch also can. [More inside thread...]
posted by julen at 4:07 PM PST - 6 comments

Moonies buy UPI; Helen Thomas quits. I've seen some, but not much, coverage of the fact that the Unification Church-owned Washington Times has purchased up the venerable United Press International. Although the UPI's been a cripped orginazation for years, I'm still disturbed to see it disappear into the maw of the crazier-than-you-think Times. Helen Thomas, the senior member of the White House press corps and all-around cool person, bailed immediately.
posted by snarkout at 2:50 PM PST - 8 comments

All you F****** A******* better proceed with F****** caution before clicking this Godd*** Mother F****** link. Bobby Knight, in his own words... (warning: extreme profanity)
posted by vitaflo at 1:18 PM PST - 1 comment

"Self-similar syncopations: Fibonacci, L-systems, limericks and ragtime" Along the lines of the book "Godel, Escher and Bach", an award winning essay looks at the mathmatical roots of popular music. I think I'm going to have to find a way to analyze some of my fave mp3's to see how they fall into the Fibonacci sequence...
posted by katchomko at 12:31 PM PST - 2 comments

I wonder if Hillary is doing a happy mario dance right now, you know, swing your arms from side to site, ohh, well, getting back to the point, a sources say Giuliani is going to Drop Out
posted by tiaka at 12:18 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Flat Eric won't dance anymore... Levi's USA informed me that Flat Eric is dead! They have posted it on their Flat Eric website. Although there are a few fansites that continue to report news about Flat Eric.
posted by riffola at 12:18 PM PST - 2 comments

Can't believe we almost let this annual event pass by without noticing...
(And can't believe the Pyrates haven't made an entry named "Blogger Frog"... Matt?)
Other possible pun-derful topics: DeepLeap, the Webbys, Microsoft NotePad, and a certain 5k Contest entry.
posted by wendell at 12:04 PM PST - 8 comments

Spider Robinson on BillCo. A nice little rant from Wednesday's Globe & Mail, bracketed by the obligatory Heinlein quote and a really lame pun.
posted by maudlin at 11:18 AM PST - 5 comments

Big Business vs. the little guy. After you read the story, go check out the Website of the pig farmer. The only question I have is: Can they find a Judge who doesn't golf?
posted by da5id at 9:20 AM PST - 4 comments

I bet you didn't know you could buy livestock online.
posted by endquote at 9:04 AM PST - 3 comments

Don't Panic! Did anyone else realize that The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy really existed? I don't know that I'd describe that font as "Large, friendly letters", but it is, indubitably, on the front cover.
posted by baylink at 8:45 AM PST - 6 comments

What hasn't been noted much on the DEN and boo.com closings is the high-bandwidth aspirations both sites trumpeted. No doubt this is why much of Metafilter's readership is privately reveling in these failures. They subtly reinforce the Web's "minimum" ideals -- keeping multimedia to a minimum, minimizing file sizes and download times, letting the minimalist purity of HTML reign supreme. Should this really make us happy, though? I'm a big supporter of fast browsing and markup-language standards, but aren't we missing the point when we secretly root for the bleeding edge to fail?
posted by werty at 7:17 AM PST - 16 comments

I have a question for Matt. I notice on the Zeldman comment that someone also has the same username as me. I am jay. There is also another jay. I don't think anyone would want to impersonate me, but for some people on this list, this might be a problem. We could all become mathowies, I even created my own mathowie account to see if this really works and it does.
posted by jay at 1:49 AM PST - 10 comments

My prediction of the aftermath from this epinions imac commercial: email discussion lists will be roasting with the PC vs. Mac (religious) flame wars for the next week or so.
posted by mathowie at 7:37 PM PST - 12 comments

Okay, this is just plain wrong.
posted by veruca at 2:32 PM PST - 15 comments

Under Construction Signs Tell More Than You Might Think. Fun analysis of those goofy "Under Construction" signs.
posted by wiremommy at 2:15 PM PST - 1 comment

Courtesy of myboot, a pretty fuuny Matrix spoof. You may want to try one of the mirrors on the source page as the file is 22M.
posted by plinth at 2:09 PM PST - 1 comment

Parry & Thrust... Slashdot.Org and Andover.Net have officially responded to the letter from Microsoft, and being Slashdot, have posted it for everyone to see.
posted by cCranium at 1:35 PM PST - 18 comments

Why Windows is not my Favorite Operating System. Assuming you give it that much credit at all... [ via Genehack via Flutterby ]
posted by baylink at 1:30 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Trey Anastasio (Phish) on Napster. I know we're all kind of sick of this now. The interesting thing is that I got an MP3 of "Heavy Things" (which is on their new album) this morning from Napster, listened 3 times and then called my local HMV to see if they had the album in yet. They did, and I'm off to buy it. (Feeling legit? You can get Liquid Audio versions of two cuts from the new album, including the one mentioned.)
posted by sylloge at 1:04 PM PST - 5 comments

Life-sized Lara Croft Mannequin [from fark]. Question: how do you make a life-sized object of something completely fictional? Don't try to answer, my brain popped when I saw the 3/4 life-size Seven Dwarfs lawn ornaments at K-Mart years back.
posted by plinth at 11:36 AM PST - 3 comments

Aw crap. You *know* their Linux initiative is going to take the blame for this, right...?
posted by baylink at 10:09 AM PST - 12 comments

First Boo.com goes down, now DEN. The Digital Entertainment Network is closing it's doors after running out of cash. After raising over 33 million dollars, they burned it at rate of up to $3 million per month, pulled their $75 million stock offering, and with no revenue model in place, they had to close up shop, with 150 people suddenly out of work.
posted by mathowie at 9:33 AM PST - 4 comments

Thus sayeth Zeldman: "Lately, well-meaning readers have informed us that the status bar is sacred, and JavaScript text messages are evil ... even when they include the domain name."

I, personally, prefer a brief description of where the link is going, rather than a long URL. Just curious, what do you think? As far as I'm concerned, there is no wrong answer or opinion on this.

posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 8:28 AM PST - 67 comments

6397.com not worth anything after all. If you were happy about the failure of boo.com, this should warm the cockles of your heart. What is it about the failure stories of the internet gold rush that is so strangely pleasant?
posted by ericost at 8:01 AM PST - 1 comment

Boo.com go bye bye! The oh-so-hip online fashion boutique burnt through $120 million in 6 months. Now it's gone. Is this one of the first casualties of the dot-com rush? Is this the beginning of a trend, or is this an isolated incident?
posted by solistrato at 6:45 AM PST - 12 comments

I applaud President Clinton for taking this stance. Unfortunately, drug companies continue to have influence in some decisions. It's a wonder that greed doesn't ruin this whole world.
posted by da5id at 5:19 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Being John Malkovich...sucks!?! Really???
posted by loGeek at 4:38 AM PST - 7 comments

Jason Kottke claps for himself in a new article at theobvious.com concerning the much maligned Webbys. Strike a pose!
posted by honkzilla at 10:43 PM PST - 1 comment

Naked Juice: Journal of a Tangerine Girl is the latest personal site to receive a cease-and-desist, after Chiquita Brands, owners of nakedjuice.com and the brand name Naked Juice, say there's potential confusion between this artist's web journal and their juice company. This is despite the fact that the journal is hosted on Jessi's own tangerinegirl.com, a site that obviously has nothing to do with fruit juice, naked or otherwise.

Interestingly, though they've apparently claimed in a letter to Jessi that they own the trademark Naked Juice, only the word Naked is trademarked according to their legal page.

Contact Naked Juice/Chiquita here.
posted by Georgina at 9:36 PM PST - 16 comments

Britain's Favorite Word? According to Bob Geldof, it starts with an "F". Finally, a rock star making a positive contribution...
But will he be sued for trademark infringement by George Carlin?
posted by wendell at 8:26 PM PST - 6 comments

Dr. Dre follows in Metallica's footseps and hands over a list of 239,612 user ID's to Napster to for possible termination of these accounts.
posted by vitaflo at 5:36 PM PST - 13 comments

Jargon Scout - In this age of web-building and domains of all sorts coming out the wazoo and email and new jargon all the time, there seems to be a lack of good jargon for emotional states. Two states that I think desperately need a word coined for them are: the anticipation for the propagation of and reticence to tell anyone about a newly registered domain; and the state where you get so starved for contact of any kind that you post your undisguised email to a half-dozen newsgroups and fanzines just so that there is something in your inbox. Anyone have any ideas for what these states should be called?
posted by Willy-Yam at 3:07 PM PST - 4 comments

All is not lost , well, for some atleast.
posted by tiaka at 2:17 PM PST - 8 comments

Home brew MP3 player. All we need now is for someone to make a cdr version instead of smartmedia (AIWA has one for the car).
posted by jamescblack at 12:58 PM PST - 8 comments

Kid Rock starves to death-- Napster to blame. Now I understand why Metallica is so angry.
posted by sugarfish at 12:13 PM PST - 7 comments

Utterly Disgusting. I don't what made me more ill, the white stringy stuff, or the brown substance. Either or, it is just another example of how great government works... at any level.
posted by da5id at 10:26 AM PST - 4 comments

Ain't it the Truth? Metallica's new CD... coming soon to Napster!
posted by da5id at 10:20 AM PST - 2 comments

Pure water that's lost it's innocence - DNA
posted by TuxHeDoh at 7:43 AM PST - 4 comments

Two great products that needed a warped mind to join them into one.
posted by plinth at 7:33 AM PST - 2 comments

Microsoft's latest security loophole involves the much-hated animated paperclip "Office Assistant". Despite its ability to create or delete files, someone chose to mark it as "safe for scripting", allowing it to be controlled by script on a web page.
posted by harmful at 7:09 AM PST - 2 comments

''They're absolutely lying. There's no question that they're lying,'' Ummmm... Yeah...
posted by da5id at 5:14 AM PST - 29 comments

Round 2: Robotgirl gina vs. Riothero mark In the Great Blog Off, the contest is already heating up before the battle has even begun. I just wonder what the topic will be...
posted by brent at 8:46 PM PST - 13 comments

Start the "formerly known as formerly known as..." jokes now: I find this tremendously disappointing, but the first person to actually adopt an icon as his name has reversed the decision, a scant 7 years into the adventure.

Prince is, once again, Prince. R.I.P.
posted by anildash at 4:55 PM PST - 11 comments

Lycos Sells Out To Those Dastardly Spaniards; W.R. Hearst Rises From Grave To Stop Takeover. Spanish ISP Terra Networks SA is now the proud owner of Suck, Hotwired, and Jeff Veen. Oh yeah, and a fairly useless portal. Now we just have to wait for the Sucksters to publicly deride their new owners...start your stopwatches.
posted by solistrato at 4:49 PM PST - 8 comments

DotCom Guy is a Bore "The DotCom Guy gets loads of publicity just like this for being a zero." - Dallas Observer. Dallas, where I live, has many claims to "fame" but I'm not sure anyone really cares about this one. Is the rest of the world paying attention to him?
posted by thinkdink at 4:34 PM PST - 15 comments

Is Napster Bad? Only if you're these greedy bunch of bastards. Kick-ass cartoon, though.
posted by attitude at 3:51 PM PST - 7 comments

Nupedia is an open source encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to, much in the spirit of DMOZ, the open directory project. It's an attempt to combine the world's experts into one knowledge resource. I guess the question is now...can it work?
posted by mathowie at 1:36 PM PST - 3 comments

Blame MICRO$OFT for the "I love you" virus, ohh, and it has 40 authors to it
posted by tiaka at 12:58 PM PST - 14 comments

Outraged web news site republishes naughty pictures so that all their readers can see what the fuss was about. Not just one picture. ALL of them. Except that from where I sit, they're not that naughty: she's fully dressed in some kind of Russian fur thing. Yes! We are outraged! At this one! and ... this one too! and that one there! See how outraged we are!
posted by dhartung at 12:34 PM PST - 4 comments

We're all doomed. You think the spam level is bad now, just wait.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 12:25 PM PST - 7 comments

Voice Recognition - An Optimistic Take. A sunny view of a voice-commanded future. But I'm a little freaked out by their description of "VoiceXML"... someday will we all be saying "Metafilter, CLICK"?
posted by wiremommy at 9:41 AM PST - 3 comments

[ Damn, it's busy this morning... ]
"Outlook is perfectly safe... perfectly safe; that's why we're fixing it."
posted by baylink at 8:11 AM PST - 4 comments

This house which I heard about from captain cursor looks normal on the outside, but make sure you check out the basement! It made me think of the barn house that I once visited while growing up in Indiana. Though very different, they both are products of magnficent obscessions--as is the famous Winchester Mystery House. It seems many people like to build and live in strange homes. Of course, there are people who are obscessed with other things.
posted by grumblebee at 7:30 AM PST - 2 comments

Disturbing. I don't know what is worse, that these people are trying to make a buck off this, or the fact that you can watch the Real unedited version here. (Warning, 50megs)
posted by da5id at 6:31 AM PST - 5 comments

Eat yer face! DIY life cast gelatin molds! [via 50 cups]
posted by plinth at 6:26 AM PST - 1 comment

Smell-o-vision may not be that far off, if the Digiscents.com people have their way.
posted by cCranium at 6:26 AM PST - 10 comments

It's fun to rip on bad driving. I didn't realize what a gaping emotional hole I've had since Jerque du Jour went away.
posted by plinth at 6:19 AM PST - 1 comment

"awarding" - i usually go to great lengths to avoid ass-kissing, but this commentary on web awards is really provocative...
posted by centrs at 11:54 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

George Lucas in Love Dear heavens I hope this wasn't already posted here... Anyway, watch and giggle.
posted by stefnet at 10:50 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Shiver me timbers... Derek P becomes a Pyrate. That "Meet the Beatles" cover will soon need to be replaced with one from Sly and the Family Web. Or Treasure Island. But good luck, and a very happy birthday for tomorrow... and if anyone even mentions the word beginning with C and rhyming with "babble", terminate with extreme prejudice.
posted by holgate at 6:06 PM PST - 35 comments

Forty-two billion dollars for conservation may soon be headed to the fifty states, if a controversial environmental protection package passes the Senate. Election-minded lawmakers -- including at least one hundred Republicans -- have piled onto the Conservation and Reinvestment Act, which allows them to bring federal funds to their states while appearing to help the environment.
posted by palegirl at 12:51 PM PST - 1 comment

Slashdot is taking questions for The Zeldman. If you have any questions for him, better post them, because otherwise you'll never be able to communicate with someone this reclusive.
posted by harmful at 9:55 AM PST - 45 comments

Age of the Customer : John Ellis articulates the current business climate of customer empowerment and highlights some companies (Coke and Time-Warner) who Just Don't Get It.
posted by wiremommy at 9:44 AM PST - 2 comments

Does the Star Trek Coffee pose a threat to Starbucks?
posted by tiaka at 9:42 AM PST - 2 comments

The Library Of Babel, by Borges. Quite good, I think.
posted by sonofsamiam at 8:34 AM PST - 4 comments

Desktop Imperium is a related site to see for folks who think vir2l is cool. Among other things, the interface stumbles closely enough to being usable that you can figure out what's being presented -- free wallpapers, in an abstract, Matrix meets Tron meets Jackson Pollack mode.
posted by aurelian at 10:10 PM PST - 8 comments

yea, um, vir2l redesigned, looks nice.
posted by Dom at 6:35 PM PST - 5 comments

Vir2L. Oh my god. Web designer eye-candy! Most impressive.
posted by Succa at 6:35 PM PST - 17 comments

The official site for Clerks - The Cartoon has probably been up for a while, but I never saw it. There are some other details on the View Askew site as well.
posted by endquote at 5:10 PM PST - 1 comment

Feds Seize Windows Source Code in Daring Raid and Reunite it with Juan Miguel Gonzalez.
posted by premiumpolar at 4:45 PM PST - 2 comments

Vatican Discloses 'Third Secret' of Fatima. Prophecies to shepherd children, conspiracy theories - this shit is old-school. It must be fun to be Catholic, living in a world that still has shadows and mist. I'm sick of this harsh, bright Enlightenment thinking.
posted by lbergstr at 12:48 PM PST - 9 comments

Internet VCR. You put in the shows you want to watch, come back, and watch it in Realplayer. Shady legally, cool geekwise.
posted by owillis at 11:26 AM PST - 8 comments

$50 dollars a year for a Web appliance and unlimited access. After three years, it's free. The only catch I can find is that if you cancel before three years, you have to pay a bazillion dollars. So who's going to make the Virginconnect into a cheap Linux box?
posted by endquote at 9:15 AM PST - 7 comments

Amtrak is running one of the most bizarre promotions ever. Yesterday, I saw a bunch of billboards along the freeways saying "Do you have a face that can stop a train?" Below that was this URL: winafacelift.com. How a train company and facelifts go together, I don't know. It's almost as if they want their slogan to be "when you're too ugly for plane travel, take a train."
posted by mathowie at 8:44 AM PST - 3 comments

From Microsoft support: General Information About Using VBScript with Outlook

VBScript is designed to be a secure programming environment. It lacks various commands that can be potentially damaging if used in a malicious manner. This added security is critical in enterprise solutions.

(via Phil Agre's RRE mailing list)
posted by tregoweth at 1:45 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Is this photo worth a million dollars?
posted by endquote at 11:00 PM PST - 8 comments

I'm sorry, Dave; I'm afraid I can't do that.
posted by baylink at 10:55 PM PST - 4 comments

IE/Mac team not disbanded.
Just in case you didn't catch my comment in the previous thread about this topic. The same team is also working on IE for OSX and WebTV.
posted by daveadams at 6:03 PM PST - 15 comments

bla-bla.com and grrl.com (a new chickclick style portal from womensforum.com) are on the hunt for independent female sites to lump together and sell off to their advertisers. what have your experiences been with .commers? how do you feel about advertising on yr own site? what kind of money is actually earnt from being part of a portal (which seems to be their major selling point)? what resources are available to independent site owners? perhaps another branch of the metafilter community could be dedicated to informing people about what does happen when a site signs on to a portal business, and what the alternatives are.
posted by gusset at 5:46 PM PST - 8 comments

Here's a short news story of a street named Cowshit. No bullshit.
posted by lizardboy at 5:10 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

I am not now, nor have I ever been... a resident of Los Alamos, NM. If you know someone who is, you might want to check out this web site, where the New Mexico Internet Professionals Association demonstrates that they did *so* learn something by watching the hams all those years...
posted by baylink at 4:33 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

verizonREALLYsucks Be good, or I'll sic the AntiCyberSquat on you!
posted by PaperCut at 3:05 PM PST - 3 comments

Farstar International is probably one of the best examples of bad Wed design ever, but obviously that's not the guy's bag. Apparently his bag is collecting really awesome pictures of galaxies and stars and other such spacey things. The shots aren't big enough for wallpapering, but might be neat source material for designy people. (The link isn't showing up in the preview, but here it is: http://www.cliffr.com/galaxies/banner.htm)
posted by endquote at 11:08 AM PST - 9 comments

Intel royally fucks over one of its best customers. We don't ordinarily get into hardware here, but what's important about this is that this has a damned good chance of putting ASUS out of business. (And just two weeks after I put an ASUS mobo into my computer, sob. Fortunately, mine is not one of the ones involved.)

If Intel has any honor (or wants to maintain any kind of reputation) they're going to completely cover ASUS's losses on this, which could easily top a billion dollars. I wonder if they will.

Anyone want to lay odds on when the first lawsuit gets filed? (Or who will sue whom?)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:14 AM PST - 5 comments

Money Good, Napster Bad.
James and Lars tell it like it is (requires Flash4).
posted by Mick at 8:57 AM PST - 5 comments

McSweeney's suspends lifetime subscriptions. Sure hope mine got in under the wire.
posted by luke at 11:14 PM PST - 2 comments

interNIC lost my business!!! To take the heat (and any possible lawsuits) off of them, they have now changed thier policy to revoke anyone's domain name at their discretion.

Phil Sbarbaro, NSI's legal counsel, offered a parallel to summarize prevailing law: "You don't own a domain name any more than you own your phone number."

I don't know about you guys, but I am definitely finding another registrar to transfer my domain names to...ASAP!
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 9:25 PM PST - 14 comments

Holy Mother of Google!
posted by bradlands at 7:37 PM PST - 2 comments

Mothers day is on Sunday - support the Million Mom March against gun violence.
posted by aladfar at 6:25 PM PST - 7 comments

"Luke, I am your father..." Hayden Christensen is confirmed to be the new Anakin Skywalker. Hot damn!
posted by inviolable at 5:33 PM PST - 1 comment

A concerned Vermont parent wrote an interesting letter to the editor regarding the gay rights conflict.
posted by faisal at 4:30 PM PST - 5 comments

The user who was selling Metallica's soul has been banned by EBay for bidding on another item he/she was selling. The strange part of all of this of course, is that I recognized their username when I read this story. Why can't we delete particular items in memory like we do with files on a computer?
posted by fooljay at 3:13 PM PST - 2 comments

Macintouch is reporting that Microsoft has disbanded the IE for Mac team and is discontinuing development of IE for Mac. So much for a 5 year commitment....
posted by faisal at 1:02 PM PST - 19 comments

Halcyon! Congratz, bro! Between you and Napster, I *almost* enjoyed the webbys this year.
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 12:24 PM PST - 8 comments

Chuck D vs. Lars Ulrich, tonight on PBS' Charlie Rose Show. I can't wait.
posted by mathowie at 12:11 PM PST - 11 comments

thegreatillusion.com This is no oxymoron in the Twilight Zone! Must see!
posted by armaggie at 9:31 AM PST - 5 comments

How to beat the Napster ban. Seems they're pulling some sly tricks with the registry.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:00 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

First it was Metallica's integrity for sale... now the RIAA's Soul and Integrity is for sale. Funny, I didn't think they had a soul. Shamelessly stolen from Fark
posted by da5id at 4:05 AM PST - 1 comment

The next wave in Internet Advertising in the post Blair-Witch era.
posted by chaz at 1:37 AM PST - 12 comments

Watch Jason Win Live! Which acceptance speech is he going to use? My bet is on "I'm too drunk to cry..."
The awards are being given now... right now... go... quickly!
posted by Neale at 9:10 PM PST - 19 comments

Rant: Why do computers make people stupid? I guess computers are like little babies...
[ From Capitol Hill Blue, via, of all places, rec.humor.funny. ]
posted by baylink at 8:38 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Does "Battlefield Earth" make anyone else nervous? The film has a deep connection to the church of Scientology - an organization that has seen a certain amount of controversy (though I don't wish to belittle the belief system of anyone). This connection seems to have gone unnoticed. Is there cause for concern when a heavily marketed film is surreptiously tied to an organized religion?
posted by aladfar at 7:58 PM PST - 27 comments

Array is back and covering the fires in Los Alamos, NM, with pictures and links to sites where people who want to can help.
posted by davewiner at 6:21 PM PST - 3 comments

Sex slavery in Europe. I saw a special about this on a cable news channel... it's almost unbelievable, but this is actually going on now.
posted by wiremommy at 1:58 PM PST - 5 comments

I'm just one in a billion!

With the birth of a baby girl named Asha - 'Faith' in Hindi - India's population officially hit 1 billion today, an event marked with fanfare and concern over the nation's too-rapid growth. Astha was born to Anjana and Ashok Arora at 5:05 a.m. this morning, putting India in an exclusive club with China as the only nations with populations exceeding 1 billion.

Now if any country messes with us, all we have to do is jump at the same time to wipe out the enemy. :)

Source: yahoo
posted by riffola at 1:43 PM PST - 3 comments

And from the "No Good Deed Goes Unpunished" file comes today's entry. 63,000 philanthropists get the shaft.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 12:55 PM PST - 1 comment

Any server can read all your IE cookies. From any domain. Anyone. I was just explaing to my folks that the reason cookies are (generally) safe is that this was NOT possible. Well, it's possible now.
posted by ericost at 11:31 AM PST - 32 comments

Even Gnutella's mention on the Nullsoft site was removed. It now shows links to Winamp, Shoutcast, and a suspicous "and more... muhahaha!" Looks like MP3 trading will have to stay underground.
posted by sonic junkie at 9:35 AM PST - 1 comment

The good guys can win, but it's not cheap. If Clue.com can beat Hasbro, surely Mattl has a case against Mattel. As if we didn't already know that.
posted by luke at 9:16 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Microsoft does it, again.
The company you love to hate is at it again, this time attacking Slashdot users. Does MS really not get it this bad? I can't belive it...
ps. The Slashdot server seems to be slashdotted itself.
posted by jedrek at 8:25 AM PST - 24 comments

Napster throws Metallica a curveball. Napster has been pointing out to its kicked-off users a certain provision of the DMCA: If an ISP kicks a user off a service for violating copyright, that user may file a counternotification if they believe they were wrongly accused. The plaintiff (Metallica) then has 10 days to respond with a lawsuit directly against that user. If they choose not to respond, the ISP must restore the account. If enough users (among the 300,000 blocked) file counternotifications, Metallica may wish it had never begun this process.
posted by daveadams at 8:09 AM PST - 12 comments

Diamond Rio, or Diamond Rio. The choice is yours. [from jose]
posted by endquote at 11:09 PM PST - 3 comments

Northpoint blows chunks - how they can prepare for new technologies is beyond me. forgive me if i'm bring up a dead or overtired subject but i'm new here... I'm on a personal campaign to let the world know how crappy Northpoint DSL is... I'll try to keep this as short as possible but basically we run a small business out of our house. We're developers. Working via modem isn't really an option (especially when you've got ancient, multiplexed phone lines). When our 1-up/1-down sDSL finally started working my roommate and I didn't leave the house for a week.

Anyway, to make a long story a tad shorter, it's been down for three weeks now. we've lost several days and several thousand dollars worth of billable hours sitting on our butts waiting for technicians to show up whenever they please. I am NOT pleased, and what also really irks me is the fact that basically, Northpoint runs the DSL monopoly in my brooklyn neighborhood. We have no other choice. I'm also taking this to dsl reports. I just really don't think DSL technology is that ready for the masses.
posted by cadence at 8:30 PM PST - 12 comments

Is this cool? Or do I just want too much? A happy marriage between my geek self and my designer/writer self? Is it possible? Is Macromedia Dreamweaver Ultradev the answer?
posted by tranquileye at 6:15 PM PST - 13 comments

This is for real eh?
posted by neo452 at 4:47 PM PST - 8 comments

RIAA backs new copyright law: "Instead of the rights to recordings reverting to the artists after 35 years, as current law states, recordings would be reclassified as "works for hire," with the record labels keeping the rights to them forever. " Let the flame-fest begin...
posted by novarese at 4:23 PM PST - 9 comments

Stealing is bad. These folks seem to think it's okay to rip off another site's design and pass it off as their own work-- right down to the identical manifesto! They even have the balls to post a copyright notice. Unbelievable.
posted by wiremommy at 3:25 PM PST - 21 comments

Yet another threat to free speech under the guise of the War On Drugs. Not to mention wholesale Internet censorship. And I quote "It says Internet providers and hosting services must remove any website within 48 hours after the government objects to it -- and no court order is necessary. What's next, filtering software for all data entering the United States?
posted by ambereden at 1:37 PM PST - 1 comment

The Joy of Engine Repair - this very effectively sums up why I like building things.
posted by plinth at 1:12 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Although this story doesn't sound like much, the FTC coming down on Time Warner, the effects could be great. Time Warner has agreed to ban their minimum pricing on featured new CDs, admitting that for the last seven years, these compact discs have been artificially overpriced. Do you think making CDs cheaper for the first time in years had anything to do with all the attention mp3s have been getting from consumers?
posted by mathowie at 11:50 AM PST - 5 comments

I'm not quite sure which is more notable: all that whiskey going up in flames, or the whiskey which is going into the community water system.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 11:23 AM PST - 1 comment

Maybe there's hope for our social lives after all. A new study (complete report here) seems to directly contradict February's study which claimed that the Internet makes people antisocial hermits. This new study is particularly focused on the habits of women who use the web but offers many interesting numbers that apply across gender lines, i.e. "Nearly three-quarters of Internet users (72%) say they visited family or friends "yesterday," while 61% of nonusers report they had visited someone".
posted by Sapphireblue at 10:49 AM PST - 2 comments

So, just what is this Filipino cracker's name, anyway?
posted by baylink at 9:50 AM PST - 4 comments

Napster did it- blocked more than 317,000 names used by its subscribers, which have been identified by the hard rock band, Metallica, as allegedly infringing on the copyrights of the group's music.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 9:29 AM PST - 11 comments

Mike The Headless Chicken Festival [via memepool]- Check out the ad for Wendy's Chicken Sandwhich further down. Somethings are just too good to be true.
posted by plinth at 6:01 AM PST - 2 comments

Anyone know what happened to Bloat? It went and disappeared today; the page sort of redirects to the main TheWebToday page ("sort of" because "/bloat/" stays in the URL). And the Bloat list isn't in the right-hand panel of the main page, either.

Has Sally Tenpenny gone and left? :(
posted by delfuego at 9:10 PM PST - 8 comments

Here's a follow-up to last week's thread about the whole Travolta-Kidman-Cruise-Scientology thing. Interesting counterpoint in some ways, although I think ALL the concerned parties have ulterior motives. Agenda, agenda, agenda.
posted by highindustrial at 8:38 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

since people who use Linux as a client OS are generally geeks, they tend to use one of the ugly, unfriendly default mail programs that ship with Linux distributions: from IDG with love. I hardly call it ugly if it saves your ass and your virtual "Billions."
posted by greyscale at 6:46 PM PST - 14 comments

I normally wouldn't do this, but I think we all need a little Star Trek/Celebrity gossip to lighten things up around here...
Cap'n! I dunna think the condom's gonna hold much longer!
posted by wendell at 4:36 PM PST - 4 comments

Freedom in the Off-Line World Department: This snarky commentator (who usually spews on Fox "We Distort, You Deride" News) hints loudly that NYPD changes after the Diallo shooting are responsible for the string of murdered cab drivers in the Big Apple. So, how much racial profiling and how many occasional unjustified police shootings are YOU going to accept in exchange for your safety? (And are you ready for the boom in murders when the LAPD is forced to clean its house?)
posted by wendell at 4:32 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Can the internet police itself given a little time and some smart people working on it? Or do we need some kind of law? The war on spam continues.

I personally find reporting spammers and getting them whacked by their ISP fun. I'm not much of an outdoorsy type, though.
posted by flestrin at 4:02 PM PST - 8 comments

Suck got old for me after a while. As a staggering genius put it, it's "like having someone shout in your ear." Today, though, they're carrying a great, great article about the situtation in Colombia. Drugs! Guns! Money! Reprehensible US involvement!
posted by lbergstr at 1:38 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

The Great Blog-Off is coming- so far 8 bloggers will be madly competing for 24 hours to find the best links on the web on an as-yet-unknown topic. A lesson in futility or potentially dirty, self-absorbed fun? Discuss amongst yourselves.
posted by wisdom at 12:58 PM PST - 5 comments

(No link, but at least it's on topic :-)
Submitted for your approval: the recording industry has shot themselves in the head, forcing users to switch from Napster, which at least gave them a mechanism to charge people who wanted to pay, to the decentralized approach of Gnutella, et al, which makes that completely impossible. Opinions?
posted by baylink at 12:44 PM PST - 16 comments

Say goodbye to personal liberty if this bill gets passed. A bill aimed at fighting drugs on and off line will limit your freedom of speech, allow police to enter your house with a warrant but not telling you what it's for. One step closer to the Police state. And one heck of a supreme court case in the wings.
posted by eljuanbobo at 12:15 PM PST - 3 comments

Cruel and unusual? "Expert witnesses testified that the brief delays give the body time to recover and increase the chance the person will feel pain." What a crock... I wonder if the 3 year old baby he killed and dismembered felt any pain? The punishment should fit the crime. Although the death penalty doesn't deter crime, if we punished those in the same manner that they commited the murder, then maybe criminals would think twice... then again, maybe not.
posted by da5id at 11:41 AM PST - 32 comments

Told ya so... Wrong guy. Thank god, I thought he was headed for the chair for sure.
posted by Dean_Paxton at 11:35 AM PST - 1 comment

To continue the theme, Yahoo starts going after "sound-alike" domains with a little help from ICANN.
posted by Mick at 10:34 AM PST - 2 comments

Adbusters' Design Manifesto 2000 is an interesting read. In accordance with what many people believe, and the result of corporations going too far, the question becomes, do we need something like this for web creators? A Pledge to pursue personal interests and experiments on the web, instead of just your daily e-company work? Would you sign such a thing?
posted by mathowie at 10:01 AM PST - 12 comments

I owe Dan Gillmor an apology, dammit. On April 1st, I blogged here at MeFi this story about Stanford filing an IPO as an example of a rather lame April Fool's joke. Well, it turned out to be a little closer to the truth than I thought.
posted by wendell at 9:24 AM PST - 2 comments

Along the same lines as Meg's post about the Panty Raider game, the governor or Illinois is trying, and succeeding, to get retailers to pull "M" rated games off the shelves. Makes you wonder when people are gonna wake up and stop blaming societal problems on all of our various forms of entertainment.
posted by schlyer at 8:16 AM PST - 6 comments

Verizon Wireless is jumping on the copyright lawsuit bandwagon. This time they're picking on 2600. Me thinks they're playing with fire.
posted by Mick at 6:57 AM PST - 6 comments

Oh, ghod; here we go again. This is, so far, actually sounding promising: "News from the cross-platform deleting community". Whomever's running it, don't blow your cover. Just add a link to me; 'k? ;-)
posted by baylink at 8:21 PM PST - 11 comments

Should same-sex couples be banned from adopting children? Last week, Mississippi Governor Ronnie Musgrove signed legislation banning gay and lesbian couples from adopting children. The new law takes effect July 1, and three other states already have similar restrictions.
posted by veruca at 7:38 PM PST - 9 comments

Metallica's Integrity for sale! Don't know if what's left of it is worth the price though.
posted by valerie at 7:15 PM PST - 1 comment

A new era in movie piracy . These guys managed to hack Microsoft's MPEG 4 codec, and have provided a means of ripping DVD movies to this new format (check the readme file). The little program they have on their site will "update" your Windows Media Player to be able to play the new divx format. The compression is comparable to current .avi and .mpg formats, but the image quality is near-DVD. Wow. I just watched "Disturbing Behaviour" in this new format and I must say I'm very impressed. No ugly chunky blocks like with MPEG. I dunno if I'd ever pay to see movies in the theatre again. Heh, sure sounds familiar eh? (*cough* MP3 *cough*) Looks like there might be some big new players joining the RIAA real soon. :)
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 7:01 PM PST - 4 comments

Unbelievable news nugget of the day: my friend Matt Lavallee has been slapped with a cease-and-desist order from the Mattel Toy Corporation for his personal domain, mattl.com. I guess no one with a name that sounds like a misspelled company is allowed to buy domains from now on? Something needs to be done, corporations do not own the web.
posted by mathowie at 4:50 PM PST - 62 comments

In this sendmail.net piece, Greg Knauss (of Winerlog-when-it-was-good fame) asserts, among other things, that if a court subpoenas your email, and it's encrypted, that you can be tossed in jail for contempt if you don't give them the keys. Um, hello? 5th amendment? Does anyone have references either way on this one?
posted by baylink at 3:07 PM PST - 6 comments

Readers prefer text over graphics. In much more scientific news a new study by Stanford University indicates that visitors to your website are significantly more likely to read the text on your website (92%) than look at your photos (64%). What do you think? Will this change the way you design your site?
posted by shmuel at 2:51 PM PST - 4 comments

Is this article accurate?
posted by milhous at 2:46 PM PST - 3 comments

Journal's VS. Weblogs . Now that the browser war is over this incredibly scientific survey shows that journals are winning the new content battle. Also in interesting news of wars it appears the new kid on the block has Apple in the corner. Honestly, I can't think of a useful way to use this tool but sure is fun! --- How about you? Can you think of a useful way to use Altameter?
posted by shmuel at 2:41 PM PST - 2 comments

Leaping Lizards, Batman! It's...it's...PERIODIC!
posted by plinth at 2:05 PM PST - 1 comment

The RIAA v Napster Summary Judgement is in: RIAA Claims Initial Win in Legal Battle Vs. Napster
posted by fooljay at 1:26 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Does MySQL suck? That isn't actually the topic of a thread at the OpenACS project site... but everyone sure *thinks* it is. :-) OpenACS is a project to port the ArsDigita Community System off of Oracle onto PostgreSQL (of which, BTW, v7.0 ships this week). If this is your cuppa, check it out. [via /.]
posted by baylink at 12:54 PM PST - 8 comments

What happened to Array? Poof! Another editthispage site is gone. Does this have anything to with the whole winerlog debacle?
posted by grant at 12:01 PM PST - 29 comments

Is it me, or does this smack of hypocrisy? I mean, on our money are the words "In God We Trust." And when about to give testimony in court, we swear on the bible. I think some judges need to get their heads out of their a$$es.
posted by da5id at 11:50 AM PST - 15 comments

Mind Games for Tech Success: You've Got to Play to Win. Interesting article from today's Washington Post showing how high tech recruiters are using Games and Theory to identify hot prospects.
posted by ratbastard at 8:45 AM PST - 10 comments

Could voluntary online payments be a viable revenue model for online content? [via ev] For that matter, could this be a valid way to pay for MP3 music?
posted by harmful at 8:34 AM PST - 1 comment

The new MetaTalk is now live as is the MetaFilter Network site, which also mentions another new site in the works. Discuss the MetaTalk site, and if you want to take issue with me, of all people, self-blogging, do it here.
posted by mathowie at 8:35 PM PST - 16 comments

Do you carry too much crap around with you?
[ via PDABuzz ]
posted by baylink at 8:00 PM PST - 14 comments

Jackbooted Trademark Enforcement for Dummies. Slashdot is carrying pointers to several incidences of overzealous lawyering by IDG books; there was also a pointer to a reply letter that, basically, tells IDG to go stick it, and why they have no choice.
posted by baylink at 3:54 PM PST - 3 comments

Digital Diaries is a photo journal of sorts, detailing the sex life of the author, Natacha Merritt. I haven't seen the book or anything, but what struck me as a little odd was the interview they have with her on Salon. It seems like they purposefully tried to make her come off as completely ignorant with regard to photography and art in general.
posted by fil! at 3:18 PM PST - 12 comments

This guy has *nailed* the Winerlog situation. [ spotted by Brennan at Weblogging Considered Harmful ]
posted by baylink at 2:35 PM PST - 1 comment

This has got to be the funniest thing I've ever seen from from a President. How in the world did they get all of those people to do this and what in the hell was it for? There was no trailer on the end. Is it just a ad released to circulate among the populace to repair the lagacy of a disgraced President?
posted by fooljay at 10:15 AM PST - 9 comments

Is a woman to blame for the "ILOVEYOU" virus? Police said that the suspect was a young computer school student and apparently from a middle class family. GIRLPOWER. haha.
posted by tiaka at 9:12 AM PST - 5 comments

IMBOT is a nifty web app which lets you send a typed message to someone someone's phone. Basically a text-to-speech phone gateway.
posted by triptych at 7:52 AM PST - 6 comments

Does this seem like a bad idea to anyone else?
posted by endquote at 2:14 AM PST - 10 comments

What does the MP3.com case have to do with online Music trading? Why can't the media ever actually try to understand a fairly simple issue before reporting on it. Beam-IT has nothing to do with music trading. Napster has a website but Dre's music can only be found in the Napster application The "Love Bug virus" isn't. And "hackers" (in the non-media use of the word) aren't criminals. Ugh!!
posted by fooljay at 12:29 AM PST - 1 comment

Winerlog is dead. In an email entitled "A serious note," sent to all editthispage members, Dave announced this evening that he is pulling the plug on the no longer funny Winerlog: "Today I have reached a decision that I would like you to know about and give some thought to. ... I have given this enough thought, and have decided that we're going to stop hosting the site tomorrow." Zooooooooooom!!!!!!!
posted by ericost at 12:28 AM PST - 19 comments

Just when you thought you'd seen it all Elian gets his own website...um, sorta.
posted by vitaflo at 12:22 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Written in 1982, this sysop reminisces about the "Golden Ages" of BBS's Kind of ironic that I hear people say the same things today about the net.
If I had been smarter, I'd have used my brother's Amiga 500 to modem around a bit, but unfortunately, text files like this are about as close to that time as I can get. Amazingly enough, with everything that's online these days, these old text files are some of my favorite things to spend my time reading.
posted by lizardboy at 10:07 PM PST - 12 comments

Cybersex addiction? Here's an AP wire story that's a fairly thin re-write of a BBC story on people becoming addicted to cybersex. Some interesting facts -- it's almost 50/50 women (how come *I* can never find them? :-). Fairly balanced, if you read the whole thing, but still a bit inflammatory.
posted by baylink at 8:35 PM PST - 7 comments

So, who's *really* to blame for the Love Bug costing billions? Phil Agre makes a pretty good argument that the least Microsoft's can get away with is contributory negligence in this RRE piece.
posted by baylink at 7:03 PM PST - 17 comments

Uhoh! Leggo my napster! So I just tried to load up Napster, and it told me that my connection to the server was refused. None of the people I've talked to have been able to get on either. Could this be the end of Napster? Killed in the night while nobody was watching? The site doesn't say anything, but grrrr, I want my pirated music!
posted by benbrown at 6:19 PM PST - 14 comments

Metafilter meets Ali G... If you lived in Europe or were familiar with what's "in" there, you'd know about Ali G, well the guys over at Mackers have created "Da Ali G Translator," which is a lot of fun to play with.

Here's a list of some other sites that I tried out.
Blogger
kottke.org
Powazek Productions

posted by riffola at 3:37 PM PST - 7 comments

Many more moments of silence in between those bloggings. (alice) is the one who introduced me to the genre — hopefully she really isn't gone for good. Thanks for all the URLs :)
posted by sylloge at 3:08 PM PST - 2 comments

Definitely a sign that the e-pocalypse is upon us. Zany Brainy has up and purchased Noodle Kidoodle! Ooogy woogy, bunny wunny!
posted by monstro at 1:15 PM PST - 5 comments

Moment of Silence.
Glenn Davis has quit ProjectCool.
posted by Zeldman at 9:28 PM PST - 24 comments

This excellent article on software quality, which is also a review of the Mark Minasi book, is courtesy of Linux Weekly^WDaily News. It has pointers to the anti-UCITA sites, too.
posted by baylink at 9:08 PM PST - 5 comments

idiot savant
posted by efader at 7:49 PM PST - 19 comments

Popular Power has released version 0.1.1 of its Worker software. It works kind of like SETI@home, except that the computing power can be organized to work on things like Influenza vaccine research, and they plan to compensate you for the cycles they use.
posted by muta at 1:55 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Panty Raiders: Humorous CD-ROM or the objectification of women? Have you ever heard of any other game referred to as a comedy? I find it particularly offensive and demeaning when a game that involves stripping women is passed off as something funny and entertaining, especially when targeted at young boys. Is this something we should be concerned about, or is it just a game? Are people overreacting?
posted by megnut at 1:48 PM PST - 46 comments

Cinco de Mayo is the biggest day of the year for avocados -- it is a Mexican holiday, but a minor one. It marks a May 5, 1862, victory by a small army of Mexican patriots and peasants over stronger French forces, but it's not Mexican Independence Day -- a common misconception among Cinco de Mayo partyers in the United States. In the United States, it's become the Latin version of St. Patrick's Day -- largely because makers of beer, chips, salsa and tequila promote it heavily as a reason to party.
posted by palegirl at 1:26 PM PST - 11 comments

DeapLeap, Flyswat, Octopus, Backflip, and Clip2 have all been out for a little while now. Personally I've checked each of them out, even used them for a day or two, but none stuck with me. Am I just old fashioned? Will these tools/sites catch on?
posted by chaz at 12:54 PM PST - 22 comments

www.apache.org was for a brief time "Powered by Microsoft BackOffice".

Ooops...
posted by Steven Den Beste at 12:23 PM PST - 2 comments

Public embarrasment as a tool to stop child pornography trading. The Wall of Shame highlights Gnutella users searching and downloading kiddie porn, carrying this disclaimer: "I'm all for freedom of data sharing but not when it comes to exploiting children. A secret gnutella server has bogus image files with very obvious names. If you search and download thesefiles from the server your IP, time of D/L and DNS will be logged. You have been warned!"
posted by mathowie at 11:36 AM PST - 17 comments

A pox on both their houses. Here's a case where I wish both sides would lose. (Is that possible?)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:53 AM PST - 1 comment

"The Love Bug" destroys companies around the globe. Only it's NOT a bug (shaking fists at newspeople), but a virus.
posted by madglee at 9:16 AM PST - 13 comments

On a lighter note... Joe Pranevich explains why Linux 2.4 isn't *really* "late".
posted by baylink at 8:14 AM PST - 4 comments

Personal Rant: Nationsbank (now Bank Of America) sucks. More inside.
posted by baylink at 7:44 AM PST - 31 comments

Satellite Tracking - NASA keeps adding great resources online. The JTrack 3d applet lets you track every satellite in orbit (as a 3d model). ...and we've all seen the Astronomy Picture of the Day. Just goes to show that faster, cheaper, better isn't the only thing they are working on.
posted by jamescblack at 9:22 PM PST - 1 comment

Winerlog really sucks these days. Don't you agree? I hope that the 'logger who told me he might be taking it over from the original editor, who *was* funny, has not, cause I'd hate to be dissing him. But I don't think it was him. Based on the number of clicks I've gotten from it before, and now, I guess no one *else* thinks it's funny anymore either...?
posted by baylink at 8:28 PM PST - 11 comments

Take a good long look at NASA, webcams of stuff that's actually cool!
posted by starduck at 7:51 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

"The attachment can also be sent through Internet Relay Chats (IRC), chat rooms accessible over the Web."
good to know those tech writers at yahoo are up on things.
posted by sugarfish at 6:35 PM PST - 4 comments

The winners of the 5K contest have been announced. Not all of my personal favorites made it into the top 10, but I think that they are all very strong entries, which is all one can hope for in contests like these.
posted by jkottke at 4:10 PM PST - 16 comments

Hey, where'd Carl go? He's not at Freedonia. Nothing is.
posted by luke at 4:07 PM PST - 10 comments

Any of you rap? "Come up with lyrics explaining 'Why you support Napster', drop your lyrics to Public Enemy's 'Power to the People and the Beats' track, and have a chance to win $5000"
posted by ericost at 1:55 PM PST - 2 comments

Derek Powazek on Webbieworld:
'[mc]: If you were starting to build a site right now with an unlimited budget, who would you ask to be on your team?'
'[dp]: Dream team? Michael Sippey on the business end, the Pyra gang doing the coding, Lance as the voice, Betty as mistress of misinformation, and those k10k baddies pushing pixels. Whoa, baby. I think my mouth just watered.'
Obvious question - who would your 'dream team' be?
posted by Markb at 9:33 AM PST - 36 comments

Metallica and Napster: The Chat. My favorite quote: "For the doubters out there, Metallica will carry on for the next 20 years," Ulrich said. "Whether you're around for the ride or not, that's your problem, not ours." Oh, really?
posted by baylink at 9:20 AM PST - 9 comments

Just wanted to warn everyone (no link yet) - came into work this morning and a new virus has infected our server, and we've had many of our customers call in that have already been infected. It's subject line is "iloveyou". Attached to it is a VB Script- but I assume that most of the readership here would be smart enough to not open attachments like that. But figured it warrented a warning.
posted by TuxHeDoh at 7:24 AM PST - 23 comments

This article describes what is purportedly the world's first "100% motion capture animated feature" -- and in none too glowing terms, I might add.
posted by highindustrial at 5:34 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

GiveQuick! I'm not sure what triggered the thought, but I realized that MetaFilter - and many of the sites of MetaFilter users - weren't around when GiveQuick began, and so I thought it might be nice to (re)introduce the idea. The premise? Affiliate fees from your own site can easily be redirected to nonprofit organizations - with absolutely no administrative costs deducted from those fees. You might also consider making online purchases through a participating GiveQuick site. Just a thought.
posted by judith at 8:21 PM PST - 1 comment

"MP3.com Bands Dis Disclosure" So they're telling the world how much bread artists make . . . can someone come up with anything resembling a rational reason for this?
"'MP3.com is creating a New Music Economy. We want to illustrate the viability of this new music economy by showing the world that artists can make money via Internet distribution of music,' the company's 'Artist Support Team' wrote to complaining bands."
Sounds as if they just got out of a "power-lunch" with the boys in Redmond or something . . . .
posted by mrpalomar at 7:45 PM PST - 4 comments

Microsoft released the beta of Windows Media Player 7, with it's neato support for flexible, scriptable skins (some of the samples developed by the place where I spend my daily grind). But what's most interesting is the fairly prominent links to other players on the WMP site. I guess that's what you get for supporting their format.
posted by endquote at 5:59 PM PST - 9 comments

portrait of the blogger as a young man.
posted by palegirl at 4:38 PM PST - 13 comments

The fans have spoken and Lucas has listened. Seems that Episode I is coming out on DVD after all. And Lucas says the web campaign on various sites encourage him to change his mind. How does this affect popular politics on a grander scale? And when will politicians jump on board the bandwagon?
posted by eljuanbobo at 4:03 PM PST - 3 comments

Immortality anyone?

I especially like Alex Chiu's nem Darwinism.

I can't tell if it's a joke or not...
posted by Jeremy at 3:38 PM PST - 7 comments

"Theft in Hollywood"... I'm strangely fascinated by this insane site. This gentleman believes that innovative ideas like "cloud", "corridor", and "storm" were stolen from his unproduced screenplay, and used in countless movies and commercials. And that's only the surface weirdness. There's much more where that came from, including secret coded messages in fortune cookies from the FBI...
posted by wiremommy at 2:12 PM PST - 1 comment

I simply don't know what to say about this site. I'm not one for theosophical discussions, but I thought that maybe somebody here would find this ... "interesting." Yeah, that's the word. Interesting. Here's a small excerpt:

You maybe academically retarded. Academia Retards By Fact Earth Has 1 Day When Dead Still, And 4 Days Within 1 Earth Rotation, losing 3 days retards humanity. Are you stupid and evil? If you are ignorant of natures harmonic time cube creation, then you were taught to be stupid and evil.

Quite an interesting way to try to gain believers, no?
posted by lizardboy at 1:42 PM PST - 8 comments

Instead of Yahoo's LSD design, AltaVista's new Raging Search site is Google's GLS (Goofy Logo, Search).
posted by tomalak at 1:21 PM PST - 9 comments

Have you ever wanted to be The Tick? --at least virtually in Quake 3, you can.
posted by plinth at 10:58 AM PST - 10 comments

What a perfect followup... I had just been going to post the NYTimes Magazine story on privacy in the Internet age, when I noted the SDB story I'd be following.
posted by baylink at 10:45 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment

Never, NEVER, NEVER tell someone "Sure, you can use my computer while I'm on vacation!"
posted by Steven Den Beste at 8:47 AM PST - 22 comments

And from the "No Shit, Sherlock!" file comes today's entry:

Inadequate wiring of logs and weak oversight of the building of a "complex and dangerous structure" were factors to blame for the deadly bonfire collapse at Texas A&M University last fall, an investigation commission said Tuesday.

Funny, I thought space aliens had done it, working with Elvis and Bigfoot.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 6:59 AM PST - 3 comments

Rich to get richer thanks to new technology. The wealth of "high net-worth individuals" is set to leap by an annual 12 percent to $44.9 trillion by 2004 with technology windfalls pushing more people into the "ultra-rich" category, a Merrill Lynch and Gemini Consulting survey showed on Tuesday.
posted by sonofsamiam at 5:43 AM PST - 2 comments

Rat-mind-control-robot. Where'd these rat's sign up? I want my cyborgian arm!
posted by shmuel at 10:42 PM PST - 3 comments

Bubbling Bliss - With all the heated debate and red-faced reactions around this place, I thought I'd offer a link to help calm you restless souls...
posted by Jeremy at 8:34 PM PST - 12 comments

Cruise and Kidman, um, get religion? The story quotes a pair of gossip reporters as saying that the pair are ditching The Religious Technology Center, Inc., er, um, excuse me: The Church of Scientology.
posted by baylink at 7:05 PM PST - 11 comments

Does this design trend remind anyone else of Autechre album cover art circa 1997? See also [ dform ], [ ngin ], and the mother of them all [ vir2l ].
posted by muta at 6:25 PM PST - 12 comments

The new Clearly Canadian bottles are really pretty. The site is nice, too. But why does the URL on the bottle point to clearly.ca, which isn't nearly as cool?
posted by endquote at 5:34 PM PST - 14 comments

Autobloggatio I had a good laugh not once but twice at the bitch-slapping I underwent for the putative sin of blogging myself on Metafilter. I had a laugh even though I thought the intent was to ridicule, slag, and deride. En tout cas, I blogged myself two different ways. On a couple of occasions, I pointed to pages I'd developed as a service to netters and bloggers Xenoblogs (list of un-American blogs) and the Buyer's Guide to Alternadomains. One makes no apologies for providing pages as a public service and making them known to the public. The other case involved ruminations on love at first sight. Lacking a discussion mechanism at my blog and knowing that people would have knowledge on the topic I had no access to (breeders, for example), I posted on Metafilter. IMHO this reveals an unserved need: Blogger et al. may make it possible to update your Weblog from any browser, but what we need is a way to automate discussion on topics blogged on individual pages. As it stands, bloggers are like home-office workers who have to meet clients at cafés: They have to go out of house. Is it possible that, for blogging to work at a level beyond howling at the moon or a tree falling in the wilderness, we need automated tools for dialogue at our own sites? Should Metafilter and (to a lesser degree) Webqueeries be the only collaborative Weblogs? Clearly this would blur the distinction between blogs and mailing lists, but so what? Among mailing lists, blogs, Yahoo clubs, and instant messaging, we already have a fractured set of media of two-way and multi-way communication. A bit more fracturing ain't gonna hurt; the horse has long since bolted from the stable. (Aside: Guestbooks work poorly in my experience. Even Zeldman's. Mine is a joke. In the immortal words of Bad Religion, there's no substance. A blog gives visitors something to talk about beyond "How do you like my page?")
posted by joeclark at 4:23 PM PST - 33 comments

In relation to yesterday's Metallica post on post, you can chat with them now (5 PM Pacific). The catch, however, is that you need to be registered with Yahoo.
posted by hobbes at 4:08 PM PST - 12 comments

I wish that this page had the complete transcript of Oprah's interview with Janet Reno, since at the very end, she said that she hoped Reno could take a little time off "and maybe not shake so much." Seeing as Reno has Parkinson's Disease, that's a pretty offensive thing to say; if Oprah didn't know this, then she should do a little more homework on her guests, and if she did, then she should be asked sometime in a live interview if she'll get a chance "to maybe stuff a little less food into her overeating mouth."
posted by delfuego at 1:34 PM PST - 4 comments

Video killed the weblogging star. Turns out ABC is casting for a tv show about the fast-moving world of online zines. But don't they know that webzines are oh-so September 1996, and weblogs are where it's at these days? Doesn't somebody around here think it's time to migrate the weblog genre over to television? Any of you crazy New York based webloggers thinking about making the move over to a different medium?
posted by monstro at 10:21 AM PST - 30 comments

"95% of all music will be free, at least for a period…" says Chuck D, while praising the magic of Napster. I <heart> Chuck D.
posted by mathowie at 9:12 AM PST - 3 comments

Pyra - a company built to flip? Sippey makes the most important statement and one that I have posted here before... Both Blogger, and Pyra are great products but where is the BUSINESS MODEL. Matt do not censor this please... it is a very valid point whether you like it or not...
posted by efader at 9:06 AM PST - 47 comments

I actually wouldn't mind seeing the plaintiffs behind this cease-and-desist order win their case.
posted by ratbastard at 8:01 AM PST - 23 comments

Google appears to be telling a story with their logo. Is this a fun and creative way to "extend their brand" (as the marcom kids like to say) or do they need to stop letting their engineers handle their logo design?
posted by jkottke at 7:45 AM PST - 22 comments

Napster users are named in the latest battle Some have admitted to being a criminal while others say who cares? Metallica sure doesn't seem like it is going to back down. The article says Metallica is scheduled to chat with fans online at the Artistsdirect.com Web site to explain its fight against Napster. So is any action going to be taken against the fans who want the music?
posted by brent at 10:53 PM PST - 4 comments

It's no longer funny.
posted by faisal at 10:31 PM PST - 10 comments

Orangina is the new orange All right, I tried to blog this and keep finding dead ends. Can someone please point me to permanent bookmarks of conversations (i.e., monologues) on A-list blogs like powazek.com and n-list ones like psionic.nu declaring that "[colour] is the new orange"? ¶ (At the Toronto bloggeur f2f, we engaged in ironic discussion of the fact that our blogs are not on the A-list and never will be, though I argued that merely contributing to Metafilter gives us exposure among the A-list crowd  in effect, a social-climber/arriviste argument for which I do not apologize. Miss Emmajane wasn't present for the ironic part, however. I am familiar with the argument that one who blogs as a ploy for readership is a failure. I agree. But blogging and being the only reader is, frankly, onanistic. I speak as someone whose blog is linked to by a grand total of three others. I'm not sure there are ten people on earth who regularly read what I write. I'm OK with that, but I'd love to be more... popular! Discuss. But give me the orange link first.)
posted by joeclark at 9:13 PM PST - 23 comments

Next up for bid, the damn raft. That's right, the top item for sale is the raft that Elian survived on while traveling to the United States from Cuba. Although six days are left in the auction, 112 bids have already been placed on it, with the high bid now at $10 million.
posted by bvanveen at 1:25 PM PST - 7 comments

Without Sanctuary - postcards & photographs of lynching in America. Shocking and sad.
posted by echelon at 9:52 AM PST - 4 comments

Time Warner Pulls ABC Get used to this kind of thing, as mega corp. 1 takes on mega corp. 2 to control what you see.
posted by alana at 7:20 AM PST - 9 comments

Guess what is back up and running? That's right, the game everyone loved to play! Laying the smack down never felt so good on some biatch... Pimpwar has returned!
posted by da5id at 6:29 AM PST - 3 comments

The WTO protests... Remeber those? Well, I knew about this rumor on Friday, but didn't want to post it until I got more verification. All the police lining Wall Street and the downtown area pretty much did that this morning. It seems that the 'organizations' loosely formed to protest any kind of world economic model have decided to cause civil unrest in downtown New York; try to gain access to the NYSE and AMEX and so forth. First, I find this whole 'movement' short sighted, and under-thought. Also, I think now participants are just trying to get into the news. Second, are these people idiots? Seattle and Washington were cheese puffs. Downtown New York is trained for terrorism. Do they really think they can operate under the radar of the security down here? I'll just say that I better be able to get in and out for lunch or I'll be pretty pissed off.
posted by rich at 6:10 AM PST - 10 comments