July 18, 2001
And the webby winners are...
And the webby winners are... not the ones I thought would win (no Blogger? no Fray?). Personally, I'll be spending time hoping for a Best Of The Web award instead. Why someday you may even get into the WWW Hall of Fame!
Your Hotmail account now boasts a new look,
Your Hotmail account now boasts a new look, and I must say it's extremely simple and nice looking. It puts the old drab color scheme to shame.
You dropped a bomb on me...
You dropped a bomb on me... The movie "Above & Beyond" was on TCM last night. It is about Col Paul Tibbets, the pilot of the Enola Gay, which dropped the first atomic bomb. Surprise: Col Tibbets is still alive, making appearances & speeches. What do you think goes through his mind when he recalls that fateful day? Would YOU have been able to drop the bomb that ended World War II?
Vinegar prank backfires on fish and chip shop owner
Vinegar prank backfires on fish and chip shop owner Listen up! Vinegar is harmful! "Eight-year-old Craig Hunt was splashed in the eye after Sam Kieu told him to sniff the vinegar then squirted it in his face." Have you ever pulled a 'small prank' which then went completely out of hand?
Maybe this idea is just too postmodern.
Maybe this idea is just too postmodern. But then a usenet group about a discussion group would never work would it? Best keep using Metatalk then . . .
Prison riot imminent. Film at 11.
Prison riot imminent. Film at 11. "Many inmates are heavily invested emotionally in the routine availability of certain types of food," wrote Jovero, a member of the state Food Task Force for prisons. "Prominent among these foods is peanut butter and jelly for religious and vegetarian inmates."
GAO to Cheney: "Show us what you got!"
GAO to Cheney: "Show us what you got!" Ok, well it wasn't that dramatic, but this "demand letter" is one step away from giving the Veep a subpeona. Even right wing attack dog Judicial Watch is getting in with some hot lawsuit action.
DEA nominee leaves the door open for medical marijuana
Amelia Earhart found?
Amelia Earhart found? TIGHAR (The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery) has put together an interesting package of evidence, including recent satellite photos, to bolster their claim that Amelia Earhart didn't crash into the sea as previously believed. Do you think that history's mysteries can be solved with circumstantial evidence decades, or centuries after the fact?
Jurassic Park III comes out today
Jurassic Park III comes out today and is getting surprisingly good reviews (I'm going to see it in a couple of hours)! Most seem to have the tone of "Not great cinema, but a fun popcorn-chomper summer movie". Thank god, because this has been a mostly sucky year at the movies so far...
Blogger Template Design Winners
Warning labels, the volume knobs on small infants, Death By Vending Machine.
Warning labels, the volume knobs on small infants, Death By Vending Machine. It's an ever-shifting line in the sand of human stupidity, a vague cultural boundary defining how much we expect our products and corporations to protect us from ourselves and how much we're willing to be answerable for our actions, a line dividing how logic-impaired we're willing to admit we sometimes are and how responsible a given corporation should be for dumping shoddy and/or dangerous products on the market without warning.
Is excessive labeling a release from liability? Is it killing off common sense or the need to have common sense?
"He hit me for HOW MUCH?????"
"He hit me for HOW MUCH?????" Famous last words of RPGers. Geeks of all kind will revel in it's nostalgic value. (via zannah.)
An run-of-the-mill
An run-of-the-mill story about the Webbies asks the question of how to find the best sites, and how good sites are interlinked on the Internet. So why is this notable? It's not, but everyone's favourite website is mentioned. Gratz, Matt.
Compassionate Conservatism?
Compassionate Conservatism? George W Bush has called on the World Bank to
offer more grants (as opposed to loans) to
developing countries. "The needs are many and
undeniable, and they're a challenge to our conscience
and to complacency. A world where some live in comfort
and plenty while half of the human race lives on less than
$2 a day is neither just nor stable." Copied from the always-excellent NextDraft. NYT registration required.
What if Dubya ran football?
What if Dubya ran football? Yup, it's another piece of Dubya-bashing. This however, makes no pretence to be anything other than silly. How would Dubya run your favourite sport? For the intellectual snobs - move along, nothing to see here!
Batman is 80 miles from the Iraqi border!
Batman is 80 miles from the Iraqi border! A new secret weapon in the US arsenal? Has the Hall of Justice relocated to Pennsylvania Ave? Or just another journalistic non-sequitur from the press pool? They should have made this the headline.
Need free Internet Access?
Need free Internet Access? Head to your local library or community center. This page allows you to type in a zipcode and find out where you can access (or learn about) the internet, usually for free. If you know someone in your neighborhood who isn't connected and might like this info, why not print out the page and give it to them?
link spotted at follow me here
link spotted at follow me here
There was not a cloud in the sky.
There was not a cloud in the sky. Scary things afoot near Hartsville, TN. Electric bulbs light in your hand. Birds fried by electric surges midflight. Mysterious police dressed in black. Blown out transformers. And -- a Bigfoot.
That's it.
That's it. No earth-shattering news, no new enclosures, nothing to phone your friends about (unless an unreleased iDVD2, boring-looking [but spiffy] new G4s and an OSX update 2 months away floats your boat). Apple CEO Steve Jobs' Macworld Expo keynote leaves everyone just a bit disappointed.
Take that, web-standards maniacs! "After Windows XP is launched in October, users will be directed to download a plug-in from Microsoft's Web site (www.microsoft.com) to make Java-based programs work. Without this step, 'any Web page that contains Java applications will not run -- it will be a dead page'" Put that in your "this page viewable in v5.0 browsers or later" crackpipe and smoke it. (Shamelessly swiped from that Other Site...)
You know you have truly made your mark on rock history when VH1 makes a TV movie about your band's catastrophic life. If this prompts me to re-buy Hysteria, I'll just cry.
Classic Microsoft user disdain. I want to submit to Microsoft. They just don't let me.
Sounds like...
Sounds like... With apparantly no sense of the irony.
"50 truisms, half-truths, blatant lies and childish wishes,
"50 truisms, half-truths, blatant lies and childish wishes, fundamental to the way we think about art, and none of them very useful." My fav's include #45 Anyone can make art (because we all have a little "genius" in us). and the corrolary #46 My kid could do that (because art is a fraud). Of course, #27 and #28 are completely true.
"New Media, New Arse."
"New Media, New Arse." BBC News Online is running a week-long series highlighting days and events that signalled the UK's dot-com downturn. (Slightly ironic, as compared to the US, the boom didn't even get started here.) But do you have your own particular moment that sums up the point where boom turned to bust?
Macworld NY Keynote webcast
Macworld NY Keynote webcast is starting. Will there be a new iMac? If you are having trouble connecting to the video stream, try this text feed.
Driving Over Jakob Nielsen:
Driving Over Jakob Nielsen: use left arrow to move left, right arrow to move right (which is quite useable really!)
Loosening the noose...
Loosening the noose... but still leaving the rope around the neck. "Far from hastening its own demise by allowing the Internet to penetrate its borders, an authoritarian state can actually utilize the Internet to its own benefit and increase its stability by engaging with the technology." An interesting - if not entirely expected - report on Internet access in Cuba and the People's Republic of China.
A Russian security expert has been arrested for showing how easy it is to crack an e-book.
A Russian security expert has been arrested for showing how easy it is to crack an e-book. All hail the DMCA!
Some information is just Too Dangerous to be Revealed!
(See also
wildly detailed coverage,
including
the affidavit, from Planet eBook.)
Just a reminder - The Webbys are announced today
Just a reminder - The Webbys are announced today - But how come the BBC seem to think they've already won one, before they're even announced?
"Project Echoes Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island" the headline goes. Looks more to me like it echoes "Planet of the Apes." Nice idea, but can we get a different design, please?
Pre-sliced peanut butter:
Pre-sliced peanut butter: "It's all about convenience." Is this the ultimate in excessive packaging? Or is it a hoax (peanut butter culture not so ingrained in the UK, so I might have missed the clues)?
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