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In Korea, you use Windows and IE, or you're out of luck. MeFi's own Gen Kanai writes about the Microsoft lock-in in South Korea. It is also a monoculture in other ways, of course, but in a country of 48 million where internet usage has risen from 9 million in 1999 to 35 million today, that leads the world in broadband penetration, some lessons for the rest of the world about the dangers of monopoly might be learned.
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You've heard of ScummVM and MAME, but harvest time is approaching in the field of reverse-engineered open source re-implementations of other classic games too:
OpenTTD (Transport Tycoon), LinCity (Sim City), Advanced Strategic Command (Battle Isle), Freeciv (Civilization), Enigma (Oxyd), Widelands (Settlers), OpenArena (Quake 3), Spring (Total Annihilation), JJFFE (Frontier First Encounters), Vega Strike and Oolite (Elite), FreeOrion (Master of Orion), Pingus (Lemmings), Stratagus (Warcraft II et al.), CloneKeen (Commander Keen), Exult (Ultima VII), FreeCNC (Command & Conquer), REminiscence (Flashback), LGeneral (Panzer General), Pioneers (Settlers of Catan), and Freedoom (Doom).
comment posted at 6:31 PM on Feb-1-07
comment posted at 3:58 AM on Feb-3-07

In 1999, MTV aired 25 Lame, a show where retired 25 of their worst and most overplayed videos. Rob Van Winkle (aka Vanilla Ice) showed up to help them retire the video for "Ice Ice Baby." The result - violence, hilarity, and broken mannequins (video, 30-second ad shows before video). Apparently unplanned, nobody knows for sure if this outburst was the product of genuine anger, or if he was just playing around. An unedited version (YouTube, lower quality) leads me to think that it was the former.
comment posted at 8:45 PM on Feb-1-07

Alex Gross
comment posted at 11:45 PM on Jan-31-07

Rumors of The Police reuniting to perform at the 2007 Grammy Awards have been confirmed! I wonder which songs they will play?
comment posted at 8:15 PM on Jan-30-07

Francis Crick was high as a kite on LSD when he figured out the double helix structure of DNA. Later, his role in the drug legalization movement inspired biochemist Richard Kemp to supply Britain with massive amounts of cheap LSD, until he was stopped in one of the largest drug busts in history. When asked about his drug use, Crick replied, "Print a word of it and I'll sue."
comment posted at 8:26 PM on Jan-30-07

Behind on your car payments? Need to pay rent? Digital Charity may be your answer. Digital Charity gives you a list (sorted by category) of people who are looking for donations via PayPal. Each person looking for a donation can create a page with their situation and a PayPal link. Anyone interested in giving them money can then click on that link.
comment posted at 8:31 PM on Jan-30-07

"Window in the Sky" is a YouTube style video synch mash-up done on a professional budget with the magic of copyright clearances. "It's a triumph of postmodern reconstruction" says the Washington Post.
comment posted at 10:07 PM on Jan-29-07

Pan's Labyrinth the new movie by director Guillermo del Toro (Devil's Backbone) is a fairy tale for grownups. Certainly not a new idea, stories like Lord of the Rings and the Chronicles of Narnia have elements that appeal to adults, but Pan's Labyrinth is perhaps unique in that it's not at all suitable for children.
comment posted at 10:31 PM on Jan-29-07
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comment posted at 3:55 AM on Feb-3-07

Are you Smart or Stoopid? A quick, entertaining and (for me) reasonably challenging way to determine your level of intelligence. Be sure to post your score.
comment posted at 6:01 PM on Jan-25-07

Meet the Smithereens. [warning: streaming Flash audio]
Nine years after their last album and 43 years after the original was released, The Smithereens cover the Beatles' Meet the Beatles album [review; this article has more background].
comment posted at 6:03 PM on Jan-25-07
comment posted at 11:01 PM on Jan-25-07

An autistic woman "speaks" her language, then ours. (YouTube) "My language is not about designing words or even visual symbols for people to interpret. It is about being in a constant conversation with every aspect of my environment, reacting physically to all parts of my surroundings." [more inside]
comment posted at 6:42 PM on Jan-28-07

An interview with 'muslix64' , who got fed up when his new television refused to play HDDVDs, because of DRM problems. So he cracked the HDDVD DRM. Then, for good measure, he cracked Blu-Ray too. The first HD movies are already appearing on a Torrent near you.
comment posted at 4:24 PM on Jan-25-07

Every Mythbuster myth in nifty graph form on one page. Quick and easy reference to each myth busted, confirmed, or plausible.
comment posted at 9:11 PM on Jan-24-07

Microsoft has been caught paying for Wikipedia edits. But wasn't this inevitable? Now that Wikipedia has become the de facto online reference, wasn't it inevitable that it would attract governments, corporates and other groups to create their own version of events. Is this an inherent and fatal flaw in open source knowledge?
comment posted at 9:20 PM on Jan-24-07

Chomsky v. Buckley, 1969 (videofilter). The primary subject is Vietnam, but other topics abound.
comment posted at 12:27 AM on Jan-24-07
comment posted at 9:09 PM on Jan-24-07

Andre the Giant, Greatest Drunkard of all Time The key to Andre the Giant is this — even as a youth he knew that his disease would dramatically shorten his life. He knew there was no cure, and lived every day with the understanding that death could shamble around the very next corner. Knowledge of this sort can darken a life. It did not darken Andre’s. He chose instead to pack his days with as much insane, drunken fun as they could hold. Instead of languishing in the darkness, he chose to walk in the sun.
comment posted at 3:56 PM on Jan-23-07
comment posted at 5:52 PM on Jan-23-07

How to boil the perfect egg. vs. How to perfectly opposite-boil an egg.
comment posted at 4:23 PM on Jan-23-07
comment posted at 5:07 PM on Jan-23-07

www.Wherethehellismatt.com Mostly, he's dancing :)
comment posted at 5:18 PM on Jan-21-07
comment posted at 10:30 PM on Jan-21-07

Atlas Shrugged is again in the pipeline to be made into a movie. BACK in the 1970s Albert S. Ruddy, the producer of “The Godfather,” first approached Ayn Rand to make a movie of her novel “Atlas Shrugged.” But Rand, who had fled the Soviet Union and gone on to inspire capitalists and egoists everywhere, worried aloud, apparently in all seriousness, that the Soviets might try to take over Paramount to block the project.
comment posted at 9:10 PM on Jan-20-07

'We don't talk to evil' - in 2003, during the term of former president Khatami, Iran contacted the United States, and offered to end support for Hamas and Hezbollah, and help stabilize Iraq. Cheney said no. Skip forward to the present, and Iran are having tea and crumpets with North Korea.
comment posted at 5:21 PM on Jan-18-07

A vanishing world... in a bowl of chowder. An extraordinary article by New York Times writer Molly O'Neill about how changes in the recipe for New England's favorite soup reveal sea changes happening at sea. [Images here.]
comment posted at 4:51 PM on Jan-18-07

In preparation for today's announcement of the formation of a presidential exploratory committee, Sen. Barack Obama has been giving well publicized speeches on the role of religion in American political life. Though faith remains a deeply divisive force in the American political scene, Obama seems to be positioning himself at the forefront of a major political realignment, one which has his opponents more than a little uneasy.
comment posted at 4:40 PM on Jan-16-07
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comment posted at 9:43 PM on Jan-23-07

DMT , or dimethyltryptamine, is a powerful hallucinogenic that can be found in living matter, including the human pineal gland. Small quantities of DMT are released during REM sleep. In 1990, Dr. Rick Strassman received FDA approval for a clinical study, the results of which can be read in Strassman's book "DMT: The Spirit Molecule". Users commonly reported being transported to "another dimension" and had contact with "insect-like alien beings". The late Terence McKenna was particularly interested in the drug, and coined the term "Machine Elves" in reference to these contacts. If reading isn't your thing, listen to comedian Joe Rogan's energized thoughts on the matter. (embedded video).
comment posted at 12:10 AM on Jan-12-07
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comment posted at 1:04 AM on Jan-12-07

Robert Anton Wilson has died. "Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd."
comment posted at 4:31 PM on Jan-11-07
comment posted at 6:46 AM on Jan-12-07