"Tonights First Star -- Le Premier Etoile"

Ladies and Gentlemen -- the Zamboni Hot Tub.
(available for rental from a London, Ontario firm)

Link via Engadget.

Mike Wallace on Tom Cruise's ass...

Go Mike! :-)

Link to Lost Remote.

SONY knew about DRM rootkit infections

A quick follow-up on this earlier post about SONY-BMG CD rootkits infecting users PC's:

Turns out SONY knew well in advance of the realease of their DRM enabled audio CD's (from 52 artists) that they would infect their customers personal computers. Via CoryD at BoingBoing and SlashDot.

I'm telling my friends to boycot SONY music -- not becasue what SONY did was stupid -- but becasue they've demonstrated that buying SONY Music products can be DANGEROUS TO THE HEALTH OF YOUR COMPUTER.

Now, if you bought one of these CD's and are in the mood to sue SONY you'd better hurry, the line is getting pretty long (so far; the Electronic Frontier Foundation, State of California, State of Texas have all launched class action suits... and State AG Elliot Spitzer of NY is taking a hard look right now).

Prof Michael Geist (University of Toronto) chimes in here with a great update.

Alpha Couch Potato

Enlarged Photo

"Man beams down 5000 channels from 12 satellite dishes on front porch!"

Al Jessup from Beckley, has more than 5000 TV & radio channels from the 12 dishes on his front porch.
... and I thought I had media consumption issues.

Link to article (via DIGG).

Sin City

According to Wired a leading Catholic cardinal is warning Catholic parents to be careful when buying iPods and other wireless devices as Christmas gifts because they could be used by minors to access pornography. Cardinal Keeler of Baltimore says iPods, PDAs and video cell phones can easily send and receive pornography, much of it unsolicited.

Guess he doesn't know that some folks in the Catholic Church are podcasting or that a quick search on term "Catholic" on Apple's iTunes Podcast Directory returns 88 results.

Amen to that!

Playboy Centerfolds Galore?

This makes stuffing them between the mattresses a lot easier...

"The first in a ongoing series begun in 1997, this photograph is the result of digitally averaging every Playboy centerfold foldout for the 10 years beginning Jan. 1988 through Dec. 1997. The shroud-like image is yielded by a simple, custom process: point-by-point mathematical averaging."

Link via MeFi.

Mount Aetna eruption

... from space.

Link to NASA's full resolution image page.

The Yoda of comedy

From his upcoming HBO special... text and audio available here.

Got Torture?

God bless Helen Thomas.

Link to a transcript of her exchange with White House press secretary Scott McLellan on the topic.

More on the subject via MetaFilter.

Pixar's Performance

Now that Eisner's toast there's been lots of talk of Disney buying Pixar for around 5 billion. I think the price may be going up:

"Steve Jobs is a money machine. His other company, Pixar, reported profits of $27.4 million on revenues of $45.8 million for the last three months -- double Wall Street estimates, according to Reuters."

Steve Job's: sandbagger extroirdinaire :-)

Link to Wired.

Verizon EVDO Restrictive Use Policy

So, high-speed wireless EVDO services costs $70 to $80 per month, but only for what they'll let you do with it...

Link to BoingBoing.

How the mighty have fallen...

I've been following this story for a week now. The bottom line is: SONY's DRM protected cd's install code on your machine, yeah just like a virus that's hard to detect (that reports information on usage of the content), they get caught, they issue issue a patch that removes the code, then basically say: "this was not malicious code, no worries, everything is OK".
Wow. Do they ever NOT get it.

I was thinking just a few weeks ago that SONY used to (circa 1988) almost completely encircle me in the living room
(TV, DVD, CD, A/V Receiver etc.) Now they are nowhere to be found. Apple has almost completely replaced them on both the Hardware and Software front... then I read this from Molly Wood at CNET News (via EFF):

"So, let's make this a bit more explicit. You buy a CD. You put the CD into your PC in order to enjoy your music. Sony grabs this opportunity to sneak into your house like a virus and set up camp, and it leaves the backdoor open so that Sony or any other enterprising intruder can follow and have the run of the place. If you try to kick Sony out, it trashes the place. And what does this software do once it's on your PC? ... The DRM itself is almost unbelievably restrictive, and some have suggested that the reasoning behind it is part of Sony's ongoing war over digital music supremacy with the decidedly more supreme Apple."

How the mighty have fallen.


Link to list of offending CD's (via EFF)
Link to Electronic Frontier Foundation.
Link to Wired News.

Italian police are investigating and watch for the inevitable class action lawsuits on this one. UPDATE: yup, less than 24 hours after I posted on this... California files a lawsuit.

and if you think all this is insane, check out SONY's End User Licence Agreement for playing a music CD on your computer. Unbelievable.

UPDATE: Link to great Wired News summary of the whole mess.

Google Maps mashups for Canada

Some cool Google Maps mashups for Canada.

"Google Maps mashups are providing visual context for location-based information on the Internet. A mashup is an information source "mashed-up" with Google Maps. These mashups are invaluable new web-based tools to find information in Canada. I've collected all known Google Maps mashups and tools which are specific to Canada to get you started:"

Link via GoogleMapsMania (in Waterloo).

A serious samy...

A sandwich that cost $47.00 and sports 30,000 calories.... yumm....

Link to sandwich hell... via Cory and Kottke.