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.

Solar Generator

I'm sure this thing is safe but if I was an ant I wouldn't go near it...

Link via Gizmodo.

Yo Yoda

Watch Yoda busta move in this uber funky easter egg treat from the new Star Wars DVD.

Link to Google video.

Creature Comforts

Best. Movie. Ever.

An early ancestor of Nick Park's "Wallace & Gromit" characters (Aarman Animiation in the UK). The Jaguar in the tree is my absolute favorite character in this Academy Award winning short. His dialogue is actually the recording of a Brazilian medical student living in the UK. Hysterical.

Link to the 5:00 min short - hosted by iFilm.

Social Isolation?

A great personal essay by Alex Pang, Institute For The Future (Menlo Park, CA) on the Joy of the iPod...

Link via DaveP at BoingBoing.

Giant Squid

Japanese researchers photograph a Giant Squid... but can they find a 50 gallon drum of tzatziki and an 80 foot wide grill?

Link to National Geographic article.

World of Music: Visualization

A visualization of 10,000 artists and how they are related to each other...
Music geek nirvana.

Link to the Stanford University project page.

Robo-Baywatch

It doesn't look as good in a Speedo but this robot design concept for rescuing distressed swimmers is pretty cool.

Nice to see a robot concept that doesn't say:
"kill, crush, destroy" or "bite my shiny metal ass".

Link via Engadget.

Duck and Cover

... or make a suit out of Tin Foil ASAP!
If you can't do that just keep looking up for some awesome aurora's over the next couple of nights.

Doc Searles has a posted about a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) that's headed for earth -- expected to arrive Sept 14th or 15th.

Link.

A Caveat on "Yes Men"

Salon.com's Scott Rosenberg writes:

"So of course Michael Brown, and all the other Michael Browns in the Bush administration, didn't tell Bush the truth about what was happening. "Everything's fine, sir! Carry on with your vacation!" Even if they actually knew, which seems unlikely, they understood -- as you can bet every commander in Iraq knows -- that to do so was to ask to be fired. Mr. Bush is to hear only what Mr. Bush (and Messrs. Cheney and Rumsfeld and Rove) wants to hear. Anything else is disloyalty -- a firing offence.
Any organization run on such principles is, of course, a juggernaut of dysfunction, headed for the ditch".

Link to the full Salon.com article.

Guerilla Drive-Ins

Aside from the MPAA sliding down ropes from Black-ops Helicopters to bust copyright infringers, this looks way cool.
I wonder if the cars get steamed up?

Link via Gizmodo.

Boot Windows from a USB flash drive

Toms Hardware has a review on a pretty useful and cool gadget here.

Satellite Imagery of New Orleans

Comparative imagery of a Highway interchange in New Orleans, pre- and post-Katrina


Comparative imagery of Gormley Stadium, City Park, pre- and post-Katrina


Comparative imagery of City Park in New Orleans, pre- and post-Katrina


From GlobalSecurity.org.

BBC TV channels heading to the net

...and so it begins:

"The BBC reports that it's "TV channels will be made available on the internet,BBC Director General Mark Thompson has confirmed.He announced plans for the MyBBCPlayer,which will allow viewers to legally download seven days of programmes,at the Edinburgh Television Festival.He said he hoped the service would launch next year".

This could be pretty cool.

Link via the good folks at SmartMobs.

Bram Cohen on P2P TV

A great post from Chris Anderson (The Long Tail) about his encounter with Bram Cohen (inventor of Bittorrent) at FOO camp ("Friends of O'Reilly") this weekend. The topic: P2P TV.

Link.

Cuban on how the NYTimes spins...

This is a pretty cool post from Mark on how what he said in an email interveiw was spun by Andrew Ross Sorkin, business reporter for the NY Times.
The 5th Estate indeed.

Link to Cuban's post and text of the email interview (which includes a link to to the NY Times pubished article.

Reminds me of the Sesame Street segment:
"One of these things is not like the other" :-)

Business as usual...

Rolling Stone's interesting, depressing and semi-terifying article at how Congress really works... wow.
Way different than they taught me in "School House Rock".

Link via EFF.

Cool Bike

... but without a bannana seat, streamers on the handlebars and hockey cards clipped into the spokes... wait... no spokes?

Link via Gizmodo.

Gallery of Star Trek Business Cards

I guess Harry Mudd wasn't "good for nothing..."

Link here via Xeni at BoingBoing.

"I canna give ya anymore"

Scotty's turn to get beamed up.
May he rest in peace.

London Calling

A letter to the terrorists.

"The Supremes"

These posts on the recent Supreme Court decision in the MGM v. Grokster case really caught my eye. The concensus seems to be that the Supreme Court got basically got it right...

A legal perspective from Electronic Frontier Foundation staff atorney Fred Von Lohman here.

On the business front:
* A Mark Cuban post entitled Kaboom!
* Former RIAA CEO Hillary Rosen throws her two cents in here.
* and my pal Chris Nolan comments here and here.

Interesting stuff.

"Pass the butter"

This is just a straight quote from Gizmodo, but I simply couldn't resist:

"Wow, Sony can’t catch a break. First the Queen of England buys an iPod mini. Then, at a luncheon with new Sony CEO Howard Stringer—a known Englishman Welshman (Welsh, English, whatev! Don’t make us bomb you.)—the Queen chided him for making products that are difficult to use. “I have a lot of trouble with your remote controls,” she’s quoted. “Too many arrows.”

What Queen Elizabeth II neglected to admit, however, is that due to the long history of in-marriage in the Hapsburg line, she has only a single lobster claw at the tip of each arm."

Link to Gizmodo

"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"

Most of us know about the "Cult of Steve" and have heard about the "Reality Distortion Field" he's famous for, but I thought this was simply the...
Best. Commencement. Speech. Ever.

(although I doubt parents who shelled out $200,000 to send their kids to Stanford would agree :-)

Take a minute to read it here.

iPod case made of wood.

Pretty cool. Made from recycled wood from Hot Tubs and Tables.

Link via Cory at BoingBoing.

Motion Cognitive Phone

Make the sign of the cross with your cell phone -- it automatically dials the Vatican. How cool is that?

Link to SmartMobs

Apple Tablet

Apple has received a patent on a tablet device.

If this is true - I want one.

But I wonder what happens if you whack your forehead with it... like a Monty Python monk... "Qui es est ou Dominay"

Pop a 6 and you move twice!

Calm down willya?

Research/Orange have created a concept "game" based around a sensor that you rest between two fingers. The sensor reports on your relaxation level as measured by galvanic skin response, and assigns more points based on how calm you are.

Link via BoingBoing/Gizmodo.

Voice Over IP a fad?

Well, today Skype hit the 100 million download mark... does that sound like a fad to you?

Link via EuroTeloc Blog.

Measuring TV

(NYTimes article)

If you're "incumbenet media", this has gotta hurt...

"...Turow said he now sees little difference between television and the Internet. Nor do his students at Penn. They watch ''The O.C.'' wherever and whenever -- on their laptops, at home on TiVo and by swapping the show (perhaps illegally) through a Web-based file-sharing program called BitTorrent. The coming generation is accustomed to the idea of watching or listening to anything on any device that's nearby, Turow said. In the meantime, his generation (he's in his 50's) ''still thinks of media in these compartmentalized ways.''..."

Link via The Long Tail and the NYTimes.

"mnayh, were's your innovation now?, mnayh"

Chinese hardware and Indain software?
China's PM thinks so...

Link via Slashdot.

Brad Bird: "Mr. Incredible"

A great audio interview with Brad Bird, writer/director of "The Incredibles" and "Iron Giant". He's a true visionary in the world of animation.. and he's also the voice of "Edna" the fashion designer who makes super hero costumes.

Link to "Fresh Air" at NPR.

NYC Event: Who Owns Culture?

An event hosted by Wired, at the New York Public Library.

This should be an interesting one... think it's going to webcast live and hopefully made available as a archive.
Look for a link after the jump.

Link via LessigBlog.

Link to review of the event via Unmediated.

Now this IS sweet!

A "knock-off" Nelson Ball Clock... made out of Tootsie Pops and an Oatmeal container.

Link via BoingBoing.

"That'd be pretty sweet"

Hope this comes to fruition. I can't imagine Apple not competing (well, actually, kicking SONY's ass) in this device category.

Link via Gizmodo.

How young people will consume news...

Media guru Merrill Brown and the Carnegie Corporation have just released a must-read report about the future of the news business. "In short, the future of the U.S. news industry is seriously threatened by the seemingly irrevocable move by young people away from traditional sources of news," writes Brown.

Link via Lost Remote.

Mark Cuban and Grokster vs. MGM

In a recent web log post Mark Cuban has indicated that he plans to lend a hand in the MGM vs. Grokster case which threatens the Betamax shield.

Way to go Mark!

via Slashdot.

Dick Tracy

Tadiran Spectralink LTD, a military contractor, has developed wrist video systems for use by Israeli armed forces.  The screens display data from unmanned drone planes, allowing forces to see over hills or into areas they wouldn’t normally have access to. 

Link via Engadget.

Halle Berry: Best to Worst

Good for her for showing up...

Berry was named worst actress of 2004 by the Golden Raspberry Award Foundation for her performance in "Catwoman" and she showed up to accept her "Razzie" carrying the Oscar she won in 2002 for "Monster's Ball."

"They can't take this away from me, it's got my name on it!" she quipped. A raucous crowd cheered her on as she gave a stirring recreation of her Academy Award acceptance speech, including tears.

She thanked everyone involved in "Catwoman," a film she said took her from the top of her profession to the bottom.

"I want to thank Warner Brothers for casting me in this piece of shit," she said as she dragged her agent on stage and warned him "next time read the script first."

Link to Reuters via BoingBoing.