11/05/04

It didn't work for Jabba in keeping Han from walking away. (Oh wait, that was carbonite...)

"We've always overestimated the power of branding while underestimating consumers' ability to recognize quality."

Looking forward to seeing it tonight.

François Nonnenmacher : Music biz in unauthorised downloads shock - Will EMI have to sue itself?

Jeremy Zawodny : core values of the web - core values of the web: some thoughts from mary before bloggercon

Andy Baio : Video: New Star Wars teaser trailer - currently "members only" on Starwars.com

jkottke : James Surowiecki on the decline of branding - "We've always overestimated the power of branding while underestimating consumers' ability to recognize quality." François Nonnenmacher : The Decline of Brands - Blame a new breed of hyperinformed superconsumers

jkottke : Why aren't video games funny?

it even does acro

some thoughts from mary before bloggercon

another amusing shirt

for porn!

rsync for snapshots

We seem to have avoided most of the Y2K election fiasco this year (depending on who you ask, of course), but most of the country still uses some sort of voting system with inherent flaws. Punch cards leave hanging chads, optical scanners have partially filled-in choices, and the current generation ...

My company just bought Small Business Server 2003, and a copy of FrontPage 2003 was included, so I've been playing around with it for the last week. Overall, a huge improvement over previous versions of FrontPage (it no longer messes with your stuff...). It includes something that DreamWeaver has ...

Though he claims it's not in direct response to Apple's annexing of his territory, Arlo Rose is set to release a Windows version of Konfabulator shortly. Rose, who once worked at Apple and now heads up a small company called Pixoria, said the new version will be available Monday. "We're all ...

Bob Herbert: OK, Folks: Back to Work. Democracy is a breeze during good times. It's when the storms are raging that citizenship is put to the test. And there's a hell of a wind blowing right now.

Mercury News: State takes stem-cell spotlight. Embryonic stem-cell research was born in Wisconsin. It matured in Massachusetts. But it will grow up in California, nourished by the passage of Proposition 71, which authorizes $3 billion in spending over 10 years, science-policy experts predict. It's a ...

cyclop writes "Nature reports that the Mars Express mission has photographed evidence of ancient glaciers on Mars. It seems glaciers have sculpted valleys on the red planet, much like on Earth." Reader macguys writes "Space.com is reporting that the Mars Rover Opportunity has received an unexpected ...

Amit Upadhyay writes "Gizmodo is reporting about extra funding for smart guns at NJIT. Few have qualms about it, mostly on the line of: would optical sensor for finger prints work when the hand is soaked with blood? Would you get time to enter the override code in an emergency? But if we remove spec ...

AP - Bolstered by a hard-fought election victory, President Bush says the United States will vigorously pursue wars in Iraq and against terror and will not retreat from trying to spread democracy through the Middle East.

AP - Yasser Arafat is in a coma and is "between life and death," though he is not brain dead, his spokeswoman said Friday. Doctors still had no diagnosis, but anxious Palestinian officials were already looking for ways to prevent unrest if their 75-year-old leader dies.

AP - U.N. experts have found traces of plutonium near an Egyptian nuclear facility and are investigating whether it could be weapons-related or simply a byproduct of the country's peaceful atomic activities, diplomats told The Associated Press on Friday.

AP - A month before the video game's scheduled release this coming Tuesday, illegal copies of the hot sci-fi action title "Halo 2" were already circulating on the Internet. It's had a lot of company lately.

AP - A $100 million supercomputer being built to analyze the nation's nuclear stockpile has again set an unofficial performance record — the second in just over a month.

Ziff Davis - The Internet Explorer flaw, which has been published on public mailing lists, allows attackers to take control of a PC via an HTML e-mail or malicious Web page.

Instead of Rocking the Vote, disappointed Kerry voters can just sit around and wait for the baby boomers to die. As a side bonus, we'll also get to stop hearing the Eagles on the muzak system in retail establishments....

Google's definitely not making a browser, according to what their executives have said publicly. That's interesting....

It's been around for thousands of years. It has been worshiped, reviled, banned, and made the cornerstone of economies. It has helped us celebrate, weep, relax, and get laid. And now we're going to make some. A pint, a glass, an ale, a lager, a beer.

Whoever officially wins this election—at the time of this writing, it’s technically still a squeaker that could conceivably go either way, though it’s looking like Bush’s first election to office—what is clear is that the Republicans owned the political agenda. I’ ...

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat is not brain dead - but in a reversible coma, says one of his aides.

The US military closes all roads into the Iraqi city of Falluja, amid speculation a major assault is imminent.

A year and a half ago I suggested, in a speech at the Etech conference called A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, that… It has to be hard to do at least some things on the system for some users, or the core group will not have the tools that they need to defend themselves [against rogue users]. ...

I probably shouldn’t be writing anything at all on a day when I feel this curmudgeonly, but the unveiling this week of Technorati’s “vote links” has spurred me to finally post here again. It was close to two years ago that I first heard this idea surfaced in a discussion rel ...

While looking for a way to empty my Firefox cache for sure (unfortunately, the empty cache button and a reload won't always do the job quite annoying if you develop a web page) I stumbled upon Gcache. It allows you to view the Google cache for any pa

Michael Moore lists 17 reasons not to slit your wrists...

I just bought it, and now it's obsolete: Dell Launches New 20" LCD Monitor - UltraSharp 2005FPW. Dell released a new 20" LCD monitor which replaces the 2001FP. Improvements include a 16:10 aspect ratio, a lower response time (12ms vs 16ms) and a initial price of $799. It looks like the 2001FP is ...

You'll never get a decent job as a sniper unless you go to Sniper School. Since there is considerable difference between the role of the law enforcement and military sniper, each STTU sniper program is modified to suit the operational and training needs of the host team or agency. (via Everlasti ...

I don't think America is that divided. I think most of us are ill-informed in two major ways, "conveniently" split along the lines of the two major political parties available to us. We're told we have two different choices -- you're rooting for this team or that team and the other team is the enemy ...

The Internet is on fire today with all the election stuff going on and it ain't pretty. Mypollingplace.com is down as are many of the state election polling place locators (the NY state one is throwing a "Web server too busy, try again later"). Rock the Vote has been up and down. Many weblogs coveri ...

Greg Knauss doesn't have a blog, so I occasionally publish some of his writing here, because it deserves a wider audience. Today, Greg writes: There is a divide in this country today, miles wide and fathoms deep. It has cleaved our great nation, and has only grown — and will only continue to ...

With my current host, I have a one terabyte bandwidth quota. That should be enough for most anyone, but apparently not for me: bandwidth_blown.gif With less than two hours to go before my October monthly limit is reset, I've used 995 of my 1000 GB. (A disturbing 262GB of that was the Tony Hawk/ ...

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - U.S. troops urged civilians to flee Falluja on Friday and launched air strikes on the rebel city ahead of an assault seen as critical to attempts to pacify Iraq before January elections.

PARIS (Reuters) - Yasser Arafat lay in a coma "between life and death" on Friday as senior Palestinian officials met to consider a future without him.

Woman controls blender by making noises at it. Is it wrong that I find this strangely erotic? [sfw, via]

Sidewalks without dog shit, angels, and Hustler: the day after the election the way-left paper Die Tageszeitung explained what's better in America.

AskYahoo.

The Foundation For A Better Life. A non-profit, non-partisan, non-religious, organization that doesn't want your money, but that simply believes, "the values we live by are worth more when we pass them on." What kind of values? Strength. Dedication. Vision. Sacrifice. Soul. Persiste ...

Important lessons about life and the mistakes we're all prone to, from The Naughty Heffalump. Having children's show characters go "adult" is a gag that's a bit tired these days,...

We don't know what the title word means, but we can guess after watching this short film from filmmaker / spiritual terrorist Jens Mikkelsen. Something along the lines of "where...

The handy proverb generator. Any subject you've got, they've got a clever saying for it. Sort of. Your big chance to sound like Anna Nicole Smith, without all the costly...

After You, a great CGI from artist Christopher Cordingley which relies on body language and the occasional small bit of mind-numbing violence to illustrate the horrors of politeness. After You...

the guerilla improv troupe's other conquests are amazing, like The Hypnotist, Ted's Birthday, and Writers Against Piracy [via] 

answer: two not very good cookies [via] 

a very different picture than this [via] 

currently "members only" on Starwars.com  

also: DS games will be $30, cheaper than GBA games [via] 

Xeni Jardin: BoingBoing reader Joe says: A computer glitch in a Columbus, Ohio precinct gives Bush an extra 3,893 votes. Makes you wonder what other mistakes the computer made that we haven't found. I'm a computer programmer and quality assurance tester for a software company in Cleveland, so I k ...

Cory Doctorow: The UK's Office of Communications (Ofcom) is publicly toying with the idea of funding a "public service publisher" (PSP) to complement the BBC's role as a public service broadcaster. The idea of a PSP is to publicly fund an entity that publishes books, games, interactive material and ...

Cory Doctorow: Low-powered electrical currents applied to the scalp immediately improve language skills. A current of two thousandths of an ampere (a fraction of that needed to power a digital watch) applied for 20 minutes is enough to produce a significant improvement, according to data presente ...

Cory Doctorow: The Hindu reviews Sarnath Banerjee's book Corridor, billed as "the first graphic novel of India." Look terrific. Corridor meanders through the lives of a bunch of confused urban youngsters — Digital Dutta, the north Kolkata man torn between Karl Marx and H1-B Visa; Brighu, a comp ...

Kyodo NewsEx-lawmaker Suzuki jailed for 2 years, fined Y11 mil Friday, November 5, 2004 at 10:41 JST TOKYO — The Tokyo District Court on Friday sentenced former Liberal Democratic Party lawmaker Muneo Suzuki to two years in prison and fined him 11 million yen for taking bribes, not reporting ...

wysiwyg for TypePad. Yay! Comment - TrackBack

I really don't believe in IQ quizzes and I know this is really mean, but it's just too interesting/ funny not to blog. IQ vs. Votes. Read and click the links in the text for more interesting comparisons. via Jason UPDATE: This is not true. Here is the story debunking it. Thanks Richard. Comment - ...

If you like flash games, you should definitely give the Jay Is website a try. Jay Bibby not only has an uncanny knack for finding fun and challenging flash games, but he also writes reviews for each game as well....

If you love Scrabble, then you'll love the Pixie Pit's free version of the popular board game. You can play with one, two, or three other players. Each time you place your tiles, the game notifies the other players via...

Dan writes up his thoughts about last night's session at the Berkman Center about the Internet and Democracy. Snippet: I pointed out that in the last day or so, the word "blog" was sometimes as common as "newspaper" or "telephone" (and more than "mailed literature") when we listened to major partici ...

While everyone here is out looking to see if their local stores are breaking the Halo 2 launch date, here's what everyone in Japan is doing. Ace Combat 5 is still going strong, but has been knocked out of the...