When the Evil Empire takes action

Mr Hanson was taking a pic of a truck off-loading a bunch of Mac G5-rods at the Microsoft campus up at Redmond and then post it at his blog as Even Microsoft wants G5s. Not at all mean or giving out any unknown secrets of Microsoft. Just a funny pic. Not. Reading his blog Of blogging and unemployment and learn how the Big Evil Empire of the Digital World is working. He got sacked. Point blanc.

Myself being hunted down by a multinational company and threaten with legal actions because of a simple publishing of a logo I can wonder in what way the Big Ones are able to get their information about "violations" even in a small blog as Hanson's. Echelon someone?

Another sign of the times

There´s a plethora of icons, signs and symbols for whatever phenomena in the digital world. Now the hacker community have gotten a new sign: The glider.

The idea is: "When you put the glider emblem on your web page, or wear it on clothing, or display it in some other way, you are visibly associating yourself with the hacker culture. This is not quite the same thing as claiming to be a hacker yourself that is a title of honor that generally has to be conferred by others rather than self-assumed. But by using this emblem, you express sympathy with our goals, our values, our way of living.".

Using digitech to understand analog life

Interesting abstract on the evolutionary origin of complex features.

The scientists have used digital organisms to understand how the evolution produces more complex organisms and the findings is that it's a combination of big random steps of mutations and the natural selection of the evolution.

I understand silch but it tickles the mysterious nerve.

The badass #1 in the movies

Of course - Al Pacino as Scarface is the biggest badass in the movies. It's the New York Post Online Edition who derives the Maxim-magazines list of the great assholes on the silverscreen to a broader crowd. Linda Hamilton, as Sarah Connor in the Terminator-flicks, is on second place.

In my point of view this list is incomplete, since Donald Duck ain't on it. That's a true asshole. But hey, you don't need to be a waco to understand that Disney have some to say about such a list...

Ideas of rubber

"I was thinking, 'The only way to make something that won't come off is to tie it on, and then it just popped in my mind - go around the testicles,".

Leonard McCoy have a slight problem - the condom is falling of when he have intercourse with his wife and since they can't use anything else on birth control this is a big problem for them. So he thought it out and have filed a patent on new condom design.

This is another proof that frustration is the birth of creativity.

Stock the celeb

Tired of that old boring stockmarket? Stocks in faceless companies that produce boring things as computers, dishwashers and porn? Here´s the chance to use your guessingskills: Celebdaq.

Instead of looking on the points for Nasdaq-comps you can check if Britney is doing well at the market.

Totally meaningless. But who have said that everything must be productive?

Kodak down the drain

Is Kodak walking the same path as Polaroid - not managing to keep up with the pace of development?

photographic film maker Eastman Kodak (EK.N) was the Dow's biggest percentage loser, falling 41 cents or 1.8 percent to $22.84, a day after reporting a 63 percent drop in third-quarter earnings. On Wednesday, Kodak's CEO defended the company's plan to shift away from its declining film business and into digital photography despite an outcry from disgruntled investors. (NYT/Reuters).

Is the time of silverline over and the IOs taking it all?

A Good Pornographer?

Somewhat strange flic about the guy who finally got sex.com. A long long juridical fight after the fact that another guy hijacked the domain and pointed it to another IP.

But it also is a sort of sad story of a guy who somewhat had the notion of selling "good porn" and not give in to the drugsellers and herbalschamans of the Net. (Wired 11.08: The Prisoner of Sex.com)

Ticking suitcase - red alert

"The only way to determine the source of the ticking came down to a $13.21-an-hour worker: I'd need to follow my trainer's instructions and go EDU - elbows deep in underwear.".

A very interesting pick is the Confessions of a Baggage Screener from Wired Mag. About both the tech-side of airportsafety and the reality of being a screener. All this humping on the security and one learn that the ones that should be the last front and save us from being blown to pieces when eating the dinner 10k metres over the Atlantic don't get the proper training and sometimes don't care to do a proper job. And learning that the technology is not that reliable as it sometimes seem.

Hard to tell Madonna from the French fried chicken

In her latest video Madonna is acting in a fashion that made the son of the photographer Bourdin react and sue the popicon for plagiarism.

When looking at the comparisation-pics (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6) the similarity is clear but hey, there´s no revolutionary idea in this pictorials that can steem from a plagitarizing use. Somehow a hommage to the Bourdin-pics I think.

The son of the photographer is probably a deskclerk wanting his fifteen minutes of fame. But the whole thing is a picture itself of the difficult question of the copyright of an idea. Is there ways that one can predict that an idea is stolen from another one? And if there´s is a question of whether or not the idea is personal och stolen there will be a strange society where ideas can be copyrighted. Even though our minds are almost inevitable and one can't grasp the full potential of it there is a possibility that two people can come up with the same idea since we can be brought up under the same cultural and social circumstances. When trying to enforce the copyright on the outcome of an idea will make it hard to think freely. (The Smoking Gun)

A philosophical look on programming languages

"At a very high level, all programming languages are similar. They all require you to describe a problem to solve. They all require similar skill sets — a good programmer in one language will find his or her skills will transfer to another language." This is the first setup by chromatic, techie at O'Reilly Network.

And then he is making a statement on
What I Hate About Your Programming Language. At a first glance this seem to be a geeky article but in the way he puts it one can understand more of the structure of the programming languages.

The Orwellian Time

There´s a lot talk in Sweden about the surveillance-cameras and the ever-continuing surveillance of our common space. In London there is 2,5 m cameras and now Sweden is going in the same direction. The critics is talking about an Orwellian state, the Big Brother-reality. But what they are forgetting is that in the novel "1984" the Big Brother is one, a state. The surveillancecams we are talking about is not controlled by one person or one organization - they´re mainly for safety or to make thiefs not willing to steal or rob.

I might think that the fright is in the picture of the Big Brother as always be able to know what a person is doing and that the cameras can't lie (well they can...) but they reality is both better and also maybe worse. Better since there's nothing that can be a Big Brother - no state in the modern world has both the technology and the state that would make it possible. But it might be worse since the possibility of control over the pictures is weak and on many hands; the pics of a wellknown person can be sold-out and the picture is maybe the most informationdense thing.

Pay back time

A pretty long article about one guy sues a telemarketer-firm (I simply love the name on the piece: How To Make A Telemarketer Cry (or, Suing Bozos for Fun & Profit)). And yes - the guy isn't the average white trash - he's a lawyer and knows how to work the system.

Who is Dr?

The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy might be one of the most well-known works in literature behind the Bible, Quaran and Donald Duck... but here is a BBC-piece where the HGTG's author left some pieces of his contributions to the serie Dr Who.

Techies play with train

Use your PDA and manage your model railroad. That's surely a continuance for the kid never to grow up. (TechTV)