Saturday, October 15, 2005

Beatles named 'icons of century'

The Beatles beat Louis Armstrong and Lucille Ball to be named icons of the century in magazine Variety.

James Bond Flops

It was the sort of tricky situation that James Bond would have defused in a second. But at a press conference to unveil Daniel Craig as the sixth 007 he made a less than suave impression when asked who he would prefer as a Bond Girl - Kate Moss or Sienna Miller. Find out what he said

As Young Adults Drink to Win

A whole new industry has taken off around drinking games, according to college administrators who say the games are just thin cover for binge drinking.

Digital Content Is the Next Big Thing

People will always consider design, price and other bells and whistles when buying a new PC. But content will soon weigh just as heavily, experts predict.

Fire dogs

Hewlett-Packard has recalled around 135,000 HP and Compaq laptop battery packs after reports claimed they were prone to overheating and catching fire.

Phone Tap: How's the Traffic?

Missouri officials say there's no Big Brother agenda in a state project to manage traffic on the highways by snagging data from commuters' cell phones. But privacy advocates are cautious.

DeLay Site Attacks Prosecutor

Turning his legal woes into a re-election campaign effort, Texas congressman Tom Delay launches a website that features the so-called truth about the 'liberal' DA who indicted him. And, of course, it solicits donations.

The Apple Polishers

"I don't hate Apple. I don't even hate Apple-lovers. I do, however, possess deep odium for the legions of Apple polishers in the press corps who salute every shiny gadget the company parades through downtown Cupertino as if they were members of the Supreme Soviet viewing the latest ICBMs at the May Day parade."

JacKShafer Explaining the press corps' crush on Steve Jobs and company.

This mock ad for iProduct cracks the fetishistic code of the Apple cult:

Apple iProduct. You'll Buy it. And You'll Like It.
Do you like Apple products? Do you live for every product announcement, every incremental upgrade, every rumor and screenshot? Do you wank and blare and drone and fucking gurgle about Apple products morning, noon, and night? Then get ready for iProduct. You'll be blown away. No matter what it is.


If the press corps possessed any institutional memory, it would recall the introduction of the Apple III+, the Lisa, the Macintosh Portable, the Mac TV, the Newton, the Apple G4 Cube, and eWorld. All were greeted with great press fanfare before falling off the edge of the world. Hell, all the press corps really needs to put Apple products in perspective is a few short-term memory neurons focused on the fanfare visited upon recent, mediocre iPod releases. Only a year ago the company received excited press notices when it introduced the iPod Photo, now acknowledged to be a failed product. I searched Nexis to find a mention of the iPod Photo in the hundreds of V-iPod newspaper stories from today and found only one. Of the wildly heralded but totally average iPod Shuffle, released in January 2005, I found only two.

When the V-iPod's super-duper, long-lasting, big-screen replacement shows up in 12 months, the press will have forgotten this second-rate box, too.

Nasa: Blue Marble Next Generation

In celebration of the deployment of its Earth Observing System, NASA shares the newest in its series of stunning Earth images, affectionately named the "Blue Marble." This new Earth imagery enhances the Blue Marble legacy by providing a detailed look at an entire year in the life of the planet. In sharing these Blue Marble images, NASA hopes the public will join with the agency in its continuing exploration of the world from the unique perspective of space.
To learn more about the development of NASA's imagery of the Earth as a whole, read the History of the Blue Marble

EU says internet could fall apart

A battle has erupted over who governs the internet, with America demanding to maintain a key role in the network it helped create and other countries demanding more control.
The European commission is warning that if a deal cannot be reached at a meeting in Tunisia next month the internet could fall apart.

One-Fifth of Human Genes Patented

One-Fifth of Human Genes Have Been Patented in the United States, primarily by private firms and universities .. a new study finds....

What is Digg?

Digg is a technology news website that combines social bookmarking, blogging, RSS, and non-hierarchical editorial control. With digg, users submit stories for review, but rather than allow an editor to decide which stories go on the homepage, the users do.

Marijuana and Brain Growth

Marijuana could actually be good for the brain.

Up the Creek

Up the Creek out to embarrass Bush over alleged video stunt, gets caught in stunt of Its own. Watch yhe video excerpt: Real or Windows Media.

samy is my hero.

With the advent of social networking sites, becoming more popular is as easy as crafting a few lines of JavaScript code, it seems.

One clever MySpace user looking to expand his buddy list recently figured out how to force others to become his friend, and ended up creating the first self-propagating cross-site scripting (XSS) worm. In less than 24 hours, samy is my hero had amassed over 1 million friends on the popular online community.


How did Samy transcend his humble beginnings of only 73 friends to become a veritable global celebrity? The answer is a combination of XSS tricks and lax security in certain Web browsers.

"Scotty" remains to be launched into space

Evidently 'Star Trek' actor James 'Scotty' Doohan took the catchphrase 'beam me up' very seriously -- his cremated remains will be launched into space in accord with his last wishes.