To compensate for the recent LJ outage, paid members can claim three days of paid time here. (Unfortunately, this doesn't include the userpics addon. It's a very welcome gesture all the same, given the outage wasn't due to any fault of 6A)

dronon found a fighting game with a bit of a difference.. not so much fighting, really, as catfighting. In Rose & Camellia, battles are conducted by means of face-slapping..

You've probably seen those Japanese cat costumes - here's the logical outcome: one based on Hello Kitty. And razzlfraz found (purely accidentally, of course) a curiously fascinating look at Adult Treasure Expo 2007, a Tokyo sex toys convention. Technology naturally plays a prominent role, but so does a passionate eye for aesthetics, sometimes resulting in quite mysterious devices, and some less mysterious. ^_^ Very good CG animated short for a music video: I Lived on the Moon, in a style reminiscent of Tim Burton. At ComicCon this year, Lea Hernandez related the spectacularly clueless line "In explaining the [Bratz movie], [Avi Arad] insisted that Bratz are 'X-Men for girls' — it's just that their superpowers are singing, fashion, soccer and cheerleading." - and from that, the question "Golly, I wonder which one is Wolverine?" sprang forth. So here's Wolviebratz. =:D

The first new Futurama DVD arrives on Nov 28 2007. ^_^

A good posting on the tepid support the Democratic presidential candidates are offering for gay marriage.

An electric car worth a look: the Think City.

atomicat spotted this superb riff on American anti-drug TV commercials, and includes a helpful guide. Lunch: a relatively light and very simple affair. Just some grilled chicken nuggets, a small pile of collard greens, and some quartered mushrooms, steamed in the microwave with a little garlic salt. (And the messy splurts: ranch dressing, tomato ketchup, and balsamic mustard with chili oil) Engadget readers note that FairUse4WM strips iPlayer downloads' DRM. Of course, you still need a Windows system to get the files in the first place. Annoyingly, iPlayer appears to be another P2P app, so if you're already using your outbound bandwidth, that'll be competing for it. OpenLeft seems to be establishing itself as a good venue for serious leftward political discussion - take this entry, on some possible future geopolitical scenarios, or this one on the varied voices pushing for and against the impeachment and trial of Bush and Cheney. The comments are particularly well considered, whether one agrees with their suppositions or not.

Meanwhile, in Alaska, the FBI and IRS investigation into Ted "Tubes" Stevens took a brilliantly ironic twist: "Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, whose home back in Alaska was raided by federal investigators Monday in a wide-ranging corruption investigation, has threatened to place a hold on the Democratic-drafted ethics legislation just passed by the House and expected on the Senate floor by week's end."

And it looks like my notifications have gone missing again. Please feed them if you see them around. (Curiously, it all seems to be working normally for replies in others' journals, but not mine)

Well, there's something of a surprise.. EMI, who'd once seemed open to the idea of letting go of DRM, was reported a few weeks ago to be toughening its stance once more, in readiness for merger talks, which subsequently fell through. Today, EMI and Apple announced the availability of DRM-free online music. Interestingly, if disappointingly, it won't supplant the existing offerings, but be in addition to the DRM'd files, and at higher audio quality. Will people pay extra to be free of DRM? 99¢ for 128kbps AAC with DRM, or $1.29 for 256kbps AAC without DRM. EMI thinks so - "Nicoli cited internal EMI tests in which higher-quality, DRM-free songs outsold its lower-quality, copy-protected counterparts 10 to 1." [Edit: complete EMI albums will only be available DRM-free at 256kbps, with no change in price. EMI music videos will also be DRM-free]

Got an iPod nano? Now you can bunnify it. =:D (Sadly, the full size version's sold out)

Oh, cracking good show, Gromit! A fan video for Korn & Tommyknocker - Twist (FLV), using Balto, and a load of video effects. OONTZ!

Via loganberrybunny, news of a rabbit who tried furiously to awaken his human, who'd slipped into a diabetic coma. "Simon Steggall, 42, of Warboys in Cambridgeshire, said Dory, a one-and-a-half stone rabbit, jumped on his chest and thumped furiously when he passed out while watching television. Dory's odd behaviour caught the attention of Mr Steggall's wife, Victoria, 32, an ambulance driver. When her attempts to bring him round failed, she rang 999 for paramedics for help."

Doctor Who s3e1 - unreservedly recommended! Wonderful. I could've done without the 1930s Frankenstein theatrics of electric arcing, but the chemistry's right there, and RTD's maturing well as a writer. It's positively refreshing to have a companion who might be able to show up the Doctor on occasion.

Apparently (despite the April 1 date) some folks have got full OS X running on Apple TV..

One of the more faaabulous videos I've seen: Sin with Sebastian - Shut up and sleep with me (FLV). ^_^

The Perry Bible Fellowship continues to rock.

The Furry Song. Genius. =:D

If that's too sensible, try the techno remix of Machadaynu that rabitguy found. (Caution: MySpace ahead) Music of the 21st Century, today!

Your daily dose of woo: Aquamantra spring water ("Energy Enhanced Natural Spring Water that resonates with the energy and frequency of well-being").

mycroftb spotted this gem of a Flash parody: Phoenix Wrong: Triple Take.

Giant rat in Chicago

dronon found that the terribly bittersweet One Rat Short is viewable online. And, there's a Ratatouille animation test around as well, uploaded by Pixar; it's very welcome to see companies embracing the possibilities YouTube and its ilk afford. And! The Secret of NIMH will see a special edition DVD release this summer, from a new HD master. "Actually, we just completed a re-mastering of the film for a new DVD which will be coming out next year. If all goes according to the marketing plan, it will feature an HDTV 16x9 version [no longer on the cards, apparently], a 1:1.85 letterbox version and a full screen version. It will have all the minutia, including negative dirt and scratches removed. We are doing a producer/director's commentary and on camera interviews for the 'extras' in about two weeks. When we know the release date of , we will post it on the homepage of this site. Right now, we believe it will be in March or April. The new master looks beautiful! MGM/UA is releasing it thru 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment."

rabitguy reminded me of a latterday CG classic that, if you've not seen it, really oughtn't be missed: The End (FLV), by Chris Landreth, also director of the Oscar-winning Ryan, based on the life of Ryan Larkin, who recently fell victim to lung cancer.

And Heck No! (I'll Never Listen to Techno) (FLV) is a brilliant bit of stop-motion animation.

Via relee, an eight page interview will Will Wright on Spore.

otter3 noticed computing with bubbles. Be sure to check out the included movies (MPEG-1) - really quite captivating.

Hey, schnee - how's this for a superlative example of overloading information per syllable? We shall now turn to ibneko for a reading. =:D This shirt I must obtain. Yes. Might well appeal to terminotaur too. ^_^ Ars Technica offers an opinion on Macrovision's open letter to Jobs' DRM missive. (Can you imagine it? A company founded on, and selling nothing but, DRM, coming out.. in favor of DRM?) Or, less reverently, a translation from PR-speak. Ah, I see searching in Google Video now returns results from both Google Video and YouTube. A distinctly retarded, nerdy, and funny short: Gates versus Jobs. A new shareholder lawsuit alleges that Intel paid around $100m per quarter to Dell in exchange for keeping AMD out of their lineup, with one year's payments topping $1b. Intel are claiming what substance there is to the suit constitutes a tiered exclusivity discount.

Chris Chibnall, responsible for some of Torchwood's worst, now graces Life on Mars. Oh joy. Still, the first episode was a very welcome return, even if some elements were overplayed somewhat, like the disdain for reporters. And WTH's with the fog-like thickness of smoke everywhere? Yes, smoking was more widespread then, but people could still see where they were walking.

Silly bit of Flash: 1-click. In case you need enhanced visibility for your mouse pointer..

In the process of seeing whether I could intercept a Flash video stream, I discovered a very handy TCP sniffer front-end, Eavesdrop. Very easy to use, whilst remaining fully functional.

w00t! Bunny Jam this year is set for Saturday, April 7th. Help setting up, or providing art installations for the night, is welcomed.

Interesting.. seems Toy Story 3 is a go after all, for 2009, directed by the co-director of Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, and Finding Nemo, with a script from the writer of Little Miss Sunshine. Also, American Dog is on track again, for 2008. "Catmull denied speculation that Walt Disney Feature Animation may become a 2-D-only studio, with Pixar handling CGI, though he did confirm the Mouse will bring back hand-drawn pics."

Elsewhere in animation, the head of Cartoon Network has quit over the fantastically inept response in Boston recently.

Little Miss Sunshine, I'm pleased to say, lived up to its promise. Dry wit and dark humor abound, with performances well up to the measure of the script. (Trailers here; I much prefer trailer 2) It's a simple enough idea - a family goes on a roadtrip to take the daughter to a beauty pageant in Redondo Beach, 800 miles away from Albuquerque. (I admit, all I recall of Albuquerque was we had breakfast there en route to CF2. Magnificent desert scenery all around, but I've always been fond of arid climates. And snowy ones. Even rain can be wonderful, like getting caught in a monsoon - not much point hurrying, as you'll be soaked in seconds, and besides, it's so warm =:) But that doesn't take into account the family involved, constantly under pressures and tribulations of their own. It's very much a character driven film, and it succeeds completely in ensuring you actually care about what happens to each of them. Add in a memorable score that nonetheless doesn't impose itself upon the film, and it shines.

Pity there's no such thing as fruit & vegetable taxidermy, else one could make quite a cool phone by putting one inside an ex-banana.

The chronicles of a taxi dispatcher - wonderful if you've previously enjoyed the gems of customer service of the inimitable Gord. Here's one example, of dealing with someone who'd stolen some corporate vouchers. Management thought banning the guy by name would work; he decides to ensure he'll never call back..

These boots are wonderful. ^_^ I hope I can wind up with them, but they don't seem easy to find, especially at any sane price.

Oooh. More Eva! Seems Gainax are working on a series of four movies, culminating in the "true conclusion" of the EVA saga. These will apparently be cinematically released, not OVAs. (Though OVAs are often of particularly good quality in Japan, compared to TV productions, with larger animation budgets to play with) Phil Yff states that the official site says, "The first part and the second part make the best use of 3D computer graphics and the latest digital technology to upgrade the animation and backgrounds from those of the old TV series. The story is completely new and will also include the appearance of new settings and characters. It will be entirely different from the old TV version and the old movie releases. Each movie is planned to last 90 minutes give or take." "The first movie will be shown early Summer 2007, the second movie Spring of 2008. The third and fourth movies will be released as a two-parter in Summer of 2008."

Good review of the final release of AmigaOS 4. The post-article discussion's worth a look as well, including Dave Haynie chiming in. I'm not sure what to make of it - the results don't look especially impressive, considering the competition, and the current owners seem to be well and truly in the mold of the original Commodore management, winding up with an OS licensable only on official hardware - except there's no official hardware available. Some might consider this a drawback in a business plan. Here's a journal going further into the platform's past; what it once was, and how things went wrong.

This article is an interesting brief read, on the topic of mutually beneficial evolution.

On the music DRM front, it seems as if EMI may ditch it, though Warner - publically, at least - is refusing to budge. The Reg also published a decent two-page commentary by a lawyer in the entertainment industry, formerly with Sony.

You shouldn't miss this clip showing the time lapse construction of some dinos, including a triceratops and an extraordinarily cool raptor that would probably cause spontaneous public inconvenience for quite a few FC-goers. They're appearing in the Walking with Dinosaurs show, currently in Brisbane. (Thanks to ysengrin)

Anyone heard of Mouse Guard? Looks like a promising comic series of six issues. Not that I keep up with print comics particularly, but given it's been out for a year, I'm surprised not to've seen any mention of it until now.

"Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven't worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music." Stunningly obvious, except to executives of member companies of the RIAA. Now, a year ago, I'd never imagine the big labels coming anywhere near DRM-free music downloads, but - industry analysts (not paid trolls like Dvorak, or Enderle for that matter) seem to be finding reason lately for suggesting there are such musings being contemplated.

Speaking of music (dancing about architecture?), find for the day has to be Mika's "Life in Cartoon Motion" - as one description read, 'His sound - flamboyant, funky, quirky, grandiose pop - has seen him described as "a one-man Scissor Sisters" and has also drawn comparisons with Freddie Mercury.' And so it is. It's ~faaaabulous~. =:D

It's very early code (at the 0.1 release), but still, the OpenSim project should be worth following, being a GNU-licensed SL-compatible sim. For now, it's very limited in functionality, supporting login, movement, object creation & updating, and chat; server-side Lua scripting and script uploads are mentioned as being "in progress". Cool beans - the second trailer for Life on Mars confirms its return date: Tuesday, Feb 13. (The trailer itself is unremarkable - just a collection of clips) Word's emerging of a rather cool POWER-derived processor, potentially offering quite an exciting reinvigoration of the PowerPC family at the high performance/low power corner of the market, comparing remarkably favorably even with Core 2 Duo, especially once the support chips are included. The secret sauce, courtesy of a few Alpha veterans, is downclocking unused or underutilised segments on a hitherto unseen scale, offering power economy at a very fine level. I'd been wondering how people actually recorded the footage for machinima, thinking it was just a matter of software. Seems, though, more common is just to record the system's video output on something like a DVD recorder, then rip that disc. But here's an alternative, particularly for Intel Macs, as it seems Snapz Pro is still not a Universal Binary. This is, and cheaper to boot - the blogger here uses it to record some 720p footage, making for a much cleaner, higher-res option. I wonder if I can try inducing dreams? Not necessarily lucid dreaming, just ones that are coherent enough to remember. Last night's wasn't anything to write into a Nobel Prize winning novel, just pleasant, snuggling up to sleep with someone; no-one I know consciously. But then we were disturbed, causing us both to scamper out of the room, to the top of the stairs. "Well, that was awkward" the visitor said. It didn't seem to bother my companion, thankfully, who was just grinning.

The erstwhile newsreader MacSOUP is finally a Universal Binary, with the release of v2.8. The other changes are just given as "minor bug fixes", but the author nonetheless recommends it to all users.

sphelx noted an especially nifty APOD image, over here, on an Australian beach, the panorama at once including the comet, fireworks, and lightning.

A new, very furry music video: Wintersleep - Jaws of Life. Where else will you get to see a bunny driving a car that's transformed into a mechadeer? (Band's site here)

The other clip you should see this week has to be one person's description (FLV) of March of the Emperor, the original French title for March of the Penguins. =:)

Bruce Campbell is inherently cool (FLV), even in a commercial.

Kawaii Not comes up with another gem. =:) On the genuinely cute (and bizarre) front, though, this fruity entry from CuteOverload really needs to be seen. Who knew you could do that with a banana? (And as for rats..) Here's a superb way to waste an afternoon: a Warcraft-inspired Flash game, noticed by patch_bunny. Lay down a choice of towers with their differing capabilities, upgrade or install new ones as you're able, and see how many levels you can annihilate. ^_^; And if someone at the con's reading this: "Are any of you guys that are headed to FC going to be coming through Colorado on your way back? If so, can you accomodate a small animal carrier with 2-4 baby rats in it? Will trade MULTIPLE full color commissions in exchange for transport help."

ysengrin may want to see the trailer for the forthcoming New Zealand film Black Sheep, as shadowolf noticed.

Sounds like a fascinating documentary: American Eunuchs.

Consider, if you please, the lives of dogs and cats. (Thanks to momentrabbit and dagoski!)

As for the iPhone - drop-dead gorgeous, but it's the UI that fascinates me. It pretty much goes without saying that screen will be coming to the other iPods soon enough. If you've not seen it in action, here's a quick demo that'll give you a good idea of just how much work's been put into the device.. so beautifully refined. Or, if you'd prefer to watch the full-blown demo, the keynote and just the introduction can be seen here, or, for best quality, go to the iTunes Store, search on "keynote", and click "Subscribe" on the Macworld Keynote Address. It'll load in the background - 1.2GB in all.

Speaking of which, this Ars thread explores some of the future possibilities of multitouch UIs - it also covers that demo you may have seen, by Jeff Han of MIT. (And if you haven't, watch it now!)

Apparently, its version of OS X - which does indeed appear to be the real deal, simply optimised and relieved of portions irrelevant to the device - weighs in at "considerably less" than 512MB of flash. I wonder if World of Warcraft could run on it.. =:) (Yes, joking, but still.. only trouble is that the critter appears to be Xscale-based, and furtherance of its design seems to've largely stalled in recent years. Perhaps the iPhone might be where the PowerPC makes its return to Apple - there are some quite attractively low power, high performance PPCs around)

Deservedly, comment of the week on The Comics Curmudgeon, speaks of this Curtis strip, "Why the hell aren't glowing telepathic otters the most publicized aspect of Kwanzaa? Its presence in Curtis has single-handedly legitimized this holiday in my mind." "A mother and son accused of stealing a snake from a pet store were arrested when they returned to the store and asked for books on how to care for the animal, police said. Store clerks recognized the suspects from surveillance video taken during the theft and stalled them until police arrived." The question posed in this quiz show is "which of these orbits the Earth?", with the choices being the Moon, the Sun, Mars, and Venus. The pain, the pain..

Parallels Workstation is nifty stuff. Have a look at these screenshots showing OS X and XP applications side-by-side on the same desktop, like any other apps, each running natively within their own OS, no emulation involved.

Could be interesting: a memorial to Carl Sagan in SL, opened by his son.

balor has nobly been researching what may, indeed, be the world's worst book. Don't say you weren't warned. (An excerpt is included. Oh, how you'll wish there weren't.. and no, this is not intentionally bad, and even has a glowing New Yorker review)

I wonder what kind of climate and soil durians can manage in, outside their native areas..

Not that I have a Linux-capable router (or maybe I do? It's a 3Com 3CRWDR100A-72), but if I had one and put one of the router distros on it, is it possible to rig the firewall rules such that traffic coming in unencrypted would only be able to see the internet, not the LAN, and anything using WPA2 would have full access? (Some bandwidth throttling mightn't be a bad idea either, just to be sure no casual visitor on the street wound up slurping all my bandwidth)

Quote for the day from Tycho: "E3 wasn't so much work as it was... It's hard to say what it was, which I suppose is another reason to dismantle it. It was more like our Moose Lodge, a masculine retreat minus the bongos and face paint." (The comic, though, leaves me puzzled, given I was flying intercontinental before I could walk =:)

For OS X geeks, Google's now released an implementation of the Linux FUSE mechanism, permitting the (theoretically =:) easy addition of a range of filesystems. "Examples of file systems that work have been tested (to varying degrees) include sshfs, ntfs-3g (read/write NTFS), ftpfs (read/write FTP), wdfs (WebDAV), cryptofs, encfs, bindfs, unionfs, beaglefs (yes, including the entire Beagle paraphernalia), and so on."

Streamburst has a novel approach to DRM - don't use it. Just add a few seconds at the start saying who downloaded that copy, and embed a small off-screen "watermark" confirming that. Buy an episode of, say, Long Way Round for £1.35, and you get a 752x416 H.264 version for DVD-grade playback, 320x176 H.264 for iPods and suchlike, and 208x112 MPEG-4 for phones. An excellent idea, though spoiled a little by remaining only level with the cost of the DVD purchase - in this case, £13 for all ten episodes on 3 DVDs.

Just so neat.. a foil boat floating on a sea of sodium hexafluoride, a colorless gas. A superb quote regarding not actually lapine shoes, but so very nearly. =:) Arashi no Yoru ni isn't just an anime.. ^_^ Interesting take on personal net.radio: Musicovery. Requires Flash, unfortunately, so it's strictly a browser-bound affair, and may or may not be open to non-OS X/Windows folks. Still, it's a novel approach. marko_the_rat might like to peek at some forthcoming Ratatouille books.

Album title for the day: Tim Koch's "Please don't tell me that's your Volvo".

One of the more daffy memes I've seen, so naturally it appealed: on your LJ user info, you'll see your ID number next to your name. Look that up in the US Patent Office's listings, and see what you're registered as. ^_^ I'm just a boring "air inlet device for internal combustion engines", from 1922. Whee, I suck!

Supposedly, Sony will not allow porn on Blu-Ray. As the brief article notes, "It does not matter how you stand to porn. It is here and it is a massive business. It is also an industry that is an early adopter for new media technology. VHS might not have won with out the adult film industry adopting it." That said, does the future of HD porn lie on either format - and there are others in the background as well - or with downloads? An hour of good quality 720p video using H.264 can fit into around 1GB - and whilst that might sound like a lot, with a low-end DSL connection of 2Mbps, that's about 90 mins to download. Scale up to a more usual 8Mbps, or a good cable connection, and that's all possible now, without any additional equipment required.

Torchwood season 1 finale: oh, gods, what bottomless pit of eternal hackery spewed forth such writing? A few good plot points - particularly the ending, and not just because it brought this to a close - but so much sheer wretchedness everywhere else. Was this some fanfic stinker that managed to slip into the script pile? (Ah, I see the writer was also reponsible for the execrable Cyberwoman, and the nearly-as-stinky second episode. Also Countrycide, which wasn't too bad) Still.. there was that rather delightful endcap to the season.

So, another chapter in SGI's history wraps up, with the last of their Mountain View offices closed; they're now all safely tucked away in Sunnyvale. I only managed to visit a couple times, including one occasion where I visited FurToonia's new home, having handed it over (with almost no downtime, yay!) from tbyte to the paws of another wizard who was working at SGI at the time, deep in their network bowels.

I'm impressed by the level of detail exhibited in Wikipedia's entry on "porn".

Rather a cool photo: a man with 800 acupuncture needles applied to his head.

Enjoying a little relaxation in the spa built within the massive ribcage of a long-expired creature.

Had much fun chatting with a newly returned mycroftb and lazerus101 over in a quiet nook of the Lost Furest, in between sim crashes. ^_^ The ornj one had just been upgraded (but not in that way, though I would like to give that bit of avatar design a try), with some enhancements to the venerable Luskwood bunny. A really good time, spent chatting about many things culinary, and scripting/building possibilities and achievements. Okay, so I'm a bit of a food geek, so I found chatting about the wonders of balsamic vinegar and different styles of Bolognese sauce fun. Is that so wrong? =:)


"DRM as we know it is over." - Paul Birch, member of the executive committee and main board of the International Federation of Phonographic Institutes (IFPI) as well as the BPI Council and Chairs International. The day can't come too soon. All DRM ever accomplishes is penalising legitimate owners, restricting their use in various additional ways (only working on certain platforms, requiring the original disc be present, breaking after a certain OS version, never to be fixed as the company's long since gone, etc).

A report of free hugs in San Francisco. ^_^

Via orona_red, there's a petition (hosted, you'll notice, on the Prime Minister's subdomain) to remove the ban in the UK on blood donations by gay/bi people. Open to British citizens and residents.

I found this simultaneously encouraging and regrettable - heartening in that he'd come that far, yet only to find the power brokers against him. The Christian Coalition's new president elect, 'The Rev. Joel Hunter, of Longwood's Northland, A Church Distributed, said Wednesday that the national group would not let him expand the organization's agenda beyond opposing abortion and gay marriage.

This is the latest setback for the group founded in 1989 by religious broadcaster the Rev. Pat Robertson. Four states - Georgia, Alabama, Iowa and Ohio - have decided to split from the group over concerns its changing direction on issues like the minimum wage, the environment and Internet law instead of core issues like abortion and same-sex marriage. Hunter, who was scheduled to take over the socially conservative political group Jan. 1, said he had hoped to focus on issues such as poverty and the environment.

"These are issues that Jesus would want us to care about," Hunter said. "They pretty much said, 'These issues are fine, but they're not our issues, that's not our base.'"'

Fun costuming project.. Cerberus is making a raccoon mask in the style of that Seeed video. ^_^ (Complete with LED eyes, of course)

An interesting look at how Asperger's Syndrome plays out positively in SL.

Many fine thoughts on the pizza! I actually asked that right after having tackled the problem (quite tastily), in the way several folks also suggested - defrosting in the microwave, followed by heating in a pan over a low heat to get the base crisp. What I didn't do, as some noted, was cover it, so I had to finish it off with a zap in the microwave to get the toppings hot again. (It was originally a "loaded cheese" deep pan, to which I added a healthy degree of garlic powder (sacrilege, I know, but we appear to be lacking fresh garlic, and I admit to being enamored of the convenience of its powdered kin) and a little chicken in black bean sauce, emphasis on the chicken, as it's rare for me to eat a meal without meat involved) I'd also cut it into quarters before defrosting, if I need to try that again, as once at room temperature, it exhibited no great love for the notion of cooperating with sliding off the plate. Two large metal spatulas did the trick, with no loss of structural integrity.

Who else has seen The Wolves of Kromer?

Here's a neat animated (and marginally furry) music video: Rabbit Junk - In Your Head No-one Can Hear You Scream. (QT7 doesn't like it, but VLC and mplayer are fine) There's a dash of Squarepusher and a good bit of Ministry in the musical influences - well worth a try.


It seems Sony's preparing a global recall for owners of laptops using their batteries, but details aren't yet available.

I get it - Bush's newly legislated powers to detain anybody indefinitely without charge, or any obligation to bring them to trial, or even inform them of the charges or evidence against them, and to use torture - it's all just part of his green credentials. See, with this in place, the CIA won't need to continue the covert flights to countries that explicitly permit torture, as the US is now one of them. Just think of all the air pollution that'll avoid! (Did your senator vote for US torture? See the list here)

I think I'd like one of these displays to view Second Life on.

And so the dance goes on. ^_^ "A couple of weeks I ago I wrote about the battle between Microsoft's DRM system and FairUse4WM, which breaks it. The news for this week is that Microsoft has patched their security against FairUseWM 1.2 and filed a lawsuit against the program's anonymous authors, and those same anonymous authors have released FairUse4WM 1.3, which breaks the latest Microsoft patch."

From the sharp peepers of spidermouse, "Also, I saw a van today that was plastered with: Gildun Scaffolding: Make Sure Your Next Erection Is In Safe Hands."

And please enjoy this word on airline safety procedures. ^_^

This story is a horribly good example of why marriage/civil unions must cover same-sex couples. Matters of human rights are not something any politician should cowardly shy away from on the pretext of leaving it to local rather than national government. (Even more so when one party is determined to void such rights entirely, yet still the other remains so faint of heart)

darac pointed out this handy utility for showing all your current and recent LJ logins, showing timestamp, IP address, and the browser used. You can also log any current session out, if you forgot to do so before leaving a public system, for example.

More presidential hilarity ensues as Bush decides to give Chancellor Merkel a surprise neckrub. Thankfully, he at least managed to get the hint and desisted a few seconds later.

Interesting map of popularity of religions by US state. (Click on a state to see the breakdown for that one)

Is there a way of seeing all of a mood icons set, just as with user icons?

Some personal thoughts on stem cell research over here - well worth a read, bringing the matter out of the realm of the abstract.

So, yet another MPAA-approved movie download service trumpets its debut, this time aiming at burning the movies to DVD. Couple small catches, though: burning is achieved using only their FluxDVD-based software, so, Windows only; and it claims to have additional protection on the burned DVD as well, possibly of the "farked around with enough to choke any computer player, but probably okay on a standalone player" variety. Best of all, though, are the prices, starting at $9, going up from there, such as Firewall for a mere $19. *cough* You get to swallow the download allowance, of course, and pay for the DVD-R and any packaging, too. It's a surefire success!

In other DRM news, the faux Napster continues its trajectory, share declining from 9% to 3% in Q1, losing $200m over four years. The number two music service? eMusic, which employs no DRM whatsoever; and as they note, "the average iPod owner has just 21 iTunes Music Store songs on their device". (It's no secret the iTMS is there as a support service of sorts, not a money maker - it's estimated Apple makes a profit of as much as 3¢/track, given the labels' share) 'Course, it'd be interesting to see a histogram of purchases - I'd imagine very few buy any downloaded music at all, DRMd or otherwise, with a few percent of player owners responsible for the great bulk of the figures.

(Hm. eMusic's offering a two week free trial, covering 25 tracks. As with most such offers, you need to actively cancel within that period, rather than consent to continuing, as I'd much prefer, but not a bad offer)

Yay! Thanks to mycroftb, I've been able to verify video streaming in SL really does work. Now to see what performance tweaks are possible - but the internet Daily Show clip from the other day plays perfectly, albeit only at 6fps or so. So I know H.264/AAC/MPEG-4 files are fine. (File under "famous last words" =:)

Ye gods. I actually had a furry dream last night. Set in SL. ^_^ Nowhere real, but I recall foxymoonheart was core to the story, along with a comic store..

( That male-or-female meme )
( Interesting survey options )