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I can't wait to drive my International CXT on this sweet piece of asphalt!

Can you name the truck with four wheel drive,
smells like a steak and seats thirty-five..

Canyonero! Canyonero!

Well, it goes real slow with the hammer down,
It's the country-fried truck endorsed by a clown!

The Federal Highway comission has ruled the
Canyonero unsafe for highway or city driving.

Canyonero!

12 yards long, 2 lanes wide,
65 tons of American Pride!

Canyonero! Canyonero!

Top of the line in utility sports,
Unexplained fires are a matter for the courts!

Canyonero! Canyonero! (Yah!)

She blinds everybody with her super high beams,
She's a squirrel crushing, deer smacking, driving machine!

Canyonero!-oh woah, Canyonero! (Yah!)

Drive Canyonero!

Woah Canyonero!

Woah!

"Micro$oft does help the American economy and has aggressively stood up to Chinese thugs in Beijing when they demanded that Micro$oft censor links, on its search engine, to Tibet and human rights. I thank Micro$oft for its distinctly American approach to bashing Chinese thugs"

Sure about that?

you're comparing oranges and apricots here.

They are comparing a STB box tivo for analog cable with one of these... besides, what self respecting geek doesn't have a spare hand me down PC laying around... to throw a tuner/capture card in?

FWIW the best benefit to building a PC based PVR isn't cost/subscription savings... it's CONTROL over the content. No one is going to be expiring six feet under DVR recordings without my consent on my PC DVR.

*shrug*

for non-US readers, we have nifty governmental regs that require yellow energy consumption labels on the side of most kitchen appliances, that include likely annual operating costs, to allow the consumer to make a better informed choice...

• Jennifer Government
• Everyone in Silico
• Pattern Recognition
• The Savage Girl
• PopCo

One of Indonesia's leading palaeontologists, Professor Teuku Jacob of Gadjah Mada University in Jakarta, has grabbed the hobbit remains and locked them away in his safe, refusing to let other scientists study them.

In addition, he rejected the widespread view that the hobbits are a separate human species, claiming they are a pygmy form of modern humans who suffered microcephaly, a disorder that produces a small brain.

The Australian scientists who dug up the bones of the hobbits, officially dubbed Homo floresiensis, have pleaded with Professor Jacob to return the bones as they may contain vital DNA clues as to their exact ancestry. The seven skeletons were found last year in a cave on the Indonesian island of Flores by an Australian and Indonesian team.

If you're the original poster of the story to MetaFilter, I would just like to apoligize for hijaaking your writeup.

And the damn trackback info is wrong.

I was only : A) jerking around the slashdot editors, B) trying to bring something cool and nerdly to a wider audience, something slashdot's been kind of light on lately.

Please feel free to resubmit the exact same story for the obligatory Taco duplicate story post. (Which would be extra ironic in this case...)

Same Oracle that thinks China's governmental censorship is A-OK?

Yes, yes, Microsoft, Google, blahblahblah. Are Microsoft, Google, et al pushing hardcore for a National ID card?

Maybe a few more details over @ the boingboing coverage of story...

...
Homeland security honcha has phony PhD
A senior technical official in the Homeland Security Department has a phony Ph.D. from a diploma mill. I'm thinking that I'd like to get one of these and join my parents (Dr. and Dr. Doctorow) as Dr. Doctorow, Jr.
(here)

No, no further remark.

CC.

Funny, I just read on Boing Boing that an Indian movie will be the first full-length feature film to premiere on a wireless cellular network.

Details here.

And which is why, "predictions" like FooBar will happen by 2015 are quite amusing - you really cannot know. For all you know, it may happen within the next couple of years. If there is one thing we should know as geeks, it is that technology can never ever be predicted.

When you have states like Kanses, Georgia, etc, in this country saying they should be taught as equally likely theories in science classes... we are doomed.

Have you seen this yet? ;-) It's a new creationist museum of "learning", clearly aimed at kids. Get 'em young has always been the aim of any religion.

But it's far more likely that he meant Red Hat's Linux in the sense that, "the flavor of Linux that Red Hat produces" - which probably makes commercial sense in that context.

Besides, it's just a blog, for cryin' out loud. If Sun officially made such a statement it's another thing.

For all you know, it's just the way he writes - people often use colloquialisms in informal writings, such as Blogs. Doesn't mean a thing.

Remember the time he and HP had a problem?

See, back when I was working on an internet helpdesk, if people kept ringing over and over and over with the same complaints and problems, we were instructed to stop helping them. These three people waste everyone else's money, so why not apply the same policy? Here and in the US.

And in regard to ninjas, - this guy knows about them. Remember the arse kicking circle. Ninja beats pirate beats robot beats clown beats ninja. Every seen a ninja fighting a clown? Now you know why

Treo: "The internet apps were not as feature filled and a lot more buggy and the O.S was not a real multitasking os. The terminal app sucked compared to the sidekick and there was no instant messaging included."

Sidekick: "has yahoo messenger,etc built in"

Hardware aside (although good hardware is important) the difference between the Treo and the Sidekick is that if the included terminal app sucks or there's no IM program, you can get new software.

That's not an option with the Sidekick, T-Mobile mistakenly thinks that after you spend $200 on a device they still own it. It's a good thing they have what you need built in, because if they didn't there wouldn't be anything you could do about it.

I would love a Sidekick, the form factor and styling are top notch, but until they offer an open platform there are better phones. (I have a Nokia 3650, FWIW).

Firefox project works. Thunderbird project works. But Mozilla Marketing Project it's working beyond expectatives, and not only at Slashdot: Video of ABC News on Firefox

whoops, yeah, I was just trying to be funny... guess I was too subtle. Good explanation.

This would make an excellent little project -- a three-page pdf; one page with the instructions and two pages with the grating patterns would be nice to have.This is something genuinely inventive, so I think its patent is well-deserved and should be respected. Maybe in 2012 we'll see non-patent-encumbered free versions.

I'm thinking this would be in the vein of this cool dragon illusion that I've got on my desk.

Microsoft has certainly set themselves up as being able to do this.

As is pointed out on BoingBoing. IANAL, but it certainly looks like you're handing over all copyright on your work to Microsoft the moment you post it. (Correct me if I'm wrong.)

To the best of my knowledge, no other blogging service has such clauses, and is enough for me to think of the MS blogging service as something evil.

Can you set it up so that the blogging teen hires a hitman to kill her mother?

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/11/10/jeopardy_winn er_wage.html

This was posted 2 days ago on Boing Boing.

Actually, they already have done that.

Science site shutdown robs the public

Even better is they can screw you over at any point, and have a history of doing so.

• Screwing you one way in 2003
• And another way in 2004.

I don't know if AT&T can pull the same stunts with this ogo, but I'd make damn sure where I stand before forking money over for a device or committing to a service.

Even better is they can screw you over at any point, and have a history of doing so.

• Screwing you one way in 2003
• And another way in 2004.

I don't know if AT&T can pull the same stunts with this ogo, but I'd make damn sure where I stand before forking money over for a device or committing to a service.

Tanks show up at an anti-war protest. Did I see this at CNN or MSNBC or Fox News? No. Boing Boing raised my awareness, pointing me to independent media. If I'm lucky, CNN might report on this days late, buried somewhere in their web site to be found by a drilled search. Hoo boy. That's if I'm lucky.

Surely you've seen this one?

Cobra Commander for President.

But some companies are dumb enough to try it:

Apple's breaking of the iPod

TiVo "upgrade" removes features

No need, the US is doing a good enough job as it is. Who needs climate regulating ice when you have jobs?

Oh, and here's an interesting piece of information, people do live near the North pole, or rather, in the arctic circle.You may know them as Inuits, or Eskimos, and they're very pissed off with the industrialised world's disregard towards their very existence.

This article describes some of the hardships currently being indured by these people, and the Bush administration "acknowledging for the first time that climate change is real and unavoidable". Here's another story from Boing Boing.

"A small coloring book of images from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq."

I know it's already appeared on slashdot, but this hallowe'en costume was a real w.t.f.?!? moment...

I thought weblogging would be a passing fad, especially given that the majority of such blogs are updated by people with poor writing skills and dull lives. The pathetic stream-of-consciousness musings of a acne infested high schooler can only keep your interest for so long.

Sure, there are exceptions that prove the rule; the rapid punditry of certain election blogs were interesting, too.

What would be most interesting to me is to find if there's a business strategy in exploiting blogs. I recall just a few years ago Micro$oft finding some business use for instant messaging (and not just as a communications enhancement, but for things like EDI); I'm sure there are some plans already to deploy Business Visual Blog Server or some such product, to what end I can't fathom. I'm sure another company will say they've patented blogs and/or blog technology, and then we'll know that blogs have really arrived.

It's a Purple Country not red or blue.

Sorry, but I've got one more:

Purple Mountain Majesties

America isn't really "Red" or "Blue." It's Purple.

Well, aside from Utah, anyway :-\

We had a major traumatic experience on 9/11. It was a wakeup call, and our populace did something about it yesterday. We re-elected the man that has taken care of the problem. Instead of flying jumbo jets into our buildings, the terrorists are on the run. So what if we haven't caught Bin Laden yet? When we do kill that SOB, someone else will simply take his place, and we'll get that SOB, too. The point is that we're not sitting around waiting to be attacked, then begging the UN's permission to defend ourselves. We have no obligation to do so, and any candidate that wants to will never get my vote. The thing you liberals just don't understand is that there is no negotiating with terrorists. They do not care! You cannot negotiate with someone who wants to chop your head off. They hate you liberals as much as they hate everyone else. You think they will be your friends if you just appease them and kneel to their demands. That is complete and utter bullshit and until you people start to admit that to yourselves, you will continue to live in your respective mental caves.

I think your wake-up call put you to sleep.

OK, here's a comparison... I have a blog, on which I post things I find interesting. The blog has a couple of text ads. If I submit an article to Slashdot, it's usually something that's also on my blog. So we are ethically on par at this point, ja? The difference is (if you look at my article history) that when I post an article to Slashdot, it doesn't link to or even mention my blog -- it links directly to the information source.

It's obvious from your article that the original source is the previous day's article from BoingBoing. You even mention in paragraph four that you've been following the story there.

So, if you're excited and want to share this news for nerds with your fellow Slashdotters, then the obvious thing to do in your /. article is to either link to BoingBoing, or link to the place Cory found the info. The fact that you linked to yourself instead -- as you always do -- naturally makes us think you wish to slashdot your ad impressions.

To me, Slashdot is a community for exchanging info, journals etc, and I don't mind that it's ad-supported because it obviously costs them a shitload to run and staff. I'm guessing that the revenue is on the same order of magnitude as the expenses and labor. Likewise, my own blog costs little and brings in little. I don't think that either Slashdot or I am being greedy.

It looks to me like you're not satisfied with building your own community and making a reasonable amount from your advertising. Instead, about twice a month you slashdot your ads to have another big bite of the cherry. This makes me think that a) you're greedy and / or b) you're a business graduate pretending to be a geek like the rest of us.

It's noon on the East Coast, this story is being read by tons of people from work, and a lot of people can be fired if their web proxy detects them downloading pictures like this. I can't direct link to the image because it's generated by a PHP script, but basically it's a topless woman holding a string to barely cover some of her nipples. You could get fired for looking at that at most companies, and it's on the main page of the story link to boingboing.net. It's on topic and people deserve this warning to keep their jobs!

If you must moderate me down so be it but I don't want anyone fired because a story reviewer was irresponsible.

I would hardly say that Apple trying to protect its relationship with the music content providers, which is the whole reason that the iTunes Music Store exists in the first place, not to mention the online store with by far the highest marketshare, is tantamount to Apple telling its customers to "eat shit and die".

His preemptive rebuttals are also complete bullshit. Yes, we're the "customers", not Sony/BMG. And he himself admits that the record companies are idiots; yes, those are the idiots that Apple has to deal with. A lot of people think it was a miracle Apple/Steve Jobs got them even to agree to this "crazy experiment" in the first place.

Additionally, getting music back off the iPod is not part of the advertised capabilities or features of the service, period, and never was. Remember iTunes 4.0b12? It let you go both ways between every iPod and iTunes under the sun, with no limits. You could two-way sync every iPod and iTunes library on earth. Remember iTunes 4.0, and its internet music sharing? The record industry might not be telling Apple *exactly* the specifics of how to implement the protections, but Apple is under pressure to not make it too "easy" to "share" music on a wide scale, while still making the DRM and protections as transparent as it possibly can.

The proponents of things like iPod Download, and even the linked article, talk about things like stolen computers and hard drive failures. Well, in fairness, Apple does have a recommendation. You might hate it, and you might think it sucks, but it's to have your music library backed up somewhere other than your computer, and other than your iPod .

Further, as long as the iPod is just a freaking disk, its contents will be able to be retrieved. But Apple CANNOT look as if it is passively ignoring things that are perceived by the music industry to be "dangerous", whether they are or not. Yes, Apple can try to help the music industry understand, and even pressure them in the right direction - and probably has, quite a bit, frankly. Remember, this whole online download thing is in its utter infancy.

If you want to hate or blame Apple for "selling out", and saying that they should just tell people like Sony/BMG to go fuck themselves, and if they lose them they lose them, fine...that's you call. And no one is forcing you to use or buy any of Apple's services. This is Apple's service and products, and they're running them how they feel they have to to ensure the iTunes Music Store's continued existence. Do you think they WANT to make things hard on customers? Quite the opposite! And maybe someday Apple will have the leverage to start pressing these things with the music industry - Jobs believes people should really be able to do what they want with their music. But people also want music from the major labels, so you can't piss them off right off the bat. What to do? Frankly, I think Apple is in the right here, and Cory Doctorow is the one who can eat shit and die.

If you intend to cast a paper ballot today, please be ready for an adventure. This morning in Santa Clara, Vickie and I signed in the way we always do and requested paper ballots. Hilarity ensued: attempting to vote on paper caused a flurry of activity: oh-no-you're-not, you-have-to-vote-with-the-machine, what's-your-major-malfunction-mister, and other clucking noises. (Cory Doctorow had something about this in BoingBoing on October 18th, which was dead on.)

There was no "votamatic" machine for paper ballots any longer; we had to enter a plain brown cardboard voting station that looked exactly like a refrigerator carton and mark our ballots with a pen. (Pen not supplied; bring your own.) I was first in line; after marking my ballot I approached the desk and asked the Nice Lady on the end if I should put it into the box. She nodded and smiled at me, so in it went.

Then I turned to look at Vickie and the rest of the line and noticed they all had big pink envelopes to put their ballots into when they were done. A tiny peanut-sized bulb flickered to life inside my brain. I went to the stack and checked, and sure enough: the big pink envelope said PROVISIONAL BALLOT on it. It had several choices to check: you had no ID, you had moved after the registration deadline, or were Otherwise Unclean. The Other Nice Lady--the one who had her act together--was making everybody who voted on paper seal it inside the provisional ballot envelope, even though there was no "I HAVE BEEN REGISTERED VOTER IN THIS PRECINCT SINCE 1987 AND I AM CHOOSING TO VOTE ON PAPER DAMMIT" box to check.

Further hilarity ensued: Vickie is a lawyer with a long history of political activism, so there was much back-and-forth between her and the Other Nice Lady, who then got on the phone with Headquarters and came back with the following ruling: we were all to mark our paper ballots, seal them in pink envelopes, and don't worry about filling out our names and addresses on the envelopes. Somehow--the nebulous theory goes--the election workers will be able to magically detect the paper ballots filled out by properly identified voters and pull them out to be counted tonight.

We left the station feeling VERY unsure that our votes would be counted.

If I was a busy election worker tonight, I'd just grab all those pink envelopes and heave them into the Provisional stack. And if I was the guy at the Provisional Counting Station, I'd have to seriously consider trashing all those envelopes without names and addresses filled in on the form on the outside. That's the point of a provisional ballot envelope, after all: to make it possible for them to verify your right to vote.

Another site that invariably seems to propagate days later into slashdot is BoingBoing.

related: http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/30/apple_to_ipod _owners.html

What's the lesson here? Well, Apple's not on your side, even if you're an Apple customer. If you buy into a proprietary platform where the music industry gets a veto, you're scr0d. Every time you buy an iPod, you are financing legal and technical countermeasures aimed at taking away legitimate features that enable you to do more with your lawfully acquired music and hardware

He went on to explain that because the way Operating Systems work so differently and how built in the Google Desktop is there's no way to just port it over to a different OS so it has to be redone from scratch -- http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/30/google_deskto p_for_o.html

Google may have a great web strategy but they don't understand the desktop OS and how Microsoft will bury them. If they didn't design Google Desktop to be platform independent from the get go, Google will have no hope of it working on the next version of Microsoft's OS, because Microsoft owns the platform, and won't tolerate third-parties providing "essential" services.

Having had two decades to watch MS bury competitors, it's unbelievable that a company with billions of dollars in capital doesn't understand the need to design independent of MS APIs. Companies like Adobe understand that . . . .

And another thing!

I'm not the only one irritated by Apple's fight against their own customers by breaking the iPod download software with a so-called software "update".

Step out of the iPod stupor long enough to recognize that we should demand more of the companies we support with our purchases.

Bloggers: 43 Folders, Kris Dresden, Diane Duane, Paul Ford, Neil Gaiman, Michael Hanscom, Jason Kottke, Anne Murphy, Jessamyn North, Alia Phibes, Quentin Tarantino, and Wil Wheaton.

Linklogs: Anil Dash, Best of Craigslist, Boing Boing, CoolGov, Daze Reader, Fazed, Kottke Remainders, LinkMachineGo, MetaJournal, Michael Hanscom's Linklog, Museum of Hoaxes, NewYorkish, Paul Ford's Linklog, Snopes: New, SubText, and UFies.org.

Chicago: Chicagoist, jamas.org, CHICAGO.Metroblogging, Chicago Snapshot, CTA Tattler, Gapers' Block, and L or El.

Miscellaneous: Ask Slashdot, Citying, Cult of the One-Eyed Cat, Good Plastic Surgery, I Work With Fools, Schmo Blog, TeeVee, This Is Broken, Today In Alternate History, and x-entertainment.

Apple Bloggers: Buzz Andersen, Bill Bumgarner, Todd Dominey, Folklore, Steven Frank, John Gruber, Dave Hyatt, Brent Simmons,

Cory quotes Tim O'Reilly, "He was fairly equivocal, saying that it was a hard problem, requiring a whole separate project, not just a port, because of the differences in the operating systems. He made no announcement of actual plans to deliver the product, or even that Google was actively working on it"

From an interview at BoingBoing... "Of course they say they'd use it to bring down 'problem people', i.e. direct action leaders."

Doing the right thing so often means fighting the power... Sometimes, leading is leaving. Or pissing off. If you do what everyone wants you to do, you will have no real influence on the world whatsoever.

I like her attitude.

They apologised.

Just coz of the bad press though?

More scary though, look at http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/28/the_strangers _scarie.html for a truly scary Halloween costume, that's all too real

The Littlest Prisoner at Abu Ghraib: So easy, so quick, and so terrifying!

Lyndie England (Candy cigarette optional.)

It should be poitned out that some clear-thinking individuals at NOA caught wind of what their legal zealots were up to, and issued an apology to the folks at SG. After the Rare fiasco, NOA knows better than anyone the ins and outs of what REALLY counts as IP.

Someone should update the original story.

http://www.boingboing.net/2004/10/28/nintendo_apol ogizes_.html

Guess somebody was a bit too quick on the "Threaten Lawsuit" button at the firm.

Thursday, October 28, 2004
Nintendo apologizes to Suicide Girls!
Nintendo sent the email below to the good people at Suicide Girls. Background here and here.

Thursday, October 28, 2004
Nintendo apologizes to Suicide Girls!
Nintendo sent the email below to the good people at Suicide Girls. Background here and here.