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I tried making an animated GIF of the equatorial ridge flyover photos just to get a sense of Cassini's motion as it flew by Iapetus. A bit jumpy, but wow.

http://hownow.brownpau.com/archives/2003/01/free_d mitry/

Having read Harry Harrison's interview about Soylent Green, it entered my head this morning to get a copy of his book "Make Room, Make Room," on which the movie was based.

Book is available in E-book format only, says the Amazon product page, so I am required to get Adobe E-Book Reader. Okay, I say, I'll download the E-Book and export it to a text file so I can read it in my Palm. First faulty assumption.

I purchase the text and go to the library download page. No E-Book reader for Mac OS X, it informs me. Okay, I say, I'll get the OS 9 installer, and run it in Classic mode. Second faulty assumption.

Once installed, I try to run the E-Book Reader. It starts up Classic, as expected, but then returns an error: "Will not run in OS X." Then promptly quits. Darn, I say, this isn't working out, and it won't let me download the text without the Reader. Maybe I should return this and get a refund. Third faulty assumption.

No returns or refunds on e-books, says Amazon's return policy, so I'm stuck with this thing. More determined than ever to get it working, I start up Virtual PC and download the E-Book reader for Windows. It takes a while on dialup, but it finally installs, "certifies" (that gets me leery), and downloads the book.

And that, my friends, is when I discover the true nature of the E-Book Reader environment. There is no way to save or export the document to another format, and it will not allow me to copy text to the clipboard, effectively trapping the document within itself. Nor will it allow me to print. I am forced to read the entire text on screen, in the E-Book Reader, with no alternative offered for readability or portability. My desire to export the document to another format is not intended to break copyright law in any way, and it falls well under fair use, but the Reader's copy-protection is hostile to any such will.

So, I'm poorer by $5.99 and an afternoon of struggling with this stupid E-Book Reader, and if I'd only done some simple research before jumping into the swamp, I could have avoided this whole mess. As it is, now I have a copy of Harry Harrison's Make Room, Make Room! trapped in an Adobe application, waiting to be read on screen.

Congratulations, DMCA, you've just gained a new enemy. I am adding my voice to the cries of "Free Dmitry!" because I want to be able to legally read my E-Books in some format other than what Adobe restricts me to.

(As I read, maybe I should take screenshots of each page and save them to GIFs which I can OCR to a text file, just to be muleheaded about the whole thing. Within fair use law, of course.)

It's a famous mistake from the first Star Wars movie.
More here.

This is why I try to avoid using the word "blog," and I absolutely refuse to acknowledge it as a verb. I'm not "blogging," I'm writing.
http://brownpau.com/archives/2004/05/unblog

Personally, I prefer wiggle images, where you make an animated GIF of two close-by images. You don't have to hurt your eyes, and it gives you a good idea of depth. Here's a web site with several "wiggle images" made from Mars Rover data:

http://space.brownpau.com/mars-rover-wiggles/

1500 imaginary mod points to whoever uses GIMP or Photoshop to cut the individual images out of the photos of Titan, makes an animated GIF out of them, and posts them online.

Here are some tips on how to make Opera 'look like a browser again'. (btw, ironically, this page has google ads)

Wiggled! Thank you, thank you, JPL, for making mission photos so available to everyone. This is exciting stuff.

For a full updated list of sites pulling april fools jokes see here

Some of the latest enteries:
livejournal.com - on userinfo pages, "Friend"/"Friend Of" -> "Stalking"/"Stalked By"
www.gpf-comics.com - Comic mirrored.
smh.com.au - Yum-cha trolleys with "L" plates
www.clutchfans.com - Patrick Ewing returning to NBA
www.freeciv.org - Freeciv ANSI client
www.rav4world.com - Closed? Should have announced that TOMORROW!
www.retrocrush.com - Nude pics of Jaclyn Smith
westcoaster.net - Roller coaster site turned into teen girl site
www.meowpawjects.com - Sock people forced webmaster to take website down.
miceage.com - Disney merges with Walmart
www.badgerbadgerbadger.com - Badgers replaces with zombies
skepdic.com - Skeptic's Dictionary closing
fool.com - Buffett buys Krispy Cream
launch.com - Britney Spears & Jason Alexander To Renew Wedding Vows
MetaFilter.com - Turned in to a Wiki for the day
www.ddrkc.com - owner sold site to a user that is unpopular
brownpau.com - March for Web Standards
www.beyondunreal.com - ut2k4 production suspended
globetechnology.com - Microsoft Solitaire
www.modernwiccan.com - Randomized Color Scheme
bbs.fuckedcompany.com - Site shutting down
www.diary-x.com - looks like diaryland!
theprp.com - Music site to "Previously Ridden Ponies"
mpx200.org - Pocket PC with 2Gb system memory/Smart Drunk Pocket PC application
www.macosxhints.com - triple G5 Powermacs
www.slyfx.com - AOL buys slyfx
palminfocenter.com - Palms for toddlers.
www.carniola.org - fake news story
eikenes.alvestrand.no - Considering porn spam to be in a separate dialect to everything else
defunctgames.com - Pimps At Sea fox xbox

For a full updated list of sites pulling april fools jokes see here

Some highlites:
livejournal.com - on userinfo pages, "Friend"/"Friend Of" -> "Stalking"/"Stalked By"
www.gpf-comics.com - Comic mirrored.
smh.com.au - Yum-cha trolleys with "L" plates
www.clutchfans.com - Patrick Ewing returning to NBA
www.freeciv.org - Freeciv ANSI client
www.rav4world.com - Closed? Should have announced that TOMORROW!
www.retrocrush.com - Nude pics of Jaclyn Smith
westcoaster.net - Roller coaster site turned into teen girl site
www.meowpawjects.com - Sock people forced webmaster to take website down.
miceage.com - Disney merges with Walmart
www.badgerbadgerbadger.com - Badgers replaces with zombies
skepdic.com - Skeptic's Dictionary closing
fool.com - Buffett buys Krispy Cream
launch.com - Britney Spears & Jason Alexander To Renew Wedding Vows
MetaFilter.com - Turned in to a Wiki for the day
www.ddrkc.com - owner sold site to a user that is unpopular
brownpau.com - March for Web Standards
www.beyondunreal.com - ut2k4 production suspended
globetechnology.com - Microsoft Solitaire
www.modernwiccan.com - Randomized Color Scheme
bbs.fuckedcompany.com - Site shutting down
www.diary-x.com - looks like diaryland!
theprp.com - Music site to "Previously Ridden Ponies"
mpx200.org - Pocket PC with 2Gb system memory/Smart Drunk Pocket PC application
www.macosxhints.com - triple G5 Powermacs
www.slyfx.com - AOL buys slyfx
palminfocenter.com - Palms for toddlers.
www.carniola.org - fake news story
eikenes.alvestrand.no - Considering porn spam to be in a separate dialect to everything else
defunctgames.com - Pimps At Sea fox xbox

Inspired by danielroot's and kokogiak's Martian stereo wiggles I've made a few Mars Wiggles of my own. No funny colored glasses required.