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This seems to a very frustrating field of research. Good Luck.

Comix:
Ctrl-Alt-Del http://www.cad-comic.com/
Diesel Sweeties http://dieselsweeties.com/
Questionable Content http://www.questionablecontent.net/
Penny Arcade http://www.penny-arcade.com/
xkcd http://xkcd.com/

Blogs:
Warren Ellis http://www.warrenellis.com/
Thighs Wide Shut http://thighswideshut.org/
Kids with Guns http://patrickben.livejournal.com/

Geeky Blogs/Mags:
Boing Boing http://www.boingboing.net/
Cool Hunting
365 Tomorrows
Grinding.be http://grinding.be/
io9 http://io9.com/
Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com/
Slashdot
Wired http://www.wired.com/rss/index.xml
AppleInsider http://www.appleinsider.com/
Macenstein http://macenstein.com/default
The Unofficial Apple Weblog http://www.tuaw.com/
Macworld http://www.macworld.com/

Dirty Stuff:
Fleshbot http://fleshbot.com/tag/straight
FlickrBabes http://flickrbabes.com/
UseMyComputer http://usemycomputer.com/
Homocidal Insomniac http://homicidalinsomniac.blogspot.com/

News:
Salon http://www.salon.com/

I thought this Wired quote about why the water sublimates on Mars is interesting:

"Just like dry ice does here on Earth, water ice goes from solid to gas when the pressure is below 6.1 millibars and it gets heated (like it does in the Martian sun). It can also go straight from solid to gas above 6.1 millibars when the vapor pressure (amount of water vapor in the air) is low enough. This is because the molecules of water in solid form and gas form are not at equilibrium."

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/answering-mars.html

So I guess no one has learned from the wise ways of Penny Arcade's ad campaign.

On another note, if you get a bad review, you should take it. Crying like a baby only emphasizes the ratings. You may get sales from a small fraction of people who play it to verify that it sucks, but sooner or later all the review sites will say the game sucks and it will only make the situation worse. The whole "bad publicity is good publicity" paradigm is long dead in this age of gamers.

The good:

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/
- non-language specific programming musings

http://blog.brokep.com/
- The Pirate Bay's brokep's blog

http://ikeahacker.blogspot.com/
- interesting furniture hacks

http://www.ladyada.net/rant
- hobby electronics news

http://www.wired.com/rss/commentary/securitymatters.xml
- Bruce Schneier's blog

http://www.thefirsthourblog.com/
- reviewing the first hour of games, handy for people like me who have a 10 minute attention span

http://torrentfreak.com/
- P2P / legal news

The ugly:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/default.stm
http://ifyoulikeitsomuchwhydontyougolivethere.com/
- destroy your faith in humanity, or at least the British

http://seenonslash.com/
- because sometimes -1 is funny

http://icanhascheezburger.com/
http://www.lolcats.com/rss.php
- still funny?

- Slashdot - http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot (well, duh)
- Slashdot: Games - http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdotGames
- El Reg - http://www.theregister.co.uk/headlines.rss (different sort of tech news than /. generally carries)
- Wired - http://feeds.wired.com/wired/topheadlines (sometimes nice for a change, although I don't read anywhere near all of it)

      --- Mr. DOS

Danger Room - National Security
http://blog.wired.com/defense

Threat Level-Security and Politics.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/

Danger Room - National Security
http://blog.wired.com/defense

Threat Level-Security and Politics.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/

I read a whole bunch, but the best/most useful are:

Digg: Sure, the commentary here is better, but it's nice to know what the Obamanation thinks of the latest political scandals.
Ars Technica: They've got good articles on various technical issues. Relatively low-volume.
Boing Boing: Quirky news, with a slant towards privacy concerns, steampunk, and general weirdness.
Wired's Threat Level: Alerts on various privacy issues, as well as other things the government is doing that you don't want them to be.

We use the metric system in the US, sometimes.

Another article about the same news: http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/06/mars-phoenix-tw.html

There is water ice on Mars within reach of the Mars Phoenix Lander, NASA scientists announced Thursday.

Photographic evidence settles the debate over the nature of the white material seen in photographs sent back by the craft. As seen in lower left of this image, chunks of the ice sublimed (changed directly from solid to gas) over the course of four days, after the lander's digging exposed them.

"It must be ice," said the Phoenix Lander's lead investigator, Peter Smith. "These little clumps completely disappearing over the course of a few days, that is perfect evidence that it's ice."

The confirmation that water ice exists in the area directly surrounding the lander is big and good news for the Martian mission. NASA's stated goal for the Mars Phoenix was to find exactly this -- water ice -- and then analyze it. With the latest news, the first step is accomplished. All that's left now is to get the water into the Phoenix's instruments, a task which has occasionally proven more difficult than anticipated.

Still, this is the best opportunity that humanity has ever had to analyze extraterrestrial water in any form. That had the Phoenix Lander's persona fired up.

"Are you ready to celebrate? Well, get ready: We have ICE!!!!! Yes, ICE, *WATER ICE* on Mars! w00t!!! Best day ever!!" the Mars Phoenix Lander tweeted at about 5:15 pm.

Their suspicions about water ice beneath the surface of Mars confirmed, scientists and the world will have renewed interest in the outcome of the soil analyses currently being conducted by the lander.

The samples are being examined for traces of organic molecules, among other substances, but the lander does not have instruments that could directly detect life.

See the full announcement from NASA.

"Publication" is the distribution of copies or phonorecords of a work to the public by sale or other transfer of ownership, or by rental, lease, or lending.

Get fired for reading the email of other employees? No way. Some companies even hire people to read employee email.

Is there really somebody out there that is comparing nuclear power to perpetual motion machines? Nuclear power is the leftist crackpots "Intelligent Design". Statements of faith entirely contradictory to science lead them to believe the rants and opinions of people far disconnected from scientific knowledge.

http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_08nuclear

While unmanned aerial vehicles are the future of the military, there are some serious concerns in the defense industry about the company Frontline Aerospace that is making noise about this particular drone. Specifically, the CEO appears to be all over the place in terms of his interests and talents as well as some of his claims and there are some substantial criticisms of the packaging and design.

Additionally, UAVs are principally successful because one of the first companies, General Atomics (GA), that produced the successful Predator and Reaper aircraft, developed the Predator design to a functional platform on their own dime and then asked the DOD if they were interested (they obviously were). Frontline Aerospace only has a concept right now and many folks in the defense industry are expressing a healthy skepticism at some of Frontline Aerospace's claims. Admittedly, the fact that GA essentially owns the show with Predator and Reaper does lead to some problems and the pilots are not entirely happy with all of the solutions from GA, but at least GA came to the game with a working system before making substantial claims about performance and capabilities.

I'll be looking forward to what this design potentially has, but as of right now, my eyebrows are a bit raised.

http://www.wired.com/news/images/full/judgecolleenkollar-kotelly.jpg

The treasonist whore is whoring out our rights to the highest bidder with the most power.

I hope the twatwad gets hit by a car on the way out of the courthouse.

And yet she stands next to the united states flag which means nothing to her. Perhaps she uses it to wipe her ass after shitting on our constitution?

This one's not over yet. Apparently online distribution was a third contender waiting in the wings. We shall see. Sony bought out HD-DVD. They can't buy out online distribution. In the meantime BD players and discs have gone up in price not down. That was a critical mistake.

Sony has some of the most brilliant engineers on earth. They're chained to the marketing team from hell. They always try to exploit their market share before it's time. A shame, really. They do a host other things wrong too. If it weren't so their supercomputer class gaming console would not be coming in third to the XBox and the Wii. They could use a consultant to come in and tell them how retarded their marketing team is, but they have too much pride to win. Surely I'm not the only one who sees this.

I feel a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of usenet memes cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. Many great and funny have just been lost forever to the great empty recycling bin. Let us remember these dead memes and maybe propagate them to another generation for their enjoyment. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.07/alt.pave.html

Here's the full story.

Diebold ATMs overwhelmingly run Windows. (Not all, AFAIK, only most.) Given what everyone knows about windows security, it can be hard to say exactly why this is but it is clear that something is wrong here. Diebold promises you as much accuracy at the ATM as they do at the polls. And of course, they are not alone.

I assume they mean a heavier isotope of carbon, but it's not too clear. Aren't ALL isotopes from space originally, anyhow? And which isotope of carbon are they talking about, anyhow?

Somehow, though, it makes me think about this story.

Seriously, if they're gaming the system this way, they deserve to lose their licenses.

Either that, or get appointed to the Colorado Court of Appeals.

I suspect you may have read one too many Arthur C Clarke short stories - artifical intelligence and artificial emotion are far from mutually inclusive by default. However, I agree with you to the extent that humans should maintain some level of compassion/respect even for inanimate objects, if only because we need the practice.

There is hope though, check out Wired's R is for Robot for some interesting insights into human/machine interaction.

I suspect you may have read one too many Arthur C Clarke short stories - artifical intelligence and artificial emotion are far from mutually inclusive by default. However, I agree with you to the extent that humans should maintain some level of compassion/respect even for inanimate objects, if only because we need the practice.

There is hope though, check out R is for Robot for some interesting insights into human/machine interaction.

It's funny how USA centric slashdot is.

You crack me up.

There are literally thousands of farmers that are paid to
grow nothing here.

http://www.wtop.com/?nid=116&sid=1391350

An excerpt (paragraph 4):

An additional $40 billion is for farm subsidies while almost $30 billion would go to farmers to idle their land and to other environmental programs.

Bio fuel can be grown in the desert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hioZ7C6HLs

At a rate of 100,000 gal per acre due to vertical hydroponics.

Another start up here, Coskata can make Ethanol for about
$1/gal from waste.

http://www.wired.com/cars/energy/news/2008/01/ethanol23

Some race cars run on methanol which is made from wood chips:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methanol#Automotive_fuel

We know how to convert most of the world to biofuels, and
some ppl are making good progress in that direction.

We can do it on non-arable land too.

He is the former chairman (and standing member of) the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation for 7 years.

From wikipedia: The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is a standing committee of the United States Senate in charge of all senate matters related to the following subjects:

• Coast Guard
• Coastal zone management
• Communications
• Highway safety
• Inland waterways, except construction
• Interstate commerce
• Marine and ocean navigation, safety, and transportation
• Marine fisheries
• Merchant marine and navigation
• Nonmilitary aeronautical and space sciences
• Oceans, weather, and atmospheric activities
• Panama Canal and other interoceanic canals
• Regulation of consumer products and services, including testing related to toxic substances, other than pesticides, and except for credit, financial services, and housing
• Regulation of interstate common carriers, including railroads, buses, trucks, vessels, pipelines, and civil aviation,
• Science, engineering, and technology research and development and policy,
• Sports,
• Standards and measurement,
• Transportation, Transportation and commerce aspects of Continental Shelf lands.

Yeah... he probably knows nothing about science and technology....

I think Hognoxious was implying that an underwater hippo fart might sound something like "Joomla!" with or without quotes.

As an aside, back in 1996 when Larry Page first told Sergey Brin about his page-linking thesis project called "BackRub", Brin lauged so hard that coffee came out of his nose. His java-enhanced expletive came out "Google!" and the name stuck.

Check Wikipedia if you don't believe me—but please wait a few minutes before you do.

If you interested in prediction markets, check out this wired article:

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-06/st_essay

It's a good piece on some of the challenges prediction markets have: small trading populations, mostly community insiders trading on things they care/know a lot about, small stakes. It's an interesting read!

from http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2003/06/59305
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed.
But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official website, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes.

The article also says that Continental Airlines has also pirated the same software. Also in both cases there appear to have been hacking of the software to try and disguise that this is the fact. The latter strongly implies that those responsible knew that what they were doing was wrong. Something which would typically be expected to increase the liability.
No doubt the usual double standard will prevail of going after people downloading popular entertainment, whilst ignoring large corporations who are making lots of money as a result of infringing copyright.
Politicans being hurt by laws they advocate is all too rare. Which is a great pity since Gordon Brown being locked up for 41 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes and 59 seconds might not be a bad thing :)

I guess you missed the part where nearly 85% of iPhone users regularly use the web from their phone.

Don't think anyone has linked it yet:
Original wired article

from http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2003/06/59305

  Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) suggested Tuesday that people who download copyright materials from the Internet should have their computers automatically destroyed.

But Hatch himself is using unlicensed software on his official website, which presumably would qualify his computer to be smoked by the system he proposes.

The senator's site makes extensive use of a JavaScript menu system developed by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the United Kingdom. The copyright-protected code has not been licensed for use on Hatch's website.

In Arizona, it's nigh impossible to find a car that doesn't have air conditioning... unless you're talking about a historic/classic car. And even in those cases, the owners who rebuild the car often retrofit A/C into them because it's a modern amenity that nobody wants to live without.

Cars in the American Southwest really need to have air conditioning to be practical. I'm sure someone will make a snide comment about "unsustainable living in a desert," but in truth, we're probably a little better than some other parts of the country. Case in point, a recent Wired article on rethinking what it means to be green made the case that a typical Arizona home puts less carbon into the atmosphere due to air conditioning in the summer than a New England home puts into the atmosphere due to heating in the winter.

In Arizona, it's nigh impossible to find a car that doesn't have air conditioning... unless you're talking about a historic/classic car. And even in those cases, the owners who rebuild the car often retrofit A/C into them because it's a modern amenity that nobody wants to live without.

Cars in the American Southwest really need to have air conditioning to be practical. I'm sure someone will make a snide comment about "unsustainable living in a desert," but in truth, we're probably a little better than some other parts of the country. Case in point, a recent Wired article on rethinking what it means to be green made the case that a typical Arizona home puts less carbon into the atmosphere due to air conditioning in the summer than a New England home puts into the atmosphere due to heating in the winter.

The new Camry is a TANK. It's as big as a Crown Victoria! One online review says "I stuck to local streets during my Camry Hybrid test drive and averaged 30 MPG," which is only slightly better than my non-hybrid Corolla. I suppose the hybrid Camry would be a great investment for a taxi company or somebody else who needs the trunk space, but anybody else should steer clear.

Unless your demand is otherwise, smaller is still better. Don't get fooled by the "hybrid" marketing game - compare the hybrid's MPG to a smaller car. If I were shopping for a car right now, I'd be looking at the hybrid Civic, the Prius, or (more likely) a 15-year-old crapper that does 30+MPG highway as a holdout for an all-electric car or plug-in hybrid (without voided warranty), which should be coming out in the next few years, e.g. Chevy Volt, AXP winner(s), 2010 Prius (maybe).

Looking at minimizing your carbon footprint, hybrids aren't even an option; the environmental cost of creating the battery is never going to offset the efficiency of a nice light-weight sedan. Wired had a nice article about this called "Don't Buy that New Prius!" a short while ago.

And VW's lineup will only get better.

Oh I want one of these. Get thee to the States already!!

Yeah, people have. And as for checking in: you don't have to do it in person. I usually use the terminals to check in, which only requires a confirmation number. It's also possible to check in without being at the airport. Slightly difficult to check id that way....

And here's a story of someone flying without id at all: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/06/71115

A lot of people still have their $100 rebate from their original priced iPhones. Remember the $500/600 price tags on them? See http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/2007/09/steve-jobs-eats.html to job the memory.

Remember that the credit doesn't count towards itunes purchases, only Apple Store purchases. So I plan on using it towards a 3G phone.

The local and state prosecutors in Missouri didn't think it was already illegal. They decided they didn't have grounds to prosecute Lori Drew. I would imagine the prosecutors desperately wished the reverse were true, don't you?

The law applies to "severe, repeated, and hostile behavior." What constitutes such behavior is up to a jury to decide, but I doubt a little name-calling would be sufficient. The Lori Drew/Megan Meier case is quite different from "name-calling" in that a middle-aged adult conducted a systematic and lengthy campaign of harassment against a 13-year-old girl. I'd call what Drew did far more "severe" than any of the name-calling I see on Internet forums.

I'm not necessarily arguing in favor of this particular law, but the characterization of the bill presented here on Slashdot is frankly a parody of the actual language. Moreover you don't even have to read TFA; the actual language is right there in the summary at the top of the page.

Again I'll note that if you want to worry about the implications of this case, I suggest looking at the Federal indictment of Drew last month. It has the potential to establish much more worrisome precedents.

The story is believable enough, but, let's let the DA PROVE it first.

In this case, I wonder: wasn't Reiser committed wrongfully? Because if finding the body could turn the conviction from first degree to second degree murder it clearly means that first degree murder hasn't been proved beyond reasonable doubt. At least, "beyond reasonable doubt" doesn't seem like something that could be dispelled by examining a body that has been hidden for several years.

And what if, after examining the body, evidence is found that death could have had a natural cause, or be a suicide? With that reasonable doubt, would the conviction be reversed?

Finally, the juror mentioned in this article that made his decision based on the accused's eyes really scares me. What if I had been tried? Would a crazy schoolteacher send me to prison for life because he didn't like the look in my eyes? There's so much debate on lie detectors in general, experts cannot agree on which subtle body signals will tell if someone is lying or not. If trained police agents, people with vast experience in interrogation practices, using advanced equipment for evaluating stress, cannot tell for sure if someone is lying or not, how come a fifth-grade schoolteacher is able to tell just by a glance at the eyes?...

I'm not saying Reiser is either guilty or not. But that juror's statements make me hope I never stand trial, not under that system, unless there's at least one honest man in the jury to restrain the crazy old schoolteachers.

This isn't about your little guy getting beaten up by bullies at school (that's still pretty much legal, at least this law doesn't address it at all). It's about being called names on the internet.

No, actually it's about Megan Meier who committed suicide after being harassed by a 49 year-old woman named Lori Drew. Missouri prosecutors decided there was no legal basis to pursue Drew for her acts; this bill is the result.

The real concern isn't this bill, but the Federal indictment against Drew in Los Angeles a few weeks ago. Drew is being prosecuted under anti-hacking statutes because she violated MySpace's Terms of Service and impersonated a teen-aged boy in order to carry out her harassment. I'm much more concerned with establishing a Federal precedent that website operators' Terms of Service can be backed up by Federal law than I am about this Missouri law. Of course my submission on the LA case here was rejected; I guess it wasn't as easy to laugh at as the Missouri bill.

It is said that they previously would not let EMI sell their albums song by song, but that they must be sold as an album. They changed their minds with In Rainbows and now with their entire back catalog.

It seems like the GP is either ignorant of the existence of the tablet PC, or just wants a giant PDA (tablet PC, no keyboard.)

I own a tablet PC, and no, I don't think he wants one in its current form, because no tablet PC is small or cheap. They're all expensive, and even the ones with small screens are absurdly thick and heavy. No, what he's asking for -- and what I'd want, too -- would be a convertible tablet (i.e., including keyboard) with about a 6" by 8" 1024x768 screen, <= 2lbs, <= $500, <= 1/2" thick, and running Windows XP Tablet Edition (because Vista is too CPU-hungry, Linux doesn't have any tablet apps, and it should have a PC OS, not a PDA one.

And before you say "you're asking for too much!" what I want almost already existed years ago: namely, the Sharp Actius MM10. You could literally add only a Wacom digitizer and a swiveling hinge to that, and it'd be perfect (but, of course, somewhat updated performance would be good too; maybe use an Intel Atom or Via chip -- whatever would be fastest while still keeping the price below $500).

Oops, better picture here:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html