Well. Well. After three high court justices ruled that rap was pretty a much a foreign language, I figured it was time to whip out the schoolbook and learn me some rap yo’.
But first I needed a name here. Which turned out to be:
A** MACHINE JONES
Give it go. I wonder what blingin’ bling ghetto name you end up with. It can’t be worse than mine.
The Recording Industry Association of America have recently won a lawsuit against Verizon, an American ISP. Under this, Verizon were forced to provide the RIAA with the personal details of four subscribers suspected of using Kazaa to share copyrighted materials.
However, I doubt this will be the death knell for file sharing networks. It is expected that the successors to Kazaa and its brethren will be able to hide their IP addresses, thereby protecting the anonymity of those whose use them. More details and some thoughts on the case by media expert Bill Thompson can be found here.
could be just round the corner. Honorary astronomer royal, Martin Rees has estimated the odds of an apocolyptic disaster striking the Earth at about 50/50. He thinks the biggest problems could be man made rather than natural. This sounds entirely plausible and somewhat worrying, not least if like me, you believe that Rees has neglected to take into account the Wubble-you factor. Thanks to Julian O for pointing this article out to me.
I’m working on my Union Jack proposal. I want to have a method of tracking down stolen hardware through background programs on said hardware sending packets of info to a predetermined tracking computer so that the packet information can be read and some clue of the stolen stuff’s location determined. I know there’d be the whole issue of firewalls etc. to get round but, in theory, is this possible?
I need there to be some hardware with this built in in the story, to change a particular plot point from happenstance to logical event, so if it doesn’t exist I will have to make it up.
Lego have cooperated with NASA to produce a mini dvd tacked to one of the Mars Lander’s landing petals. Painted on the dvd is Biff Starling- excitable but easily distracted plastic spaceman.
“Dude, I’m just hanging out in here the day before launch,” Starling wrote in an e-mail to ground controllers Jack Dash and Jill Dot on Saturday. “These space types sure close everything up early–many days ahead of launch. I know they’re just making sure everything is ready to go, but if I weren’t a robot, I’d be seriously hungry about now for some space snacks.”
via BoingBoing
Having missed the Ani DiFranco concert last week because John forgot what day of the week it was, we’ll just have to settle for this interview on Salon (You’ll have to go through an ad to get a one day pass.)
A dictionary of contemporary newspeak.
“Paul of Tarsus” is now “Jesus”
“John the Evangelist” is now “Jesus”
the author of Leviticus is now “Jesus”
Jesus is now a Republican
According to the BBC generation X are over the hill. It seems that workplace ageism now starts at 35, especially in the tech sector. I’ll order my zimmer frame now.
The FBI has called in real life teenagers to teach agents how to sound right when leading paedophiles on in chatrooms.
We at Team Spinneyhead are big Willow/ Alyson Hannigan fans, as are so many others. Indeed, as possibly the highest profile lesbian on television, the character of Willow, and her relationships, gets quite a bit of analysis (includes spoilers for those of us who haven’t seen season 7 yet). There was even talk of a Willow based Buffy spin off, though the typically wussy TV execs were scared of a show that would portray dykes as rounded characters. Sigh.
Still, I guess we’ve got American Wedding to look forward to.