Are people really this stupid?
Well, yea, I guess they are...
So my latest favorite website Digg.com released "Digg version 3" on Monday. I admit that I tend to assume that the three people that read this site also read slashdot and (now) digg, and don't repeat stories that I find there on here. Anyway, the new version of digg has some new things, some good, some bad, and some completely indifferent. I'll note these below with :-) :-( and :-| respectively.
The only real downside I see is the amount of stories that go onto the frontpage is going to double/triple/quadruple, meaning it'll be harder to catch up. Conversely, slashdot's story posting seems to have slowed down recently. It's still about a story an hour, it just "feels" slower compared to the rapid fire digg.com site activity.
To echo my buddy Dave..... *bounce bounce*:
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
From the tales of the wierd comes a Maury show clip about a girl with a pickle phobia. Now that's messed up. I just wish Maury would tell these people <godfather voice>BE A MAN!</godfather voice> Seriously, these people have some fubar issues and are put on display for the ridicule of the TV audience.
I need to do about 10 of these suggestions!
Very recently posted, lots of new tidbits, very cool looking. The advanced screening people that I've heard have been raving about Superman Returns.... can't wait! View the trailer here.
Yet another hilarious and pretty accurate report on gaming and gamers and what the US congress is doing about them. Yay for election year grandstanding? :)
Here's a neat little home project.... know those clocks with the LEDs floating in the air? Here are the instructions to make your own. Needs a bit of electronics experience to make a board yourself it looks like, but if you do, or can rent an electronics nerd with some pizza and beer, could be a neat addition to your office :)
As seen on forgetfoo is this video.... YouTube - Zuiikin Gals II. I'm at 1:20 of the 3:52 and my ears are bleeding and I'm considering jamming a pen into my eyeball to make the pain stop. It's possibly the most screwed up thing I've ever seen, and yet it's so simple.... just hot oriential girls in bikinis (SFW) saying things. Well, except for the randomly interspersed old men on the street.
I recommend you watch it with the sound off and imagine the bikinis are much smaller.
3:05. OK, I'm bailing.
I watched the videos from the BumpTop Prototype site and it's definately ingenious.... making windows and files act very much like paper on a desk. However, I thought that we used computers because organization was easier than moving papers around on a desk? :) Watch the video to see what you think.
Wow, and I thought farcry was realistic looking. Check out this 14 minute Crysis video. Amazing looking with a lot of cool stuff that looks like it'll help gameplay (destructable environments) and not just be eye candy. Too bad the resolution is so crappy :(
Another interesting Google maps/earth mashup is Where I Had My First Kiss . com which lets you tell and show the world where it was.
Jensen Harris has a neat post with some history on the close button entitled You Windows 3.1 Lovers! He also discusses some of the changes regarding the UI in the latest version of MS Office.
A very funny video of how MS has been innovating lately. Punish your Microsoft developer is apparently from an MS event, but as it's the first time I've seen it I figured I'd share.
I know some friends of mine have the motorola RAZR cell phone, so this link might be interesting to them. Hack the Motorola RAZR V3 Tutorial covers software upgrades, changing logos, changing how the system works, etc.
Please let her 15 minutes be over soon (you have to log in to see a black and white video Paris Hilton singing and flouncing around). Tick, tock, tick...
Quite frankly I think the video that came up as suggested of two orange cats is far more amusing and cute :)
This is neat, a couple of humans doing humans. Fake effects, real moves. Nifty.
Very funny video of Harvard Class Day Speech 2006. Via Digg.
It's like Digg, but for naked chicks. ForgetFoo unleashes NippleByte.
BoingBoing has a nice review of Coupland's JPod: the Anti-Microserfs.
Gamespot has a nice list of reasons why it's worth to be a PCgamer in 2007. The ones I knew about and was excited about were Spore, Crysis, and Intersteller Marines. The list is pretty long, not just FPS like I like, but role playing and puzzel games as well. I also hadn't heard about Medal of Honor:Airborne Assault before, I loved that game before I discovered Call of Duty, I'm looking forward to a graphically updated version of MoH:AA.
So this is pretty intersting.... according to a digg story, Vista Beta 2 will be available for public download later today.
I'm not sure of a couple of things... is this only for people with MSDN access, or a 100% public beta such as they did recently for office 2007? What restrictions will be placed on it (I'm going to guess it'll be expireware)? Etc etc.
On the other hand, this is pretty brilliant. Vista is the "next big thing" for the home desktop market, and all the magic 8 balls say that it'll be available to the public Q1 2007 at the earliest. That's another 6 months before it can start being realisticly in the hands of the average joe, and then only at either the cost of the OS or bundled with a new computer. This way everyone can get access to it, free, get the brainshare going, and have an extra 6 months of (in theory) training to get used to the OS which will be a lot different than XP.
I wonder if they'll be taking tech support calls, or will be relying on the QA software built into the OS itself? Either way, it'll be interesting to see if this makes the final release less buggy and more secure.
Also, it kicks the pirates in the balls a bit. No more need to download the torrent from pirate bay, grab it straight from MS. Of course, this also goes along with my theory that MS actually likes pirates or at least does the minimum to protect their software from piracy so it gets into the hands of the most people, and increases their brainshare. Now, they have been cracking down lately, but when you have 90% of the market, you don't need to spread much further.
Things I'll be looking for...
Anyway, I'll be downloading and installing this over the vista beta 1 install I have from an earlier torrent on my second hard drive :)
Update: Downloads now working.....
The GNOME art site has set up some GnomeArt Tutorials on the gnome wiki.
Ok, it's not really flying, but it's pretty close. I've seen this before sometime ago, and it needed a repost. Here's a video of the Flying Dude. He's more like a flying squirrel though. Check it out though, very cool vid.
Check out this Google Spreadsheets - Sneak Peek. Personally I think this is cool. The technology is nothing hugely new, and the features of course don't match excel at all.... however, the number of users who use all of excels features, or really use anything more than basic spreadsheet capability, are probably pretty low. This, combined with the integration of google spreadsheets into gmail/gtalk/calendaring, etc etc, will make this something to watch anyway, especially with google's purchase of writely will make google something to (continue) watching.
This is pretty cool... the owner/writer/creator of pbase created what he calls The Photographer’s Screen Saver. Basically it displays image on your screen, but has a few nice tweaks for multiple monitors and image paths. Looks cool, check it out.
Just an FYI that I did some looking through accounts on the server that hadn't been logged into for more than a couple of years, or that combined with only having spam in their mailboxes. The users have been disabled, if any of these are in error let me know and I'll fix them up. This probably won't affect anyone, but I figured I'd throw it out anyway.
Chris Ball has a presentation online which highlights some great perl modules.
I had a big *blink* moment a second ago when I surfed to Slashdot and discovered they'd implemented the new look and feel. That's pretty big, seeing as they've had the same look for a good ... uhm.... well, forever. I think the new look is a bit more modern looking, a bit odd (that can be written off to the fact it's brand new), and still keeps the "slashdot look" which is what the requirement that CmdrTaco had.
Now this is an amazing demonstration of RC plane flying. This guy does just about anything you can imagine with a fair sized plane in a school gym. Makes it stand on it's head, balance in the air, and flip and flop around in amazingly tight quarters. Check out the video. Thanks Dana for the link.
If you've been hit by the ugly virus that encrypts all the files on your hard drives and then extorts you for cash, you're lucky. The article states that the virus has been cracked and that the password you need is: "mf2lro8sw03ufvnsq034jfowr18f3cszc20vmw".
Fun times :)
I know I rag on Microsoft, and Windows security, but at least there are those out there doing something about it. My ex-boss, ex-coworker and good friend Dana has just released version 1.1 of Firewall Dashboard. New features include: