Wired has a great article about the downfall of the economy — and society in general. The article, Free! Why $0.00 Is the Future of Business, is a great piece about computers, and the no cost products they have unleashed upon the world.
I didn’t read the entire article (6 f’n pages long!), but I know what it says. The internet has brought with it all the political ideologies of those barefoot, smelly, patchouli-wearing hippies, out in Silicon Valley. They continue to give away products and services — for free — to destabilize the economy. They claim it is the business model of new media, but we’re onto them, and have had enough.
From the article:
… A typical online site follows the 1 Percent Rule — 1 percent of users support all the rest. In the freemium model, that means for every user who pays for the premium version of the site, 99 others get the basic free version. The reason this works is that the cost of serving the 99 percent is close enough to zero to call it nothing.
Bastards. Obnoxious Mods has decided that, in order to thwart this socialist onslaught, we need to take drastic measures. We will begin charging to read this blog. We figure $0.10/word ought to be about right for the wisdom we dispense daily.
That is $0.09/word more than we pay our good friends over in Mumbai to write it. I love the internet.
Unfortunately we don’t have the means to setup a subscription service so we will be going on the honor system. Just keep track of how many words you read and send us a check. You can make the check out to Cash and send it to the following address.
PO Box 7775 #62266
San Francisco, CA 94120-7775
Remember, we’re all up in your cookies, watching your every move.
… from Wired
Scientists have discovered how birds stay in formation when flying, namely, the starling bird. Apparently they just act as if they are a high school student and follow everyone else. Each bird pays attention to seven of its neighbors and looks for clues as to the direction.
This of course brings us one step closer to the swarms of evil nanobots combing the globe that Michael Crichton described to in his novel, Prey.
… from Neatorama
If you want to do something more than eat to save the world then we have the product for you. Typically, to save energy while using your computer, you could use either of the Standby or Hibernate modes. They allow you to save the computers current state without leaving the computer to run and waste electricity. Great for most of us, right? But what if you’re a whore for attention, and driving a car with “hybrid” on the side in big letters isn’t enough? The short answer is: Buy an Eco Button. This little waste of space will put your computer to sleep when you slap down on it with an authoritative, “I’m doing my part to save Mother Earth.”
But wait, there’s more! From the article:
The USB-powered button comes with software that tells you how much energy and how many carbon units you’ve saved through its labor-saving practices.
You better use this thing often though, because as it is plastic, it is made using petroleum. And don’t forget the human cost of [probably] being manufactured in China. The upside though is that China’s impeccable environmental record will almost certainly put you ahead.
… from Everything USB
I love the United Kingdom. You can walk around London and see camera after camera watching your every move. You really feel… whats’s the word? Guilty. Safe. Originally a monarchy, London really knows how to be scared of her own citizens. Instead of open dialog and discussion the UK has decided to use closed-ciruit television cameras (CCTV) to make their tiny, unimportant country feel safer. The picture above shows just how safe they’ve made the area surrounding George Orwell’s former home.
Cameras aren’t enough, however. To be truly safe you need a national ID and database system in place and checkpoints with barb wire and dogs and the Brit’s gov’t realizes this. Those communists terrorists over at no2id.net disagree and have put up a leaked government document detailing plans on how London plans to sell the idea to the peasants. I can’t wait until my country, the good ol’ US of A, will take England’s lead and get on the lockdown train. Go Manchester United!
A mirror of the leaked 1.2 MB PDF document with annotations from no2id.net. Don’t look at it or you’re a traitor.
… from Boing Boing
For those of you not following this story. The Pirate Bay is a torrent search engine based in Sweden. What gets peoples panties in a bunch is that sometimes people upload torrents for copyrighted content. Take a look at a sample of the content that is searchable. I know… makes me sick too. Certain entities in the United States — and other locations — have a problem with them and continue to try to shut them down — unsuccessfully.
The problem is that none of the illegal content is actually hosted on the Pirate Bay servers. A torrent file is just a map to where to get the content that can be understood by special programs. For some reason those idiots in Sweden think this isn’t illegal since The Pirate Bay isn’t actually letting users download illegal content themselves. For comparison, here in the States, you will be drawn and quartered for sharing torrent files. Comcast is even slowing down BitTorrent traffic.
But since what The Pirate Bay does isn’t illegal in their country — no matter how much the MPAA/RIAA beg — they will be set free to pirate another day.
… from The INQUIRER
I’m glad someone has come up with this. It’s like an eye shade only it plugs into your computer via USB to give you soothing eye-warmth. You are also easily able to control the temperature by using the on/off switch.
Just the other day I was complaining to my girlfriend about how my eyes were a bit chilly. She of course told me to put on a sweater because she was “soooo warm”.
… from GetUSB.info
I just know a great idea when I see one. Take the product above as an example. It just screams, “Good idea!”. One part iPod and speakers and one part sub-woofer inside fragile Chinese-styled vase.
To better explain this product here is a work of fiction describing how we think it came to be:
The Disgruntled Designer
by Cory
“My job sucks. I just work on Apple iPod docks ALL day”, the designer thought to himself as he left his desk, “I need some snacks.”
The designer stood at the vending machine trying to decide between snacks. Will it be the Donettes or the Snickers? Just then an idea hit him like a ton of Donettes…
“It’s perfect”, he whispered to himself.
The designer arrived back at his desk and quickly went into sketching mode.
“It will have all the class of a taxicab crown air freshener, stupidity of most iPod docks, and the type of design that those iPod freaks have become accustomed to.”
He walked into his bosses office with the concept in hand.
“What am I doing? I’m going to lose my job.”, he thought, but quickly reconciled, “Oh well, what the hell, this job sucks.”
No matter – after a few short moments his boss loved the idea and they bumped it right into production. And that product was the iPod dock and Chinese-styled vase sub-woofer.
The end.
… from DVICE
Take a look at this alarm clock hack. Some might say this is simple tomfoolery. And those some are the bleeding heart liberals out there. This video is nothing more than a glimpse into Canada’s secret plans to take over the good ol’ US of A.
What the hell is this guy talking about, you might ask? I’ll tell you what I’m talking about.
- Canada’s timber industry has been gaining steam in recent years. NAFTA hasn’t hurt. This has had a ripple effect of slowly increasing the value of the Canuck dollar.
- The price of a barrel of oil has risen and now suddenly Canada has vast oil reserves 2nd only to our close ally, Saudi Arabia. WTF Canada? Where were you during the 80’s? You are trying to bleed us dry.
- And now this shifty-eyed, hockey-loving, beer-swilling Canadian is showing off his alarm clock. Obviously they are creating these things for their citizens so they can get a jump on the day and slowly surpass us on every front. That can be the only logical conclusion that any intelligent human being could arrive at.
Damn Canadians.
… from Laughing Squid
The Recording Association Industry of America (RIAA) has sued a lot of people in their time. You could even say they’ve sued more people than that guy you see on TV who helps people who have slipped and fallen. Why are they so so-happy? It turns out some people like music and share it with others on the intarwebs. Ya… the heathens, we know.
What makes this current case special is the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has been trying to kill the RIAA’s “making available” case. Making available means that Jeffrey and Pamela Howell had turned some of their CDs into MP3s and placed them in their KaZaA share folder. The RIAA’s investigative arm, SafeNet (formely MediaSentry), found this songs and downloaded them.
You have a CD. You tell your friend that you will burn him a copy. You get sued, even before you give the copy to your friend. You see, the RIAA has no proof that any copies were actually downloaded by anyone and therefore no proof that any copyright infringement actually occurred. At least, that is the claim that EFF makes.
From the article:
Because the law specifically gives copyright owners the ability to control copies distributed “to the public,” the music labels need to show that such distribution took place. The EFF points out that the copyright holder itself can hardly be considered “the public,” and goes on to claim that “an authorized agent acting on behalf of the copyright owner also cannot infringe any rights held by that owner.” Their conclusion is therefore that ”where the only evidence of infringing distribution consists of distributions to authorized agents of the copyright owner, that evidence cannot, by itself, establish that other, unauthorized distributions have taken place.”
Pretty crafty are those EFF attorneys. It seems the money we donated is being well spent. As you can tell there was no sex in this article, but let’s be real here, why else would you read something like this? You’d rather watch a gopher fart on YouTube or something.
For any stupid lawsuit:
… from ars technica
