Saturday, June 30, 2007

iPhone disassembly

Ifixit takes apart a new iPhone complete with pictures and detailed commentary.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Off to Menorca

i'm off to Menorca for a week so blogging will be non existent.

in the meantime, here's a the google maps link to where i am staying:

Son Bou , Menorca

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

10,000 websites infected with MPack hack

Attackers have launched massive attacks in Europe from a network of at least 10,000 hacked websites, several security companies have warned.

Analysts reported the opening salvos of a large-scale attack based on the multi-exploit hacker kit called "Mpack” as early as Friday. Attackers taint compromised websites with code that redirects visitors to a server hosting the Mpack kit - a professional, Russian-made collection of exploits that comes complete with a management console to detail which exploits are working, and against what countries' domains.

More here

More info:
TrendMicro - Italian Job
Mpack it up
Symantecc - Mpack packed full of badness
Slashdot - The Italian Job

Update:
An Italian blog reports that all of the servers compromised are IIS 6.0/Windows 2003 servers.

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

French nuclear energy advert

Trust the French to make an advert that makes nuclear energy stylish, funky and cool. This ad is by H5
- the same folks that gave us that Royksopp video.

Linkdump

Mandriva - Not our job to pay protection money
Test Drive of PC BSD
Plan 9 running on the Blue Gene supercomputer
Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo is a gramatically correct sentence.
Star Wars galaxy map
Map of Antarctic lakes and rivers beneath the ice sheet Via here
Physics with two time dimensions
Superconducting turbojet
Cosmic horseshoe - a nearly complete Einstein ring
Sloan Digital Sky Survey

Monday, June 18, 2007

Sicko

Michael Moore's Sicko on Google video. The full film.

Friday, June 15, 2007

Helsinki public transport in live Google Maps mash up



Helsinki public transport live GPS enabled Google map.

Hat tip:Google Maps Mania


Other interesting mash ups:
Gridskipper
Washington Post local explorer

Old Bailey online

The Old Bailey Online site has online transcripts of historical London trials. The site "contains 101,102 trials, from April 1674 to October 1834".
There are a multitude of ways to sift through the data - you can search by crime, by punishment, by defendant name, by year and many others.

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Alternative Linux development environments

HBasic
HBasic is an integrated development environment used to create, execute and debug programs with an BASIC style language. HBasic has object oriented features either in combination with precompiled C++ components (shared libraries) or class definitions (HBasic sourcecode). This also includes a version of inheritance. HBasic runs on Linux and uses the KDE GUI libraries.

Dabo Desktop Application Framework
Dabo is a 3-tier, cross-platform application development framework, written in Python atop the wxPython GUI toolkit. And while Dabo is designed to create database-centric apps, that is not a requirement. Lots of people are using Dabo for the GUI tools to create apps that have no need to connect to a database at all.

Lazarus
Lazarus is the class libraries for Free Pascal that emulate Delphi. Free Pascal is a GPL'ed compiler that runs on Linux, Win32, OS/2, 68K and more. Free Pascal is designed to be able to understand and compile Delphi syntax, which is of course OOP. Lazarus is the part of the missing puzzle that will allow you to develop Delphi like programs in all of the above platforms. Unlike Java which strives to be a write once run anywhere, Lazarus and Free Pascal strives for write once compile anywhere. Since the exact same compiler is available on all of the above platforms it means you don't need to do any recoding to produce identical products for different platforms.

Hat tip: Linux Action Show

Monday, June 11, 2007

How did the Sopranos end?

Answer: a big crescendo of nothing

Via Reuters


MONTCLAIR, New Jersey (Reuters) - Whaddya gonna do? After building tension for six seasons over 8-1/2 years, "The Sopranos," one of America's most critically acclaimed television shows, ended on Sunday with nothing more than a black screen. And there was no clear answer to the big question -- would mob boss Tony Soprano sleep with the fishes?

Instead the mobster, who suffers the same worries as the rest of us, even if he gets relief from the occasional murder, finished the show munching onion rings in a New Jersey diner surrounded by a smiling wife and two content kids.

Sure a guy looking like a hit man had entered the restroom behind Tony and might be expected to come back out and kill the entire family, but then the screen went black for about five seconds and that was that. Some fans were disappointed.


More over here on the Captains Quarters blog
Angry fans crash HBO site
More critics

Friday, June 08, 2007

Witricity

M.I.T. have demoed witricity , a form of wireless electricity, according to Engadget. Goodbye power cables and batteries.

More info:
Turning sound waves into electricity
Cable free power arrives
Power can be sent through thin air
MIT demos witricity
Wireless power transfer revisited

Friday linkdump

Simplicity may be key to robotic self-reproduction
Lastgraph - graphs of last.fm listening habits
Hacking Google street view
Chinese writing may be 8,000 years old
The Art of Wikigroaning
The Armageddon flowchart
Pirate myths

Thursday, June 07, 2007

Planets and stars to scale (video)

Wednesday, June 06, 2007

Cow Socialism

Hat tip :Rick O'Shea's Breakfast Blog

SOCIALISM:You have 2 cows, and you give one to your neighbour.

COMMUNISM:You have 2 cows. The State takes both and gives you some milk.

FASCISM:You have 2 cows. The State takes both and sells you some milk.

NAZISM:You have 2 cows. The State takes both and shoots you.

BUREAUCRATISM:You have 2 cows. The State takes both, shoots one, milks the other, and then throws the milk away...

TRADITIONAL CAPITALISM:You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.Your herd multiplies, and the economy grows. You sell them and retire on the income.

SURREALISM:You have two giraffes. The government requires you to take harmonica lessons.

AN AMERICAN CORPORATION:You have two cows.You sell one, and force the other to produce the milk of four cows.Later, you hire a consultant to analyse why the cow has dropped dead.

ENRON VENTURE CAPITALISM:You have two cows.You sell three of them to your publicly listed company, using letters of credit opened by your brother-in-law at the bank, then execute a debt/equity swap with an associated general offer so that you get all four cows back, with a tax exemption for five cows. The milk rights of the six cows are transferred via an intermediary to a Cayman Island Company secretly owned by the majority shareholder who sells the rights to all seven cows back to your listed company. The annual report says the company owns eight cows, with an option on one more.Sell one cow to buy a new president of the United States, leaving you with nine cows. No balance sheet provided with the release. The public buys your bull.

A FRENCH CORPORATION:You have two cows.You go on strike, organise a riot, and block the roads, because you want three cows.

A JAPANESE CORPORATION:You have two cows.You redesign them so they are one-tenth the size of an ordinary cow and produce twenty times the milk.You then create a clever cow cartoon image called 'Cowkimon' and market it worldwide.

A GERMAN CORPORATION:You have two cows.You re-engineer them so they live for 100 years, eat once a month, and milk themselves.

AN ITALIAN CORPORATION:You have two cows, but you don't know where they are. You decide to have lunch.

A RUSSIAN CORPORATION:You have two cows.You count them and learn you have five cows. You count them again and learn you have 42 cows.You count them again and learn you have 2 cows. You stop counting cows because your sobering up and open another bottle of vodka.

A CHINESE CORPORATION:You have two cows. You have 300 people milking them. You claim that you have full employment, and high bovine productivity, and arrest the newsman who report the real situation.

AN IRAQI CORPORATION:Everyone thinks you have lots of cows.You tell them that you have none.No-one believes you, so they bomb the sh*t out of you and invade your country. You still have no cows, but now you're a "democracy"....

THE POLISH GOVERNMENT:You have two cows. You lecture one on how turning gay will mean the end of cattle. The other cow emigrates.

CHELSEA FOOTBALL CLUB:You have two cows and twentysomething overpaid donkeys. Everyone hates you.

THE WELSH:You have two cows. You try not to look too disappointed.

AN IRISH ENTREPRENEUR:You have two cows. You borrow against future headage payments to develop your land. The cows can live in flat 62. In Bulgaria.

AN IRISH RURAL DWELLER:You have two cows. An Taisce object.

THE IRISH TIMES:You have two cows. They don't always agree with you. What sort of cattle are they?

THE SUNDAY INDEPENDENT:You have two cows. You start sleeping with one of them. A column follows.

FINE GAEL:You have two cows and, by God, a CONTRACT for two more!

PROGRESSIVE DEMOCRATS:You have two cows. The others were destroyed by an ungrateful public.You're not quite sure if two is enough to maintain an actual farm.

SINN FÉIN:You have two cows, not enough green fields, and lots and lots of sheep.

THE GREENS:You have two cows and an extensive portfolio of equity interests in various American food and beverage corporations. You sell these and pay child actors to pretend they want adults to vote for you.

FIANNA FÁIL:You had two cows. Due to separation proceedings with your one-time heifers, you dodge any questions on your finances.

Socialist Party:You have two cows. You keep one and pay the other to your party. This keeps you in touch with ordinary working farmers who have only one cow. The other farmers ignore or patronise you.

THE H.S.E.:You have two cows. They go on strike.

Google Earth - new imagery

From the Google Earth Community forum:

New high resolution:
Canada: Whistler, BC; Waterloo & Toronto, Ontario; Nanaimo, BC; and
Fort Saskatchewan, AB
England: Base 50cm coverage of nearly entire country,
Germany: Cities/Regions of Greifswald, Trier, Köln, Stuttgart, Bonn,
Oldenburg, Rostock, Saarbrücken, Hamburg, Hannover, and Ritterhude
Austria: Villach region
France: Cities of Caen, Dijon, Metz, St Etienne, Toulouse and Rouen
Spain: Catalonia and Valencia
Andorra
US: Imperial County (CA); Yellowstone National Park (WY);
Galveston/Houston (TX); Peterborough (NH); Cheyenne (WY); Burke, Wake,
and Cabarrus Counties (NC); Racine and Kenosha Counties (WI);
Washington, DC; St Paul (MN); and the State of Alabama
Japan: City/Regions of Kochi, Asahikawa, Koriyama, Miyazaki, Nagano,
Utsunomiya, Akita, and Toyama

Large Digital Globe (60cm) update includes areas in Sudan, expanded
Africa, Australia, Mexico coverage and smaller areas of coverage in
Asia, Polynesia, South America, Canada, Europe, Middle East plus some
interesting islands in Antarctica and Greenland.

Updated Imagery:
Americas: Bogotá, Columbia; Mission Viejo (CA, US); Hillsborough County (FL, US)
EU: Dublin, Ireland
Middle East/Africa: Beirut, Lebanon and Tripoli, Libya
Asia: Hong Kong and Manila, Philippines

Updated Terrain:
Western US 10m, Canary Islands 10m

hat tip:Google Earth Blog

The worst logo in world ever



A logo that was made for Instituto de Estudos Orientais in Brazil. It's meant to portray an oriental house in front of a setting sun.



via here

D-Day anniversary


Wiki image of Omaha beach landing
Direct link to full 3000 × 2274 image
D-Day on wikipedia
Omaha beach article

The best job in entire world

Looks like i'm wasteing my time with blogging, working, adsensing,breathing, getting up in the morning, eating..

i should have bought some Australian forest.

Farmer gets $1 million for doing nothing

Tuesday, June 05, 2007

Alternative London logo



found this here on facebook

I like this one - simple , effective, and the last letter "n" reminds me of a London tube tunnel.

BBC gets Goatsed on live TV

BBC London news today broadcast viewer's alternative logos for the 2012 London Olympics.
But one of them was a bit familiar to veteran web users

Monday, June 04, 2007

Lisa Simpson giving head

or rather, the new London Olympics logo

Blogger reactions (London Metro)
this logo is fucking shit, Devils Kitchen
This looks like the logo for the Annual Rabbit Shagging Championships, Iain Dale
How much of my money did they blow on this pink day-glo pig's abortion of a logo, I wonder?, Mr Eugenides

the answer is : £400,000

"Lisa Simpson giving head",Reddit
Rebranding the Olympics, Buzzfeed

At the moment the "Lisa Simpson giving head" meme seems to be gaining the most traction.

The BBC gets Goatsed


Via Flickr

Desktop tower of money

The story behind the Flash game Desktop Tower Defense. The game gets 20 million page views a month, with a resultant 4 figure ad revenue stream.

Myth TV versus Vista MCE review

Over on the AVS forum , there is a review of Myth TV on Ubuntu versus Vista Media Center.

Hat tip:Slashdot

Saturday, June 02, 2007

Chymera - Xcela - free to download

Chymera has released a free to download track from from this blogpost on MySpace.

Further links:
Chymera on MySpace
Chymera - official website

John Chow made $10,559.40 last month

John Chow has posted a breakdown on the amount of money his blog made last month from his blog - $10,559.40 in total. What's interesting is that he has a wide variety of revenue sources, so he's not entirely dependent on Adsense. Not bad going for a site that got 187,324 unique visitors last month.

Capital of Togo

Sometimes Google Trends throws up some weird and wonderful results. Today I find that capital of Togo is currently at no.8. You can clearly see a spike in searching for this term:



I have no idea why this term has suddenly become popular, but for those who are interested, the capital of Togo is Lome

Friday, June 01, 2007

Top 15 Google street view sightings

Mashable has put together a top 15 of google street view sightings.

The Loch Ness monster is back!

pretty amazing footage in this video:


more here:



Hat tip:The WTF blog


Updated: 9:06 p.m. PT May 31, 2007

EDINBURGH, Scotland - The Loch Ness monster is back — and there’s video.

A man has captured what Nessie watchers say is possible footage of the supposed mythical creature beneath Scotland’s most mysterious lake.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw this jet black thing, about 45 feet [13 meters] long, moving fairly fast in the water,” said Gordon Holmes, a 55-year-old lab technician from Shipley, Yorkshire, who took the video Saturday.

Nessie watcher and marine biologist Adrian Shine viewed the video and hoped to properly analyze it in the coming months.

“I see myself as a skeptical interpreter of what happens in the loch, but I do keep an open mind about these things and there is no doubt this is some of the best footage I have seen,” said Shine, of the Loch Ness 2000 center in Drumnadrochit, on the shores of the lake.

Holmes said whatever it was moved at about 6 mph (10 kilometers per hour) and kept a fairly straight course.

“My initial thought is it could be a very big eel, they have serpentlike features and they may explain all the sightings in Loch Ness over the years.”

Link baiting update


I thought I'd get a few hundred extra hits from my link baiting experiment, but not this many! Pretty crazy , eh?