Saddam executed

Matt Drudge
Reuters - hanged at dawn
Al jazeera
Newsweek interview with videographer
Wikipedia page on the execution

LMMS

LMMS (a fruityloops clone) running on Fedora 5.

Maps

25 things to do with Google Maps
and here's 25 more things to do
Digital Urban announces panorama viewer

linkorama

25 addictive flash games
cant stop.
BBC moves to file sharing sites
Deal made with Azureus.

Marines in space

Semper Fly : Marines in space

Popular Science article on the proposed suborbital spacecraft that would deploy a batch of U.S. marines anywhere on the planet within 2 hours.

Google Zeitgeist 2006

Google have released the 2006 zeitgeist

Google Earth Update

Christmas has come early - there's been a Google Earth update. OgleEarth has the details.

Linkfest

Microsoft's Yellow Road to Cairo
Microsoft used its new clout to introduce a product vision called Cairo in 1991; it disrupted development and marginalized competition throughout the next decade.

The tactic worked so well that Microsoft repeated it in the following decade as Longhorn. Here's how it happened, and why Microsoft won't be able to repeat the same fraud again.
How to win in Iraq
Wear a moustache.

Friday Linkdump

Stars can be strange
quark matter.
xRez extreme
forget megapixels - here's some GIGApixels
Chaos Theory
addictive flash game
Parallel Universes
YouTube of BBC documentary
Google Patent search
Parallels on an Intel Mac
with a screenshot
The Flickr Ho Ho Ho easter egg
try adding a "ho ho ho hat" or a "ho ho ho beard" note to any of your photos.
Interview with DivX CEO
Prospect Books of the Year
Most overrated and most underrated.
Lifestyles of the rich and fascist
Lifestyles of whacked out dictators.
Airplane and treadmill problem
will the plane take off?

Cheat Sheets

From ILoveJackDaniels.com - Mysql, CSS, Ruby on Rails, PHP and many more.

Second Life - over hyped?

Via Valleywag

Intel graphics - resolution hack

915 resolution page - hacks the BIOS for Intel graphics chipsets so that you can get a higher resolution in Linux.

Mozart online

Via Yahoo

VIENNA (AFP) - Sheet music of all of Mozart's works is now available online for free, following an initiative by Salzburg's International Foundation Mozarteum in honour of the 250th anniversary of his birth.

The Digital Mozart Edition (DME) website features over 600 works by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, separated into ten categories, from concertos for orchestra to chamber music and pieces for piano.

Top 50 music videos of 2006

Here

All YouTube embedded in a single blogpost. Nice!

Is Vista doomed from the start?

Discussion on techrepublic with over 500 replies.

That Threshers 40 per cent voucher

Here's a jpeg version

BBC news story about this
Another blog about this


Here's the zipped version that has the PDF version in it

Microsoft Vista = OS X rip off?

Spandau Ballet Gold petition

Add your name to the petition to make Spandau Ballet's 'Gold' the national anthem of the UK.

Ubuntu open week - Ask Mark

IRC log files of the "Ask Mark Shuttleworth" chat session , that was held as part of Ubuntu Open Week

Buzzfeed

Bye bye Digg - hello Buzz Feed

Installing Ubuntu without a CD drive

Installing Ubuntu with no cdrom drive

Mod Rewrite - changing url variables

The following Mod rewrite rule redirects somewhere.com/test.php?val=1234&blah=widget
to somewhere.com/test.php?val=321&blah=widget

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /test/
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^val=1234&blah=widget$
RewriteRule .* test.php?val=321&blah=widget [R=301,L]

This is useful if , for example, people are finding you via "old" urls in Google (or if you've changed the url variables you are using). The [R=301,L] bit is important , as this redirects the users browser to the new version of your url (which they can then bookmark).

Linkdump

The Wow Signal
Never explained.
How to Label a Goat
New book on UK government regulation
100 Notable books of 2006
NY Times
Josef Koudelka photos
Prague spring, 1968

Suspect Nation

Channel 4 documentary regarding the issues of UK civil liberties, security and surveilance.

Create your own Ubuntu Live CD

The Ubuntu Customization Kit is a tool that helps you create your own Ubuntu based Live CDs.

Vince Clarke tells a joke

Erasure use Ableton?

click on the image for a closer view of what Andy Bell is looking at.
Hat tip:Gareth Jones blog

Very interesting blog btw , where Gareth writes about the day to day work that goes into producing the new Erasure album. Lots of tech details for the synth nerds like me out there, and a sprinkling of short YouTube videos of Andy and Vince to camera.

update: "anonymous" is the comments has said that its not Ableton that Andy is looking at. Anyone got an idea what it is so?

update 2: Anon is correct. It's not abelton, its Logic Audio.

A non-free Ubuntu?

Ubuntu developers are debating about the forthcoming Feisty Fawn release and whether it should include, by default, non-free drivers.

More here

Big Yahoo maps update

According to this blogpost theres' been a rather big Yahoo Maps update.

Monday Linkfest

Richard Dawkins video collection
What Vista should have been in 2003
NASA dawn of the Apollo program
How to compile a kernel the Ubuntu way
Irish road of doom
GoogleTorrents
Two students invent algae biofuel process
Powers of Ten
Man tries to jump mile wide river in rocket powered car
A redrawn Middle East

Aiglx + Beryl on Ubuntu

Hubble Top 100

Hubble space telescope top 100 gallery

Awesome.

Tweaking MySQL

MySQL disk cache
Tuning server parameters

Google Goals

Documents on Google's internal company goals have been leaked to Google Blogoscoped

Ubuntu 6.10 - development release

Ubunto 6.10, codenamed "Edgy Eft", is now available for testing. Changes include an improved init bootup sequence, Firefox 2.0, TomBoy, Gnome 2.16 and many more.

The New Atheism

I dont normally post stuff on religion or philosophy on this blog, but this article on The New Atheism from Wired magazine was too good to let pass.

"The New Atheists will not let us off the hook simply because we are not doctrinaire believers. They condemn not just belief in God but respect for belief in God. Religion is not only wrong; it's evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there's no excuse for shirking.

Three writers have sounded this call to arms. They are Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett. A few months ago, I set out to talk with them. I wanted to find out what it would mean to enlist in the war against faith."

Read it all.

Friday linkdump

Space colony art from the 1970s
77 million paintings by Brian Eno
The world via webcam
very cool visualisation of the planet
12 best movie pitches ever
Five simple steps to designing with colour
Contains No News
A blogger deletes the fluff from the CNN home page and is left with hardly any real news.
Leonardo Da Vinci's ten best ideas
Turn your iPod into a DVR

Linkdump

The failure of Friendster
interesting
SETI Institute creates the Carl Sagan Center
That was the "major announcement"
Let's Go : Second Life
A Wired guide
The Good News about GooTube
Nevada to vote on marijuana legalisation
Growers and sellers to be licensed and regulated
Gmail suggest
Vote for new Gmail features
Letter to EU warns against open source
Lobby lobby lobby
EU considering regulating video bloggers
Pay a tax to host a video blog?
WoW: A View from the Top
Ex WoW player writes about his addiction to it
In Orbit (pic)
stunning Nasa photo
Photoshop : How to age people 20 years
Tutorial
Whats so special about the number 1729?
Quite a lot - via Kottke
An earth without people
No trace left after 100,000 years
Hans Reiser arrested
On suspicion of murder

Major SETI announcement due?

Via Digg

Signals from the centre of the galaxy are rumoured to have been detected.

Restored ME-262

Filmed at the ILA 2006 in Berlin.

This is a test posting from Google Docs

Google Code search

Jason Kottke has a list of interesting Google code search finds.

Insane traffic in India

Unbelievable - and nobody has a crash either.

Google Buys YouTube

More here over at Google blogoscoped

"Google announced today that it has agreed to acquire YouTube, the consumer media company for people to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, for $1.65 billion in a stock-for-stock transaction. Following the acquisition, YouTube will operate independently to preserve its successful brand and passionate community."

North Korean nuclear test

USGS Earthquake data

Photos of North Korea - taken by a Russian tourist.

Google Maps - Australian lake of custard

Here on google maps

Rumours - Google to buy Youtube?

Here at Techcrunch

Rumoured price is $1.6 billion.

Google Video versus YouTube - analysis of traffic levels. Needless to say, YouTube is vastly more popular.

How to save YouTube videos to your hard drive.

Google Maps - North Korean prison camp?

Located here in the north east corner of North Korea.

Further information:
NBC on the N.Korean gulags
Reactions to Camp 22 reports

Update:
This satellite photo of a N.Korean prison camp is from U.S. Committee on Human Rights in North Korea.
Here it is on on Google Maps

Google Earth & Maps updates

Via: Google Sightseeing

On October 3rd, we updated Google Maps and Google Earth with the following new imagery:

- Cross Plains, Texas
- the whole state of Minnesota, South Carolina, North Dakota, Missouri (updated to 2005), Idaho, Maryland, and now full coverage for the entire state of Texas
- Updates to Florida (most of the state covered now)
- 15 high-resolution cities in Germany
- update for London, 2006 data at 10cm
- South Georgia Island (courtesy of the British Antarctic Survey)
- Albany, OR; Lubbock, TX; Port Townsend, WA; Portage County, OH; Trumball County, OH
- 32 Digital Globe high-resolution cities (updates and new coverage)

In addition there was a significant update to the regular Digital Globe imagery all over the world.

Enjoy!

Updates I've found (so far):
Cork city ,Ireland
Limerick, Ireland
Wodonga, Australia - half the town is lucious green, the other half in drought.
Villach , Austria is now hi-res.
Pyongyang, North Korea - new imagery, brighter colours.
Hoeryong, North Korea - home of the infamous Camp 22

Doodle 4 Google

If you live in the UK you can vote in the latest Doodle 4 Google competition. Pick your favourite doodle (there are 30) from 3 age groups.

That's a Numberwang!

Linkdump

Do newspapers have a future?
Google Reader redesigned
More like Gmail
Richard Dawkins discussing his new book
The God Delusion
Physicists discover structure of brain cell same as entire universe
PC Magazine's top 99 undiscovered websites
Blueball Machine

Akademy 2006

The annual KDE akademy has taken place in Dublin this year.

Announce
Digg

Ulteo - first peek

Beranger has a screenshot
Gael Duval responds

David Bowie on "Extras"

Ricky Gervais gets treated to a little improv from Bowie

Monday Linkdump

Scientists discover shadow person
brain activity
Nano syntax highlighting
colorising in Nano
How to swear in Latin
Maximus cursii
Stylus - top 100 music videos
with embedded YouTube goodness
Austria In Pictures
by Jason Kottke
David Bowie on Extras
Another cringeworthy classic from Ricky Gevais
BitTorrent sites compared
BTJunky at no.1
Google Belgium
court verdict posted on Google dot Be

Face on Mars

ESA have released high resolution imagery of the Cydonia region on the Mars, the home of the famous "face on Mars".

London at night - from the ISS

London at Night
The crew of the International Space Station acquired this image shortly after 7:22 p.m. local time on the evening of February 4, 2003.

Images page

Linkorama

Scientists and engineers simulate jet colliding with WTC
Pirate parties raid Europe and US
Lifehacker - forget tv and watch the web
6 911 myths debunked
Artist Banksy targets Disneyland
Top 50 most expensive Adwords
The Physics of Superheroes
South Carolina pushes hydrogen economy

Hotel Bedjumping
wacky idea
Inside the RISC OS

Saturday linkdump

Graph of American house values from 1890 to the present
Via Kottke
Tiny Music makers
Intel inside, Windows 95 startup and the Mac startup sound.
Digg dashboard
Handy.
Original Simpons cartoons free to download
1987 to 89, on the Tracey Ullman show.
Hubble pictures possible planetary system

Will the film industry survive?

Torrents , piracy and beyond - will the film industry survive?

very interesting article.
quote:
"Maybe I’m a dreamer, but just imagine it - a human-centric, socially-accountable media ecosystem, built around great art, music, storytelling and ideas."

Building a billion CPU laptop with nanotech

Via Google Video

Steorn - technical comments

Here's Tom Beardan's technical comments regarding Irish company Steorn's free energy claims.

via TDG

Steornwatch - Live chat interview

Steornwatch.com has a transcript of the live chat interview with "free energy" Sean McCarthy of Steorn


More Steorn:
Discussion here

Thursday Linkfest

MRO probe completes 6 months of Martian aerobraking
all systems go
Hubble images Cassiopeia-A
supernova remnant
Dialup BBS revisited
Discovering the ghost BBS's that are still out there
Pageviews are obsolete
Flickr adds geotagging and maps support
Steven Soderbergh interviewed
Big movie stars impact on movie profits not as big an effect as the industry thinks.
Kalzium creator brings periodic table to life

A Ferrari driving in Paris 1978

Superb Google Maps + Video mashup

Claude LeLouch's Rendezvous

"On an August morning in 1978, French filmmaker Claude Lelouch mounted a gyro-stabilized camera to the bumper of a Ferrari 275 GTB and had a friend, a professional Formula 1 racer, drive at breakneck speed through the heart of Paris.

No streets were closed, for Lelouch was unable to obtain a permit."

Fanpop

Fanpop - interesting Web 2.0 mishmash of clustery diggified social networking goodness.

"Free" Music - Spiralfrog and Universal do a deal

Universal back free music offer

"Vivendi Universal, the world's biggest music group, has signed a deal to make its music catalogue available on a free legal downloads service. Under the agreement, Spiralfrog will offer Universal's songs online in the US and Canada."

Irish company discovers "free energy"

Via Yahoo

DUBLIN (AFP) - An Irish company has thrown down the gauntlet to the worldwide scientific community to test a technology it has developed that it claims produces free energy.
Click to learn more...

The company, Steorn, says its discovery is based on the interaction of magnetic fields and allows the production of clean, free and constant energy -- a concept that challenges one of the basic rules of physics.

It claims the technology can be used to supply energy for virtually all devices, from mobile phones to cars.

Steorn issued its challenge through an advertisement in the Economist magazine this week quoting Ireland's Nobel prize-winning author George Bernard Shaw who said that "all great truths begin as blasphemies".

Digg Link
Guardian article
Google Video
RTE

Quintuplet stars

Via SpaceflightNow

For the first time, scientists have identified the cluster of Quintuplet stars in the Milky Way's galactic center, next to the super massive black hole, as massive binary stars nearing the end of their life cycle, solving a mystery that had dogged astronomers for more than 15 years.

Grandpa is a surprise YouTube star

A British 79 year old has become a surprise hit on YouTube, with 79,000 viewings and over 6000 subscribers.

His first video
His profile

Wednesday Linkdump

Search engine for released AOL logs
Philip has more
The AOL blunder
oops.
Vanity Fair - 911 - the Norad Tapes
Audio clips, text.
Ultra realistic vector art
Chinglish Flickr pool
An Engrish Flickr photoset

Darth Vadar being a smart ass

Dave Chappelle: The Internet In Real Life

LinkDump

HOWTO Install Kanotix on a USB External Drive (24 Jul 2006)
Tremulous: The best free software game ever? (19 Jul 2006)
Baghira - Arnaud's OSX cloning tutorial (18 Jul 2006)
Connect to remote Unix desktops with Cygwin (18 Jul 2006)
Exploring Linux with Ubuntu (18 Jul 2006)
CLI Magic: Searching with find (17 Jul 2006)
Video: Sims 2
Python on the Nintendo DS
Digg Labs

MusicLens

Musiclens.de is a cool app that generates a list of songs according to the various parameters (vocals, tempo, mood etc) that you set.

Hat tip:John Batelle

Jupiter's two red spots

The Gemini Observatory has imaged Jupiter in infra-red , showing its two red spots in white,
More here at spaceflightnow.com

Friday linkdump

Video trailer for Valve's Portal game
revolutionary gameplay.
Big Lebowski - short version
Video edit
Boing Boing analysis
Stats and more stats
Bezos invests in 37signals
Amazon meets Rails
Unnecessary Censorship video

N.Korean missile sites revealed on Google Earth

Google Earthing the North Korean military

Tip for your Gnome desktop

Tips for your Gnome Desktop

Links off to various sites containing information on how to tweak your Gnome experience.

Google Mail for Mobile

Google has launched Google Mail for Mobile


More here

LInkorama

ASCII Zidane
"Le Headbutt" ASCIIfied
Awkward questions for the RIAA
From the EFF
Zoooooom!!!
Google Maps now has continuous zoom - just double click.
Office 2007 icons

50 Terabyte DVD disks being developed
Massive
The Big Here
Via Kottke
Interview with Physicist Lawrence Krauss
Empty space turns out to be not so empty
Top 50 blogs written by scientists
10 Most beautiful OS X apps

Remembering Cosmos

I might be a bit late with this, but I stumbled upon this Discovery Science page, where viewers have posted their memories of the Carl Sagan's Cosmos tv series, which was rebroadcast last year for its 25th anniversary on The Science Channel, (formerly known as Discovery Science).

The plot to hijack your hard drive

Very interesting article by Businessweek on the dodgy side of Internet advertising - namely, spyware & pop-up ads, focussing on a New York based company called Direct Revenue.

Googlefight over airplane

From the WSJ : Lawsuits fly over Google plane

Linkorama

Music from TV commericials
Includes samples. Archived back to 2002
Wardriving with Ubuntu & Google Earth
Integrated coolness
Mouse with floating duckie
Cute
Out of context photoshops
Worth1000 comp, using landmarks.
Vertical data in Google Earth
Proof of concept
Tour De France tracker
Another Google Maps mashup
SSH tricks
Robin Williams on Who's Line is it Anyway?

Switching from Mac to Ubuntu

Canaries in a coal mine - Tim O'Reilly writes about Mark Pilgrim and others who have switched from OS X to Ubuntu Linux.

Mark's list of essential Ubuntu software

Google Checkout launched

Google Checkout has been launched today.

Digg v3 - right hand menu hack

Look through this Digg comment thread

People have been creating css hacks in order to revert digg back to a version 2 layout.

Worked for me.

Digg version 3 launched

Digg has just launched a new iteration of its design.
The biggest visible change is that the menus are now on the left-hand side , rather than the right hand side. It'll take a while to get used to I suppose.

Qunu

Qunu

Qunu is a killer idea
Qunu launches
Qunu part 2
Qunu - your help line

Royksopp - Remind Me

Problems with Vista

In Broken Windows theory , Philip Su, who has "managed developer teams in Windows for five years", writes about the problems with Vista.

How to get billions of pages indexed by Google

Via Monetize

Ubuntu developers meet in Paris

Via Newforge
PARIS -- On Monday of this week, more than 60 Ubuntu developers gathered in a hotel near Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport to plan Ubuntu's next release, codenamed Edgy Eft. The goal of the meeting is to set the goals for the upcoming release and to chart the set of steps that will be necessary to implement it.

Feature specifications

Classic movies it's OK to hate

Bumptop 3D desktop demo
Youtube video demo of a new kind of desktop
100 Awesome music videos
With embedded YouTube links.
1400 80s music videos!!
Somebody has collected an awful lot of YouTube links
Googlesightseeing finds Pompeii
Ancient Roman town is now in hi-res

Google trouble?

Google is finding it difficult to expand outside of the search market according to this Times Online article. Meanwhile, Microsoft react to the Google Spreadsheets announcement, saying that it's "like watching a time machine from 10 years ago".

Linkdump

Cliched Shakespeare lines
Full of sound and fury
Are you Hexakosioihexekontahexaphobic?
The number of the beast
Art and genocide
Nazi imagery versus Communist imagery
Google spreadsheet?
One more step towards the Web OS
Photoshop a Google employee
Fark fun

Novell KDE and Gnome

Novell , KDE & Gnome
Novell announcement sparks a long (and a times heated) debate.

Ubuntu Dapper Drake Live CD

Unlike previous Ubuntu versions, the current 6.06 ¨Dapper Drake¨ release combines both the install and live cd into one iso. When you boot off the CD , you will see a Install icon on the desktop - use that to install Ubuntu onto your hard drive.

Space - Magic Fly

This is why i love YouTube.com - you come across rare , obscure stuff like this:




A big fat "thank you" to whoever uploaded this.

Ubuntu Dapper Drake released

Press release here on the Ubuntu website.

Update: The Ubuntu websites are experiencing higher than normal traffic levels because of the Dapper Drake release.

Linkorama

Building the (New) New York
Illustrated article on how New York might look in 2016.
Couples and surfing
Is the internet age less social than the TV age?
Unobtrusive sidenotes
Javascript + CSS recipe. Heres an example.
Remote control airplane video
this is flown indoors. Amazing aerobatics involved.
Timelines from 1750 to 2050
Zoomable and draggable.
Husband 1.0
Nerd humour
Girlfriend 6.0 versus Wife 1.0
More nerd humour
World language maps
Africa is particularly intricate
The Most Offensive show on TV
Something on MTV wins that dubious distinction.
Tim O'Reilly responds to the Web 2.0 trademark issue
And ends up digging an even bigger hole for himself. Oh dear.

Guy Goma - the BBC "wrong guy"

The now famous BBC News 24 clip


And later - on the Jonathan Ross show


And here he is again - interviewed by GMTV




He now has a fanclub

Google Movie Trailers

There's a new page on Google Video showing the latest movie trailers for upcoming films.

Google Gapminder

Gapminder is an interactive Google tool that allows you to visualise world development

Europe - No patents for software

Via News.com

Software patent campaigners have reacted with surprise to an apparent change in the European Commission's stance on those patents.

The Commission said last week that computer programs will be excluded from patentability in the upcoming Community Patent legislation and that the European Patent Office will be bound by this law.

BBC - On This Day
1982: Dozens killed as Argentines hit British ships
Dozens of men are feared dead in the seas around the Falkland Islands after frigates are destroyed.
1961: Kennedy pledges man on moon
President John F Kennedy says the US will aim to put the first man on the moon by the end of the decade.
1963: African states unite against white rule
Leaders of 32 African nations set up an organisation that will give them a united voice for the first time in African history.
1979: Price of milk shoots up
The price of milk is to go up by more than 10% to 15p a pint - three times the price it was five years ago.
1994: Camelot wins UK lottery race
The Camelot consortium wins the contract to run Britain's first national lottery starting in November.

bag o' links

Lost in translation
On the differences between German and English humour
Golden Book of Chemistry - PDF
PDF version of a 1960s chemistry book that was banned.
Footiefox
Firefox extension for the world cup.

The Safety Browser

The latest IM hijack goes one further - it hijacks Internet Explorer (calling itself the "Safety Browser") , and plays a loop of awful music anything you boot up in WinXP.

Via Slashdot

Safety Browse

We can browse if we want to,
we can leave your friends behind
Cause your friends dont browse and if they dont browse
Well theyre are no friends of mine

I say, we can browse where we want to,
catch a virus we will never find
And we can act like we come from out of this OS
Leave the real one far behind,

We can go when we want to
The night is young and the bandwidth high
And we can dress unneat from our hats to our feet
And no one will be the wise
Say, we can act if want to
If we don't nobody will
You can act real rude and be totally booted
from IRC like an imbecile

I say, We can browse. We can browse.
Our machines are out of control.
We can browse. We can browse.
From firewall to firewall
We can browse. We can browse.
Everyone clear out your cache!
We can browse. We can browse.
Taking the spyware chaaance....

Safety browse
Is it safe to browse? Is it safe to browse?
Oh , the safety browse

70,000 beer cans found in house

KSL in Utah report on a rented house that was discovered to have 70,000 cans of Coors beer inside , left by a tenant - equivalent to 24 cans per day for 8 years.

Friday linkfest

Biggest hack ever?
Over 17,000 websites defaced by Turkish hacker
5 Steps to CSS Heaven
Organise your CSS
Fast Food Nation trailer
Unhappy meals
Crumbling comet may produce meteor shower
Expected by Monday
Google Maps Australia
Road data finally implemented
Linus interviewed by CNN
The craft of hackery is more important than Microsoft bashing
Kubuntu Shipit
Order your Kubuntu CDs now - shipping in June

Lost cities

An interactive flash game from Lonely Planet - find the 45 cities in a photo.

linkbag

LG3D live cd
Slax based distro that showcases the 3D Looking Glass desktop
Mandriva One 2006
Now available publicly
New solar system discoved
Orbiting around HD 69830 , 41 light years away
Signs you're a crappy programmer
And dont know it.
Corkd dot com
Review and share wine - a Flickr for wine aficionados

iPod owners are thieves - Real Network CEO

Rob Glaser , CEO of RealNetworks, is dubbed Jackass of the week by DaringFireball.

No wonder - when he makes statements like this:

"If you want interoperable music today, there is a very easy solution: it’s called stealing.
The average number of songs sold for the iPod is 25, and there are many more songs on iPods than 25. About half the music on iPods is music obtained illegitimately either from an illegal peer-to-peer networks or from ripping friends’ CDs, which is illegal. But it’s the only way to get non-copy protected, portable, interoperable music".

Huh? Its not illegal to rip a CD that you bought for your own use.
That comes under "fair use" law. What a wonderful way to alienate potential customers Mr Glaser.

ZX Spectrum game videos

Alien 8 walkthrough
On Google video

Arc Of Yesod walkthrough
Pentagram
Nightshade

sunday linkdump

Write anything you want on an LED sign
this is being dugg to death right now.
Who Links to me
Handy little site - shows who links to your site.
Beginning Ubuntu
Explains package management, how to use Synaptic and apt, how to compile and more.
Follow the Nitrogen
The search for ET has focussed too much on water , say U.S. geobiologists.
Our world from outer space
interesting satellite imagery of planet Earth.
Prototype Mars suit tested in North Dakota
Channel Chooser
Watch 70 TV channels online for free.
Are Sims the new dolls?
Lots of kids are abandoning dolls and using the Sims game instead - and some valuable life lessons are being learned as a result. The article quotes one 10-year-old boy who plays with Sims, and has learned valuable life lessons. "I learned don't leave your baby crying or people will come take your baby away."

LyricWiki

LyricWiki currently has the song lyrics for over 200,000 songs.

bag o' links

The worst products of 2006
PC Mag lists them
Google releases Sketch-Up for free
The pro version will cost $495
Scott McNealy steps down as CEO of Sun
Jonathan Schwarz takes over the helm.
BBC reveals online revamp
A quarter of 16 to 34 year olds watch no BBC programming at all.

Friday linkdump

Vista failures
MS not delivering on promises
PC Linux MiniMe released
Cut down live cd version
Xubuntu beta release
xfce desktop
DSL-N
Damn Small Linux with extra packages


A Tour of Micrsoft's Mac Lab

150 Mac Minis

Apple makes 8 year old girl cry

Via Arstechnica

Amazing photographs of rainbow

I thought I'd seen my share of amazing rainbow photographs until I saw this one.

read more | digg story

Sesame Street video clips

One big page of links to dozens of Sesame Street video clips

famous sounds

Famous Sounds has lots of samples of synths, bass, drums and more.

Easter egg hunting in Linux

Jonathan Carter has a list of Easter Eggs in open source software.

Big data update for Google Maps

Via Ogle Earth

• large data move for Digital Globe's coverage of Western Europe (!!)


• Paris, France - GeoInfo 5/2004


• Amsterdam, Assen, Houten, The Hague, Zeist, Wassenaar, Waterland - AeroData 2005


• Livingston County, New York - NYGIS 2005


• Columbia County, Orange, Rockland, Westchester,Sullivan, Ulster, Herkimer County, New York - NYGIS 2004


• Herkimer County, New York - NYGIS 2003


• Lawrence, Kansas - Digital Globe 4/2005, 1/2006 (a bit snowy)


• Google Earth Community layer March 24th update, improved presentation


• Antweb added to Community Showcase


• World placenames, borders, and island names - Europa Tech.


• Alternative language placenames (French, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, English) - Europa Tech.

Tuesday linkfest

Rails resources
Extensive linkfest on Ruby and Rails
Looking ahead: Ubuntu 6.06
A preview of the next release with screenshots
Top 10 best designed blogs
Inspirational
U.S. religious affiliation maps
Via Boing Boing
Tornado images
From a Nashville website
Venus south pole images released
The Venus Express probe takes the first ever images of the Venusian south pole.

linkdump

Riding the Rails
Ruby ruby ruby
Worldmapper
Fascinating series of world maps from Sheffield University
A small project with Og
Database abstraction using the Og library for Ruby
Static pages on Rails
How favcol uses Rails cacheing
Red paper clip guy gets one year in Phoenix offer
amazing
Yahoo! Maps! go! 1! Metre! Resolution! For! Continental! USA!
catching up with Google Maps
The shuttle fleet at 25
Old and going nowhere.

Google Calendar now live

Google Calendar is now live

It's a bit slow at the moment.

Google Maps Bournemouth

The seaside town of Bournemouth in England, is now in hi-res on Google Maps

DSL plus pendrive equals portable paradise

Linux.com reviews Damn Small Linux

jumblelink

ABC to offer programmes online
Full versions of Lost and other shows will be available online from April 30th - but commericials will be included.
Sam's mailbox pictures
Mailboxes from around the world.
The dot EU landrush fiasco
Lots of dodgy registrars.
Gravity powered air travel
A pollution free idea for air travel that is damn interesting.
Traffic micro simulator
Traffic flow simulator. Java required.

Randomstuff

James Gosling : Scripting Flamewar
The Rise of Ruby on Rails
Are you sure you want to be mainstream?
Mark Pilgrim is blogging again
Diet Soda + Mentos geyser

Kubuntu in trouble?

Kubuntu.de has been taken down, due to a lack of response from Canonical to Kubuntu developer queries.

"Since Canonical ignores all our personal and partly financial engagement until now we have to assume that Canonical is not willing to make Kubuntu a "1st class distribution"."

"Unless all the requests made by Andreas Muller are answered till 15.04.2006

kubuntu.de will shut down including its forum and mailing lists
Amu will stop developing Kubuntu
there will be no booth at LinuxTag
To clarify the seriousness of the situation, kubuntu.de will be offline for one week beginning as from monday, 10.04.2006"

Why IT and Users hate each other

"This reveals one of IT peoples' worst behavioral traits. They assume that because users don't understand IT, they must be stupid. It's a fatal flaw because generally, IT people are very smart. It's harder to major in computer science than marketing. But some math majors aren't interested in IT. They get their MBA's instead. They're smart. And it really frustrates them that they can't be smart about IT."

Read it all here on CIO dot com.

456

if you are American, today's date is 04-05-06, a date we wont see for another 1000 years.

In the UK is today's date 05-04-06, so we'll have to wait until next month for our 456

Is Dapper Drake the one?

Tux Magazine talks about the forthcoming Dapper Drake release of Kubuntu.

Ubuntu Certification announced

(Boston, USA: April 4, 2006) – The Linux Professional Institute (LPI), the world's premier Linux certification organization, and Canonical Ltd, sponsor of the award-winning Ubuntu operating system, jointly announced the development of a certification exam for the Ubuntu distribution. This certification exam will enable qualified candidates to demonstrate specific expertise in the professional use of Ubuntu. The certification exam will be launched at Johannesburg, South Africa, May 16 - 19, 2006.

More here

Malware scourge

Microsoft says that recovery from malware is becoming impossible - security expert recommends automated systems of wiping and re-installing.


Ha ha ha ha......

Google Finance

Google has launched Google Finance.

Ulteo

Ulteo is Gael Duval's mysterious post-Mandrake project. No details yet on what its all about.

Happy St Patrick's Day

Members of the Chicago Stockyard Kilty Band march down S. Western Avenue during the 28th Annual South Side Irish St. Patrick's Day Parade.
Source:Metromix .com photo gallery


Chicago River, dyed green
Source:Globe And Mail

Ultimate Ubuntu Eye candy

How to add Xgl and Compiz to your Ubuntu install. Not for the faint hearted - and only try it on a test system.

via: Digg

Some Links

Is YouTube the Napster of Video?
Despite the title, I good write up on the explosive growth of YouTube.com - even record companies are stealthily uploading music video content in order to get more artist exposure.
Oscar Nominees You Didnt see
In watching films before the hype, critics get a different picture.
Rural America
Haunting photo essay of North Dakota - where rural towns are closing down, and houses lie abandoned.

Flickr of an idea

Very interesting USA Today article on how Flickr was born.

via:Digg

Fake minature

Cinque Terre
Originally uploaded by monkey123.

From the tilt-shift fake minuatures pool on Flickr.

Linkdump

Hubble releases hi-definition view of galaxy
X-Ray Milky Way reveals millions of unseen objects
Can you Digg what is happening to journalism?
Google Maps versus the rest
Google Video - Quatum Physics double slit experiment
Google Hosting
Apple Ruby On Rails Tutorial
Google Purchases coming?

Major Richard WInters interview

Fascinating interview with Major Richard Winters ,of Band Of Brothers fame, here on historynet , reflecting on the tv series , D-Day and leadership.

Linkdump

Google Pages
Create your own web pages via an easy to use interface.
Kottke reviews first year
Kottke looks back at his first year as a full time blogger
The centre of the Google Maps universe
Wired looks at the default centre of Google Maps - Coffeyville in Kansas.
Chuck Norris Facts - Web 2.0 version
Chuck Norris Facts t-shirts
Googlestore
The UK is missing

Google China

now this is funny

Pintsearch

Pintsearch is a Google Maps powered site that plots around 2000 London pubs. Each pub is rated and colored accordingly.

Gmail delete button

Gmail has rolled out a new delete button.

hat tip : Google Blogoscoped

Google Robot FAQ

Here's a Google Robot FAQ from the year 2030.

Linkdump

Kottke on Digg versus Slashdot
Fill My Room
Real world version of MillionDollarHomePage.
"For every dollar you donate, I will add 1 block to the room! I will not stop until my room is full!"
A Map of Cultural Prejudices
Compiled by asking Google what a country 'is known for'.
FlickrMap
"It's as simple as tagging your photos with a city and country name"

Stardust lands

Stardust probe lands
The Stardust space probe has landed sucessfully in the Utah desert after a seven year journey. The probe contains samples it collected from the coma of comet Wild 2. This marks the first time that scientists have had actual samples of a comet.

El Reg gives thumbs down to Google Video

The Register's Ashlee Vance tears into Google video, calling it an "embarrassment".

"We've been waiting more than three hours for our purchase of a Charlie Rose show to go through. Had to boot up a Windows box just to wait. Great stuff."

Linkdump

Scientists create the most detailed image of Orion Nebula ever
Steve Jobs announces first ever intel powered Mac
Chuck Norris responds to random facts meme and is cool about them.
Taco on Slashdot moderation process
New neighbour of the Milky Way galaxy discovered

Monty Python spam sketch

safety dance

So bad, it's good...


The Men Without Hats 80s hit is here on Google Video

hat tip Google Video blog

Larry Page keynote at CES

Video available here

Urban dynamics video project

Google video here

"In an ever faster moving world cities have become somehow fascinating for us. They do not only respresent mankind's belief in technology but do also provide us with an endless variety of images and sounds.

urbanDynamics is an international video project designed to cover global urban dynamics. Its aim is to make a collage of urban environments around the world by assembling video footage from citizens. It's an experiment that totally depends on the participants, who rediscover their cities with a simple miniDV camcorder."

via Google Video of the Day

747 engine versus a car

Top Gear find out

via Google Video of the Day

Texas constitution

Here's something I didnt know. You cannot hold public office in Texas if you are an atheist, or for that matter, Buddhist, as it clearly states that you "acknowledge the existence of a Supreme Being"
Article 1, Section 4 of the Texas constitution

I suppose you could get around it by joining the Church of the Flying Spagetti Monster

Google Rumours

Source: Google Blogoscoped

Google is expected to make an announcement at the CES later on today. Pay per view Google video, Google pack, Google thin client or Google Cube?

I'm still waiting for Google Calendar

Hyperdrive engine a possibility?

In this this extraordinary article, The Scotsman reports that a hyperdrive engine could well be a possibility within 5 years. The engine is based on a fringe , untested area of physics, but the U.S. Airforce and NASA have expressed an interest.


"The hypothetical device, which has been outlined in principle but is based on a controversial theory about the fabric of the universe, could potentially allow a spacecraft to travel to Mars in three hours and journey to a star 11 light years away in just 80 days, according to a report in today's New Scientist magazine.

The theoretical engine works by creating an intense magnetic field that, according to ideas first developed by the late scientist Burkhard Heim in the 1950s, would produce a gravitational field and result in thrust for a spacecraft.

Also, if a large enough magnetic field was created, the craft would slip into a different dimension, where the speed of light is faster, allowing incredible speeds to be reached. Switching off the magnetic field would result in the engine reappearing in our current dimension"

The paper quoted in the article is here (Google Scholar, HTML version)

Full New Scientist article has been posted on LiveJournal here

Fark - Best Photoshops of 2005

Here
look out for the flying spagetti monster references in some of them.

How Microsoft lost the API war

Article here

Its an old article by Joel On Software from 2004, but still a damn fine read on why application developers are leaving the Microsoft platform and moving into web services.

Working at Google

Mini Microsoft has a blogpost here on the marathon coding sessions at Google. I have to admit coding until 4am sounds pretty insane. The comments are interesting, as it turns into a working at Microsoft versus working at Google discussion, with lots of anonymous Microsoft & Google employees contributing.

Review of new Kodak ultrawide lens camera

Imaging-resource.com has a detailed review of the new dual lens Kodak Easyshare compact camera.

"Ultrawide angle zoom lenses are tricky and expensive to make, not to mention bulky. Kodak sidesteps these limitations by combining an ordinary 3x zoom lens and a 23mm equivalent fixed focal length ultrawide optic in a single camera, making what's sure to be one of the more intriguing cameras of 2006."

A huge virus threat for every Windows PC ever made

Experts believe that this could be the biggest vulnerability that has ever surfaced for Windows PCs. Other than the users themselves. "Unlike most attacks, which require victims to download or execute a suspect file, the new vulnerability makes it possible for users to infect their computers with spyware or a virus simply by viewing a web page, e-mail or instant message that contains a contaminated image."


read more | digg story

U.S. soldier in Iraq

This is interesting. Looks like a regularly updated Flickr photostream by a U.S. soldier in Iraq. Photos of himself, missions, patrols and his squad are posted. I wonder how long this will be allowed to be up there.