BBspot
Satire for Smart People; The Truth for You

Rome Again, Home Again
#x3C;p>(For some reason my server wiped out the work I did yesterday, so I'm reposting this BBlog entry, sorry for the duplication if you've already seen it).

I'm back in the US, back in the US, back in the US of A.

After two amazing weeks in Europe, the BBspot family has returned to reality. I'm slowing catching up on email and other technical things I ignored on our trip. Amazingly, Mrs. BBspot and my daughter spent more time online than I did during this vacation. Though, to be fair, my daughter was completing an online math class in the evenings and early mornings (yes, she's just as much of a nerd as I am).

I'm not sure how I'm going to chronicle the epic journey we took through 4 countries (France, Monaco, Italy and Vatican City), but it will definitely be a multi-parter. Thanks to my friend Francisco for keeping the links going while I was gone, and thanks to those of you who are still around after 2 weeks of no new stories.

It'll take me a little bit just to get unburied, but I should be back to posting normally soon. Until then, au revoir.

That's all for now. Stay geeky!

Daily Links - 7/29/10

Thanks Facebook - 100 million profiles leaked in a torrent file.

eWaste - This is where your old iPhone goes.

Tattooed Lego - A company has released a cool ad featuring some intricately tattooed LEGO.

Last to Surrender - These people wanted the war to go on and on and on.

Technology for Spies - It's making the life of a spy harder.

Nerd Protests - Brought to you by Paul and Storm.

Ceiling Height - Looks like I should be working outside.

Daily Links - 7/28/10

Word Patterns - A quiz for all you Scrabble champs.

Sea Monsters - And their real-life equivalents.

Star Wars Clock - A clock with Star Wars ships.

Locust Swarms - The math of locust swarms.

Robots.txt - Last.fm knows what the robots.txt file is really for.

Cave Tour in Klingon - Self-guided tours in Klingon coming to the Jenolan Caves.

Invention of the Leatherman - Patent gallery of the Leatherman multi-tool.

HumorFeed.com Headlines - 07-29-2010
HumorFeed

The Texas Cockroach - Local Teen Believes He Can Hook Up With Lindsay Lohan
CAP News - Judge Rules Air Guitar Not Real Music
News Mutiny - Gun Safety Tips for Real Americans

digg.com: Stories / Popular
digg.com: Stories / Popular

400 Yr-old oysters offer clues to Early US Colonist life
A study of 400-year-old oyster shells offers a rare glimpse into life amongst North America's first colonists' settlement in Jamestown. pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/WM-wragw2QU3Q0AzDCzXHmfPX2c/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/WM-wragw2QU3Q0AzDCzXHmfPX2c/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/WM-wragw2QU3Q0AzDCzXHmfPX2c/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/WM-wragw2QU3Q0AzDCzXHmfPX2c/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/digg/popular/~4/0iw3kJA0jIk" height="1" width="1"/
President Obama is Bringing Us Closer to the Apocalypse
The end times are near. pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/L36IkTeHNvVfVZYa1pAs87wHf_0/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/L36IkTeHNvVfVZYa1pAs87wHf_0/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/L36IkTeHNvVfVZYa1pAs87wHf_0/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/L36IkTeHNvVfVZYa1pAs87wHf_0/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/digg/popular/~4/GbfY8q4KP34" height="1" width="1"/
Congress May Double Penalties For Pot Brownies
A bill has just reached the floor of the Senate that would double penalties for any edible products combined with medical marijuana in California and the 13 other states that provide compassionate relief for patients. The worst part is that the bill was written and sponsored by Dianne Feinstein, a Democratic senator from California! pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FAJg9E9aNdlAeSnke7cQtYksx00/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FAJg9E9aNdlAeSnke7cQtYksx00/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FAJg9E9aNdlAeSnke7cQtYksx00/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/FAJg9E9aNdlAeSnke7cQtYksx00/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/digg/popular/~4/oHm4E9BSUXI" height="1" width="1"/
7 Amazing (Yet Uninspiring) Feats of Human Endurance
Some people achieve world records buying running marathons and swimming across oceans. These are not those people. pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/y_LjuZ7gPA6qtBuGJQeFY5r5-V4/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/y_LjuZ7gPA6qtBuGJQeFY5r5-V4/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/y_LjuZ7gPA6qtBuGJQeFY5r5-V4/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/y_LjuZ7gPA6qtBuGJQeFY5r5-V4/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/digg/popular/~4/byRSVhtIVtI" height="1" width="1"/
ESPN abruptly dumps salacious LeBron James party story
If you were reading a rather provocative ESPN story about LeBron James partying at a Las Vegas night club, and now you're not, there's a reason for that. ESPN yanked the story off the Internets after only a few minutes of life. The piece tells of a banquet-style blowout following James' announcement of his move to Miami. pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/anSkwIjv6jyQWgeGVoFfY-yH2Hc/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/anSkwIjv6jyQWgeGVoFfY-yH2Hc/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/anSkwIjv6jyQWgeGVoFfY-yH2Hc/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/anSkwIjv6jyQWgeGVoFfY-yH2Hc/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/digg/popular/~4/XrZ3lEibyK8" height="1" width="1"/

Boing Boing

When 2 dinosaurs become 1
Prepare to have your mind blown. Certain dinosaursmdash;physically disparate enough that we've always thought of them as different speciesmdash;may actually be the same animal at different stages of its life cycle. Also: Those big, protective-looking bone formations surrounding some dinos' heads and necks probably weren't all that useful as a defense against predators. Case in point, triceratops. Or, maybe we should be calling it torosaurus now, I'm not sure. See, according to research done by scientists at Montana's Museum of the Rockies, the familiar triceratops is really just the juvenile form of the more-elaborately be-frilled and be-horned torosaurus. This extreme shape-shifting was possible because the bone tissue in the frill and horns stayed immature, spongy and riddled with blood vessels, never fully hardening into solid bone as happens in most animals during early adulthood. The only modern animal known to do anything similar is the cassowary, descended from the dinosaurs, which develops a large spongy crest when its skull is about 80 per cent fully grown. Scannella and Horner examined 29 triceratops skulls and nine torosaurus skulls, mostly from the late-Cretaceous Hell Creek formation in Montana. The triceratops skulls were between 0.5 and 2 metres long. By counting growth lines in the bones, not unlike tree rings, they have shown clearly that the skulls come from animals of different ages, from juveniles to young adults. Torosaurus fossils are much rarer, 2 to 3 metres long and, crucially, only adult specimens have ever been found. The duo say there is a clear transition from triceratops into torosaurus as the animals grow older. For example, the oldest specimens of triceratops show a marked thinning of the bone where torosaurus has holes, suggesting they are in the process of becoming fenestrated. There are other species this might apply to, as well. Some with even bigger shifts in appearance. While this is a Big Hairy Deal for dinosaur science, it also elicits a little bit of a "duh" moment when you go back and look at the animals in question. What you should really be getting out of this story is an illustration of how difficult it is to study a creature that's been extinct for millions of years. After allmdash;as my husband pointed outmdash;nobody would be shocked to learn that a baby chick, an adult chicken, and plate of parmigiana were all the same animal. But that's because we've experienced chickens. Were an alien to drop in on Earth for one afternoon, they might be just as amazed at the life cycle of poultry as we are now at the triceratops/torosaurus'. Paleontologists are tasked with reconstructing the lives of animals nobody has ever seen alive. And that creates a world where the obvious just isn't. New Scientist: Morph-o-saurs: How shape-shifting dinosaurs deceived us (Via John Taylor Williams) Image courtesy Flickr user lindseywb, via CC...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=8dfd989c7093837fddc06ed1f0b33656p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=8dfd989c7093837fddc06ed1f0b33656p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechConspartnerID=167key=segment"/img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.28925.rss.TechCons.7604,cat.TechCons.rss"/
Kite-flying in a thunderstorm leads to pseudo-telekinesis
Kite designer Tim Elverston sent in this video through Submitterator, showing his friend making a piece of kite line move "magically" with the help of static electricity. Also, they got shocked. If you listen to the video through headphones, you can clearly hear an electrical buzzing every time their fingers get close to the kite line. Interestingly, the effect seems to have been dependent on the line material, and the bench the kite was tied tomdash;both of which were made from plastic composite. The two other identical kites flying in the same conditions were not doing the same thing. They were flying on different line material, and tied off to different things, a person and a wooden fence. There was visible lightning and electrical activity in a storm that was about 1-3 miles to the West of us. The only other two times I have experienced this were both while riding in my kite buggy, and I started to get a shock through my leg to the metal frame of the buggy....br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=65b8d057aaaf2b804e4e882c6eb7d8e6p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=65b8d057aaaf2b804e4e882c6eb7d8e6p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechConspartnerID=167key=segment"/img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.28925.rss.TechCons.7604,cat.TechCons.rss"/
3D-printed clothing
Via our Submitterator, Fang McGee points us to this novel use of 3D printers: spitting out fabric structures for clothing. From Ecouterre: ...Designer-researchers like Freedom of Creation in Amsterdam and Philip Delamore at the London College of Fashion are cranking out seamless, flexible textile structures using software that converts three-dimensional body data into skin-conforming fabric structures. The potential for bespoke clothing, tailored to the specific individual, are as abundant as the patterns that can be created, from interlocking Mobius motifs to tightly woven meshes. "Are 3D-Printed Fabrics the Future of Sustainable Textiles?" (via Submitterator)...br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=38ca6d0fd642725a4cf024d0cdebd45dp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=38ca6d0fd642725a4cf024d0cdebd45dp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechConspartnerID=167key=segment"/img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.28925.rss.TechCons.7604,cat.TechCons.rss"/

Waxy.org Links

FC64 Commodore 64 emulator in Javascript
a bit CPU-intensive, but it works!  
10k Apart
build a web app in less than 10k, though you can use jQuery/Prototype and Typekit  
TorrentFreak on the BitTorrent releasers vs. the Scene
insidery article covering an interesting shift in online movie releasing  

Gizmodo
Gizmodo, the gadget guide. So much in love with shiny new toys, it's unnatural.

Please, Somebody Make These Beautiful HTML5 Animations Into a Game [Image Cache]
div style="float: left; padding-right: 10px;" !-- div style="background-color: #B3B3B3; width: 160px; padding: 1px;"a title="Click here to read Please, Somebody Make These Beautiful HTML5 Animations Into a Game" href="http://gizmodo.com/tag/imagecache/" style="background-color:#888888; color:#FFFFFF; font-size:12px;text-align:right; display:block; height:14px; padding:1px 2px; text-decoration:none; text-transform:uppercase; width:156px;"span style="color: white;" class="hash"#/spanspan style="color: white;"imagecache/span/a/div -- diva title="Click here to read Please, Somebody Make These Beautiful HTML5 Animations Into a Game" href="http://gizmodo.com/5599837/please-make-these-beautiful-html5-animations-into-an-adventure-game" class="pp_image" img style="border-color: #B3B3B3; border-width: 0 1px 1px; border-style: none solid solid;" height="120" width="160" title="Click here to read Please, Somebody Make These Beautiful HTML5 Animations Into a Game" alt="Click here to read Please, Somebody Make These Beautiful HTML5 Animations Into a Game" src="http://cache-02.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2010/07/160x120_screen_shot_2010-07-29_at_2.20.37_pm.jpg"/ span class="play_icon"/span /a/div /div Maybe it is because I'm a sucker for a href="http://gizmodo.com/5584814/monkey-island-2-is-what-all-ipad-gaming-should-be-about"old school 90s graphic adventures/a, but I love these just for what they are: Beautiful 8-bit cycling animations made using HTML5. They're so good that someone should write a game around them. a href="http://gizmodo.com/5599837/please-make-these-beautiful-html5-animations-into-an-adventure-game" title="Click here to read more about Please, Somebody Make These Beautiful HTML5 Animations Into a Game [Image Cache]"Morenbsp;raquo;/a br style="clear: both;" / br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=8570b67cdbbc2499ae3e3b65b14d3e09p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=8570b67cdbbc2499ae3e3b65b14d3e09p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechConspartnerID=167key=segment"/img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.28252.rss.TechCons.5726,cat.TechCons.rss"/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=3AByrY8qwbQ:tpXnLdgGrjU:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=3AByrY8qwbQ:tpXnLdgGrjU:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=3AByrY8qwbQ:tpXnLdgGrjU:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?i=3AByrY8qwbQ:tpXnLdgGrjU:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=3AByrY8qwbQ:tpXnLdgGrjU:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?i=3AByrY8qwbQ:tpXnLdgGrjU:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/3AByrY8qwbQ" height="1" width="1"/
Google Now "Fully Blocked" In China [Google]
div style="float: left; padding-right: 10px;" !-- div style="background-color: #B3B3B3; width: 160px; padding: 1px;"a title="Click here to read Google Now amp;quot;Fully Blockedamp;quot; In China" href="http://gizmodo.com/tag/google/" style="background-color:#888888; color:#FFFFFF; font-size:12px;text-align:right; display:block; height:14px; padding:1px 2px; text-decoration:none; text-transform:uppercase; width:156px;"span style="color: white;" class="hash"#/spanspan style="color: white;"google/span/a/div -- diva title="Click here to read Google Now amp;quot;Fully Blockedamp;quot; In China" href="http://gizmodo.com/5600107/google-now-fully-blocked-in-china" class="pp_image" img style="border-color: #B3B3B3; border-width: 0 1px 1px; border-style: none solid solid;" height="120" width="160" title="Click here to read Google Now amp;quot;Fully Blockedamp;quot; In China" alt="Click here to read Google Now amp;quot;Fully Blockedamp;quot; In China" src="http://cache-03.gawkerassets.com/assets/images/4/2010/07/160x120_500x_media_http9gagcomphot_nrjpc.jpg.scaled500.jpg"/ /a/div /div Google, the a href="http://gizmodo.com/5446712/google-refuses-to-continue-censoring-results-in-china"brave search engine company who refused to censor search results in China/a, seems to be finding itself entirely unwelcome in the country: Apparently Google is now fully blocked in China. a href="http://gizmodo.com/5600107/google-now-fully-blocked-in-china" title="Click here to read more about Google Now quot;Fully Blockedquot; In China [Google]"Morenbsp;raquo;/a br style="clear: both;" / br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=52cf488b49fe102d87e76302836100ebp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=52cf488b49fe102d87e76302836100ebp=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechConspartnerID=167key=segment"/img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.28252.rss.TechCons.5726,cat.TechCons.rss"/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=wa7vJr9UJgs:p4XBxwqobTg:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=wa7vJr9UJgs:p4XBxwqobTg:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=wa7vJr9UJgs:p4XBxwqobTg:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?i=wa7vJr9UJgs:p4XBxwqobTg:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=wa7vJr9UJgs:p4XBxwqobTg:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?i=wa7vJr9UJgs:p4XBxwqobTg:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/wa7vJr9UJgs" height="1" width="1"/
Comcast's DVR App Is Coming to Android and BlackBerry [Comcast]
div style="float: left; padding-right: 10px;" /div You can already a href="http://gizmodo.com/5488350/comcasts-latest-iphone-app-manages-your-dvr-from-anywhere"manage your Comcast DVR from your iPhone/a, but soon you'll be able to do the same with BlackBerry and Android as well. No date announced, but it's coming. [a href="http://blog.comcast.com/"Comcast/a] a href="http://gizmodo.com/5600091/comcasts-dvr-app-is-coming-to-android-and-blackberry" title="Click here to read more about Comcast's DVR App Is Coming to Android and BlackBerry [Comcast]"Morenbsp;raquo;/a br style="clear: both;" / br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ br clear="both" style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://ads.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=9ef3eb7b00d579745d1fde0291458752p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://ads.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=9ef3eb7b00d579745d1fde0291458752p=1"//a img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://segment-pixel.invitemedia.com/pixel?code=TechConspartnerID=167key=segment"/img alt="" height="0" width="0" border="0" style="display:none" src="http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-8bUhLiluj0fAw.gif?labels=pub.28252.rss.TechCons.5726,cat.TechCons.rss"/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=UJQlMLRhPoA:B8dM8YCm744:H0mrP-F8Qgo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?d=H0mrP-F8Qgo" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=UJQlMLRhPoA:B8dM8YCm744:yIl2AUoC8zA"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?d=yIl2AUoC8zA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=UJQlMLRhPoA:B8dM8YCm744:D7DqB2pKExk"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?i=UJQlMLRhPoA:B8dM8YCm744:D7DqB2pKExk" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?a=UJQlMLRhPoA:B8dM8YCm744:V_sGLiPBpWU"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~ff/gizmodo/full?i=UJQlMLRhPoA:B8dM8YCm744:V_sGLiPBpWU" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/UJQlMLRhPoA" height="1" width="1"/

InformationWeek - All Stories And Blogs
InformationWeek

The Cloud's Proliferating Open Source APIs

In June, Red Hat moved its Deltacloud open source project into the Apache Software Foundation's incubator. In July, Rackspace made its Cloud Files code open source and will collaborate with partners in the OpenStack project. The Open Cloud Standards Incubator at the DMTF is producing another set. Isn't this just too much open source?

Fun With Your New Dragon

Version 11 of NaturallySpeaking re-raises the perennial question, does "easier" mean "easy"?

YouTube Promises 15 Minutes Of Fame
To mark an increase in allowable running time for non-partner videos, YouTube says it will promote a handful of video makers.

The Register
Biting the hand that feeds IT

Data for 100m Facebook accounts published to BitTorrent
h4Forever is a mighty long time/h4 pUnderscoring the permanence of data published on the internet, a security researcher has compiled the names and URLs of more than 100 million Facebook users and made them available as a BitTorrent download.?/p
Uncle Sam sues Oracle (again) for alleged fraud
h4DoJ doubles down on whistleblower suit/h4 pThe US Department of Justice has filed a fresh lawsuit against Oracle, three months after intervening in a whistleblower suit that accuses the software giant of overcharging the government by "tens of millions of dollars."?/ppstrongsmalla href="http://whitepapers.theregister.co.uk/paper/view/1514/?ftd=rss"Free On-Demand Webcast - Virtualizing the Hard Stuff/a/small/strong/p
Ballmer and Softies sacrifice sleep to catch iPad
h4'Job-one urgency'/h4 pstrongFAM/strong Microsoft's chief executive has come very close to telling investors he screwed up after years of writing off, belittling and underestimated Apple's potential success in touch-based computing.?/p

Yahoo! News: Technology News
Technology News

Google: Search engine blocked in mainland China (AP)

AP - Google says people in mainland China are being blocked from using its Internet search engine.

US suing Oracle alleging software contracts fraud (AP)
AP - The U.S. Justice Department said Thursday it is joining a fraud lawsuit against Oracle Corp. related to software contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
Adult industry sees iPorn potential in new phone (AP)

AP - It's a maxim of technology: Invent the newest gadget and the porn industry will find a way to cash in.

Hack a Day
Fresh hacks every day

Super simple gaming controller for Android or iPhone
If you’ve got an iPhone or Android device that you use with a Wii remote when gaming, this quick hack will give you the third hand you need to manage all of that hardware. [Syanni85] mounted his Android phone to a Wii wheel for just a few dollars in parts. He ran across the wheel [...]
Graphic calculator as a spectrum analyzer
[Michael Vincent] turned his TI-84 Plus into a spectrum analyzer. By running some assembly code on the device the link port can be used as an I2C bus (something we’ll have to keep in mind). After being inspired by the cell phone spectrum analyzer he set out to build a module compatible with the calculator [...]
Ice Tube Clock GPS
Our favorite Soviet-Era display that found its way into a present-day kit now displays time from orbiting satellites. A GPS module patched into an Ice Tube Clock with modified firmware will be able to provide a satellite-synced time. The firmware, modified by yours truly, parses the GPS module’s NMEA RMC sentences for the time and [...]

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The latest links from I-Am-Bored.com.

Oedipus Poetry (Funny)
Tis a bit long a slow burn perhaps. If your patience is stong you'll find this poem kicks ass.
Crossing the ''Friend'' / ''Relationship'' Divide (Funny)
Mario makes it look easy enough.
Giant Spider Crab Sheds Its Shell (Science)
....wait for it...

Slashdot
News for nerds, stuff that matters

Sometimes It's OK To Steal My Games.
spidweb writes "One Indie developer has written a nuanced article on a how software piracy affects him, approaching the issue from the opposite direction. He lists the ways in which the widespread piracy of PC games helps him. From the article: 'You don't get everything you want in this world. You can get piles of cool stuff for free. Or you can be an honorable, ethical being. You don't get both. Most of the time. Because, when I'm being honest with myself, which happens sometimes, I have to admit that piracy is not an absolute evil. That I do get things out of it, even when I'm the one being ripped off.' The article also tries to find a middle ground between the Piracy-Is-Always-Bad and Piracy-Is-Just-Fine sides of the argument that might enable single-player PC games to continue to exist."pa href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgames.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F10%2F07%2F29%2F2241252%2FSometimes-Its-OK-To-Steal-My-Games" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Sometimes+It's+OK+To+Steal+My+Games.%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2Fa2SizS" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a/ppa href="http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/07/29/2241252/Sometimes-Its-OK-To-Steal-My-Games?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./piframe src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discussamp;id=1737302amp;smallembed=1" style="height: 300px; width: 100%; border: none;"/iframe pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/eoBg88HqUdJVNItAl6kSWbEJ-NE/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/eoBg88HqUdJVNItAl6kSWbEJ-NE/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/eoBg88HqUdJVNItAl6kSWbEJ-NE/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/eoBg88HqUdJVNItAl6kSWbEJ-NE/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/Pg6NNjXTeQ8" height="1" width="1"/
Thermoelectrics Could Let You Feel the Heat In Games
myshadows writes "Tech Review has an interesting article on how Tokyo Metropolitan University researchers have been able to give a sensory addition to gaming peripherals mdash; namely, temperature. 'As the range of interactions with digital environments expands, it's logical to ask what's next: Smell-o-vision has been on the horizon for something like 50 years, but there's a dark horse stalking this race: thermoelectrics. Based on the Peltier effect, these solid-state devices are easy to incorporate into objects of reasonable size, i.e. video game controllers. In this configuration, just announced at the 2010 SIGGRAPH conference, a pair of thermoelectric surfaces on either side of a controller rapidly heat up or cool down in order to simulate appropriate conditions in a virtual environment.'"pa href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fhardware.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F10%2F07%2F29%2F2154209%2FThermoelectrics-Could-Let-You-Feel-the-Heat-In-Games" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=Thermoelectrics+Could+Let+You+Feel+the+Heat+In+Games%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FaRFgmQ" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a/ppa href="http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/10/07/29/2154209/Thermoelectrics-Could-Let-You-Feel-the-Heat-In-Games?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./piframe src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discussamp;id=1737278amp;smallembed=1" style="height: 300px; width: 100%; border: none;"/iframe pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/86P_UufwVlbahTPLK5PT3uh6LVY/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/86P_UufwVlbahTPLK5PT3uh6LVY/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/86P_UufwVlbahTPLK5PT3uh6LVY/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/86P_UufwVlbahTPLK5PT3uh6LVY/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/DSWThfJtqao" height="1" width="1"/
KDE SC 4.7 May Use OpenGL 3 For Compositing
An anonymous reader writes "KDE SC 4.5 is about to be released and KDE SC 4.6 is being discussed. However, Martin Graesslin has revealed some details about what they are planning for KDE 4.7. According to Martin's blog post, they are looking at OpenGL 3.0 to provide the compositing effects in KDE SC 4.7. OpenGL 3.0 provides support for frame buffer objects, hardware instancing, vertex array objects, and sRGB framebuffers."pa href="http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Ftech.slashdot.org%2Fstory%2F10%2F07%2F29%2F216239%2FKDE-SC-47-May-Use-OpenGL-3-For-Compositing" target="_blank" title="Share on Facebook"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/facebook_icon_large.png"/a a href="http://twitter.com/home?status=KDE+SC+4.7+May+Use+OpenGL+3+For+Compositing%3A+http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2F9JiOXD" target="_blank" title="Share on Twitter"img src="http://a.fsdn.com/sd/twitter_icon_large.png"/a/ppa href="http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/07/29/216239/KDE-SC-47-May-Use-OpenGL-3-For-Compositing?from=rss"Read more of this story/a at Slashdot./piframe src="http://slashdot.org/slashdot-it.pl?op=discussamp;id=1737248amp;smallembed=1" style="height: 300px; width: 100%; border: none;"/iframe pa href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cdAEjp9QglWGdA_ybiNkJgsWCzw/0/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cdAEjp9QglWGdA_ybiNkJgsWCzw/0/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/abr/ a href="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cdAEjp9QglWGdA_ybiNkJgsWCzw/1/da"img src="http://feedads.g.doubleclick.net/~at/cdAEjp9QglWGdA_ybiNkJgsWCzw/1/di" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Slashdot/slashdot/~4/QQPfkDgXQhM" height="1" width="1"/

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Funny Quote of the Day
Funny Quote of the Day from BrainyQuote.com

Richard M. Nixon
"It is necessary for me to establish a winner image. Therefore, I have to beat somebody."
Marilyn vos Savant
"Have enough sense to know, ahead of time, when your skills will not extend to wallpapering."
Dan Quayle
"I have made good judgements in the past. I have made good judgements in the future."

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HPIM0814
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HPIM0815
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