The guys over at JibJab got some great new animations going. As always, they parody political (mis-)happenings. The first one, “What we call the news” shows how TV news humbly started in the ’60s and what they have become today. The second clip “Nuckin’ Futs” is a summary of the events in 2006, sung by children.
Sit back and enjoy the show:

At last, one of the biggest music distribution companies, EMI, is going to ditch the Digital Rights Management DRM. The company will offer all songs of their artists first on Apples iTunes store, but will charge a bit more per song (album prices stay the same) for better quality and a file free of DRM.
The only band still not available online are the Beatles, whos company Apple Corps still doesn’t want their songs to be downloadable.

Source: derStandard.at [german]
More information:

• EMI press release [emigroup]

• EMI unlocks anti-piracy software on music [reuters]
• Beatles catalog not in Apple deal [Forbes]

There’s beer. Then there’s advertisments. And then there are really, really great beer advertisments. Budweiser often had them, Tuborg had a few good ones, Heineken also. But this one beats them all when it comes to big, epic ads - it even has its own Wikipedia article.

Inspired by Cheers Beer [Dan’s blog].

Last year Google bought YouTube for 1,65 billion dollars - and now the aftermath has hit the fan: Viacom, owner of such tv stations as Nickelodeon and MTV, is filing a lawsuit against Google for “massive intentional copyright infringement”. The statement goes on, “In fact, YouTube strategy has been to avoid taking proactive steps to curtail the infringement on its site, thus generating significant traffic and revenues for itself while shifting the entire burden – and high cost – of monitoring YouTube onto the victims of its infringement.”

This is the first major company to go after the Google/YouTube connection and its alleged copyright infringement. If it goes well (for Viacom) maybe others will try to jump the wagon too. Only time and probably judges will tell what becomes of YouTube when major tv players go hunting for it.

More Information: “Viacom sues Google and YouTube” [guardian unlimited]

That’s what happens when even big broadcasting stations like NBC don’t check the sources their images come from. This one’s probably off of Google Images. “So good you’ll suck dick” - the anchorwoman even looks like she knew what was being shown there on the screenshot.

Did you know that there used to be a large forest swastika in germany, where some foresters planted larch trees in a pine area so people flying over it would see the swastika?
Have you ever heard of the little austrian town of Fucking?
Have you been to the penis museum in iceland?
Seen the tree that owns itself?
Did you know that the pin that holds the rotor to the mast of some helicopters is called a Jesus nut?

If such obscurities bring even a little smile to your face, the following page might be worth a visit: Unusual articles on the english Wikipedia

Students at the University of East Anglia in the UK are working on the Wikipedia online encyclopedia as part of their degree course. Wikipedia has recently divided academics when a US university banned the site because of fears that students could reproduce content from it without checking its accuracy. But there is hope when a project such as the middle east course embeds Wikipedia into university courses with tasks like “edit eight articles and then write your own article concerning the subject”.

Read more: Students assessed with Wikipedia [BBC]

Purdue University researchers have created a handheld sensing system its creators liken to Star Trek’s “tricorder” used to analyze the chemical components of alien worlds.
The new portable system is an ultrafast chemical-analysis tool that has numerous promising uses for detecting everything from cancer in the liver to explosives residues on luggage and “biomarkers” in urine that provide an early warning for diseases.
“We like to compare it to the tricorder because it is truly a handheld instrument that yields information about the precise chemical composition of samples in a matter of minutes without harming the samples”, one of the researchers said.

More information:

• ‘Tricorder’ Sensor Has Real-Life Promise [photonics]
• We’re one step closer to Star Trek [neoseeker]

PNAC, the “Project for a New American Century”, something that I (as a non-american) never heard of before, might be a familiar term to some of you. PNAC released a paper in the nineties that almost read like a playbook for the war in Iraq. Now some of the guys from PNAC seem to think the whole thing might have been a mistake.

What?

Not the idea. They still think they were right there. They just overestimated the ability of certain policy makers to be able to pull it all off. Vanity Fair has an eye-opening article online that details their current thoughts on the matter. An article that illustrates the idea that friends can be the harshest critics…

read more on Neo Culpa: Politics & Power

M. I. T. Almost everyone interested in computers or technics in general will have heard those 3 magic letters. MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Only a few able are allowed to study there every year. But now you can at least be like the little mouse watching in the classroom: MIT OpenCourseWare enables everyone, and even without registration, to view and download the lot of MIT courses from the last years. Even the student presentations and audio and video files from teachers are available there.

The courses they provide are manifold: ranging from “Aeronautics and Astronautics” through “Music and Theater Arts” to “Writing and Humanistic Studies”. A great opportunity for everyone that wants to learn new and exciting stuff!

Pro golfer Fuzzy Zoeller is teed off over what he calls defamatory statements about him on Wikipedia.

But instead of suing the popular online reference site, Zoeller is taking a swing at a Miami company. In a lawsuit filed last week in Miami-Dade Circuit Court, Zoeller — suing under the name John Doe — alleged the statements were posted from a computer belonging to Josef Silny & Associates.

read more on MiamiHerald.com

… would normally be out of our reach. Yes, you can argue that about 4 million people are going to have sex just now, 15 million are sleeping in their bed, and around 9 million are surfing the web just this moment. Don’t sue me on these numbers, they are completely unrelated, and everyone knows 96% of statistics are made up on the spot anyway.

If you would like to take a look at what random people from all over the world are doing just now, the new fad when it comes to publishing your thoughts online might be Twitter.
It’s a sort-of-blog where you can register and then answer the only question they ask you there, over and over: “What are you doing?”
Then you will see yourself in the twitter timeline together with what all the other user have done or are doing at the moment. More or less another service mankind didn’t really need to surive, but a fancy thing nontheless. I like to give the site a visit whenever I am bored on the net, i.e. when I’m at work.

Also there is the option to use Twitter productively [lifehack.org]

Around 2 weeks ago Microsoft released Windows Vista to the public. The consent from the masses is divided, some hail it for the security features, some for the usability, but most (including me) just fail to understand what makes it so better than XP, and especially why an operating system need such highend hardware to run smoothly.

Also around 2 weeks ago, PC World released two articles called “15 Reasons to Switch” and “Wait! Don’t buy Vista“. I’ll list their 15 supposed reasons to switch and the 6 reasons to stay with XP here and give me own comments on them, because frankly, most of the info from the first article sounds like it came straight from Microsoft PR. So prepare for the view of a programmer, network admin and freelancing web-designer on these reasons pro & con Windows Vista:

15 Reasons to Switch - I don’t think so…

1. “It’s the Interface, Stupid”
   The new interface is probably the number 1 hardware monster in Vista. Flashy animated menus, a 3D taskswitcher, transparent windows, etc. Who needs this anyway? I haven’t seen too much users that still have the flashy Luna theme that came with XP - either they downloaded a smoother theme or used the old classic Windows theme. Flashy is not the same as userfriendly!
2. “Flip Over Windows Flip 3D”
   As I said on the first issue, who needs that 3D taskswitcher? Those users that want a really flashy OS are better served with Media Center Edition or other such OS’s and the ones that want to work (and/or game) efficiently on their machine will still have to endure the slowdown that the feature produces especially on machines older than a year.
3. “Live Thumbnails”
   Okay, I admit that feature is kind of nice, especially because the thumbnail is live and therefore will play a video if the program does it and so forth.
4. “Boost Performance With ReadyBoost”
   When the OS is performing lowgrade, you just put in another tool to boost the performance? Great idea… but wouldn’t it be better to have the system itself perform better in the first way?
5. “Cool Performance Tools”
   Well okay, nice to have. But I have tons of these already working on my harddrive, all of them freeware.
6. “Better Security”
   The only thing that really is better than XP, because comparable to Linux when you try to do something only an admin could do, you get a login dialog so that you will have admin rights only for this operation and can then continue to surf the web or whatever you did without the crucial admin rights.
7. “Find Anything Fast With Search”
   One word: Google Desktop Search. Okay that were three, but an URL sure has to count as a single word right? desktop.google.com
8. “Nifty Software Gadgets”
   Everthing that Vista wants to have as “new gadgets” was already available since aons on Linux systems, and even on windows machines as Freeware like Desktop Sidebar or many others.
9. “Better Wireless Networking”
   WLAN without a hassle when you try to connect to a network after using your laptop in another wireless network? I’ll believe it as soon as I see it.
10. “Map Your Network”
    Nothing else than another way to view the network neighborhood in essence.
11. “Better Graphics With Windows Photo Gallery”
    IrfanView for viewing, PhotoShop for editing. Nothing comes even close.
12. “Become a Director With Windows Movie Maker”
    Windows Movie Maker was already in XP. And it was crap. Okay some amateur (video) editors may have used the program to cut a few holiday videos, but nothing good has come of it. If you really want to edit video professionally, you want to use Pinnacle Studio, Adobe Premiere or the most highend, an Avid.
13. Better Notebook Support”
    Wow, I can turn on and off my wireless adapter from within Windows? I can do that now on XP as well with the laptop tools provided by the manufactor. And to top that, Windows XP uses a lot less hardware power and therefore battery life power so it will run longer than Vista.
14. “File Sharing and Syncing”
    I admit being able to sync different directories over the network without any installed tool is kinda nice.
15. “Protect Your Kids With Parental Controls”
    Yada Yada Yada, “Killergames”, “Erfurt”, “Columbine”, Yada Yada Yada. If you spend quality time and conversation with your child it won’t need to be locked out of the PC, and it surely won’t shoot random people just because it was able to do so on a screen. I’m not saying 5 year olds should play Doom 3, but reasonable parents should come up with something else than just locking them out without a reason.

And now, for something completely different!

Wait! Don’t buy Vista - That’s my kind of talk…

1. “Vista Is Incomplete”
   Indeed it is. Hotfixes and Servicepacks come out for every Windows. But there have to be drivers available at launch too. Surround sound, for instance, only works with certain Creative cards and not with most others, those only output stereo. nVidia and ATI graphic card drivers are still in beta, etc. Why switch from a perfectly fine running system to a proably broken system if I can’t even install all the drivers needed?
2. “Vista Is Expensive”
   Indeed it is. And Vista Ultimate is the only version I’d settle with.
3. “Vista Wants a New PC”
   If you PC is older than a year Vista probably won’t run as smoothly as you see in the presentation videos. 2(!) Gigabyte of RAM is heavily recommended for it, a number that was before reserved to gaming stations and CAD machines or the likes, is now needed by a simple operating systems?
4. “Vista Is Time-Consuming”
   Well once it is truly running it probably won’t be, but until then, good luck. Again the thought comes to mind, “never touch a running system” - why spend days of work installing and configuring a new system when the old one is perfectly fine?
5. “Windows XP Isn’t Obsolete”
   Everything I said here written in one italic sentence.
6. “Vista May be the Best Reason Yet to Buy a Mac”
   Well I didn’t expect that as a reason not to buy Vista! But there is truth behind the statement: If you have to get your employees used to Windows Vista, you might as well get them used to a mac, and in the meantime do away with virus problems and all the likes that bug Windows.

Read more about the Hidden Costs of a Windows Vista Upgrade.

According to a press release, Intel was able to produce a single CPU with 80 cores, that is able to deliver 1 Teraflop (1 trillion operations per second).

The now-called Teraflops Research Chip is composed of a total of 80 independent processing cores, which Intel refers to as tiles. The tiles are organized in rectangular fashion, with 8 tiles placed across and 10 down, adding up to a total of 80.

Though the company has no plans to release the 80 core chip to the public market, it claims that it offered specific insights in new silicon design methodologies, high-bandwidth interconnects and energy management approaches.

We’ll see what will come of it. In the meanwhile you can read more about the project here:

• DailyTech
• PhysOrg
• New York Times
• International Herald Tribune

It all happened on the 28th of March in 2003. The second Iraq war just started 7 days ago. Two US A-10 tankbusters are flying their mission. After they attack a convoy of what they believe to be enemy rocket launchers, the truth is made clear to the two pilots while still in the air circling their prey:

Hey, POPOV34, abort your mission. You got a, looks we might have a blue on blue situation.

Friendly fire. Probably known to man since man started wars (so since the beginning of mankind that would be..?). But in modern times, with all the advancement in weapons and armors, and especially the way the military “advertises” their strategy, that of a “surgical strike”, friendly fire still happens a lot. And when it happens it is almost always deadly.

Yeah, I know that thing with the orange panels is going to screw us. They look like orange rockets on top.

More than two years passed since the incident was in the news. But today it came up once again because british the Sun newspaper revealed a tape recording the actions and dialogue of the pilots and their home stations on the mission. The controversy around the subject is that the US government tried to hide the tape for two full years, and now at last it is brought to light.

More information via the Sun:

• Joy at direct hit turns to horror
• Cockpit video stuns world
• The tape they wanted to hide