Japanese boys pen spinning

Again, only Japan.

Cracking Windows passwords with Linux

I put this here as a reference.
I have a feeling it may well be needed.

Cracking Windows Passwords with Linux

Cognitive Fitness: 10 Debunked Myths

As some of us have long suspected, alot of people are not using their brains in an efficient manner.
Hopefully this article will clear up some loose ends.

Over the last year we have interviewed a number of leading brain health and fitness scientists and practitioners worldwide to learn about their research and thoughts, and have news to report.

Sharp Brains

Free Skull Font

Nice skull font.
‘Skull a day’ is giving a free font away!
SkullaDay - the font

This is a great site & you should check it out.
A new skull ‘thing’ every day.
Skull-a-day

The First Photograph

A great analysis & history of the first ever photograph.
Made in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce at his estate in Chalon-sur-Saône, France.

First ever photograph.

X-rayed things

Nice directory of x-rays of ordinary, and not so ordinary things.

X-Rayed things
sorry - in Japanese

Post Secret

Ive just re-discovered the very wonderful & disquieting Post Secret web site.
People are invited to post in thier secrets on handmade postcards. The result, a poigniant collection of thoughts & musings.

PostScret

4yr Old BBC Documentary on Bush stealing the elections

This appears to be doing the rounds again, Aired on Newsnight (British TV News show) its a (some what flippiant in my view) mini documentary on the shenanigins surrounding Bush's election.
I didnt relaise that Katherine Harris who presided over the Florida voting, had also been named as Bush's Florida campaign co-chair the year before.
What are these people thinking!


The Very Wonderful Greg Palast

Ron Paul Interview

A very lucid Ron Paul Interview.

JUDY WOODRUFF: You are somewhat of a sensation among young people in this country. They are -- you've broken all records for Web searches. You're on MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, I guess more than just about any other candidate. With all due respect...

REP. RON PAUL: Be nice.

JUDY WOODRUFF: ... you're 72 years old, how do you explain it?

REP. RON PAUL: Young ideas, a fantastic idea about individual freedom and allowing people to do what they want and take care of their lives, their lives belong to them, and get the government off their backs, and offer them low taxes, and make sure I never mess around with the Internet. Don't tax the Internet, and don't regulate the Internet.

Ron Paul at PBS.org

P2P anonymity

P2P researchers: use a blocklist or you will be tracked!

The old cliché "You're not paranoid if they really are out to get you" turns out to apply quite nicely to the world of P2P file-sharing. A trio of intrepid researchers from the University of California-Riverside decided to see just how often a P2P user might be tracked by content owners. Their startling conclusion: "naive" users will exchange data with such "fake users" 100 percent of the time.

Ars Technica

Google Hacking made easy

Audio Raider uses the Google AJAX Search API to uncover open directories of music files. Not only is Audio Raider easier than trying to remember than complex Google strings, it filters out the spam results. While P2P is monitored, these directories are not. Download safely without the RIAA!

AudioRaider.com

Income inequality worst since 1920s, according to IRS data

The superrich are gobbling up an ever larger piece of the economic pie, and the poor are seeing their share of earnings shrink: new IRS data shows the top 1 percent of Americans are claiming a larger share of national income than at any time since before the Great Depression.

The Raw Story

How the U.S. Became Switchboard to the World

We know America has become a surveillance state, here is the reason why every other country should be worried too.

A lucky coincidence of economics is responsible for routing much of the world's Internet and telephone traffic through switching points in the United States, where, under legislation introduced this week, the U.S. National Security Agency will be free to continue tapping it.

How the U.S. Became Switchboard to the World

Vatican publish Templar documents

The Knights Templar are a fascinating group, if not only for the conspiracy theory, then for the insight they give into the thinking & politics of the time.

The publishing house said the new book includes the "Parchment of Chinon," a 1308 decision by (Pope) Clement (V) to save the Templars and their order. The document was misplaced for centuries in the archives and found again by researchers in 2001.

Templar article at BoingBoing

Sinister Funeral Service Advert

I would advise you not to read the small print.

Y wing Beats X wing!

I love these home brew rocketry events of geekdom & explosions combining Mans desire to explore/ blow stuff up.

[Video]

Best Quotes
Q- So whats the difference between the Y-Wing & the X-Wing
A- Less wings - less stuff to tear off

Remeber
- step one - get in the air -
- step two - come back

I love rocket science.

2 Great Photography Links

Heres a great pair of photography links for you.

Portraits of people walking through turnstiles

Americas young Hobos - (bit grim in places)

Major Act defecting from the Majors

Following on from my post about the Yahoo Music Exec telling the Majors to stuff DRM, we have news of Major Acts such as RadioHead & NIN being quite happy with no Record Company involvment.

DRM is an insidious technology that restricts your ability to do what you wish with the things you have bought. Some companies actually remove rights you had purchased when they ... er ... update you.

Lets hope that the Major Record companies (& other interest) learn from this debacle and realise that not treating your customers like criminals can be beneficial to business.

"Radiohead's management says that the free-download experiment is working out very well so far, driving an 11-fold traffic boost to the band's Web site and converting plenty of those hits into sales of premium boxed sets for £40 a pop."

Great round up of security tools

If your seriously concerned about security, or just a happy hacker, these (and the knowledge of how to use them) are your tools.

XP Security Tools

Band releases Album on Floppy

A UK band called Batch Totem has released a 74-minute album compressed down to fit on a 1.4MB, 3.5" floppy disk. Who need vinyl nostalgia?

[Link]

Thanx BoingBoing

Burma

The Guardian reports on Burmas Internet lockdown, & the terrible events going on there.

[Link]

Yahoo exec tells Majors to stuff DRM

Finaly, some one in the business stands up to the majors & tells them to stuff it!

I'm here to tell you today that I for one am no longer going to fall into this trap. If the licensing labels offer their content to Yahoo! put more barriers in front of the users, I'm not interested. Do what you feel you need to do for your business, I'll be polite, say thank you, and decline to sign. I won't let Yahoo! invest any more money in consumer inconvenience. I will tell Yahoo! to give the money they were going to give me to build awesome media applications to Yahoo! Mail or Answers or some other deserving endeavor. I personally don't have any more time to give and can't bear to see any more money spent on pathetic attempts for control instead of building consumer value. Life's too short. I want to delight consumers, not bum them out.

Yahoo Music to record execs: No more DRM, ever


UPDATE - Madonna also quits the majors
Music Industry Launches Four-Pronged Effort to Destroy Itself

Record Companies stiff woman over mp3s

The RIAA has won its court case against an American woman for making mp3s available across the net. (Kaazaa).

Copyright law is, as Berkeley law professor Pam Samuelson points out, way too verbose; it's now swollen to an unbelievable 200 pages long. It's complex, incomprehensible, designed to favor large copyright holders over defendants, and thoroughly out of touch with reality.

[Link]

Update - Juror aparently has never been on the Internet - Opens up questions about the trial.

Poigniant Video Essay on Population

Hes a very beautiful video short detailing world statiastics if our global villiage contained only 100 people.




[Link]

Gizmodo Readers' Computer Rig Poll

Geeky I know, but they are beuatiful.

[Link]

Insightful article on events in the US economy

Yes I know reading about financial matters is boring, but if you want to know whats really going on in the world, then study banking.
Its not Aliens, 911 Conspiricies or Secret World Orders, its just greed.

In fact, as far as some big banks and financial institutions were concerned, for a moment in time, the system was in a full-blown cardiac arrest. Liquidity, the flow of money—the lifeblood of today’s economic structure—came uncomfortably close to clotting up.

[Link]

Steal Colour Profiles from Old Masters

& then apply them to your own photos.
Great trick in Photoshop to improve the colour balance of your images.
I spotted this a few months ago, & Ive just had chance to use it.
Works a treat!

[Link]

Mac OS X overview

Found a great document at kernelthread.com dispelling myths & detailing the history and intricacies of the Mac OSX operating system.
I prefer not to get in to the argument about which is 'better', for me, its like guitars - if you want to sound like Eric Clapton, use a Fender Strat, like Jimi Page - use a Les Paul.
Use the right tool for the Job.
That said however, I dont have a Mac around the house, so keeping up with whats going on in there is a chore.

This document does not aim to regurgitate Marketing KoolAid, not that there's anything wrong with it™, but is intended primarily as an introduction to Mac OS X for those members of the technical community who are not familiar with it. You can think of it as a somewhat low-level taste of Apple's operating system.

(Steve Jobs founded NeXT based on BSD and brought it back to Apple - answered my question!)

[Link]