It did not occur to me that outer space could have a smell, but the Don Pettit of the International Space Station sez its "a rather pleasant sweet metallic sensation". sweet. (via /.)
"It reminded me of my college summers where I labored for many hours with an arc welding torch repairing heavy equipment for a small logging outfit. It reminded me of pleasant sweet smelling welding fumes. That is the smell of space."
The original SimCity got open-sourced as 'Micropolis'! It's cool how old games get open-sourced (see the Marathon Infinity Aleph One project). And better yet, it got donated to the One Laptop Per Child Project. More @ /. As a true SimCity zealot, I have to say that handing it over to all those kids in the developing world is really quite cool!
UK News: you better shut off your fuckin wireless Internet router because if someone grabs a Sony BMG album, you're on the Big Shit List: Internet users could be banned over illegal downloads - Times Online
Drupal 6.0 released: its a big deal. One guru I know dropped what he was doing at his job and installed that right away on his test server. That's devotion, people. That's one hell of a platform.
The McCain version of the schmaltzy black-and-white Obama rock-n-roll celeb video. john.he.is. [satire, people]
Comcast is really getting tangled up by playing content police and jamming competing video services, the Washington Post noticed:
Marvin Ammori, the general counsel for Free Press, said Comcast's behavior is the second major example of an service provider overstepping its authority in an attempt to quash competition. In March 2005, the FCC fined Madison River Communications for blocking calls by competitor Vonage, which provided free calls over the Internet.
Ammori said that by interfering with video transfers, Comcast is trying to protect its television and On Demand video services.
Among the leading pranks of the corporate behemoth: Using pervasive data mining to jam BitTorrent yet claiming that they are somehow not responsible for the vast levels of piracy on their network. But also, that it's legit to jam legal BitTorrents even though the system is a 'killer app' that will eventually destroy their business model (arbitraging the distribution of content, getting a cut from the generators of the content for the privilege of vending it to the ever-fattening American Consumer). The FCC is getting up in their shit. Etc.
The uber-tech savvy audience at Slashdot points out that if Comcast wants to play traffic cop and stop the Torrents, they should not be legally shielded for creating the crime of transmitting the illegal Torrents in the first place. Thansal sez:
The argument here is this:
ISPs are currently not liable for what illegal things their customers do with the service provided.
One of the reasonings behind this is that they should not be mining traffic enough to know wth is going on. (IANAL, this is a bad explanation)
Comcast says that they SHOULD be mining traffic to shape it and see wth is going on.
Comcast should then be held liable for any illegal activities that they 'know' about because of this monitoring.
[IANAL = I Am Not A Lawyer, tho really that twisted tribe is the most anal.] A ton of smart arguments in here about it.
Also they have been bumping the rate for Internet-only connection to a whopping $65 a month, up from about $50. However, if you yell at them enough when they call to tell you about the bump, it is apparently possible to avoid getting charged. This is what I was told. Comcast is such a disaster.
See FreePress.net for more on the battles of Net Neutrality and Corporate Nonsense. And download Miro, an open source RSS-friendly video player which can also slurp the FLV files out of YouTube, and indeed lets you subscribe to HD-quality BitTorrent powered content 'channels'. This program, Miro, is indeed the Comcast Killer. Shit!
That's all........
