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May 2000 Archives
May 31
My Winamp Locker
appears to be a free online storage space for your music files, hosted by Winamp. At 3Gb, and the offer of sharing and listening to your songs anywhere, how on earth do they expect to A) make any money back from all the server hardware they'll buy to support this, and B) not get sued by the RIAA? I thought it'd be a great service to exploit for my personal 2-3Gb collection, but it turns out you have to upload your files one at a time. ugh.
posted by mathowie at 9:39 PM PST - 6 comments
A Scourge of Small Arms
"The root causes of ethnic, religious and sectarian conflicts around the world are of course complex and varied, typically involving historical grievances, economic deprivation, demagogic leadership and an absence of democratic process. Although small arms and light weapons are not themselves a cause of conflict, their ready accessibility and low cost can prolong combat, encourage a violent rather than a peaceful resolution of differences, and generate greater insecurity throughout society--which in turn leads to a spiraling demand for, and use of, such weapons."
posted by Calebos at 6:45 PM PST - 7 comments
Motley disses Metallica
Mister Sixx and pals give their response to Lars' crew, on the whole mp3/napster issue. Sounds like 2 groups of people are benefitting from all these lawsuits, lawyers and flash-cartoonists...
posted by nomisxid at 3:23 PM PST - 4 comments
Hmmm... perhaps I've been wrong.
It would appear that the federal courts *have* been being strict about the 'militia' interpretation of the Second Amendment. That may change, however, thanks to a Federal Appeals Court judge from, no surprise, Texas.
posted by baylink at 3:22 PM PST - 18 comments
are webloggers male or female?
i'm doing a poll to try and discover the gender distribution of webloggers. someone recently asked this of me, and i had no idea if anyone had gathered that info.
posted by brig at 2:59 PM PST - 22 comments
Huy Fong
rules. In the IT department of the ad agency I'm freelancing for the boys use a bottle a week, putting it on dern near everything. Check out the
letters.
posted by Mo Nickels at 11:36 AM PST - 1 comments
Stupid new marketing word of the day: "Advertorial" (spotted on
this NY Times page).
Here's a screenshot - what exactly are they trying to say? Do their advertisements now contain editorial copy that should help shoppers make a more informed decision, or are they just trying to fool us into thinking these advertisements have more credibility because they are "editorialized"? (disclaimer: I hate marketing BS)
posted by mathowie at 10:12 AM PST - 14 comments
Does God exist?
In a day and age where people are somewhat better educated (than say 500 years ago), we are taught to think freely and form our own opinions. As a result, it is no surprise that Christianity is nowhere near as strong as it was back in its glory days. Here are some
good debates between University professors over the existence of God. Very good arguments from both sides. Very thought-provoking stuff. I, for one, believe there are far too many people who blindly believe in a religion because it is the easy way out. Tell me what you think.
posted by PWA_BadBoy at 3:50 AM PST - 38 comments
Now this is really stupid.
14-year-old Francis Di Masi's petition to have his name legally changed to "Frank" because he gets teased mercilessly in school about it was rejected. The judge said in his decision that "Learning how to deal with these taunts [is] part of growing up."
My first name, family name and nicknames have always given other people trouble when it comes to spelling and pronounciation, so I know what it's like to grow up getting name-related grief every single day of your life; "tedious" doesn't even
begin to describe it.
So while I don't think "Francis" is altogether a
bad name, why shouldn't the kid get to legally call himself whatever he wants? I mean, if some moron can change his name to DotComGuy without a hitch, why not Frank?
posted by lia at 3:43 AM PST - 21 comments
May 30
Tahni reacts if you touch her or move her around the screen with your mouse. If you leave her alone, she will amuse herself and entertain you in the process. (Is there any way that doesn't sound dirty?)
posted by endquote at 9:58 PM PST - 3 comments
Zimbabwe is too important not to blog
My pal, technical saviour, and usurper in the race toward pessimism and gloom
Luke Tymowski has quietly beavered away producing a Tomalak's Ream-esque daily digest of Zimbabwe news. Benighted Jakob Nielsen just finished saying that Web writing like this is the only way to go. Does he read Luke? He oughta. A lotta people oughta.
posted by joeclark at 9:04 PM PST - 4 comments
I'm giving $30 to some Metafilter user.
I'm stealing this idea from the Shiny Thing giveaway that
usr/bin/girl held a while back. I liked her contest, but I would have liked it more if we got to see everything people asked for. So here goes.
I will buy one lucky Metafilter user something off of the Web of a $30 value or less (I will pay shipping and taxes).
To enter: add a comment to this post. The comment must link to the thing you want and provides a bit of contextualizing commentary. (I'd prefer it if the link pointed to something that has at least a semi-permanent home on the Web, no eBay please.) I will choose and announce a winner within (roughly) the next forty-eight hours.
This winner will be chosen based on a single criteria -- "coolness." Whatever item I find the most "cool" wins. I make no claim that my definition of what's "cool" will match any commonly socially-accepted definitions (or your own personal definition, for that matter). Decision of judge is final.
I set the bar here: in order to win, your item must be at least as cool as
this; otherwise I will declare myself the winner.
Have fun. Play fair.
posted by jbushnell at 7:11 PM PST - 62 comments
Ursula K. LeGuin's "The Lathe of Heaven"
is being offered to local PBS stations in the month of June. It hasn't been broadcast in about 20 years. VHS tape and DVD due out in September. Both KQED (San Francisco) and KRCB (Rohnert Park-Cotati, CA) aren't going to broadcast it. I guess Suze Orman needs the airtime...
posted by paddbear at 4:20 PM PST - 2 comments
On the topic of cars
, I've known about this city for awhile, and it looks like heaven. It's actually a law to have a picket fence, and there's no cars, because well, there's no roads! But, at around 500k at least for a house, I think it's a bit out of my league
posted by starduck at 4:20 PM PST - 9 comments
(close-up on my face, quickly zooming out to an overhead shot as I yell)
Noooooooooo!!!!! TicketWeb, one of the last places you could buy a ticket to a concert that wasn't Ticketmaster, just got
bought out by Ticketmaster. TicketWeb's slogan is "The Online Ticketing Alternative." Not anymore....hello, monopoly anyone?
posted by mathowie at 2:12 PM PST - 7 comments
Anyone else joined up for this?
With all the grief that
ICANN &
NSI seem to be causing these days, I'm curious how many other people out there have joined the ICANN Member-At-Large program, and if anyone has posted any comments yet. To me, requiring someone to get 10% of the Asian region, to be self-nominated, seems most improbable.
posted by nomisxid at 1:39 PM PST - 4 comments
PDAs & the eye module...
Do you have a PDA? What kind? Is it useful? If you have a Handspring, do you have an Eye Module? Would you recommend it? Or would you rather have a regular digital camera? Inquiring minds wanna know...
posted by wiremommy at 11:59 AM PST - 3 comments
THAT'S a speeding ticket...
Scientists push light up to 300 times the SPEED OF LIGHT.
I just got a floaty-glowy feeling. Some interesting interesting stuff is happening in our world.
My favorite quote from the article: "That is so fast that, under these peculiar circumstances, the main part of the pulse exits the far side of the chamber even before it enters at the near side. "
[Note: link is for NYT, free registration req'd]
posted by cCranium at 11:42 AM PST - 12 comments
May 29
Car-free Cities
Would you like to live in a city where everything you need is within a five-minute walk? Where you can get from one side of a city of a million people to the other in less than thirty minutes? Where the air is clean, people are healthy, children and the elderly aren't dependent on others to get where they want to go, and life is beautiful? You can have it all--just ban cars.
posted by daveadams at 10:01 PM PST - 50 comments
Look! I got banned.
And all for spite. I thought it'd be nice and irritating to download his stuff after he started a dispute. I did the same with Metallica. After hearing their music, I'm surprised they have the balls to defend such crap. It's like kicking a garbage can full of screaming monkeys down the stairs.
posted by madglee at 8:26 PM PST - 3 comments
Jeremy's CyberCafe and Beer Haus is up for sale,
but what's really cool about it is that it is located just outside of Joshua Tree National Park in the Southern California desert, and they have a full T-1 line that they're selling along with the business. Hmm...T-1 access
plus nearby national park? Maybe we should take up a collection and buy it ourselves? :)
posted by mathowie at 11:20 AM PST - 2 comments
Discussion:
What's a reasonable amount of time, for you, to expect someone to reply to an email?
[More inside...]
posted by baylink at 9:59 AM PST - 38 comments
May 28
Your site in Chinese.
I picked this one up out of my logs. Enter your URL, hit return, wheet, there it is, your site in simplified Chinese. Dunno how accurate it is, but goddamned, it's the coolest thing I've seen in, oh, almost 16 hours.
You need to be running a browser and OS that handles Chinese characters for this to work, by the way. Mac users can install the appropriate freebies off of their OS 9 or 8.6 disks; it's a custom install. Windows users can download some big software turd. At least Internet Explorer on both platforms will display Chinese characters correctly once the system extensions are installed.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:59 PM PST - 1 comments
THE ROBINSON REPORT: "A Complete Report to the Citizens of the Commonwealth on the Personal Background of a Candidate for the United States Senate" -- written by the candidate, in the spirit of full discolsure. [more inside]
posted by palegirl at 1:14 PM PST - 6 comments
Apparently,
there's a link between today's television programming and promiscuity in teenagers. I'd say its because overly-censored American tv is so boring that most teenagers would prefer to have sex rather than watch that crap.
posted by sammy at 12:07 PM PST - 1 comments
The open bookmark project
Hi:
I have started a pitas site covering bookmarks. The goal of this project is to receive the bookmark and favorites files from people around the world and learn what sites he/she bookmarked and how they organized them.
posted by efader at 11:25 AM PST - 5 comments
The Spyware Infested Software List.
All programs on this list surreptitiously report back to a server telling either what you've been doing or what is on your computer. It's quite a list.
I don't understand why Navigator isn't on there, though. Navigator's "What's Related" feature does exactly the same thing.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:55 AM PST - 7 comments
"our country
has failed to make veterans, especially disabled veterans, a monetary urgency. Congress' attempt to honor and recognize our freedom fighters during their aged years must include the backing of the entire country."
posted by Mick at 8:29 AM PST - 1 comments
Where did CC go?
Is it true the editorial cabal at the Aged have censored CC following postings on MeFi? It's Sunday night and she's not blogging ... Has Casey been exposed as a Rocky regular and management have dumped her? Did palegirl kidnap her? Bring back CC you bastards!
posted by beergirl at 5:54 AM PST - 2 comments
May 27
Freedom of Art Dept.:
In a previous topic, captain cursor said: "It's actually better to have a weak artistic piece when arguing aspects of law. Since the law should apply to all works, good or bad, you don't want to be distracted by the merits of the work.". So what happens when a very popular image is "censored"?
A commercial mural painter in L.A. wants to paint a big Statue of Libery on the side of a building (nobody's paying him to do it). Big murals need permits, the local city councilman doesn't like big murals, the painter starts painting without a permit, gets arrested,
puts up a web site. (At least he gives one page to
the councilman's reply.)
So, MeFi opinion leaders, is this painter a First Amendment hero, an opportunistic promoter or what?
posted by wendell at 4:18 PM PST - 7 comments
Advertising on Your GPS Reciever
It looks like advertisers are already dreaming up new uses for the higher quality GPS signals.
"You're walking down the block, your phone goes off as you pass every store and tells you that there's a 50-percent-off sale."
Someone remind me why it was a good idea to deregulate the GPS?
posted by darainwa at 9:54 AM PST - 4 comments
A Word An iMac in Spanish
Apple is finally getting with the program on localization (after ausgeficking badly in the last two years: cancelling English and Quebec French variants, for example; failing to upgrade system software in major languages like Spanish; considering Puerto Rico a foreign country; refusing to sell foreign-language keyboards even as aftermarket items) and selling iMacs
in Spanish in the U.S. (Hmm. What system version?) However, some unilingualists see it as symptomatic of the cancerous breakdown of their beloved Republic. You Americans.
posted by joeclark at 8:51 AM PST - 13 comments
May 26
Sweet mother of...
I don't think it's the video games doing it folks, I think it's toy guns that need a tripod to hold steady...it's like a mobile hose...
posted by starduck at 4:06 PM PST - 7 comments
Internet Explorer too hard for you? Confused by all the choices in Netscape? Like AOL? Maybe this
this browser is more your speed.
posted by mathowie at 11:35 AM PST - 16 comments
Tim Burton rules...
Tim Burton's latest directing gig is for Timex, and I'm thrilled to see that his dark mind isn't stifled in 30 seconds. The commercial is just as edgy and tasty as you'd expect.
posted by schmarley at 10:15 AM PST - 8 comments
May 25
the age weblog [via wetlog, of course]
it's pretty obvious she's reading MeFi [and memepool] -- but not linking to them.
posted by palegirl at 9:02 PM PST - 22 comments
queer by choice: "this web site exists in order to promote, condone, encourage and recruit individuals to explore their homosexuality. it is a site dedicated to thoughts and ideas not available in the mainstream of current thinking on homosexuality."
posted by palegirl at 8:48 PM PST - 11 comments
.ca slightly less tightarsed
En tout cas, the Canadian domain administration has "streamlined" its application process (like an NSI manqué), but hasn't improved its Victorian-era rules (one domain per entity, hard to get a .ca, etc.).
But searches now only show if a domain is or isn't available, not who owns it. Ewww.
posted by joeclark at 5:25 PM PST - 2 comments
Salon Kvetch-o-Rama
I admire Jim Romenesko and his now-famous
Medianews site. Tremendous conciseness, relevancy, good taste, apt use of <B>. (Glowing article in
New York not online. Spectacular accompanying photograph. In effect, Jim is paid $80,000 annually to blog for a living.) Jim actually covers the
Salon redesign of recent infamy (
here), and mentions it en passant on his homepage. I had alerted Jim to our discussion here, but it looks as like Medianews and Metafilter are parallel universes on this. I wonder if combining discussions would make sense here and elsewhere. (Was that less than 500 words?)
posted by joeclark at 5:21 PM PST - 3 comments
If it looks like a duck and it smells like a duck and it sounds like a duck it's a . . . .
Holy Union?
posted by alan at 3:10 PM PST - 3 comments
CD sales down near college campuses?
A new study shows that despite growing music sales overall, independent stores near the campuses of colleges that have banned Napster report a 7%
decline in sales over the past two years. [more inside...]
posted by daveadams at 6:23 AM PST - 10 comments
Deepleap.org is up.
No one mentioned this yet, so I figured i would. Everyone go whine about the reload button not working.
posted by alan at 5:51 AM PST - 9 comments
May 24
The Poincaré Conjecture: If we stretch a rubber band around the surface of an apple, then we can shrink it down to a point by moving it slowly, without tearing it and without allowing it to leave the surface. On the other hand, if we imagine that the same rubber band has somehow been stretched in the appropriate direction around a doughnut, then there is no way of shrinking it to a point without breaking either the rubber band or the doughnut. We say the the surface of the apple is simply connected, but that the surface of the doughnut is not. Poincaré, almost a hundred years ago, knew that a two dimensional sphere is essentially characterized by this property of simple connectivity, and asked the corresponding question for the three dimensional sphere (the set of points in four dimensional space at unit distance from the origin). This question turned out be be extraordinarily difficult, and mathematicians have been struggling with it ever since.
...but if you can prove it, [or any of six other '
millenium prize problems'] the
clay mathematics institute wants to line your pockets with $1M
posted by palegirl at 8:11 PM PST - 3 comments
So I stumbled upon
this Britney Spears Auction at Yahoo (yeah, right, just like I stumble upon episodes of Dawson's Creek or 90210 - I swear I was just flipping channels!) and there's two notable things up for sale.
This action figure/doll scares the bejesus out of me, there's something just plain wrong about a doll sporting a bare midriff, pigtails, and a short skirt (and did ya notice that she dots her "i" with heart? ugh.). Then
this outfit from the Saturday Night Live episode is kinda creepy too, what on earth would someone do with her outfit? Put it up on the wall or let people rent it out for halloween?
posted by mathowie at 4:55 PM PST - 11 comments
links open windows
is a bookmarklet I wrote which evolved from my 'links open windows' checkbox. Drag this to your toolbar (like you did with
deepleap) and with a click you can cause the links on any page to spawn new windows. In a few cases (like the
Guardian weblog) you might want to do the opposite, and follow
links in one window. Enjoy.
posted by sudama at 1:19 PM PST - 11 comments
China, our new buddy
It seems like history may be made today. I hope that if China does receive favorable trade status that it will go to improve human life in that nation and improve ties between our countries.
I'd like to buy China a Coke...
posted by Brilliantcrank at 9:57 AM PST - 7 comments
dot-god domains now available!
Don't get too excited yet, though. You can register, if you're lucky, because the server's overloaded. And once you do register, you can't actually use the thing until July. But still, get in now, while the getting's good. Full details are available in the
email from the registrar.
posted by endquote at 7:29 AM PST - 9 comments
May 23
Discussion: I'm a blogger, he's a blogger, she's a blogger...
[ more inside... ]
posted by baylink at 3:24 PM PST - 25 comments
Mötley Crüe
offers their new single "Hell On High Heels" as a free MP3 download...promoting their upcoming album "New Tattoo", hitting stores, June 20th.
See guys...*that's* how it should be done.
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 3:07 PM PST - 8 comments
inside.com goes live.
Inside.com is the latest attempt to have people pay for non-porn, non-financial information on the web. The site is currently in "Sneak Preview" mode and is the brainchild of Kurt Anderson (of Spy Magazine fame).
posted by icathing at 1:18 PM PST - 3 comments
Yet Another Domain Name Dispute Develops (YADNDD):
chunkymunky.com gets a Cease & Desist from
chunkymonkey.com. One is a windows software site, the other a fan site about a cartoon character. Is there any cause for confusion on the part of users wanting to visit either site (actually, one would have to misspell "monkey" in order to get to the windows site)? Should the chunkymunky.com site owner have taken down his/her site? Who is going to protect domain owners from future things like this happening?
posted by mathowie at 10:07 AM PST - 21 comments
Builder.com cosmetically improved?
Builder.com refines their site with a better homepage and category pages... but as far as I can see, no change to the actual article layouts themselves. What do you think - anyone read Builder.com anymore?
posted by williamtry at 8:30 AM PST - 4 comments
Is it just me or has Roger Ebert gone fully looney? I was reading
his review of "Dinosaur" and came across this criticism:
"A dinosaur, even one that spoke English, would be unlikely to know what that line implies."
What? Do you mean.... uh.... What? The whole review is like that.
posted by y6y6y6 at 7:45 AM PST - 47 comments
Ever wondered how much it would cost to have your listing pop up on a particular MSN search? According to Micros~1's
keywords.com (as of a few minutes ago), you can get
sex for $795.20/month,
mp3 for $175.66, and
Bill Gates for a mere $8.96 a month!
posted by tregoweth at 1:48 AM PST - 3 comments
May 22
Flasher's get thier own blog
and I'm not talking about raincoats. A blog all about Flash sites - something I needed now that I have DSL. Tell me, do all Flash sites have to use techno or house music - what ever happened to
polkas?
posted by DragonBoy at 9:37 PM PST - 3 comments
Ugly, ugly ugly.
The Salon.com redesign is finally - and unfortunately - live. It's not a magazine - it's a portal!
Mignon Khargie - wherefore art thou?
Blegh.
posted by gsh at 8:50 PM PST - 55 comments
Damn, but this site is pretty.
Nice, understated, good writing, not too much fluff, good copyediting (a weak spot on the web -- separates the women from the boys), and a design that fits on my monitor.
If you helped Free Willy, check OceanFutures out.
posted by baylink at 5:23 PM PST - 5 comments
"Real" has done it again.
For the
third time they've embedded surreptitious monitoring capability into one of their programs.
"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me." What do we do for the third time? (A tactical nuke seems indicated.)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 9:48 AM PST - 16 comments
May 21
Look at
the silly boys with their cute little grindcore band names. Oooh! I'm threatened! I'm quivering! I'm shocked and saddened, saddened and shocked! So scary.
posted by Mo Nickels at 7:41 AM PST - 3 comments
Does anyone know what happened to
GirlText? Elizabeth was supercool, but for the last week or two, there's been a "denied access" page. Bummer.
posted by delfuego at 7:40 AM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
May 20
Camworld points to the [second page of] the Encyclopedia Brown piece (like everyone *else* who didn't actually *read* it; *Busted!* :-) and also to
Comma Separated Values Considered Harmful, a treatise that the vertical bar character ("|") is a better field separator in tabular text data files than the comma or even the tab.
Is that really news? It wasn't to *me*...
posted by baylink at 10:20 PM PST - 13 comments
"
The ROMP is a freewheeling entertainment destination cut from the unruliness and irreverence of the Internet. Our no holds barred animations, videos, and games give voice to a new generation of artists both inside and outside Hollywood. The ROMP allows users to set the limits, break them, and get a good laugh out of it. But don't take our word for it." (i.e., they have a game where the object is to get laid.)
posted by endquote at 7:36 PM PST - 2 comments
byron smith of the current canadian everest expedition has made it to the summit! he was going to send a live broadcast from the summit, but unfortuantely the conditions have prevented that from taking place; so the team is going to descend to camp IV and try to broadcast from there. stay tuned for it, it should prove interesting. --
Everest 2000 - Daily Dispatch
posted by palegirl at 6:34 PM PST - 3 comments
Guns save lives?
(I suppose it's the bullets that kill people) The NRA today staged the "400 Man March" to show their support for guns and opposition to last week's Million Mom March. On CSPAN today, I also caught a bit of their convention, where they were openly talking about Bush being "
their president". I don't know what scares me more, seeing the speeches from their convention on TV, or someday going to
an NRA-themed restaurant ("I'll take the saturday night special please, with armor piercing sauce on the side.").
posted by mathowie at 11:57 AM PST - 57 comments
Even more proof...
that your government is as dumb as you think it is. Anyone wanna start on the conspiracy theories concerning LoveBug 2?
posted by baylink at 10:24 AM PST - 1 comments
May 19
MS Cookie Patch
Breaks Some Images - We noticed something odd today. Those of us with IE 5.0 who installed the patch to close the cookie security hole can no longer see many of the images on the
Washington Post site. People who installed the patch on IE4 still can; and IE5 users without the patch also can. [More inside thread...]
posted by julen at 4:07 PM PST - 6 comments
Can't believe we almost let
this annual event pass by without noticing...
(And can't believe the Pyrates haven't made an entry named "Blogger Frog"... Matt?)
Other possible pun-derful topics: DeepLeap, the Webbys, Microsoft NotePad, and a certain 5k Contest entry.
posted by wendell at 12:04 PM PST - 8 comments
Don't Panic!
Did anyone else realize that The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy really existed? I don't know that I'd describe that font as "Large, friendly letters", but it is, indubitably, on the front cover.
posted by baylink at 8:45 AM PST - 6 comments
What hasn't been noted much on the DEN and boo.com closings
is the high-bandwidth aspirations both sites trumpeted. No doubt this is why much of Metafilter's readership is privately reveling in these failures. They subtly reinforce the Web's "minimum" ideals -- keeping multimedia to a minimum, minimizing file sizes and download times, letting the minimalist purity of HTML reign supreme. Should this really make us happy, though? I'm a big supporter of fast browsing and markup-language standards, but aren't we missing the point when we secretly root for the bleeding edge to fail?
posted by werty at 7:17 AM PST - 17 comments
I have a question for Matt. I notice on the
Zeldman comment that someone also has the same username as me. I am
jay. There is also another
jay. I don't think anyone would want to impersonate me, but for some people on this list, this might be a problem. We could all become
mathowies, I even created my own
mathowie account to see if this really works and
it does.
posted by jay at 1:49 AM PST - 10 comments
May 18
Trey Anastasio (Phish) on Napster.
I know we're all kind of sick of this now. The interesting thing is that I got an MP3 of "Heavy Things" (which is on their new album) this morning from Napster, listened 3 times and then called my local HMV to see if they had the album in yet. They did, and I'm off to buy it. (Feeling legit? You can get Liquid Audio versions of
two cuts from the new album, including the one mentioned.)
posted by sylloge at 1:04 PM PST - 5 comments
Life-sized Lara Croft Mannequin
[from
fark]. Question: how do you make a life-sized object of something completely fictional? Don't try to answer, my brain popped when I saw the 3/4 life-size Seven Dwarfs lawn ornaments at
K-Mart years back.
posted by plinth at 11:36 AM PST - 3 comments
Aw crap.
You *know* their Linux initiative is going to take the blame for this, right...?
posted by baylink at 10:09 AM PST - 12 comments
First Boo.com goes down, now DEN.
The Digital Entertainment Network is closing it's doors after running out of cash. After raising over 33 million dollars, they burned it at rate of up to $3 million per month, pulled their $75 million stock offering, and with no revenue model in place, they had to close up shop, with 150 people suddenly out of work.
posted by mathowie at 9:33 AM PST - 4 comments
Thus sayeth Zeldman:
"Lately, well-meaning readers have informed us that the status bar is sacred, and JavaScript text messages are evil ... even when they include the domain name."
I, personally, prefer a brief description of where the link is going, rather than a long URL. Just curious, what do you think? As far as I'm concerned, there is no wrong answer or opinion on this.
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 8:28 AM PST - 67 comments
Boo.com go bye bye!
The oh-so-hip online fashion boutique burnt through
$120 million in 6 months. Now it's gone. Is this one of the first casualties of the dot-com rush? Is this the beginning of a trend, or is this an isolated incident?
posted by solistrato at 6:45 AM PST - 12 comments
I applaud President Clinton for taking
this stance. Unfortunately,
drug companies continue to have influence in some decisions. It's a wonder that greed doesn't ruin this whole world.
posted by da5id at 5:19 AM PST - 1 comments
May 17
Jargon Scout
- In this age of web-building and domains of all sorts coming out the wazoo and email and new jargon all the time, there seems to be a lack of good jargon for emotional states. Two states that I think desperately need a word coined for them are: the anticipation for the propagation of and reticence to tell anyone about a newly registered domain; and the state where you get so starved for contact of any kind that you post your undisguised email to a half-dozen newsgroups and fanzines just so that there is something in your inbox. Anyone have any ideas for what these states should be called?
posted by Willy-Yam at 3:07 PM PST - 4 comments
Utterly Disgusting.
I don't what made me more ill, the white stringy stuff, or the brown substance. Either or, it is just another example of how great government works... at any level.
posted by da5id at 10:26 AM PST - 4 comments
Microsoft's latest security loophole
involves the much-hated animated paperclip "Office Assistant". Despite its ability to create or
delete files, someone chose to mark it as "safe for scripting", allowing it to be controlled by script on a web page.
posted by harmful at 7:09 AM PST - 2 comments
May 16
DotCom Guy is a Bore
"The DotCom Guy gets loads of publicity just like this for being a zero." - Dallas Observer. Dallas, where I live, has many claims to "fame" but I'm not sure anyone really cares about this one. Is the rest of the world paying attention to him?
posted by thinkdink at 4:34 PM PST - 15 comments
Outraged web news site republishes naughty pictures
so that all their readers can see what the fuss was about. Not just one picture. ALL of them. Except that from where I sit, they're not that naughty: she's fully dressed in some kind of Russian fur thing. Yes! We are outraged! At this one! and ... this one too! and that one there! See how outraged we are!
posted by dhartung at 12:34 PM PST - 4 comments
This house
which I heard about from
captain cursor looks normal on the outside, but make sure you check out the
basement! It made me think of the
barn house that I once visited while growing up in Indiana. Though very different, they both are products of magnficent obscessions--as is the famous
Winchester Mystery House. It seems many people like to build and live in strange homes. Of course, there are people who are obscessed with
other things.
posted by grumblebee at 7:30 AM PST - 2 comments
Disturbing.
I don't know what is worse, that these people are trying to make a buck off this, or the fact that you can watch the
Real unedited version here. (Warning, 50megs)
posted by da5id at 6:31 AM PST - 5 comments
May 15
Shiver me timbers...
Derek P becomes a
Pyrate. That "Meet the Beatles" cover will soon need to be replaced with one from Sly and the Family Web. Or Treasure Island.
But good luck, and a very happy birthday for tomorrow... and if anyone even mentions the word beginning with C and rhyming with "babble", terminate with extreme prejudice.
posted by holgate at 6:06 PM PST - 35 comments
Forty-two billion dollars for conservation may soon be headed to the fifty states, if
a controversial environmental protection package passes the Senate. Election-minded lawmakers -- including at least one hundred Republicans -- have piled onto the Conservation and Reinvestment Act, which allows them to bring federal funds to their states while appearing to help the environment.
posted by palegirl at 12:51 PM PST - 1 comments
Age of the Customer
: John Ellis articulates the current business climate of customer empowerment and highlights some companies (Coke and Time-Warner) who Just Don't Get It.
posted by wiremommy at 9:44 AM PST - 2 comments
May 14
Desktop Imperium
is a related site to see for folks who think vir2l is cool. Among other things, the interface stumbles closely enough to being usable that you can figure out what's being presented -- free wallpapers, in an abstract,
Matrix meets
Tron meets Jackson Pollack mode.
posted by aurelian at 10:10 PM PST - 8 comments
Vatican Discloses 'Third Secret' of Fatima.
Prophecies to shepherd children, conspiracy theories - this shit is old-school. It must be fun to be Catholic, living in a world that still has shadows and mist. I'm sick of this harsh, bright Enlightenment thinking.
posted by lbergstr at 12:48 PM PST - 9 comments
Internet VCR.
You put in the shows you want to watch, come back, and watch it in Realplayer. Shady legally, cool geekwise.
posted by owillis at 11:26 AM PST - 8 comments
$50 dollars a year for a Web appliance and unlimited access. After three years, it's free. The only catch I can find is that if you cancel before three years, you have to pay a bazillion dollars. So who's going to make the
Virginconnect into a cheap Linux box?
posted by endquote at 9:15 AM PST - 7 comments
Amtrak
is running one of the most bizarre promotions ever. Yesterday, I saw a bunch of billboards along the freeways saying "Do you have a face that can stop a train?" Below that was this URL:
winafacelift.com. How a train company and facelifts go together, I don't know. It's almost as if they want their slogan to be "when you're too ugly for plane travel, take a train."
posted by mathowie at 8:44 AM PST - 3 comments
May 13
bla-bla.com and grrl.com (a new chickclick style portal from
womensforum.com) are on the hunt for independent female sites to lump together and sell off to their advertisers. what have your experiences been with .commers? how do you feel about advertising on yr own site? what kind of money is actually earnt from being part of a portal (which seems to be their major selling point)?
what resources are available to independent site owners? perhaps another branch of the metafilter community could be dedicated to informing people about what does happen when a site signs on to a portal business, and what the alternatives are.
posted by gusset at 5:46 PM PST - 8 comments
I am not now, nor have I ever been... a resident of Los Alamos, NM. If you know someone who
is, you might want to check out
this web site, where the New Mexico Internet Professionals Association demonstrates that they did *so* learn something by watching the hams all those years...
posted by baylink at 4:33 PM PST - 0 comments - Post a Comment
Farstar International is probably one of the best examples of bad Wed design ever, but obviously that's not the guy's bag. Apparently his bag is collecting really awesome pictures of galaxies and stars and other such spacey things. The shots aren't big enough for wallpapering, but might be neat source material for designy people. (The link isn't showing up in the preview, but here it is: http://www.cliffr.com/galaxies/banner.htm)
posted by endquote at 11:08 AM PST - 9 comments
Intel royally fucks over one of its best customers.
We don't ordinarily get into hardware here, but what's important about this is that this has a damned good chance of putting ASUS out of business. (And just two weeks after I put an ASUS mobo into my computer, sob. Fortunately,
mine is not one of the ones involved.)
If Intel has any honor (or wants to maintain any kind of reputation) they're going to completely cover ASUS's losses on this, which could easily top a billion dollars. I wonder if they will.
Anyone want to lay odds on when the first lawsuit gets filed? (Or who will sue whom?)
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:14 AM PST - 5 comments
May 12
McSweeney's
suspends lifetime subscriptions.
Sure hope mine got in under the wire.
posted by luke at 11:14 PM PST - 2 comments
interNIC lost my business!!!
To take the heat (and any possible lawsuits) off of them, they have now changed thier policy to revoke anyone's domain name at their discretion.
Phil Sbarbaro, NSI's legal counsel, offered a parallel to summarize prevailing law: "You don't own a domain name any more than you own your phone number."
I don't know about you guys, but I am definitely finding another registrar to transfer my domain names to...ASAP!
posted by EricBrooksDotCom at 9:25 PM PST - 14 comments
The user who was selling Metallica's soul
has been banned by EBay for bidding on another item he/she was selling. The strange part of all of this of course, is that I recognized their username when I read this story. Why can't we delete particular items in memory like we do with files on a computer?
posted by fooljay at 3:13 PM PST - 2 comments
Macintouch is reporting that Microsoft has disbanded the IE for Mac team and is discontinuing development of IE for Mac. So much for a 5 year commitment....
posted by faisal at 1:02 PM PST - 19 comments
