There's another crack in my powerbook case.

I need more tape.

Smashed Screen Desktop Picture: "

Filed under: Tips and tricks, PowerBook

The site is in German, but even if you cannot read German, you'll be able to find the Desktop pictures of this smashed PowerBook screen near the bottom of the page. It comes in 1440 x 900 Pixel, 1152 x 720 Pixel, 1024 x 768 Pixel, 1024 x 640 Pixel, and 800 x 600 Pixel flavors. Just look for the word Bildschirmhintergrund.



Also, if you want to freak your friends out, put this picture on his/her computer, open it up and view fullscreen, then pretend like you dropped the screen as your friend returns to the room.


[via fscklog]

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"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

Why Skype-eBay was the Worst Kept Secret On Wall Street: "

There were some curious movements in the eBay stock just before the Skype deal was announced. Hitchhiker’s Guide to 650 points out

When the rumors came out last thursday on the Skype acquisition, eBay stock dropped 3.8%. With 1.35B shares outstanding and each share losing $1.53, eBay lost about 2.07B in market cap. With the overall market being flat that day, the 2.07B lost in market cap can probably be attributed to the Skype rumours.

It means that the traders on Wall Street knew way before the ‘tech crowd’ (as we debated the merits of the acquisition) that the acquisition was a foregone conclusion by Thursday closing. With little downward movement in the eBay stock price today (except at opening) the traders essentially covered their shorts/puts early in the morning, taking profits before Meg talks up the acquisition (and the eBay stock goes up)…..

The question I have is who leaked the rumors? Someone at Merrill (eBay advisor), Morgan Stanley (Skype advisor), Skype, and maybe eBay must have really lose lips for traders to be so certain that this transaction would happen.

However, a post over on Skype forums says that the leak might have come from a cabbie in New York who overheard the eBay Executives. And you thought they didn’t understand english….

I kid you not — the week before the announcement, we received a comment in our Customer Support from some NYC taxi driver about eBay acquiring Skype, and we downplayed this as a rumor, which is what it still was for us at that time. The taxi driver replied ‘look gentlemen, you may disregard it all you want, but I know the facts since I just gave a ride to some eBay execs who discussed exactly what would be happening’. Can’t validate if the story is really true, but looking back, it turned out to be true and funny nevertheless.

"

(Via Om Malik on Broadband.)

Walking on the Moon

Walking on the Moon
Originally uploaded by jurvetson.

All the years I used Tang in the hope I was playing astronaut I was living a lie. Click on the picture to read the story.

Hill Wedding Pics

Night Before the Wedding - 2
Originally uploaded by satmandu.

I redid the wedding pics, fixed the dates, and put them in chronological order.

Now if we just go into space, and either trael very fast around the earth in the reverse direction or slingshot at warp around the sun and bring Christopher Reeve back...

Science: Stem Cells Restore Feeling In Paraplegic: "Vicissidude writes 'According to WorldNetDaily scientists in Korea report using umbilical cord blood stem cells to restore feeling and mobility to a spinal-cord injury patient. The research, published in the peer-reviewed journal Cytotherapy, centered on a woman who had been a paraplegic 19 years due to an accident. After an infusion of umbilical cord blood stem cells, stunning results were recorded: 'The patient could move her hips and feel her hip skin on day 15 after transplantation. On day 25 after transplantation her feet responded to stimulation.''"

(Via Slashdot.)

Michigan & Daily Alum David Ender (fresh from Baghdad, blog linked on the right)'s pieces on the Katrina Aftermath in MoJo here & here.

For the love of gods, look at the pictures.

Funny Bug: "

Michael King is a seven-inch-tall lineman for the Jets. The way Chad Pennington has been pounded this season, that sounds about right.

"

(Via NSLog();.)

Floating Island Says Saffron Not Its Color: "

As Robert Smithson's conceptual art piece 'Floating Island' docked for the last time yesterday, its reign as New York's preeminent focus for inanity was briefly interrupted by a competing piece of conceptual art: A small motorboat containing a minature replica of this year's other major piece of high-profile absurdity, Jean-Claude and Christo's Gates. Alas, the mini-Gates did not find a home at the mini-park, but -- at least for one day -- we hated cheeky art students just a bit less.

A Miniature Gate in Hot Pursuit of a Miniature Central Park [NYT]

"

(Via Gawker.)

I take back everything I said about audioblogging.

Dig That: "

We have no idea what they're writing about today -- sports? rivalries? gay marriage? bear culture? -- but we realize: We really ought to be reading Boston alt-weeklies more often.

Weekly Dig [Official site]

"

(Via Gawker.)

The script works.

MacSlash on Google Secure Access with OS X: "

Filed under: Books and Blogs, Analysis / Opinion, Tips and tricks, Internet Tools

So, this morning, Bloglines listed a very interesting hack over at MacSlash that I wanted to check out and blog about here on TUAW, but for the past several hours, MacSlash has been MIA. I wonder what was up?


In any case, it's back up now and they point to the way to get Google Secure Access working on OS X. Google Secure Access is 'a Windows application that allows users to connect to Google's VPN (Virtual Private Network) to make WiFi connections more secure. While google did not release a client for Mac OS X it quickly became apparent that Google's VPN client used PPTP (Point to Point Tunneling Protocol) which is natively supported by Mac OS X. Getting it to work on OS X was the logical step to explore.'


My take on this? It's yet another failure on Google's part. I mean, if we the people can hack this and get it working, why didn't Google with all their money just come out with support of it on OS X out of the gates? It's not like they cannot afford to support Mac users. It's that they are choosing not to. Bad Google!

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"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog.)

The critique of Arundhati Roy is especially good.

Mmm. I do treasure the memories of trudging down a main thoroughfare in the morning to the newspaper stalls next to the train station to pick up a copy of the English language Telegraph (owing to my absolutely abysmal Bengali reading skillz).

Ramachandra Guha on Amartya Sen and Andre Beteille: "Ram Guha is clearly one of the leading Indian public intellectuals of our times. His thought-provoking, insightful, historically grounded, superbly researched, and often provocative columns and articles on various subjects are invariably something to look out for. Though he is sometimes unpredictable (recall his unseemly attacks on Arundhati Roy and William Dalrymple), Guha's pieces are usually models of clarity, moderation, and craftsmanship. His recent piece in The Telegraph chronicling the lives and scholarly contributions of Amartya Sen and Andre Beteille is a good example of his brand of scholarship. Describing the two personalities as 'the finest, and I think also the most honourable, intellectuals of our land in our time', Guha provides an affectionate yet well-reasoned assessment of two very distinguished Indian academics. The spectacular contributions that these two academics have made, both in their own fields as well as to the world of academic research more generally, must serve to inspire legal academics to produce scholarship which has a genuine and sustained impact on society."

(Via Law and Other Things.)

Mr. President, it has been a privilege.

Arctic Ice Cap Shrank Sharply This Summer, Experts Say

It also appears that the change is becoming self sustaining, with the increased open water absorbing solar energy that would be reflected back into space by bright white ice, said Ted A. Scambos, a scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colo., which compiled the data along with NASA.

"Feedbacks in the system are starting to take hold," Dr. Scambos said. "The consecutive record-low extents make it pretty certain a long-term decline is underway."

Has anybody noticed that aimexpress went javascript?

Nice...

Highlights of the Neil Gaiman/Joss Whedon interview in Time:

JW: We've been co-opted by the man.

NG: We're in this weird world. Anansi Boys is coming out, and it's a funny fantasy novel, and it's being published as a mainstream thing. It should have been 10,000 copies just to people who love them, who would have had to go to a science fiction specialty shop with a cat in it just to find it.

BLOGS REVEAL MARGINALISED VOICES WATCH: Zarqawi b...: "BLOGS REVEAL MARGINALISED VOICES WATCH: Zarqawi blogs the weekend's protests over at IowaHawk. A sampling:

'But... are these what the virgins in paradise will look like, effendi?'

Also,

Dear Mr. and Mrs. _AL-DURRA____:

Please find enclosed a Ziploc containing the remains of your martyr _TARIQ____. Though he is now frollicking in Paradise, his comrades and I will always remember him for his ___POKEMON COLLECTION____. Thanks to his holy sacrifice, we are one step closer to __EXTERMINATING THE JEWS___.

Yours in Sharia,
Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi

"

(Via OxBlog.)

Fucking tools.

MPAA tries to get sneaky (again) with broadcast flag legislation: "The MPAA is readying another attempt at getting Congress to pass broadcast flag legislation."

(Via Ars Technica.)

Thank You, Stanislav: "

Twenty-two years ago today, the world nearly ended.

We owe the fact that it didn't to the level head of one Stanislav Petrov.

Those of you who remember late 1983 might recall that it was a remarkably tense time. The Soviet Union had just shot down a Korean airliner that had flown into Soviet airspace. The US was performing large-scale military exercises within quick reach of the USSR. In the US, President Ronald Reagan talked about the 'Evil Empire,' while Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov ordered the KGB to get ready for an imminent US attack. The two superpowers threatened each other with nuclear missiles in Europe, and shot at each other's proxies in brushfire wars in Central America and Central Asia.

Stanislav Petrov wasn't the regular overnight officer on duty on September 25-26, 1983, at the Serpukhov-15 Ballistic Missile Early Warning System control post. He came in as a substitute to maintain his skills, expecting that -- like every other night since the Oko monitoring satellites had gone into orbit -- it would be a quiet evening.

Forty minutes after midnight, September 26, the computer system registered the launch of a Minuteman missile from the United States. In a 2004 interview for the Moscow News, Petrov described what happened:

'An alarm at the command and control post went off with red lights blinking on the terminal. It was a nasty shock,' the lieutenant colonel admits. 'Everyone jumped from their seats, looking at me. What could I do? There was an operations procedure that I had written myself. We did what we had to do. We checked the operation of all systems - on 30 levels, one after another. Reports kept coming in: All is correct; the probability factor is two.'

'What does that mean?'

'The highest,' analyst Petrov smiles...

Then another launch signal; and another. Within a few minutes, the early warning system registered five missiles on the way. Petrov had to decide -- was this a real launch or a false alarm? The Soviet policy at the time was massive response, the launch of all strategic nuclear missiles the moment an attack from the US was spotted. If Petrov followed policy and alerted the Kremlin, a global thermonuclear exchange would almost certainly result.

'You can't possibly analyze things properly within a couple of minutes,' Petrov reasons 20 years later. 'All you can rely on is your intuition. I had two arguments to fall back on. First, missile attacks do not start from just one base. Second, the computer is, by definition, brainless. There are lots of things it can mistake for a missile launch.'

Obviously, Petrov made the correct call. The Oko satellite that had sent the alert had been mistaken by the infrared signature of the sun reflected off of high-altitude clouds. In thanks for not following the rules and triggering World War III, Petrov was chastised by his superiors for not filling out the event properly in his log book, and very nearly jailed; in the end, he left the military without the usual honors and commendations. Now 66 years old, he lives in a small town outside of Moscow on a small pension. He's received no ribbons or medals from his country, no statues or plaques. Even the Moscow News agrees that the West remembers him more than the Russians... although few in the West remember him, either.

Those who do consider him a hero. Tonight, drink a toast to Stanislav Petrov. Twenty two years ago today, on a cold Siberian night, he chose not to follow orders, and chose not to end the world.

(Originally found via Metafilter)

(Posted by Jamais Cascio in Big Systems - Global Institutions, Governance and History at 07:07 PM)"

(Via WorldChanging: Another World Is Here.)

POLITICS: More "Isolated" Instances of Torture Revealed: "New detailed accounts, obtained by Human Rights Watch, have surfaced from sources in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last 48 hours, detailing systematic abuse, torture, and murder at military detention facilities. The source of these accounts? At least 3 U.S. officers assigned to those facilities.

Three U.S. army personnel - two sergeants and a captain - describe routine, severe beatings of prisoners and other cruel and inhumane treatment. In one incident, a soldier is alleged to have broken a detainee's leg with a baseball bat. Detainees were also forced to hold five-gallon jugs of water with their arms outstretched and perform other acts until they passed out. Soldiers also applied chemical substances to detainees' skin and eyes, and subjected detainees to forced stress positions, sleep deprivation, and extremes of hot and cold. Detainees were also stacked into human pyramids and denied food and water. The soldiers also described abuses they witnessed or participated in at another base in Iraq and during earlier deployments in Afghanistan.



According to the soldiers' accounts, U.S. personnel abused detainees as part of the military interrogation process or merely to 'relieve stress.' In numerous cases, they said that abuse was specifically ordered by Military Intelligence personnel before interrogations, and that superior officers within and outside of Military Intelligence knew about the widespread abuse. The accounts show that abuses resulted from civilian and military failures of leadership and confusion about interrogation standards and the application of the Geneva Conventions.

These first-hand accounts, coupled with documents obtained by the AP, detailing that the Navy secretly contracted jets used by the CIA to render suspects to countries known for their use of torture, clearly contradict claims by the Bush administration that detainee abuses by U.S. forces abroad have been infrequent, exceptional and unrelated to policy.



Be prepared for the smear campaign levied against the officers who came forward to present yet more substantial damning evidence that this administration is clearly and actively subverting the rule of law in its campaign 'to bring democracy' to the Middle East.

(Written by: Dead_Ringer)

"

(Via SuicideGirls: News Wire.)

The birthday boy this morning:

I love the taste of cheesecake in the morning.

I would modify that to:

I love the taste of cheesecake [left out all night after your birthday party] in the morning.

More for you organizational geeks.

OMB Watch's Adam Hughes said moving FEMA into Homeland Security forced it to compete with other department priorities, notably fighting terrorism, a higher priority of this administration.

Cake or Death?

Texas trip cancelled because it was...too sunny: "

Interfering with on-going storm preparations wasn't the reason Bush ditched going to San Antonio yesterday. No, that's not why. The reason was a bad visual:

It was too sunny.

Not kidding:

Another White House official involved in preparing Mr. Bush's way noted that with the sun shining so brightly in San Antonio, the images of Mr. Bush from here might not have made it clear to viewers that he was dealing with an approaching storm.

The White House is desperate.

"

(Via AMERICAblog.)