Fresser.

it's a fact, no time left for eternity

“ State authorities are testing a plan that would see the Emergency Management Office issue alerts over online gaming networks in addition to regular channels.

The goal, said New York State Deputy CIO Rico Singleton, is to reach younger residents who spend more time on the Xbox, PlayStation, or Wii than with television or radio…

Under the state’s plan, authorities would tap [Microsoft’s, Nintendo’s, Sony’s] networks to broadcast warnings about natural or man-made disasters.” Singleton it was logical, “considering the amount of time our youth spend on video games.” Interop: New York Tests Xbox-Based Alert System — InformationWeek

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“ If you allow players in an online world to penalize each other, you open the door to extortion:

One of the features that supported user socialization in the game was the ability to declare that another user was a trusted friend. The feature involved a graphical display that showed the faces of users who had declared you trustworthy outlined in green, attached in a hub-and-spoke pattern to your face in the center.

[…]

That feature was fine as far as it went, but unlike other social networks, The Sims Online allowed users to declare other users untrustworthy too. The face of an untrustworthy user appeared circled in bright red among all the trustworthy faces in a user’s hub.

It didn’t take long for a group calling itself the Sims Mafia to figure out how to use this mechanic to shake down new users when they arrived in the game. The dialog would go something like this:

“Hi! I see from your hub that you’re new to the area. Give me all your Simoleans or my friends and I will make it impossible to rent a house.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I’m a member of the Sims Mafia, and we will all mark you as untrustworthy, turning your hub solid red (with no more room for green), and no one will play with you. You have five minutes to comply. If you think I’m kidding, look at your hub-three of us have already marked you red. Don’t worry, we’ll turn it green when you pay…”

If you think this is a fun game, think again-a typical response to this shakedown was for the user to decide that the game wasn’t worth $10 a month. Playing dollhouse doesn’t usually involve gangsters.” Schneier on Security: Virtual Mafia in Online Worlds

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“ 6:58:58 PM. 1) my nephew’s ok, 2) there’s a dead body at the main gate, 3) US denies responsibility for bombing in Afghanistan. Over and out.” WikiLeaks to release over half a million 9/11 intercepts

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More brilliance from "Clients from Hell"

Prospective client: $400 for a logo?! Why are you so expensive? My nephew has Photoshop—I can just get him to do it.
Me: Does your nephew have Microsoft Word?
Prospective client: Yes.
Me: Then have him write you a novel while he’s at it.

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FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD. At the edge of my consciousness as a native. full image

FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD. At the edge of my consciousness as a native. full image

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street guts (russelldavies)

street guts (russelldavies)

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Fantastic Windows Fail (matlock)

Fantastic Windows Fail (matlock)

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“ Can one… be surprised that a meeting of the Tiburon Town Council voted on Wednesday by 4 to 0 to install cameras to photograph every single car that enters or leaves this little Disneyland?

The San Francisco Chronicle reported that this may be the first community in the country to have defended itself with cameras in such a way. The idea is to photograph the license plates of every car that treads Tiburon’s hallowed roads and compare the information with the police’s list of the stolen and nefarious.” Town to photograph every car that enters and leaves | Technically Incorrect - CNET News

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Detroit 1930. full scale

Detroit 1930. full scale

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“ Yeah, after I took mescaline I started seeing crabs around me all the time,” Sartre says in Gerassi’s new book, Talking With Sartre. “They followed me in the streets, into class … I would wake up in the morning and say, ‘Good morning, my little ones, how did you sleep?’ I would say, ‘Okay guys, we’re going into class now … ’ and they would be there, around my desk, absolutely still, until the bell rang.”

In between, Sartre told Gerassi, “I began to think I was going crazy.”

He consulted a young psychiatrist named Jacques Lacan — who later became another of France’s foremost intellectuals — and they attributed Sartre’s crab-infested depression to his fear that he was being pigeon-holed as a teacher.

“That was the worst part, to have to be serious about life,” said Sartre. “The crabs stayed with me until the day I simply decided that they bored me and I wouldn’t pay attention to them.” By then it was the 1940s, France was occupied and Sartre had other things to worry about.

After surviving imprisonment by the Germans and throwing himself into post-war anti-American agitation, Sartre told his non-godson that he had been plunged back into depression by the rise to power of Charles de Gaulle, the hero of the conservative bourgeoisie.

No longer taking mescaline, Sartre, who died in 1980, found himself pining for the distracting visions from his youth. “The crabs were mine. I had got used to them,” he said. “I would have liked my crabs to come back.” Mescaline left Jean-Paul Sartre in the grip of lobster madness - Times Online

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altnytterfarlig:

Good infographics: Visualizing empires decline (via Boing Boing)

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A little weird to come across this, from a very strange direction, while sitting in Russell’s flat.
russell davies (via Frank in Lalaland)

A little weird to come across this, from a very strange direction, while sitting in Russell’s flat.

russell davies (via Frank in Lalaland)

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Reblogging this, with great and fond reminiscence. Wishing I’d been making money back when Final Home was around; I would have worn nothing but.
What I love in particular about this is not just the idea that they made a jacket you filled with stuff to keep you warm, but also, in 1995, what stuff it was you would be keeping in there. Palm Pilot!

culled:

youmightfindyourself
Final Home 44-pocket parka

Reblogging this, with great and fond reminiscence. Wishing I’d been making money back when Final Home was around; I would have worn nothing but.

What I love in particular about this is not just the idea that they made a jacket you filled with stuff to keep you warm, but also, in 1995, what stuff it was you would be keeping in there. Palm Pilot!

youmightfindyourself

Final Home 44-pocket parka

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Safety Issues - SAFE: Spider Boot Antipersonnel Mine Foot Protection System - Photo

Safety Issues - SAFE: Spider Boot Antipersonnel Mine Foot Protection System - Photo

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The American enclosed shopping mall is an endangered species. With retail sales down, chains are closing. That’s leaving malls without tenants. One report put the vacancy rate at the end of 2008 at 7.1 percent. And so malls themselves are closing. But we’ve still got the buildings.
So, what do we do with them? Over the weekend, The New York Times put that question to some people with particularly interesting perspectives on the issue.
Two artchitecture professors who co-wrote the book Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, predicted: “Smaller malls in older suburbs will increasingly house nonconventional, community-serving tenants, including community college classrooms, branch libraries, spaces for nonprofit arts groups, places of worship, immigrant ‘mom and pop’ shops, and public and private office space.” (via What Should We Do with Deserted Malls? | GOOD)

The American enclosed shopping mall is an endangered species. With retail sales down, chains are closing. That’s leaving malls without tenants. One report put the vacancy rate at the end of 2008 at 7.1 percent. And so malls themselves are closing. But we’ve still got the buildings.

So, what do we do with them? Over the weekend, The New York Times put that question to some people with particularly interesting perspectives on the issue.

Two artchitecture professors who co-wrote the book Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, predicted: “Smaller malls in older suburbs will increasingly house nonconventional, community-serving tenants, including community college classrooms, branch libraries, spaces for nonprofit arts groups, places of worship, immigrant ‘mom and pop’ shops, and public and private office space.” (via What Should We Do with Deserted Malls? | GOOD)

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