So I’d found that I’d stayed up late enough the other night to catch the Daily Show International Edition (CNN pushed it out to 1:30 here) and I saw about 5 minutes of headlines, before CNN broke in with breaking news.

The breaking news was watching the 747 carrying Reagan’s casket trundle up a runway. For ten minutes. Approximately every 2 minutes, the female announcer would let us know that “you are watching the plane carrying former President Ronald Reagan’s body taxi up the runway” as if it... [More]

There are two most amazing things about the Half-Life 2 case modification, Blackmesa HL² by piloux, documented here.

1. This is the first modification that I would consider a work of art. The attention to detail is really amazing. The person who made it must have really had a blast making it. They’re also bound to get a lot of attention at LAN parties.
2. This news was posted on Slashdot this morning. The page, including images, weighs in at 1.5MB. The server it’s on never faltered. Go to it now... [More]

The Anybody-but-Bush/Kerry campaign is getting more strident and acquiring more adherents with each passing day. The core question that they seem to think doesn’t even need answering (on account of how evil Bush is) is: ‘Is Kerry going to be a better President for the majority of Americans?’ That’s the difficult question tackled by With Friends Like These by Mickey Z (CounterPunch).

Kerry’s not Nader

If he is, then you should vote for him, right? I mean, there are people who are more than just mentally suffering under... [More]

The FCC Song by Eric Idle (MP3) is the first I’ve heard from him in a while … and he’s mad. He’s got an official announcement on his web site. The lyrics are available in full and here’s a little sample (just to show you it’s not work safe).

“Fuck you very much the FCC.
Fuck you very much for fining me.
$5,000 bucks a fuck, So I’m really out of luck.
Thats more than Heidi Fleiss was charging me!
So fuck you very much the FCC.
For proving that free speech just isn’t free!
Clear Channels a dear... [More]”

US Historians are so adorable when they talk about world history. So, How Do We Get Out Of Iraq, Guys? addresses a “novel idea” for withdrawing from Iraq, proposed by John Kiesling. It basically involves picking the guy we want to rule Iraq and pulling him into power by “ced[ing] him tactical, positional victories while denying them to his competitors”. Propping up dictators is something we’ve done dozens of times before — usually we aren’t directly in competition though. Usually, this is the... [More]

In a discussion on Plastic about Baptists potentially removing their children from public school in droves, One thing I don’t understand about Plastic was rated ‘Brilliant’ for saying said that:

“What most parents are trying to get through homeschooling is not a better education but one that more closely fits their own ideology, even to the point of downright denial of facts and the censorship of ideas. For the sake of their ideology they exclude knowledge, which is a harm to the child.”

... [More]

Version 3 of the Unreal Engine is in development. Tim Sweeney on UE3 (Beyond Unreal) has the latest info on it, direct from the lead developer/architect. He’s been involved since the first version which ran Unreal; the second version ran Unreal Tournament and UT2003. Since this engine is aimed at the kind of machine that will be “mainstream in 2006”, some of the numbers being tossed around are pretty formidable.

Sweeney offered no answer when asked how much space a game that uses “2k by 2k” everywhere might take... [More]

Koenigsegg is a Swedish supercar company that you’ve probably never heard of. They make the CCR1, the beautiful orange car to the left, which goes from 0-100km in 3.2 seconds and tops out at “395+ km/h (242+ mph)”. It reaches “806 HP at 5900 RPM” for maximum power output. Being European, it doesn’t even guzzle gas to the extreme amount you would expect — about normal for an American car (“13 l/100 km” (about 20MPG highway) — see A gallon of gas for info on Euro/US conversion). There are a lot... [More]

I was asked recently for my impressions of Of memory and our democracy by Colin Powell (USA Today). I presume the person asking wanted to know how I would react to such obviously cogent and convincing arguments put forth by such a preeminent thinking such as Mr. Powell. The thing is, once you read it objectively, you have to wonder whether he even wrote the damned thing at all. Or if it matters.

The article itself is a puff-piece mouthing oft-quoted myths that are readily absorbed by a cowed, brainwashed public. This is... [More]

I got an email recently with a rather interesting suggestion: change the emblem of the United States from an “eagle to a condom because it more accurately reflects the government’s political stance”. Why is it better?

“A condom stands up to inflation, halts production, destroys the next generation, protects a bunch of pricks, and gives you a sense of security while you’re actually being screwed.”

While you’re probably nodding your head in agreement, and, perhaps, wonderment that the government... [More]

Look on the bright side. Each staggering step the US takes towards certain Armageddon is at least always accompanied by an opportunity to engage in some serious “Schadenfreude” when Bush gets trapped on the White House lawn by a pack of reporters. Or maybe he’s flushed out from cover by a serious enough scandal that he’s forced to make some form of official statement.

That’s when the whole flustered, fumbling, repetitive, seriously talking-pointed, single-minded (or no-minded?), redundant... [More]

Leave it to the Japanese to come up with a super-efficient way of folding a T-Shirt and then putting the demonstration to video game music. This technique may revolutionize the way some of you do laundry.

UML is bandied about so much these days that it’s considered by many to be standard. It’s standardized, but to be standard it’s got to be in use almost everywhere. Everywhere important, at least. Domain-Specific Modeling and Model Driven Architecture by Steve Cook (PDF) assures us that we who feel uncomfortable with UML’s claims to universality are, in fact, in good company.

Where I work, we do pretty much pure object-oriented designs; every once in a while someone dares put an aspect of our design into UML... [More]

The undying myth of the forefathers

Do You Recognize Bush’s America? by Arriana Huffington (AlterNet) contains a lot of good, hard information about the Bush administration, covering the massive contradictions in policy versus pablum that should be evident to any 10-year-old, but evidently escapes most Americans (though, to be fair, they miss it because of the paucity of real information provided by criminally negligent media).

Then she ends the article with:

“The guiding principle behind George Bush’s rebooted Democracy is... [More]”

Long-time earthli News reader, Nico Michael, participated in the filming of a short political feature as told in Film lets N.Y.ers drop a dollar on President (NY Daily News). The “15-minute film” is sponsored by “a nonprofit group that distributes films promoting social causes and human rights” and simply shows people sending their opinions to the White House via public phone.

If you dare step away from the video card world for more than a few months, you find, on returning, whole new vistas of acronyms, bandwidths, core-speeds, registers, pipelines and “technologies” waiting to eat you alive. The latest cards from the two top vendors, ATI and NVidia, are lining up to play tomorrow’s games at 1600x1200 with 8x Anti-aliasing and all effects on high. Quake 3 doesn’t even make a dent — assume it runs at 300FPS with everything on.

Radeon X800 XT

ATI’s latest card,... [More]

So in Iraq the US has what many call a Vietnam. There are a lot of parallels you can draw between the two wars and a lot of people are doing so. They’re the ones using the word “quagmire” a lot. It’s a detrimental term meant to reflect poorly on the one caught in the “quagmire” (the US). It also serves to dehumanize the opponent as a sucking force from which the US should disentangle itself before more harm comes to it. The harm inflicted on the country being called the quagmire is implicitly... [More]

Please note the incredible coincidence, once again, of news heating up at home and a coup abroad. Qusay and Uday have been killed. DNA verification came within hours. Let’s stop talking about what the President said or didn’t say; ok, he said it, but let’s stop talking about what it meant; ok, it was crystal clear what it meant, let’s stop talking about whether it was true; ok, it was definitely not true, let’s stop talking about whether the President was aware it wasn’t true …

Qusay and... [More]

Ari Fleischer is leaving the administration and his massively disengenuous efforts will be sorely missed. Ari & I (AlterNet) has an interview with the master disseminator. We live in times, however, where I feel that many will sympathize with poor Ari in this short inteview as he does his best to avoid making a commitment when he’s not sure; the reporter in this case is simply hectoring and badgering him unnecessarily.

The question he asks is extremely simple, but it is difficult to answer, because the... [More]

Here is an intriguing solution to spam. An infinite supply of email addresses; useful for when you must submit a usable email address (e.g. where a mail is sent to verify registration).

All mail sent to addresses you give out from spamgourmet is routed through that site and filtered through rules before going to your real address. For example, if your user name is ‘dude’, then you can sign up for a dodgy website with:

xxxgirls.5.dude@spamgourmet.com

This will allow 5 messages sent to this... [More]

Stupid Microsoft Tricks by Robert Cringely (PBS) talks about recent happenings in yet another lawsuit for anti-competitive practices that Microsoft is involved in; in this case, they are accused of flat-out stealing another company’s technology after prolonged (2 years) discussions with that company about licensing.

When asked to provide all emails from that period, the record at Microsoft came up blank for 35 weeks.

“The reason for this mass erasure, it was explained, is that Burst technology was unimpressive and not... [More]”

Poor Nations Can Purchase Cheap Drugs Under Accord (NY Times) covers a recent accord passed by the WTO allowing poorer nations, particularly African ones, to purchase generic versions of needed drugs from non-approved vendors.

“Under the accord, poor countries will be able to import generic versions of expensive patented medicines, buying them from countries like India and Brazil without running afoul of trade laws protecting patent rights.”

You may recall a similar accord being tabled last year, but... [More]

Grand Theft Auto in the dock… (The Register) brings violent video games back to the fore in US news, since:

“…two teenagers − William and Joshua Buckner, 16 and 14 years old respectively − opened fire on vehicles on the Interstate 40 highway in Tennessee with a .22 calibre rifle, killing one person and injuring another severely.”

When caught, the clever little imps had a reason all ready: “…they were bored, and decided to mimick their favourite videogame − Grand Theft Auto”. Note their ages; they are more... [More]

First Person Shooter − Under 100KBs of Code (SlashDot) delivers exactly that — including all textures and sounds. The screenshot below shows you that it’s a relatively normal looking 3d shooter, with a bit of a Quake2 feel to it, but with “Doom3-style graphics, that means full Phong lighting model with various light sources and normal mapping everywhere, and of course stencil based shadows”.

.kkrieger Screenshot

How do they do it? There’s a comment Explanations! by one of the developers, where he explains.

“All content,... [More]”

New Negative Campaign Ads Blast Voters Directly (The Onion) does it again with another article that will probably end up coming true before November. Now here’s a spot I’d like to see:

“A controversial 30-second TV spot for Kerry that aired throughout the Midwest Monday blamed the country’s ills not on Bush’s policies, but on the “sheer stupidity” of America’s voters.”

The Bush team fights back with:

“‘Are you going to vote for a candidate whose campaign promises would cost America $1.9 trillion over the... [More]”

It’s that time of year again. Slashdot has a story on it at The National TV Turn Off Week. The main site’s at TV Turnoff Network and is a spinoff of Adbusters. It’s a good idea and I’ve got just the challenge I need this week: the second season of 24 is playing 2 or 3 hours per week on a local German channel. I’ve watched the first 14 hours or so over the last 5 or 6 weeks. I don’t watch a lot of TV anyway — I’m debating what the significance of skipping 24 this week would be. I’m sure... [More]

That’s how Bush describes himself. That’s how his administration thinks of itself. They see it as justification for pretty much any action, as absolving them of any blame, as an excuse not to answer hard questions and as a reason to ignore all unbelievers who do not think the way they do.

We are at war. With us or against us. Shut up and sit down.

The attitude showed up in spades in Rice’s testimony this week, it’s apparent in every word Rumsfeld says and the President exhudes it while still... [More]

I just saw a piece of his daily press conference on CNN and, at first, he’s funny. He’s not funny in the way he thinks he’s funny, but funny in that he talks exactly like the people who make fun of him make him sound. The February 2nd, 2004 Doonesbury (pictured left) put the question of weapons of mass destruction into the Rumsfeld grinder and got:

The JavaScript Calendar page looked too nice and was putting earthli Software to shame. No longer! The summaries are small News articles, which means that software is now dynamic and searchable. There are only four entries so far, but more are coming. So far, the earthli Browser Detector has gotten an update. The code will be updated with the next WebCore release, but the algorithm description is much clearer now.

You’ve probably been to travel sites that let you use a cute little calendar to pick a date. You click an icon and up pops a calendar in a little window, you cruise around the months and click on a day to select it. The window goes away and your date is magically entered for you. It almost feels like a real GUI on the web!

earthli Javascript Calendar is just such a component, designed to easily integrate into your site’s design with no muss and no fuss. It’s free and open source and yours for... [More]