The web's most interesting stories on Wed 14th May 2008 at at 7pm GMT

The web's most interesting stories on Wed 14th May 2008 at 7pm GMT

These are the web's most talked about, buzziest URLs on Wed 14th May 2008 at 7pm GMT. The current winner is Food Portion Size, 20 Years Ago vs. Today - check back in a hour to see what's top and what's dropped. To get the permanent listing for the day you can use this permalink.

Food Portion Size, 20 Years Ago vs. Today
A visual representation of what sizes used to be (20 years ago) compared to what they are today.

When our parents ordered a coffee two decades ago, they weren’t given as many size options—a standard cup of joe was eight ounces, the size of a small coffee cup. Nowadays, most of us feel like we don’t get our money’s worth un…
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A comparison of pagination, then and now.

way better

Uhh, a cup of coffee isn't the same as a mocha..stupid fucks. There are enough differences in the health quality of foods that examples don't need to be forced.

A carrot is still a carrot. Spinach is still spinach.

Even more interesting is the first recommended story below the article: Five Foods That Cause Anal Leakage

you never report the good news, like how I can double the size of my beer at the airport for only $1

And we wonder why the population is so FAT.

This article has visual representations of changes in portion size from 20 years ago to now.

Interesting comparison of the inflation of portion sizes

Portion Size, Then and Now

The change of food portions over the last 20 years

A visual representation of how food portion sizes have increased over the years. Or: This is why you're fat.

Zero Punctuation: Grand Theft Auto IV
Its the event of the year…

Yahtzee is a British-born, currently Australian-based writer and gamer with a sweet hat and a chip on his shoulder. When he isn't talking very fast into a headset mic he also designs freeware adventure games and writes the back page column for PC Gamer, w…
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It's zero punctuation, but there's punctuation in the title. hahaha, im so original.

Well this is an interesting predicament.

yeah, that wasnt very nice

Hey! For the record I upmodded your submission and comment! I know not what you speak of mortal.

I love Wednesdays!
This wasn't as good as his previous ones, I think Yahtzee is slipping.
Suck suck suck.
There, that should take care of it all. God damn Digg comments.

submitter must have used the doc brown's delorean in gta to submit this week's zero punctuation prior to release….

Although it isn't a mission, you CAN write a letter to your mum.

[insert poor rick roll attempt here]

You submitted it 23 minutes before it came out? wtf

New Sites Make It Easier To Spy on Your Friends
If you are still relying on Google to snoop on your friends, you are behind the curve.

Zaba Inc.'s ZabaSearch.com turns up public records such as criminal history and birthdates. Spock Networks Inc.'s Spock.com and Wink Technologies Inc.'s Wink.com are “people-search engines” that specialize in digging up personal pages, such …
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Does anyone else think this is really lame? Not the post, just the idea?

Sounds like you've got something to hide…

touche

Best to find out what secrets they have before you decide to keep them a secret though…just to be on the safe side.

That is true, maybe they are illuminati or some government spy coming after me? lol

I do my stalking through Facebook personally.

Wall Street Journal article about new sites

Ain't nobody got spies like us.

New Sites Make It Easier
To Spy on Your Friends

Where to double check your online privacy

Some sites for stalking - very scary

Bush Administration Sued for Allowing Use of 4 Pesticides
Environmental & Farm Worker groups have now sued the Bush administration for allowing the continued use of four pesticides. They claim that the government brushed aside its own evidence that the chemicals are toxic to workers, children, and animals. The suit challenged the EPA’s 2006 decision to reauthorize the use four pesticides in California.

Read this special report now… “Seven Words That Can Change the World reveals the astonishing, simple truths that have the power to forever transform our world for the better while freeing our minds from the enslavement of limiting beliefs. This is not a text f…
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But you can smoke them in your home without fear of arrest and prosecution.

Bring back DDT, save millions of lives.

Uncontrolled greed, creates uncontrolled evil!

Imagine how bad it is in other countries that import crops to the U.S., but have little or no regulatory bodies to oversee use of pesticides.

sigh

I miss chlordane. One application, no bugs of any sort for years.

Keep piling on the lawsuits Americans… One of them is going to eventually stick…

We don't need no workers, children and animals, dammit!

Bush = nonstop entertainment on the internets!

Ah Mr. Bush… why do you hate yourself so?

How to Pack Everything You Own in One Bag : NPR
With more and more airlines charging extra to check a second piece of baggage, packing light has become a necessity.

“If it's not on your list, it shouldn't be in your bag,” Dyment tells NPR's Michele Norris. “What happens with people is that they pack before their trip, and that packing activity consists mostly of talking to yourself and saying, 'Wel…
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I roll everything up - keeps it from wrinkling and lets you fit a lot more in as well.

re than two pairs of shoes," Dyment says. "In lots of business situations these days, you can buy shoes that are quite dressy looki

"Dyment has two big tricks for packing a bag correctly: Don't let any space go unused, and wrap your clothes in bundles. "

Good tips for packing everything in one bag

Now that many airlines are charging for a second checked bag, one packing expert reveals tricks travelers can use to pack everything they need in one checked bag. He says the key is to draw up a list and bundle wrap clothes.

"the key is to make a list in advance of what to pack and stick with it (…) well before a trip" + "bundle wrapping" techniques + "Never take more than two pairs of shoes,"

Vatican: It's OK to Believe in Aliens
The Vatican’s chief astronomer says that believing in aliens does not contradict faith in God. The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican Observatory, says that the vastness of the universe means it is possible there could be other forms of life outside Earth, even intelligent ones.

The Bible “is not a science book,” Funes said, adding that he believes the Big Bang theory is the most “reasonable” explanation for the creation of the universe. The theory says the universe began billions of years ago in the explosion of a single…
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So.. I'm confused, did the aliens live with us when we were tromping around on dinosaurs?

The Vatican does not claim that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. In fact, the Vatican has no quarrel with evolution.

Vatican information is free, but scientology charges hundreds of thousands of dollars to allow alien beliefs…

Thanks for telling me what to think.

This made me think of Richard Feynman's quote:
Some years ago I had a conversation with a layman about flying saucers ' because I am scientific I know all about flying saucers! I said “I don't think there are flying saucers'. So my antagonist said, “Is it impossible that there are flying saucers? Can you prove that it's impossible?” “No”, I said, “I can't prove it's impossible. It's just very unlikely”. At that he said, “You are very unscientific. If you can't prove it impossible then how can you say that it's unlikely?” But that is the way that is scientific. It is scientific only to say what is more likely and what less likely, and not to be proving all the time the possible and impossible. To define what I mean, I might have said to him, “Listen, I mean that from my knowledge of the world that I see around me, I think that it is much more likely that the reports of flying saucers are the results of the known irrational characteristics of terrestrial intelligence than of the unknown rational efforts of extra-terrestrial intelligence.” It is just more likely. That is all. - Feynman
Though it is reasonable to think that there's other life, but having outer life visit us is extremely unreasonable.

IMO believing that there is no life anywhere in the universe apart from on earth, regardless of your religious beliefs, is crazy.
When people ask me if I believe in aliens the answer is I do, I cannot believe that in all that space there is no life anywhere. Whether aliens have ever come to earth is another thing altogether though…

I, for one, welcome our new alien saviors.

Whew! what a relief! < please note sarcasm> I could have almost/maybe swallowed that aliens might exist. But why did he have to add that part about "extraterrestial brothers". whatever. Also,how can someone believe in the big bang theory and that God crea

Ruling out the existence of aliens would be like "putting limits" on God's creative freedom, he said.

VATICAN CITY - Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.
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The Rev. Jose Gabriel Funes, the Jesuit director of the Vatican

Believing that the universe may contain alien life does not contradict a faith in God, the Vatican's chief astronomer said in an interview published Tuesday.

Whoa, Catholics now cleared to believe in aliens? Whoa

RIAA Explains How It Catches Alleged Music Pirates - Chronicle.com
The Chronicle of Higher Ed got a briefing at RIAA headquarters on how the group catches pirates. They just use LimeWire and other software that pirates use, except that they’ve set up scripts to search for songs, grab IP numbers, and send out notices to college officials. They claim they don’t target specific colleges, though many feel that they do

The LimeWire software allows users who right-click on any song entry and choose “browse host” to see all of the songs that a given file sharer is offering to others for download. The software also lists the IP address of active file sharers. (An IP …
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Try using PeerGuardian. It supposedly blocks IP addresses, and thus connections, from suspect computers on the internet, such as RIAA. I guess it works, if PeerGuardian keeps their banned IP address list current.

It'd be awesome to share a bunch of self-made MP3's with names of RIAA-owned artists plastered on them. Just shit to waste their time. It'd be even better if thousands of people did it.

were in ur internetzz watching u download our moviez

One music pirate down, 42,457,798 to go….

The RIAA just scares me, there's no two ways about it. I learned to avoid the RIAA the hard way, so now i am just on nutsie.com a lot.
Take a peek:
http://www.nutsie.com/member/view_member/121747?pl …
Free, streaming and LEGAL.

Here's how the process works: The RIAA maintains a list of songs whose distribution rights are owned by the RIAA's member organizations. It has given that list to Media Sentry, a company it hired to search for online pirates. That company runs copies of t

To catch college students trading copyrighted songs online, the Recording Industry Association of America uses the same file-sharing software that online pirates love, an RIAA representative told The Chronicle at the organization's offices during a privat

damn, the RIAA is still using Limewire?
(damn, other people are still using it too?)

Chronicle of Higher Education article explaining how the RIAA catches alleged music pirates

The official explained that one way the RIAA identifies pirates is by using LimeWire, a popular peer-to-peer file-sharing program that is free online and used by many college students.

List of commercial games released as freeware
Big list of around 70 games that were at one time commercial games but are now freeware. Includes games such as Ground Control, Hidden and Dangerous, Grand Theft Auto, Grand Theft Auto 2 and One Must Fall: 2097.
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I knew it was going to be that way when they said they doing it in Python and TCL/TK. You couldn't have picked two worse languages for games, and it would have been difficult to come up with a sorrier combo of languages for anything. I'll bet the executable is still C++, too.

abe lincoln must die?

Yes, you bloody well have.

They are still shareware, mostly.

The original “Grand Theft Auto” series should be there. http://www.rockstargames.com/classics/

Old school abandonware that's been legally freed by its owners.

Game section "free" posted on Wikepedia

games re-released as open source

Lots of good games on here.

Commercial games released as freeware are games that, in their original license, were not considered freeware, but were re-released at a later date with a freeware license, sometimes as publicity for a forthcoming sequel or compilation release.

Surreal paintings of Jacek Yerka [Pics]
Jacek Yerka famous Polish painter of fantasy world and landscapes. Yerka studied art for a short time at University, but then learnt from direct study of Northern European masters, the Van Eycks, Dierck Bouts, Robert Campin, Bosch, and surrealists such as Magritte.

U are a great artist! For sure! Great artists know the value of the subconscious to the art. Just as Dali did know. True art is never simply naturalistic or banal if you ‘d like to put it that way. Realism and naturalism is merely journalism and journalism …
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I can look at an artist's lifetime of work, each represented at 500px wide, and scroll through it in under a minute. Then, I sigh and move on to the next link, my brain as unsatisfied as before.

He may not be Salvador Dali or Ren Magritte, but he does hit some chords right out of the park (to craft a surrealistic phrase).

this just doesn't make sense!

guys this is why we have art.reddit

So, he likes Escher…..

Cool paintings, very …. Surreal

More surreal, thought-provoking art from Jacek Yerka. I love the swan one

surrealist in the beksinsky fasion

A Dali fan I presume. Via - MaoXian.

Rumors: Xbox 360 Spring Updates"Motion Sensor"& Game install
Perhaps the most interesting additions are “Calibration options for motion sensor devices” for the Dashboard and “Support for titles to store installation data on Storage Device for faster loading” for Games. If true, the former would lend further credibility to frequent rumors that Microsoft is planning to introduce a motion controller for Xbox

Dashboard/Miscellaneous 1. Option to navigate quickly out of several menus back to respective blade home (applies to Games, Media, System). 2. New blade trim styles added. 3. Introduce expanded Inside Xbox as a portal to news, weather, entertainment, help and…
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This is update adds MANY often request features as well as some useful surprises. I couldn't be more exited for its release which will hopefully be within the next week or two. I'm sure Major Nelson will make it official in the very near future anyway. Hats off to the Xbox team for vastly improving what is already the best online service on any console! XBL FTW!!!

Seems plausible. Is it true?

18 of the Craziest, Creepiest, Kinkiest Hotel Rooms [PICS]
Ever want to sleep suspended in mid-air, stay in a barn loft or live out some other strange fantasy youre afraid to tell anyone? If you can think of it, chances are someone has created it.
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Creepy? Eh…Kinky? Sure. Expensive? Oh yeah!

woah this is something out of the ordinary alright!

I wonder how much they charge for short stays? In the Bronx they got a great quickie motel for like 30 bucks for 4 hours with mirrors galore!

Who visits a hotel for a good time?

Nothing like a kinky hotel room with your hot, kinky girlfriend in bed with you.

Chinas Great Firewall is crude, slapdash, and surprisingly easy to breach. Heres why its so effective anyway.
This is a great article from the March 2008 issue of The Atlantic by James Fellows. It's the most in-depth look at the Chinese web access issue that I've seen.

Next is the perilous “connect” phase. If the DNS has looked up and provided the right IP address, your computer sends a signal requesting a connection with that remote site. While your signal is going out, and as the other system is sending a repl…
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“Partly it is because even electrons take a detectable period of time to travel beneath the Pacific Ocean to servers in America…”

No, they use electrons over copper wire like the rest of us.

This should explain what I am on about

Got a 500 server error

I'm consistently amazed by the degree that Chinese people don't know they are oppressed. It's because they've got in place invisible handcuffs like these.

chinese firewall during the olympics great firewall

The Atlantic Monthly on the GFW

Amazing article about The Great Firewall of China

Discussion on China's "Great Firewall", its vulnerabilities, and its effectiveness.

The Great Firewall of China

100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Mans Library
There are the books you read, and then there are the books that change your life. We can all look back on the books that have shaped our perspective on politics, religion, money and love. Some will even become a source of inspiration for the rest of your life. From a seemingly infinite list of books of anecdotal or literal merit, we have narrowed..
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Not programming…

I know.

Is it OK to read these if you are not an essential man?

What no Dianetics?

surprisingly good list, although I would just add that only the Old Testament is worth reading. There are some good stories of epic battles, venomous rage, deceit and revenge in there. The New Testament should have been dropped by the editors all together. It's totally repetitive and keeps going on about a guy named Jesus who always told unfunny stories and ultimately got himself thrown in prison, which is where I stopped reading.

I would have also included The Fool's Progress by Edward Abbey.

I would have included Cat's Cradle instead of Slaughterhouse Five - to me it's a better choice from Vonnegut.

This is actually a pretty good list, and taking the time to photo the book covers brings it to life. I will avoid a 'dont judge a book by it's cover' joke at this point. Dharma Bums is great.

Only 1/5 of the way there. If I spent as much time reading as I did on Digg I'd probably be done by now.

Read reviews of all these books

Written by: Jason Lankow, Ross Crooks, Joshua Ritchie, and Brett McKay Photo by the nonist There are the books you read, and then there are the books that

A listing of books recommended for males to read

Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

bluebeard, the metamorphosis, walden, How To Win Friends And Influence People, for whom the bell tolls, bros karamazov, art of war, Confederacy of Dunces

Sumo Car Wash..!
Great article on the hilarious new commercial featuring a Sumo carwash featuring the classic track “Danger! High Voltage” Electirc Six.

Agency: DDB Canada, Toronto Creative Director: Andrew Simon Copywriter: Matt Antonello Art Director: Paul Riss Producer: Andrew Schulze Production Company: The Corner Store, Toronto Director: Jorn Haagen DP: Doug Koch Executive Producer: Jennie Montford Steadicam: Be…
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Thank you for that post! That was funny ass hell! LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Direct link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4H9bEtJsa0A
Music: Electric 6 “Danger! High Voltage”
Fuck your blog spam.

I could use one of those!!

This beats the Paris Hilton burger advertisement video.

Hilarious video : )

To be honest, yeah. This is kinda sexy. In a funny way.

NASA to announce result of 50 year galactic search
NASA has scheduled a media teleconference to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. Hmm, I wonder what it is?

Your browser or your browser's settings are not supported. To get the best experience possible, please download a compatible browser. If you know your browser is up to date, you should check to ensure that javascript is enabled.
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Not far now.

Then I assume the earth is powered by Windows server, because we're practically destroying it.

Brown star twin of the sun? What would that imply? That our sun does not acknowledge his black brother and has been hiding him for the past 50 years? Is our sun racist?

Hm. Sounds like a place where nothing ever happens.

Woohoo! What's my prize?

This could be huge. What have they been searching for the entire time NASA has existed?

NASA - NASA News Audio Live Streaming

Lies We Tell Kids
Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that the way to succeed is through following "the rules." In fact most such rules are just hacks to manage large groups efficiently.
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Say what you want about that article, but it was probably the most well written pieces I have seen on Reddit in months.

We'll probably start off with the Fairy Stories of Oscar Wilde. Although I do remember constantly crying whenever I read that book. At the moment he's got some Roddy Doyle kid's book which is going down well, and as soon as he hits six or seven the excellent Artemis Fowl books by Eoin Colfer should come into their own.

was doubtful first few pages, but then it gets excellent

You know, I never thought I'd find myself thinking of PG and Violent Acres as being alike in any way…

Character in 1760s-set novel (paraphasing Diana Gabaldon): “Aye, Da told me it was self-abuse, but if it came to abusing myself or some puir woman, he expected that was the better…”

Probably the biggest lie told in schools, though, is that the way to succeed is through following "the rules." In fact most such rules are just hacks to manage large groups efficiently.

Paul Graham on the buildup of "white lies" regarding sex, death, society and so on

By 15 I was convinced the world was corrupt from end to end. That's why movies like The Matrix have such resonance. Every kid grows up in a fake world. In a way it would be easier if the forces behind it were as clearly differentiated as a bunch of aliens

Some parents feel a strong adherence to an ethnic or religious group and want their kids to feel it too. This usually requires two different kinds of lying: the first is to tell the child that he or she is an X, and the second is whatever specific lies Xe

So much good stuff in here. "If you freak out when people tell you alarming things, they won't tell you them."

What year is this again? [Pic]
i don't get it….seriously. The first thing that came into my mind, was oh! it's curious george, he's so cute. And then i thought, oh, i get it, it's like the opposite of our george. And then told me it was supposed to be an insult. I didn't see …
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But we all know damn well that's not the way it was intended. racist underpinnings won't go away if we pretend they don't exist.

The internet in general does skew younger, right? I am 21 and the only reason I knew that “monkey” often offends is because my dad once told me a story about some sports caster who got fired for yelling something to the effect of “look at that monkey go”. I remember being bewildered at the time as to why it was so offensive, why it was such a big deal, and why he even said it..

Same here.. and I think the best response is to not treat this as racist as it validates the shirt as offensive which I now think was the intention of the shirt maker.

anyone who would wear such an offensive thing emblazoned across their chest would almost certainly have the iq of a monkey.

Everyone seems to be forgetting that even if it is merely comparing Obama to the lovable Curious George, it's still racist because Curious George is racist. Think about it: the Man in the Yellow Hat - a white man - travels to Africa, kidnaps a native, and takes him back home (ON HIS BOAT). Despite this, Curious George is always portrayed as happy about his situation - obviously an attempt to whitewash the slave trade.

100 Must-Read Books: The Essential Man’s Library | The Art of Manliness
There are the books you read, and then there are the books that change your life.

Exploring the “virtue” of living for ourselves, this monster of a book (1,084 pages in my version) is certainly worth plowing through as it is simply a great story. The fundamental concept is that our world falls apart when individuals sto…
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This post comes off as silly to me for some reason, not that it is in any way incorrect.

As a closed system, our federal government originally was composed of:

I've never been a fan of drinking and reading and the cigars would make all of the books wreak.

Agreed. Whenever these types of list are compiled you'll always find the poster really liked someone in particular.

I always hate lists like these. I would think most novels will make you think, regardless of if you absolutely hate them or love them. Forming an opinion should be something all books should do (even though a few don't).

There are the books you read, and then there are the books that change your life.

Great set of books, great set of covers. Please read them all.

Written by: Jason Lankow, Ross Crooks, Joshua Ritchie, and Brett McKay Photo by the

Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky

A list of must read books, as always focused moslty on European and American writers and subjects

Beautiful explanation of how the AES block cipher works!
A explanation of how AES works.
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Are there any encryption algorithms that are unbroken, yet discernable from random noise?

One time pad with a true random key as long as the key is never reused.

Uh, how is data XORed with a unique random key discernable from random noise?

Pretty much the same, but use the key schedule in reverse order.

I see, I thought it would be simpler like a one-step process of multiplying the ciphered text with a pre-computed matrix or something.

A explanation of how AES works.

Very nicely done animation/visualization of aes algorithm.

How AES Block cypher encryption works - An amazing visual explanation

wonderfull explanation how the AES algorith works

Beautiful explanation of how the AES block cipher works!

'NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years.', any ideas?
WASHINGTON — NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. Hmm, SETI program started 50 years ago, could we have FINALLY found aliens?

NASA press releases and other information are available automatically by sending a blank e-mail message to hqnews-subscribe@mediaservices.nasa.gov. To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send a blank e-mail message to hqnews-unsubscribe@mediaservices….
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If I saw you I'd punch you right in the neck.

“Oh, there he is!”

I'd be surprised if we got 4+ years notice of something like that.

Confirmed to be about a supernova in the Milky Way. See http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2008/g19/media/

It's probably just some satellite or something that went missing.

NASA to Announce Success of Long Galactic Hunt WASHINGTON — NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years. This findin

"NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years."
This could be either 1.) the exact location of our black hole, or

"NASA has scheduled a media teleconference Wednesday, May 14, at 1 p.m. EDT, to announce the discovery of an object in our Galaxy astronomers have been hunting for more than 50 years."

NASA to Announce Success of Long Galactic Hunt

Now that's an enigmatic press release if ever there was one

Torrent2exe
Turn a torrent file into a single exe torrent client

2. Add extra functionality to your torrent-related site. You can put direct links to these downloads together with links to the torrent files or use special script that will automatically do it.
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Turn a torrent file into a single exe torrent client

Convert torrent files to exes

Convierte el archivo .torrent en un .exe

downloading torrent without any client, just inside .exe file.

Convert your torrent files into standalone executables that can be downloaded without any external program.

'The Corporation': The Best Documentary Out There On The Corporation As A Legal Construction
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I think it's funny that people who want to reign in corporate power are said to “hate corporations,” “hate business,” and “hate capitalism.”

No resources in Africa?…

There is actually an official torrent of this movie:

I think it's far more poetic as it is.

live and let live man. I didn't glean all that from just a couple sentences.

Fedora 9 Gives Ubuntu a Run For Its Money
Fedora 9 is a significant upgrade and packs in a number of new features. Perhaps the best part of Fedora 9 is the new live USB options. After playing with the release candidate for a week or so Im happy to report that Fedora 9 has made some significant strides and gives Ubuntu a serious run for its money when it comes ot user-friendliness.

Fedora is also free. “Run for it's money is just a saying”. However, Fedora is a fast paced rpm based distribution. If you've ever gone through dependancy hell, you've probably quit using Fedora several releases ago. Every 6 months, a new versio…
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Leap of faith is right. I've played with KDE4, it's nice but I think it's still too raw for being the default KDE flavor. Maybe by the time they get to KDE4.1…

A run for its money?

Upvoted for correctly omitting the apostrophe from its.

KDE 4 is the shit. RPM is a dinosaur, why hasn't it gone extinct yet

kinda sad the only way a fedora article can be dugg up is if it mentions how it stacks up to ubuntu in the article.

NNDB Mapper: Tracking the entire world
The NNDB Mapper is a visual tool for tracking the connections of more than 32,000 famous people- linking them together through family relations, corporate boards, tv shows, political alliances and shadowy conspiracy groups, from San Francisco’s political landscape, to Hollywood sex charts, to who rocks more: Ozzy vs Slayer?
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"The NNDB Mapper allows you to explore NNDB visually by graphing the connections between people. Over 32,000 individuals are listed in our network."

The NNDB Mapper allows you to explore NNDB visually by graphing the connections between people. Over 32,000 individuals are listed in our network.

A place that tracks connections between people and power.

See the connections between powerful people

Sort of like theyrule beyond the members of the board.

The Constitution recognizes only three federal crimes - treason, piracy, and counterfeiting. The federal government has no Constitutional authority to wage the War on Drugs.
The government can no longer tolerate your privacy. Government agents routinely rummage through your bank records, without your knowledge, looking for suspicious transactions. Politicians continually lower the standards for warrants to search your mail or tap your ph…
[ 123 reddit points]

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Because he's so often right?

You can play obtuse — or you could read, say, the Federalist Papers or even notes from the convention in New Views of the Constitution.

Ron paul believes the state government owns your ass, he directly contradicts the constitution where it says 'inalienable', 'god given rights' by claiming the 14th amendmant does not actually apply to state governments.

That's true, but I think the point is that the Constitution is generally vague enough that it can be interpreted to allow the gov't to regulate just about anything it wants.

Nope. I do believe violent crimes are handled at the state level, unless the crime or investigation involves multiple states or the crime was committed on federal property.

Cross Compare of SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL - Postgres OnLine Journal
Data Warehouse server product comparison

The below is by no means an exhaustive comparison of these 3 databases and functionality may not be necessarily ordered in order of importance. These are just our experiences with using these 3 databases. These are the databases we use most often. If we left your fav…
[ 57 del.icio.us posts]

[ 60 reddit points]

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Interesting points. I'll add one thing, though, about the date/time handling. Postgres definitely has the upper hand on the data types, allowing for timezone and all, but the Date and Time functions available for MySQL have been far more user friendly, in my experience. It's nice to see a fairly balanced look at things instead of all the “PostGres good, MySQL bad” arguments we usually see.

What am I shilling for?

You mean their best purchase to date?

I run mysql, postgres, oracle and sql server in my shop. We have dozens of instances of each.

buried! Only Microsoft bashing is allowed here.

Data Warehouse server product comparison

Comparison of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, MySQL 5, and PostgreSQL 8.3
The below is by no means an exhaustive comparison of these 3 databases and functionality may not be necessarily ordered in order of importance. These are just our experiences with usi

Comparison of Microsoft SQL Server 2005, MySQL 5, and PostgreSQL 8.3

People ask us time and time again what's the difference why should you care which database you use. We will try to be very fair in our comparison. We will show equally how PostgreSQL sucks compared to the others. These are the items we most care about or

The below is by no means an exhaustive comparison of these 3 databases and functionality may not be necessarily ordered in order of importance.

PC Club / Club IT Closed?
Our sources tell us that some/all of the top management has left PC Club / Club IT as of today without giving prior notice to employees. Today during business hours, PC Clubs HQ store had its doors locked and the closed sign out.

As a huge fan of Hardocp and a recently (today) laid off employee of PC Club, I just want to let you know that the rumors are confirmed. As of 5:00 all PC Club employees will be laid off and PC Club will be filing for bankruptcy tomorrow morning at 8:00 pacif…
[ 117 diggs]

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Why is it every comment in this thread is getting dugg down?

I used to work at PC Club as well for 1 year. I enjoyed it until management became shrewd and tried to enforce us to implement policies that forced us to cheat and lie to the customers. The internal workings of the company also violated several laws and prohibited any sort of positive internal growth. This isn't even mentioning the inventories that were so inefficient that they often times lasted until 2 or 3 in the morning, most of the time in vain.
I'll miss my coworkers and the deals, but that's about it.
“To focus on customer values by offering quality computer products and services in the most effective and innovative way to computer professionals.” … lol.

http://www.clubit.com/ - We are sad to announce that PC Club and Club IT are now closed. We apologize to our customers. If you have any pending orders or concerns please contact us at customerinfo@pcclub.com. Thanks you for all your years of support.

Are all the people with rebates pending from either store, pretty much screwed?

I quit the LASA (Santa Clarita) location almost a year ago and never looked back. For a company that routinely treated its employees with complete disrespect and irregard along with a failing business model (Comp USA anyone) it was only a matter of time.

Useful Podcasts For Designers And Developers | Developer's Toolbox | Smashing Magazine
Weve amassed a collection of podcasts that are either directly about web design, or would be helpful to a web designer. If youre interested in more podcasts try searching through Odeo or iTunes. There are quite a few web development podcasts, and a few niche topic web design podcasts, not covered in this roundup.

You Suck at Web Design PodcastThis is a comedic podcast put out by freelance web designer Matthew D. Jordan. He creates fictional stories related to web design. He describes the podcast as an attempt to deal with web acronyms, such as Web 2.0, WYSIWYG, and Ajax. His …
[ 4 diggs]

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A list of useful podcasts for web design professionals.

list of tons of tutorials and podcasts on web design, Adobe products, and web technologies

by Sean Hodge Podcasting is an engaging medium that available in both audio and video formats. Podcasts often refer to audiocasts, but now with iPods other media players being able play video, videocasts are just

Podcasts for designers. A very good list, actually. I need to add some of these.

podcasts on variety of topics

Rather than telling girls that IT is trendy we should be telling girls and boys that focusing on being trendy or fashionable is hollow and irrelevant, and a career in IT is interesting and challenging
The percentage of women in IT is low and shrinking, dropping from 42 percent in 1996 to 32.4 percent in 2004 worldwide. In some countries, including in the United States, its below 30 percent. But pressuring girls into careers they won't like isn't helping anyone. Dangling false motives - such as better “role models” won't help either.

IT Management : Career/Staffing: Are There Too Many Women in IT? - ITSMWatch Newsletter - Tech Focus: Security Cybersecurity: Laws Only Go So Far Mozilla Firefox vs. Internet Explorer: Which is Safer? Is Your Blog Leaking Trade Secrets? The Las Vegas Counterf…
[ 88 diggs]

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Question: With all the free programming tools, information and ideas available nowadays online, what kind of person makes it to the age of 18 without ever doing any programming?

Count me, I'm in IT. I love programming. Except for when I'm driving home and all I can see in my head is script, it's like the bloody matrix.

Former IT woman here… dropped out years ago, just shy of 6 figures, on Sept. 11, 2001. Figured life was too short to live it in a cube. Did a lot of sailing.

with more and more women getting involved with IT you would think that the number of Geeks getting laid would be on the rise as well but I fear that isn't the case as nerd girls like powerful males as well.

The way the current mentality in IT is to work like unemotional machines in order to act as midwives between people and machines. So how does an emotionally crippled industry cope with real live human beings? Ask people to either become emotional cripples themselves or use psychologist to translate the problem into machine terms. Oh! Or we could start back in on making it easier for women to relate to computers.

Holy crap, this guy's a genius.

"Rather than telling girls that IT is trendy and fashionable, we should be telling both girls and boys what we really believe to be true: that focusing on being trendy and fashionable is hollow and irrelevant, and that a career in IT is interesting and ch

Dangling false motives - such as role models and the countering of stereotypes - won't help anyone, either. They've got to love the machines, the systems and the act of complex-problem solving or they're unlikely to enjoy or succeed in IT

Jesus Catches A Dude Watching Porno
Courtesy of the fine Christians over at GodTube.

Find every article we've ever written or linked to with this list of archives:
[ 97 diggs]

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Look at the actor. Living proof Jesus lived until the age of 55.

i remember when he caught me skipping class in HS. embarrassing….

He should have just jerked it!

dugg for funniest title i've seen in a while

how to build a maintainable site using cushycms and twitter
A great tutorial on nettuts.com

<div id=”about” class=”content_box”> <a href=”/images/collis.tif”><img src=”images/photo_sm.jpg” class=”photo” alt=”Collis”/></a> <div class=”about_text&qu…
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Enjoyed this - looking forward to trying it out.

How to Build a Maintainable Site using CushyCMS and Twitter

A nice introduction to CushyCMS (simple, web-based CMS) and an always-welcome HTML/CSS tutorial

How to Build a Maintainable Site using CushyCMS and Twitter, Spoonfed Web Tutorials

In this tutorial we're going to build a simple one-page site and then in less than 5 minutes, get it setup with a Twitter feed for daily updates and with CushyCMS for general content.

In this tutorial we're going to build a simple one-page site and then in less than 5 minutes, get it setup with a Twitter feed for daily updates and with CushyCMS for general content. If you haven't seen it, Cushy is a completely free and extremely simple

In a major blow to national Republicans, a Mississippi congressional seat that once voted for President Bush by a twenty-five point margin elected a Democrat on Tuesday.
In a major blow to national Republicans, a Mississippi congressional seat that once voted for President Bush by a twenty-five point margin elected a Democrat on Tuesday.

Last night, Childers, a conservative Democrat, again outperformed Davis in many rural counties. Childers did better than in April in eighteen out of twenty four counties, while he underperformed in just two counties. Childers held steady in three of the remaining cou…
[ 0 diggs]

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[ 89 reddit points]

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haha 'OMG HE's OBAMA!'

there have been many democrats that have failed, but also many that have succeeded, because they compared a generic republican to Bush. bad politics if you ask me…

Now the question is, “WHY?”

evil lite -> e-lite -> elite?

Sure, but to the point of not being that much different from the only other party? I guess if we're stuck with a primarily bipartisan system, it's a good sign. Sorta.

I feel so much safer knowing a 53-year-old housewife is going back behind bars for the pittance of drugs her friend sold when she was a youngster.
Lefevre In Jailhouse Interview: 'I Just Needed To Get Out Of There'
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I remember it from a Babylon 5 episode and the “pithy Lazarus Long quotes” section of Time Enough for Love.

The black-and-white photo is, yes. The video, however, is recent.

Well, the prosecutors do have the power to not press charges. I doubt they would, though.

You know, I think that's exactly how the Founding Fathers of this country felt about unjust laws!

I agree with this in spirit. Clearly, this is an insane sentence, but just because she's a well of, white house mother doesn't mean she deserves any breaks that a black male in between jobs wouldn't get. Fair is fair. This sentence would be just as unfair to her as anyone else.

Craigslist Sues eBay: Craiglist alleges eBay stole its corporate trade secrets and planned to pressure Craigslist into a full-scale acquisition deal by eBay
In 2004, eBay began to expand into the market through the acquisition of online classified businesses Marktplaats and later, LoQuo and Gumtree. In 2005, eBay launched its own free online classifieds site named Kijiji in nearly a dozen markets in Europe and Asia. A ye…
[ 78 reddit points]

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What kind of secrets can Craigslist have? It's one of the most bare-bones sites on the web.

-Euphemisms for escort services

Are Nigerian scammers going to travel to my town and pay with cash? I think not.

You mean how Digg was great, and then sucked. And then how Reddit was great, and now is turning into Digg?

I think this is the counter-strategy; eBay has its own Craigslist competitor, so possibly trade secrets-related lawsuits are seen as a way to cripple Kijiji.

Stephen Colbert spoof O'Reilly rage video!
Very funny.

President Bush warned in an interview Tuesday that the Democratic presidential candidates’ plans to withdraw abruptly from Iraq could “eventually lead to another attack on the United States” and would “embolden” terro…
[ 3 diggs]

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[ 55 reddit points]

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[exasperated arm-swinging]

We'll what? What does that mean? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?!

Dear Canada,

just drive a few miles south and use a computer there. problem solved.

Agreed.

Stephen Colbert has some fun with the O'Reilly tape that recently surfaced.

Learning JavaScript Programming Language through Video Lectures - good coders code, great reuse
javascript rhino and yahoo theatreI decided I wanted to learn JavaScript Programming language better. I had been programming in it now and then but I had never really developed any good skills in it.

There were not that many points that got me interested because it was pretty obvious stuff. It was just interesting to see that the DOM is not perfect and there are many bugs which one or the other browser fails, why they fail and how to solve these DOM related probl…
[ 17 diggs]

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[ 17 reddit points]

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I hate videos as learning material. They just don't work for me. They move too slowly for 95% of the time, and as soon as the interesting bit comes up, it's gone again. I don't see any value in videos above that of written material.

Linkjack of very well-known (and excellent videos).

imo, video lectures are the best. learning stuff from tutorials is just so painstakingly boring and sometimes hard to absorb.

I find videos great when you're brand new to a subject. the Lynda.com tutorials are really good for beginners. Really verbose.

These videos have been posted a few times.

JavaScript Programming Language through Video Lectures

JavaScript Video Lecture Part I

Javascript videos and some useful tips on watching video lectures

Learning JavaScript Programming Language through Video Lectures

I decided I wanted to learn JavaScript Programming language better. I had been programming in it now and then but …

He was asked why Wired is now tagging every post about TechCrunch with Buttmunch"
Arguably the most powerful blogs in the online tech world, takes on Wired.com over criticism over the Techcrunch-Washington post partnership

Arrington not only writes about the companies in which he invests, he writes about his friends with which he does business. All I ever hear about is Scoble-this and Loic-that or whatever he finds “cool.” Let’s remember that TC is…
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Geek fight.

Makes for great publicity in stunts like this. He should send them roses for tagging his posts like that.

This was a Wired blog post, and not an article in Wired magazine. I wonder if they are treated differently, editorially-speaking?

I'm letting my subscription to Wired expire because it's basically advertising masquerading as content, with one or two barely decent articles thrown in the mix. Print magazines are fucking horrible anymore most are 70+% ads and then 50% or more of the actual articles are just ads.

Who is this douche and why does he seem to want to shame Wired?

Ahhh bitch fights in the echo chamber…

and this childish spitefulness is *another* reason why the washington post shouldn't have a relationship with techcrunch. good grief.

Interesting clash between bias vs. disclosure, and competition vs. covering competition