Even the Wikipedia entry is not work safe!
Even the Wikipedia entry is not work safe!
Even the Wikipedia entry is not work safe!

The Aristocrats (also known as The Debonaires in England) is a joke which has been told by numerous stand-up comedians since Vaudeville, and often only among an audience of other comedians. It has been referred to as "The world's funniest joke" and "the world's worst joke." It may be either depending on who's telling it, who's listening and the innumerable variations upon the theme. It has probably never been told the same way twice.

The joke always begins with a family walking into the office of a talent agency, and ends with the punchline "the Aristocrats!" The aim apparently is for the joke teller to fill in the middle by putting various members of the family into the most offensive sex acts and images the mind can conjure. Each joke-teller brands the joke with his own filth. The more tasteless, the better.

Here is a link to a video of South park creators telling the joke: link
Here is a page with a bunch of variations of the joke: link

I love tunneling my traffic!

The Aristocrats - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wow! Repeat after me: Too much Turtlewax!

Shine on your crazy diamond!

Last week Healthcare Advocates sued both the Harding Earley firm and the Internet Archive, saying the access to its old Web pages, stored in the Internet Archive's database, was unauthorized and illegal.

Ignoring robots.txt != DMCA Violation.

This is the most retarded application of the DMCA I have ever seen.

Keeper of Expired Web Pages Is Sued Because Archive Was Used in Another Suit - New York Times

I present to you a blatant violation of copyright

The full-text to the book the curious incident of the dog in the night-time by Mark Haddon.

As the book is one of my favorites, I notified the publisher about three months or so ago. Apparently they don’t care that someone just posted the entire content to their books, complete with copied illustrations.

I present to you a blatant violation of copyright

After talking with Acidus the other day about Napster's revamped format, it occured to me that some common misgivings are present where their download policy is concerned. I present them for your review because I have found their service to be useful and more content-rich than iTunes in addition to having some interesting features.

Background: I skipped downloading more than about 10 songs a quarter because I hardly ever found what I wanted on the "Top 40" flavor of iTunes. I asked around about Napster, and most everyone was under the impression that the monthly fee only allows you to rent songs playable only on your PC, after cessation of which your access to the music ends. This is true, but this is only one method of accessing Napster's motley library and you are actually allowed to access your account and downloaded tracks on up to 3 PCs w/ Napster's software.

The Rest of the Story: The other two ways you can access music include a non-monthly fee, $.99 download service similar to iTunes or a slightly higher monthly fee ($14.95 vs $9.95) which allows you all the comforts of regular Napster plus unlimited downloading to a Napster approved player of which my H320 iRiver just happens to be. If you want to burn the songs to CD, however, you have to pay $.99/song no matter which of the three versions you have. It just depends on if you want to listen to full-length tracks before downloading and access downloaded tracks on up to 3 PCs (Napster), that plus transfer to portable players (Napster To Go), or just buy music for your library to keep forever (Napster Light).

Cool Stuff: The coolest thing about Napster is the ease of use. The GUI is clean and intuitive and you can easily access other users' libraries and find stuff that "you will like if you like Band X". Also, Napster's built-in recommendation agent seems pretty on target.

Unclear: I can't tell yet whether tracks downloaded through Napster To Go and transferred to my iRiver will remain playable after my membership ends. They secretively allude to expiration software built into the tracks, but I'm curious if it goes so far as to expire in a Mission Impossible this-message-will-self-destruct-in-five-seconds takeoff. I also am suspicious that not all songs will be transferrable and that I will have to pay in addition to the higher monthly fee in order to transfer songs to my iRiver.

Conclusion: The whole thing is damn well complicated and exaccerbated by the horrible explanation on Napster's FAQ. What few gritty details they provide are on the FAQ which is passably organized at best. I am also angered by the fact that you pay a monthly fee for the priveledge of basically listening to a full track before downloading. Otherwise, to play it on your PC, transfer to MP3 players or CDs, or just to keep the songs forever, you [seemingly] have to pay $.99/song regardless of your membership type.

Verdict: Membership on Napster is only really worth it if tracks transferred through Napster To Go are available to you forever on your MP3 player as an unprotected song that you can play in Winamp later on. I'll know soon enough when I cancel my one week free trial tomorrow. Even if they aren't available on your portable player, I may just switch to the $9.95 version if I determine that browsing member's collections turns out to be an efficient way to find stuff I haven't heard before. All in all, membership seems like an awfully expensive way of finding something that hasn't been Clear Channel sanitized.

-janelane, fuzzily

Napster: A User's Review

Basically, it fires a bolt of lightning. It can be tuned to blow up explosives, possibly to stop vehicles and certainly to buzz people. The strike can be made to feel as gentle as "broom bristles" or cranked up to deliver a paralyzing jolt that "takes a few minutes to wear off."

Bitar, who is of Arab descent, believes StunStrike would be particularly intimidating in the Middle East because, he contends, people there are especially afraid of lightning.

At present, StunStrike is a 20-foot tower that can zap things up to 28 feet away. The next step is to shrink it so it could be wielded by troops and used in civilian locales like airplane cabins or building entrances.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet!

Real life Red Alert Tesla Coil?

With a criminal probe heating up into who exposed an undercover CIA agent, the White House spokesman is fending off sharp questions about what role U.S. President George W. Bush's top political adviser may have played in the case.

The White House spokesman faced sharp questions not only about Rove, but also about his own statements in the nearly two-year-old criminal probe.

In 2003, McClellan said it was "totally ridiculous" to suggest that Rove played any role in the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame's identity. He also said Bush has insisted that his staffers cooperate with the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, and that anyone responsible would be fired.

"You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved, and now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson's wife," one reporter said. "So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation?"

"There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it," McClellan replied.

Damn. Some people are going to get fired for this, but Rove certainly won't get the jail he deserves.

White House clams up on

HackTV episode 2 is begging to be downloaded! We offer the same varieties as earlier episodes with a smaller WMV file for the dial-up windows users and the larger DIVX encoded file for the high-bandwidth users.

Stank did another great job working hard on all his projects.

HackTV Episode 2 is out

Wikinews

Flickr pool

All you need. Wikinews is wiping the floor with CNN and other news sources. They already have a translated statement.

Flickr has tons of photos from camera phones from people in London, instead of the same footage over and over like the networks

A post on BroadBand reports by Eric Howes is reporting that a number of Claria programs are set to a default action of “Ignore” in Microsoft Antispyware.

What this means is that while Microsoft Antispyware will still find Claria adware, in most cases, it will have a recommended action of “Ignore” (versus “Quarantine” or “Remove”). I'm not talking cookies, I'm talking the actual adware programs.

How "Soylent Green" is this shit?

-Microsoft makes a technology (ActiveX) with a bad/user-confusing security model which fosters spyware/adware installations.

-Microsoft makes a rather crappy web browser, whose crufty 1997 era security concepts allows said technology to easily and unsuspectingly be installed in the first place

-Microsoft then creates software to find and remove the very adware their products allows to exist! They graciously make this product free (for now?).

-Microsoft is in serious talk to *BUY* one of the companies that makes money off *INFECTING* people with said technology.

-Microsoft modifies its spyware/adware detection tool so that tool by default *IGNORES* the spyware/adware product of the very company it wants to buy.

Microsoft/Claria Shenanigans