Damn.

Here's to you Mr. Wizard. Thanks for the introduction to science.

'Mr. Wizard' dies at 89 - Los Angeles Times

In his speech, Jobs announced that the iPhone will be able to run Web 2.0 applications that look just like the iPhone's built-in apps but are created by third-party developers. As the iPhone will have a full-fledged version of Apple's Safari Web browser, developers can build their applications with Ajax and other Web technologies.

Ok, I'm not sure what this means exactly (and granted this is 2 steps removed from the source). Its a browser with a JavaScript interpreter. Of course it can run Ajax apps. I wonder if this referes to Adobe's Apollo apps which can run external of a browser.

"I'm underwhelmed," said Avi Greengart, an analyst with industry research firm Current Analysis. Many developers, he said, "were expecting to be able to write apps and run them in a browser anyway."

Yeah, nothing new here.

He pointed out that, although Jobs said that the Web 2.0 apps will run in a sandbox, they still will be able to reach beyond the sandbox to access key functions, such as phone calls

... ... SWEET! Now Samy can let you know he is your new hero by calling you. On your Phone. Thousands of times a second. From JavaScript.

This makes John Terrill's curse "I'm going to XSS your FACE!" that much closer to reality.

iPhone + XSS = All your cell networks are belong to Acidus

Check out this wonderful street view image. Someone was a bit distracted when they took this one for the database, but I think it's teh awesome.

Museum of Thongs, courtesy of Google Maps

Finally, for those of you feeling like there's not enough sensless application of buzzworded technology in your life, now there's something to get you just that one step closer to Perfection (and the next revision control number) with Pig 2.0!

Featuring:

* Ecologically safe chrome plating
* An ethnically-neutral speech synthesis chip
* 100% guaranteed stable molecular structure
* ...and even more highly-technological innards!

Presenting: PIG 2.0!

Decius wrote:
javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

This is just teh awesome! :)

RE: Go to Google News, and then past this into your URL window and hit enter

Well, it seems that the artificial scarcity bubble has burst in Second Life.

The people working on libsecondlife created a library that was then used to make a program called CopyBot, which can and will duplicate pretty much anything a user sees in SecondLife, regardless of how many LindenBucks they were trying to sell it to you for.

Well, now that the cat is out of the bag, vendors in SecondLife are closing up shop right and left because if they display their products for purchase, they can then be quickly and exactingly copied.

This is pretty much a disaster for the people who've been trying (for whatever reason) to make a living by selling what amounts to crude virtual artwork by creating entirely artificial scarcity. Now evil "thieves" can rip off "their designs" without them having any control over it whatsoever.

But you know what... I really couldn't give a rat's ass.

I might be inspired to give a (copied) rat's ass if I could go 100 yards in any direction in the system without seeing knockoff clothing taken from Poser demos, lingerie straight out of the pages of Victoria's Secret cataclogs, sunglasses which are very obviously detailed copies of Oakley designs, avatars of very copyrighted and trademarked things like Bart Simpson, Space Ghost, and characters from Naruto, uselessly non-functional things like Motorola cell phones and iPods had their designs cloned. ...even Mario the Italian plumber and the yellow AIM "running guy" (I even own a copy of this one because I was interested in the cell-shading trick done) wasn't safe from these people.

Frankly, I think it's just a shame that a group of people that refused to police itself (and by this I mean people who were stealing the majority of their content in the first place) didn't get what was coming to it sooner.

CopyBot finally makes it big in SecondLife

Some very inventive Japanese-Americans have produced a way to open letters, powered only by organic fuels and vegetable by-products!

This is truly an awesome breakthrough. Future products in the works are devices for automatically retrieving newspapers from the stoop, and bio-organically powered personal warming devices in various sizes and shapes.

New organic technology breakthrough!

Yes, I'll be having one of the red ones. Or possibly the giant black and chrome one.

That's just awesome how nimble they are.

What I want for Christmas

For those crying "This is electrolysis and doesn't work" might find that the second video on the page shuts them right the fuck up.

A couple of HHO Gas videos

For those of you who are, like me, awaiting November with bated breath for Nintendo to relax their deathgrip on the North American release of the Opera browser for the Nintendo DS, there may be yet another toy to play with in the meantime.

K-Byte and Lite-On (yep, them) are now making an IM appliance that's about the size of a pager with a LCD screen that jumps on available nearby WiFi connections and runs an IM client that talks on Yahoo, AIM, or MSN's networks. I've no idea if they have plans to make it able to support Jabber or not (this would be a clincher for me), but they've apparently managed to get them on the shelves at both Target and Best Buy for about $100 apiece.

Very, very tempting.

Let the IM appliances begin launching!