LONDON, England (CNN) -- Syd Barrett, the eccentric guitarist who founded Pink Floyd but later left the music business to live quietly and somewhat reclusively, has died at the age of 60, according to a spokeswoman for the band.

A spokeswoman for Pink Floyd told the Press Association: "He died very peacefully a couple of days ago. There will be a private family funeral."

The singer and guitarist, born Roger Keith Barrett on January 6, 1946, founded the band in 1965 with Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. (Its name was derived from two American bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.)

He wrote many of the early hits for the avant-garde rock band, including the 1967 album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and the band's first hit singles, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play."

His songs were odd and charming combinations of childlike lyrics and swirling melodies, often augmented with strange arrangements. The titles alluded to space, the occult and sometimes nonsense: "Astronomy Domine," "Lucifer Sam," "Chapter 24."

Consider some lyrics of "Bike," from "Piper": "I know a mouse, and he hasn't got a house / I don't know why, I call him Gerald / He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse."

Pink Floyd, taken under the wing of Beatles engineer Norman Smith, had early success, but Barrett, suffering from mental problems and heavy drug use, started demonstrating erratic behavior, including catatonia during concerts. He left the band in 1968. He was replaced by David Gilmour, who had joined the band as its fifth member earlier that year.

Barrett put out two noted solo albums, "The Madcap Laughs" and "Barrett," both in 1970.

In 1975, during the recording of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album, Barrett showed up unannounced at the studio -- ironically, during the recording of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," a song about him. He had become overweight and shaved his eyebrows; the other members didn't recognize him at first.

"Wish You Were Here" was dedicated to Barrett.

Much of British psychedelic music was influenced by Barrett, and a number of musicians have credited him, according to Allmusic.com.

Barrett had since lived in anonymity in the eastern English city of Cambridge. According to The Associated Press, he suffered from diabetes.

The spokeswoman said a low-key, private funeral would be held. She did not disclose the cause of death.

CNN.COM - Pink Floyd legend Syd Barrett dies

seriouslyuguys wrote:

This is a video of a guy answering a question with what he believes is a correct answer, but Trebek gives him shit over it. (Safe for Work)

I think that should have been an acceptable answer. BTW the guy is Ken Jennings, the current record holder for longest winning streak on Jeopardy.

I agree! That one should have gone to the judges as an acceptable answer! Funny!

-LB

RE: Jeopardy Goof

OH this pisses me off to no end...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on Wednesday mocked a $100 laptop computer for developing countries being developed with the backing of rival Google Inc. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The $100 laptop project seeks to provide inexpensive computers to people in developing countries. The computers lack many features found on a typical personal computer, such as a hard disk and software.

"The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen," Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington.

"Hardware is a small part of the cost" of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support.

Hmmm... are we a TAD jealous, Bill? Are we a little bitter that legions of children will grow up learning to compute on something OTHER than Windows?

Before his critique, Gates showed off a new "ultra-mobile computer" which runs Microsoft Windows on a seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) touch screen.

But of course! Competition. You just can’t sleep at night knowing you don’t control every aspect of people’s lives, (just 95% of us) can you? The open source community’s accusations that you are nothing short of a money-grubbing, power hungry BASTARD can’t be that far off mark, huh? Too bad this is an instance where you clearly have ZERO influence. Its eating away at you, isn’t it?

Those machines are expected to sell for between $599 and $999, Microsoft said at the product launch last week. (Full story)

OK, apparently Mr. Money Bags doesn't understand the concept of the $100 "One Laptop per Child" initiative. Or maybe he does and is frustrated because he knows he can’t compete. Maybe if he's going to piss and moan because his precious monopoly is in jeopardy, maybe he ought to, oh I donno... dip into his OWN pockets and make his own offering at a comparable price point - even if he has to loose money. Ya know - like he did with XBox??? The whole idea is to keep these things as inexpensive as possible, and here he is with his OWN offering that’s six to ten times more expensive? Hmmm… You willing to “eat” the losses Billy Boy? Put up or SHUT up.

"If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type," Gates said.

OK, maybe he IS just stupid sometimes. The reason they don't have a hard drive is to (A) conserve power (these things are going to get charged by a hand crank) and (B) t... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

USAToday - Bill Gates mocks MIT's $100 laptop

finethen wrote:
How can people so young be so violent and destructive?

How? Its called zero respect for authority. Back in the day when I was in public school (1974ish - 1987), it was still legal for school officials to administer corporal punishment – within reason of course. Today? You even threaten to touch a child and their parents sue. Gotta love the lawyers!

Kids have nothing to fear today. There is no such thing as a true "authority figure"; the concept is totally alien to them. Cops are all bad - their shitty rap songs constantly remind them of this.

Kids in my day didn't walk thru metal detectors en route to class, because no one was callous enough to take a gun to school with the premeditated intent of mowing down classmates.

Make it legal once again for parents and principals to "tan ass" when it’s called for, and MAYBE you might see this shit stop.

-LB

RE: Chron.com | Drinking May Have Fueled Ala. Church Fires

Authorities with the U.N. war crimes tribunal are investigating the death of Slobodan Milosevic after the former Yugoslav president was found dead Saturday morning in his cell in The Hague, Netherlands. He was 64.

Slobo takes the eternal dirt nap. Good riddance, bastard.

CNN - 'Butcher of the Balkans' found dead

Decius wrote:

Apple Computer appears to have invoked the Digital Millenium Copyright Act to stop the dissemination of methods allowing Mac OS X to run on chips from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.

Yea that works. Everyone knows crackers are ALWAYS deterred by extra steps taken to prevent them from breaking copy protection.

Anyone remember a little company called DirecTV once upon a time boasted their encryption to be "hack proof"? "O Rly?" said the hackers...

Stuff like this is the equivalent of painting a big red bull’s eye on your ass. Tell crackers they "cant" and they WILL - that much faster. It will now become even more of a game to be the one to do it first.

-LB

RE: DMCA axes sites discussing Mac OS for PCs | Tech News on ZDNet

SAN JOSE, California (AP) -- Apple Computer Inc. has resorted to a poetic broadside in the inevitable cat-and-mouse game between hackers and high-tech companies.

The maker of Macintosh computers had anticipated that hackers would try to crack its new OS X operating system built to work on Intel Corp.'s chips and run pirated versions on non-Apple computers. So, Apple developers embedded a warning deep in the software -- in the form of a poem.

Indeed, a hacker encountered the poem recently, and a copy of it has been circulating on Mac-user Web sites this week.

Apple confirmed Thursday it has included such a warning in its Intel-based computers since it started selling them in January.

The embedded poem reads: "Your karma check for today: There once was a user that whined/his existing OS was so blind/he'd do better to pirate/an OS that ran great/but found his hardware declined./Please don't steal Mac OS!/Really, that's way uncool./(C) Apple Computer, Inc."

Interesting easter egg. But I agree - Apple should reexamine licensing OS/X before someone releases it into the public domain FOR them.

/me drools at the prospect of running Final Cut Pro on a PC I can build for a third to a quarter of what a Mac would cost.

-LB

CNN - Apple's ode to hackers - Developers embed poetic warning deep in OS X software

finethen wrote:

Laughing Boy wrote:

Thats BAD news? Unions are an idea whos time came and WENT.

-LB

What rubbish. Thats like saying corporations are an idea that came and went. Unions are unsuccessful because of the illegal union-busting that companies like Wal-Mart and McDonalds practice but the National Labor Relations Board refuses to punish.
Now that more americans than ever work in companies like that (i.e, the service industry) unions are a much needed defense.

The article is rubbish too. If unions were a victim of their own success than Wal-Mart wouldn't have had a 6 million person class action sexual discrimination suit against it, and the number one killer of latinos wouldn't be construction related accidents.

Unions are a victim all right, but not of any kind of success.

no your spewing is rubbish. Unions were established at a time when labor laws were lax at best or totally non-existant. Watch "Hoffa" for a history lesson Re: the Teamsters.

Today, because of greedy unions, corporations have no choice but to close plants and ship jobs over seas because the fucking unions are totally unresonable. Look at the airline industry - corporate profit earnings are DOWN and the fucking stupid-ass unions are still striking for a RAISE??? What part of "earnings down" does not compute???

Or lets sum it up like this - take a pay cut or lose a job. You figure out the lesser of the two evils.

-LB

RE: Unions Pay Dearly for Success

wilpig wrote:

The bloodied body of a collaborator on the children's book series Curious George was found Tuesday morning covered in black garbage bags in the driveway of his impeccably landscaped mobile home.

This is absolutely terrible but sometimes you want to blog things like this because the press won't pay much attention to them.

That is horrible. And the timing couldn't have been worse as "George" just made his big screen debut.

Story has been updated. They have 2 suspects in custody that have confessed to the murder.

-LB

RE: Curious George collaborator found dead

bucy wrote:

The bad news is that the figure stood at 7.8 percent — less than a third of the rate of the early 1970's.

Thats BAD news? Unions are an idea whos time came and WENT.

-LB

RE: Unions Pay Dearly for Success