I'm not fond of the Sixaxis, really, as a controller - it is difficult to make the case that it feels sturdy or exhibits satisfying heft. This thought persisted only a few minutes into my life as an amoeba and then was replaced by a desperate need to traverse fluid and consume other microorganisms. Then an urge to develop longer, more powerful flagellum became my goal - as though an episode of Unique Whips were playing out at the cellular level. So no, I don't like the controller. Playing Flow, the controller seemed to disappear. It makes a case for motion sensing controls that is as potent as anything Nintendo has delivered to date.

That's the parable, I guess. A controller is as good as the game. A system is as good as its library. Far all these interstitial lamentations, all the saber rattling and console war propaganda, there is a simple remedy: a breathtaking exclusive experience. I'm not comfortable saying (as others have) that Flow reaches the high bough we call a "killer app." It's amazing, and you should play it, but it wasn't true when they said it about Geometry Wars and it's no more true now. Will it be Motorstorm? I guess we'll know in a week.

I'm curious. Not nearly $600 curious, but curious nonetheless.

Penny Arcade! - Les Mots Dangereux

Sure, rag on NY iPod wearers all you want, but apparently there's no getting in between this Germantown PA highschooler and his iPod. Two students were arrested on Friday for assaulting their 60-year-old teacher Frank Burd, who confiscated it from a 14-year-old who was using it in his class. The kid returned later with an 11th grader, and they pushed Burd up against a locker, breaking his neck in two places. The good news is that Frank Burd's condition is stable and spirits are high. Unfortunately for the two students, their assault was caught on video, and they're going to be charged as adults.

Good. Punk bastards should be forced to live without their precious iPod and other "rights".

Two teens assault teacher after he confiscates one's iPod - Engadget

flynn23 wrote:
These don't seem too practical to me.

Oh yeah... they're totally form over function. I still want one.

Besides, studies have shown that younger cities such as Atlanta, aren't well built to accommodate mass transit. They were designed for the car, which is why they promote the car. Even Washington DC is not very mass transit friendly thanks to the loop.

I don't disagree. In fact, I agree wholeheartedly. That's why I'm angry. City planners have continued making conscious choices to defeat mass transit and favor the car. That's the whole fucking problem.

I can't believe anyone on earth would prefer this nightmare of 10 and 12 lane superhighways, these swathes of hot, smelly, unsightly pavement, endless delays and annoyance and, most of all, lack of freedom. People claim to favor the car because it promotes freedom, but I see quite the opposite. I find it harder to go out socially, because having to find a place to park, and deal with my car, and curb my drinking is a massive disincentive to even try to go out and have fun. It's depressing as hell. And living in town doesn't help either because you can hardly walk anywhere. This is a city -- like others, as you say -- which completely destroys the concept of the town as a community in favor of this network of awful roads. I think it's a travesty.

Obviously being a single 20-something puts me in a different mindset from others, but what the fuck do i care about them... they've forsaken the city and moved to the burbs, lobbied to separate themselves in order to deny the city their tax revenue, and still pressure the city to expand roads so that THEY can have an easier time polluting the air and making life worse for those of us who'd really like to have a real urban lifestyle. It's not bad enough they've got to turn the landscape in every direction into a calamity of ugly subdivisions without trees, endless chain restaurants and grand edifices of Wal Mart. They've gotta ruin it for me inside the perimiter too.

I'm bitter at the entire lifestyle and it sickens me that people behave in this way. -k]

RE: 어른들을 위한 장난감 가게

However, the density of the city somehow makes this seem easier to imagine than in, say, Atlanta, where if you're walking around with an umbrella you're usually walking to or from a car.

Stupid, stupid Atlanta. I'm so tired of driving everywhere.

I want one of these awesome umbrellas, and a place to use it. Atlanta, as you say, is NOT such a place.

Anyway, the company calls it a "Light Saber" umbrella, but Tom's correct, I think it's better if i think of it in terms of the Blade Runner umbrella, to the right. More information, and pix of a restored original, here.

어른들을 위한 장난감 가게

A must-watch clip of gay actor George Takei (Sulu from Star Trek) responding to Hardaway's homophobic comments.

Very funny.

[Yeah, pretty awesome. Takei pretty much rules. -k]

George Takei 0wnz Tim Hardaway

As if the folks at Top Gear didn't already have the best job in the world, they recently went and completely outdid themselves, building their own Space Shuttle out of a Reliant Robin, roughly the British equivalent of a Pinto or a Gremlin (minus a wheel). As you can see, it all came together quite nicely, complete with an external fuel tank, solid rocket boosters, and a spot-on paint job

Wow. I love Top Gear.

Top Gear builds, launches Space Shuttle car - Engadget

Decius wrote:

What do you think?

I have a rather different take on the whole thing. Willan concludes by saying

Until we can find our own vision to aspire to, maybe Borf and Andre the Giant are all we have.

We are clearly meant to identify with the emptiness the author feels, his lack of place or purpose. Or, rather, not his but "his" in the collective, generational sense. I largely agree with the facts being presented, but interpret them differently.

But I'll come back to that in a moment.

I feel like I should start by saying that I've never really grasped the notion of "generations," since it always seemed to me like people were being born an dying pretty much all the time and that this general cyclic meta-grouping was kind of arbitrary. That is to say, one's "generation" has everything to do with common philosophical themes and popular media and that it's basis in date of birth hardly regular enough as to be predictable.

Therefore, I'm going to roughly group my 28 year old self in with the 21 year old author and use pronouns like "we", "our" and "us". I'm not gen-X -- again, to the extent that I understand the meaning in the first place -- and gen-Y, as I've heard, is so indistinct and non-descript that it essentially captures the same sort of existential no man's land the author so dishearteningly expounds upon.

Further, and it may not need to be said, but I'm really only talking here about the United States, perhaps even being broad enough to include "the West" as a larger element, but certainly not the entire world. The author states

... this hailing of "American youth" displays a paradoxical lack of awareness of our generation even as it tries to pin us down. There's no such thing as "American youth" -- or British youth, come to that, these days. That's exactly what we're not -- a body, a set.

and I think his essential point is correct. There's little enough cohesion among youth of a similar age which would permit such a generalized reference to have any real meaning. I'm going to discuss this further, but one of the reasons for that, I think, is that the concept of "similar age" has itself changed lately. In ages past, 10 years difference in age was probably less of a gulf than it is today. I am certain that the day-to-day experience of college now is substantively different than when I left a mere 6 years ago. But I think this is a small part of it.

While arguing that modern youth are not "a body, a set" above, Willan does bring up the notion of collectivism and particularly the way in which the internet fosters that sort of anonymous social interaction. I don't think he's quite making incompatible statements here; he's arguing that the anonymity is what strips us of our icons -- our Ginsburgs and Kerouacs -- and establish the emptiness of our generation's social fabric.

RE: We're All Borf In the End

Presumably Decius is concerned primarily with the definition apparently now covering computer security analysis as follows (excisions mine, for clarity) :

'Private detective business' means ... the business of obtaining or furnishing, or accepting employment to obtain or to furnish, information, including ... digital or electronic information, with reference to:
...
(C) The location, disposition, or recovery of lost or stolen property;
(D) The cause or responsibility for ... losses, ... damage, ...

I have to admit it seems rather absurd to require that the nerds going through your server logs be licenced PI's. That being said, given the potential for such data to be used as evidence, it wouldn't hurt for them to be trained in the relevant laws thereof.

I'm not certain I see categorically how removing a virus would fall into these provisions however, and I'd like to hear what I've missed.
Perhaps insofar as it would require you as an IT professional to "furnish information" that the "losses" resulting from downed computers was due to such-and-such virus in the course of your removal of it?

Anyway, I think there's two different aspects to consider here. The first is your normal IT functions, such as virus and spyware removal, the configuring and monitoring of firewalls, etc., and the second is more advanced computer security such as responding to system compromises, "forensic" data analysis, systems fraud monitoring, etc. The former, I'd think, should be pretty much completely exempt from any sort of regulation.

The latter, on the other hand, as I've said, has implications for evidence and the potential recovery of losses or the proscecution of a criminal investigation. Given that, I actually don't oppose the notion that such workers should be verifiably conversant in the legalistic aspects of their work. As a matter of fact, I'm kind of surprised that those kinds of activities aren't already considered as being the exclusive jurisdiction of "the Law". Allowing company employees to process information that exposes the perpetrator of an alleged criminal act seems rather like allowing the fox (or, perhaps, merely the fox's close friend) to guard the henhouse.

Don't confuse my statements with endorsing this law, mind you. I absolutely don't think the law as it stands addresses what I'm talking about. Neither kind of work is quite the same as existing licenced PI or PS activities where you have trained personnel, frequently armed, handling physical security or so forth.

-k]

hb504_LC_29_2714_a_2.html

What's Special About This Number?
0 is the additive identity.
1 is the multiplicative identity.
2 is the only even prime.
3 is the number of spatial dimensions we live in.
4 is the smallest number of colors sufficient to color all planar maps.
5 is the number of Platonic solids.
6 is the smallest perfect number.
7 is the smallest number of faces of a regular polygon that is not constructible by straightedge and compass.
8 is the largest cube in the Fibonacci sequence.
9 is the maximum number of cubes that are needed to sum to any positive integer.
10 is the base of our number system.

a math prof made this cool site talking about special quality about thousands of numbers...good mental masterbation for all the number theory junkies out there (you know who you are)...

[ Wow. definitely one of the nerdiest things i've ever seen. -k]

What's Special About This Number?

At the Sedgebrook retirement community in Lincolnshire, where the average age is 77, something unexpected has been transpiring since Christmas. The residents, most of whom have never picked up a video game controller in their life, suddenly can't put the things down.

"I've never been into video games," said 72-year-old Flora Dierbach last week as her husband took a twirl with the Nintendo Wii's bowling game. "But this is addictive."

Nice!

Wii bowling knocks over retirement home | Chicago Tribune