The plaintiff named in the suit, Jason Tomczak, bought his Nano in September. He said the screen quickly became so scratched that he could not view it. He claims in the suit that the screen was so easily scratched that even rubbing a paper towel across it left significant marks. The suit also claims that putting the Nano in your pocket with items such as car keys, coins, a credit card or the device's headphones can render the screen hard to read. Apple has reportedly sold more than 1 million Nanos since the device's introduction.

Maybe I'm just being a fanboy, but I don't buy it. Apple has certainly been hardnosed about defects in the past, but I think this dude's a dick. If you put your iPod in our pocket with metal objects, it's gonna get hella scratched. I mean, seriously.

Unless Apple's lying about the use of one plastic over another (they say the nano uses the same resin as the previous models), then i think this is a retarded lawsuit.

mtv.com - News - Nano Users Sue Apple Over Scratched iPod Screens

Artistic works traditionally carry significance beyond their physical beauty, but a new sculpture in the McAllister Building headquarters of the Penn State Department of Mathematics may carry that tradition to its limits.

Very very cool...

3D sculpture depicts 'shadow' of a 4D object

The CIA is divided between the Directorate of Intelligence, which houses the analysts, and the Directorate of Operations, which houses the spies and the paramilitary forces. The spies are, in general, divided into two groups. There are those with official cover and those with non-official cover. Official cover means that the agent is working at the U.S. embassy in some country, acting as a cultural, agricultural or some other type of attache, and is protected by diplomatic immunity. They carry out a variety of espionage functions, limited by the fact that most foreign intelligence services know who the CIA agents at the embassy are and, frankly, assume that everyone at the embassy is an agent. They are therefore followed, their home phones are tapped, and their maids deliver scraps of paper to the host government. This obviously limits the utility of these agents. Being seen with one of them automatically blows the cover of any potential recruits.

Then there are those with non-official cover, the NOCs. These agents are the backbone of the American espionage system. A NOC does not have diplomatic cover. If captured, he has no protection. Indeed, as the saying goes, if something goes wrong, the CIA will deny it has ever heard of him. A NOC is under constant pressure when he is needed by the government and is on his own when things go wrong. That is understood going in by all NOCs.

George Friedman of Stratfor on the way the CIA divides up its clandestine staff, and how it relates to the Plame situation.

Stratfor via DailyKos: The Importance of the Plame Affair

Five publishing houses - McGraw-Hill, Pearson Education and Penguin Group (USA), Simon & Schuster and John Wiley & Sons - filed a suit in New York yesterday, claiming that Google's plans would infringe their copyrights.

"If Google can make ... copies, then anyone can," Patricia Schroeder, president of the Association of American Publishers, told Reuters. "Anybody could go into a library and start making digital copies of anything."

Ok, they have a point... this sets a precedent. I still think they're shooting themselves in the foot. It's not always easy to locate interesting and relevant books. A card catalog simply doesn't cut it.

I think this could be really beneficial to smaller publishers and independent authors, but as usual, the big entrenched interests are kicking and screaming. For example, the music, movie, cable, telecom industries. Anything to slow the passage of time.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Further obstacles to Google's library plans

American innovation offers a solution to our broadband problem. It's time for Congress, the FCC and the White House to stop protecting the corporate dinosaurs and start exploring alternatives that will foster a genuine free market in high-speed Internet services.

Aside from some unnecessary sniping at Bush, this is a solid article about why you can't have nice things.

Salon.com Technology | Free American broadband!

In keeping with this trend, Colbert's name is scattered all over the set -- in the background in two places, on a plasma screen in front of him, twice on his desk and moving in a red ticker across the ground, plus his desk is in the shape of a giant "C." During the opening credits, an eagle flies around his head, and words flash across the screen: "POWERFUL," "COURAGEOUS," "EXCEPTIONAL," and also "DOMINEERING," "RELENTLESS," "GRIPPY." Yes, you read that right: Grippy. Soon, Colbert tells us about his own personal brand of no-nonsense, hard-hitting ... well, nonsense. Somewhere out there, Bill O'Reilly is fidgeting and twitching like the villain whose voodoo doll just took a thumb tack to the forehead.

In a nice play on O'Reilly's "No-Spin Zone" foolishness, Colbert wants us to know that even though his name is all over the place, the show isn't all about him. "No, this program is dedicated to you, the heroes!" he bellows. "And who are the heroes? The people who watch this show -- average, hardworking Americans. You're not the elites, you're not the country club crowd. I know for a fact that my country club would never let you in. But you get it! And you come from a long line of it-getters!"

Immediately, Colbert has his finger on the throbbing pulse of right-wing punditry, the dexterity with which they pander to the working class without getting any mud on their Italian wing-tip loafers. "On this show, your voice will be heard," Colbert reassures us, "in the form of my voice."

Which brings us to "tonight's word": truthiness. "Now I'm sure some of the word police, the 'Wordinistas' over at Webster's, are gonna say, 'Hey, that's not a word.'" But Colbert goes on to explain, "I don't trust books. They're all fact, no heart. And that's exactly what's pulling our country apart today. We are divided between those who think with their head, and those who know with their heart." Next to Colbert, a bullet point flashes "No Thinking." With the glorification of ignorance at its peak, this little rant couldn't feel any more timely. It's soothing, somehow, to witness Colbert tackling the profound absurdity of the times with such unbridled glee.

It was pretty amazing last night.

[ Awesome. Except that it's making me want to get cable again... -k]

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | All-spin zone

This guide is part of the Machine Identification Code Technology project. It explains how to read the date, time, and printer serial number from forensic tracking codes in a Xerox DocuColor color laser printout.

Kudos, EFF.

EFF: DocuColor Tracking Dot Decoding Guide

Nearly exact self-similar fractal forms occur do in nature, but I'd never seen such a beautiful and perfect example until, some time after moving to Switzerland, I came across a chou Romanesco like the one above in a grocery store. This is so visually stunning an object that on first encounter it's hard to imagine you're looking at a garden vegetable rather than an alien artefact created with molecular nanotechnology.

Coolest vegetable ever.

[ Seriously. That's fucking awesome. -k]

Fractal Food

Usage Note: Decimate originally referred to the killing of every tenth person, a punishment used in the Roman army for mutinous legions. Today this meaning is commonly extended to include the killing of any large proportion of a group. Sixty-six percent of the Usage Panel accepts this extension in the sentence The Jewish population of Germany was decimated by the war, even though it is common knowledge that the number of Jews killed was much greater than a tenth of the original population. However, when the meaning is further extended to include large-scale destruction other than killing, as in The supply of fresh produce was decimated by the nuclear accident at Chernobyl, only 26 percent of the Panel accepts the usage.

I finally got sick of wondering how acceptable it is to use "decimate" in various contexts. Like most, I use it pretty wantonly, to mean "massive devastation", but in the back of my mind, it bugged me. Henceforth I'll try to stick to the Panel recommendation and not use it in reference to destruction of inanimate items.

Dictionary.com/decimate

Fucking awesome. Check out the root page to see a whole bunch of other cool silicon microscopy art.

-k

Molecular Expressions: The Silicon Zoo - Thor, God of Thunder (Darkfield)