When going to pay at a store, a bank customer discovers that the name on his new debit card is wrong...

Sky News : Sign Here Please 'Mr Dick Head'

People who illegally share music files online are also big spenders on legal music downloads, research suggests.
Digital music research firm The Leading Question found that they spent four and a half times more on paid-for music downloads than average fans.
Rather than taking legal action against downloaders, the music industry needs to entice them to use legal alternatives, the report said.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Downloading 'myths' challenged

IN THE WAKE of Hot Coffeegate author Steven Johnson, the man behind "Everything Bad Is Good For You", has written an open letter to Senator Hillary Clinton, the woman largely behind launching the avalanche that has buried Take Two, Rockstar and half the gaming industry up to its neck in trouble. We’ll let the letter do the talking.

Heh.

A bit of Hot Coffee for Senator Clinton's mind

- Choose content from the 4 original Eno/Schmidt Eno/Norton Oblique Strategies editions.
- Includes the widely-distributed unofficial “HyperStack” version. (as”edition 0”).
- Minimal UI focuses on content.
- Intuitive device-like operation and behavior.
- Easy one-click action.
- Supports multiple instances.
- Complete and automatic recall through restarts.
- Efficient use of screen real estate.
- Uses 0.00% CPU when idle.
- Eye-soothing transitions.

Oblique Strategies - Dashboard - Games

SAN FRANCISCO - A man who compared a woman's anatomy to a carburetor won an annual contest that celebrates the worst writing in the English language.

N.D. Man Wins Annual Bad-Writing Contest - NEWS - STRANGE - Comcast.net

VANCOUVER, British Columbia - The debate over the existence of Sasquatch, a k a Bigfoot, an ape-like creature said to haunt the wilderness of western Canada, among other places, has entered the world of modern DNA testing.

Was it Sasquatch? DNA test will tell - Peculiar Postings - MSNBC.com

This is a nice little bit. Not perfect, but pretty much on the mark.

I think thats Dr.Demento on the voiceover at the end.

stopcox.org

For once, a book which really lives up to its title.
Hall self-published this massive tome in 1928,
consisting of about 200 legal-sized pages in 8 point type;
it is literally his magnum opus.
Each of the nearly 50 chapters is so dense
with information that it is the equivalent of an entire short book.
If you read this book in its entirety you will be in a good position
to dive into subjects such as the Qabbala, Alchemy, Tarot, Ceremonial Magic,
Neo-Platonic Philosophy, Mystery Religions, and
the theory of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry.
Although there are some questionable and controversial parts of the book,
such as the outdated material on Islam,
the portion on the Bacon-Shakespeare hypothesis,
and Hall's conspiracy theory of history
as driven by an elite cabal of roving immortals,
they are far out-weighed by the comprehensive
information here on other subjects.

An excellent book, regarded as one of the most comprehensive occult books ever. Now in the public domain, so enjoy!

Secret Teachings of All Ages Index

Acidus wrote:

President Bush has created a new senior level position to fight global piracy and counterfeiting that cost American companies billions of dollars in lost sales each year, Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said on Friday.

Calling "piracy" lost sales is really misleading because you count "pirates" as potential customers. First, the language "Pirate" is inaccurate. "Hobo" would be a more accurate analogy. A Hobo might bum a ride but never buy a ticket. This makes a Hobo a non-customer. A Pirate on the other hand, steals the actual potential for something to make a sale. Does a Hobo? No... A Hobo takes up unsold space on a train. In other words, while there is an unfair product distribution, this does not impede the rightful owner from selling more product. An IP Hobo in some ways encourages other potential sales. Most artistic tastes rub off by group contact, so for every Hobo'd copy has a good chance of selling a real copy and widening an audience that otherwise would not have known about a product. Video rental stores and Libraries purchase at least one official copy of an IP product. IP Hobos are free to borrow these copies and absorb their content. There isn't much of a difference between this type of distribution, and P2P methods. There are the added benefits that a single copy can be passed seamlessly along to the next reader/viewer/listener without the need to wait for the first person to finish (which is ideal for an archive of information). In a Library model, the person returns the media borrowed, but in this case is it even important? Most of these people aren't reading the media over and over again, the work simply exists as a part of the library.

What's the difference between a song you remember, and a song on your computer? A computer might have a somewhat better copy, but I think the crucial difference comes down to means of access. You can hum the song, its not quite the same as hitting play, however it is a means of access and distribution of a copy-written work. You hum the song, before you know it, your friend is humming the song, and his friends, and their friends and so on. Are these people thieves? Or is the fact that "Humming" is a degraded copy make a difference? Hmm... Lets say one person buys a CD and his friends hear the content while in this persons car... Did they purchase the rights to hear this music? Did this person have the right to expose this material? Should these things come with memory erase pills, so that no one remembers "content," but instead only remember liking or disliking it so you can buy an official licensed edition? Lets say you hum the contents of an album, and release a torrent file of the humming? Is that any different then releasing a shitty recording of the actual music in a torrent file? Is the shitty recording in any way less of an IP violation then a higher quality release? How... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

RE: The Other shoe: The Anti-piracy czar

Julian Beever is an English
artist who is famous for his art on the pavements of England, France, Germany,
USA, Australia and Belgium. It's peculiarity? �Beever gives�his
drawings an anamorphosis view, his images are drawn in such a way which
gives them three dimensionality when viewing from the correct angle. It's
amazing�!!!

It really is pretty amazing.

Virtual Street Reality