Security Brief: Radical Islamic Web site takes on ‘South Park’ – This Just In – CNN.com Blogs

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The radical Islamic Web site Revolutionmuslim.com is going after the creators of the TV cartoon series “South Park” after an episode last week included an image of the Prophet Mohammed in disguise.

[From Security Brief: Radical Islamic Web site takes on ‘South Park’ – This Just In – CNN.com Blogs]

Natasha the walking macaque

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Natasha, a five-year-old macaque living at Safari Park, near Tel Aviv, almost died from a severe case of the stomach flu. When she recovered she started walking upright like a human, no longer dropping down on all fours or using her hands to move along .

A zoo veterinarian says he has no idea why this happened but maybe the flu left Natasha with some brain damage.

[From Natasha the walking macaque]

Fecal Face – Meredith Dittmar Interview

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My process is always changing. Typically I collect images, diagrams, math and words and surround myself with them before I begin a set of pieces – though once I start working I only refer to them rarely. I throw it all into the brain blender and see what comes out. I usually work on several pieces at a time because creating certain effects in clay is labor intensive and then when something doesn’t fit it usually get used somewhere else. I try to sculpt freely, creating parts, using them or not, and see what begins to appear. I sketch the larger overreaching ideas as they come and maybe use them or not. I’m always playing with the balance of tackling the technical challenges the clay poses, with the desire to keep moving forward with more immediate techniques. Most importantly though, I try to keep my head out of it and work from a open & quiet state.

[From Fecal Face – Meredith Dittmar Interview]

OpenCola (drink) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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OpenCola is a brand of cola unique in that the instructions for making it are freely available and modifiable. Anybody can make the drink, and anyone can modify and improve on the recipe as long as they, too, license their recipe under the GNU General Public License. Since recipes are, by themselves, not copyrightable, the legal basis for this is untested.[1]

Although originally intended as a promotional tool to explain free and open source software, the drink took on a life of its own and 150,000 cans were sold. The Toronto-based company Opencola founded by Grad Conn, Cory Doctorow, and John Henson became better known for the drink than the software it was supposed to promote. Laird Brown, the company’s senior strategist, attributes its success to a widespread mistrust of big corporations and the “proprietary nature of almost everything.”

[From OpenCola (drink) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Seven Crimes That Will Get You a Smaller Fine than File-Sharing

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Thinking about file-sharing? Don’t. You’ll get fined, and crime doesn’t pay (unless you rob banks and/or armored cars, then it pays very well). Take it from Jammie Thomas, who was fined $2 million for downloading 24 songs, or anyone else who tried to fight the RIAA.

Instead, try another crime, because plenty of them draw far lighter penalties than downloading Jason Mraz’s latest. Thanks to the Mechanics blog at Gapers Block, here are seven crimes that will get you smaller fines than file-sharing:

1. Child abduction: the fine is only like $25000.

2. Stealing the actual CD: the fine is $2,500

3. Rob your neighbor: the fine is $375,000

4. Burn a house down: The fine is just over $375,000

5. Stalk someone: The fine is $175,000

6. Start a dogfighting ring: the fine is $50,000

7. Murder someone: The maximum penalty is only $25,000 and 15 years in jail, and depending on your yearly salary, would probably be far slighter a penalty that $2 million.

[From Seven Crimes That Will Get You a Smaller Fine than File-Sharing]

The Mysterious “Mirror Man” appears in L.A.

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When I first looked at the photos, I thought the “mirror man” was a sculpture. But I found this information from a photographer nicknamed SilverSky who took the pictures, he states “I was in LA and this guy shows up in a suit from head to toe made of glass. I thought it was pretty cool.”

[From The Mysterious “Mirror Man” appears in L.A. — Illusion 360 – World’s Most Amazing Art, Design, Technology, Video]

Mediterranean Black Bean Quinoa Burgers with Red Onion Basil Aioli « The Voracious Vegan

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Black Bean Burger
2 cans black beans, drained and rinsed and roughly smashed
2/3 cup cooked quinoa
1/4 cup chickpea flour (with additional 2Tbsp if needed)
1/3 cup chopped sun dried tomatoes, the soft kind marinated in oil
1 Tbsp ground flax seed mixed with 3 tbsp water, microwaved for 20 seconds
2 tsp liquid smoke
salt and pepper to taste

[From Mediterranean Black Bean Quinoa Burgers with Red Onion Basil Aioli « The Voracious Vegan]

7,500 shoppers unknowingly sold their souls – Odd News | newslite.tv

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Thousands of shoppers unknowingly signed their souls over to a computer-game store after failing to read the terms and conditions on their website.

GameStation added the “immortal soul clause” to online purchases earlier this month stating customers granted them the right to claim their soul.

While all shoppers during the test were given a simple tick box option to opt out, very few did this, which would have also rewarded them with a £5 voucher.

The store claims this shows 88 percent of people do not read the terms and conditions of a website before they make a purchase.

Bosses also say they will not be enforcing their rights and will now email customers nullifying any claim on their soul.

[From 7,500 shoppers unknowingly sold their souls – Odd News | newslite.tv]

Royalty Free Icons & Clipart Stock Images ~ Icons Etc.

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Icons Etc is pleased to offer 125,580 free icons and clipart stock images for web design, application design, graphic design, and many other purposes. Click on the Browse All Tags tab in the menu above to browse all of our tags in alphabetical order. Go to the top of the sidebar to Browse By Category (Icon Style) or scroll down and Browse Icons & Clipart by Most Tags (In descending order). Check back often to view our latest releases of more great icons and clipart.

[From Royalty Free Icons & Clipart Stock Images ~ Icons Etc.]

How Stanislav Grof Helped Launch the Dawn of a New Psychedelic Research Era | Drugs | AlterNet

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Next week, the brightest lights of the psychedelic cognoscenti will gather in San Jose, California. Leaving swirls of tracer visions in their wakes, they will converge from around the world at an incongruously bland Holiday Inn, 50 miles south of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood that once served as the pulsing capital of Psychedelistan. There, several hundred turned-on and tuned-in doctors, psychologists, artists and laypeople will participate in the annual conference of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS). For four days, they will explore — through workshops and lectures, nothing more — the widening gamut of clinical inquiry into the uses of the psychedelic experience, a global resurgence of which has led to hopeful talk of a “psychedelic revival.”

[From How Stanislav Grof Helped Launch the Dawn of a New Psychedelic Research Era | Drugs | AlterNet]

HBO’s ‘Treme’ finally gets New Orleans right HBO’s ‘Treme’ finally gets New Orleans right | Treme – The HBO Series | News, Blogs and Reviews – NOLA.com

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Better than it’s ever been.
Probably as good as it will ever get.
This is the screen depiction that New Orleans deserves, has always desired, but has been denied.

[From HBO’s ‘Treme’ finally gets New Orleans right | Treme – The HBO Series | News, Blogs and Reviews – NOLA.com ]

HBO’s ‘Treme’ creator David Simon explains it all for you HBO’s ‘Treme’ creator David Simon explains it all for you | Treme – The HBO Series | News, Blogs and Reviews – NOLA.com

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In the first episode of “Treme,” to be broadcast tonight on HBO, a character will reach into her purse and produce an apple-flavored Hubig’s pie. She will do this in late November 2005. With the rest of her dessert menu no longer available, the character, a local chef, will then serve the local delicacy to a patron of her restaurant.

[From HBO’s ‘Treme’ creator David Simon explains it all for you | Treme – The HBO Series | News, Blogs and Reviews – NOLA.com ]

MacDailyNews – 1998 Bill Gates: I can’t figure out why Jobs is even trying to be Apple CEO; he knows he can’t win

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Bob Cringely has republished a quote from an interview he did with Bill Gates from June, 1998 for a never-published piece for Vanity Fair:

“What I can’t figure out is why he (Steve Jobs) is even trying (to be the CEO of Apple)? He knows he can’t win.” – Bill Gates, June 1998

Cringely writes, “Look at the two companies today. Jobs is still running Apple despite cancer and a liver transplant while Gates has moved on to saving the world at the Gates Foundation. Microsoft is worth $240 billion, a tiny drop from 12 years ago, with the shares now around $27 (down from $29). Nothing gained in more than a decade. Apple shares, on the other hand, have gone from $7.25 to almost $240, Apple’s market cap has risen more than 33X from $6 billion to $220 billion. And Cupertino’s cash hoard today is almost exactly the same as Microsoft’s at around $40 billion.”

[From MacDailyNews – 1998 Bill Gates: I can’t figure out why Jobs is even trying to be Apple CEO; he knows he can’t win]

MacDailyNews – Adobe Platform Evangelist: ‘Go screw yourself Apple’

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Adobe Platform Evangelist: ‘Go screw yourself Apple’
Friday, April 09, 2010 – 05:27 PM EDT
“By now you have surely heard about the new iPhone 4.0 SDK language that appears to make creating applications in any non-Apple-approved languages a violation of terms,” Lee Brimelow, Adobe Platform Evangelist, blogs for The Flash Blog. “Obviously Adobe is looking into this wording carefully so I will not comment any further until there is an official conclusion.”

MacDailyNews Take: Brimelow then inexplicably proceeds to comment further. This marks just the first of his many lies.

Brimelow continues, “What they are saying is that they won’t allow applications onto their marketplace solely because of what language was originally used to create them. This is a frightening move that has no rational defense other than wanting tyrannical control over developers and more importantly, wanting to use developers as pawns in their crusade against Adobe.”

MacDailyNews Take: Whiners whine and liars lie and sometimes they’re one and same. We already explained this quite clearly earlier today: “Flash is a proprietary, resource-hogging, browser-crashing abomination and we don’t want ported software; software designed for the lowest common denominator is inferior to software designed to take advantage of individual platforms’ strengths.” Adobe should understand this implicitly because they long ago turned their backs on the very platform that made their company in order to design their apps for Windows, the lowest common denominator. That is why Mac users suffer with inferior Adobe software today.

Brimelow continues, “The fact that Apple would make such a hostile and despicable move like this clearly shows the difference between our two companies. All we want is to provide creative professionals an avenue to deploy their work to as many devices as possible.”

MacDailyNews Take: So, Adobe doesn’t want to own the proprietary toolset to generate profits by controlling the Web’s multimedia platform. The angels just want to provide creative professionals with blah, blah, blah. Well then, Adobe should drop Flash into the dumpster where it belongs, and embrace the creation of cross-platform tools that enable people to deploy open standards, such as HTML5, that will work on as many devices as possible, including 85+ million iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.

Brimelow continues, “Many of Adobe’s supporters have mentioned that we should discontinue the Creative Suite products on OS X as a form of retaliation. Again, this is something that Adobe would never consider in a million years. We are not looking to abuse our loyal users and make them pawns for the sake of trying to hurt another company. What is clear is that Apple most definitely would do that sort of thing as is evidenced by their recent behavior.”

MacDailyNews Take: Adobe won’t do that because they’d go under. Real creative professionals use Macs. Adobe can’t live off Window sufferers trying to use pirated Photoshop or Adobe’s craptastic Premiere.

Brimelow continues, “Personally I will not be giving Apple another cent of my money until there is a leadership change over there. I’ve already moved most of my book, music, and video purchases to Amazon and I will continue to look elsewhere. Now, I want to be clear that I am not suggesting you do the same and I’m also not trying to organize some kind of boycott. Me deciding not to give money to Apple is not going to do anything to their bottom line. But this is equivalent to me walking into Macy’s to buy a new wallet and the salesperson spits in my face. Chances are I won’t be buying my wallets at Macy’s anymore, no matter how much I like them.”

MacDailyNews Take: Adobe’s Platform Evangelist relegates himself to second-rate media services and that’s supposed to be some big statement?

Brimelow continues, “Now let me put aside my role as an official representative of Adobe for a moment as I would look to make it clear what is going through my mind at the moment. Go screw yourself Apple.”

MacDailyNews Take: Pure class and absolutely nothing new; it’s exactly what Adobe’s been saying to Apple Mac users for the last 15 years.

In the end, only one of these two companies will be screwed. It isn’t Apple.

[From MacDailyNews – Adobe Platform Evangelist: ‘Go screw yourself Apple’]

4AD – News – Announce album details, headline NYC show

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With the infectious tones of “Round and Round” still causing a stir online, Los Angeles’ Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti have confirmed details of their debut album for 4AD. Entitled Before Today, the record consists of twelve tracks (including the aforementioned single “Round And Round”) and will be released worldwide on June 8th 2010 on CD, LP and digital formats.

Six months in the making, Before Today was recorded in part in Encino at the House of Blues (once Tito Jackson’s home studio) with Sunny Levine (Quincy Jones’ grandson) and Rik Pekkonen (Bill Withers, Seals & Crofts, Bread) as well as at the band’s home studios. The result is a beguiling mix of glam rock, West Coast funk and Merseybeat harmonies with a high-production sheen; a contrast to the corroded bedroom recordings that have fomented a fervent cult following over the past decade.

[From 4AD – News – Announce album details, headline NYC show]