Nate Edel's blog
Woman Survives Being Locked Up in Barrel and Thrown Into Sea by Jealous Husband
A Russian banker sealed his wife in a barrel and threw her into the sea when the couple were on vacation on Crimea Peninsula in Ukraine, the Pervaya Krymskaya newspaper reports.
City Settles Flour-Filled Condom Lawsuit
(AP) PHILADELPHIA A woman who was arrested and jailed for three weeks on drug charges for what turned out to be flour-filled condoms has settled a lawsuit against the city for $180,000.
Scorpion bites man repeatedly on plane to Vermont
A scorpion bit David Sullivan on the back of his right leg, just below the knee, then crawled up and down his left leg, he thinks, before getting him again in the shin.
From various posts on Flyertalk. And one extra, from elsewhere:
Australia-bound tourist ends up in Montana
German man mistakenly books plane ticket to small oil town of Sidney
BERLIN – A 21-year-old German tourist who wanted to visit his girlfriend in the Australian metropolis Sydney landed more than 8,000 miles away near Sidney, Montana, after mistyping his destination on a flight booking Web site.
Nikko’s nerdtacular Star Wars R2-D2 gear
These are probably the greatest gadgets I’ve seen at all of CES. Massive high-def televisions and supercharged gaming PCs are great, but they can’t compare to products fashioned to look and act like the galaxy’s greatest astrodroid.
Electronics company Nikko, best known for its remote-controlled cars, have announced a DVD projection system and a wireless, networked Webcam, both based on Star Wars’ R2-D2. The nerd truly is strong in these ones.
via a forward at work.
Civil court judges prepare to cast aside their wigs after 300 years
· Review finds consensus that horsehair should go
· Criminal courts may retain traditional headgear
This is why I’m glad I bought my new laptop BEFORE Vista came out… indeed, pretty much *right* before they started shipping the “free upgrade” coupons:
http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/vista_cost.txt
Executive Summary
Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista’s content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.
Executive Executive Summary
The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history [Note A].
A truly wonderful array of historical photos:
DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY — NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER — Online Library of Selected Images
What exactly are “Deathly Hallows?”
I guess we will have to wait to find out. In the meanwhile, the decision is whether it’s time to reread “Half Blood Prince” now, or wait for a definite ETA for the final book.
Are there really two million people using Second Life?
Bobbie Johnson
Thursday December 21, 2006
The GuardianYou’d think so. With glowing press coverage, virtual world Second Life would appear to be going from strength to strength: last week it broke through the 2m sign-ups barrier.
But not everybody is convinced by such milestones. Clay Shirky, the respected internet analyst and thinker, questioned how many of those 2m ever return after signing up.
…getting to the punchline below…
And it may be worse even than Shirky’s bleak estimates. Philip Rosedale, the founder of SL maker Linden Lab, last month said that churn was probably around 90% – meaning just one in 10 people who sign up use it in any meaningful way.
For comparison, the online fantasy game World of Warcraft had 5m subscribers – all paying a monthly fee – this time last year.
I haven’t yet found an MMOG I actually like, but I totally understand the appeal the when there’s a significant and enjoyable gaming to them. Something with only a dubious gaming nature, like say The Sims Online (do they even still exist?) I don’t really get the appeal of, but … de gustibus, and all that. When they’re just an online not-a-game, like Second Life, it seems like a glorified form of IM, and I do not get it at all… seems like a real wankfest to me (to borrow a Britishism.)
Are we being ripped off over software?
With sterling at nearly $2, the price difference between here and the US looks starker than ever
Jack Schofield
Thursday December 21, 2006
The GuardianBuy a copy of Microsoft Windows or Office, Adobe Photoshop or even a game in the UK, and you will usually end up paying much more than you would in the US. It could be as little as 20p more for a music download (though even after VAT that’s a near-25% markup), up to an amazing £181 extra for a copy of Adobe Photoshop CS2, if you are paying manufacturers’ suggested retail prices.
At least for games and other things not needing localization (*) for functional reasons, why not order from the US Amazon? Though I’m not clear how much of that would be lost to shipping.
In any event, sorry to our neighbors cross the pond, and hey, at least remember you’ve got the NHS while we’ve got the freakishly bad US private healthcare market.
Pooping Peasant Popular in Spain
‘El Caganer,’ the Great Defecating Peasant Increasingly Found on Mantelpieces in Spain
BARCELONA, Spain Dec 20, 2006 (AP)— The Virgin Mary. The three kings. A few wayward sheep. These are the figures one expects to find in a traditional Christmas nativity scene. Not a smartly dressed peasant squatting behind a rock with his rear-end exposed.
Yet statuettes of “El Caganer,” or the great defecator in the Catalan language, can be found in nativity scenes, and increasingly on the mantelpieces of collectors, throughout Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region, where for centuries symbols of defecation have played an important role in Christmas festivities.
I couldn’t MAKE this stuff up, folks. More craziness from the same site: Caller impersonates cop, convinces McDonalds crew to abuse coworker
No idea what to make of this, but in case it’s of interest to any of my readers:
Thailand Abandons Limits on Foreign Stock Investments (Update6)
By Suttinee Yuvejwattana and Margo Towie
Dec. 19 (Bloomberg) — Thailand scrapped currency controls on international stock investors one day after their imposition by the central bank prompted the biggest stock market plunge in 16 years.
The government lifted a requirement that banks lock up 30 percent of new foreign-currency deposits for a year for funds earmarked for stocks, Finance Minister Pridiyathorn Devakula said in Bangkok. The rule, intended to slow a 16 percent gain in the Thai currency this year that threatened exports and economic growth, sparked investor selling that wiped out $23 billion of market value in Thai stocks.
Via AMERICAblog:
Wholesale prices surge; Housing rebounds
WASHINGTON – Inflation at the wholesale level surged by the largest amount in more than three decades in November, reflecting higher prices for gasoline and a host of other items.
The Producer Price Index, which measures inflation pressures before they reach the consumer, was up 2 percent last month, the biggest advance since a similar increase in November 1974, the Labor Department reported Tuesday.
Economists had been expecting a rebound in wholesale prices following two months of big declines. However, the 2 percent jump was four times bigger than the 0.5 percent increase they had forecast. Even excluding volatile energy and food prices, core inflation posted a 1.3 percent advance, the biggest jump in 26 years.
Emphasis above is mine. What a great economy we’ve got, eh? Between this and the quagmire in Iraq war, Bush is looking like he is trying to out-Nixon Nixon.