TechRepublic : A ZDNet Tech Community
Found via Digg:
The page is actually in German, but it has a thumbnail and author credit for each variant on the arcade classic. I had no idea Morgan Spurlock created a food hoarding Pac-Man variant (in Flash) for his Super Size Me Web site. Apparently, there are a lot of product tie-ins, as M&Ms and Mentos both have Pac-Men of their own (the latter involving German instructions and sheep). Enjoy!
From Shuzak.com via Digg:
“Today, Google has its hands in web search, email, online
videos, calendars, news, blogs, desktop search, photo sharing, online
payments, social networking, instant messaging, WiFi, word processors,
web hosting, web browser, search tool bars, spreadsheets, discussion
groups, maps and more. Before long, Microsoft, AOL, Yahoo! and eBay maneuvered to encapsulate
Googles ever-growing strength. Over two hundred years ago, Emperor
Napoleon, the Google of his day, found himself in a similar situation.
Russia, Prussia, Austria and Britain had decided to go to war.”
There are some interesting parallels between Google and Napolean, depending on how you want to interpret history. In broad strokes, they were both upstart conquerors who became the most feared power in their respective worlds incredibly quickly, then found themselves in a fight for survival with the previously established heavyweights of the day. While that may seem like a quant military-to-business analogy, this author argues that Google is using Napoleanic tactics to ream Microsoft–and is doing so very effectively.
What’s interesting about the Google-Napolean parallels is the notion that Napolean was eventually defeated–he did not pass on, but was destroyed. Following the author’s logic, Google is not long for this Earth, not as a serious power anyway. Once the old guard (Microsoft & Yahoo) has slowly, painfully marshalled its forces against Google, “Don’t Be Evil” Incorporated is headed for a Waterloo. So says this author.
From BoingBoing a few days ago:
“TrackMeNot: Firefox extension randomizes your search history - Stephen sez, ‘TrackMeNot runs in Firefox as a low-priority background process that periodically issues randomized search-queries to popular search engines, e.g., AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and MSN. It hides users’ actual search trails in a cloud of indistinguishable ‘ghost’ queries, making it difficult, if not impossible, to aggregate such data into accurate or identifying user profiles. TrackMeNot integrates into the Firefox ‘Tools’ menu and includes a variety of user-configurable options.’”
From BoingBoing today:
“Greasemonkey script feeds all your searches through anonymizer
- Nemanja made this Greasemonkey script that automatically feeds all your search-queries through Black Box Search, ‘a proxy that runs Google, Yahoo, and MSN searches through a proxy and then displays them with almost no delay.’”
Since my readership threw a Sith-fit when I discussed the physics behind the Death Star superlaser a few months ago, I figured I was obligated to followup with McSweeney’s take on everything that’s wrong with the Death Star trash compactor.
To quote Joshua Tyree: “Ignoring the question of how
Princess Leia could possibly know where the trash compactor is, or that
the vent she blasts open leads to a good hiding place for the rescue
crew, why are there vents leading down there at all? Would not vents
leading into any garbage-disposal system allow the fetid smell of
rotting garbage, spores, molds, etc., to seep up into the rest of the
Death Star? Would not it have been more prudent for the designers of
the Death Star to opt for a closed system, like a septic tank?”
This is but one of nine points Tyree makes to illustrate what idiotic environmental engineers the Empire must have under its employ, if this sort of waste disposal system is considered top-notch. I say Tyree is misunderstanding the function of the Death Star trash compactor. So far as we know, the trash vents only lead up into thd detention block–exactly the sort of place that the Empire would want to be flooded with fetid smells and noxious spores. Thus, if prisoner cells are the only place the trash compactor vents toward, it also explains the idiotic tentacle-beast that lives beneath the water–it’s an anti-escape device.
Without a plucky R2 droid hacking open the compactor and its magnetically selaed door, it’s virtually escape-proof, and guarantees that horrible smells and tormented screams (either from the wall-crushers or the tentacle worm attacks) will reach up into the the Empire’s dungeons. After all, when Luke insists that R2 “shut down all the trash compactors on the detention level,” we have no way of knowing if their are comapctors on any other levels. I submit to you that there were not, as the compactors existed merely as cruel and unusal torment devices meant to soften up Imperial prisoners. If I was a Sith, that’s what I would do.
Well, it’s official, Stargate SG-1 has been cancelled:
“SCI FI Channel is proud to be the network that brought Stargate SG-1 to its record-breaking 10th season. … Having achieved so much over the course of
the past 10 years, SCI FI believes that the time is right to make this
season their last on the channel. SCI FI is honored to have been part
of the Stargate legacy for five years, and we look forward to continuing to explore the Stargate universe with our partners at MGM through a new season of Stargate Atlantis.”
Color me mildly saddened. I truly enjoyed SG-1, though I also believe the soul of the show was lost when Richard Dean Anderson (Jack O’Neill) and Don S. Davis (General Hammond) left. When TechRepublic members debated the best Stargate episode, they agreed with my assessment–the show peaked at the end of Season 7, and has merely been looking for ways to stay on the air ever since.
The current Ori storyline never caught my interest, nor the ham-handed introduction of convoluted Arthurian myth. I also never warmed to Stargate Atlantis, which seemed overly fixated on action, rather than some of the more intriguing hard science/mythology mashups that powered SG-1. Honestly, Atlantis was like a lobotomized version of SG-1 for most of its first season, so I never really got into it. Executive Producer Robert C. Cooper swears SG-1 will go on in some form, but I seriously hope he’s wrong. Better no Stargate than bad Stargate. (Have we learned nothing from the debacles that were Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise?)
However, those of you looking for one last super-fix of SG-1 goodness may have some relief ahead of you. Cartoonist Leah Rosenthal has some snarky little send-ups of SG-1 tropes and characters on her Web page. From the looks of things, she feels the same way about the Ori as I do…
Well, the headaches are mostly gone, but the lethargy remains. I really feel like I’m a step slow, mentally. If Geek Trivia gets really lame, really fast, everyone will know why.
So, following a total meltdown after my stint at the local sci-fi con, I decided it was time to finally give up the caffeine. It screws with my migraines, and it makes travel a real bear, since going more than 12 hours without it would spike a headache–which can get really inconvenient in foreign airports and on camping trips.
So, after not having gone more than a day without caffeine since I was in grade school, I gave it up on Monday. Today is the first day I haven’t had a headache, but I feel like I’m running at half-speed, and my brain is wrapped in cotton. Hopefully, it will get better from here. If anybody has any advice on dealing with caffeine withdrawal, I’d love to hear it.
I found this helpful illustration from the BBC via Warren Ellis. For those of you who haven’t heard, the International Astronomical Union–them folks what gets to name space-y stuff–may have finally settled the issue of whether or not Pluto was actually a planet, what with its miniscule size and weirdo sometimes-I’m-closer-than-Neptune-sometimes-I’m-not orbit. Officially, Pluto is a planet, but any specific definition of a planet that would allow for Pluto also automatically qualifies a number of the larger, less well known objects orbiting our favorite sun.
To quote the Wired article: “The panel also proposed a new category of planets called ‘plutons,’
referring to Pluto-like objects that reside in the Kuiper Belt, a
mysterious, disc-shaped zone beyond Neptune containing thousands of
comets and planetary objects. Pluto itself and two of the potential
newcomers Charon and 2003 UB313 would be plutons.”
Don’t completely rewrite the textbooks just yet, as my Jedi Master John Scalzi has a cogent prediction of future planetary classification: “what I think will eventually happen is that there will be nine ‘Historical Planets’ that get named in popular astronomy books, with
Pluto/Charon being considered one entry … and then all the other planets get a
hand-wave, as in: ‘Our solar system is comprised of nine historical
planets, and many other smaller, icy planets discovered after Pluto.’
Done and done. Among other things, this will allow people not to worry
about screwing up the ‘naming the planets after Roman gods’ thing.”
Me, I’m for rewriting text books, if only because that means I get to sell a whole new set of trivia questions to the world.
As all true geeks know, PvP is the undisputed pinnacle of geek-centric webcomic humor, at least according to this Trivia Geek. Now, that which is great has become even greater by salvaging an otherwise overrated leftover from the first Web2.0 feature-fetish craze: tagging.
The public beta of the new PvP Web site is now online, and those crazy freaks have tagged all eight years worth of comics. Now, you can peruse a Web comic for every occasion, Who says mandatory tagging sucks?
Once more, from the glories of ThinkGeek, you can own your very own plush version of this:
A Reading
from the Book of Armaments, Chapter 4, Verses 16 to 20:
Then did he raise on high the Holy
Hand Grenade of Antioch, saying, “Bless this, O Lord, that
with it thou mayst blow thine enemies to tiny bits, in thy
mercy.” And the people did rejoice and did feast upon the
lambs and toads and tree-sloths and fruit-bats and orangutans and
breakfast cereals … Now did the Lord say, “First thou
pullest the Holy Pin. Then thou must count to three. Three shall
be the number of the counting and the number of the counting
shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither shalt thou
count two, excepting that thou then proceedeth to three. Five is
right out. Once the number three, being the number of the
counting, be reached, then lobbest thou the Holy Hand Grenade in
the direction of thine foe, who, being naughty in my sight, shall
snuff it.”
– Monty Python, “Monty
Python and the Holy Grail“
