MILITANTPLATYPUS

Blu-ray
Sad but true. Toshiba has officially thrown in the towel, which means that Blu-ray is the new format.

toshiba.co.jp

Russian police are hunting scrap metal thieves who stole a 200-tonne metal bridge in a night-time raid.

The bridge in Khabarovsk in eastern Russia vanished overnight and was part of the only road leading to a local heating plant.

Now staff at the plant have to find alternative routes to work.

dailymail.co.uk

via happycolt - tmbo

The chief operating and development officer of Yum brands, which includes Taco Bell, KFC, Long John Silver’s and Pizza Hut, is named Mr. Hearl. Mr. Hearl is retiring and will be replaced by Mr. Eaton. Seriously.

wsj.com

via tmbo - coyote

10,000 Filipino families live in this massive graveyard in Manila. I recently spent five days walking among its residents taking photos and hearing stories of struggle and survival.

Some families ended up here almost accidentally. Some inherited the mausoleums that they now live in from their great-grandparents. Others came from the provinces and couldn’t make enough money to live in the big city. In all cases, they’re basically families with nowhere else to go.

viceland.com

via re

Biodiesel may not become the airplane fuel of the future but it did prove effective enough to recently power a 1968 L-29 Czechoslovakian jet—dubbed BioJet 1—up to 17,000 feet (5,180 meters) over 37 minutes. A three minute, 15-second test the day before was the world’s first flight entirely fueled by cooking oil.

sciam.com

via tmbo - Whammo

On the 11th annual National Day of Silence (April 18, 2007), Erin Davies was victim to a hate crime. Because of sporting a rainbow sticker on her VW Beetle, Erin’s car was vandalized, left with the words “fAg” and “u r gay” placed on the hood and driver side of her car. Despite initial shock and embarassment, Erin has decided to embrace what happened and film a documentary about her 58-day cross country tour around the US and Canada in her car known worldwide as the fagbug.

fagbug.com

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The New York Times has a very interesting graph (see above) comparing adjusted fuel prices for now and 1920.

nytimes.com

via re

Apple Makes $831 On Each AT&T iPhone

[UK] Schools warned off Microsoft deal

Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard: the Ars Technica review

Sprint: Unlock Yourself on the Way Out

400 Mbps Home Powerline Networking

House Bill Opens Door to E-mail Tax

Mozilla Separating Browser From The App

Security

Windows Update Screws Up Again; Pissed Off Users Discover Desktop Search Auto Installed

Attackers take aim at IE7 flaw

Hacker Criminals Find An Exploit In a Fix

Freeware of the Week

dashwire.com - Manage your cell phone on the web

News of the Weird

He’s not undead, just unsober…

Prostitutes sew lips together in protest

Australian Les Stewart holds what the Web site Oddee.com calls the “third most bizarre” of all Guinness Book world records: having typed out the written numbers “one” through “one million,” over a period of 16 years from 1983 to 1998, according to an August story in his local newspaper Sunshine Coast Daily. He said he typed for 20 minutes at the beginning of every waking hour during that time because he “wanted something to do.” “It just came naturally to me.” [Sunshine Coast Daily (Maroochydore, Australia), 8-22-07]

Is the standard EULA doomed? Adobe plans to move key apps online

Money-Saving Comcast TiVo Spotted, Spy Shot Gallery

Associated Press Confirms That Comcast Blocks Some BitTorrent Traffic; Despite Comcast Denials

What Else Is Comcast Jamming? Gnutella? Lotus Notes?

Core of “Windows 7″ taking shape: meet the “MinWin” kernel

Firefox 3 Getting a Visual Makeover

Apple Posts Mac OS 10.5 Leopard Guided Tour

Security

With attack code circulating, RealPlayer fix coming

Exclusive: I Was a Hacker for the MPAA

New WEP Attack: Caffe Latte Hits Client, Not Access Point

Freeware of the Week

LinkSync 2.0 Beta 2b - Sync bookmarks for several browsers

News of the Weird

Ferry crews warned against smoking pot

Change for a million?

According to police in Warsaw, Poland, novelist Krystian Bala might have gotten away with torturing and murdering a businessman in 2000 if only he had resisted writing about his crime in his 2003 novel, “Amok.” The trail for the killer had been cold for several years until a tipster informed police of the book. In the plot, which authorities say bore a distinct resemblance to the 2000 murder, were details that police say could only have been known by the killer. After investigating, police found several other ties Bala had to the crime, including the fact that the victim was Bala’s ex-wife’s lover. Bala was sentenced in September to 25 years in prison. [The Times (London), 8-9-07]

The Texas legislature has a motto: if you are going to cheat and do things illegally, go big, and get it on tape!

Voting for other members is done out of necessity…

Watch the movie