SickOfAllTheFuckingDot.Coms
All I know is anyone thats sick of all the .com startups and hoopla lately needs to visit this site.
Very Funny, Very Satirical.
i-drive
This is pretty cool…i-drive is another one of these free internet-based hard drive space sites that are popping up all over the place now. But these guys have a special feature called “SideLoad” where you can go to one of their partner sites (the one I was on was Scour), and you can load MP3’s (or whatever) straight to your virtual drive at i-drive. Good thinking…
Dumb Animals
Here’s an article about some genius in Mexico who, with the help of an encouraging friend and a few beers, decided to stroll into a lion’s cage to retrieve his cell phone.
Yep, they say those things will kill you. That applies to both lions and cell phones.
iMart
There are probaly few of you reading this who are not familiar with Apple’s lawsuits against Daewoo corp. and eMachines (for copying the iMac design). It seems to be that Apple will probably win these lawsuits. After all, the eMachines eOne and FuturePower computers are far too similar to the iMac for it to be legal. However, it seems the Supreme Court is having some thoughts about this sort of issue.
At first glance, eMachines and Wal-Mart have very little in common. But wouldn’t you know it? Wal-Mart is into stealing other people’s ideas, too. This article states that Wal-Mart was sued by a children’s clothing company (Samara Brothers) for trade-dress infringement of their clothing designs. And hey, Samara Brothers won. Over $10,000,000 in damages, in fact.
And then Wal-Mart took the case to the Supreme Court.
It seems that the Supreme Court doesn’t mind it when companies can’t think for themselves. They overturned the 2nd Circuit court’s ruling, leaving Wal-Mart with the ability to jack any ideas it seems fit and to use them for their own purposes. This worries me. A lot.
Honestly, I couldn’t care less about Wal-Mart and some children’s clothing company. The reason the ruling was overturned was because the clothing designs were not specific to Samara’s brand, and therefore were open to the world to copy. It’s that concept that annoys the hell out of me. I don’t think this case will have any bearing on Apple’s cases because the iMac and its design are central to the Apple look. Just check out the new jelly-filled website and forthcoming operating system.
But what if the Supreme Court decides that at the time the iMac was released, its look was NOT central to Apple’s brand and that it’s open for copying by anyone? Be prepared to see some ugly-ass computers. Insanely great design is more than just a pretty skin.
Kids get their way in San Diego.
This is a great story about a group of young skateboarders who built and designed their own skatepark in an old abandoned lot. Eventually the cops and the city council found out about it and went to put a stop to it when the group of youngsters started to get their shit together and… [go read the story]
World finds good use for Backstreet Boys' music
Unless you’re a pre-teen girl, you should enjoy this article. Apparently a sampling of the Backstreet Boys music has been utilized as an anti-student-protester tool at a Canadian university. Cool.
A protester was quoted as saying, “This is probably the first time the Backstreet Boys have been deliberately used as a form of sleep deprivation torture.”
We can only hope it will not be the last.
1984 4-sale
If you were thinking about licensing the concepts from George Orwell’s future-past novel “1984” for web or electronic use, you will want to talk to the folks over at Newspeak.com. The main purpose of their site seems to be to pawn these rights they aquired from Mr. Orwell’s estate.
But aside from the subtle pushing of their licensing rights, there are actually some pretty interesting parallels drawn between the book and the modern world…good food for thought. I like the main interface too – it features Warhol-esque portraits of Hitler, Mao Tse Tung, Stalin, someone else I don’t recognize but who probably is/was a pretty bad guy, and then smiling down at the end of the line is Mr. Bill Gates. Check it out.
2001: A Spaced Odyssey
Windows 2001 released ahead of schedule?
Apparently someone has gotten a hold of a development build of Win2k+1 and splattered it all over the net. Does anyone else see this as really stupid?
For a moment, let’s just put aside the utter confusion of the Windows development cycle…neptune, odyssey, whisler, blackcomb, mars – sounds like the cast of a bad sci-fi movie. To ponder what the hell Microsoft is thinking at any particular moment could land you in an institution.
But honestly, if you found a development build of a Windows product that is not even slated for release until next summer, and will undoubtedly not be finished and released until 12-16 months after the end of the year it was named for, would you install it and send it to all of your friends? Granted, there is the techno-geek curiosity factor, but what are you going to learn? With over a year to go until release, this project will probably get combined, cancelled and restarted 60 times before it goes to market, if it does at all. From the article: “So far As noted by ActiveWin, the pirated Whistler build looks almost identical to Windows 2000 Professional.” Surprise, surprise, surprise. Another planned pointless upgrade.
Hell, I don’t consider Windows 2000 stable, desirable or different enough to justify installing yet, and it HAS been officially released…let’s keep crappy future Windows products in the uncertain future, shall we? Let Microsoft do their own testing. 🙂
ONLY IN LA
Heres a little quick bit of comedy to lighten the atmosphere here at alternate.
Apparantly the singer of Blink182’s dog was having digestive problems and had to go to the vet for an enema, the funny thing is the doctor was hip enough to know the name of the Blink album and to find it quite funny… (the record is named Enema of the state)
Netscape 6.. What the fuck.
According to this article it appears that Netscape is planning on releasing Netscape 6.0 in the next 25 days…
UHM, what the fuck happened to Netscape 5.0???
I guess Microsoft must of purchased it from AOL… (laf)