A Bit of Tech Humor

Here's one you may have seen before, but it's certainly funny enough for a second viewing.

The Web Site Is Down

Note: This is NSFW (you've been warned)

New Music, New Outlet

Years ago (more than I like to admit), I remember when Guns N' Roses released their landmark albums Use Your Illusion 1 & 2. There was a huge fanfare over the whole thing, with record stores opening around midnight so die-hard fans could get the first copies on CD and tape.

Now here we are, 17 years later and news of a new Guns song being released made me think about how much has changed. Music cassettes are virtually gone, with CDs close behind. Many brick and mortar music stores are gone, or diversified to include DVDs and games. Real hardcore fans have heard a bunch of leaked tracks from Guns thanks to YouTube and file sharing.

And now news that their next official release is actually part of a video game... Rock Band 2, to be exact. I'm not sure all of this is what Axel meant when he sang "welcome to the jungle" or "take me down to paradise city", but it's definitely a whole new world.

Not as Many People Going Wii

Recent figures show the Wii's Japan lead on PS3 falling from a 6-to-1 lead, to a 1.7 -to-1 lead in recent months, seems like PS3 is finally putting out enough titles to attract the hardcore gamers that are the base of their market. The Wii on the other hand is more for the "casual gamer" or a second system (to PS3 or Xbox).

While things may be looking up for Playstation, the bigger question is how did you get in to this situation in the first place? And how embarrassing is it to be routinely beat by Wii Sports...

Starbucks' Corporate Skinny Latte

The days of a Starbucks on every corner (literally) may be coming to an end... with the closing of some 600 locations, seems like the economy is not fully in swing with a $4 cup of coffee, especially when said cup of coffee is actually cheaper than a gallon of gas, or should I say the gallon of gas is MORE expensive than a Starbucks coffee! And if Starbucks is having this much trouble, I wounder how the also-rans like Caribou Coffee are doing...

(I know this not a tech-related story, except when you calculate the ratio of the amount of code written to the amount of Starbucks coffee consumed)

This Day in Geek...

What a strange day yesterday turned out to be. I came across the following two articles, both filed yesterday, both tech-related, and worlds apart...

In this corner, we have news concerning Hans Reiser (the murder defendant who used the "geek defense") leading police to the body of his dead wife, while all the way over here, new words in the Merriam-Webster dictionary based on geek culture.

Seems like "geek" is everywhere from TV and movies, music, books and fashion, and, as the above shows, just about anywhere else nowadays!

Watching YouTube Watch You...

Looks like Viacom is getting ready to attack YouTube once again for copyrighted material on the site, or is this just another battle in their drawn out war?

Now, it seems that YouTube viewers (you and me both) may be part of the collateral damage. With a judges ruling to turn over data records, people's viewing habits could be compromised, which it turns out is actually against the law.

The records are only tied to an IP address (and not more detailed user data), which the judge found sufficiently protected users. Clearly he didn't read any coverage of AOL releasing "anonymous" search data a while back.

This time around, it looks like YouTube, Viacom, and a little assistance from the EFF, are looking to insure viewing data can't be reverse engineered to discover a user. With over 12 terabytes of log data, I'm pretty sure one or two clever people could find a few needles in that haystack.

For more on the story, check out the original article here:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/03/AR2008070302359_2.html?wpisrc=newsletter&sid=ST2008070304015&pos=