28/02/06
Justin:
Paint.NET is the replacement fot MS Paint to be bundled with Windows Vista. Looks pretty good.
gareth: It's a nice lightweight fuly-featured image editing program, I've been using it for ~a year. I didn't know it was being packaged with Vista though.
Gareth:
George Bush can't ride a bike with one hand
Marcus: I'd forgotten about the Segway incident.
Marcus: George Bush: a sitcom parody of a president.
justin: tw*t.
27/02/06
Marcus:
New Scientist: "Quantum computer works best switched off" (via)
Marcus: My brain hurts.
justin: '"A non-running computer produces fewer errors," says Hosten. That sentiment should have technophobes nodding enthusiastically.' - this is madness. If it was like, a tractor with no petrol, people would be worshipping it.
gareth: The amount of sense that makes is approaching zero. (Calculus joke very dorky I know)
Marcus:
The MPAA is (retardedly) targetting Usenet hosts for lawsuits because "users are able to attach movie, music and games files to their messages." PDF press release, Boing Boing post.
gareth: No surprise, after all it is the American way to sue all who oppose you.
Gareth:
The new Ask.com is live.
Marcus: It's looking rather empty and dull without Jeeves.
gareth: It really is. Ask doesn't really have anything at all aesthetically interesting now. Google has it's logo that they change based on current events, but Ask just looks like a regular old search engine.
26/02/06
Marcus:
Linkbunnies regular Dave, currently off travelling the world, has been climbing Mount Doom. In Middle Earth. Probably.
Marcus: His travel blog reads like the hateful ramblings of a man who is getting to do an amazing amount of cool fun stuff. Meanwhile I have to sit here with a headache and listlessly flick through the BBC News website.
Marcus: 
Marcus: His photos are great too. Bastard.
Marcus: Stop showing off with your fancy hiking, skydiving, bungee-jumping and discovering ancient lost civilisations and get back here and post some mildly interesting links!
gareth: What a lazy bastard. I'm jealous.
Gareth:
"A socialist youth organisation wants to sell hundreds of flag burning kits to university students next week .. to highlight anger at the (Australian) Federal Government."
gareth: It would be even funnier if they were protesting capitalism and commercialism.
Gareth:
iBuzz: turn your iPod into a "Music Activated Sex Toy"
Marcus: Bah. I thought this was going to be some kind of special MP3 or something to make the hard drive spin so it vibrated. Or something.
Gareth:
The new Loremo looks pretty nice. "The amazing thing is that the Loremo only needs 1.5l per 100km. This is approx. 157MPG! "
24/02/06
Gareth:
Explosm.net: hilarious. Especially the comics, a series entitled Cyanide and Happiness. They are akin to PBF in their randomness and hilarity.
Justin:
Subdivision Surfaces team gonged by the Academy in glittering ceremony.
justin: You lot make me sick. Subdivision surfaces have done more for movie making that Halle Berry ever has. Sub-d modelling. Lovely. It feels lovely - like dressing in the flacid skin of a fecorpse.
Gareth:
"N has been described as reminiscent of lode runner -- you're a little dude running around in a puzzle-y world inhabited by enemies."
Was put on to this while listening to the Barenaked Ladies podcast.
gareth: This game is so damn awesome. Screenshots
Marcus: Ngh.
gareth: SOURPUSS! GIGANTIC SOURPUSS!
Gareth:
Looks like Jason Kottke is done his year-long go at being a professional blogger. I have to admit, I would find that incredibly boring - I mean, your job being to talk about your life and point out the interesting bits?
23/02/06
Gareth:
Poke: "
Poke is the ultimate gaming utility. It's a small program that allows you to cheat in every game out there - published or to be published in the future!" What it does is allow you to edit memory locations for running processes (ie games). I thought it was fairly interesting. (Via)
Marcus:
BBC News: "A US state legislature [South Dakota] has approved a bill to ban most abortions... Exceptions will be made if a woman's life is at risk, but not for rape."
Marcus: "But President George W Bush describes the practice as 'abhorrent'."
Marcus: This is your "don't forget America is still run by dickheads" reminder.
gareth: Wow, that's ridiculous.
justin: He actually said partial birth abortions were 'abhorent', which is a different matter considering how they are performed.
Marcus: My bad. Holy sh*t, is this Partial Birth Abortion diagram accurate? It reads like a bad parody.
justin: No medical procedure sounds nice when you think about it.
Gareth:
The Year 2038 problem. Try setting the year of your system clock to 2038+. On Windows, it keeps chugging - several programs crashed, however. I guess they weren't able to handle sixty four bit integers.
gareth: Ubuntu 64bit keeps on rolling just fine, due to the fact that it's 64bit no doubt and all the programs have been written to support 64bit integers.
tim: yeah also apparently someone on this ship 'entered a zero into a database field causing a divide by zero error in the ships Remote Data Base Manager which brought down all the machines on the network, causing the ships propulsion system to fail' heheh and it had to be towed back into base!
gareth: I can't believe they use goddamn Windows NT on a boat that requires reliability. Do they reboot every week or so?
Gareth:
Wow, I had no idea this existed: Unununium, an OS without a kernel. Dynamic everything! Hoorah!
Gareth:
Laugh at this guy's adventures with Tourette's syndrome. Fortunately he's an actor, so you don't have to feel bad about it.
22/02/06
Justin:
I hate myself for looking up whether Preston and Chantelle from Celebrity Big Brother were shagging.
gareth: You people are the reason shows like this are still going!
Gareth:
This BBC article on Terry Gilliam's latest happenings has a good little snippet on what he thinks of piracy.
terry gilliam: It's hard for me to worry about the studios losing money. I'm not very sympathetic to their money problems, because they certainly haven't been sympathetic to mine. When you look at one of their accounting sheets you realise you're never going to see a penny, so if someone wants to rip them off that's fine with me. If you're going to pirate, though, make sure the quality's good. Have some respect for what you're pirating!
Andy:
I havent posted for a while, but i feel i have to, in regards to what i do for a living and my obsession
with security matters. Using www.b4usearch.com using
the 'people search' facility, you can find a person by knowing their name & region. It searches the
electoral roll. In combination with http://maps.google.co.uk you can zoom using a postcode into the satellite imagery section and see images with greater clarity than google earth. Of course, you can remove yourself from that electoral roll database, using a few investigatory skills. Not good news for privacy seeking people like me and all you guys.... ignorance aint bliss!...
Marcus: Yikes. It works too.
Marcus:
1982 article on De Beers' great diamond scam - diamonds originally not being all that special a gemstone until they orchestrated one of the most successful cartels ever. (via)
Marcus: "To achieve this goal, De Beers had to control demand as well as supply. Both women and men had to be made to perceive diamonds not as marketable precious stones but as an inseparable part of courtship and married life. To stabilize the market, De Beers had to endow these stones with a sentiment that would inhibit the public from ever reselling them."
Marcus:
Download (legally?) a whole bunch of Neil Young rarities. (via)
justin: They seemed down when I tried it.
Justin:
How many of you know the lyrics to Come On Eileen by Dexys Midnight Runners? - now's your chance.
21/02/06
Gareth:
The first production F-35 delivered to the flight line on February 19, 2006.
justin: More on that.
Marcus:
The BBC is featuring daily articles on those classic public information films of yesteryear. Today's is all about scarily-animated cat freak Charley.
Marcus: I didn't know Kenny Everett did the voice!
Justin:
If I was going to buy a bargain Samsung D600. I'd buy this one. - PS, erm Catholics are urging a boycott of Southpark.
Marcus: I'm going to rename this site eBaybunnies. You bloody shill.
justin: Am I the bad guy just because I want to bring Linkbunnies readers great news of bargains and money saving ideas? Mate, if they follow links about vore porn they'll follow links to anything.
gareth: Suddenly selling all your worldly possessions? Going to become a monk are we?
gareth: Oh wait, you're not the seller. You should still become a monk though. I mean, look how happy he looks!
20/02/06
Justin:
You know that wicked choral ending bit to Beethoven's 9th? (ode to joy) here is the translation into English.
justin: Joy, lovely divine light,
Daughter of Elysium
We march, drunk with fire etc.
Daughter of Elysium
We march, drunk with fire etc.
gareth: Wow, funny coincidence - I'd just found all nine of his symphonies in a really nice high bitrate.
justin: My advice is listen to the famous Herbert von Karajan/Berliner sympharmonic version. One evening, set aside some time, sit comfortably in a dark room, with a decent hi fi and listen to it loudly.
gareth: That would be the very one I have, the 1962 performance.
justin: The very reason they made compact discs the size they did - in order to fit that performance on one disc.
Marcus: Snopes on the Beethoven 74-minute CD claim. Oh, and it's the Berlin Philharmonic - no such thing as the Berlin Sympharmonic.
justin: Umm, yeah, silly me I was thinking of something else. I have already linked to this Snopes snippet, and a couple of others like it. The weight of evidence does lean towards it being true though.
justin: It's the European anthem too!
Justin:
Google has formally rejected a demand from the US government to hand over a week's worth of search records.
justin: I'm not sure how all this ties in with their rap on the knuckles from the US government over dealing with China.
Justin:
US scientists have called on mainstream religious communities to help them fight policies that undermine the teaching of evolution.
gareth: I have only one thing to say: FSM!
Justin:
Classic Cat is a directory with links to over 2800 free to download classical performances on the internet, sorted by composer and work.
Chris:
It looks like someone at Sony UK finally snapped out of a coma long enough to do something productive: the amazing animated/live action/bonkers movie from Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean Mirrormask finally gets a release in the UK next month. I first saw the trailer last spring. In the States the film's been and gone, and is already out on DVD.
Marcus:
Nutter British historian David Irving has been jailed for three years in Austria for denying the Holocaust.
Marcus: That'll teach the f*ckhead.
gareth: What a f**king jew.
gareth: Kidding of course!
Marcus: Yikes.
Justin:
The planning agency which designed Milton Keynes has been handed the job of reshaping a city which is no stranger to adversity: Najaf, in Iraq.
C Randall: Haven't we ruined the city enough?
Justin:
I was reading a charming BBC news story about Yakushima Island, where they are testing a new hydrogen fuel cell car, as the Island also had an ingenious way of supplying itself with power. So I thought I'd read more about the island, which boasts an ancient forest which is said to be the inspiration between Linkbunnies perenial favorite, Princess Mononoke.
justin: Now, to masturbate to vore porn.
Marcus: Reading this I made the fascinating discovery that a great deal of Wikipedia is in fact based on the public domain 1911 Encyclopaedia Brittanica. Everybody else may already have known this (geeks), but I didn't.
19/02/06
Justin:
From SA, the weekend web analysis of 'vore culture' - Ladies and gentlemen who wish to be devoured by animals.
gareth: What the F**K
gareth: WHAT THE F**K
Marcus: WHAT THE f*ck
Marcus:
US holiday bookings are way down in Britain, and it's about to become an even bigger pain in the ars* getting a visa. (via)
Justin:
Smiley Xtra - use Firefox to insert any emotican animation things into your online posts.
justin: 
justin: 
Marcus: Terrific. More websites need sh*tty animated smilies to torment the eye and destroy the soul. I'm glad we've become one of them.
gareth: That's one more adblock wildcard filter for me!
gareth: Agh, apparantly these images are spread all over the place. What a mess.
18/02/06
Gareth:
I'd give the world about three months before the nukes start flying
justin: Nah, we'll have to wait until Iran gets nukes. Then all we have to do is sit back, wait for non-governmental Palestinians to launch an attack on Israel, for them to respond with military force, for the Hamas government to consider that an act of war and retaliate in a more meaningful way, for the Israelis to strike back with greater force and then finally for the Iranians to 'defend' the Islamic and sovereign nation of Palestine - leading onto to long saught after war.
gareth: Fair enough. Perhaps three months was a bit pessimistic.
justin: I guess it all depends on how long before Iran gets nukes before a nuclear war happens.
Justin: I do think they were a bit stupid to elect Hamas. Either they want peace, or they want war. apparently though, the strategy is to wait until 2020 when the Palestinian population will far outweight the Israeli population.
17/02/06
Gareth:
Prince of Persia! Just as f**king tempermental as the original.
gareth: It might be just me, but I can't seem to get "combat mode" to work. I just get stabbed by one of the bastards with swords, after I've jumped around like a ninny.
Gareth:
New drugs which will allow people to survive on only two hours sleep a day are being developed, scientists have said.
Marcus: I linked to a Wired article on Modafinil back in July 2004 (gosh, have we been going that long?).
Marcus: According to an old Ask Metafilter thread, it's also legal to buy Modafinil in the UK.
gareth: Oh damn. Wow, I'd never even thought about how long linkbunnies has been going. We actually have a pretty decent bank of things to waste time with. I'd say we could probably waste entire months with the stuff we have built up.
justin: This is what everyone will look like after takign these pills. 
Marcus: I'm going to kill you.
Gareth:
You know that "successful entrepreneur" that won Olympic gold? He's apparantly made his money off of spyware. (Via)
gareth: I'd just like to mention that he's a f**ker.
Gareth:
Everyone boy wants one of these
Marcus: And it has a 100 mile range too. That means I can regularly do spyplane overflights of most of my friends to make sure their loyalty is maintained. Awesome!
Gareth:
Incase anyone is still using MSN messenger, etc: Gaim is amazing. With support for all mainstream chat protocols and being very minimalistic (none of MSN's overdone crap) it really is perfect. It's also multi-platform, written in C. (no java!)
Justin: Does it give you alerts when people come online, or when you get hormail emails, or indeed even google emails?
gareth: You can configure it for all of the above, and more.
16/02/06
Marcus:
High capacity (512mb+) SIM cards for mobile phones are on the horizon. Take all your ringtones etc with you when you switch phones.
Justin: That' simpressive :)
Marcus: Well, it would be an integrated way of storing large quantities of data without having to splash out on extra memory cards, so I'm all for it.
Justin:
Yahoo and Google have not been been accused as being tools of the Chinese government's oppressive regime - they are tools of the Chinese government's oppressive regime.
Marcus:
Comedian Dave Gorman's flickr photos. (via)
Marcus: He of the highly entertaining Dave Gorman's Googlewhack Adventure, and other things.
justin: My feelings on the matter can be seen here.
justin: My feelings on the matter can also be seen here.
Marcus: My feelings on your feelings on the matter can be seen here.
Marcus: My feelings on your feelings on the matter can also be seen here.
Marcus: My feelings on my feelings on your feelings on the matter can be seen here.
justin: If what they did was done by someone who was actually talented, it would be great. As it is, they aren't really funny. Dave Gorman didn't exactly set the stand up world alight did he? What has Danny Wallace done apart from mince about?
Gareth:
This is really impressive. Note: really goddamn loud music.
Justin: This is cool.
Marcus: Awesome!
chris: My eyes!
Justin:
Chemical free cure to ADHD or ADD or whatever its called when kids need a slap
Marcus: As a teacher with wide experience of this condition, I can report the best solution for everybody involves strapping the afflicted child into a giant hamster wheel and using all their extra energy to power lightbulbs.
Marcus: The lightbulbs don't actually have to be for anything much. but it looks kind of cool.
andy: ADHD is a common term in the police force. Its better known as 'bad parent syndrome'.null
Justin:
They are remaking 'Monkey' - although the BBC mistanekly believes it had "lavish special effects"
Gareth:
I'm pretty sure these are the funniest things known to man
Justin: Double-posting rebel scum.
gareth: ... well, it's funny enough for two posts!
justin: To be honest, I know it's even been posted more than that - but possibly before Marcus ruined everything by deleting the archives.
Marcus: Your huge ass created a mini blackhole which sucked a whole swathe of linkbunnies into it and created a six-month void. Don't blame me for that.
Gareth:
If you're going to go "WTF" to one thing today, make it this
gareth: Or this
gareth: perhaps this
15/02/06
Justin:
Looks like they are going to ban smoking in public places in the United Kingdom
gareth: That's good to hear - same thing should be happening in Canada quite soon. It'll definitely make pubs, restaurants etc a bit nicer.
14/02/06
Gareth:
The Devil's Dictionary, funny stuff. An example of which: "Brain: An apparatus with which we think what we think."
Marcus:
Motorcyclist videos idiot driver spinning out and losing control directly into her path, causing a direct collision.
Marcus: Motorbikes: awesome fun, but sadly lacking at protecting you from morons.
Marcus: More info on the crash here.
gareth: Wow, the Civic driver is a massive liar. "She hit me" sort of stuff.
gareth: Looks like the motorcyclist had one of these, which look really cool.
Marcus:
New Half Life 2 mission packs will be called "episodes" rather than go under some other cool name. Apparently the idea is to make the franchise "episodic". (via)
gareth: Best way to get the most money out of it, IMO.
Justin:
Timeline for the Israeli/Palestinian conflict
Justin: Tee hee hee - once again the British are largely to blame :)
Justin:
Lou Ferrigno (aka late 70s early 80s Hulk) has become a 'special sherrif' - Just don't make him angry.
Justin:
Subdivision modelling world - everythign you wanted to know about subdivision modelling but were afraid to ask.
Gareth:
I like this. Looks like the film industry might be catching on to the fact that people are moving beyond crap movie theatres with uncomfortable seats.
13/02/06
Tim:
I just found out something amazing- you remember that robot daggit thing from the old series of battlestar galactica? well apparently it was a dressed up chimp!
Gareth:
This is so cool: a real transformer.
justin: I dont see anything.
gareth: It takes a bit to load - that might be it?
chris: Looks suspiciously like the video ends just before the thing falls off the table, but still cool!
justin: Oh right, must be blocked at work. That transforming robot is the best thing mankind has created so far.
tim: damm thats beautiful
12/02/06
Gareth:
Lovechess: "With its combination of erotica and chess, LoveChess was the first erotic game that showed sexual action in a stylish, humorous and light-hearted way." Basically Chess and sex mixed together, which is a bit of a funny idea. Probably NSFW.
11/02/06
Gareth:
Counterscript: "Telemarketers make use of a telescript - a guideline for a telephone conversation. This script creates an imbalance in the conversation between the marketer and the consumer."
Gareth:
Goodnight Jeeves
gareth: 
Marcus: I think that's probably a decision that will come round to bite them on the ars*.
gareth: Yep, I'm expecting ask.com to go down in usage.
10/02/06
Gareth:
This is awesome: snapshots of an atomic explosion, with exposures of 1/100,000,000th of a second.
Marcus:
First intact Ancient Egyptian tomb discovered since Tutankhamun in 1922!
Marcus: And only 5 metres away from Tutanhamun's tomb at that!
justin: Always in the last place you look.
justin: Actually, I copied a gag froma standup I saw a while back - my landlady goes "I found them keys, I guess it's not always in the last place you look..." - "well, yes it is, because you're not still rummaging around your room now are you?"
Gareth:
The use of the Half-life 2 physics engine in Garry's mod can be used to make some amazing Rube Goldberg machines.
gareth: The Wikipedia article on Rube Goldberg is good, too.
gareth: Another one.
09/02/06
Gareth:
Halo 2 PC shall only be able to run on Vista. Which is absolute crap, in my opinion - I don't want to have to upgrade to an entire different OS just to play one game. Oh well, I've an Xbox so that's alright.
gareth: The Bungie take on it. Mostly just them saying "We have not announced x at this time"
gareth: Although they did of course confirm it, on the grounds that "Bungie Studios and Microsoft's steadfast commitment to quality determined that the Windows Vista platform would provide the best possible version of Halo 2 for the Windows PC. We will provide you with more details in the future."
Justin:
Although this Star Trek fan will never be able to breed, he has done his entire house up like something from ST:TNG
chris: I see today that one fan's gone bankrupt - a lesser-known side of 24th century life, obviously.
Gareth:
This blog of an Egyptian addressing the recent political cartoon brouhaha is really good. I like the bit where he notes that they were already printed in October 2005 (during Ramadan).
08/02/06
Gareth:
Hooray trees! The forests in BC are beautiful, for those of you who didn't know.
gareth: In Canada, we have rocks, trees and water.
Gareth:
The Wikipedia article on the Hello World programming test has programs written in just about every language to do as such
07/02/06
Marcus:
Screenhead has two decent SNL clips: one old thing featuring a "whitened-up" Eddie Murphy, and Prince doing his thing from last weekend.
06/02/06
Gareth:
BMW has been found out by Google for using pages full of keywords to get higher on the results list. The text page that the search engine would then redirect to BMW's main site. Google doesn't like this, saying "Don't deceive your users or present different content to search engines than you display to users" - a bit coy right after their Chinese affair.
justin: Why would one of the most famous luxury car makers in the world resort to that kind of tactic? Sounds like a web design company trying to justify their existence by getting more hits.
justin: Oh, apparently they fiddled the term "used car" - except, far from being ranked zero, BMW still seem to be up there.
gareth: Good or bad publicity, it's still publicity for BMW.
Justin:
That French woman thart had the face transplant has revealed herself to the media, so we can all have a look.
justin: Looks a bit like Kevin Spacey - thinking about it... has anyone seen him recently?
Marcus:
Pissed off that your dumbass workplace has blocked a site? Use Google's translation service to proxy past the block and read that goat porn site essential material.
gareth: Although it should be noted that language translation services are not anonymous proxies.
05/02/06
Justin:
The BBC has been questioned for not showing those cartoons of Mohamed and has written a rebuttal, detailing the compromise it has made.
justin: I'm sure I'm not the first person to point this out, but surely torching an embassy in response to a cartoon portraying Mohamed as a terrorist is a little ironic?
justin: I have to applaud British even handedness (especially as for once we're not the ones being pilloried), but maybe it's time someone cracked open the Type 45 Love-maker on these guys?
gareth: And I'm sure I'm not the first person to point this out, but the Embassies have nothing to do with the newspapers in their respective countries.
Laura: I was going to get on my soapbox about this, but there would be little point. Suffice to say, I think everything that can be said has been said, however, ponder on this: Someone said to me at the weekend, if your faith cannot take the knocks and blows from others that it will no doubt experience, then you really ought to question what you believe in.
Marcus: I'm sure the fundamentalist Islamic world will see the funny side sooner or later, just like they did with Salman Rushdie and that Satanic Verses japery.
justin: Muslims are never up in arms about shoddy building regulations in Pakistan or Iran, or unsafe ferry operators - but any time the west questions their activities they are properly motivated. It's almost as if they are trying to prove something to themselves.
justin: Here is a quote I admired on the BBC 'have your say' bit: "The English press have shown their true colours by not publishing the cartoons. It's okay to take pot shots at 'stars' who cannot defend themselves but now that they have the opportunity to stick their head above the parapet and defend freedom of the press they back away like the cowards they are. "
tim: to be honest I quite admire the muslims faith in not having idolatory, its quite a high-minded belief to have. Although clearly jumping up and down and shreiking at a picture is what chimpanzees do, they do have a point....
04/02/06
Gareth:
This just in: EA is a crap publisher, and are doing badly due to their lack of nearly any good games.
Justin:
I hope you want to buy a Sony Minidisc player/recorder, because I'm selling one on e-bay!
justin: Please excuse the blatant self promotion, but it's my first listing on e-bay!
gareth: You've bought a wooden backscratcher off ebay? Ewww. Congrats on the first listing though!
justin: Erm, it was for a girl. sh*t, you can see all the stuff I've done? yikes!
gareth: Yeah, the router looks nice though.
03/02/06
Justin:
A lok at the Jyllands-Posten cartoons that are causing such a fuss with such a small percentage of the Muslim community.
02/02/06
Tim:
well, they might not have commercial spaceflight and interstellar cruise ships yet but they've got the name and the website done pretty well...
Justin:
The Searh for Hanoi Hannah - the soft spoken Vietnamese radio broadcaster famous telling GIs to abandon their unjust war...
Justin:
You have not been ACCUSED of being a Linkbunnies reader, you ARE a Linkbunnies reader! - Chinese propaganda posers through the ages.
Justin:
HMS Daring is Britain's newst warship, a Type 45 destroyer.
justin: Frankly, anything called a "destroyer" must be cool.
gareth: "Each D-class destroyer will have more firepower than the combined fleet of Type 42s."
Obi Wan Kenobi: That's no moon, that's a space station.
tim: yeah no foreign power will respect a country with a fleet of 'creators'
justin: Type 45 Sympathiser.
justin: Type 45 Care Worker
Justin:
Men allow yourselves to be exploited by women profiteering from their bodies by typing commands into a window and watching them do stuff.
Gareth:
I like this: MPAA accused of DVD piracy. I thought the day would never come.
justin: Yeah, the MPAA has an excuse... tell it to the judge.