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Criminal Cramer

(author unknown) — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 09:37:02 PDT

Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart went toe-to-toe last night. It was just like Ali-Foreman, only with more head trauma. But you didn't see everything. Much of the interview had to be cut for time. But this is the internet, where all we have is time. So, here now, is the exclusive, uncensored, complete three-part interview.

Related:
Economic Meltdown No Laughing Matter
It's true: Jon Stewart has become Edward R. Murrow(tip to Mat and John)
There's nothing unique about Cramer

Not since Crossfire has Jon been in such fine form.

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 3

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Timothy Mitchum & Carol Woods - Let it Be (written by Paul...

(author unknown) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 12:54:00 PDT

Timothy Mitchum & Carol Woods - Let it Be (written by Paul McCartney)

this song and post is dedicated to a friend of mine who lost a loved one this past weekend (the same friend that calidre just did a post for). i was thinking about what song i wanted to post all night then one of my friends hit me up to ask me if i saw “across the universe.” we both immediately spoke about the cover version of ‘let it be.’ this was an extremely chilling and inpsirational moment that kind of came out of nowhere in the film. however, the scene will give you goose bumps.

‘let it be’ was written by Paul McCartney after a dream he had where his mother who had passed during his childhood came to comfort him. let it be was recorded during one of the toughest recording times for the group as they were on the verge of breaking up. this song really speaks to you in whatever situation. so for one of my brothers i hope you can enjoy and hit me up anytime.

When I find myself in times of trouble
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And in my hour of darkness
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
And when the broken hearted people
Living in the world agree,
There will be an answer, let it be.
For though they may be parted there is
Still a chance that they will see
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be. Yeah
There will be an answer, let it be.
And when the night is cloudy,
There is a light that shines on me,
Shine until tomorrow, let it be.
I wake up to the sound of music,
Mother Mary comes to me,
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.
Let it be, let it be.
There will be an answer, let it be.
Let it be, let it be,
Whisper words of wisdom, let it be.

Fredo Viola - Our Lips Are Sealed (Fun Boy Three Cover) At...

(author unknown) — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:31:00 PDT

Fredo Viola - Our Lips Are Sealed (Fun Boy Three Cover)

At first listen it’s fairly easy to notice the quality of Fredo Viola’s voice. In this cover of Fun Boy Three’s “Our Lips Are Sealed,” the singer’s layered vocals glide gently over the delicately composed instrumentals. I especially love how the harp in the background echoes the warm tone of Viola’s voice! His new album won’t be out for another month, but it should be quite a listen. In the mean time you can grab his EP.

Myspace

Smile by Robert Downey, Jr.popularized by Nat King Cole(posted...

(author unknown) — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 17:15:00 PST

Smile by Robert Downey, Jr.
popularized by Nat King Cole
(posted by bunkercomplex)

Simon Willison: Introducing EveryBlock

(author unknown) — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:51:24 PST

Introducing EveryBlock. EveryBlock launched! Adrian Holovaty, Wilson Miner, Paul Smith and Daniel X. O’Neil’s startup which answers the question, “What’s happening in my neighborhood?” Cities covered by the launch are Chicago, New York and San Francisco.

Ville Säävuori: We Are Django

(author unknown) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 20:38:05 PST

I’ve always thought that the community is one of the greatest things about Django. Not because Django isn’t great but because the people are just so awesome! Django People is a brilliant new site by Simon Willison and Natalie Downe which brings together Djangonauts all over the world. (Interestingly, I was talking about exactly this same idea yesterday with my friend, in the lines of “there should definitely be something like that”. Great minds think alike (I wish) :)

I had the pleasure of meeting Simon and Natalie during the Europython conference last summer. Like every other Django people at the conference, they were super-nice and fun to share thoughts with. The various conversations we had with the Web-gang there were definitely one of the highlights of my last year. I hope that Django People will help in finding more same-minded people, both near you and when traveling around the world.

If you are Djangonaut, add yourself to the site! And when you do, please include your picture and some information about yourself. It’s so much nicer to look at real faces than empty rectangles :)

Here’s to many more Django friends.

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Tough Times For CNN

Jamie — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 14:40:19 PST

Or what I like to call “self inflicted problems“:

Within minutes of posting a story on CNN’s homepage called “Gender or race: Black women voters face tough choices in South Carolina,” readers reacted quickly and angrily.

Many took umbrage at the story’s suggestion that black women voters face “a unique, and most unexpected dilemma” about voting their race or their gender.

CNN received dozens of e-mails shortly after posting the story, which focuses largely on conversations about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that a CNN reporter observed at a hair salon in South Carolina whose customers are predominantly African-American.

The story states: “For these women, a unique, and most unexpected dilemma, presents itself: Should they vote their race, or should they vote their gender?”

You can read the rest of the article here and the article they are referencing here.

I guess the “best political team on television” should think a little more before publishing articles.

Update from Blue Gal: With tongue firmly in cheek as usual, Princess Sparkle Pony points out that it would be so much easier for CNN if Oprah were running her own self.

JERRY O'CONNELL IS TOM CRUISE

(author unknown) — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 08:02:00 PST

<a href="http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/3f716ffebe" mce_href="http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/3f716ffebe">the parody video Tom Cruise WANTS you to see!</a> on <a href="http://www.funnyordie.com" mce_href="http://www.funnyordie.com">FunnyOrDie.com</a>
Jerry O’Connell is quite possibly the bravest man in Hollywood, because an actor making fun of the Scientologists is like a black guy going to a Klan meeting and asking, "where the white women at?"

Bye, Bye Fred Thompson

John Amato — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 12:31:54 PST

It’s been glad knowing you. This isn’t surprising that he left the race after his speech to nowhere. I can’t wait to see Lady MacCheney have to go on teevee and tell us why Fredrick of Hollywood is gone baby gone. A terrible candidate that ran a snooze-athon of a campaign.

Download (1162) | Play (1073) Download (1161) | Play (542)

MSNBC’s Shuster and the WaPo’s Cillizza comments on the demise of Hollywood Fred. It looks like he won’t endorse any of the remaining candidates. Erick at Red State is spinning Fred’s departure like crazy, (It’s not the end of Fred) but he tells us that Fred doesn’t like the GOP field that’s left standing:

I spoke with one of Fred’s advisors a little while ago. We should note that Fred Thompson has not and will not be endorsing any of the other candidates. My understanding is that with no strong clearly conservative person in the race, he saw no point in endorsing

That’s got to hurt McCain I would imagine. Here’s a new commercial for the Dems. “Even Fred Thompson can’t endorse a Republican for President!” Or something like that…

Native Comet Support for Browsers

Dion Almaer — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:26:57 PST

As JavaScript developers, we are used to years of hacks, as we try to push forward without browsers updating and helping us out. We are so stuck in this pragmatic thinking that we sometimes forget to pick our heads up.

Kris Zyp has taken some time to think about Comet, and instead of thinking about the next good hack, he takes that step back and dreams:

What if I had commit privileges on all the major browsers, the competence to add functionality in all the code bases, and wanted to add native Comet support in a form that was easily accessible to developers?

He ends up with a proposal that adds to good ole XHR:

With only a few simple XMLHttpRequest API additions, Comet communication could be realized with a native implementation that supports fast and efficient standards-based two-way asynchronous communication, with true server-delivered HTTP streaming and simple subscription requests, with the added benefit of client-delivered streaming and cached resource until updated capability. Developers could create Comet applications with a standard API without hacks. Communication could be standards-based, allowing current servers to easily implement the necessary features to handle communication.

It would look something like this:

PLAIN TEXT

JAVASCRIPT:

var cometXHR = new XMLHttpRequest;
cometXHR.open('POST','comet',true);
var xhr1 = new XMLHttpRequest;
cometXHR.addHttpChunk(xhr1);
xhr1.onreadystatechange=function(){...}
xhr.open('GET','/ticker1',true);
xhr.send();
var xhr2 = new XMLHttpRequest;
cometXHR.addHttpChunk(xhr2);
xhr2.onreadystatechange=function(){...}
xhr.open('GET','/ticker2',true);
xhr.send();

Kris gets into many of the details, and makes me with that someone would implement this as a Google Gear, so it could get pushed into the fabric of the Web by being on all browsers.

What Does the English Language Look Like?

Josh Catone — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 07:24:57 PST

Have you ever wondered what the English language looks? Yeah, neither have I. But a group of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and New York University did, and tapping into the billions of images freely available on the Internet, they came up with a visual map of the English language using nearly 80 million of those images. The images are arranged based on the semantic relationship between words, and thus, according to the researchers, the project explores "the relationship between visual and semantic similarity."

The researchers started by locating images for all 75,062 non-abstract nouns in the English language (though, to be honest, some of them seem pretty abstract -- Ulaanbaatar, for example?). For each noun, the researchers found multiple images, they then combined the images into an average (sort of a blob of colors) that represents that word visually. They used 79,302,017 images in total.

"The list of nouns was obtained from Wordnet, a database compiled by lexicographers which records the semantic relationship between words," explains the project's web site. "Using this database, we extract a tree-structured semantic hierarchy which we use to arrange tiles within the poster. We tessellate the poster using the hierarchy so that the proximity of two tiles is given by their semantic distance."

The result is a stunning visual map of the English language. As Angela Gunn points out, it is thus rather ironic that the very first word on the grid is "blind."

Oh, for anyone who was wondering, Ulaanbaatar is the capital of Mongolia...

Time Warner’s Greed Knows No Bounds

Sean P. Aune — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:27:39 PST

There’s an astounding amount of news that crosses our virtual desks here at Mashable. Some of it is actual news, mounds of start ups, some silliness, and some… well, some that just make you bang your head into your keyboard repeatedly as you wonder what a company was thinking.

Time Warner Cable has come to the astounding conclusion that they will be testing a change to how they bill their broadband cable customers sometime this year. The lucky residents of Beaumont, Texas will be the ~~sacrificial lambs~~ test subjects for their new “metered” system of billing. Translation? The more you download, the more they’ll charge you.

Imagine you get a shiny new Apple TV Take 2 with their high definition movie rentals. The cost of the rental is $3.99 from Apple, but under a plan of a similar sort in Canada, The New York Times says the movie could cost you $30 in Bandwidth overage fees. How do they get to this number? The plan they point to in Canada charges approximately $7.42 USD for every gigabyte of bandwidth uses over their alloted 30 gigabytes. Seeing as a high def movie averages around four gigabytes in size, your Apple movie rental just leapt from $3.99 to costing you $33.67. Even think about all the videos your friends email you, sites you visit with embedded videos, even looking at huge graphics… all that could cost you now.

Considering the amount broadband access already costs in this country, not to mention the difference in speeds with the rest of the world, this is just seemingly outrageous to me. I pay $63 a month for 8 mbs, while I know people in Japan who pay $39 a month for 62 mbs, and in both cases, it is unlimited downloading. Citizens of the United States are already being taken for a ride on the Information Super Highway in a rickety old car with no emission controls, but now they want to throw speed bumps in our way.

What is Time Warner thinking? Is it just unmitigated greed? Is it a true need to cover an increase in bandwidth usage? Admittedly, everyone and their brother seems to be dipping into the bandwidth pool as of late: Joost, Skype, Apple, bit torrents, they all are using up bandwidth at ever increasing rates.

Apparently Time Warner is just worried about truly heavy users, but what about the grandmother who gets a computer and watches her grandchildren over a Skype video chat every night? Is she going to receive a bill for a hundred or more dollars for exceeding her bandwidth because she didn’t monitor it?

If you agree this is a bad idea, start heading over to places such as SaveTheInternet.com and the Electronic Frontier Foundation to see what you can do to stop this horrible idea before it even has a chance to gain a foothold.

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McDonald's Stops Advertising On Elementary School Report Cards [Followups]

Ben Popken — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 06:35:40 PST

McDonald's has decided to stop branding report card envelopes in a program that gave kids in Florida free food as a reward for good grades after a backlash from parents concerned about exploitive marketing. Teport cards came in an envelope (pictured, click to enlarge) telling kids to check their grades and redeem a free Happy Meal if they got all A's and B's or got good marks in "Citizenship" or attendance. The jacket also showed a smiling Ronald McDonald and mentioned McDonald's several times.

Critics charged that McDonald's was seeking a backdoor way to infiltrate kid's minds after agreeing, amidst the obesity epidemic furor, to stop all advertising aimed at children under 12. Companies know that the earlier you can implant marketing messages and build brand affinity, the stronger bonds you forge. It looks like friendly educational outreach, but it's really about training a future army of consumers. Why else would they need to showcase their branding so prominently all over the report card?

McDonald's Ending Promotion on Jackets of Children's Report Cards [NYT]
PREVIOUSLY: McDonald's Advertises On Elementary School Report Cards

LongJump: Database in the Cloud

Sarah Perez — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 18:55:18 PST

LongJump, a company based out of Sunnyvale, California, has introduced a Database-as-a-Service (DaaS) product that offers you an easy way to build a database application backend for your website and business. With LongJump, database setup is simplified - you no longer need to worry about server provisioning, redundancy, backups, patching, or any of the other IT complexities involved with running your own servers. Instead, you just sign-up with LongJump, set up your data structure and permissions, and connect your web services.

Using a simple, drag-and-drop web-based interface, the LongJump Native Browser Interface provides an easy way to manage and work with the data. Now, database creation and editing can be done by anyone with spreadsheet or basic database skills by using LongJump's built-in tools. The provided tools let you easily add users, change their access and sharing permissions, define new data models, import data, add or change fields, perform mass update and delete functions, add data policies or workflows, and create custom reports. All that's needed is a standard web browser - they recommend the latest version of either Internet Explorer or Firefox.

Customizable home pages can be created with configurable dashboard widgets for any purpose or can be assigned to specific members of your team. Built-in customizable reporting tools can be used to create charts, graphs, and other reports that can also be displayed on these homepages.

If you build an app with a LongJump database, you can can choose to publish it to LongJump's Application Catalog so other users can try it, review it, and subscribe to it. LongJump will even work with you if you want to make your apps available for a subscription fee, the pricing of which is up to you.

Your LongJump database is not only easy to set up and use, it is also likely to be more secure, reliable, scalable, and flexible than anything you could afford to build yourself. For $19.95/month, LongJump provides customers with an SLA guaranteeing 99.999% server and network uptime on systems that are certified for SAS 70 Type II, an industry standard for data protection compliance. If you need to add new capacity, LongJump can do this within 24 hours, while load-balancing incoming traffic.

LongJump is another example of the trend toward open platforms on the web, as it also provides a REST-based XML API for developers. This means LongJump developers have more options than just using the provided user interface to manage their data. Instead, they could forgo that interface altogether to use LongJump just as a data store; they could build a web-based front end to their apps or deliver the data in the LongJump database via a web service.

A low-cost cloud database that can be designed and used by non-programmers is a great resource on its own; the gallery of subscription applications and tools for developers make it even better and sure to be adopted by many businesses in the future.

MySpace Bug Gives Free Reign to Pedophiles

Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 11:29:06 PST

Kevin Poulsen is reporting on a bug in MySpace that is allowing folks with photos stored in the system to have them viewed by anyone, instead of following the restrictions supposedly set in place by the system requiring a user be friended first. Of course, this isn’t exactly the best sort of bug to come to light at a time when MySpace is attempting to work with the Attorney Generals of America to make MySpace a safer place, especially for minors.

The glitch emerged last fall, according to Kevin’s report, and has allegedly created a cottage industry of advertising supported pedophilia websites based entirely off stolen photographs from profiles of children under 16.

MySpace representatives haven’t yet commented on the ongoing issue yet, which is surpringly simple to perform (and doesn’t even involve an illegal zone transfer). Simply enter the standard URL for your photo album, and replace the Friend ID with the Friend ID of the intended target.

It is absolutely ridiculous that a bug like this has survived so long in plain site, as the topic has been talked about first as far back as late last summer on forums, and early fall in the general blogosphere. That it still remains unaddressed with anything other than lipservice further supports my initial reactions to the 49 AG agreement with MySpace.

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Daysleeper

Matthew Perpetua — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:02:38 PST

I wonder if, when the band settled on the name R.E.M. back in their early days, Michael Stipe had any idea that he’d end up spending the rest of his adult life writing a body of work overflowing with references to sleeping and dreams. The topic comes up in a huge number of the band’s songs, and though there’s no clear message to the motif, it’s pretty clear that Stipe finds the dream state to be a source of endless inspiration. I’m right with him on this — dreams may be our only window into the workings of our unconscious minds, and their content is arguably the result of our most intuitive, creative, and deeply mysterious thought processes. We spend a huge chunk of our lives sleeping and dreaming, and it may be foolish to write off all that time. It’s an essential part of our existence, and when we fuck up our sleep patterns, there is a clear physical and mental consequence.

“Daysleeper” is essentially a song about what happens when dreams cease to complement or complicate our lives. The character is listless and emotionally drained, and forced by circumstances to work through the night, and sleep through parts of the day. It’s a forced, artificial sleep — the blinds are pulled down, he’s got a machine to create a comforting sonic ambiance to cancel out the world outside his home. All of his time is spent moving against the nature of his body and the culture around him, and so he feels isolated and lonely. The song’s most poignant line — “I cried the other night, I can’t even say why” — suggests that he’s even become removed from his own emotions. The poor guy is a wreck, but he’s barely got the energy to notice.

The prominent crisp acoustic arpeggios and plaintive lead vocals make “Daysleeper” the most traditional song on Up, but the most essential element of the song’s arrangement is actually the droning keyboards that create the hazy ambiance of the piece, and convey the lethargy and disconnected mental state of its protagonist more effectively than any of the lyrics. The keyboards push what would have been a lovely yet sorta ordinary folk pop song into something more remarkable: A character study that places the listener right into a cramped, fluorescent-lit cubicle in the far corner of its subject’s mind.

Style abounds in Portland…

Rachael — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:43:46 PDT

If there’s anything that we enjoy here, it’s the opportunity to get out and spend some quality time with the stylish members of the Emma community. So when we had the chance to work with Emma client Office PDX and help sponsor the bSide6 preview party in Portland, Oregon, we naturally jumped on board.

bSide6 is a soon-to-be-open workspace for cultural creatives on East Burnside in the heart of Portland. It’s without a doubt on the cutting edge of architecture (so this non-architecturally-savvy person is told), and a few Emma clients in the Portland area are eager to call the new space home when it opens next summer. For work, that is. Not actual home. I mean, let’s face it. No office is cool enough to shower in.

We also swung by Amalee, a little boutique in the city. As the mark of a fabulous Emma customer, they had an email signup list on proud display (way to go, you bearers-of-the-permission-policy, you). In addition to having plenty of stylish clothes and accessories, they also host the occasional art show. So if you’re in Portland and the timing is right, you can shop there while enjoying a cocktail, some hors d’oeuvres, and a little culture on the side. Really, it’s like a cornucopia of style. That’s right. It’s almost Thanksgiving. I can say cornucopia.

Technorati Tags: portland, amalee, office pdx, bside6, myemma.com

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Georgia coach apologizes for celebration vs. Fla.

Associated Press — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 07:31:07 PDT

Georgia coach Mark Richt apologized Monday for his team's raucous celebration after its first touchdown against Florida, a display that he encouraged in hopes of firing his team up.

★ Leopard

John Gruber — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 17:59:38 PDT

The two and a half years between the debut of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and today’s release of 10.5 Leopard feels long, not just because it’s been the longest-ever stretch between major Mac OS X revisions, but also because it’s been an eventful two and a half years.

How eventful? Think about this: When 10.4.0 shipped, it was PowerPC-only; Intel-based Macs existed only in secret Cupertino labs.

There are plenty of other writers who’ve written excellent, top-to-bottom reviews of Leopard as a whole. If you read no other today, read Jason Snell’s at Macworld. (And, of course, stay tuned for John Siracusa’s, coming Sunday at Ars Technica, which will cover not just the new-to-Leopard UI minutia, but also the numerous significant developer-level additions — be prepared for a lot of Leopard-only apps from indie developers in the immediate future.)

My nutshell take is this: I’ve been using Leopard full-time for about three months, and there’s no question it’s a worthy update. Is 10.5.0 truly ready for production use, or would most users be better off waiting for 10.5.1? We’ll see. No one ever got hurt by waiting a week or two to install a new OS. But there’s no question that most of the new features and changes in Leopard are winners. There are some turds, too, but the ratio of improvements-to-regressions is pretty high by my score.

The most significant new feature in Leopard is Time Machine. That’s why the retail packaging and default desktop picture are Time-Machine-flavored, and a few years from now when we’re installing Mac OS X 10.7 Feral Alley Cat, it’s the feature we’ll remember when reminiscing about what was new in 10.5.

The most striking aspect of Time Machine is its UI. When it debuted at WWDC 2006, it immediately faced criticism that it was just downright gimmicky. It is in fact gimmicky, but, I think, that’s actually a good thing in Time Machine’s particular and unique case. Apple has made something so effect-laden and so extraordinary that users want to see it in action — the fact that that something is backups, which, let’s face it, is effectively a chore, is a noteworthy achievement. Making backup software that people can’t wait to try, and which, once activated, just automatically kicks in and does its thing on a regular schedule, is like making people want to go ahead and sign up for life insurance.

The argument for Time Machine’s game-like UI isn’t that it’s more usable, but that more people will use it. That’s actually more important in the case of backup software: there will be data saved that would otherwise have been lost if Time Machine instead sported a more traditional, straightforward visual appearance, because there will be some number of users who will have turned Time Machine on in the first place only because it looks so damn cool. It’s results that matter most, and the result of Time Machine is going to be that more Mac users will be backing up their data regularly than ever before. For some Mac users, who otherwise still wouldn’t be backing up regularly, it’s going to end up being the most important feature Apple has ever added to the Mac OS.

The design of Time Machine is the single most Apple-like thing in Leopard. No way would a UI like this have come from anyone else, including the old pre-return-of-Steve-Jobs Apple Computer — if anything, the old Apple of the 1990’s was more traditional than any other UI design company.

After Time Machine, it’s the little things that stand out most in Leopard. Quick Look, for example, is a joy to use. Just select a file in the Finder and hit the space bar. Boom, you have an instant preview. Hit space again and it goes away. (Apple’s choice of the space bar as the toggle is perfect.) It takes about 30 seconds of playing with Quick Look to wonder how you ever lived without it.

The same goes for the finally-unified window chrome look-and-feel. Spend a day or two in Leopard, then sit down in front of Tiger, and the brushed metal really just looks absurd. (On the Leopard turd front, however, we’ll be saying the same thing about the translucent menu bar when 10.6 comes out — it’s a gimmick that makes menu text harder to read.)

But what I like best, and what I think Apple deserves the most praise for, is the fact that they’ve gone back and refined all sorts of little things, changes so small that they fall far beneath the not-that-high-in-the-first-place threshold of Apple’s own “300+ New Features” list. E.g. the way that when you rename files in the Finder now, you get a default text selection of just the name part, without the file extension.

Or, take this example (which example will sure make mine the Leopard review with the least exciting screenshots in the world). Here’s a segment of the Keyboard tab in the Keyboard & Mouse System Preferences panel from 10.4:

This isn’t the worst UI copy in the world, but it’s not great. How many users really understand what exactly the difference is between “hardware” and “software” features, here?

Here’s how this looks in Leopard:

This isn’t just slightly better wording, it’s completely better. Same exact feature, but someone at Apple took the time to rewrite the UI copy, and it’s better for it.

Leopard is chock full of details like this — little things that won’t be promoted on the box cover or mentioned in mainstream media reviews, but which, taken cumulatively, epitomize why Mac OS X keeps getting better with each major release.

BOiNK to Replace Recently Shut Down OiNK

Andy Angelos — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 06:07:19 PDT

Recently terminated BitTorrent tracker, OiNK.cd, will be replaced during the next week with a modified site attempting to regain the hundreds of thousands of confiscated music albums. Earlier this week, OiNK.cd had its servers raided by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, or the IFPI.

The modified site - entitled BOiNK - is a project from notorious BitTorrent behemoth The Pirate Bay. BOiNK will contain several different features than the original tracker, which claimed an estimated 180,000 users at the time of seizure. Primarily, BOiNK will be a public site rather than invite-only, now dependent on the former OiNK community for music uploads.

The Pirate Bay’s ability to reconstruct the tracker in a matter of days once again demonstrates the resiliency of filesharing sites. Another lesson for the IFPI and RIAA on the difficulties of disabling distributed networks. And if these organizations still have no learned lessons, this list provides more examples detailing the perseverance of Torrent trackers.

[via TorrentFreak]

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