Friday, December 09, 2005

Dave: A very sweet Rocketboom today about John Lennon. Listen to all those people sing! 10:59:44 PM    comment []

Head of Nuclear Agency Again Urges Iran to Cooperate [New York Times: International News] 10:50:16 PM    comment []

China's newest sweatshops. What was science fiction in Salon a year ago is now front page New York Times news. [Salon - How the World Works] Like I said. 10:50:10 PM    comment []

Massively amassing virtual gold. The New York Times Online this morning has two articles and a multimedia report about the outsourcing of winning game currency to China. Called gold farming, an estimated 100,000 Chinese kids are working 12-hour shifts playing games to acquire virtual gold that is then sold to affluent players, often in the United States. Seth Schiesel reports in one of the articles that he was playing World of Warcraft one night when a message appeared on his screen from an unknown player Hfasdlf quoting prices for virtual gold ($9.99+100G - $76.99=1000G). Schiesel explains: In "massively multiplayer online games" like EverQuest and World of Warcraft, a character like Hfasdlf is known as a farmer because all it does is farm for gold (or whatever the game's virtual currency happens to be) rather than play the game in the spirit intended. How gold farming -- considered illegal -- will play out in the real world remains to be seen. [Smart Mobs] Wow. If only someone else online had thought to treat this topic before the New York Times found out about it! 10:47:28 PM    comment []

E-Hijacking. The article is a bit inane, but it talks about an interesting security problem. "E-hijacking" is the term used to describe the theft of goods in transit by altering the electronic paperwork . . . .  . . . [Schneier on Security] 10:44:27 PM    comment []

Triangulation launches. I've started a new podcast series with Leo Laporte and John Dvorak called "Triangulation." The idea is totally John's: pick a topic on which we all three roughly agree, and then spend 30 minutes drilling down on the layers of the subject. It is intended to be the opposite of Crossfire like malarky. Here's the first on Google Book Search. [Lessig Blog] 6:35:24 PM    comment []

Free B-Movies for IPod. More than 500 public-domain flicks -- including classics like Night of the Living Dead -- are just a click away. Plus: Video art lights up iPods. From Leander Kahney's Cult of Mac blog. [Wired News] The more than 500 movies in the public domain 6:35:14 PM    comment []

Recent picture of Jorn Barger. [Scripting News] 6:29:51 PM    comment []