While we do believe that there can be so-called "synergies" in various mergers and acquisitions, it often does seem as though companies play up what those synergies may be. Take for example the news that TV channel Fox News has set up shop on Facebook, rather than the social network's main competitor MySpace -- which just so happens to be owned by Fox as well. Basically, Fox News recognized that it was probably more likely to find an audience on Facebook, which highlights how silly some expected "synergies" often turn out to be. If Fox News had gone with MySpace instead, due to "synergies," the end effect would have been worse, as it would have gone with the social network that didn't fit as well. In other words, the so-called "synergies" wouldn't actually have been... well... synergistic. So, instead, it just highlights how the expected synergies don't even exist.

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Brian Jordan writes "For 48 hours during the weekend of August 29-31 at the OLPC Physics Game Jam Boston, game developers will compete in teams of 2-4 to design and implement a physics-based game for the One Laptop per Child XO laptop. There are prize categories for indie, professional, and remote developers (Ludum Dare style). In addition to OLPC/Jam-related swag for all participants, one team will win an XO laptop. Participants should have some game development experience, but we'll be going over the development process during the event — read below for details. If you'll be in the Boston area this weekend, or want to participate remotely, sign up before August 22. If you're a graphic artist, sound designer, musician in the Boston area, or want to be a volunteer, get in touch." Click the magic link for details of the crash course in game programming being offered.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

farside photoshop
married to the sea
minimalist stick figure theatre
scary bear
pope alien
cat and girl
diesel sweeties
kookie

previously on web zen:
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Permalink for this edition. Web Zen is created and curated by Frank Davis, and re-posted here on Boing Boing with his kind permission. Web Zen Home and Archives, Store (Thanks Frank!)

Over the past few years, there's been a bit of a renaissance of the "DIY" culture towards building all sorts of "stuff." It's sometimes unfortunate when so much focus in the tech world is just on the latest in what's happening online, in that it ignores all sorts of other interesting things going on. The NY Times is noting a return to having even software and internet developers practice building physical things as well, in part just to get them to start thinking outside the (computer) box when thinking about how to design digital things. Think of it as cross-training for the digital developers mind.

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ElvaWSJ writes "A small subculture of amateur physicists and science-fiction fans — fewer than 100 worldwide — are building working nuclear-fusion reactors at home. The designs are based on the work of Philo T. Farnsworth, an inventor of television, from the 1960s. Some of these hobbyists hope similar reactors can one day power the planet, but so far they consume more energy than they create."

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Spammers and scammers keep upping the game against security researchers, sometimes in creative ways. And, in fact, it would appear that the latest sneaky trick making the rounds is almost admirable in its sneakiness. For example, take a look at this latest hack, which hijacks your clipboard, and repeatedly places a link to a site for fake security software. The hijack takes place through flash advertisements (even those found on legit sites), which is all the more reason to use AdBlock or FlashBlock or NoScript or something to protect you. However, what it's banking on, is the fact that plenty of people quickly cut and paste links they want to send around or post in other blogs and forums. When done quickly, many people won't even notice that they're not pasting the link they thought they cut from elsewhere -- thus getting lots of folks to inadvertently spam links. This must be incredibly annoying for those who get hit with it, but that doesn't take away from the creativeness of the attack itself. Even security researchers, like Mikko Hypponen, are grudgingly tipping their hats on this hack: "It is a pretty clever technique. Our work would be so much easier if our enemy would be stupid."

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Anti-Globalism sends along a PCWorld article outlining two technologies from Intel and Dell that do an end run around Windows. "Dell, Intel and their partners announced last week new technologies that represent major leaps forward for mobility. The companies seem to have discovered the secret to making such bold leaps: Cut Microsoft out of the deal. One technology involves enabling users to gain instant access to a laptop's e-mail, browser and other basic functionality — without booting Windows at all. The second technology enables an Internet-based message to wake a Windows PC from sleep mode. These new technologies are perfect metaphors for what's happening in the industry... Windows is asleep while Microsoft's own partners give users what they really want."

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For years, we've pointed out how various telcos get away with adding extra fees to increase the price of service without technically "increasing the price." The sneakiest of these add on those fees with names that make them sound like they're required by the government -- even though they rarely are. A few times, we've asked how those sorts of fees might be applied to other businesses. Of course, we did so as a joke, using it to show how ridiculous some of those fees really were. However, it appears that perhaps it wasn't such a joke. Reading this NY Times article about all the new fees that airlines are charging passengers, it has to remind you of the sorts of fees seen on your telco bills lately. As far as I know, I haven't seen any airlines disguising fees as gov't taxes yet -- though it may just be a matter of time. Of course, the airlines are doing their best to ignore the criticism of things like charging $7 for a pillow or $2 for some water -- but as political cartoonists are noticing, it may not be long before people expect to be charged for oxygen masks or use of the bathroom.

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Daniel says:

The idea is just to de-contextualize serious or crappy video comments, collecting them like in an isolated art gallery.

We also made a typographic presentation video.

Decontextualized video comments become modern pieces of poetry

Now that the tool I use to manage S3 is available for Firefox 3, I have been able to switch to it, and I have. But there's a real problem with how search works in this browser. It could be there's a simple solution if so, let me know what it is. But right now, it's broken.

Here's the problem -- I go to the search box in the upper right corner of the window and enter a phrase, and click Return. What I expect to happen is that Google opens with results for that search term. What actually happens is that cuil.com opens with results for that search term. Okay, I figure it's a matter of switching the default, when I go to the popup I expect to see the same choices as in Firefox 2, with Amazon, Yahoo, AOL, Google, etc. But Cuil is the only choice, and there's no way to delete it. Okay, there's a link to Get More Search Engines, but Google is not on the list. Huh? WTF is going on here?

The answer better be realllly good. I'm pissed. I don't want to use cuil.com, sorry.

Update: I got hacked. Re-installed Firefox. Fixed. Better.

Rick Adams shot a video of a man clinging to the hood of a car driven by an intoxicated maniac, and writes about what happened to him as a result of filming the incident.

[T]he frenzy around it was unsettling to me; as soon as it was published (including some really stupid factual errors) the story was around the world and it made me wonder: how accurate are the stories I know nothing about but read all the time? If something as small as this could have errors in it (some of which I won't go into as they really should be kept in the courtroom, as far as I'm concerned) because of a feeding frenzy does that bode well for our acceptance of everything else we read in the Oregonian or hear on the Today show? A small example: somewhere, somebody got the idea the video was taken with a cell phone and you can tell from the headlines that the media thought this was a cool concept. My cell phone doesn't even take stills, let alone video, but never mind: CELL PHONE CAPTURES ROAD RAGE INCIDENT, blared the trumpets. As a guitar player I know only too well that you can't take back a note once it's been played.

I also found the immediate media concern trolling a little hard to take. When I told one local TV station's door-to-door news crew I really didn't want to participate in the whole process because it seemed like they were trying to sensationalize the issue the reporter popped up with "But you might have some information that's vital! And if you didn't speak up the case might be harmed! Then how would you feel?" And I lost track of how many times I was asked to describe how I felt when I was filming the incident, always framed as a leading question telling me how I should have been feeling and cueing up the response they had in mind but which I never did give to anyone.

The most amusing things I saw were comments to the Oregonian's story online, which assured me that the entire event had been staged and that the photos were hoaxes. I really did try to figure out how you could stage something like this and get an arrest in less an hour but I just couldn't do it; I'm simply not creative enough.

Road rage filmer writes about his media experience

This is really ignorant and crude.

There's a misunderstanding that bloggers somehow must have the same politics or even standards as the party who's throwing the convention.

I think we should have the Catholic League nixed for being ignorant and crude, and offensive.

Thank G-d no one listens to me!

An anonymous reader writes "The impending IPv4 address allocation shortage has lead to a lot of speculation on the future of IPv6 (including here). A new study says that Internet IPv6 migration is not just going slowly — it has basically not even begun. After spending a year measuring IPv6 traffic across 87 ISPs around the world, the study concludes 'less than one hundredth of 1% of Internet traffic is IPv6... equivalent to the allowed parts of contaminants in drinking water.'"

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Every time you think that the Olympics' bizarre obsession with extra-ordinary protections on intellectual property took a step beyond ridiculous, you were probably just underestimating the International Olympic Committee, who will just keep going further and further. You may recall the efforts put forth by the IOC to get special trademarks on certain words, like 2010 and Vancouver and 2012 and London, since that's where the next two Olympics will take place. While it seems ridiculous to be able to get trademarks on such things (and goes against the very purpose of trademark law), politicians seem to bow down to the Olympics. But that was just the start.

The Olympics has threatened any non-sponsor advertiser from even mentioning the Olympics, banned people in the stands from wearing clothing that has the logos of competitors to sponsors and even insisted that its security technology choices would be limited to sponsors, even if others had better technology.

The latest, however, may be the most ridiculous. All over Beijing, the brands of non-sponsors are being covered up by Olympic officials so that no one thinks that faucet maker American Standard got a "free ride." Seriously. They're putting tape over the brand name on faucets. And on light switches. And the headphones used by reporters and many other places where perfectly normal brands might occur. They've even covered up the name of a major hotel in Beijing, because it's not an Olympic sponsor.

In media centers, dormitories and arena bathrooms, pieces of tape cover logos of fire extinguishers, light switches, thermostats, bedroom night tables, soap dispensers and urinals. The Taiden Industrial translation headsets in a large conference room have had their logos covered, as have the American Standard faucets in the bathrooms nearby, and the ThyssenKrupp escalators down the hall. Even the sign atop the InterContinental Beijing Beichen hotel, attached to the Main Press Center, has been obscured by an Olympic cloth wrap. InterContinental Hotels Group isn't an Olympic sponsor.

Why? Well, the IOC claims that it's necessary:

The International Olympic Committee says that such "brand protection" is essential for the Games to raise the corporate money that keeps them going and growing. The Games get 40% of their revenue from sponsors, with the rest coming from broadcast rights, ticketing and licensing.

A few quick responses to that whopper of a statement:

• The purpose of trademark law is not to protect the ability of the Olympics to make a profit. It's to avoid people being confused into thinking one product is made by someone else.
• Even if it's important for the Olympics to make money off of sponsors, it's difficult to see why that would necessitate blocking everyone else's brands. No other event does this, and those events make out just fine.
• Couldn't some of the covered up brands make the exact same response back? American Standard sold its faucets at a certain price, knowing that it would get some brand recognition from having its brand on the faucets. By blocking that, aren't the Olympics denying American Standard's "essential brand protection" that it needs to keep making money?

Once again, the true spirit of the Olympic games seems to be in absolutely trashing the meaning and purpose of intellectual property laws.

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CWmike writes "More than one in every three new PCs is downgraded from Windows Vista to Windows XP, either at the factory or by the buyer, said performance and metrics researcher Devil Mountain Software, which operates a community-based testing network. "The 35% is only an estimate, but it shows a trend within our own user base," Craig Barth, the company's CTO, said. "People are taking advantage of Vista's downgrade rights." Last year, Devil Mountain benchmarked Vista and XP performance using other performance-testing tools and concluded that XP was much faster. Barth said things haven't changed since then. "Everything I've seen clearly shows me that Vista is an OS that should never have left the barn.""

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whitehartstag writes "Black Hat 08 disclosed several SSL VPN and DNS vulnerabilities that caused several people to sit up and take notice. Some of these new exploits performed a brilliant Man-In-The-Middle attack on SSL VPN tunnels. This article walks you through how using certificates, instead of OTP tokens for second-factor authentication can increase the security of your SSL VPN against these new types of attacks."

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Well, it was really only a matter of time. After Steve Jobs confirmed that Apple had included an application "kill switch" in the new iPhone to disable any app it wanted remotely, someone was bound to kill the kill switch. And, indeed, apps are popping up that will let you disable the kill switch -- though only on a "jail broken" iPhone. Still, it does make you wonder how useful the kill switch really is when it can be so easily disabled.

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