Articles by NeonMadman
In determining a user's body mass index (or BMI, which sounds like BMX and Bowel Movements Incorporated), the Wii Fit has "underweight" and "fat" on either end of spectrum.
And now obesity experts are grossed out about the Fatty McFatterson comments and don't want children to use the device.
"BMI is far from perfect but with children it simply should not be used. A child's BMI can change every month and it is perfectly possible for a child to be stocky, yet still very fit. I would be very concerned if children were using this game and I believe it should carry a warning for parents," explained Fry.
So is stocky fat? If the term "fat" is in there, should "underweight" be changed to "Skeletor"?
You're all dying to know what I think of this matter, I realize that, so I'll just cut to the chase: I think the obesity experts need to calm down. If Nintendo is going to give a weight complex to children, well, the parents of said "stocky" children should be aware of this and treat it like parents: nip it in the bud, send your kid to therapy, tell them that television is evil and judges Little Jimmy even when Little Jimmy is asleep, and that Little Jimmy should probably go outside and run around in circles until he feels better about his body image.
Besides all that, the concept of Wii Fit is to help overweight kids shed pounds whilst having fun. So it doesn't matter what they call them at first; what matters is the progress they'll make toward transforming as they please.
Related to Jesse's post about embarrassing shit on the Internet comes the sad and weird conclusion to the Megan Meier suicide case with the indictment of Lori Drew.
For those out of the loop, Lori Drew is a psychopathic mid-westerner who decided to cyberstalk Megan Meier under a false MySpace profile. The profile of one "Josh Evans," was created in 2006 and used to first flirt with Meier and then, bizarrely, suggest the world would be better off if she killed herself. Which she did.
Since Missouri courts couldn't do shit with the case, federal prosecutors shifted it to California, where MySpace's servers are based, and smacked Drew with three counts of accessing protected computers without authorization to obtain information to inflict emotional distress, and one count of criminal conspiracy.
Drew's daughter was a friend of Meier's before the two had a falling out. Drew hacked into the Josh Evans profile to discover what Meier really thought about her daughter. The case complicates from there. (For the whole story, I recommend the Wikipedia page and the New York Times.)
Wired reports that the sentencing in this case set a strange and frightening legal precedent. Since there is no federal law against cyberbullying, the feds used an age-old "violation of terms of service" law to bust Drew, which may cause 1984-esque ripples in the legal sea.
"Empowering terms of use to be key pieces of evidence in criminal matters -- when terms of use are generally thought of by the people who are entering into them as purely contract or civil maters -- is something that should be done carefully," says Andrea Matwyshyn, law professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton Business School. "I think you're going to have strong disagreement as to whether this is an advisable course to take."
This is a tricky matter, to say the least, and definitely not one for a light and fluffy Friday morning. However, it deserves serious consideration. Because the law hasn't caught up to the negative possibilities of the Internet, Drew almost managed to escape prosecution. But because the case had garnered so much national and international attention, the Feds wanted to take a stand (which MySpace wholly supports, says their press release). Doing so, and so quickly, may have altered the course of the law, or, in reverse, get the case thrown out if it reaches the Supreme Court.
Still, one cannot be charged with a law that does not exist yet, so the Feds may have done the right thing under the guise that it was the only thing they could've done.
What're your thoughts and opinions on the case, Homotronic Biddyonic Phonic Defenders of the Universe? I can only say I wish we'd foreseen this, somehow, and should definitely craft the law for the future.
I was passing by the Boylston Street Apple Store this morning at 7:00AM when I noticed barricades surrounding the storefront and police officers flanking the sidewalk.
Let me remind you: it was seven o'clock in the morning. On a Thursday.
As I got closer to the building, I took a peek inside. It's very spacious and minimalist—very peaceful. I imagine in a few hours time, it'll be jam-packed with wide-eyed computer geeks and thrill-seekers from the dankest corners of the city. Peace will become a concept of the past.
Then I noticed people. At least ten people, sitting and standing behind the barricades. One had a camera strapped around his neck, making me believe he was some kind of reporter before I remembered that press day was yesterday. So he was just one of "those guys" who brings cameras to "big events" like a store opening (I saw similar people at the midnight release of Grand Theft Auto IV; there was literally nothing special to photograph that night).
Then I noticed sleeping bags. SLEEPING BAGS. People were camping out for the Apple Store. The store doesn't open until 6:00PM tonight! Can I emphasize that enough? SIX O'CLOCK PEE EM TONIGHT.
Ridiculous. I just lost a shitload of faith in humanity.
Here's yesterday's post if you missed it: Largest Apple Store In The U.S. Will Ruin My City.
Samsung slides into the PDA-like devices with the Glyde, exclusively for Verizon.
There isn't much about the Glyde that separates it from the rest of the slide-out keyboard smartphones on the market ... except the unique (to me) design of its keyboard. I really, really like that keyboard; it resembles that of an actual computer, with a fat space bar and a lack of extraneous buttons.
Because the Glyde looks so much like the AT&T Tilt (the phone I purchased for myself), I compared the specs to see if I got ripped off.
- Both have 2.8" touch screens
- Tilt: 6oz. Glyde: 4.13oz
- You can talk for 240 minutes on the Tilt and 210 minutes on the Glyde ... though I never trust those specs, as they're nearly always wrong
- Tilt has a 3 megapixel camera with 10x zoom; Glyde has a 2 megapixel camera with "flash and zoom," whatever that means
And a bunch of other crap—check the Glyde out here, and the Tilt out here. They're so close to one another, it really comes down to whether you subscribe to AT&T or Verizon, and whether, like me, you're second-guessing your decision not to buy an iPhone (goddamn it).
The largest Apple Store in the United States opens tomorrow in Boston, my city of residence, and will likely become a drool-soaked mob-fest that'll have me buying tickets to San Francisco earlier than originally planned.
This three-floor monstrosity of a building has been in development for eight years, mostly because rich Back Bayers (the neighborhood in which the store rests) are freaks about building preservation and history. Granted, the building torn down was a piece of crap just rotting there, but still—old money has to maintain some sense of dignity.
Wealth-hatin' aside, I have to agree with purists out there. This building—and pardon my French—is fucking ugly. It cheapens the entire block. It's surrounded on either side by nice-looking brownstones. Character and class. Across the street is a fancy-dancy Lord & Taylor with a conservative building front. Nothing around this glass-and-plastic castle even remotely resembles what they've jammed in there. It's an eyesore.
Not to mention the horrible hoopla that'll surround tomorrow's 6pm opening. Oh Christ it'll be awful. You know how when a McDonald's opens in a small town, the lines stretch outside the door for hours, even though every single customer, at one point in their lives, has eaten at McDonald's? The same will be true, double-fold, for this Apple Store.
I imagine everybody waiting outside either owns an iPod or has stopped at Boston's other Apple Store near Lechmere in Cambridge (which isn't technically Boston but whatever; we own it). So what's the point? To check out the architecture? Is that what draws country bumpkin's to the new McDonald's?
Or is that $600 economic stimulus check burning in everybody's pocket so they just have to get a new Apple product, even though the desktops haven't been significantly updated in weeks, a new iPod isn't even on the line, the iPhone is sold out and iPhone 2.0 isn't set for release for another month?
And three floors? Do we really need three floors of Apple? Gizmodo spews the layout:
The first floor is all Mac, the company's "most important product"... Floor two is dedicated to iPod, iPhone and all the third party accessories Apple offers. The third floor is dedicated to service, with a massive Genius Bar, sections for one-on-one, workshops and a second location for Apple's new "Pro Labs" initiative.
Blargh.
Before you put my head on a pole, I own an iPod and a MacBook. I like Apple products as much as the next fellah. I don't, however, understand the Cult of Mac, nor do I—in a typical Masshole kind of way—tolerate window-gazing tourists bogging up Boylston Street, causing major traffic delays and generally making a nuisance out of an already obnoxious urban environment.
If any readers live in Boston and plan on attending this opening, check out the roof of Lord & Taylor across the street. Just ... keep an eye out ... on the roof ... for a little red dot....
Timex Corporation must have lost their minds, or else had a sudden influx of suicidal engineers pounding away at the bench, looking for a way to invent the most morbid device they could nightmare-up.
Because here comes The Life Index Watch. What, pray tell, does the Life Index Watch do? Takes an index. Of your life. And tells you how long you have until you die.
Using biometric data seeping through the flesh, The Life Index Watch, worn like a nicotine patch (and apparently shower-safe—is she in the shower? why is she naked?), processes information about key health factors, such as exercise, diet, how many Budweisers you can chug in 30 minutes, how many packs of Marlboros you can blast through on a Friday afternoon, etc. You know. The usual stuff.
Timex calls the product an "incentive to lose weight and exercise," but I, for one, regard the situation differently. I think it's a challenge to see how fast I can die.
No matter how many times and how fast I clicked on the image—and on anything else clickable—I couldn't find any purchasing information. But as soon as I get one of these suckers, I'm going to sequester myself in the grottoes of Boston, huddled up with smelly junkies, and smoke and drink myself to death, all to watch the bright little numbers dwindle. Doesn't that sound like fun? Doesn't that sound like the kind of fun Timex wants us to have?
I owe Sprint $200. I canceled my monthly contract with them based on poor cellular service, poor customer service and the fact that they have a tear in their corporate colon that's leaking money all over the place. In fact, in their first quarter alone, Sprint posted losses of $505 million and 1 million monthly-contracted customers.
If I was good at math, I'd make a really cool, applicable comparison like, "That's three billion Big Mac value meals!" But I'm not, so I won't.
Meanwhile, both AT&T and Verizon—the big dogs of this lead-fisted battle to implant tumors in our busybody minds—gained at least 1 million customers each.
Not enough? Yesterday's announcement of the Blackberry Bold 9000 (which sounds like a Terminator) as an exclusive offering for AT&T subscribers should definitely strike fear in the hearts of those who don't have that whirlygig blue sliced-up world on their monthly bills.
Now the battle between iPhones and Blackberries has dissipated into the question: when, exactly, are you joining AT&T?
And all that boils down to: when, exactly, is somebody gonna get all "anti-trust" and "unfair competition" on AT&T's ass?
It sounds a bit idiotic coming from someone who just admitted he switched carriers, but I have a festering problem with AT&T's stranglehold on all the tech goodies I hold dear. In fact, I have a problem with the basic principle of releasing heavily-marketed drool-inducing hardware to a singular (pun intended) company and thereby squashing the hopes of dreams of people who, unlike me, aren't willing to brazenly toss aside 200 smackers for the opportunity to blog on the go (oh, and make phone calls, I guess).
Now let me put this to you, Bionic Homotronic Commandos: are you skipping out on your previous carrier so you can dry-hump the Bold or the iPhone? Or are you (possibly) foolishly holding onto the pipe dream that our Congress will step in, slap the shit out of AT&T's wrist and once again open the markets?
I've been playing Grand Theft Auto IV pretty-much non-stop since its release, taking breaks only to go to work, shower and spend some sexy alone time in my room. And while I haven't felt the urge to arm myself to the teeth and pop innocents in the streets of Boston, my perception of the world around me has shifted ever so slightly.
So it was with great surprise that I stumbled upon this Wired article detailing Susan Arendt's altered reality based on her exposure to the game.
I must admit, I'm a bit of a leadfoot by nature, but the flow of traffic on a highway is usually rapid enough to keep me content. That day, however, despite the reasonable pace being set by the cars around me, I quickly grew impatient with my perceived lack of progress. I looked for holes in the traffic that I could use to my advantage to make faster progress. As I approached a stop light at an empty intersection, the thought flashed through my mind that I should just drive right on through it. I didn't, of course, but the thought was there, just the same.
Insert female driver joke here.
Here's the thing: I don't drive. But after jacking hundreds of cars on the streets of Liberty City, I've felt the salivating desire to do so in Boston. Just yesterday I was walking back from the grocery store when a motorcycle cruised slowly by. Motorcycles in GTA are by far my favorite vehicle, and the hardest for me to find precisely when I want one. Seeing this Reality Bike I immediately thought, "Man, I gotta jack that shit, go off some killer jumps."
Of course I didn't (I am, after all, writing this from a computer outside of a prison) but, as Susan points on, the urge ... it's there. Am I crazy? Or have you had warped reality sensations like this, too? Can technology and video games truly alter your brain chemistry? Is this what those anti-violence advocates keep harping about?
[via Wired]
I'm gonna cut to the skinny of this: all you need is a functioning e-mail address that ends with .edu.
My Emerson alumni address ends with .edu and I was able to become eligible for this offer.
Microsoft Office Ultimate 2007 comes with:
* Access™ 2007
* Accounting Express 2007*
* Excel® 2007
* Groove® 2007
* InfoPath® 2007
* OneNote® 2007
* Outlook® 2007 with Business Contact Manager*
* PowerPoint® 2007
* Publisher 2007
* Word 2007
That's a whole lot of unnecessary crazy shit, yo! Unfortunately for us Mac users, Microsoft is only offering the Windows XP or Vista versions of this fantastically jam-packed package.
Deal ends May 16. Get up on this pony!
Site: http://www.theultimatesteal.com/
The House overwhelmingly (410 to 10) approved the PRO-IP Act, or HR 4279, which enables law enforcement to seize property from digital thieves.
Added to the breakdown of TorrentSpy, it's high time illegal downloaders realized the consequences of their actions. I know; this isn't an ideal Friday morning activity, nor is it a reality any of our stuffed hard drives would like to consider, but the U.S. government is clearly sick of us sticking our hands in pockets we do not own and is dead-set on making an example of our purloining.
And by "we" I mean "you" because my conscience is clean. Yeah ... clean as a whistle....
While it'll soon be within law enforcement's rights to bust into houses and nab computers, hard drives, discs, etc., we should thank our lucky stars one provision didn't pass: the House wanted the content industry to be able to collect damages for each stolen track off a CD.
So even though our pickpocketing bodies are riddled with bullets and lying face-down in blood, at least we're not getting totally ass-screwed by Uncle Sam.
(I realize that adorable LOLcatz picture has very little to do with anything but c'mon, it's Friday; I'm sick of bad news all the time)
[via: Ars Technica]
The now-defunct BitTorrent browser TorrentSpy was ordered to puke up $110 million to the MPAA for its involvement in copyright infringement. For each claim against the company, they were charged $30,000.
This bold move is meant to scare the bejesus out of all y'all illegal downloaders out there: No, the MPAA ain't gonna put up with your degenerate habit much longer.
Here's TorrentSpy's kinda lame, passive-aggressive posting on their one-page website:
Friends of TorrentSpy,
We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.
The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.
Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown.
It was a wild ride,
The TorrentSpy Team
"Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order [...] and the like." - Justice William O. Douglas
The Big Brother comment at the end is straight-up overkill. C'mon. We've all read 1984. We know this is a Brave New World. No sense in beating it into our heads yet again.
The long and short of it is this: back in February 2006, TorrentSpy was sued. The judge in the case asked for the IP addresses of individual customers. TorrentSpy lied and said those IP addresses weren't available. Once busted in this lie, the judge got pissed and had some strong words:
"Plaintiffs have convinced the Court that their ability to prove their case has been inalterably prejudiced by Defendants' willful spoliation of evidence, making terminating sanctions the only effective recourse," wrote Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in her decision. "The Court has concluded that Defendants' conduct constitutes spoliation and second, that termination of the case in favor of Plaintiffs is the proper sanction."
Ouch.
So are you emptying out your hard drive right now?
[via: Ars Technica]
(I realize this isn't very tech-centric but I couldn't keep it to myself.)
Heralding a new era of Sick, Roadkilltoys.com unleashes ... roadkill toys. These adorable plushy animals have all the makings of a side-of-the-road disaster: spilling guts, tire marks, protruding popped eyeball.
As of now, the site only has Twitch the Raccoon and Grind the Rabbit (pictured). There are plans for Splodge the Hedgehog, Pop the Weasel and Fender the Fox. Available in the UK for twenty-five pounds. Worth the shipping cost? Only if you hate your little bitch of a niece.
[via: Boing Boing]
And girls who like girls who like fembots!
Gadget of the Week
Show-stopping "half-VGA" screen and HSDPA/UMTS support, gorgeous video playback: Bold, Bold, Bold!
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