Some people just have too much time on their hands. Myself included, and by finding this little gem, I’m pretty much a hopeless cause. So…what do you do when you have a Sound recorder in Windows, a folder full of default windows sounds, and urge to cross creative threshholds? Why, you create a lot of noise!

I guess metal shrapnel in the eye was a common enough event in the 1930’s to justify building and marketing this monstrosity? According to Modern Mechanix (feed added!), this article below comes from the Modern Mechanics and Inventions magazine dated 1932.

It’s a good thing they didn’t have meth addicts back in the day or all that copper would be as good as gone.

[Found via Boing Boing]

The adult entertainment giant says it will start selling downloadable movies that viewers can burn to DVD and watch on their TVs.  Wow!  This announcement came late last year, however no great strides have been made to bone up on this deal.  But…if you’re looking for technical innovation in the motion picture industry I’ve got bad news for you. Two companies, Cinema-Now and MovieLink, announced they signed a contract to distribute digital copies of videos online. The catch was that these downloaded copies could not be burned onto DVDs or copied in any way other than on the computer on which they were downloaded. Now Vivid Entertainment Group has taken the initiative a step further.

Vivid will distribute its adult movies, including all the special extras included on DVDs, through CinemaNow. The difference: Vivid’s downloaded files will be burnable onto DVDs so people who purchase the files can watch on their televisions, or portable devices which play DVDs. The price, $19.95 per movie, is roughly the cost of actual DVDs in stores. They’ve taken the next logical step in making thier business model workable, we can only hope that “legitimate” Hollywood will follow the adult industry.

In the recent past, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen a call out to people to donate their old computers and related equipment for the use in developing nations..  However, it seems that the majority of the equipment being received is useless or non-functional, resulting in being dumped in various locations ‘en mass’.  A report by Basel Action Network, a Seattle based environmental organiztion, claims that much of the used computer equipment sent from the United States is creating enormous environmental problems.

According to the report US corporations are avoiding recycling costs and making people believe that their used equipment is being placed for noble causes.

In various locations of Africa dumping of computer equipment has caused uncontrolled release of components, including cancer-causing chemicals and substances that disrupt human hormonal and immune systems. A typical computer and monitor contain several pounds of lead, plus toxics like arsenic, mercury, copper and cadmium according to the report.

Yeah, I’m not an enviromental freak either, but there is something to be said here.  Perhaps if the ‘developing nations’ want the equipment badly enough, they should also prepare for its waste disposal as well?  There are dozens of safe ways to get rid of various pieces of computer equipment without causing any enviromentally unsafe byproducts.  Only the future will tell.

In the “Official Google Webmaster Central Blog“, 2 google engineers describe the basic actions they’ve taken to finally prevent pranksters from being able to ‘game’ the google search analysis that drives traffic to one site.

One of the most famous examples was bloggers and web site owners collaborating to ensure the word ‘failure’ was associated with Bush. Geeks understand what’s happening here and take it as just the prank it is, but apparently there’s enough people out there that can’t fathom something more technical than the “on/off switch” assumed that these googlebombs were actually GOOG’s opinion, thinking they’ve altered the results in their database.

Well it appears GOOG has finally implemented an algorithm to specifically improve their analysis and prevent the 100 most well known googlebomb’s as well as detect future instances.

Check their blog post for more details.