Category: Entertainment

I hesitate to post this for fear of tarnishing our bleeding-edge image, but…

I’ve never done much online gaming, mostly because my interests are in other areas and my home machine is a 600 mhz Celeron with a 56k modem. That said, I just came across http://gamesocket.com, which appears to be a largely abandoned online battlezone-style multiplayer tanks game. It wouldn’t load using win2k, but windows 98 is fine. When you’ve got 4-5 human players it’s pretty addictive. Would any Streettechnoristas like to get together at 9PM Pacific and mix it up? Also, are there any other low-bandwidth, free combat games out there that you like?

Reminiscent of some of Digital Living Today‘s handy reference cards, Flame Warriors is a comprehensive catalog of the many personality types you’ll encounter on cyberspace, from the Nanny and the Blowhard to the Weenie, the Nitpick, and L’Enfant Provocateur . Which are you?

Thanks to abundant Apache misconfigurations, one can, theoretically, search for mp3s using Google

A nice pr piece by Apple on the TMBG documentary, Gigantic.

Through many slow nights in front of indifferent club audiences, TMBG persisted, themselves indifferent enough to fame to just keep playing. John Flansburgh’s career advice? “If you want to have a creative life, don’t be too calculating. Don’t worry so much about copyrighting your song when no one even knows it. There is inherent value and excitement in having your stuff in the world. Get your stuff out there!”

This just in: Shoggoth on the Roof has been cancelled due to threats of a lawsuit.

Today U.S. representatives Zoe Lofgren and John Doolittle introduced the Public Domain Enhancement Act to Congress. The legislation would require copyright owners to pay a very small fee (say, $1) upon a copyright’s 50th “birthday” in order for the copyright to continue. Copyrighted works for which the fee isn’t paid will pass into the public domain, thus freeing works which have been abandoned by the owners of their copyrights. Sounds like a good idea to me. You can read the text of the bill itself here. Also relevant is the Reclaim the Public Domain petition, which outlines some very good reasons to support this bit of friendly legislation.

A nice little animated author recommendation engine culled from a Metafilter thread.

If you like Neal Stephenson, for example, you might also like these authors.

Who do you want controlling the largest assemblage of military-industrial killing machines in the history of the world? I may never sleep again. Kinda makes you long for Gerald Ford. Or even Chevy Chase.

When looking for information on Quicksilver, I came across this archive of Stephenson’s work, including a great short story I’d never heard of: Jipi and the Paranoid Chip.

“Havoc has already been in touch with the entrepreneur in the Baksheesh-Free Zone who started this whole thing. He was able to trace the serial number that was sifted out of the debris of that mall. It was one of four dozen car alarm systems that were assembled by a particular jobber based in Libya, who, it turns out, received an inordinately large drop-shipment of high explosive—Cold War Semtex, way past its expiration date.”

Music isn’t our usual fare here on the front page, but UGO.com is running a great interview with John “One of the guys from They Might Be Giants” Linnell. They talk about the new TMBG documentary Gigantic, action figures, and theme songs. And if you’re into music, be sure to check out “The Ever Recurring Music Topic” in the Geek Pastimes section of Shop Talk, our discussion area.