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GUANTANAMO BAY NAVAL BASE, Cuba (AP) — Blaring from a speaker behind a metal grate in his tiny cell in Iraq, the blistering rock from Nine Inch Nails hit Prisoner No. 200343 like a sonic bludgeon. "Stains like the blood on your teeth," Trent Reznor snarled over distorted guitars. "Bite. Chew." The auditory assault went on for days, then weeks, then months at the U.S. military detention center in Iraq. Twenty hours a day. AC/DC. Queen. Pantera. The prisoner, military contractor Donald Vance of Chicago, told The Associated Press he was soon suicidal.

(UnrealityMag) "As a child of the 80s, I grew up with slap bracelets, pogo balls, and of course, the Nintendo Entertainment System. Still, nothing kept my little heart ticking like cartoons. I’m not too familiar with what’s popular now as far as cartoons go (Dora the Explorer?), but watching 1980s cartoons was the closest my pre-pubescent self got to an orgasm. Aside from the slick animation and great stories, it was the theme songs that made cartoons so enjoyable. Here are, in my opinion, the 10 best cartoon theme songs from the 1980s. These aren’t in any particular order, but I’m sure some moron will comment that [insert 80s cartoon here] should be #1."

Original article with videos...
http://unrealitymag.com/index.php/2008/12/08/the-10-best-80s-cartoon-the...

(Computerworld Blogs) By Dan Tynan - Just in time for the holiday shopping frenzy, a conservative Christian investment group called the Timothy Plan has published a report listing the worst video games in the world. They're hoping of course people will use their list to decide which console games to buy, and I think they will – but not necessarily in the way the group intended. It's actually two reports. One is a Basic Guide to 142 games rated and ranked along 13 categories; the “Graphic” version gives the details behind the ratings for the bottom 30 games. (Good luck downloading them; I tried all day and just barely made it through a short while ago.)

The worst of the worst? Grand Theft Auto IV and its near-clone, Saints Row 2. Both received 18 points out of a possible 39. GTA IV scored a perfect 3 on Sex, Violence, Language, Drugs, and Alcohol, fell down slightly on Nudity and Gay/Lesbian themes, and registered nothing at all in the Comic Mischief and Demonic categories. (Maybe they'll correct that in Grand Theft Auto V.)

Change.gov embraces looser copyright licensing policy and creates citizen forum

(Computerworld) By Heather Havenstein - Like his campaign apparatus, President-elect Barack Obama's transition team is embracing what some have called a Google-enabled government by loosening copyright licensing on its Change.gov Web site and by launching a feature that allows citizens to contribute to policy discussions.

Over the weekend, the Change.gov site changed its traditional strict copyright notice to embrace the Attribution 3.0 Unported License, the most liberal license available under the Creative Commons license framework. The Creative Commons framework was developed by Stanford University professor Larry Lessig to let the creators and owners of content choose how they allow their work to be used. The updated Change.gov site lets anyone use and "remix" its content as long as they cite the transition project as the original source of the material, noted Nancy Scola, a blogger at TechPresident.com. She described the change as a "major coup" for those hoping that the Obama administration would offer "saner and more sensible" thinking about copyright questions than past federal governments have.

From Final Destination 2...

Coolest video EVER.

This is exactly why I refuse to take part in the consumerist madness that is Black Friday. Death by materialism and greed... all while a god damned Christmas song played in the background. Disgusting.

The Wal-mart stampede, caught on camera

(NY Daily News) BY JOE GOULD - A Wal-Mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.

The 34-year-old worker, employed as an overnight stock clerk, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m. Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.

(New York Times) Thomas L. Friedman - I spent Sunday afternoon brooding over a great piece of Times reporting by Eric Dash and Julie Creswell about Citigroup. Maybe brooding isn’t the right word. The front-page article, entitled “Citigroup Pays for a Rush to Risk,” actually left me totally disgusted.

Why? Because in searing detail it exposed — using Citigroup as Exhibit A — how some of our country’s best-paid bankers were overrated dopes who had no idea what they were selling, or greedy cynics who did know and turned a blind eye. But it wasn’t only the bankers. This financial meltdown involved a broad national breakdown in personal responsibility, government regulation and financial ethics.

I would be able to open a Capri Sun without getting Pacific Cooler all over me.

By Chris Kanaracus

(IDG News Service) A U.S. District Court judge in Boston today dissolved a gag order against a trio of MIT students, a decision that frees them to publicly discuss security flaws they found in the ticketing system used by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA).

Following a roughly 90-minute hearing today, U.S. District Judge George O'Toole sided with attorneys from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) who have been representing the three MIT students — Zack Anderson, Russell "RJ" Ryan and Alessandro Chiesa.

The students originally had planned to detail their findings at the Defcon hackers convention last week. But another judge imposed a 10-day restraining order against them on Aug. 9, the day before their scheduled presentation, after the MBTA claimed in a lawsuit that disclosing information about the vulnerabilities would cause "significant damage" to its transit operations.

Original article:
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&...

Ever try to remember who you bumped into at the store a few days back? Or exactly what the company president said at the morning meeting? Well, you're not alone. And IBM researchers are working on software that just may help you better recollect all the forgotten pieces of your life.

This week, the company unveiled software that uses images, sounds and text recorded on everyday mobile devices to help people recall names, faces, conversations and events. Dubbed Pensieve, the software organizes bits of collected information, stores them and then helps the user extract them later on.

"Today, we're flooded with information. It's an information overload and we're not capable of handling it," said Eran Belinsky, an IBM project leader. "This would relieve us from the anxiousness or need to try to remember everything. And there's the issue of trouble with recollection. [It's like] your index is broken. You know you know something, but you can't get there. This could help people having trouble with their memory reconstruct their memories."