Blogs

To improve road safety in New Zealand it is now illegal to use a hand-held mobile phone whilst driving. This should reduce the rate of accidents due to distraction considerably, though the rate of accidents due to not being able to see through the fraking window might increase if this photo is anything to go by.

Found here.

Labour MP Trevor Mallard asked in Parliament whether the ad had been arranged before or after Mr English had used a seven-letter word beginning with f, followed by a four-letter word beginning with c, when talking to the person in charge of editorial policy for TVNZ.

-- http://www.stuff.co.nz/national/politics/3005275/English-no-influence-over-controversial-TV-ad
'nuff said

Ralph Lauren has sent a DMCA takedown notice to Boing Boing's ISP, Priority Colo regarding an article criticising the Photoshop disaster that is a recent Ralph Lauren advertisement. Cory Doctrow responds:

So, to Ralph Lauren, GreenbergTraurig, and PRL Holdings, Inc: sue and be damned. Copyright law doesn't give you the right to threaten your critics for pointing out the problems with your offerings. You should know better. And every time you threaten to sue us over stuff like this, we will:

a) Reproduce the original criticism, making damned sure that all our readers get a good, long look at it, and;

b) Publish your spurious legal threat along with copious mockery, so that it becomes highly ranked in search engines where other people you threaten can find it and take heart; and

c) Offer nourishing soup and sandwiches to your models.

Big Ups to Priority Colo for refusing to cave to such and obviously unenforceable threat, and thanks Cory Doctrow for such an artful response.
UPDATE: The ongoing story unfolds here.

Collectors Weekly have posted an interview with pinball collector Clay Harell.

So one day I went to an auction of coin-operated video games. They had pinball machines there, too, including a 1980 Spider-Man machine. This is about 1988, so the game’s only eight years old. They started bidding at a hundred dollars, and nobody’s bidding. I drag it home and set it up, and sure enough a few things don’t work on it. And of course I don’t know how to fix it, but I go through it, figure it out, and it’s rewarding.

Clay operates one of the best sites on the web for pinball repair information.
Looking at his collection, I'm just thankful 8 bit computers are easier to store!

Ars Technica has published a retrospective look at the Mac laptops of the past 20 years.