michael crichton writes an great op/ed essay about the silly patents being issued

this just hit me today, after using gmail every day for weeks with chat on. this is the kind of user interface stuff that some people spend their whole life without understanding how perfect this is..

1. go to google moon
2. zoom all the way in
3. :)

so imagine you open up a box that contains a positively tiny dell x1 and find the teeny tiny laptop inside, contained in a white squishy rectangular bag that looks like this: what would be your first thought as to what this means? here's a closeup: now my thought was "it's a white soft rectangle, it means don't use this as a pillow." it's a guy with the rectangle behind his head and yawning, while moving his hand to cover his mouth with his hand. jason on the other hand immediately saw it as don't put this bag over your head and die. i think mine is funnier, though while his is a more common warning topic, it is an interesting new way to display that. the other fun tidbit of information about this warning label was that the image was at the very top toward the sealed end of the bag, which was about 24 inches long. so they put the warning about not killing yourself with the bag 24 inches away from the hole in which you'd put your head when trying to kill yourself. maybe that gives some credence to my pillow interpretation.

miss deaf texas struck and killed by train, that is almost as ironic as our previously covered TULSA - Blake Champlin, a Tulsa lawyer and environmental activist, died Monday at his home when a tree supporting a hammock fell and crushed him. I admit it, i felt like a horrible person when i laughed while reading this.

why get stuck with 1.4MB from your floppy drive when by running raid 1 across 13 floppy drives you can get 16MB? crazy collage kids.