Unable to afford a proper camera crew and equipment, The Get Out Clause, an unsigned band from the city, decided to make use of the cameras seen all over British streets.

With an estimated 13 million CCTV cameras in Britain, suitable locations were not hard to come by.

They set up their equipment, drum kit and all, in eighty locations around Manchester – including on a bus – and proceeded to play to the cameras.

Afterwards they wrote to the companies or organisations involved and asked for the footage under the Freedom of Information Act.

The Get Out Clause, Manchester's stars of CCTV cameras - Telegraph

YouTube - Google - Powered by Post-Its

IRVINGTON, N.Y. — An 80-year-old man who thought he'd lost the only recording of his dead wife's voice can hear her again, any time he wants. When Verizon upgraded Charles Whiting's telephone service, his wife's voice, saying, "Catherine Whiting," disappeared from his voicemail system.

She had died in 2005 and Whiting said he listened to her voice every day for comfort. He blamed Verizon for the loss, saying, "Now they took her voice away."

But Verizon had archived all the old greetings and messages. Company spokesman John Bonomo said Tuesday that a contractor found the recording and restored it to the new voicemail system.

"I'm glad they rescued it," Whiting said. "I'm very happy."

Lost Voicemail of Man's Dead Wife Restored by Phone Company

Secret safe-words of the Emergency Broadcasting System - Boing Boing

Strange measuring cups

YouTube - An Engineer's Guide to Cats

I can't imagine the frustration of trying to learn a computer and having the keyboard malfunction, yet it appears that is what's happening with many of the One Laptop Per Child XO Laptops. Of course, it's still better than if Microsoft made them... then ALL they keys would crash :)

I have played with a friend's XO, and it is neat. The daylight readable screen is something else. The keyboard is too small for my hands, even though I have thin, articulate fingers. I would surely use an external keyboard with one anyway (or a Frog Pad).

Anyway, maybe they will get these glitches worked out before they Send me the laptop I ordered in November! :)

Good luck, third-world-villagers.

Slashdot | Widespread Keyboard Failures on OLPC's XO-1

Hello Verizon - We are definately home!

The Wright brothers' first priority was to patent their airplane, and they duly received their patent in 1904. It didn't just cover their specific design, but the whole concept of three-axis control - being able to independently steer the aircraft in pitch, roll, and yaw - that was critical to powered flight. This patent became a mighty weapon that the Wright brothers used for the next thirteen years to sue the bejesus out of anyone else who tried to fly an airplane.

It may not have been a problem if the Wrights themselves had kept working on aircraft design, or if the original flyer had been good enough to license. But neither was the case - the Wrights became so consumed with their lawsuits that they had no time or energy left for further work, essentially becoming the SCO of the early aviation age. And their airplane design, while innovative, was mostly innovative in the wrong ways.

100 Years Of Turbulence

The funny thing about Starbucks is it's helped to create a coffee culture filled with a significant number of people who don't actually like Starbucks—which means that, despite conventional wisdom, it's actually a good thing to be a mom & pop coffee shop with a Starbucks nearby, writes Slate. Instead of stealing your business, you get the spillover from their store. "They'll do all of your marketing for you, and your sales will soar."

That's certainly how it worked out for Hyman. Soon after declining Starbucks's buyout offer, Hyman received the expected news that the company was opening up next to one of his stores. But instead of panicking, he decided to call his friend Jim Stewart, founder of the Seattle's Best Coffee chain, to find out what really happens when a Starbucks opens nearby. "You're going to love it," Stewart reported. "They'll do all of your marketing for you, and your sales will soar." The prediction came true: Each new Starbucks store created a local buzz, drawing new converts to the latte-drinking fold. When the lines at Starbucks grew beyond the point of reason, these converts started venturing out--and, Look! There was another coffeehouse right next-door! Hyman's new neighbor boosted his sales so much that he decided to turn the tactic around and start targeting Starbucks. "We bought a Chinese restaurant right next to one of their stores and converted it, and by God, it was doing $1 million a year right away," he said.

We've noticed that Starbucks has had another "positive" effect on the coffee house industry—it's trained consumers to willingly pay over $1.50 for a cuppa joe no matter where they're buying it. Maybe this is why "Just over the five-year period from 2000 to 2005... the number of mom and pops grew 40 percent, from 9,800 to nearly 14,000 coffeehouses," and "the failure rate for new coffeehouses is a mere 10 percent."

From Slate via Consumerist

Little Coffee Shops Need Not Fear Starbucks