] Nobody has the time to struggle getting %u201Cinto%u201D
] a book. You need to start with something compelling.
] Check this out from forthcoming title called The Story of
] Success.

Nice opening story.

800-CEO-READ Blog: The Story of Success

] Chart of the Day asks, "When is the best time of the year
] to buy or sell a home?"
]
] The answer to that question could save you a significant
] amount of money. Timing your home purchase or sale has a
] significant impact on price.

Wow. Good to be without a family.

The Big Picture: Selling a Home: Best Time?

] Call it the curse of the magazine indicator. Paul
] Krugman's quote on the subject is infamous: "Whom
] the Gods would destroy, they first put on the cover of
] Business Week."

The Big Picture: Uh-Oh: Apple on the Cover of Fortune

] When hotel heiress Paris Hilton found out in February
] that her high-tech wireless phone had been taken over by
] hackers, many assumed that only a technical mastermind
] could have pulled off such a feat. But as it turns out, a
] hacker involved in the privacy breach said, the Hilton
] saga began on a decidedly low-tech note -- with a simple
] phone call.

Paris Hilton Hack Started With Old-Fashioned Con

] On one level -- on most levels, actually -- Tarantino and
] prime-time's highest-rated dramatic series seemed like a
] poor match. The director's strengths lie mainly in black
] humor and eccentric characterization, while the "CSI"
] franchise is resolutely unfunny and its running cast of
] characters can only politely be called archetypes.
] Fragments or vestiges is more like it; cardboard cut-outs
] would also work. Watching stony CSI team leader Grissom
] (William Petersen) trying to engage in trademark
] Tarantino banter about his childhood relationship with
] Trigger -- that would be Rogers' trusty steed -- is
] almost physically painful.
]
] Furthermore, Tarantino isn't much of a plot architect
] (although I'm sure he'd beg to differ). Instead, he's a
] pack rat who snitches bits of story from here and there
] and makes them stick together with a distinctive
] aesthetic. Whether you like him or not, his movies
] breathe, while the "CSI" shows are essentially finely
] tuned machines. They depend on whiz-bang reenactments and
] animations, and on plots that switch back once, twice and
] sometimes three times before dropping you back at your
] front door, 59 minutes past the hour.
]
] There are deeper incompatibilities, too. "CSI" is the big
] television hit of the George W. Bush era, and the message
] it delivers over and over is, appropriately, a simple
] one: Step outside the boundaries of conventional family
] life -- into bisexuality, cross-dressing, Ecstasy raves,
] Goth rituals, or just some extramarital whoopee -- and
] you're likely to wind up exsanguinated on someone else's
] bathroom floor, with pantyhose in your mouth. Tarantino
] is a culture icon of the '90s if there ever was one, and
] it's safe to say that his moral code, to the extent he
] has one that isn't quoted from Sam Peckinpah, flows
] through a more lubricious valley.
]
] Still, there was something to this combination --
] something like getting sick-drunk on tequila and then
] rolling down a hillside of poison ivy, maybe. Tarantino
] grasped one important fact about "CSI" that is a perfect
] fit for him: It's a sick puppy of a TV show, probably the
] most sadistic thing on the air that doesn't feature
] midriff-wearing bimbos with spray-on tans competing with
] each other. In inflicting terrible torments on one of the
] CSI cops, and perhaps the least likely one at that, he
] tries to turn the series' cruelty on its head. Eads, a
] jarhead-jock type who normally displays the emotional
] range of a refrigerator, infuses Stokes' terrible plight
] with a wrenching humanity that's almost entirely new to
] this show.

CSI and Tarantino are both different, guilty pleasures of mine.
This review nicely characterizes why both are, and why they make odd bedfellows. I'll have to track this episode down myself.

When Tarantino had a cameo on Alias, another guilty pleasure, that was something. It made sense. And has a great character. But CSI?

Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Tarantino's morbid take on

] Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is turning over its online DVD
] rental business to Netflix Inc., signaling that the
] world's largest retailer couldn't beat the Internet
] upstart at its own game.

Not terribly surprising EXCEPT that it is Wal-Mart, who doesn't *need* to back down. Contrast with Blockbuster, who can't *afford* to back down in its competition with NetFlix.

I want to believe Wal-Mart went to NetFlix over Blockbuster, in restructuring its service, because NetFlix is both the leader and the better company. But I suspect it is because NetFlix doesn't visibly sell its discs, and is willing to agree to point its users at Wal-Mart as a DVD purchasing site. A deal that NetFlix would have been happier doing with Amazon, probably.

This deal probably isn't valid if Amazon buys them, but what could Wal-Mart do at that point, having turned away all of its customers. All of its customers, which, suspected at being around 100K, is about as many as NetFlix is signing up about every two weeks (back of the envelope calculation).

Netflix Takes Over Wal-Mart DVD Rentals

] This software is a GameBoy emulator for the Texas
] Instruments TI-92/89 graphic calculator. It is alpha
] software and is not to be considered stable. It will only
] work with very few games, and at very ugly speeds. Hence,
] downloading is only recommended to developpers willing to
] contribute to the project.
]
] The TI-92/89 has a Motorola M68k CPU running at 10-12MHz
] (depending of the model) and the GameBoy has a variation
] of the Zilog Z80 running at 4MHz. So, the TI-92/89 is
] only ~3 times faster than the GameBoy, and we also have
] to emulate its graphic chip, wich works in a tile based
] way (as opposed to the TI-92/89 in wich each LCD pixel is
] mapped to a bit in the RAM).
]
] Currently, the project is focusing into recompilation
] techinques since the parser approach is clearly
] insufficient to address the speed problem.

BoogerSoft TIGB

] How-to: Phreaking your iPod (DTMF)

Long ago, the easy way to make a red box was with a micro tape recorder and a fist full of quarters. Put in the quarters, record the tones generated, retrieve quarters, replay tones as needed.

Long ago, it was someone anomalous to find someone with a sound generator near a payphone. Now, find someone without the resources to get a tiny little MP3 player. And find someone who would surprised to see someone carrying one about.

They are probably standing next to the person desperate to make free payphone calls.

.: UNEASYsilence :. � Blog Archive � How-to: Phreaking your iPod (DTMF)

] How the United States are connected to each other

Simple, elegant diagram. Great site.

connections - usa.gif (GIF Image, 905x674 pixels)

] As the Rolling Stones get ready to head out again on the
] road, Ron Wood can laugh about it - the night he and the
] lads thought they were all going to be busted.
]
] "We were doing drugs in the dressing room," says Wood,
] remembering a concert in the early '80s. "Suddenly the
] tour manager stuck his head around the door and said,
] 'The police are here!' We all panicked and threw our
] drugs in the toilet.
]
] "Then Sting, Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland walked
] in."

New York Daily News - Home - Rush & Molloy: Rockers pour out 'Spinal Tap' stories