LONDON, England (CNN) -- Syd Barrett, the eccentric guitarist who founded Pink Floyd but later left the music business to live quietly and somewhat reclusively, has died at the age of 60, according to a spokeswoman for the band.

A spokeswoman for Pink Floyd told the Press Association: "He died very peacefully a couple of days ago. There will be a private family funeral."

The singer and guitarist, born Roger Keith Barrett on January 6, 1946, founded the band in 1965 with Roger Waters, Nick Mason and Richard Wright. (Its name was derived from two American bluesmen, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.)

He wrote many of the early hits for the avant-garde rock band, including the 1967 album "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and the band's first hit singles, "Arnold Layne" and "See Emily Play."

His songs were odd and charming combinations of childlike lyrics and swirling melodies, often augmented with strange arrangements. The titles alluded to space, the occult and sometimes nonsense: "Astronomy Domine," "Lucifer Sam," "Chapter 24."

Consider some lyrics of "Bike," from "Piper": "I know a mouse, and he hasn't got a house / I don't know why, I call him Gerald / He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse."

Pink Floyd, taken under the wing of Beatles engineer Norman Smith, had early success, but Barrett, suffering from mental problems and heavy drug use, started demonstrating erratic behavior, including catatonia during concerts. He left the band in 1968. He was replaced by David Gilmour, who had joined the band as its fifth member earlier that year.

Barrett put out two noted solo albums, "The Madcap Laughs" and "Barrett," both in 1970.

In 1975, during the recording of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here" album, Barrett showed up unannounced at the studio -- ironically, during the recording of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond," a song about him. He had become overweight and shaved his eyebrows; the other members didn't recognize him at first.

"Wish You Were Here" was dedicated to Barrett.

Much of British psychedelic music was influenced by Barrett, and a number of musicians have credited him, according to Allmusic.com.

Barrett had since lived in anonymity in the eastern English city of Cambridge. According to The Associated Press, he suffered from diabetes.

The spokeswoman said a low-key, private funeral would be held. She did not disclose the cause of death.

CNN.COM - Pink Floyd legend Syd Barrett dies

seriouslyuguys wrote:

This is a video of a guy answering a question with what he believes is a correct answer, but Trebek gives him shit over it. (Safe for Work)

I think that should have been an acceptable answer. BTW the guy is Ken Jennings, the current record holder for longest winning streak on Jeopardy.

I agree! That one should have gone to the judges as an acceptable answer! Funny!

-LB

RE: Jeopardy Goof

OH this pisses me off to no end...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Microsoft Corp. Chairman and Chief Software Architect Bill Gates on Wednesday mocked a $100 laptop computer for developing countries being developed with the backing of rival Google Inc. at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The $100 laptop project seeks to provide inexpensive computers to people in developing countries. The computers lack many features found on a typical personal computer, such as a hard disk and software.

"The last thing you want to do for a shared use computer is have it be something without a disk ... and with a tiny little screen," Gates said at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum in suburban Washington.

"Hardware is a small part of the cost" of providing computing capabilities, he said, adding that the big costs come from network connectivity, applications and support.

Hmmm... are we a TAD jealous, Bill? Are we a little bitter that legions of children will grow up learning to compute on something OTHER than Windows?

Before his critique, Gates showed off a new "ultra-mobile computer" which runs Microsoft Windows on a seven-inch (17.78-centimeter) touch screen.

But of course! Competition. You just can’t sleep at night knowing you don’t control every aspect of people’s lives, (just 95% of us) can you? The open source community’s accusations that you are nothing short of a money-grubbing, power hungry BASTARD can’t be that far off mark, huh? Too bad this is an instance where you clearly have ZERO influence. Its eating away at you, isn’t it?

Those machines are expected to sell for between $599 and $999, Microsoft said at the product launch last week. (Full story)

OK, apparently Mr. Money Bags doesn't understand the concept of the $100 "One Laptop per Child" initiative. Or maybe he does and is frustrated because he knows he can’t compete. Maybe if he's going to piss and moan because his precious monopoly is in jeopardy, maybe he ought to, oh I donno... dip into his OWN pockets and make his own offering at a comparable price point - even if he has to loose money. Ya know - like he did with XBox??? The whole idea is to keep these things as inexpensive as possible, and here he is with his OWN offering that’s six to ten times more expensive? Hmmm… You willing to “eat” the losses Billy Boy? Put up or SHUT up.

"If you are going to go have people share the computer, get a broadband connection and have somebody there who can help support the user, geez, get a decent computer where you can actually read the text and you're not sitting there cranking the thing while you're trying to type," Gates said.

OK, maybe he IS just stupid sometimes. The reason they don't have a hard drive is to (A) conserve power (these things are going to get charged by a hand crank) and (B) t... [ Read More (0.1k in body) ]

USAToday - Bill Gates mocks MIT's $100 laptop

That's right. The HP ScanJet 4c's SCL (Scanner Control Language) command set includes an unofficial PLAY TUNE command. I stumbled across this after reading an article on the ScanJet 4c in the feb. 1997 issue of HP Journal (see the sidebar Sing to Me).

The PLAY TUNE command basically varies the stepping rate of the scanner motor to produce audible frequencies. All it needs is a series of note frequencies and durations previously written to its SCSI buffer. The ScanJetPlay utility resulted from my efforts in trying out this easter egg. Check dis shit out, babee! :^)

ScanJetPlay requires libsane and libsanei (for SCSI access) from the SANE backends package. Note that libsanei and its header files is not installed per default, and must be done manually.

Video here...

http://www.ghana-projects.de/scanjet-elise2.mpg

This just sounds so cool ... :)

Thats amusing... but nothing new actually. The old Commodore 64 had a program called "1541 music" that did essentially the same thing - slammed the read/write head mechanism of the 1541 floppy drive against the stop at different speeds. Was MURDER on the heads(the 1541 was notorious for going out of alignment and this certainly did nothing to help!) But it was mildly entertaining for a few seconds; a "WTF! Ha ha!" moment - until you realized what it was doing to your head alignment! LOL!

-LB

ScanJet Music

Dover's much-maligned school policy of presenting "intelligent design" as an alternative to evolution was officially relegated to the history books Tuesday night.
On a voice vote, and with no discussion beforehand, the newly elected Dover Area School Board unanimously rescinded the policy. Two weeks earlier, a judge ruled the policy unconstitutional.

"This is it," new school board president Bernadette Reinking said Tuesday, indicating the vote was final and the case was closed.

Thank God!
-LB

Board rescinds 'intelligent design' policy

After he discovered a false biography on Wikipedia that claims he was responsible for the death of JFK and his brother Bobby, John Seigenthaler wrote an op-ed piece in USA Today refuting those claims and rebuking Wiki admins and the ISPs that host them. Now, in light of Seigenthaler's outrage, the once open access Wikipedia now requires registration to submit new articles to the English language version of the site.

Seigenthaler spent a tonne of time and resources to track down the writer of the wikipedia article. He also considered filing a John Doe suit and kicked up a gigantic shitstorm with his Op-Ed.

Wikipedia is far from perfect, but instead of wasting what I assume to be days and weeks of his time, why didn't he just correct the entry?

Wikipedia: The Rules Have Changed | MetaFilter

President Bush has said the United States does not torture prisoners. However, he has threatened to veto the bill if it contains the McCain provision, saying it could limit U.S. counterterrorism tactics.

Oh, you mean torture of detainees? "Green light" torture tactics here, and what do you think the enemy is going to do to OUR troops or hostages?? The shrub is quite possibly THE single most dimwitted fuck in history. Speaks volumes about the idiot lemmings that vehemently defend him and his policies.

USAToday - Compromise on torture ban said to be close

dmv wrote:

This 1883 book is without question the worst phrasebook ever written. The writer, Pedro Carolino, who was Portuguese, did not particularly speak English, nor did he have a Portuguese-English dictionary available. Instead, he worked with a French-English phrasebook and a Portuguese-French dictionary. The results, I'm sure you'll agree, are staggering.

Heh - this could have been written in 2005. Babblefish anyone?? :D

LB

RE: English as she is spoke: Introduction

"Since being in hospital Saturday 14th I've had no internet connection - there is no wireless here, nor any Ethernet, nor even a crappy bedside unit. There is a bedside unit that does TV and radio, and is supposed to do 'net but it doesn't work, and besides has an awful PDA-style keypad.

For the first few days Nik ever so kindly shuttled his powerbook back and forth with my mail downloaded for offline tinkering. This worked pretty well all-in-all but obviously I couldn't use the Web or do any work. We did try to set up a dev environment but it was quite hard work and out of both our areas of knowledge.

Word got out I was banged up in hospital and Saul Albert of wirelesslondon.info rocked up with two laptops, a 12V car jumpstart battery, a directional wifi antenna, and reams of various cables.

Thank you Saul! (And thank you unsecured hotspot owners!)"

LB

How to get internet from a hospital bed

dmv wrote:
] ] Second, sales of the largest and most profitible SUVs are
] ] slowing. This has a disproportionate impact on GM and
] ] Ford. I'm not sure what the net net is on an individual
] ] (consumer) level; if you own a large SUV, I expect you
] ] will be disappointed at what you can sell it for, as long
] ] as gas stays near $2.50 per/gallon. Now consider all of
] ] the SUVs which have been leased over the past 3 years:
] ] Dealers will soon have a glut of them on their lots, if
] ] they don't already, as lease renewal/extensions and trade
] ] ups slow.

GOOD! FANTASTIC even! Send 'em to the scrap yard where they belong! It's about time people woke up and realized how inefficient these fucking things are. FINALLY the honeymoon is over and people are going to think long and hard about buying an oversized SUV; buying decisions will now be based more and more on how it will impact their expendable cash and not the "doesn't this look cool?" mentality of trying to keep up with the Joneses.

Everyone says they want to reduce dependence on foreign oil. Great! So start at home and stop driving vehicles that get 12 MPG.

Soaring gas prices DO have a silver lining after all. :)

LB

RE: The Big Picture: Gasoline Prices (Adjusted for Inflation)