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The Magpie Developer
Jeff Atwood is one of the best programmer/writers around. I love reading his stuff, some I agree wholeheartedly with, other stuff we disagree, but this post is about a dead-on as they come. This idea has been floating in my head for a long time, but it is hard for me to conceptualize it in words, Atwood does a brilliant job at it. Must read for any developer. |
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Andy Olmsted's Last Blog Entry.
(Warning: Pretty rough) No matter how you feel politically about the war, this reminds you that each number people throw around as statistics is a human life. This is extremely well written, and pretty rough on your soul towards the end, but something everyone should read. Its a shitty situation all around, but there is always a human face behind the statistics and I want to make sure I never forget that. |
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Drinking stories that put yours to shame
Via Keith
To preserve his body during the voyage home, the second-in-command stored Nelson's body in the ship's vat of rum and halted all liquor rations to the crew. Not a bad idea, but when the ship reached port, officials went to retrieve Nelson's body and found the vat dry.
Disregarding good taste (in every sense), the crew had been secretly drinking from it the entire way home. After that, naval rum was referred to as Nelson's Blood. |
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making vodka pills in 24 hours
Recently, Chef Fabian was experimenting further with the Adria/Torreblanca technique of making 'vodka pills.' I use this word to describe the process of making liquid-filled candies by pouring flavored alcohol syrups into cornstarch and letting it set until a hard outer shell forms. |
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Strategy Letter VI - joelonsoftware.com
As a programmer, thanks to plummeting memory prices, and CPU speeds doubling every year, you had a choice. You could spend six months rewriting your inner loops in Assembler, or take six months off to play drums in a rock and roll band, and in either case, your program would run faster. Assembler programmers don’t have groupies.
Entire Article is Dead On. A must read for anyone in the software biz. |
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(Wednesday, November 24)
Open Letter
This is an open Letter to the guy (or extremely dexterous girl) that pisses all over our bathroom seat:
Dear Seat Pisser All Overer,
Please clean your pee up. I don't care if you spray, just clean your spray up. We work in a one toilet office the other toilets in this company are just too far away to walk too. I hate walking in and seeing piss all over the rim of the toilet, then having to exit because I don't want to clean up your piss. But I know as soon as I exit I will be remembered as the last person to leave the bathroom (hence labeling me the un-true shot). So please wipe the damn thing, I understand if you have shudder (or in some cases Seizure) when you go and happen to miss the target, but at least have the decency to clean it up when you do.
It's just fucking gross.
-E
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Free iPod?
Ok Check this out, I got a link to join FreeiPods.com from a friend (a friend who does thier research on things before doing anything) and I thought the site looked really cheesey. The thought of a free iPod is nice, but I didnt want to get scammed. So I did some reaserch myself and Wired has an article posted on it. I went ahead and signed up and will let people know about the status on an ongoing basis:
Free iPod Website:
http://www.freeiPods.com/
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Ideologies Vs. Eduation
As people do better; they start voting like Republicans - unless they have too much education and vote Democratic, which proves there can be too much of a good thing."
-Karl Rove
Senior Politcal Advisor to the President
"Bush's Trillions" by Nicholas Lemann Issue Feb 19 & 26 2001.
Is this a shameless attempt at making me feel better about the outcome of the election? You beat your ass it is :) Feel free to replace the 'John Kerry' with 'Guy Who Wasnt GW' Thanks to the anon. donator of it:
 (remember if you click the link to click on the image again to bring it up fullscreen)
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(Tuesday, November 23)
Baghdad Burning
I watched, tense, wondering what they would do- I expected the usual Marines treatment- that a heavy, booted foot would kick the man perhaps to see if he groaned. But it didn't work that way- the crack of gunfire suddenly explodes in the mosque as the Marine fires at the seemingly dead man and then come the words, "He's dead now."
VERY interesting Blog entry from an Iraqi woman who blogs continuously about the war. MC sent me a link to this entry about the Marine shooting in Falluaja and her thoughts on it. I am sure this IS NOT an isolated incident; it just happened to be one that was video taped. I don't think anyone will ever know what the environment of the situation was, except those people in the mosque. It is really unfortunate that Americans and Iraqis are still being put through this, more than a year after "mission accomplished". Mission has not been accomplished. There are still people dieing on both sides, and we are not better (as Americans) in the war on Terrorism today than 2 years ago. I would be willing to say there are MANY MORE people hating Americans (especially if they see us as occupiers) in Iraq than there were 3 years ago. Good planning GW. We are fighting 2 wars, the War on Terrorism VS OBL (What I call the war of financial attrition) and Iraq. It is a pretty shitty situation our President and his "Intel" got us into.
-E
Baghdad Burning
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Kevin Sites Blog
After reading this, you really just don't know what to say. There isnt anyone wrong in this kinda situation, you just wish the situation didn't exist, but you are glad someone didn't ignore it.
Kevin Sites Blog
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(Friday, November 19)
Inmarsat zapping
Arrrrrrr Matie...
"Pirates are the heroes of age-old adventure stories, but most of us forget that whole regions still depend on modern pirates. The coast around Malacca in Malaysia is such a spot, together with the Bay of Thailand and the Southern Chinese Sea. In South America the coast of Northern Brazil is another centre of pirate activity. On average every other day sees an attack, and whenever pirates strike they leave good manners at home. Typically all people on board of a ship are killed, unless they manage to escape with a rescue boat. Most pirates know in advance if the ship and its cargo is worth an attack, because they use state of the art equipment to monitor Inmarsat communications and even fax transmissions listing every single cargo item. Quite a substantial portion of Inmarsat reception units that are being sold in Germany or the United States are channelled to those regions where they are of invaluable service to modern age pirates. French journalist Eric Paquier managed to interview one pirate recently and when asked what pirates do with their victims he got the following response: 'We hang them upside down on one of the masts, then burn them alive and later eat their ears for dessert."
Inmarsat zapping
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USE THE DAMN VETO GEORGE!
I really think GW believes that we can live on a 'Credit Card Economy' while he is in office and whoever is in office in 10 years will take the blunt of it. For the love of God, we cannot afford everything. Learn to pick and choose. It really amazes me people think he is 'Conservative'. When it comes to fiscal responsibility and foreign relations, GW is anything but Conservative.
Bush signs debt ceiling increase into law - Nov. 19, 2004
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(Thursday, November 18)
BBC NEWS | Business | Bill Gates 'most spammed person'
"But he said only about 10 e-mails a day made it through to his inbox, because of anti-spam technology that filters the messages. He went on to describe the system, which may be available to consumers with the next Windows release, as a form of a Klingon Cloaking device in which he can be transported back in time to find and terminiate the spammer before he/she send the email."
Ok, I admit i added the last sentence. Sounds about as truthful as the first one though doesn't it?
BBC NEWS | Business | Bill Gates 'most spammed person':
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TheBostonChannel.com - Entertainment - Rolling Stones Top 100 Songs
Actually only 50 I guess they will put other 50 out later. Thanks to Joel for the list: (My Esteemed Opins in Italics)
Rolling Stones Top 100 Songs
Where the Hell is Stevie Wonder/Van Morison ?
1. Like a Rolling Stone - Bob Dylan
Biased?
2. Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones
3. Imagine - John Lennon
4. What's Going On? - Marvin Gaye
5. Respect - Aretha Franklin
Amen.
6. Good Vibrations - The Beach Boys
7. Johnny B. Goode - Chuck Berry
8. Hey Jude - The Beatles
9. Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
10. What'd I say? - Ray Charles
11. My Generation - The Who
12. A Change Is Gonna Come - Sam Cooke
Interesting.
13. Yesterday - The Beatles
14. Blowin' In The Wind - Bob Dylan
15. London Calling - The Clash
16. I want to Hold Your Hand - The Beatles
17. Purple Haze - Jimi Hendrix
18. Maybellene - Chuck Berry
?
19. Hound Dog - Elvis Pressley
20. Let It Be - The Beatles
21. Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen
22. By My Baby - The Ronettes
23. In My Life - The Beatles
Amen.
24. People Get Ready - The Impressions
???? Is their and Impressionist Editor at RS?
25. God Only Knows - The Beach Boys
26. A Day In The Life - The Beatles
27. Layla - Derek and the Dominoes
28. Sittin' On The Dock Of The Bay - Otis Redding
29. Help - The Beatles
30. I Walk The Line - Johnny Cash
31. Stairway To Heaven - Led Zeppelin
32. Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones
Should have been higher!
33. River Deep, Mountain High - Ike and Tina Turner
How the hell is this right next to Sympathy for the Devil?!?
34. You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling - Righteous Brothers
RIP Goose
35. Light My Fire - The Doors
36. One - U2
37. No Woman, No Cry - Bob Marley and The Wailers
38. Gimme Shelter - The Rolling Stones
39. That'll Be the Day - Buddy Holly and the Crickets
40. Dancing in the Street - Martha and the Vandellas
41. The Weight - The Band
Take a Load off Fanie and move her Ass up to Top 10. Whats this #41 Bullshit?
42. Waterloo Sunset - The Kinks
43. Tutti Frutti - Little Richard
44. Georgia On My Mind - Ray Charles
45. Heartbreak Hotel - Elvis Pressley
46. Heroes - David Bowie
47. Bridge Over Troubled Water - Simon and Garfunkel
48. All Along The Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix
49. Hotel California - The Eagles
50. The Tracks of My Tears - Smokey Robinson and The Miracles
Only the B2K Remix. Those Guys Roxxx!!!11
TheBostonChannel.com - Entertainment - Rolling Stones Top 100 Songs:
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Grey Video
I dug the Grey Album a lot. This video is pretty cool. Looks like a lot of the clips are from Hard Days Night. Neat video mix.
The Grey Video (Grey Album Encore)
Right now I am listning the The Kleptones - A Night at the Hip Hopera the new Hip Hop/Queen Mashup... Man is it awsome... Might even be better than The Grey Album. Go find it on a p2p.
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High-Definition Personal Video Recorder Cookbook
High-Definition Personal Video Recorder Cookbook
"So you want to build your own HDTV personal video recorder before the broadcast flag mandate takes effect on July 30, 2005, leaving you with nothing but devices laden with Hollywood-imposed restrictions? With just a little bit of spare cash and basic computer tinkering skills, you can build yourself a high-definition PVR that out-performs any similar product currently on the market. "
EFF: High-Definition Personal Video Recorder Cookbook:
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Best Buy hopes to exorcize devil patrons
Customers Searching for the Best deal?!? What is this world coming too? Here's an idea, why don't you guys open more than 2 f'ing registers at a time so it makes shopping there a more pleasurable experience. I am more than happy to drive 30 extra mins to Fry's seeing as how their store is cleaner/bigger/and at any given moment has more than 2 register's open, guaranteed. All Hail thy Fry's Mecca.
Best Buy hopes to exorcize devil patrons
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Amazon is Amazing
The Amazon Simple Queue Service offers a reliable, highly scalable hosted queue for buffering messages between distributed application components. The Amazon Simple Queue Service reduces the costs associated with resolving the producer-consumer problem that arises in distributed application development. Such costs include increased application development time, and potentially significant investment in server and network infrastructure to support distributed application messaging. Amazon has already invested in the large-scale computing infrastructure that runs the Queue Service, and since the Service's interface is exposed via Web services, integration with applications is fast and easy.
Using the Amazon Simple Queue Service, you can decouple components of your application so that they run independently, with the Queue Service easing messaging management between components. Any component of a distributed application can store any type of data in a reliable queue at Amazon.com. Any other component or application can then later retrieve the data, using queue semantics. The queue acts as a buffer between the work-producer that is saving the data, and the work-consumer that is retrieving the data for processing. Thus, the queue resolves issues that would otherwise arise if the producer were producing work faster than the consumer can process the work, or if the producer or consumer were only intermittently connected to the network.
Registered developers have free access to the Simple Queue Service during the Beta, but storage is limited to 4,000 queue entries per developer.
How utterly brilliant. No longer a Book-dot-com. Amazon is leveragin its large scale hardware system, and extending it to developers. I am sure the switch will be flipped to charagable messages as this grows popular. Anyone need a 100% uptime message queue? Bezos is Brilliant.
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(Friday, November 12)
Teen Wolf
Me and some friends were having an email discussion about Teen Wolf and someone mentioned Styles character and I brought up the character 'Boof'. Not convinced the characters name was 'Booth' (and all through childhood I had the misnomer stuck in my head) I went to IMDB.com to go check out her character's name. That's when I just laughed my ass off at this review of the movie:
"Date: 2 January 2004
Summary: Big Bad Movie
I hate this movie, but somehow it made enough money to warrant an even weaker sequel. I'm a horror purist and I hate it when a movie twists and distorts the facts to squeeze a script out of nothing. Michael J. Fox plays a teen with a werewolf heritage, but instead of turning into a wolf man at the sign of the full moon and terrorizing the countryside, he just spouts hair and wins basketball games. Just when the concept couldn't get any more stupid, he is graciously accepted by being a freak by his peers. I've known kids who terrorized others for mismatched socks ! And who knew wolves were basketball players; that's one tidbit that I'm sure Steve Irwin would like to know about. If a wolf attacks, just distract it with a basketball ! Please don't waste your time watching this movie; I cringe today just wondering how this movie got made !"
The review just about made me cry thinking that there is one person out there in the world that is a 'horror purist' that got upset when they threw in the Teen Wolf VHS tape and was hoping for some sort of scary movie with MICHAEL J FOX and was actually let down by the movie?!?! And this was my favorite line "I hate it when a movie twists and distorts the facts" I, Eric Thompson, must have missed the Werewolf Fact Ship when it left the dock. It gets better too, in the middle of the review one can easily see that at sometime in his life this reviewer was beat up (probably more than once) because he fucked up when choosing his socks one morning. This was definitely a great laugh for my day, and I may have to start commenting on the psychology of other peoples comments more often.
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(Thursday, November 11)
Veteran's Day
Don't forget Vets day today. Both my grandfathers served. The picture above is of my Mother's father. He passed away before 3 months before I was born, some think because of a heart-weakening sickness he contracted while he was liberating Dachau in WWII. My other grandfather served in WWII and the 50-53 Korean war aboard a bomber doing mass calculations on where to drop the goods (now you can see where me and my father get our math skills, imagine doing our number cruntching 40,000 feet in the air). I really do consider them the greatest generation and both great men that people from my generation may never understand what they had to go through.
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Microsoft search set to take on Google - Nov. 10, 2004
Yahoo fired the first shot. Big news outta Redmond about the date of thier launch. To those who don't know Search Engines dynamics well, about 1 year ago 70% of websearches were done on Google's search engine. Now that did not make 70% of searches were done on Google.com about 30% (of that 70%) of all those were done on AOL search. Now on the flip side MSN's results (aka SERPS) were from Yahoo's PFI (Paid for Inclusion) results set. Now MSN has their own spider and is now breaking away from Yahoo. Which gives a slight bit better amount of traffic to websites from Non PFI (as of right now) traffic. In short its a nice little boost of free traffic to websites and also puts another competitor out in the Search Engine Market so one engine does not dominate near as much (Google) and consumers have a wider choice of SE to compete for better results.
Microsoft search set to take on Google - Nov. 10, 2004
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Fox News Sucks
Fox News is so lame. They are the only News Company that would put more value (ie higher position on the web page) on the Peterson Jury losing a member than American Soldiers fighting tooth and nail (and even to the death) in Fallujah. Rupert Murdoch makes me sick. That is pretty "American" if you ask me. Fox News looks like some shitty british tabloid. Please folks get your news anywhere but here. There is *liberal*
media, and there is also Extremest-We-Are-Only-Out-For-Advertisers-And-Gossip-Numbers newspapers online. Know your enemies and know your friends.
_E
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(Tuesday, November 9)
Ding Dong the Ashcroft Gone
"The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved"
Hmmm....[waiting for him to look at the camera and yell "NOT!" in Wayne and Garth style].
Eric: "Asphictersayshuh?"
GW: "Huh?"
Respect and Hate go hand in hand. In all honesty I think Ashcroft held internet policies that were so far right, AnneCoultier.com could cut her teeth on them, I do wish him the best health wise. Politicians that want to "cover female statues breasts" in our nations capitol may be old school (and almost Amish for that fucking matter) but I know here lately he has had some health problems and we all know he is a 'popular target' for the patriot act (when it is the Bush admin, and certain intelligence executives who want to make *their* job easier) that push it. I wish him well and hope he stays out of the spotlight and enjoys life. Dear God please don't let GW appoint another Zealot. I fear Ashcroft was step 1 and we may be about to see step 2. Prepare the world for Joe Smithism.
MSNBC - Ashcroft, Evans resign from Cabinet
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(Saturday, November 6)
New Tom Wolfe Novel
Regardless of the girlie-ass cover, I am really pumped about the new Tom Wolfe novel coming out. In all honestly I have only read two Tom Wolfe novels, but it has not been in spite of me not wanting to read more, it has just been the amount that time/work/life have allowed me to read. The first book I read written by him was 'A Man in Full' If anyone lives within 50 miles of a square foot of the (Atlanta) Perimeter (285) then you need to read this book. You will relate in some way to one of the characters. The entire book is set in Atlanta and has southern drawl and southern executive business character to a T just like whip cream on a pumpkin pie with a side of Good Ole Boy politics thrown in. Man what a great book. About seven years ago I read The Electric Kool Aid Acid Test. Let me say this, I believe Tom Wolfe is the only American writer who is currently putting pen to paper (or finger to keystroke [of some manner, bit-processing or not]) who will be studied in High School and College Level English classes as a 'Master' in the future. That level of a specific artistic job that is so far beyond journeymen of a particular trade that it is always an expectation, but never a reality. I am really excited to read this novel. I hope it lives up to my (a computer programmers) expectations.
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(Friday, November 5)
Lawnmower Be Gone.
National Weather Service issued a frost advisory for Friday night into Saturday morning for numerous Metro Atlanta counties.
Awww yeah first freeze of the year. You know what that means boys and girls...... NO MORE LAWN MOWING. I am going to drink heavily tonight to celebrate.
Frost Expected in Metro Counties
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Indian Outsourcers For Bush
I sent this to a group of friends yesterday, thought I would share:
Their are a bunch of Indian Programmers in Hyperbaud, India that did work for us at one point and I thought it was really interesting when they IM'd me late last night. The conversation went like like (Edited) :
Indian Contractor: I guess you are satisfied with the voting?
(I was a lil confused, I was 'satisfied in my mind with the voting, I didn't necessarily enjoy the out come, but I was satisfied it had been done fairly, of course by this he meant 'I assume you are happy that Bush is president again. Instead of trying to explain my very involved political feelings, I just got lazy and said:)
Cyanbane: Yes I am.
The following response was very weird at first, but I completely understand it in hindsight. The response was
Indian Contract: Good we are too. We were worried for a small amount of time earlier.
I was really confused based on my perception of foreigners views of America. Then it hit me why he wanted bush voted in so much. I asked him:
Cyanbane: I assume you are happy also?
He proceeded to tell me about how India was very pro bush as all their jobs depend on it. He explained that some companies had actually already been preparing programmers for layoffs and documenting basically 'pink slips" to certain people because Kerry would be such a hurt to the IT outsourcing businesses. He continued to talk about how a lot of the major companies like Wipro and others will probably continue expanding at the amazing rates they expanding because of the Bush win. I personally do not see a problem with outsourcing, it is a natural form of business evolution. From a business perspective it is something that is bound to happen. Not only in India, but also former Russian States and China. I just thought it was interesting how my perception was so skewed about India's loathe for Bush (with relation to our diplomacy with Pakistan). The bottom line is it is all about the American Dollar for them also.
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Episode III Frame By Frame
Form Arena Force and Force.net:
00:07 - 20th Century Fox Logo
00:09 - Lucasfilm Logo
00:14 - "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away..."
00:19 - Luke Skywalker in ANH walks out to view the binary sunset on Tatooine.
00:23 - Obi-Wan Kenobi in ANH speaks to Luke about the Jedi.
00:26 - Qui-Gon Jinn in TPM brandishes his saber before the final duel with Darth Maul.
00:27 - Shot from AOTC of the Clonetroopers walking into the transport.
00:29 - Shot from AOTC of the Clonetroopers at the end of the movie with transports lifting off in the background.
00:23 - First Revenge of the Sith shot of Obi-Wan and Anakin with their backs toward the camera, walking up to a window during the day.
00:36 - AOTC shot of Anakin looking evil just before the Tusken slaughter.
00:38 - AOTC shot of Anakin riding the Swoop on Tatooine.
00:41 - ANH Obi-Wan continues his voice-over.
00:42 - Second Revenge of the Sith shot. A hooded Anakin turns to the camera with red and yellow eyes much like Darth Maul's.
00:50 - Shot of erupting volcanoes on Mustafar.
00:56 - Geonosians ride giant beetles in a Mustafar lava field.
00:58 - Black screen with Darth Sidious saying "Lord Vader?" followed by Vader's "Yes Master?" and Sidious' "Riiiiise".
01:04 - Darth Vader, strapped to a table, begins to rise.
01:05 - A hooded Obi-Wan looks up. He is in a darkly lit area with sunlight seen in the background. This is possibly a location on Utapau.
01:06 - Palpatine turns to look at the camera.
01:07 - Vader continues to rise.
01:08 - R2D2 on the Tantive IV.
01:08 - C3PO on the Tantive IV.
01:09 - Padme turns to look at Obi-Wan with a terrified look on her face.
01:09 - Mace Windu raises his saber above his head. This shot is inside Palpatine's office.
01:10 - Vader continues to rise.
01:11 - Chewbacca and Tarfful.
01:12 - Yoda, in Palpatine's doorway, opens his cloak to reveal his saber.
01:13 - Vader finishes his rise and locks into frame.
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That ain't IE :)
VERY Cool for all you 'Lost' Fans:
OK, all of you "Lost" groupies out there, it's time for another blog entry on our new favorite show. In my prior post on the show I mentioned that one of the producers said there is a connection between the show and a comic book. The comic book is Flash/Green Lanter: Faster Friends I and II. I can see I'm going to have to go out and buy the comic, but for now I have found a page that gives a quick summary of the comic. I may blog a bit about last night's episode later tonight or tomorrow, but for now, I figured this would give us all some food for thought. This comes from a website apparently devoted to the Green Lantern, and first saw this referenced here. Here's the summary.
Read On:
Spellings got SPECSappeal Baby...
"Researchers at electronics giant TDK have developed a tough new coating that promises to make scratched DVDs a thing of the past and that will help usher in an emerging data storage format with 10 times the capacity of the current DVD standard."