Categories
Blather

eeeporn

Speaking of the eee PC, here’s a video that takes a good long look at an actual machine. The clip bears a disturbing resemblance to a porn video, with the pretty thing being carefully unwrapped, posed, poked and probed. I suspect this borrowed skin flick aesthetic might be common throughout the gadget-porn video genre.

Anyway, I found it very instructive. The keyboard does look worryingly small (I don’t think there’s a camera angle that makes the guy’s fingers look bigger…)

Categories
Blather

Military Promotions

The IDF is trying to fight a “plague” of draft-dodging with nauseating conformist peer pressure, and Nir contrasts this with an Ukrainian army recruitment campaign, where a uniform (with a dandy striped sailor’s vest!) and an APC will get ya da bitches.

But through that clip you get to a whole series of army ads from around the world, including one for the Lebanese Army. No war machines or weapons here, as a single unarmed young man in uniform walks through European-style boulevards and is greeted with patriotic pride by passers-by. Knowing (or rather, knowing of the absence of) the Lebanese army, one can’t help wonder if that young lad is all of it. But still, one can’t help but feel envious. Instead of appealing to machismo or spineless conformism, this ad tries to touch your heart, and show you that serving your country is a noble and worthwhile thing to do. It may not be very effective in convincing me to join the Lebanese army, but it does a very effective job at making me feel very reluctant to fight such nice people as the Lebanese. And that, at least, might help that country’s national defense.

Categories
Blather

eeelust

I lust after an Asus eee pc , but I’m wondering how usable it’ll be with its tiny keyboard and tiny screen. What’s it like, browsing the web at a resolution of 800×480?

Categories
Comics

a better world

A wish for a better world – Matt Rossi on the early Superman comics:

The real wish fulfillment of the early Siegel and Shuster Superman stories (say it three times fast) isn’t his amazing powers, it’s that he can change any social ill, right any wrong, fix any problem with straightforward brute force. He has the power to effect real, lasting societal change by finding the right people and hitting them.

Categories
Oddities Software and Programming

Netscape 0.9

To mark the passing of Netscape, Sean Burke installed netscape 0.9 and took it for a test ride.