Boombot.

As the health of the Dalai Lama seems uncertain, the question remains: will he be reborn this time? and, if so, where?

Facil, an open-source community based in Québec, is suing the Québec government for buying Microsoft software when free alternatives are available. Facil’s press release
says, in part, “From February to June 2008, FACIL has noticed sales of
proprietary software for more than 25 million dollars. These purchases
were made for products offered by large multinational enterprises, with
no regard to suppliers in Quebec. … While most of the developed
countries have started, a few years back, migrating their technological
infrastructures to Free Software, Quebec’s public administration is far
behind.” Some applaud Facil’s move. Others, not so much.

A Serbian village erecting a statue to reggae superstar Bob Marley? Sure, why not? A Bosnian town with a statue of kung-fu legend Bruce Lee? Hell, yeah! And how ’bout, say, a Serbian monument to Rocky? Er, well.. ok. But the British Museum displaying what they say is the largest gold statue built since ancient Egypt, of… Kate Moss? Um… I dunno. I prefer the Russian monument to the enema.

The aim of Self-Portrait Challenge
is to create an online community of people participating in a
continuous artistic self-expressive art project; self-portraiture. (images in the nude category obviously NSFW) They also participate in the Flickr: self portrait tuesday group.

Your
Gmail account isn’t secure. Announced at Defcon
16, Jay Beale’s tool, The
Middler (man-in-the-middle) to steal session ID from not only Gmail users,
but LinkedIn, LiveJournal, Facebook, and presumably any site that uses a session-based
cookie. Enable
https permanently.

Rat Sound Systems is the original punk rock sound company. Started in LA in the early 80s, it was a stalwart of the early LA punk scene (posters: it did happen). Starting in the 1990s, Rat Sound has been supplying sound for some of rock’s biggest acts. They even went corporate, with a client list including Paris Hilton.
Since May 2006, founder Dave Rat, who mixes the Red Hot Chili Peppers for the audience, has been keeping a tour blog.
Those of you who (like me) are interested in audio nerdery may be interested in the Sound nerd speak section of Dave’s blog. (e.g. drum fills, subs, input lists, amplifiers, the Grateful Dead’s wall of sound)

You may also read about the technical evolution of sound systems, from humble beginning to the Rat Trap 5 cabinet of the 1990s and the L-Acoustics V-DOSC and Microwedge of today. Also of interest: Dave’s Roadiepedia.

Steve Jobs hangs on.

They’re everywhere; languishing on doorsteps, hanging out in the middle
of the road, dangling off street signs, peeking out of piles of
garbage, reclining in the middle of the sidewalk, riding the bus for
free. London Bananas.

Mythbusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman
demonstrate the difference between CPU and GPU by painting the Mona
Lisa in 275 milliseconds using a 1100 barrel paint ball gun earlier
this week at NVIDIA’s NVISION 08 show.