A great African American civil rights activist one said, “I’m sick and tired of being sick and tired.” That’s how I feel about copyright these days. You’ve got these entrenched business interests who seemingly have their favorite congressmen on speed-dial, and then you have people who, God forbid, would like to see these businesses embrace new, practical business models that don’t automatically assume their customers are potential criminals. But this! This latest development has me thinking, “You know what? Just shoot me. Go ahead. I don’t have to pay my student loans any more (take that, Citibank!), and I won’t have to worry about being treated like a criminal by the likes of whatever stupid entertainment company is in Congress’ good graces this week. Win-win.”

What the heck am I whinging about? It’s the leaked notes of an international copyright treaty, the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, that’s in the process of being negotiated in Seoul. Everything’s very hush-hush, of course, and you don’t hear a damn thing about it on TV, no. No, that’s filled with crackpots on the left and right claiming that health care will fix everyone’s problems automatically or destroy the country as soon as it’s signed into law. As if things this complicated could be debated in 30-second segments.

Anyhow, the bullet points of the treaty, by way of Boing Boing:

• That ISPs have to proactively police copyright on user-contributed material. This means that it will be impossible to run a service like Flickr or YouTube or Blogger, since hiring enough lawyers to ensure that the mountain of material uploaded every second isn’t infringing will exceed any hope of profitability.

• That ISPs have to cut off the Internet access of accused copyright infringers or face liability. This means that your entire family could be denied to the internet — and hence to civic participation, health information, education, communications, and their means of earning a living — if one member is accused of copyright infringement, without access to a trial or counsel.

• That the whole world must adopt US-style “notice-and-takedown” rules that require ISPs to remove any material that is accused — again, without evidence or trial — of infringing copyright. This has proved a disaster in the US and other countries, where it provides an easy means of censoring material, just by accusing it of infringing copyright.

• Mandatory prohibitions on breaking DRM, even if doing so for a lawful purpose (e.g., to make a work available to disabled people; for archival preservation; because you own the copyrighted work that is locked up with DRM)

Awesome. My favorite part is that treaty signatories have to abide by U.S.-style copyright takedown convention. Don’t worry, Planet Earth, we’ve got your best interests in mind.

The heck we do!

Whatever, I’m tired of this he-said, she-said garbage, vis-à-vis copyright, as should be clear by the tone of the post.

The Core System
The Eos core bundle contains a speaker with integrated iPod dock, a remote control, and an additional wireless speaker. You can buy wireless speakers individually, and pump music to up to four speakers from a single base station, for a total of five rooms filled with music. The base station is not too big, with ample room in the dock for the entire gamut of iPods and iPhones. On the front of the unit are plus and minus buttons for volume control, a wireless on/off toggle, a source input button, and a mute button. There are two LEDs on either side of the base: the one on the left is labeled “iPod” and the one on the right is labeled “AUX”. Obviously, pressing the “Source” button will toggle the audio source between a docked iPod and the line-in connection on the back of the unit.

Aside from the line-in jack, the back of the base station has a power port, a toggle switch for the Range Extended feature, and a link button which is used to set a unique ID for your Eos base station. In the unlikely event that your neighbor also buys an Eos, you can use the link button to make sure that your wireless speakers only play music from your base station.

The remote control is small, and the kind of thing I’d lose pretty quickly. I confirmed that the remote would operate a docked iPod, and then never touched it again. Maybe I’m an anomaly, but I usually just listen to my music on “shuffle”, and don’t have any need to interact with the iPod once the music starts playing.

The speakers in the base station were good. Speaker reviews are always a little tricky, because listening to music is such a subjective experience. So I won’t linger too longer here other than to say that I was entirely satisfied with the audio quality and the richness of the sound produced.

Expansion
Adding speakers is super easy. Just plug the speakers in and turn them on: they should find the base station automatically. Each speaker has its own volume control, so you can set sound levels on a per-room basis. Unfortunately, this is an entirely manual process: you need to turn the knob for each speaker on the speaker. There’s no centralized volume control, a la the Sonos system.

The speakers sounded as good as the base station: no complaints on audio quality.

The wireless speakers are billed as an all-in-one design, such that you plug the whole thing into the wall. You can certainly do that, but I find them to be a little too big for that kind of use. The power plug can be removed from the speaker, allowing you a little more flexibility with placement. I found that to be a really handy feature, though the power cord was, in most cases, just a little too short to allow me to place the speakers where I wanted. Also, removing the power plug from the speaker is a somewhat daunting process. The instructions — and a sticker on the speaker itself — says to “press down hard”. They’re not kidding. You have to really exert some force to get the plug free. Also, the power plugs are gigantic wall warts. Don’t expect to share an outlet with any other device, regardless of whether you use the all-in-one design or remove the plug from the speaker.

GigaWave Technology
The secret sauce in the Eos system is the GigaWave technology:

To avoid interference, Eos™ GigaWave uses proprietary frequency hopping digital spectrum technology (FHDSS). The special communications algorithm used in our GigaWave technology will not interfere with WiFi networks or digital products like Bluetooth and cordless telephones. This same technology allows Eos to stay clear of interference cased by with by other products that communicate in the 2.4 GHz , 5.8 GHz and the new Dect 6.0 cordless telephone frequency range.

I didn’t notice any interference or static, despite the countless WiFi and Bluetooth devices I have on at any one time. The speakers inside the house all worked fine, and it was fun to rock out to music through my abode without having to make any single source obscenely loud.

The range is listed as 150 feet. I put a speaker in my garage, which is maybe 75 feet from where I had the base station. In the default configuration, the signal would drop out pretty frequently. There was no static, and no faded signal: either it played, or it didn’t. I then enabled the Range Extender feature, which was surprisingly well-explained in the user manual:

To maintain a solid, interference free link the Eos system incorporates an advanced proprietary error correction scheme. Error correction is done by creating a slight delay between the transmitter and Wireless Speaker. Using this delay, Eos can confirm that the audio packets arrived at the Wireless Speaker/receiver. If the audio packet is not received, the Eos base station can resent it. Eos’ default delay (Range Extender Off) is 20 ms.

Turning on the Range Extender Switch increases the delay to 64ms. The increased delay allows Eos to resend more audio packets due to distance from the transmitter or ambient interference.

The Range Extender feature didn’t make for a perfect transmission to my garage, but it did make it noticeably better. There were still brief outages in my music playback, but there were far less and they were far shorter than when the Range Extender was off.

Uses
The intended primary use for the Eos is clearly to play music from an iPod or iPhone. Alas, this device isn’t specifically for iPhones, so you get that annoying screen: “This accessory is not made to work with iPhone” and are then prompted to turn on Airplane mode. Even though the Eos system is WiFi-friendly, I was repeatedly unable to stream last.fm music to my iPhone while it was in the base station.

If you want to manage your music, you’ll either need to deal with the ergonomics of using an iPod in the dock, or use the remote control. And remember, there’s no volume control with an iPod. As the manual states, “iPod volume jog wheel changes the headphone volume only and has no effect on the Eos base station volume.” So you’ll need to manually adjust volume on a per-room basis.

Perhaps a better solution is to connect the Eos base station to your Apple TV, or that home media PC that stores all your music. If you’re using iTunes, you can use the iPhone Remote app to control the music and the master volume from your phone.

The Bottom Line
I’m not the kind of guy who regularly wants to listen to the same music in more than one room of my house. I usually want music in only one room, anyway. If you’re the kind of person who would like to listen to the same music in multiple rooms, then the Eos may be a good choice for you. Or, if you can’t (or won’t) run speaker wire through your walls, the Eos would be worth considering. The Eos plays extremely well with other wireless devices, so you ought not have anything to worry about.

The retail price for the Core system (base station + one speaker) is $249 USD. That strikes me as a little much. It looks like there’s a sale going on right now, though, making that Core bundle only $199. I’m still not sure that’s a good price, but hey, it’s $50 you get to keep.

Photo credit: Dan Winters

It’s a bit surreal. A soldier assigned to the Reaper and Predator program may see combat at 2:00pm, and then go home at 5:30pm and stop for Taco Bell on the way home. Esquire managed to get some really excellent access at the site, and spent some time with the the people responsible for helping defend the ground troops in Afghanistan.

As I was perusing my hand-picked collection of websites that may or may not contain wonderful gadgets to write about – a ritual I perform Monday through Friday after breakfast and before my 10AM “good, healthy cry” – I came across this game on Hammacher Schlemmer’s site: Skittle Pool. What in the hell is Skittle Pool?

Apparently the original game came out in 1970, which would explain my unfamiliarity on the topic. Being born in February of 1979, I missed out on most of the important events of the decade and the ones I witnessed have long been forgotten in the non-working memory bank of a newborn infant.

So from what I gather, Skittle Pool is a tabletop billiards apparatus that can employ the same scoring systems as most standard pool games, except that instead of using a cue stick, you place the cue ball on a rotating stand before each shot and slam into the aforementioned cue ball with yet another cue ball attached to a pendulum chain.

Or as BoardGameGeek.com more eloquently puts it:

Skittle Pool is similar to “Skittle Bowl”, however the pins have been replaced by nine 2″ billiard balls. The table is approx. 24 inches square with 3 pockets each on the left and right sides. At the bottom of the board is a pendulum device that acts as the striker. The cue ball is placed in a special pivot foot and that foot is rotated to aim the cue ball at a target ball. The striker, a ball similar in size to the cue, is lifted and released (or gently thrown) to strike against the pivot foot which in turn transfers the energy to the cue ball.

Most billiard type games can be played on the table. A scoring rack (wire with plastic scoring chips) is included in the game.

The game was most notable for its promotion by American actor Don Adams who was well known for his role as a bumbling secret agent in “Get Smart” on 1960’s television.

Ah, Get Smart. I do recognize that name as a popular show from the 60’s that recently got made into a movie – further proof that Hollywood has officially run out of new ideas.

A quick YouTube search turns up the actual Skittle Pool commercial from way back when:

And while the product page on Hammacher Schlemmer doesn’t contain any reviews from Skittle Pool owners, it appears that the same item is available at Amazon for $20 less. The reviews (and there are only two of them) range from the surface not being very flat to the new version being so cheaply made that it broke, was replaced, and broke again.

If you’re feeling both nostalgic and industrious, you can make your own Skittle Pool table instead. This project over at Instructables came about as a result of the cheap plastic version breaking and, while the DIY version could probably use some felt, a second pendulum, and something more than tape to hold it together, it ought to serve as a good jumping off point for anyone serious enough to take a stab at it.

Any old-school Skittle Pool owners out there? Fun? Not fun? Would you buy it again?

BBG points us to this Palm Pre commercial remix that forces us to ask the question: Was Tim Robbins dead or dying in the Jacob’s Ladder. Was it like in An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge? Why haven’t I watched that movie lately? It was really good.

Even crazier REAL commercial after the jump.

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
by Ambrose Bierce

A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below. The man’s hands were behind his back, the wrists bound with a cord. A rope closely encircled his neck. It was attached to a stout cross-timber above his head and the slack fell to the level of his knees. Some loose boards laid upon the sleepers supporting the metals of the railway supplied a footing for him and his executioners–two private soldiers of the Federal army, directed by a sergeant who in civil life may have been a deputy sheriff. At a short remove upon the same temporary platform was an officer in the uniform of his rank, armed. He was a captain. A sentinel at each end of the bridge stood with his rifle in the position known as “support,” that is to say, vertical in front of the left shoulder, the hammer resting on the forearm thrown straight across the chest–a formal and unnatural position, enforcing an erect carriage of the body. It did not appear to be the duty of these two men to know what was occurring at the center of the bridge; they merely blockaded the two ends of the foot planking that traversed it.

Beyond one of the sentinels nobody was in sight; the railroad ran straight away into a forest for a hundred yards, then, curving, was lost to view. Doubtless there was an outpost farther along. The other bank of the stream was open ground–a gentle acclivity topped with a stockade of vertical tree trunks, loopholed for rifles, with a single embrasure through which protruded the muzzle of a brass cannon commanding the bridge. Midway of the slope between the bridge and fort were the spectators–a single company of infantry in line, at “parade rest,” the butts of the rifles on the ground, the barrels inclining slightly backward against the right shoulder, the hands crossed upon the stock. A lieu tenant stood at the right of the line, the point of his sword upon the ground, his left hand resting upon his right. Excepting the group of four at the center of the bridge, not a man moved. The company faced the bridge, staring stonily, motionless. The sentinels, facing the banks of the stream, might have been statues to adorn the bridge. The captain stood with folded arms, silent, observing the work of his subordinates, but making no sign. Death is a dignitary who when he comes announced is to be received with formal manifestations of respect, even by those most familiar with him. In the code of military etiquette silence and fixity are forms of deference.

The man who was engaged in being hanged was apparently about thirty-five years of age. He was a civilian, if one might judge from his habit, which was that of a planter. His features were good–a straight nose, firm mouth, broad forehead, from which his long, dark hair was combed straight back, falling behind his ears to the collar of his well-fitting frock coat. He wore a mustache and pointed beard, but no whiskers; his eyes were large and dark gray, and had a kindly expression which one would hardly have expected in one whose neck was in the hemp. Evidently this was no vulgar assassin. The liberal military code makes provision for hanging many kinds of persons, and gentlemen are not excluded.

The preparations being complete, the two private soldiers stepped aside and each drew away the plank upon which he had been standing. The sergeant turned to the captain, saluted and placed himself immediately behind that officer, who in turn moved apart one pace. These movements left the condemned man and the sergeant standing on the two ends of the same plank, which spanned three of the cross-ties of the bridge. The end upon which the civilian stood almost, but not quite, reached a fourth. This plank had been held in place by the weight of the captain; it was now held by that of the sergeant. At a signal from the former the latter would step aside, the plank would tilt and the condemned man go down between two ties. The arrangement commended itself to his judgment as simple and effective. His face had not been covered nor his eyes bandaged. He looked a moment at his “unsteadfast footing,” then let his gaze wander to the swirling water of the stream racing madly beneath his feet. A piece of dancing driftwood caught his attention and his eyes followed it down the current. How slowly it appeared to move, What a sluggish stream!

He closed his eyes in order to fix his last thoughts upon his wife and children. The water, touched to gold by the early sun, the brooding mists under the banks at some distance down the stream, the fort, the soldiers, the piece of drift–all had distracted him. And now he became conscious of a new disturbance. Striking through the thought of his dear ones was a sound which he could neither ignore nor understand, a sharp, distinct, metallic percussion like the stroke of a blacksmith’s hammer upon the anvil; it had the same ringing quality. He wondered what it was, and whether immeasurably distant or near by–it seemed both. Its recurrence was regular, but as slow as the tolling of a death knell. He awaited each stroke with impatience and–he knew not why–apprehension. The intervals of silence grew progressively longer, the delays became maddening. With their greater infrequency the sounds increased in strength and sharpness. They hurt his ear like the thrust of a knife; he feared he would shriek. What he heard was the ticking of his watch.

He unclosed his eyes and saw again the water below him. “If I could free my hands,” he thought, “I might throw off the noose and spring into the stream. By diving I could evade the bullets and, swimming vigorously, reach the bank, take to the woods and get away home. My home, thank God, is as yet outside their lines; my wife and little ones are still beyond the invader’s farthest advance.”

As these thoughts, which have here to be set down in words, were flashed into the doomed man’s brain rather than evolved from it the captain nodded to the sergeant. The sergeant stepped aside.

II
Peyton Farquhar was a well-to-do planter, of an old and highly respected Alabama family. Being a slave owner and like other slave owners a politician he was naturally an original secessionist and ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Circumstances of an imperious nature, which it is unnecessary to relate here, had prevented him from taking service with the gallant army that had fought the disastrous campaigns ending with the fall of Corinth, and he chafed under the inglorious restraint, longing for the release of his energies, the larger life of the soldier, the opportunity for distinction. That opportunity, he felt, would come, as it comes to all in war time. Meanwhile he did what he could. No service was too humble for him to perform in aid of the South, no adventure too perilous for him to undertake if consistent with the character of a civilian who was at heart a soldier, and who in good faith and without too much qualification assented to at least a part of the frankly villainous dictum that all is fair in love and war.

One evening while Farquhar and his wife were sitting on a rustic bench near the entrance to his grounds, a gray-clad soldier rode up to the gate and asked for a drink of water. Mrs. Farquhar was only toe, happy to serve him with her own white hands. While she was fetching the water her husband approached the dusty horseman and inquired eagerly for news from the front.

“The Yanks are repairing the railroads,” said the man, “and are getting ready for another advance. They have reached the Owl Creek bridge, put it in order and built a stockade on the north bank. The commandant has issued an order, which is posted everywhere, declaring that any civilian caught interfering with the railroad, its bridges, tunnels or trains will be summarily hanged. I saw the order.”

“How far is it to the Owl Creek bridge?” Farquhar asked.

“About thirty miles.”

“Is there no force on this side the creek?”

“Only a picket post half a mile out, on the railroad, and a single sentinel at this end of the bridge.”

“Suppose a man–a civilian and student of hanging–should elude the picket post and perhaps get the better of the sentinel,” said Farquhar, smiling, “what could he accomplish?”

The soldier reflected. “I was there a month ago,” he replied. “I observed that the flood of last winter had lodged a great quantity of driftwood against the wooden pier at this end of the bridge. It is now dry and would burn like tow.”

The lady had now brought the water, which the soldier drank. He thanked her ceremoniously, bowed to her husband and rode away. An hour later, after nightfall, he repassed the plantation, going northward in the direction from which he had come. He was a Federal scout.

III
As Peyton Farquhar fell straight downward through the bridge he lost consciousness and was as one already dead. From this state he was awakened–ages later, it seemed to him–by the pain of a sharp pressure upon his throat, followed by a sense of suffocation. Keen, poignant agonies seemed to shoot from his neck downward through every fiber of his body and limbs. These pains appeared to flash along well-defined lines of ramification and to beat with an inconceivably rapid periodicity. They seemed like streams of pulsating fire heating him to an intolerable temperature. As to his head, he was conscious of nothing but a feeling of fulness–of congestion. These sensations were unaccompanied by thought. The intellectual part of his nature was already effaced; he had power only to feel, and feeling was torment. He was conscious of motion. Encompassed in a luminous cloud, of which he was now merely the fiery heart, without material substance, he swung through unthinkable arcs of oscillation, like a vast pendulum. Then all at once, with terrible suddenness, the light about him shot upward with the noise of a loud splash; a frightful roaring was in his ears, and all was cold and dark. The power of thought was restored; he knew that the rope had broken and he had fallen into the stream. There was no additional strangulation; the noose about his neck was already suffocating him and kept the water from his lungs. To die of hanging at the bottom of a river!–the idea seemed to him ludicrous. He opened his eyes in the darkness and saw above him a gleam of light, but how distant, how inaccessible! He was still sinking, for the light became fainter and fainter until it was a mere glimmer. Then it began to grow and brighten, and he knew that he was rising toward the surface–knew it with reluctance, for he was now very comfortable. “To be hanged and drowned,” he thought? “that is not so bad; but I do not wish to be shot. No; I will not be shot; that is not fair.”

He was not conscious of an effort, but a sharp pain in his wrist apprised him that he was trying to free his hands. He gave the struggle his attention, as an idler might observe the feat of a juggler, without interest in the outcome. What splendid effort!–what magnificent, what superhuman strength! Ah, that was a fine endeavor! Bravo! The cord fell away; his arms parted and floated upward, the hands dimly seen on each side in the growing light. He watched them with a new interest as first one and then the other pounced upon the noose at his neck. They tore it away and thrust it fiercely aside, its undulations resembling those of a water snake. “Put it back, put it back!” He thought he shouted these words to his hands, for the undoing of the noose had been succeeded by the direst pang that he had yet experienced. His neck ached horribly; his brain was on fire; his heart, which had been fluttering faintly, gave a great leap, trying to force itself out at his mouth. His whole body was racked and wrenched with an insupportable anguish! But his disobedient hands gave no heed to the command. They beat the water vigorously with quick, downward strokes, forcing him to the surface. He felt his head emerge; his eyes were blinded by the sunlight; his chest expanded convulsively, and with a supreme and crowning agony his lungs engulfed a great draught of air, which instantly he expelled in a shriek!

He was now in full possession of his physical senses. They were, indeed, preternaturally keen and alert. Something in the awful disturbance of his organic system had so exalted and refined them that they made record of things never before perceived. He felt the ripples upon his face and heard their separate sounds as they struck. He looked at the forest on the bank of the stream, saw the individual trees, the leaves and the veining of each leaf–saw the very insects upon them: the locusts, the brilliant-bodied flies, the grey spiders stretching their webs from twig to twig. He noted the prismatic colors in all the dewdrops upon a million blades of grass. The humming of the gnats that danced above the eddies of the stream, the beating of the dragon flies’ wings, the strokes of the water-spiders’ legs, like oars which had lifted their boat–all these made audible music. A fish slid along beneath his eyes and he heard the rush of its body parting the water.

He had come to the surface facing down the stream; in a moment the visible world seemed to wheel slowly round, himself the pivotal point, and he saw the bridge, the fort, the soldiers upon the bridge, the captain, the sergeant, the two privates, his executioners. They were in silhouette against the blue sky. They shouted and gesticulated, pointing at him. The captain had drawn his pistol, but did not fire; the others were unarmed. Their movements were grotesque and horrible, their forms gigantic.

Suddenly he heard a sharp report and something struck the water smartly within a few inches of his head, spattering his face with spray. He heard a second report, and saw one of the sentinels with his rifle at his shoulder, a light cloud of blue smoke rising from the muzzle. The man in the water saw the eye of the man on the bridge gazing into his own through the sights of the rifle. He observed that it was a grey eye and remembered having read that grey eyes were keenest, and that all famous marksmen had them. Nevertheless, this one had missed.

A counter-swirl had caught Farquhar and turned him half round; he was again looking into the forest on the bank opposite the fort. The sound of a clear, high voice in a monotonous singsong now rang out behind him and came across the water with a distinctness that pierced and subdued all other sounds, even the beating of the ripples in his ears. Although no soldier, he had frequented camps enough to know the dread significance of that deliberate, drawling, aspirated chant; the lieu. tenant on shore was taking a part in the morning’s work. How coldly and pitilessly–with what an even, calm intonation, presaging, and enforcing tranquillity in the men–with what accurately measured inter vals fell those cruel words:

“Attention, company! . . Shoulder arms! . . . Ready! . . . Aim! . . . Fire!”

Farquhar dived–dived as deeply as he could. The water roared in his ears like the voice of Niagara, yet he heard the dulled thunder of the volley and, rising again toward the surface, met shining bits of metal, singularly flattened, oscillating slowly downward. Some of them touched him on the face and hands, then fell away, continuing their descent. One lodged between his collar and neck; it was uncomfortably warm and he snatched it out.

As he rose to the surface, gasping for breath, he saw that he had been a long time under water; he was perceptibly farther down stream nearer to safety. The soldiers had almost finished reloading; the metal ramrods flashed all at once in the sunshine as they were drawn from the barrels, turned in the air, and thrust into their sockets. The two sentinels fired again, independently and ineffectually.

The hunted man saw all this over his shoulder; he was now swimming vigorously with the current. His brain was as energetic as his arms and legs; he thought with the rapidity of lightning.

The officer,” he reasoned, “will not make that martinet’s error a second time. It is as easy to dodge a volley as a single shot. He has probably already given the command to fire at will. God help me, I cannot dodge them all!”

An appalling plash within two yards of him was followed by a loud, rushing sound, diminuendo, which seemed to travel back through the air to the fort and died in an explosion which stirred the very river to its deeps!

A rising sheet of water curved over him, fell down upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the forest beyond.

“They will not do that again,” he thought; “the next time they will use a charge of grape. I must keep my eye upon the gun; the smoke will apprise me–the report arrives too late; it lags behind the missile. That is a good gun.”

Suddenly he felt himself whirled round and round–spinning like a top. The water, the banks, the forests, the now distant bridge, fort and men–all were commingled and blurred. Objects were represented by their colors only; circular horizontal streaks of color–that was all he saw. He had been caught in a vortex and was being whirled on with a velocity of advance and gyration that made him giddy and sick. In a few moments he was flung upon the gravel at the foot of the left bank of the stream–the southern bank–and behind a projecting point which concealed him from his enemies. The sudden arrest of his motion, the abrasion of one of his hands on the gravel, restored him, and he wept with delight. He dug his fingers into the sand, threw it over himself in handfuls and audibly blessed it. It looked like diamonds, rubies, emeralds; he could think of nothing beautiful which it did not resemble. The trees upon the bank were giant garden plants; he noted a definite order in their arrangement, inhaled the fragrance of their blooms. A strange, roseate light shone through the spaces among their trunks and the wind made in their branches the music of Æolian harps. He had no wish to perfect his escape–was content to remain in that enchanting spot until retaken.

A whiz and rattle of grapeshot among the branches high above his head roused him from his dream. The baffled cannoneer had fired him a random farewell. He sprang to his feet, rushed up the sloping bank, and plunged into the forest.

All that day he traveled, laying his course by the rounding sun. The forest seemed interminable; nowhere did he discover a break in it, not even a woodman’s road. He had not known that he lived in so wild a region. There was something uncanny in the revelation.

By nightfall he was fatigued, footsore, famishing. The thought of his wife and children urged him on. At last he found a road which led him in what he knew to be the right direction. It was as wide and straight as a city street, yet it seemed untraveled. No fields bordered it, no dwelling anywhere. Not so much as the barking of a dog suggested human habitation. The black bodies of the trees formed a straight wall on both sides, terminating on the horizon in a point, like a diagram in a lesson in perspective. Overhead, as he looked up through this rift in the wood, shone great garden stars looking unfamiliar and grouped in strange constellations. He was sure they were arranged in some order which had a secret and malign significance. The wood on either side was full of singular noises, among which–once, twice, and again–he distinctly heard whispers in an unknown tongue.

His neck was in pain and lifting his hand to it found it horribly swollen. He knew that it had a circle of black where the rope had bruised it. His eyes felt congested; he could no longer close them. His tongue was swollen with thirst; he relieved its fever by thrusting it forward from between his teeth into the cold air. How softly the turf had carpeted the untraveled avenue–he could no longer feel the roadway beneath his feet!

Doubtless, despite his suffering, he had fallen asleep while walking, for now he sees another scene–perhaps he has merely recovered from a delirium. He stands at the gate of his own home. All is as he left it, and all bright and beautiful in the morning sunshine. He must have traveled the entire night. As he pushes open the gate and passes up the wide white walk, he sees a flutter of female garments; his wife, looking fresh and cool and sweet, steps down from the veranda to meet him. At the bottom of the steps she stands waiting, with a smile of ineffable joy, an attitude of matchless grace and dignity. Ah, how beautiful she is! He springs forward with extended arms. As he is about to clasp her he feels a stunning blow upon the back of the neck; a blinding white light blazes all about him with a sound like the shock of a cannon–then all is darkness and silence!

Peyton Farquhar was dead; his body, with a broken neck, swung gently from side to side beneath the timbers of the Owl Creek bridge.

Years ago, Whittier Collge’s most famous graduate, President Richard Nixon, was discussing something in his office. His favorite aide, H.R. Haldeman, was there, too. What they were discussing, exactly, has become something of a legend in the former United States of America. You’ve heard of the 18.5-minute gap, yes? That’s what we’re concerned with today: what was said during those 18 minutes? Did they gossip about Twitter, or the fact that—SHOCK!—Apple is a bit of a control freak? No one knows… until now? Maybe, friends. Maybe.

You can read all about the 18.5-minute gap on Wikipedia, but the executive summary is: President Nixon and his chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, were talking in the Oval Office one day in 1972. Now, President Nixon, being the man that he was, had a secret audio taping system running in the Oval Office at all times. If you so much as talked about your favorite baseball player in there, it’d be recorded. Except for this 18.5-minute gap we’re talking about. People for years have been wondering what was said during the 18.5 gap in the conversation. Something that made Nixon look bad, so he had that part of the tape erased, creating said gap? Again, no one has any idea.

And here’s where it gets “techy.” For years, people have tried to “recreate” the missing part of the tape, but the latest scheme may just have the best chance of success. A gentleman by the name of Phil Mellinger wants to look at Haldeman’s notes. (Mr. Haldeman was a prodigious note taker.) Mr. Haldeman’s notes from the meeting with the 18.5-minute gap exhibit sigs that maybe, just maybe, he had taken notes during the 18.5-minute gap, but then had them destroyed.

The idea is to look at the surviving yellow note pad, and examine the indentations using a method called electrostatic detection analysis. What?

As the book Forensics Demystified describes the procedure, a sheet of paper is subjected to an electrostatic field: “Charged electrons from this static field are attracted to the damaged or impressed fibers in the paper where the indentations have been made.” Then toner can be placed on the paper—or on a thin cellophane sheet—and it will adhere to areas that have indentations: “The writing becomes pronounced.” Voilà, notes can return from the shredder. The original is not harmed.

So, if you can read the notes, then you can figure out what was said during the 18.5-minute gap.

That is, of course, provided Mr. Haldeman actually did take notes during that 18.5-minute gap!

via Huffington Post

The new product line is available in both 42 and 47-inch models, both of which are only 5.9mm thick. The catch is that Shinoda released their prototype displays this week, which are only 1mm thick, obviously a huge improvement over the bloated and oversized LG.

The LG units do have a weight advantage, however, coming in at 13 and 16 pounds respectively. The Shinoda weighs a Oprah-sized 200 pounds. That’s quite a difference. To be fair, LG only claims the title of thinnest LCD screen, but that’s like saying “I’m the fastest man on earth… who’s wearing this hat.”

[via Tom's Hardware]

Do you have high blood pressure? Well, you’re about to get a huge chunk of salt for lunch. Smarthouse is claiming that a source working in the confines of LG have revealed that Apple is working on an OLED touch-screen netbook and a new iPhone/iPod Touch. Sure, we knew about the 10-inch panels weeks ago, but this lends a bit of credence to that rumor. It’s no secret that Apple tapped LG a while back to produce screens for them, but a leak of this nature could spell disaster for the partnership.

There aren’t very many details on the new iPhone/iPod Touch, but a few other details about the netbook have come fowward. LG has been diligently testing OLED screens that are resistant to body oils and sweat because leaving fingerprints and smudges on anything made by Apple is a big no-no. According to Smarthouse, LG is tinkering with a screen that has an added layer that will eliminate “finger marking.”

Smarthouse was also told that Apple may or may not be working on another wireless content device because of interest on Apple’s part for a wafer thin OLED screen made by LG.

I need a glass of water now.

via Smarthouse

So there’s this site Out There called TwitterValue. It allegedly measures how much your Tweets are worth, based on a super-secret “Ph.D algorithm.” Our guess is that it takes into account the number of followers you have, how frequently you tweet, how many @replies you get, etc. Being the vainglorious nerds that we are here at CG, we decided to see how much our Tweets are worth. You’re in for a treat, believe me! Or should I say, you’re in for a Tweet, lol!

• @johnbiggs (John) is worth $372

• @ThePeterHa (Peter) is worth $137

• @daamoth (Doug) is worth $31

• @nicholasadeleon (Nicholas, me!) is worth $137

• @GregKumparak (Greg) is worth $137

• @smerrill (Scott) is worth $136

• @frompkin (Dave) is worth $22

• @boilr (Jeremy) is worth $17

That’s a suspicious amount of clustering around the $136-$37 area, no?

For comparison’s sake, the boss himself, @TechCrunch (Arrington), is worth $3,710 and @BarackObama (the president, silly!) is worth $41,150.

How much are you worth, citizen (and how is this different than TwittAd?)

Part 1:

Part 2:

Vudu’s HD catalog is officially the largest available from any service and even surpasses physical media. In the month of October Vudu added over 150 HD titles per week to reach this historical milestone. Their recently announced HDX service now has over 150 titles as well.

Today, they added 35 HDX titles and 398 HD titles, which we’ve listed after the jump in alphabetical order because we love you!

HD titles:

12 Angry Men
21 Hours at Munich
A Dry White Season
A Fistful of Dynamite
A Great Wall
A Hole in the Head
A Kiss Before Dying
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy
A Rumor of Angels
A Slipping Down Life
Adios Sabata
Alfie
Alien vs. Predator
Ambush Bay
American Ninja
Angel Unchained
Art School Confidential
Article 99
At First Sight
Avalanche
Avanti!
Baby Boom
Barfly
Behind Enemy Lines
Ben-Hur
Beverly Hills Cop 2
Beverly Hills Cop 3
Black Girl
Blade Runner (Director’s Cut)
Blue State
Body Heat
Border Cop [aka The Border]
Braveheart
Breaker! Breaker!
Brian’s Song
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
Bucktown
Bull Durham
Bulletproof Monk
Caveman
Child’s Play
China Doll
Cinderella Man
City of Industry
Clambake
Close Encounters of the Third Kind (Director’s Cut)
Clue
Code of Silence
Coffy
Colors
Company Business
Confessions of an American Girl
Convoy
Cool Blue
Cooley High
Cops and Robbers
Count Yorga, Vampire
Courage Under Fire
CQ
Crimes and Misdemeanors
Crisscross
Crusoe
Curse of the Pink Panther
Cutter’s Way
Cyborg Soldier
Dance with Me, Henry
Dark Blue
Davy Crockett, Indian Scout
Day Watch [Dnevnoy Dozor]
Days of Thunder
Death Rides a Horse
Desperately Seeking Susan
Die Hard With a Vengeance
Die, Monster, Die!
Diggstown
Dirty Work
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Double Trouble
Dr. Phibes Rises Again
Easy Money
Electra Glide in Blue
Enter the Ninja
Erik the Viking
Escape from Alcatraz
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, But Were Afraid to Ask
Exodus
F.I.S.T.
F/X
F/X 2
Fantastic Four
Farewell to the King
Fay Grim
Fiddler on the Roof
Fight Club
Flesh and Blood
Fluke
Follow That Dream
For Those Who Think Young
For Us, the Living: The Story of Medgar Evers
For Your Consideration
Force 10 from Navarone
Friday the 13th: Part 2
From Noon Till Three
Futureworld
Gattaca
Ghost Warrior
Ghoulies
Ghoulies 2
Grave of the Vampire
Gun the Man Down
Hang ‘em High
Happy Endings
Hard Promises
He Who Must Die
Hercules Against the Barbarians
High Tide
Hoodlum
Hoosiers
Hot Dog… The Movie
House of D
House of Games
How to Beat the High Cost of Living
How to Murder Your Wife
How to Succeed in Business without Really Trying
Huckleberry Finn
Hurricane Streets
I Escaped from Devil’s Island
I Love You, Don’t Touch Me!
I, Robot
Ice Age
Ice Age: The Meltdown
If It’s Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium
If Lucy Fell
In the Name of the King
Inherit the Wind
Inserts
Inspector Clouseau
Interiors
Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Iphigenia
Irma La Douce
It Runs in the Family
Jason’s Lyric
Johnny Be Good
Khartoum
Kid Colter
Kid Galahad
King of Hearts
King of New York
Kingdom of Heaven
Kings of the Sun
L.A. Bounty
L.A. Streetfighters
Lady Chatterley’s Lover
Last Tango in Paris
Lawman
Legend of the Lost
Lenny
Leviathan
Life Stinks
Little Man Tate
Little Miss Sunshine
Little Monsters
Livin’ Large!
Lone Wolf McQuade
Lupo
Mac and Me
Mad Max
Mademoiselle
Madhouse
Making Mr. Right
Man of the East
Man on Fire
Manhattan
Me, Myself and Irene
Memories of Me
Men of Honor
Mermaids
Midnight Cowboy
Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous
Miss Julie
Mississippi Burning
Moby Dick
Moonlight and Valentino
Moulin Rouge
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Unrated)
Mr. Majestyk
Mr. Mom
Much Ado About Nothing
Murder at 1600
Music from Another Room
My American Cousin
My Beautiful Laundrette
Mystic Pizza
Napoleon
Navajo Joe
Nim’s Island
Nobody’s Fool
Number One
Octavia
Once Upon a Time in America
One, Two, Three
Osama
Pajama Party
Paper Lion
Parents
Personal Velocity
Phaedra
Phone Booth
Pit and the Pendulum
Planet of the Vampires
Platoon
Play Dirty
Poltergeist 2: The Other Side
Pootie Tang
Popi
Pork Chop Hill
Posse
Posse
Prisoner of the Mountains
Pumpkinhead
Pursuit
Pussycat, Pussycat, I Love You
Queen of Hearts
Quigley Down Under
Radio Days
Rancho Deluxe
Raw Meat
Real Men
Rebel in Town
Red Dawn
Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins
Reprise
Reptilicus
Return of Sabata
Return of the Magnificent Seven
Revolt at Fort Laramie
Revolution
Rich Kids
Road House
Robbers’ Roost
Robocop 2
Rolling Thunder
Romeo Is Bleeding
Running Scared
Sabata
Salt and Pepper
Scandalous
Scarecrows
Scooby-Doo in Where’s My Mummy?
Scream and Scream Again
Semi-Tough
Shadows and Fog
Shanghai Surprise
Shutter
Silent Hill
Sleepover
Soapdish
Some Girls
Species 3
Species: The Awakening
Star Trek 6: The Undiscovered Country
Stay Hungry
Storefront Hitchcock
Straight Out of Brooklyn
Street Kings
Super Troopers
Support Your Local Sheriff
Sweet Smell of Success
Swing Shift
Tales of Terror
Tank Girl
Teachers
Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines
Terror in a Texas Town
The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
The Amityville Horror
The Baby-Sitters Club
The Barefoot Contessa
The Battle of El Alamein
The Bed Sitting Room
The Charge of the Light Brigade
The Charge of the Model-T’s
The Chocolate War
The Conversation
The Couch Trip
The Counterfeiters
The Dark Half
The Day After Tomorrow
The Defiant Ones
The Delinquents
The Dirty Dozen: The Fatal Mission
The Dogs of War
The Food of the Gods
The Foot Fist Way
The Gallant Hours
The Garbage Pail Kids Movie
The Greatest Story Ever Told
The Group
The Gunfight at Dodge City
The Hard Word
The Hawaiians
The Honey Pot
The Horror Show
The Hospital
The Hotel New Hampshire
The In Crowd
The Jewel of the Nile
The Job
The Juror
The King and Four Queens
The Knack, and How to Get It
The Last Man on Earth
The Long Goodbye
The Longest Day
The Lover
The Magnificent Seven
The Magnificent Seven Ride!
The Maltese Falcon
The Masque of the Red Death
The Mighty Quinn
The Neanderthal Man
The Omen
The Organization
The Package
The Peacekillers
The People That Time Forgot
The Pink Panther Strikes Again
The Playboys
The Pope of Greenwich Village
The Presidio
The Pride and the Passion
The Punisher
The Purple Rose of Cairo
The Relentless Four
The Resurrected
The Return of a Man Called Horse
The Return of Dracula
The Return of the Living Dead
The Return of the Pink Panther
The Revolt of the Slaves
The Right Stuff
The Rock
The Rookie
The Running Man
The Scalphunters
The Secret of NIMH
The Secret of Santa Vittoria
The Sentinel
The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
The Thomas Crown Affair
The Train
The Virgin Suicides
The White Buffalo
The Wonderful Country
The Young Savages
Thelma and Louise
This World, Then the Fireworks
Thrashin’
Three Kings
Throw Momma From the Train
To Kill For
To Live and Die in L.A.
Topkapi
Trail of the Pink Panther
Transporter 2
Troll
UHF
Undertow
Undiscovered
Unforgettable
Unforgiven
Urban Cowboy
Valdez Is Coming
Welcome to Woop Woop
What Happens in Vegas (Unrated)
What’s New Pussycat?
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Windtalkers
Witness for the Prosecution
Wooly Boys
X-Men: The Last Stand
X2: X-Men United
Yellowbeard
Yentl
Young Billy Young
Youngblood
Yours, Mine and Ours

HDX titles:

Alien vs. Predator
Day Watch [Dnevnoy Dozor]
Distant Voices, Still Lives
Fight Club
Finding Amanda
Happy Endings
House of D
Ice Age
King of New York
Little Miss Sunshine
Men of Honor
Mission: Impossible 2
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Unrated)
Nim’s Island
Platoon
Shutter
Silent Hill
Speed
Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home
Street Kings
Super Troopers
The Day After Tomorrow
The Job
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen
The Matrix Revolutions
The Punisher
The Rock
The Rookie
The Running Man
To Live and Die in L.A.
Top Gun
Transporter 2
Undiscovered
What Happens in Vegas (Unrated)
Wooly Boys

Vudu

If any of you have the time to read a 6,000 word article, then you may want to head over to the New Yorker, which just published a bafflingly long profile of Cliff Blenszinski—the former CliffyB—and Epic Games. It’s one of the rare times you’ll see something as “low” as video games appear in the magazine.

However, for those of you who don’t have the time to sift through so many words, here’s the condensed version, filled the highlights and key pull quotes.

• Blenszinski was always a gamer. “Indeed, the first issue of Nintendo Power, published in 1988, listed the high scores of a handful of Super Mario devotees, the thirteen-year-old Bleszinski’s among them.”

• Growing up, Blenszinski says, “I was never geeky enough for the geeks and I was never cool enough for the cool people. I’ve always been in that weird purgatory,”

• This malaise helped to contribute to Gears of War: “‘When you start to peel back the layers of the Gears world’, Bleszinski told me, “‘there’s a lot of sadness there.’”

Then the profile turns to covering more of the industry in general and Epic Games specifically.

• “Epic’s original name, Sweeney told me, was ‘a big scam’ to make it look legitimate. ‘When you’re this one single person in your parents’ garage trying to start a company, you want to look like you’re really big,’ he said.”

• “Bleszinski’s office resembles a toy-store yard sale. These are boyish affectations, certainly, but boyishness is the realm in which these men seek inspiration, not a code by which they live.”

• “The game industry is more or less leakproof, and possesses a strange kind of innocence: it guards its secrets as guilelessly as a boy might hide from his mother—but not from his brother and sister—the extraterrestrial living in his bedroom.”

There’s also discussion of gameplay mechanics.

• “Anyone who plays modern games such as Gears does not so much learn the rules as develop a kind of intuition for how the game operates. Often, there is no single way to accomplish a given task; improvisation is rewarded. Older games, like Super Mario, punish improvisation: you live or die according to their algebra alone.”

• “Our final game was called Wingman, which is played in pairs. Bleszinski and I buddied up, and I shouted across the room to him for some general guidance. ‘Basically,’ he said, ‘kill anyone who doesn’t look like you. Our foreign policy.’”

That’s the gist of it, but I will say that, big surprise, it’s a pretty good read. I’ll be giving the original Gears a second chance tonight as a result of the profile. Job done, then.

Photo from Flickr

I’ve been using Vudu for a few months now and it’s a pretty snazzy service. The remote is surprisingly ergonomic and the Vudu UI is put together quite well. You can read Doug’s review over yonder if you like. Today, Vudu announced that they’ve continued their expansion in Best Buy stores throughout California, Arizona and Illinois. A full listing of stores along with recently added rentals, movies available for purchase and upcoming titles have been added for your pleasure.

Best Buy Locations:

Chicago, IL 60620
Addison, IL 60101
Glendale, AZ 85308
Bloomingdale, IL 60108
San Jose, CA 95118
Chicago, IL 60614
Downers Grove, IL 60515
Phoenix, AZ 85016
Chula Vista, CA 91910
Chicago, IL 60614
Colma, CA 94014
Crestwood, IL 60445
DeKalb, IL 60115
Downers Grove, IL 60516
East Palo Alto, CA 94303
El Cajon, CA 92020
El Centro, CA 92243
Oakland, CA 94608
Encinitas, CA 92024
Flagstaff, AZ 86004
San Francisco, CA 94118
Gilroy, CA 95020
Phoenix, AZ 85085
Norridge, IL 60706
Countryside, IL 60525
Chicago, IL 60618
Lansing, IL 60438
Marin City, CA 94965
Marina, CA 93933
Melrose Park, IL 60160
Milpitas, CA 95035
San Diego, CA 92126
San Diego, CA 92108
Mountain View, CA 94043
Chicago, IL 60622
North Riverside, IL 60546
Scottsdale, AZ 85260
Aurora, IL 60504
Oceanside, CA 92054
Oswego, IL 60543
Chula Vista, CA 91915
Phoenix, AZ 85032
Pinole, CA 95464
Prescott, AZ 86303
Geneva, IL 60134
South Elgin, IL 60177
Salinas, CA 93906
San Carlos, CA 94070
San Francisco, CA 94103
San Jose, CA 95125
San Marcos, CA 92069
San Rafael, CA 94901
Santa Rosa, CA 95407
San Jose, CA 95128
Santee, CA 92071
Schaumburg, IL 60173
Scottsdale, AZ 85250
Soquel, CA 95073
Chicago, IL 60607
Sunnyvale, CA 94087
Tempe, AZ 85281
Phoenix, AZ 85053
Union City, CA 94587
Vallejo, CA 94591
West Dundee, IL 60118
Yuma, AZ 85365

NEW TO RENT

1. The Eye (HD)

2. Bone Snatcher

3. Untraceable

4. Rambo (HD & SD)

5. National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets (HD)

6. Full Metal Jacket

7. Terminator 3: Rise of the Machine

8. Interview with the Vampire

9. Glory Road

10. Falling Down

11. The Chronicles of Riddick (HD)

12. The Chronicles of Riddick, Unrated (HD)

13. Demolition Man

14. City of Angels

15. The Wedding Date

16. Happy Gilmore (HD)

17. Pitch Black, Unrated (HD)

18. Fire Down Below

19. Ghost Ship

20. Tremors

21. The Mummy Returns (HD)

22. The Cottage

23. Vertigo

24. Remember the Titans (HD)

25. Batman & Mr. Freeze, Subzero

26. The Chair (HD & SD)

27. Jonah, A VeggieTales Movie

28. The Air I Breathe

29. Lake Dead (HD)

30. You Belong to Me

31. Left For Dead (HD & SD)

32. Be Kind, Rewind

33. Rails & Ties

NEW TO OWN

1. Vantage Point

2. Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns

3. The Prestige

4. O Brother, Where Art Thou?

5. Armed and Dangerous

6. Glory Road

7. Desperate Measures

8. Loser

9. Pearl Harbor

10. Bratz Passion 4 Fashion Diamondz

11. Bratz Starrin’ and Stylin’

12. Bratz Rock Angels

13. Bratz Kidz Fairy Tales

14. Will Penny

15. And Justice for All

16. Goin’ South

17. Waterhole #3

18. Matilda

19. Candyman

20. Islands in the Stream

21. Bad Company

22. Chuka

23. Five Card Stud

24. Rustlers’ Rhapsody

25. Blue

26. Vertigo

27. The Tin Star

28. Arrowhead

29. Nevada Smith

30. Copper Canyon

31. Three Violent People

32. The Lonely Man

33. Branded

34. Johnny Reno

35. Player 5150

Coming Soon on VUDU…

The Royal Tenenbaums (to own July 15)

High Fidelity (to own July 15)

Step Up 2 (to own July 15)

College Roadtrip (to own July 15)

The Bank Job (to own July 15)

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins (SD & HD) (to rent July 16)

Caramel HD (to Rent July 16)

21 (to own July 22)

Definitely, Maybe (HD) (to rent July 23)

Doomsday (to own July 29)

Doomsday Unrated (to own July 29)

Harold & Kumar, Escape from Guantanamo Bay (to rent or own July 29)

Harold & Kumar, Escape from Guantanamo Bay, Unrated (to rent or own July 29)

Tyler Perry’s Meet the Browns (HD) (to rent July 30)

Yeah, I don’t know what’s up here either. It’s basically a “viral video” for the LG Secret which is supposed to show that the phone is indestructible. Why should we all care? I don’t know. Clearly wiser minds than ours have tackled the problem of selling a me-too cellphone to a bored and unruly populace and this is what they decided would get the most traction.

Given the excitement about the iPhone 2, the suppositions that carriers are getting huge shipments, and idea that hundreds of media are currently running around with the IP2 as we speak, surreptitiously shooting pictures of our underwear with the phone’s 12-megapixel X-Ray camera, I thought I’d take a moment to explain how Apple — and the rest of the industry — releases products into the wild and where many of these spy shots and leaks come from. I’ll also address some misconceptions about what and how we do our “jobs.”

Spy shots – Most spy shots come from disgruntled employees into office parks across the land. Bigger factories will not allow any cameras on the premises, so the earliest you can feasibly get spy shots is when a company begins sending product out to software partners for testing and coding. For example, the Instinct we saw pictures of last week probably came from someone within Sprint itself who received a phone to play with and doesn’t care about their job. Note the last part of that sentence: you need someone who hates their job and/or is dating a blogger.

If you see something that looks like a picture from a factory or a lab, do not be fooled. It is probably fake.

Some of these disgruntled employees also sell or rent out their ill-gotten gains to certain websites. If you see early shots of any device on a site or on, God forbid, eBay, you’re looking at what amounts to stolen merchandise.

In regards to FCC spy shots, these are a bit simpler to find. The FCC tests almost all electronic devices for radio interference. They have to take photos of the device in order to place it in the FCC report. These photos surface on the Interwebs. Why didn’t the iPhone appear in an FCC report? Because Steve launched it eight months in advance, thereby reducing the value of finding the iPhone’s FCC report buried in the database. The question is, however, why the iPhone 2 hasn’t surfaced.

NDAs - Many journalists, the hacks at CrunchGear included, are invited to one-on-one or party-like media events throughout the year. There we are offered food and/or booze and shown devices that we can’t talk about until a certain “embargo” period is up. This embargo period is a vestigial construct designed to allow folks in Boise to get up to speed on what the folks in New York already know and to allow aged reporters a little “head time” with the concepts before they write. We at CrunchGear, on the other hand, can spout off a poorly-researched post in minutes, reducing the value of the embargo considerably.

In order to view these items, we have to sign Non-Disclosure Agreements which state that we won’t talk about the device until some certain date and time. Some sites refuse NDAs or are too dumb to figure out when 12PM EST is and post early, thereby rendering the NDA moot and causing great gnashing of teeth when someone in Australia gets a scoop on something that essentially everyone knew about already but wasn’t allowed to write about.

That said, some journalists are special-er than others. If there is an IP2, David Pogue has it. He just does. It’s a law of nature, the same way that weird itching on your lip means a cold sore is coming. The rest of the world will either get it the day of launch in a FedEx package or cry and bitch to PR people that they didn’t get one. Occasionally a device is promised and never comes, resulting in hilarity.

Review samples – Journalists get review samples. We send them back. If I have a bunch of boxes in my house containing devices in various states of undress it is because the PR people haven’t sent me an address and shipping label. Trust me: after your 10th fully-featured Linux-based media hub, you’ve had enough. And no, this job isn’t like being a secret shopper where you get to keep what you get. We, the CG team, pay for our electronics like anyone else. Except for the robotic pleasure bot I got from Sony for writing them a good review. I’m keeping that.

Objectivity – As a blogger, I’m subjective. As a journalist (I also write for newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times), I’m objective. This means I try not to have a bias towards or against a product in more mainstream places and that I do have a massive bias here on the site. This is because I consider this site a conversation with you guys and if I said everything was just peachy (*ahem* *cough* CNET *cough*) you’d think I’d gone senile and stop reading. We at CG like long walks on the beach, Macs, and XBox. I personally hate the Wii, Sony (for failing to live up to its promise to produce and sell cool product and instead making tiny TVs for $6000 and some rolling turd), and mean people. We try to report it like it is but, if in our experience we know something is false when companies say it’s true and vice versa, we will tell you.

If a gadget site tells you they are objective, they are lying.

Now, to discuss a few unsavory parts of our industry.

Sponsorships – One charge always leveled by naysayers is that “X is sponsoring you, so you’re nice to them.” This is not true and shouldn’t be true anywhere. Advertising is usually walled off from editorial, as it should be, so even if Microsoft turns CrunchGear into BillGear I’ll still say that Vista eats it.

Bribes – We don’t accept money or product for coverage nor do we handle advertising in any direct sense. That’s our policy and that is pretty much standard across the board. We do accept gold ingots, as the value is expressed in the scarcity of the metal and not based on the vagaries of the financial markets.

Junkets – Journalists and increasingly bloggers are offered junkets. Junkets are flights, room, and board offered by companies to show off a certain item, factory, or brothel. We at CG will accept these without much hesitation simply because it adds immediacy to our coverage and I trust my boys — I do not go on them — won’t be wooed by offers of caviar and backrubs on the French Riviera. If I thought we could afford trips to Tokyo every year, I’d budget them in. As it stands, it’s better and more valuable to let someone pay for said trips and get a good story than sit them out and get information second-hand. Note: if suddenly all of the major sites start reporting live from Tokyo on the release of a new love pillow, it was probably a junket. Note: Junkets are about as glamorous as a trip to Italy with your aged parents. You spend hours on buses, eat bad hotel breakfasts, and get to know your fellow journalists far too well.

Press rooms – When you, the non-journalist, go to a conference, you have to pay for food at a stand or restaurant and you enjoy yourself. When we go to a conference, we get a bagel, some stale coffee, and sit at uncomfortable tables for hours posting from the “show floor.” The place we do these things is called the “press room” and, interestingly enough, we also have “bloggers lounges” now, which is an actual first. Sure it sounds like we’re pampered and spoiled but it’s actually a pain because all of the journalists are corralled in the same room and journalists in the same room with limited Ethernet ports (Wi-Fi never works at conferences), hopped up on carbohydrates and coffee, is a powder keg. You, on the other hand, can walk around and then leave without giving the conference a second thought.

So there you have it: all the things that effect whether you will or will not see a leaked iPhone 2 photo on our website or a photo of anything, for that matter. Newsgathering, like sausage-making, involves stuffing offal into nasty tubes of intestine. You can sugar coat it, but you’re still going to eat some feces with your meat.

Just a clarification on that photo that shows a glossy black iPhone. While the original rumor suggested that the new iPhone will indeed have a glossy black finish, the photo in question more than likely is just a case.

So while the next iPhone may well have a glossy black finish, that particular image ain’t it. Happy trails.

via MacRumors

Oh, look! LG Prada 2.0! (No pics of the actual phone yet.) Highlights include 3G (HSDPA), a 5-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and a full QWERTY keyboard. Or, in toto:

• Quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900). WCDMA 900/2100, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA connectivity
• 3″ WQVGA 400×240 px TFT touchscreen
• 5 megapixel camera
• front camera for video calls
• Wi-Fi b/g connectivity
• USB 2.0, Bluetooth
• Full HTML browsing
• FM-Radio
• TV-out
• microSDHC memory card slot (up to 8GB)
• slide-out QWERTY keyboard

Look for it, maybe, Q4 of this year. By then, though, we’ll already have the 3G iPhone and no one will pay much attention to it. Just like last time with iPhone1/Prada1.

via Gizmodo

He even has a backer for the bill, Illinois’ Secretary of State, who thinks it should be softened to being a secondary offense, only applicable to jaywalking cell-phone talkers. May as well have a law against putting lipstick on donkeys for all the good a law like that will do. I’m glad they’ve solved all the other, real problems in that state so now they can focus on mind-numbingly pointless legislation such as this.

Whatever upgrade is being done to Xbox Live on April Fools is anyone’s guess, but recent surveys and speculation might lead some to believe Netflix is coming. Was Monday’s meltdown a result of this? Hmm…