Category Archives: Original Duenos

Posts by the original Duenos.net crew.

Josh Wolf wins Journalist of the Year

The Northern California Chapter of the Society for Professional Journalists have awarded “Josh Wolf”:http://www.joshwolf.net/ their highest honor, the SPC Monroe Award. For those of you who don’t know, Josh is a blogger/independent journalist who has been in jail awaiting charge since August 1st, 2006 when he refused to release video tape footage he’d taken at a demonstration in July, 2005. He is being held unconstitutionally on trumped up charges of civil contempt and on February 6th of this year he became longest-jailed journalist in US history for refusing to comply with a federal subpoena. I am a big supporter of Josh’s and he more than any other person has convinced me that this country needs more independent journalists keeping us up-to-date on what is happening in this world.
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An excerpt from his acceptance speech, which he had to deliver from prison:
_The face of the media is changing. This we know for sure. But what remains to be seen is the role professional journalists take in developing this new landscape. Will the battle lines be drawn with two classes of warring voices or will we work together in solidarity to develop a massive chorus as diverse and eclectic as our society itself? As journalists is our commitment to an economic system or is it to the pursuit of the free flow of information? The power is in your hands. Choose wisely._

Analog peer-to-peer

A few months ago I read about a service called “BookMooch”:http://bookmooch.com/ on “BoingBoing”:http://boingboing.net that offers users a community full of people wanting to exchange their old books for free. I’ve used the site extensively and have loved it. I was finally able to get rid of those old Tom Clancy novels and ‘trade up’ to the classier writings of Henry James. My conclusion: there aren’t enough phrases like “class 2 tactical op” in Henry James. Luckily I can always trade down again with BookMooch.
The idea of a non-monetary economy in which people share their goods and/or services sounds like wackiness, I know, but I just read an “article”:http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.03/start.html?pg=4 from Wired Online about more ‘analog peer-to-peer’ sites that promise just such a cashless utopia. Each one caters to a different type of media, but here’s a short summary taken from the article:
”
“PEERFLIX”:http://peerflix.com/
MEDIA: DVD
INVENTORY: 40,000 titles
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.50
“LA LA”:http://www.lala.com/
MEDIA: CD
INVENTORY: 1.8 million titles
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.75
“PAPERBACKSWAP”:http://www.paperbackswap.com/index.php
MEDIA: Take a guess …
INVENTORY: 30,000 titles
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.59
“GAMESWAP”:http://www.gameswap.com/
MEDIA: Videogame
INVENTORY: 1,102 games
PER-TRADE FEE: $1.99 “

Brick Link, the eBay of LEGO

The LEGO-trading hotspot is “http://www.bricklink.com/”:http://www.bricklink.com/ Home (at the time of writing) to 64,918 registered members, this site hooks people up who are looking to trade, buy, sell, or discuss LEGO. Sets, parts, figurines, books, gear, catalogs, instructions, original boxes, or just unsorted lots of pieces. You name it and someone will be willing to trade it on Brick Link.
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Selfish thinking taken to a new level

In one of the more blatant acts of selfishness I have heard of, a group of American families hurt by the USS Cole-incident, is suing the government of Sudan for $100 million. Some facts for you: The bombing of the USS Cole killed 17 sailors in October of 2000. Since 2003, the genocide in Sudan has taken the lives of probably 400,000 people and displaced a further 2.5 million. If this law suit goes through and the Sudanese do pay, I think we all know where it’s going to come from. It’s one thing to file ridiculous law suits within the US where we’re all relatively well-off, but this is unconscionable.
A “BBC article”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/6444449.stm on the subject.
A very well-referenced “Wikipedia page”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darfur_conflict on the Darfur tragedy.
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Climate Change Game

In honor of the British government taking on the strictest (but still not nearly strict enough) carbon regimen in Europe, I give you “this game.”:http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/hottopics/climatechange/climate_challenge/ In this better-than-average flash game, you the player are the president of the EU and you balance money, electricity, food, water, and carbon emissions against each other, guiding the Union into the future. Some options are very realistic (like tax breaks for domestic solar cells) and some are less so (like mag-lev trains) but overall this is a pretty good waste of time, and not a bad way to look at the decisions facing governments.
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Exploding laptop batteries

Laptop batteries have been exploding for a long time, but it’s been a phenomenon I’d largely ignored until now when I read an “Inquirer article”:http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38176 about a MacBook exploding this morning. Then I went in search of evidence. I found this “video”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WeWq6rWzChw&mode=related&search= and I realized that when they say exploding, they actually do mean *exploding.*

According to an article on the subject at “Howstuffworks.com”:http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dell-battery-fire.htm , these explosions/meltings/fires are caused by small amounts of metal floating in the lithium fluid piercing the separation walls between the cells, causing a short circuit. Bad luck eh?

Lego computer

So we’re all big nerds right? Well it turns out that some of us are way cooler nerds than others and have managed to combine the childhood obsession with building things, Lego construction, with the more adult version, computer-building. I was hunting around for cool case ideas for a home theatre PC I’m thinking of building when I came across this cool Lego computer case by “Winston Chow”:http://www2.hawaii.edu/~wchow/ at the University of Hawaii.

The build is recounted “here”:http://home.hawaii.rr.com/chowfamily/lego/

Google's Zeitgeist

I found something new from Google. I know, big surprise there’s something new from the company that keeps on giving, but it’s absolutely worth a look. “Zeitgeist”:http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html is a site that tracks the trends in Google search terms, sponsored by the company itself. As opposed to the normal “what everyone searches” stats, (sex, boobies, etc…) this site shows the big gainers per month, week, or even year. For example, here is the page for 2006 in review: “Zeitgeist”:http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2006.html
Zeit·geist | Pronunciation: ‘tsIt-“gIst, ‘zIt | Function: noun | Etymology: German, from Zeit (time) + Geist (spirit) | Date: 1884 | Meaning: the general intellectual, moral, and cultural climate of an era.

Russian theatres jam cell phones

Here’s a “link”:http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=38057 to a posting on TheInquirer.net about two theatres in St. Petersburg who got so frustrated at patrons not silencing their mobiles, they simply jammed the signal. Sure it violates some rights, but it might be less annoying than those ‘turn off your cell phone’ PSAs they run in the movie theaters in the States.