As the last living person to not have played GTA IV yet (I'm holding out until I have, errr, time to play), I found this Apple Parody in GTA's "internet" hilarious:

THINK Simple.
THINK Minimalism.
THINK Overpriced.

THINK Fruit. THINK.

You are not thinking hard enough. Maybe you are a To$$er.

WITH FRUIT

You are finally living.
Design has evolved to make your life worth living.
You are in a cocoon.
A fruit cocoon.

THE NEW IFRUIT PHONE

No buttons
No reception
No storage capacity
All ego

...

I think it's time I start playing GTA IV. Apple fruits are fun to pick on.

via digg.

• African Americans rioted against racial injustice.
• Immigrant workers in New York City rioted against the military draft.
• Working-class North Africans in Paris rioted to protest the death of two youngsters at the hands of the police.
• Tiananmen square intellectuals and students rioted for democratic reform.

Here, though, we riot when our local sports team beats a rival team, not in the finals, or the semifinals, but in the quarterfinals.

Whether it's actual hockey fans or anarchists using the crowd as a cover is anyone's guess, although the image gallery over at Fagstein's blog has an image of a hockey-flag waving fan next to a marijuana-tshirt-wearing delinquent, so maybe they're in cahoots!

Sigh...

In case you needed yet another reason why Bell Canada is the absolute worst company in the Canadian telecom space, they've quietly begun throttling traffic on independent, small ISPs who lease their lines.

This means that if you're anything like me - and by Gosh, you oughta be! - your ISP is small, progressive, and independent... and soon to get much, much slower. I use Radioactif / Aei, though there are many other good ones to choose from. However, since the lines are all owned by Big Brother Bell, they all end up leasing their lines from them. So far, this agreement had maintained a precarious balance, allowing small, innovative ISPs to crop up here and there and offer innovative service coupled with low prices, and Bell had managed to maintain control of its own lines.

This is just a reblog from the Media McGill page that Gilberto Gil will be presenting today at 6pm, at the Omni Hotel.

There will also be a follow-up presentation tomorrow morning at the SAT on St-Laurent, which I expect to be more intimate (hopefully) than today's talk.

If any of my readers have any questions about community networking, technologies and culture, Internet governance, cultural development or anything else that they would like me to ask Mr. Gil tomorrow, leave it in a comment here and I will do my darndest.

More info on the Media@Mcgill page...

I don't listen to podcasts much. I don't feel like I can make time to listen to any of them. Both Amarok and Banshee have very solid podcasting clients, but when will I listen to them? I listen to MP3s when I'm working because I can't focus on anything else, since my multitasking abilities are limited to chewing bubble gum and kicking ass. At the gym I need my angry angsty pop-metal or 2Pac to keep me motivated, and in the car I only listen to CKOI because the hosts are awesomely hilarious, they play the best new francophone music, and anglophone radio sucks the big one in Montreal.

Sometimes I'll visit a site with a podcasting section and play something that looks interesting through the flash player in the browser, but I'm not "subscribed" to any podcasts. Well, I wasn't until I found the Free Library of Philadelphia Podcast:

I was actually trying to make it to Yunus' talk at the Free Library in Philly last week (for free!), but it didn't work out. Then, poking around a little, I found that the library records most of the talks and puts them up on their podcast for anyone to download. I've been hooked on these for the past week - Anthony Bourdain's and J. Craig Venter's are particularly fantastic.

I've only listened to about half of them so far, but I'm definitely going to work my way down the list.

Ok, fine, podcasting doesn't always suck - when I can sit still for long enough to listen to them.

So it looks like the version of Recaptcha I was using (or the Drupal plugin) was buggy and causing Internet Explorer 6 and 7 users to be unable to view my posts for the past week or so.

I hadn't noticed because I seldom browse from my Vista box.

I've removed recaptcha until it's fixed, so feel free to flame away, IE users!

I'm feeling it's not much of a step up from what they had before.

First of all, no one uses "text size selectors" anymore.

Second of all, if you're going to use one anyways, the least you could do is make sure sure that it doesn't completely break your design when a user selects a larger font:

One day, I'll stop quoting Mark Pilgrim, promise.

If wishes were iPhones, then beggars would call [dive into mark]

I have nothing to say about the iPhone that hasn't been said already. Apple made it very clear what they were offering: a carrier-locked, closed-development mobile computing device where every aspect of the user experience would be controlled by Apple. I'm told it can also make phone calls. If that's what you want, then buy it. If not, then don't.

When this iPod dies, I won't buy another; I'll buy something that works out-of-the-box with my Linux workstation. Live by the penguin, die by the penguin. Apple doesn't want my business, so why reward them?

I don't understand this continuing obsession with buying things that you need to break before they do what you want.

I thought the big draw for Apple hardware was that 'It Just Works.' By breaking it, you must know you're giving up the 'Just Works' factor, so what's left? Rounded corners?

My current theory is that i's some twisted form of wish fulfillment. 'I wish this company understood the value of openness, but they don't, so I'm going to keep buying their closed, crippled shit until they get it.' Yeah, let me know how that works out for you.

>BBC NEWS | Technology | Halo 3 sales top £84m in 24 hours

Video game Halo 3 earned more than £84m ($170m) in sales in its first 24 hours on release, according to Microsoft.

The game sets the record for the most money earned in a day by an entertainment product, topping figures set by film Spiderman 3.

Thousands of shops opened at midnight on Monday in the United States as gamers queued for the Xbox 360 title.

BBC NEWS | Technology | Shadow lamps to connect friends

Called Teleshadow the system pipes video of what people are doing at home via the net to their friends' houses.

But instead of showing images in full motion and colour, Teleshadow turns them into shadow outlines projected on the inside of a small decorative lamp.

Creator Shunpei Yasuda said the shadow presence system aims to fill the gap between live video and static images.

Mr Yasuda, a post-graduate student in Media Design at Japan's Keio University, said the inspiration for the system came from Japanese history.

For many years, he said, Japanese homes have had Shoji or paper walls that divide some rooms. The thin walls preserve some privacy but the shadows cast on the paper as people move about also act as a reminder of that person's presence.

In a similar way Teleshadow preserves privacy while reinforcing presence between rooms that are far apart rather than next door.