This video has been passing around all month, but I just found out about it this week. It’s a movie trailer spoof of Brokeback Mountain by way of Back to the Future.
Ladies and Gentlemen: Brokeback to the Future, by Chocolate Cake City.
(Props: Elizabeth, who sent me the link via e-mail.)
Microsoft Anti-Spyware has hit the beta 2 milestone, but now it’s called Windows Defender. MS Anti-Spyware won’t notify you of the upgrade as part of its automatic update process, but it’s an important one to make. If you’re an MSAS user, download and install the new version.
Search giant Google has purchased blog statistics upstart Measure Map, and gotten Jeff Veen as part of the bargain (Veen was Product Director for Measure Map when the site still belonged to Adaptive Path). The deal was announced on Valentine’s Day (awwww) on both The Official Google Blog and on Veen’s weblog.
One has to wonder what this means for Google’s existing web traffic analysis tool, Google Analytics. The official line from Veen’s post on the Google weblog seems to indicate that not much will change. This makes sense, given that Measure Map is so thoroughly focused on weblogs. Certainly, any integration that does occur will be optional and will take some time to achieve smoothly.
(Props: Jay Allen’s The Daily Journey)
While checking a recent design with Fangs — a screen reader emulator for Firefox — I discovered that my attempts to hide some headings from sighted users, while keeping them available for the blind, had backfired. Instead, nobody could see (or hear) them.
It turns out that the problem was my use of the CSS declaration display: none, which causes the affected text to go unread by Jaws (the most popular screen reader on the market). I found a solution to my problem at WebAIM, where there’s an article on the subject of hiding content with CSS. They’ve already done all the cross-browser testing, and cooked up a method that should work everywhere and for everyone.
Asimov believed “The Last Question” to be the best short story he ever wrote. Now you can read it online, without even having to make a trip to the library.
The last question was asked for the first time, half in jest, on May 21, 2061, at a time when humanity first stepped into the light. The question came about as a result of a five-dollar bet over highballs, and it happened this way…
This story is the epitome of high-concept “hard” science fiction. The narrative spans a few trillion years of human history in about 4,500 words and pursues big answers to the big questions. That it can do this without alienating or boring less scientifically-minded readers is a testament to Asimov’s skill. Along the way it touches on the concepts of transhumanism and posthumanism, but its ultimate target is much larger and more impressive.
The central premise of the story — humanity invents an artificially intelligent machine capable of solving its thorniest problems, but the biggest problem of all proves insoluble time and again — is a set up for an ending with more punch than almost anything else in the genre.
“Ask Multivac.”
“You ask Multivac. I dare you. Five dollars says it can’t be done.”
Adell was just drunk enough to try…
You owe it to yourself to read this story.
(Props: Backwards City)
