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The Parisian blogs that were more than sounding boards

scaredpoet

Paris

Could it be? Police in France are alleging that at least some of the extensive rioting that has occurred over the past week in Paris was potentially helped along by at least two bloggers, who allegedly used the medium to incite rioting.

One of the blogs was called “sarkodead” – a reference to Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who inflamed passions when he called troublemakers “scum.” Both “sarkodead” and “hardcore” were hosted by Skyblog, a branch of the popular Skyrock radio station.

The blogs were taken off line this weekend, and the radio station cooperated with police, judicial officials said.

The suspects in the case are 16 and 18 years old, with a third 14 year old also being held for questioning. Unfortunately, the blogs are offline, so way may not know for some time what was actually said.

If anyone happens to have a screenshot of the blogs in question prior to their removal, please let me know as I may consider posting it depending on what was said.

Motorola: A touted High Speed Data standard is a disappointment

scaredpoet

The verdict is in: Morotola has tested HSDPA (High-Speed Downlink Packet Access) in real-world conditions. And the results? Not as great as everyone expected:

When the user requests data, such as clicking a hyperlink for a web page, there can be delays of seconds as the radio network transitions back from a slow to a fast state. Users will not expect such delays for services marketed as “Mobile Broadband”.
[…]
The trials have shown that video streaming performance degrades when a relatively modest number of users are active. As little as four active users are sufficient to cause video streaming to freeze if scheduling priorities are not set properly.

Nice. It’s particularly interesting to note that GSM operators were boasting that HSDPA would easily surpass the maximum speeds of its nearest current rival, EVDO, by a factor of three. While that may be true on a virtually-empty network, it would seem that Verizon’s EVDO-based VCAST service, which already streams video clips at high speed to hundreds of thousands of users (and growing) without issue, seems to be holding up quite well to the competition. Likewise, Sprint launched power vision recently, which is similarly running quite well on a crowded network.

Yeah, I think I’ll stick with EVDO for now.

Hey, nice mellons!

scaredpoet

square

How much would you pay for a square watermellon? IN Japan, they’ve become a trendy (and expensive) designer fruit:

To make it happen, farmers grew the melons in glass boxes and the fruit then naturally assumed the same shape. Today the cuboid watermelons are hand-picked and shipped all over Japan.

But the fruit, on sale in a selection of department stores and upmarket supermarkets, appeals mainly to the wealthy and fashion-conscious of Tokyo and Osaka, Japan’s two major cities.

Each melon sells for 10,000 yen, equivalent to about $83. It is almost double, or even triple, that of a normal watermelon.

“I can’t buy it, it is too expensive,” said a woman browsing at a department store in the southern city of Takamatsu.

So assuming a square mellon is triple the cost of a round mellon in Japan, that would mean a round mellon would still cost roughly $28? Yikes!

The Kitty Defense

scaredpoet

So this guy decides that his cat is such a great judge of character, that he deicdes to kill a guy because his cat told him to. Yeah, the guy’s just a little nuts. But, not insane enough to escape a murder conviction:

EVERETT — A man accused by witnesses of saying his cat’s behavior led him to kill another man has been convicted of first-degree murder.

A Snohomish County Superior Court jury deliberated for about three hours before convicting Clayton Edward Butsch, 40, of Lake Stevens on Wednesday in the shooting of Chad J. Vavricka, 30, of Snohomish.

Butsch, whose lawyer said he was framed, also was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm but was acquitted of possessing methamphetamine as jurors reasoned that many others had access to his trailer. He faces a standard range of 38 to 50 years in prison when he is sentenced Tuesday.

Maybe the cat furnished the meth too?

– Avarice –

CrazedPenguin

– Avarice –
A sort-of poetic something by Phil “CrazedPenguin” Gorski

But what of your simple goals and dreams?
I dream of big things, many things, my things
Life most certainly isn’t always as it seems
And I still find my way through it

My way, my way alone
Call me greedy all you want
no truer words can be said
Because this world, everything in it, is there for the taking
If I want it, I tell you, I will always get it

Money, status, materials and associates
All are but a hand’s reach away
I am a man who knows what I want
and the word “no” is something I’m very much deaf towards

So what of your foolish goals and dreams?
Very infantile and lackluster when held to the greatness
the greatness of my desire to gain more, to gain greater things, to have it all
I’m greedy, but I’m also destined for great things
I will have my day and I will have everything I desire, no matter what

Call it sinful if you must
My wonderful, delightful avarice
Because I am greedy
And want it–I desire it–all to myself