Matt Burns at TechCrunch voices his suspicions that Megaupload may have been taken down because it was preparing to launch Megabox, a service that would have competed directly and legally with the RIAA record companies.

[Kim] Dotcom described Megabox as Megaupload’s iTunes competitor, which would even eventually offer free premium movies via Megamovie, a site set to launch in 2012. This service would take Megaupload from being just a digital locker site to a full-fledged player in the digital content game.

Will Collier opines that

Copyright protection is a legitimate problem in the digital age, but if the speculation here turns out to be accurate, the Justice Department has been used to facilitate the crib death of a legal competitor to the RIAA.  If that pans out, we’ve got a much bigger problem than piracy to worry about.

Sarah Palin’s tour a rolling menace

The reporters who are speeding, tailgating, cutting off other cars, blasting through roundabouts and passing on the right in an effort to keep up, say they have no other choice since they never know what Palin’s up to or where she’s headed — and aides typically won’t tell them anything. Once they’re on the road, they’re filing urgent updates by phone and figuring out unorthodox bathroom breaks, like the reporter who pulled over to relieve himself on the side of the highway going from Gettysburg, Pa., to Philadelphia — drawing notice from both Palin aides and the rest of the trailing press.
“It’s like paparazzi,” said one reporter who followed Palin to the Thursday evening clambake. “It’s like following Princess Diana.”

The difference between these paparazzi and Princess Diana’s paparazzi is that Sarah has a great big honkin’ bus. If they sideswipe Sarah’s bus she might not even notice.

The “journalists” keep telling everybody who will listen (less and less by the day as it were) that Palin has delusions of grandeur, is irrelevant, is stupid, etc. etc. ad infinitum. Yet the media keep following her, writing about her every move, and their readers keep clicking and commenting.

At some point isn’t all the attention proof of actual grandeur?

It’s really quite amusing.

I love the fact that this whole tour is being driven by social media.

Not a big deal, but not exactly irrelevant either.

My better half  was notified yesterday that an update was available from the MS mother-ship. (notified on Zune – not on her phone directly)  Over at Windows Phone Secrets  Paul Thurrott posted this about it.

NoDo, pre-update heading out to AT&T users
Posted on April 19, 2011 by Paul Thurrott

I’ve received numerous emails and tweets from people who report they’re now downloading the Windows Phone pre-update and NoDo update for their AT&T Samung Focus and LG Quantum handsets.

Paul also mentioned that AT&T might consider shipping the apps in the AT&T App store rather than stuffing them into an update. I agree, especially considering that one of the apps isn’t compatible with all WP7 phones.

In this update the AT&T address book is evidently not compatible with the Samsung Focus whatsoever.

The phone that was running the original AT&T firmware received an 800xxxxx error and Zune informed us that the update had failed. (We re-ran the updates  and the phone is now up to date) … “Smooth” update process indeed.

So I figured I would take the risk and go ahead and run the update on my “Hacked” phone …. flawless installation on the first try.

I’ll try WISPr connecting at any AT&T hotspots I can find today and update this post with my results (good or bad).

In my case the Walsh updater ensured that my phone received its update.  It didn’t “break” my phone at all.  In fact quite the opposite.

Hattip Paul Thurrott at Windows Phone secrets

Samsung focus

Windows Phone Secrets posted about a new utility they recently discovered, with which you may be able to get the “NoDo” update right now.

AT&T has taken a bit longer than even I expected for them to roll out the “NoDo” update.

I performed the process on my Samsung Focus today and I’m now happily up to date.  Everything is working fine, apps do seem a trifle faster, and copy paste functionality is now available.

Thanks guys!

With new utility, you may be able to get NoDo right now
Chris Walsh has released a tool that may allow you to bypass Microsoft’s silly restrictions and install the February 2011 (“pre-update”) and March 2011 (“NoDo”) updates for Windows Phone.

I needed both updates, this method got me there.  My only word of advice is to be patient, and follow the instructions carefully. (and make a visit to Windows Phone Secrets to comment if it worked for you or not).

Hat-tip: Paul Thurrott and Chris at My Coding Adventures

Update: MS Posts some caviates. As always YMMV when running these utilities.

No worries!

Is Bing/Google street/building/everything view 2.0 coming next year then?

Lets all take a deep breath here (if you dare!) and put some of the hysteria being generated over the nuclear power plant failures in Japan into perspective. On average, most of the US population has been exposed to the radiation of around 500 to 800 American nuclear bomb test fallout sometime in their lifetime.  Not to mention the 1021 bombs set off by the other nuclear power states.

Just a quick question; Why is there nearly no mention at all of the plight of the Japanese tsunami survivors?

As always , politics over reporting.

Why are we not dumping hay from planes right now? If nothing else its cheap and easy.

Find more of Iron and Wine’s music here

Stick with it until the end.

As Nick Gillespie says at Big Government:

In The Excellent Powder: DDT’s Political and Scientific History, Richard Tren and Donald Roberts argue that the infamous insecticide is the world’s greatest public-health success stories, saving millions of lives by preventing insect-borne disease. Unfortunately for those in areas still infested with mosquitoes and other flying bugs, DDT is also the world’s most-misunderstood substance, the target of a decades-long scientifically ignorant and ideologically motivated campaign that has vastly limited its use and applications.

Read the whole thing here.

Previous post regarding DDT: DDT about to be reintroduced as pesticide

Hattip: Big Government

This is a very good video presentation, although Michael Specter leaves out some of the causative factors of some of the public’s distrust of pop science.

Things like the rampant Healthcare fraud recently perpetuated by Big Government aficionados, using fudged data and faked demographics to ramrod corporatist solutions to problems that would be best left to the marketplace.

The scientifically regressive fraud called AGW, with its ham-handed manipulation of data sets and worse than bad coding of the computer models. As it turns out, all the while the supposed “Climate Scientists” were suppressing basic fact checking, hiding data that didn’t fit the hypothesis and cynically labeling scientific skeptics things like “flat earthers” and ‘Climate Change Deniers”.

A Hypothesis is not a Theory unless other scientists can reproduce the results on their own using the base data that the originating idea is based upon. The AGW hyperbole acolytes “loss” of the original data sets is the antithesis of classic science and an assault on the scientific method itself.

Science is skepticism and skeptics aren’t “Deniers”, skeptics are the guardians at the scientific gate!

Star Wars Attack Of The Clones Review

Even more interesting is that the Cartoon Network filed a bogus DMCA take-down notice over this review. It’s now back up on GooTube in all of its glory!

Update: In case you missed it here is the review for Avatar by Red Letter Media (only two parts!).

I can hardly wait for the crowd-sourcing results. It will amusing to see inevitable video mash-ups of politicians talking from both sides of their mouths.

I also expect to see a bunch of this footage in the coming campaign commercials for November’s elections.

When Video first started to become predominant on the intertubes with embedding I predicted that it was going to be interesting to see the results as the phenomenon grew.

This is one more example of a massive amount of free information actually being made available directly to the citizenry without the “filter” of news media outlets. What happens next is anyones guess, but you can be sure that it will be interesting!

More Viscount Monckton on Climategate: ‘They Are Criminals’

Related posts:
The Great Global Warming Swindle

DDT about to be reintroduced as pesticide

Challenging the Hypothesis of Man-Made Global Warming

Heritical Thoughts About Science and Society

Hattip BoingBoing

Hattip: Writer Chick Talks.

This is one reason that education in the US has become nothing more than glorified babysitting service.

“Police in San Diego were called to investigate an 11-year-old’s science project, consisting of ‘a motion detector made out of an empty Gatorade bottle and some electronics,’ after the vice-principal came to the conclusion that it was a bomb. Charges aren’t being laid against the youth, but it’s being recommended that he and his family ‘get counseling.’ Apparently, the student violated school policies — I’m assuming these are policies against having any kind of independent thought?”

There is a comment at the news link that said it best:

“Idiots. Another potential engineer frightened away by blind mindless authority.

This is why modern “chemistry sets” come with sand, salt and purified water, and no potentially dangerous chemicals. Take away the love of science and the love of experimentation, enforce rote memorization. And then the same vice principal will complain that America’s science standards are slipping.

In the long run we will cease to be a leader in science and innovation. But the good news is that as we become a third world country there will be plenty of jobs in the factories of other nations that come here for the cheap labor we will provide them in the future.”

My plan is to have every post done replicated to every account no matter which account is doing the posting. The first part is Facebook, then Twitter, then Slashdot Journal. Who knows from there.

This is also a wonderfully appropriate quote for our times:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” — C.S. Lewis

If this is a hoax video, its pretty well done.

If this is an actual app, (I hear the application supposedly works by processing infrared light through a specific light filter … oookay) I might just quit resisting and buy an iPhone. Imagine the fun!

Update: The English translated version of this video was DMCA’d by the copyright nazies, so I pointed to the original one in French.

This CF&P Foundation’s Economics 101 video discusses the idea of “Moral Hazard”, which occurs when bad choices are subsidized.

This often happens when government intervention lets people take risks while having little or no skin in the game.

Housing policies, for instance, subsidized mortgages, thus enabling irresponsible borrowing and leading to bubbles and bailouts.

Politicians may be setting the stage for the next crisis with a too big to fail policy that will subsidize the biggest financial institutions.

Thanks to www.freedomandprosperity.org for the work.

Read more on the WIKI about the concept of Moral Hazard.

Then ask yourself, “How does this apply to ideas such as Government health care, Government run banks, Government run auto makers, and even Government financed science?”

Hat tip: The Hot Air

Dr. Nils-Axel Mörner: the Galileo of our “scientific age”

Science has taken a leap four centuries back to dark age when science lost to theology. Then the butt of condemnation and punishment were just two souls – Bruno and, the better remembered, Galileo. Now it is a huge horde of scientists from across the planet, who dare challenge the mainstream belief in CO2-induced global warming or anthropogenically-induced global warming (AGW), that are being condemned with calls for punishment of these “traitors” for committing “high crimes against humanity,” “deserving Nuremberg-style trials,” ……… Reviling and calls for punishment are unending. If theology was settled then for a particular cosmological view, now it is “science is settled’ for AGW. Then it was cosmological data gathered through telescope versus theological view; now it is clean, hard core science versus manipulated science backed by political interests. Then it was Cardinal Bellarmine backed by Pope Clement VIII/Pope Paul V; now it is Dr. R. K. Pachauri backed by our political Pope, Mr. Banki Moon. More…

I have also linked to the Air Vent under the ScienceBlogs category.

On that note, here is a fun interview where Lord Monckton adresses a Greenpeace-campaigner on global warming.

This video is also destined to be one of those Internet meme generators for a good long time, and if you skip watching this then you won’t know what the hell the related meme is in reference to, and who wants to be in left the dark and look like a newb?

Now where did I put those pizza rolls?

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 1 of 7):

Watch the rest of the segments here. Or click the links below.

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 2 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 3 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 4 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 5 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 6 of 7)

Star Wars: The Phantom Menace Review (Part 7 of 7)

Hat tip: SlashFilm

And a big thank You to comedy writer and filmmaker Mike from Milwaukee, Wisconsin for the epic review itself!