Bloggasm

This is pretty spiffy. A book bound in human skin has been found. What movie was there in which a book was bound in skin? I think it was Hocus Pocus. Okay, I just gave too much away by knowing the answer to that question.

British police are trying to trace the owners of a 300-year-old book, thought to be bound in human skin.

The book, most of which is in French, was found in central Leeds, northern England.

British detectives believe the book may have been dumped after a burglary.

It looks as if a phone-jamming scheme that was aimed at Democrats has been firmly connected to the White House and other Republican figures: Phone-jamming records point to White House

Key figures in a phone-jamming scheme designed to keep New Hampshire Democrats from voting in 2002 had regular contact with the White House and Republican Party as the plan was unfolding, phone records introduced in criminal court show.

The records show that Bush campaign operative James Tobin, who recently was convicted in the case, made two dozen calls to the White House within a three-day period around Election Day 2002 – as the phone jamming operation was finalized, carried out and then abruptly shut down.

So far, nobody high-up in the party has been officially fingered:

The Justice Department has secured three convictions in the case but hasn’t accused any White House or national Republican officials of wrongdoing, nor made any allegations suggesting party officials outside New Hampshire were involved. The phone records of calls to the White House were exhibits in Tobin’s trial but prosecutors did not make them part of their case.

Colbert Low: My name is Colbert Low

I am the first Malaysian blogger to join an international blog network at Weblog Empire and we are now part of b5media as of 31 Oct 2005.

I am the editor for The Gadget Blog and I do reviews on cool new gadgets and related stuff. I also guest blog at Realtechnews.com and ohGizmo.com when I have the time.

The b5media.com Blogging Network that my Gadget Blog is a part of, was founded by the 3 greatest blogger right now. And we are growing like MAD….With over 150 blogs now!

Duncan Riley
Darren Rowse
Jeremy Wright

We’ve even been featured by big gadget websites like Realtechnews.com, Gizmodo.com, OhGizmo.com, theGadgetizer.com, Treehugger.net and Engadget.com, etc since June 2005.

Simon Owens: Whenever companies are working on new forms of technological gadgets, how much time do you think they focus on the look and style of an object compared to the technological aspects of it? Have you ever purchased a cell-phone or other technological device almost soley based on its look?

Colbert Low: Look and style does play an important factor. I guess they probably come out with it first and only then add in the functions. They probably spend the same amount of time designing it and adding features to it.

Simon Owens: As a gadget blog do you get a lot of press releases from technology companies? What do you think of blogs that simply print press releases without original content?

Colbert Low: I do get swarms of emails from PR agencies and newsletters every week. I try to sort them out every Friday as I do have a full time job as a Linux System Engineer too. I guess it’s important to add some comments to those press releases as some of them are quite bland and blogs are supposed to be more human-like and not regurgitate out the same old press release. If blogs do that, then we are moving backwards to the dinosaur age of text browsers.

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“A five-year-old boy can’t have the breasts of Dolly Parton.”

–heard on Big Story Weekend

When you follow politics enough, you begin to pick out news pieces and rhetoric which have absolutely no substance whatsoever, things that are nothing but white noise. Let me show you an example– in which not only has the news source just wasted about sixty seconds of your time, but the person quoted in the source is nothing but a political pawn who has absolutely nothing to say at all: Feminist Camille Paglia Attacks Liberal Media

Camille Paglia, the famed, feminist social critic that calls herself a Democrat, gave an interview to The Capital Times of Madison, Wisconsin, recently (hat tip to Radio Equalizer) in which she attacked a wide array of American media icons. For instance, she stated that the writing of The New York Times was, “‘Upper middle class comfortable elitist liberalism.’”

She then blamed a lot of the left’s difficulties on Hollywood: “‘It’s the reason my party, the Democratic Party, is in such bad shape. It’s because of the insularity and the arrogance of those views.’”

Ok, first let’s establish the news organization’s subtitle: “Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias.”

Pundits on both sides love to do this. They pick someone from the opposite side that criticizes his or her own political bias and uses this as anecdotal evidence to support one theory: “Even [insert person with political bias here] is criticizing his own party.” And since there are literally thousands of prominent political figures on each side, it’s not hard to find someone to do this. It’s one of those logical black-holes that every pundit loves and refuses to let go of.

Now, let’s get into the meat (or lack thereof) of her statements:

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Kyle Orland got his start writing about video games when he started Super Mario Bros. HQ, a fansite devoted to the famous Nintendo mascot, in 1997. Since then he’s written as a freelancer for publications including Electronic Gaming Monthly, GameSpot, Next Generation, GameCritics and more. His blog, Video Game Media Watch, takes a highly opinionated look at the way video games are covered in the specialist and mass media.

Simon Owens: There’s been some somewhat recent lawsuits against video-game makers about video games promoting violence amongst teens. My best guess is that you wouldn’t agree with these accusations (if I’m wrong, please correct me), but do you think there will ever be a real conservative backlash against violent video games?

Kyle Orland: Well, I don’t know about a conservative backlash — Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Joe Lieberman are among those out in front on this one. Every art form goes though these kinds of growing pains when they’re new, when the older generation in power is scared and confused by the younger generation’s unfamiliar new hobby. As time passes, the older generation will die out and the generation that grew up with games will realize that games didn’t cause them to become a generation of anti-social murderers and everyone will calm down. The key is to not let the older generation set the medium back with restrictions in the mean time.

Simon Owens: As video games become more technologically advanced, we’re seeing a division of players. On the one side we see the frat-boy types floating towards first-person shooter and sports games, while the more nerdy of video game players drifting towards role-playing or strategy games. Are there are a lot of games that bridge the gap between these two and offer both a lot of action and a lot of strategy at the same time?

Kyle Orland: This is a little simplistic division, but in general there are many splits in game preference. Western vs. Eastern. Hardcore vs. Casual. Console vs. PC. The best games can bridge the gaps between these groups, but they are few and far between. Tetris is probably the most universal, historically, but games like The Sims, the Mario and Zelda series, and even simple Windows games like Solitaire and Minesweeper all have incredibly wide reach. People who play these games might not consider themselves “gamers,” but they are. We need more games like this that expand the somewhat narrow definition of what video gaming is.

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I recently got a chance to sit down (figuratively, it was an email interview) with PSP Hacks and discuss the dangerous world of hacking.

Simon Owens: How has Sony reacted to the concept of PSP hacks? Is this something they generally encourage?

PSP Hacks: I don’t believe Sony encourages people to hack their device however, I think when Sony issues a firmware update this will encourage the hackers to circumvent the latest security attempts made by Sony.

Simon Owens: How would you summarize your blog’s audience? Are they mostly tech geeks or do you get a lot of hard-core gamers who aren’t necessarily schooled on the tech side of PSPs?

PSP Hacks: I think it’s a combination of both. People who are interested in hacking their unit for the first time and have no clue – there are ‘newbies’ visiting on a daily basis, and then there are the technical ones who just want to see what’s new in the community and have a general understanding on how to accomplish the basics.

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