Militant Geek Custom Shirts

Ah, another timeless classic in the spiritual strata we call ‘Ghosts of Geeks Past’. While the photo technically showcases nerds it comes from an era when the Geek and Nerd sub-geniuses hadn’t yet split. In 1982 Life magazine rounded up all the world video game “champions” they could find and posed them. You’ll notice that the photographer brilliantly placed an imposing wall between the no-doubt-sex-starved winners and the row of duped cheerleaders. Really, the most female play any had gotten up until this point had been with Ms. Pac-Man.

An now we cut to a fictional recreation outside a high school gymnasium:

Cheerleader:“Give me an S!”
Cheerleaders:“S!”
Cocaine Snorting Photographer“Hey, girls! Over here! How would you like to take a photo with some world campion athletes?”
Cheerleader:“Really! Oh my gosh! That would be, like, totally awesome! You mean like Pete Rose? He’s so virtuous.”
Cocaine Snorting Photographer“Um… sure. Ok! The set is right over here…”
Cheerleader:“Um… Who are these guys? And what’s that smell?”

Ah, the 80’s.

This past Monday was a US holiday to celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights moment. At the same time French citizens gathered to demonstrate against a political party with the most un-King like sentiments, the French extremists Front National. What started out as a peaceful protest against bigotry turned into a pitched battle complete with push guns, rez cages, pig grenades, and flying saucers. All told, just another day in the bizzaro world of Second Life.

I have heard the future of war and it fires along to a European techno soundtrack. From James Au’s detailed account:

It’s unclear when the shooting started, or who fired the first shot (several witnesses claim FN security forces assaulted them with “push guns”, weapons capable of flinging a Resident across the island like a ragdoll), but in the final days of last week, at least, the assault raged from both sides. It’s also unclear if the anti-FN protest groups were involved in the escalating violence– Officers with both antiFn and SLLU haven’t replied to my Instant Message– though by personal observation, at least a few members seemed to be. Since Porcupine is not a damage-enabled area, weapons there have about as much stopping power as pointing one’s finger at the computer screen and saying Bang Bang. But get enough projectiles flying, and server lag is bound to ground anyone’s use of the area to a halt. (Or in my case, cause the Second Life viewer to crash.)

And so it raged, a ponderous and dreamlike conflict of machine guns, sirens, police cars, “rez cages” (which can trap an unsuspecting avatar), explosions, and flickering holograms of marijuana leaves and kids’ TV characters, and more. By California time, the battles often culminated at 2am, 3am, and even later into the small hours of the American clock, when Residents in Europe are most active. So amid the exchange of salvos, the chat log was choked over with pro and anti-Le Pen curses, most in French. And when the lag was not too overwhelming to stream audio, the whole fracas was accompanied by bursts of European techno.

One enterprising insurrectionist created a pig grenade, fixed it to a flying saucer, and sent several whirling into Front National headquarters, where they’d explode in a starburst of porcine shrapnel.

But like all things in Second Life, a normalcy eventually returns:

By today, the headquarters of Front National has entirely disappeared from Porcupine; in its place, a tiny casino has sprung up overnight, and is already receiving customers.

In honor of the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., a special sun is made to arc across the grid of Second Life today. If you look close enough, you’ll see it’s inset with the face of the man who was so untimely cut down, when far too much of his work remained. In his country, the world beyond, and, perhaps, in worlds he never could have imagined.

Yes, lets have a moment of silence for the digital pigs who so bravely sacrificed themselves in the name of… um… people who have nothing better to do.

Ah, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The struggle for civil rights and the ultimate triumphant of peaceful protest over bigotry is something we can all drink to, geek or not. Given that the assembled team or monkeys and I are still working through our post-Martin malaise here’s the important stuff from last week that just didn’t quite warrant its own post.

• A little company out of California announced a new cellphone, or something.
• Actually, futher examining the iPhone exposes Apple’s business model for what it is: a roach motel where: “customers check in, but they can’t check out”. From Boing Boing, Illustration by Christophe Vorlet
• But if your business model is based on customer lock in how do you keep the word from spreading? Why, bullying bloggers, of course. As Geek & Poke deliciously declare “Someday you’ll have to decide: Do you want freedom of the press or this really cool phone?”
• Just to remind people that things non-Apple related still do happen we thought we’d let you know that Napster bought AOL music. We also thought we’d let you know that an AOL music service with an awesome factor of 0 times anything is still zero.
• The news about Vista just keeps getting better:
  

  if your computer detects erroneous data in its registers, or voltage fluctuations (both of which are typical of PCs whose parts have been manufactured by dozens of companies), it will restart major subsystems, hanging up while it flushes all your data — just in case those errors were part of a hack-attack on the system.

  Meanwhile John Carmack, quasi-famous game developer (Quake, Doom), rocketeer, and quote machine says that Vista leaves him cold:

  Nothing is going to help a new game by going to a new operating system. There were some clear wins going from Windows 95 to Windows XP for games, but there really aren’t any for Vista… They’re really grasping at straws for reasons to upgrade the operating system. I suspect I could run XP for a great many more years without having a problem with it.

• The Pirate Bay, a legion of swiss hackers who thumb their nose at copyright and have become a political party, are looking to buy an Island. They’re raising money for Sealand, a decrypt platform and pseudo sovereign nation six miles off the coast of the U.K. The owners are asking nearly $1 billion for a WWII concrete slab that was largely damaged last June in a fire. They’ve raised $15,000 so far and have started negotiations. Pr0n fiends the world over begin giggling uncontrollably.
• eBay buys StubHub, a ticket reselling site, for $310 million. eBay already had a ticket marketplace but I guess they have aspirations of Yahoo like redundancies.
• Sprint is laying off 5,000 people. Even over a phone the sound of sudden anxiety was as clear as a pin drop.
• MyBlogLog, a five person distributed operation, is sold to Yahoo for $10 million. The founders promise to spend their new windfall on a classier set of pajamas to wear to work.
• Second Life’s client software goes open source. Which might be cool if it was anything other than Second Life. As Valleywag says ‘Unless you’re a sexual deviant, its as boring as hell’.

One of the reasons I started the ‘Ghosts of Geeks Past’ feature is that there is simply too much embarrassing flotsam on the waters we tread. I remind lest we repeat. Take today, for example: what begins as a fairly boring Microsoft 386 marketing promo (Accounts! Spreadsheets! Corporate Blah!) becomes a sinking ship of c(rap)-tastic portions at the 7-minute mark (my suggestion is to hit the play button to begin downloading, immediately hit pause, go read the rest of your email while it buffers, come back and jump to the magical 7 minute mark). Jaw dropping will ensue.

Anyone up for a remix?

Ok, yesterday we all had a bit of phun at the iPhone’s expense (to Apple’s credit it’s incredible how it won’t be released until June and already its a pop culture touchstone).

However, there is still at least one more video out there worth posting. Last night on SNL during the weekend update segment Fred Armisen did a great Steve Jobs impression and announced an iPhone with battery life of ‘about 20 minutes’. Let’s put the power of crowds to the test - 50 Geek Cred points to the first person who can link to that segment (YouTube, Google Video, whatever) in the comments. Update: 50 Geek Cred Points to Ritz for the quick reply (I was doing YouTube tag searchs for iPhone and SNL, but their search box is returning odd results at this time) - a tip of the hat also goes out to Mimoun for chiming in.

The iPhone has not engorged Stephen Colbert; in fact, he’s flaccid with rage. (Props to Gizmodo for both excellent iPhone YouTube heads-up on this otherwise slow weekend.)

When is enough enough? Conan shows us the iPhone future:

Say what you will about Google - that they’ve turned evil, lost viewers trust, or gone plane crazy; at least they don’t design like Yahoo. Steve Bryant shares the ugly cluttered results (link has full color and larger size):

Less than a day after Cisco sued Apple over the iPhone trademark hints from the filing imply Apple tried trickery to get its way. Highlighted court documents from Paul Kedrosky:

Why try and trademark something where its out of sight, out of mind? An elaborate explanation as to why Apple’s naming scheme will fail in the US has been up at ZDNet for almost a month:

It’s not an entirely unheard of tactic to secretively file for trademarks in places where such filings may escape the prying eyes of those keeping vigil over trademark and patent applications at the US Patent and Trademark Office. But now, maybe the real reason for Apple’s far-off applications has revealed itself: perhaps the trademark simply isn’t available here in the US

Add another bullet to my list of reasons the iPhone is iHype: Cisco is going to make them change the name. Via Pual Kedrosky:

Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) today announced that it has filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California against Apple, Inc., seeking to prevent Apple from infringing upon and deliberately copying and using Cisco’s registered iPhone trademark.

Cisco obtained the iPhone trademark in 2000 after completing the acquisition of Infogear, which previously owned the mark and sold iPhone products for several years. Infogear’s original filing for the trademark dates to March 20, 1996. Linksys, a division of Cisco, has been shipping a new family of iPhone products since early last year. On Dec. 18, Linksys expanded the iPhone family with additional products.

“Cisco entered into negotiations with Apple in good faith after Apple repeatedly asked permission to use Cisco’s iPhone name,” said Mark Chandler, senior vice president and general counsel, Cisco. “There is no doubt that Apple’s new phone is very exciting, but they should not be using our trademark without our permission.

“Today’s iPhone is not tomorrow’s iPhone. The potential for convergence of the home phone, cell phone, work phone and PC is limitless, which is why it is so important for us to protect our brand,” Chandler concluded.

With its lawsuit, Cisco is seeking injunctive relief to prevent Apple from copying Cisco’s iPhone trademark.

Surely, Apple knew this was coming but went ahead with their publicity extravaganza anyway. Arrogance or ignorance?