Militant Geek Custom Shirts

So this shirt, available appropriately by Giant Robot, depicts what appears an iconic moment from the great French Robot Wars of 1992. As I’m sure you’ll remember, that conflict was fueled by frustrated escargot automatons toiling under snooty Parisian chefs (redundant, I know). The chaos was finally settled when the humans agree to make regular cheese concessions. And then they all donned flannel and listened to Nirvana. Ah yes, I remember it like yesterday.

Robot in the City is $18 from Giant Robot.

Stateside geekdom owes a lot to Japan - and I’m not just talking about J-Rock Groupies or Yatta. Whether is gadgets to fawn over or reliable cars to commute to the cubical Japan is responsible for a major portion of this country’s productive output. And, in an irony that exists only to me, it destroys that productivity with each and every video game import.

Split Reason celebrates this bevy of time wasting triumphs with this lovely design. The shirt will cost you $18.95. L33T skills to pwn N00bs with is extra.

Other than Think Geek’s Classic Caffeine Molecule Shirt our Chemistry Haxx0rs don’t have walk-a-wear for their predilections. However, today I’m pleased to announce that apparel catering to their needs has doubled with this awesome shirt from Brian Wu. Like the best designs it combines a number of aspects: revelations of toxic chemicals showing up in Chinese-made toothpast and slavishly applying Chinese characters to things because it ‘looks cool’ despite not knowing what it ‘means’.

In this case the characters roughly say ‘two sweet alcohol’ - a reference to the diethylene glycol that wound up making people sick. How often do you get a political, cultural, and fashion statement all in one? For $19.99 from Cafepress, not nearly often enough.

Uneetee.com is have a great little sale. From the 9th to 12th of this month they were selling some of their better designs for a delightful $12. The design that caught this geek’s eyes was ‘World Circuit’ - or, the world as circuit board. The light green print against darker fabric lacks a bit of contrast to these eyes and the traces are most likely ink, not foil (which would really kick a Dalek). However, for $12 these trivialities aren’t deal breakers. Hurry though - sale ends tomorrow.

World Circuit by Daniel Gilbert from uneetee.com

From Wired’s Epicenter blog comes word that the MPAA is positively beside itself with glee. Through efforts like hiring additional staff the Hollywood gestapo was able to arrest a stunning nine would be pirates in the United States. From the post:

John Fithian, CEO of National Association of Theatre Owners, stated: “Future thieves beware: we will find you; we will stop you; and we will have you arrested.”

Sony contracted additional security personnel for more than 160 pre-release screenings and eight premieres. The studio consider it money well spent, crediting the film’s record box office in part to the heightened vigilance.

After all, if those handful of individuals were allowed to spread their evil, deceitful camcorder copies to the Internets more people would have realized what an awful movie S3 was and stayed home.

And what of the argument that piracy is taking money out of the pockets of Hollywood’s bit players? If hiring of additional security was such a smashing success it would seem that piracy is creating new jobs. Contradiction? Perhaps.

Related: Illegal Music Is Not Legal

Ah, Second Life - that game/not-a-game which has captivated the hearts of brothel running single mothers and Martin Luther flying saucers the world over. Nearly buried beneath the news of Viacom’s GooTube shakedown was word that Second Life is going to Japan. Japanese companies are already starting to worry about performance (via Mainichi via Gizmodo):

The Japanese version is on the way, but the American subsidiaries of automakers like Toyota and Nissan have already put cars on the market in the virtual world. They do it for promotional purposes, but performance in the virtual world is said to reflect performance in the real world, too. If a Japanese language version starts running, more Japanese companies are gonna get involved… This is the first large-scale online game where real money is involved. It’ll be interesting to see whether the cops will be prepared to deal with disputes that have occurred within the game. I can see all sorts of social problems coming out of this.

Personally, I think their concern is misplaced. If Furries are bumping and grinding in Second Life what will the Japanese version bring? Tentacle pr0n?

What happens when you take the pretentiousness of an Apple product unveiling and combine it with current geopolitical events? Why, the iRack. Make sure to watch till the end for the revealing of Apple’s follow up to the iRack, the iRan:

Hat Tip: Geeks are Sexy

For anyone that has been following the string of Apple OS names the compulsion for big cats is puzzling - Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger, and Leopard. Sure, maybe Steve Jobs just has an unhealthy love of whiskers. Or perhaps, Apple has been naming their operating system after German armored vehicles. From blog-for-a-homepage:

But why does Mac OS X and german tank models share the same naming convention and other similarities? Could it be something having to do with the shared, well deserved, feeling of being the best in engineering on the respective fields? Maybe the tendency of both parties to respond well to strong leadership? The desire for total control over the different territories and the need to enforce this with great tanks, well organized armies, DRM and operating systems locked to run on specific hardware?

Of course, the naming could be a run-down of a clone-maker’s product line that was conveniently crushed back in 1997. Somehow Steve Job’s rubbing a former competitor’s nose in trademarked spoils seems a tad more scandalous than the German tank bit. However, how often do we get to use the phrase ‘Mein Gott’ in a post title?

If you haven’t heard there’s something of a game today. Of course, if your surfing the Internet right now instead of enjoying a beer and chicken wing stupor you probably don’t much care. Let’s get a new week of tech mediocrity kicked off with the play by play of what came before:

• Vista launches…
• …and most don’t care…
• …Especially Romania, who’s President, Traian Basescu, told Bill Gates that pirated software was responsible for his country’s vibrant technology industry. And you thought that Bill Gates ran off the set of the Daily show fast…
• But don’t be fooled. Vista is revolutionary. With Vista’s voice recognition technology Microsoft has created an entirely new way of being hacked. You no longer need to know arcane bits of code to destroy a computer - with Vista you only have to talk to it.
• Apple’s iTunes (now illegal in Norway due to its own monopolistic behavior) currently doesn’t work on Vista. Apple’s advice? Just keep the OS purchase on hold and we’ll get back to you. It’s not like they knew that Vista was coming out this past week… or that they had six years to do something about it.
• It was revealed that Verizon had first crack at the Apple iPhone two years ago and they passed .
• John Jantsch from Duct Tape Marketing tries to get senior execs at LinkedIn, the professional equivalent of a pyramid scheme, to explain what it’s good for.
  

  They responded by telling me they were pretty busy but my chances of getting to participate would improve if I used their system to get referred to one of their executives.

• Technorati launches a Digg clone named WTF. Even Technorati observers are asking the same thing. The sound heard immediately after the stunned confusion is Technorati further sliding into obsolescence.
• Sweden launches embassy in Second Life. Attracting those who participate in Furry S&M is apparently a priority for their tourism industry.
• On NewTeeVee there’s a piece about Amanda Congdon, a person that everybody thought was a big fish; turns out she was big only because she came from the teeny tiny pond. As the piece by Steve Bryant says:
  

  If you’re looking for a reason why Congdon’s reporting has taken a turn for the retarded lately, scuttlebutt has it that she’s still shellshocked from her move to L.A.

  Shocker #1: Congdon’s reporting? Shocker #2: a turn for the worse? The former host of Rocketboom has always been painfully forced, at best. People keep saying she’s a brilliant, articulate person foiling the image of the vapid ‘pretty face behind a desk’. But dumb humor + smart blonde = dumb blonde.

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.