noinput.net | plug it in

We’ve come a long way as a society, thats for sure

This Video is spreading like wildfire on the web right now, freakin awesome rendition of Mario Melodys. Normally I would post it on my site in my player but google video is too hot not to link to directly.

hat tip -> brian

Pretty hot mashup of a Wiki search engine with an AJAX backbone.

room404.com - The history of 404

You ever wonder where that dreaded 404 number came from?

Before the beginning of time, when the Internet was still very much under the spell of bare Unix shells and Gopher, before SLIP or PPP became widely used, an ambitious group of young scientists at CERN (Switzerland) started working on what was to become the media revolution of the nineties: the World Wide Web, later to be known as WWW, or simply ‘the Web’. Their aim: to create a database infrastructure that offered open access to data in various formats: multi-media. The ultimate goal was clearly to create a protocol that would combine text and pictures and present it as one document, and allow linking to other such documents: hypertext.

Because these bright young minds were reluctant to reveal their progress (and setbacks) to the world, they started developing their protocol in a closed environment: CERN’s internal network. Many hours were spend on what later became the world-wide standard for multimedia documents. Using the physical lay-out of CERN’s network and buildings as a metaphor for the ‘real world’ they situated different functions of the protocol in different offices within CERN.

In an office on the fourth floor (room 404), they placed the World Wide Web’s central database: any request for a file was routed to that office, where two or three people would manually locate the requested files and transfer them, over the network, to the person who made that request.

When the database started to grow, and the people at CERN realised that they were able to retrieve documents other than their own research-papers, not only the number of requests grew, but also the number of requests that could not be fulfilled, usually because the person who requested a file typed in the wrong name for that file. Soon these faulty requests were answered with a standard message: ‘Room 404: file not found’.

Plug -> 404lounge.net
The most artistic 404 pages around

George Lucas talks piracy - Cinematical

Pretty good overview, I’d say, from the big guy G.L. on the state of piracy and movies. I like his confidence int he fact that DVD’s wont be around much longer. Interesting points.

• The window must be collapsed. “I think it’ll happen— it’ll have to happen… because of piracy. It’s the only way you can stop piracy; there is no other way…It won’t be DVDs—DVDs aren’t going to be around too much longer. If you can get it at home for $2, then why would you go on the street and get a bad version?”
• iTunes will keep the home entertainment industry alive. “Pay-per-view [will replace DVD]. It’s the way kids do it today. It’s how you do it on your iPod: They just download it. You pay 99 cents for music, and movies will be like two bucks. That will definitely change the economics of the business because (studios) are losing money now.”
• American movies are too expensive. “The average [Hollywood budget] is something like $60 million, [but] the average cost of making a movie in Europe is $3.5 million. That’s the way things are really competing. I think the American film industry is going to become like the rest of the world — and people won’t get paid as much.”
• Movie theaters don’t matter… “For studios, the fact is that the theatrical film market is less than 10% of their business — it’s very, very small. I mean, you could chop that off in a second, and it wouldn’t even bother them — they’re just doing it as a promotional thing.”
• …but they’re not going anywere. “I don’t think the theatrical exhibition business will go away because I think people will always want to go to the movies, just as they go to the opera, they go to the ballet, and they go to football games. Football is a perfect example, where you can stay at home and watch it in the comfort of your own home and see a much better presentation, but people still sit out in the cold and cheer.”

In other news:

• Film-makers asked to spread Firefox word
• OpenCD 3.1 Released
• Zero-Day Exploit Targets IE - Browse & Die
• iTunes outsells traditional music stores
• 132 O’Reilly books and other things

Wired News: Hacking the Hybrid Vehicle

Engineers are developing adapter kits for hybrid vehicles that will increase their efficiency to 100 miles per gallon by powering them solely on electricity during short trips.

Today’s hybrid vehicles use electricity stored in batteries to assist the gasoline engine in acceleration and to completely power the vehicle while idling or at steady low speeds (generally less than 25 mph). Vehicles such as the Toyota Prius, Honda Civic Hybrid and Ford Escape Hybrid include drive-train management systems that automatically decide when to use the batteries or internal-combustion engine.

100mph/gal?? hoooly shit. maybe it will be worth the investment.

hat tip -> foo