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Revoked American Independance

Aug 21 2005

Revo­ked Ame­ri­can Independance

Dec­la­ra­tion of Revo­ca­tion

To the citi­zens of the Uni­ted Sta­tes of Ame­rica, in the light of your fai­lure to elect a com­pe­tent Pre­si­dent of the USA and thus to govern your­sel­ves, we hereby give notice of the revo­ca­tion of your inde­pen­dence, effec­tive today.

Her Sove­reign Majesty Queen Eli­za­beth II will resume monarchi­cal duties over all sta­tes, com­mon­wealths and other territories.

Except Utah, which she does not fancy.

Your new Prime Minis­ter (The Right Honou­ra­ble Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been una­ware that there is a world outside your bor­ders) will appoint a Minis­ter for Ame­rica without the need for further elections.

Con­gress and the Senate will be disbanded.

A ques­tion­naire will be cir­cu­la­ted next year to deter­mine whether any of you noti­ced. To aid in the tran­si­tion to a Bri­tish Crown Depen­dency, the follo­wing rules are intro­du­ced with imme­diate effect:

1. You should look up “revo­ca­tion” in the Oxford English Dic­tio­nary. Then look up “alu­mi­nium.” Check the pro­nun­cia­tion guide. You will be ama­zed at just how wrongly you have been pro­noun­cing it.

The let­ter ‘U’ will be reins­ta­ted in words such as ‘favour’ and ‘neigh­bour’; skip­ping the let­ter ‘U’ is nothing more than lazi­ness on your part. Like­wise, you will learn to spell ‘dough­nut’ without skip­ping half the letters.

You will end your love affair with the let­ter ‘Z’ (pro­noun­ced ‘zed’ not ‘zee’) and the suf­fix “ize” will be repla­ced by the suf­fix “ise.”

You will learn that the suf­fix ‘burgh’ is pro­noun­ced ‘burra’ e.g. Edin­burgh. You are wel­come to re-spell Pitts­burgh as ‘Pitts­berg’ if you can’t cope with correct pronunciation.

Gene­rally, you should raise your voca­bu­lary to accep­ta­ble levels. Look up “voca­bu­lary.” Using the same thirty seven words inters­per­sed with filler noi­ses such as “uhh”, “like”, and “you know” is an unac­cep­ta­ble and inef­fi­cient form of communication.

Look up “interspersed.”

There will be no more ‘bleeps’ in the Jerry Sprin­ger show. If you’re not old enough to cope with bad lan­guage then you shouldn’t have chat shows. When you learn to deve­lop your voca­bu­lary, then you won’t have to use bad lan­guage as often.

2. There is no such thing as “US English.” We will let Mic­ro­soft know on your behalf. The Mic­ro­soft spell-checker will be adjus­ted to take account of the reins­ta­ted let­ter ‘u’ and the eli­mi­na­tion of “-ize.”

3. You should learn to dis­tin­guish the English and Aus­tra­lian accents. It really isn’t that hard. English accents are not limi­ted to cock­ney, upper-class twit or Man­cu­nian (Daphne in Frasier).

You will also have to learn how to unders­tand regio­nal accents — Scot­tish dra­mas such as “Tag­gart” will no lon­ger be broad­cast with subtitles.

While we’re tal­king about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is “Devon.” If you per­sist in calling it Devonshire, all Ame­ri­can Sta­tes will become “shi­res” e.g. Texasshire, Flo­ri­dashire, Louisianashire.

4. Holly­wood will be requi­red occa­sio­nally to cast English actors as the good guys. Holly­wood will be requi­red to cast English actors to play English characters.

Bri­tish sit-coms such as “Men Beha­ving Badly” or “Red Dwarf” will not be re-cast and wate­red down for a wishy-washy Ame­ri­can audience who can’t cope with the humour of occa­sio­nal poli­ti­cal incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your ori­gi­nal natio­nal anthem, “God Save The Queen”, but only after fully carr­ying out task 1. We would not want you to get con­fu­sed and give up half way through.

6. You should stop pla­ying Ame­ri­can “foot­ball.” There is only one kind of foot­ball. What you refer to as Ame­ri­can “foot­ball” is not a very good game.

The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your bor­ders may have noti­ced that no one else plays “Ame­ri­can” foot­ball. You will no lon­ger be allo­wed to play it, and should ins­tead play pro­per football.

Ini­tially, it would be best if you pla­yed with the girls. It is a dif­fi­cult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allo­wed to play rugby (which is simi­lar to Ame­ri­can “foot­ball”, but does not involve stop­ping for a rest every twenty seconds or wea­ring full kev­lar body armour like nancies).

We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005.

You should stop pla­ying base­ball. It is not rea­so­na­ble to host an event called the ‘World Series’ for a game which is not pla­yed outside of Ame­rica. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your bor­ders, your error is unders­tan­da­ble. Ins­tead of base­ball, you will be allo­wed to play a girls’ game called “roun­ders,” which is base­ball without fancy team strip, over­si­zed glo­ves, collec­tor cards or hotdogs.

7. You will no lon­ger be allo­wed to own or carry guns. You will no lon­ger be allo­wed to own or carry anything more dan­ge­rous in public than a vege­ta­ble pee­ler. Because we don’t believe you are sen­si­ble enough to handle poten­tially dan­ge­rous items, you will require a per­mit if you wish to carry a vege­ta­ble pee­ler in public.

8. July 4th is no lon­ger a public holi­day. Novem­ber 2nd will be a new natio­nal holi­day, but only in England. It will be called “Inde­ci­sive Day.”

9. All Ame­ri­can cars are hereby ban­ned. They are crap, and it is for your own good. When we show you Ger­man cars, you will unders­tand what we mean.

All road inter­sec­tions will be repla­ced with roun­da­bouts. You will start dri­ving on the left with imme­diate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with imme­diate effect and without the bene­fit of con­ver­sion tables. Roun­da­bouts and metri­ca­tion will help you unders­tand the Bri­tish sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call ‘French fries’ are not real chips. Fries aren’t even French, they are Bel­gian though 97.85% of you (inc­lu­ding the guy who dis­co­ve­red fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Bel­gium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are pro­perly called “crisps.” Real chips are thick cut and fried in ani­mal fat. The tra­di­tio­nal accom­pa­ni­ment to chips is beer which should be ser­ved warm and flat.

Wai­tres­ses will be trai­ned to be more aggres­sive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Com­mon­wealth of Mas­sachu­setts, this quan­tity to be dou­bled for tea made within the city of Bos­ton itself.

12. The cold tas­te­less stuff you insist on calling “beer” is not actually beer at all, it is lager . From Novem­ber 1st only pro­per Bri­tish Bit­ter will be refe­rred to as “beer,” and Euro­pean brews of known and accep­ted pro­ve­nance will be refe­rred to as “Lager.” The subs­tan­ces for­merly known as “Ame­ri­can Beer” will hen­ce­forth be refe­rred to as “Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine,” with the excep­tion of the pro­duct of the Ame­ri­can Bud­wei­ser com­pany whose pro­duct will be refe­rred to as “Weak Near-Frozen Gnat’s Urine.” This will allow true Bud­wei­ser (as manu­fac­tu­red for the last 1000 years in the Czech Repu­blic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

13. From Novem­ber 10th the UK will har­mo­nise petrol (or “gaso­line,” as you will be per­mit­ted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) pri­ces with the for­mer USA. The UK will har­mo­nise its pri­ces to those of the for­mer USA and the For­mer USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol pri­ces (roughly $6/US gallon — get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve per­so­nal issues without using guns, law­yers or the­ra­pists. The fact that you need so many law­yers and the­ra­pists shows that you’re not adult enough to be inde­pen­dent. Guns should only be hand­led by
adults. If you’re not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or spea­king to a the­ra­pist, then you’re not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It’s been dri­ving us crazy.

16. Tax collec­tors from Her Majesty’s Govern­ment will be with you shortly to ensure the acqui­si­tion of all reve­nues due (back­da­ted to 1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

Yahoo Launches Audio Search (impressive)

Aug 4 2005

Saw this on Insi­de­Goo­gle,

quote:

Yahoo has appa­rently deci­ded that, now that they have an ad net­work tar­ge­ted at blog­gers, it is time for them to release all of their blog-related ser­vi­ces in deve­lop­ment. As a result, here is Yahoo Audio Search, which can find you pod­casts. Accor­ding to The New York Times, Yahoo claims to have inde­xed 50 million music, voice and other audio files.

The ser­vice will also dis­play links to the online sites where users can pay to down­load a song. Most major music sites have agreed to send Yahoo lists of their songs and pay a com­mis­sion on every song sold. The current ver­sion of the ser­vice has no adver­ti­sing, but Mr. Horo­witz said ads might be added later.

You can refine your searches by music, pod­casts or other audio, by song, artist or album, by for­mat (RAM, MP3, MIDI, WMA or AAC) by dura­tion (more or less than a minute), by web & audio ser­vi­ces or audio ser­vi­ces only, and by major relea­ses or to inc­lude alter­na­tes, imports, EPs, etc.. Smartly, the pod­cast results have links to the RSS feeds.


http://​audio​.search​.yahoo​.com/

This is an extre­mely nifty release. Take these exam­ple searches and results:
(Pur­po­sely tes­ting with les­ser known artists)

Vene­tian Sna­res: Search
Clic­king the artist brings up a dis­co­graphy and list of albums.
Clic­king the song gives a list of legal loca­tions for down­load, cost, qua­lity, for­mat, abi­lity to burn to cd,
Quick links inc­lude Y! music link to artist, bio­graphys and reviews.
There is also a matching artists page on the right hand side to give quick access to dis­co­graphies of searched terms.

From the dis­co­graphy page:
For­mat: Album Cover, Title (Record Label, Year of Release)
Sort relea­ses by popu­la­rity, date and title.
On the right Yahoo auto­ma­ti­cally searches ima­ges, the web and video and dis­plays the first results from each in a sin­gle column.
Find CD link under each album links to Yahoo shop­ping and gives a list of online out­lets to purchase the cd.
For more well known artists there are “Simi­lar artist” links also.

Clic­king an album cover takes you to the ” album brow­ser”:
This lets you quickly browse an artists albums. On clic­king from the brow­ser you are pre­sen­ted with a trac­klis­ting and all the avai­la­ble legal online down­load loca­tions for that song.

You can also select your pre­fe­rred audio ser­vice from one of these:

quote:

None
Artist­Di­rect
Audio­Lunch­box
Buy​Mu​sic​.com
dMu­sic
eMu­sic
Epi­to­nic
Gara­ge­Band
iTu­nes
Live­down­loads
MP34U
MSN Music
Music­match
Naps­ter
Pas­sA­long
Real­Pla­yer Music Store
Rhap­sody
SoundC­lick
Yahoo! Music Unli­mi­ted


Moving on to Pod­casts:
Search for engad­get: Engad­get Pod­cast
Notice the last published date and direct link to the RSS feeds.
Here’s another pod­cast search: BBC

There’s also an “other audio” option which I have yet to try.

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The irony of banning GTA due to sex

Jul 25 2005

Inside Fire­fox:
“Games­top has deci­ded to stop stoc­king Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. Pro­bably because parents might buy this game for their kids, and it has (shock) sex in it now acces­si­ble via a dif­fi­cult to apply mod (on the PS2 at least). I guess using a pros­ti­tute, killing her and taking the money back, mas­sac­ring pedes­trians and stea­ling things is fine family fun, but con­sen­sual sex isn’t? For shame, Games­top. You try and act like you’re above this, but ins­tead you show how unen­ligh­te­ned you actually are.”

I just read this at Insi­de­Fi­re­fox lin­ked to above. I agree com­ple­tely and think this “hot cof­fee” mod thing is going a little too far. Although I’m sure the bri­tish 18 cer­ti­fi­cate ade­qua­tely covers this.

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Optimus (concept) Display Keyboard

Jul 14 2005

A goon over at forums.somethin­gaw­ful.com poin­ted this out to me and I relished the idea of having one of these so much that I deci­ded to make a blog entry about it. At the moment this is only a con­cept piece, howe­ver there are patents pen­ding and from the forums thread their is sig­ni­fi­cant inte­rest in such a pro­duct. It is inge­nious without a doubt.

The Opti­mus Key­board

The image
“Every key of the Opti­mus key­board is a stand-alone dis­play sho­wing exactly what it is con­tro­lling at this very moment.”

The image The image
“Addi­tio­nal block of keys on the left is meant for switching bet­ween pro­grams or modes”

The image The image
Stan­dard key­board in English, same key­board dif­fe­rent dis­play when pla­ying Quake, sho­wing the controls.

The pos­si­bi­li­ties of this are end­less. So many times I have pla­yed video games and for­got­ten the con­trols, had dif­fi­culty remem­be­ring key­board short­cuts, wan­ted impro­ved func­tio­na­lity and quick (and obvious) one key com­mands (I have this to some extent with my MS natu­ral key­board but you need to remem­ber each button’s func­tion). This key­board can also be sold inter­na­tio­nally as it incor­po­ra­tes very easily all the dif­fe­rent setups and arran­ge­ments of keys and cha­rac­ters, i.e. the Rus­sian or Greek alpha­bets. It’s a sim­ple aid and solu­tion to com­mon key memo­ri­za­tion pro­blems, cus­to­mi­za­tion and adap­ta­bi­lity and it looks inc­re­dibly cool. I want one.

Ima­ges © 1995–2005 Art. Lebedev Stu­dio

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In Case of Emergency (ICE)

Jul 12 2005
I’ve just read about this on the BBC web­site and I think it is an exce­llent idea and should be widely adop­ted. It is a sim­ple and effi­cient method of iden­tif­ying who to call in the case of an emer­gency.
 

BBC says:

A cam­paign encou­ra­ging peo­ple to store per­so­nal details on their mobile pho­nes to help iden­tify vic­tims of acci­dents and disas­ters has taken off since the bomb attacks in Lon­don.

Users are being urged to enter a num­ber in their phone’s memory under the hea­ding ICE — In Case of Emergency.

Para­me­dics or police would then be able to use it to con­tact a relative.

The idea is the brainchild of East Anglian Ambu­lance Ser­vice para­me­dic Bob Brotchie and was launched in May.

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