I'm trying to build a bullet-proof backup system for my Macbook Pro on a modest budget and need some technical advice for choosing which hard drive to put in an external firewire enclosure. (OWC Mercury Elite-AL Quad-interface [Firewire 800/400, USB, eSata])

This is not the oft-repeated question of "Which HDD brand is the most reliable?" We should all know by now that all hard drives will fail sooner or later and it's the backup strategy that should keep you up at night.

I've got the backup strategy nailed down (redundant copies of my laptop HDD and external HDD, plus off-site backup), and I've figured out I need a 750 GB or 1 TB SATA drive. The question is, which HDDs have performance and power-usage specs that make the best sense for an external backup drive that will only get written to for a nightly backup with SuperDuper plus occasional Time Machine writes in the background when I'm at my desk?

Tom's Hardware Winter 2008 Hard Drive Guide gives a great technical look at today's top drives from WD, Seagate, Hitachi and Samsung. I don't know how to read these numbers (like average sequential read throughput or access time) to know what's relevant to my backup situation. Tom's Hardware also gives metrics on performance per watt, and another article highlights low-power-consumption as an important consideration for always-on externals.

What metrics matter for backup-only drives? Should I go for so-called RAID class drives that are certified for 24/7 grinding? Should I go for one of these "green" drives that are low-performance but low power consumers? What's good for the long haul?

pWhen news came out that Conde Nast was launching its teen social media site a href="http://www.Flip.com" title="Flip.com"Flip.com/a, back in 2006, Staci a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/junior-achievement-meets-conde-nast-new-site-for-ambitious-teen-girls" title="had a very"had a very/a pertinent question: "Can Conde Nast, which has been so good at matching demographics with ideas for print, create an online place appealing enough to catch and keep teen girls attention among so much competition?" Now as it has announced that it is closing Flip.com, the answer seems to be, unfortunately, no. The site will close down on Dec 16th, according to a note sent out to users, reported a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the_state_of_journalism/flipcom_to_close_december_16_102210.asp" title="by FishbowlNY"by FishbowlNY/a. "If you have any flipbooks that you would like to save before this date, we suggest you print them. It's easy; go to the flipbook and click on the Print button just below it." How convinient... /p p Just a few months after the site's beta launch early last year, the company tied to retool it, and make it more about partnerships and working through other social networks like MySpace and Facebook. Even that didn't seem to have worked. Part of it has been its own internal bungling and key employee defection. Then, it didn't have a big traffic funnel to bring any kind of mass to the social net, and if anything, the key in such an effort is the network effect. /p p Conde Nast, which some thought to be the perfect magazine machine and almost immune to a downturn, is having a particularly tough time during these times: it has been slashing jobs across the board, including at Portfolio and Men's Vogue, as well as its online division CondeNet. Flip.com was run out of CondeNet, and its budget review finished just late last month...Flip's closure is likely a result of that review. What else will the company pull the plug on? Any ideas? And by the way, I stand by a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-conde-nast-scales-back-portfolio-mens-vogue-layoffs-are-coming/" title="my earlier prediction"my prediction/a in October: "I wouldn't be surprised if Portfolio ends up being a special section with Wired magazine or New Yorker a year down the line." Now, it may come even sooner... /p pstrongRelated/strong/p ul class="related" lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-conde-nast-social-net-flip-tries-to-avoid-flop-with-partnerships-and-pr" title="Conde Nast Social Net Flip Tries To Avoid Flop With Partnerships And Promotions"Conde Nast Social Net Flip Tries To Avoid Flop With Partnerships And Promotions/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/hachette-to-launch-home-improvement-portal" title="Hachette To Launch Home Improvement Portal; CondeNet's Flip Opens Today"Hachette To Launch Home Improvement Portal; CondeNet's Flip Opens Today/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/condenets-teen-girl-site-flip-will-let-users-control-advertising/" title="CondeNet's Teen Girl Site Flip Will Let Users Control Advertising"CondeNet's Teen Girl Site Flip Will Let Users Control Advertising/a/li /ul p!-- iMark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. a href="http://content.adbureau.net/accipiter/adclick/CID=000010cb0000000000000000/SITE=PC_US/AAMSZ=PREMB_NEWS/relocate=http://marklogicdps.eventbrite.com/"Register now!/a/i --/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=54CF3r"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=54CF3r" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=XxF8O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=XxF8O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=zw3BO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=zw3BO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=W8Yro"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=W8Yro" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=zjLeO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=zjLeO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=yVshO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=yVshO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/473172160" height="1" width="1"/

At some point this past summer, between all but consecutive viewings of The Dark Knight, I slipped into a screening of Step Brothers with the same tempered expectations with which I had greeted Blades of Glory and Semi-Pro -- and found myself equally surprised in the coming days and weeks and months by just how admittedly tickled I was by any of them (quoting lines was moderate on all counts). Mind you, I'm saying this as the guy who chuckled during Anchorman, sure, but not really enough to keep it on my shelf or call myself thankful for it.

That's nothing against our Eric D. Snider, and nothing against the star of each film mentioned, Will Ferrell (yes, he was actually Batman). In fact, with Step Brothers hitting shelves today (with reports of a wholly sung commentary track), it only seemed fitting that we go over his most amusing roles as overgrown man-children (Ferrell's, not Snider's). Because they're there, and they always will be, and the sooner that I admit to being vulnerable to his shtick, a better world this very well may be.

Filed under: Comedy, New Line, Sony, Dreamworks, Cinematical Seven

Continue reading Cinematical Seven: Favorite Will Ferrell Man-Children

Permalink | Email this | Comments

I remember Iomega.... what do you guys think of this op-ed from Motley Fool?

http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...xt-iomega.aspx

(please leave rose-colored Apple glasses at the door and give fair, reasoned consideration when replying)

Personally, I think Apple is NOT the next Iomega, but I do think they're more vulnerable than their image suggests. I think they should release different levels of the iPhone, including a mass market device - tricky part is timing the introduction of it at a point when the high-end devices are starting to plateau (which may happen sooner rather than later if the economy continues to implode throughout next year... and beyond?) since those provide the fattest margins and you don't want to eat into those - just supplement them with low-margin high-volume devices.

The new Mio GPS phone will be a touchscreen one. This is yet unnamed and is smaller than the Nuvifone from Garmin and may even come sooner than the bigger iPhone killer. Specs includes Windows CE OS, Mitac’s “Spirit” UI, a 3.2 MP camera and 3.5G connectivity.

[via engadget]

No sooner are we lauding the importance of honest, graphically intense PSAs, we get this from Strawberry Frog

Hi guys

I purchased my iPod Touch about a year ago. A 1st gen 8 gig jobby. I've always liked it, but only in the last month or so have i REALLY enjoyed it (almost like a new toy even) since firmware 2.x was released. For me, it's like a fresh beginning. up until 2.x i found the Touch good but stagnant and 'boring' even. just a music player. but since the app shop i've started using it almost all the time for things!

but, sooner or later i'd like to update. but only when there's significant reason to do so. Yup, extra memory would be good, but not yet essential for me. but what about other things, both in hardware and software?

HARDWARE - what can we realistically expect in the next year or 2? the introduction of a few curves and a speaker in the gen 2 isn't really a breakthrough in excitingness to me. so what else is plausible? significantly faster processors? camera? voice recording (ie, mic), more connectivity (ie, ability to connect joystick, stylus, mouse, sound recorders, monitors etc etc, you get the jist)? higher screen res?

SOFTWARE - this will obviously evolve, but how? again, what is feasable in the near future?

cheers fellers for your opinions.

ps, i'm looking for opinions which dont consider a jailbreak

Quote: The iPhone has never seemed a likely contender as a smart phone for the blind (it's certainly not designed for touch typing), which makes this case by designer Bruno Fosi all the more impressive. The Silicon Touch covers the phone's screen and features a selection of bas-relief buttons that correspond to menu items in a custom app, allowing those with diminished sight access to all the phone's functions, including multi-touch and finger flick scrolling. Right now it's just a concept, but we're hoping to see this one become a reality sooner rather than later. Source: Engadget

Interesting move, don't you think so?

The iPhone has never seemed a likely contender as a smart phone for the blind (it's certainly not designed for touch typing), which makes this case by designer Bruno Fosi all the more impressive. The Silicon Touch covers the phone's screen and features a selection of bas-relief buttons that correspond to menu items in a custom app, allowing those with diminished sight access to all the phone's functions, including multi-touch and finger flick scrolling. Right now it's just a concept, but we're hoping to see this one become a reality sooner rather than later.

[Via Yanko Design]

Filed under: Cellphones

Silicon Touch: an iPhone case for the visually impaired originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

div align="center"a href="http://critica.us/product-design/invisual-a-tactile-silicone-case-for-the-apple-iphone/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="1" alt="" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/12/081201-iphone-01.jpg" //abr / div align="left"The iPhone has never seemed a likely contender as a smart phone for the blind (it's certainly not designed for touch typing), which makes this case by designer Bruno Fosi all the more impressive. The Silicone Touch covers the phone's screen and features a selection of bas-relief buttons that correspond to menu items in a custom app, allowing those with diminished sight access to all the phone's functions, including multi-touch and finger flick scrolling. Right now it's just a concept, but we're hoping to see this one become a reality sooner rather than later.br /br /[Via a href="http://www.yankodesign.com/2008/12/01/this-iphone-is-touchier-than-most/"Yanko Design/a]/div /divpFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/cellphones/" rel="tag"Cellphones/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/01/silicon-touch-an-iphone-case-for-the-visually-impaired/"Silicone Touch: an iPhone case for the visually impaired/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Mon, 01 Dec 2008 16:58:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://critica.us/product-design/invisual-a-tactile-silicone-case-for-the-apple-iphone/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/01/silicon-touch-an-iphone-case-for-the-visually-impaired/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1387604/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/01/silicon-touch-an-iphone-case-for-the-visually-impaired/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/uXAxi3Ta-zMQdALkTm71i0ssrTc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/uXAxi3Ta-zMQdALkTm71i0ssrTc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=gwXbL7OJ"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=gwXbL7OJ" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=2s92xS9y"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=2s92xS9y" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/gvxbjKDPiwA" height="1" width="1"/

Voice of truth from the old wise are often unheeded and shouted out by the unwise and crooked ones with vested interests. This is what happened to ‘patriotic rebel’ Mr. George Fernandes when he said in our august parliament that China is Enemy No.1 as far as India is concerned. He was stating this with the full knowledge and calculations as the Defence Minister of India. Yet the leftists and left-overs from the ‘Hindi-Cheeni bhai bhai’ era lost no time in condemning his statement. The hard core leftists of India, whose national interests are always suspect, continue to attack his stand and is coercing the wobbly government in power to get more friendly with the enemy. China is a demon which is being let loose by the careless international community and the consequences can be highly damaging when we consider their cunning past and future requirements. People’s Republic of China (PRC) is almost certain to replace United States of America (USA) as the world’s biggest economy by the year 2015. It will be followed in the ladder by USA, India, Japan and Germany in that order. Economic power is fast replacing military might as the winning parameter for world power and PRC will soon start dictating its own terms in the new world order. China is a special country and it has several features that can bring about disastrous consequences for the world, especially its immediate neighbours. Perhaps the one and only way to survive a disaster is to become aware of it early enough and start preparing for its prevention or damage control. Chinese interests are definitely going to turn against India sooner or later, whatever we way look at it. Hegemony Fifth Columns Someone rightly said that future wars will be fought for water and not for oil or gold. With the ill effects of global warming setting in much earlier than expected, it is definitely going to make matters worse. Snowing in Arabian Peninsula, unlimited number of cyclones and typhoons in America and unprecedented extent of snowing in China are going to make the strategy planners sit up in these parts of the world. Water for everyday life is as important as air and the most affected nations know their increasing requirements in the wake of global warming. Chinese strategists must be definitely looking for an entry into tropical areas with access to warmer seas. Their doubletalk about the state of Arunachal Pradesh in India is proof enough for this. They know that a democratic diversity like India is weak and its rulers (like Nehru) can be easily fooled. In this background India can forget its 1962 experience only at its own peril. A much more stronger and unchallenged China can easily rip through Arunachal Pradesh and redraw its borders overnight. Then it is only West Bengal or Bangladesh that stands in its way to the Bay of Bengal. A vast majority of Maoists, Leninists, Marxists and what not, which are thriving in these parts of the world will make it easier for China to cut its glorious corridor to warm waters. No UN and no USA will come to the help of India at this juncture. Though Chinese themselves have given up Communism, it has been carefully cultivating the growth of leftist offshoots in many parts of the Asian sub-continent. All such apparently disparate groups will come together as the fifth column for the Chinese army when it wants to reach the bay. We must also bear in mind that Myanmar is much more close to China than to India. World Policeman Democracy All those who can think independently about the future of this planet will agree on the need to have a responsible world leadership and world policeman. Of course we can always cherish and nurture our hopes for a just and equitable United Nations which bestows equal status for all world nations; but it will always remain a desirable target. Whenever there is a world crisis and we need some one to take decisions, the whole world looks up to UN. And its organizational mechanism has always risen to the occasion in arriving at some sound decisions. But when it comes to the difficult part of its implementation, it is always the strongest nation that can do something. During cold war era we had options, but it is not the case anymore. Like it or not, the world policeman is USA now. But it may not be the case forever. There is a growing dislike for anything and everything American among various sections of world society for various reasons. This is bound to translate into all transactions and business between nations. The role of China becomes very important in this scenario. With its seemingly unbiased stand on almost all world issues, China is slowly and steadily pushing out USA in every sphere. Chinese rulers are utilizing its unique low cost production advantage to its fullest use in replacing USA as the preferred trading partner for all nations except its rivals. Sooner or later this is bound to reflect in the health of US economy and its position as a world policeman. A strong and resurgent China is bound to punch out USA from the world ring in not so distant future. We have everything to lose in this scenario. No Indian and no Japanese will sleep peacefully after China anoints itself as the world policeman. The whole world must realize that it is better to have a democracy as world policeman rather than a pseudo-communist monolith. If the policeman is misbehaving there is at least a chance to correct it by voting out the incumbent leaders. But an undefined political setup like what exists in China can become dangerously robotic and inhuman. China has certain unique characteristics in terms of its race, religion, culture and nationalism. It will be another dose of Nazism, but of a much more frightening scale. Millions and millions of lives will be required to end the rule of a Chinese Hitler. It is not too late now, but only if we can heed to the voice of wise men and visionaries.

Mozilla achieved an important milestone in November, sailing past 20% market share over an entire month for the first time since its release in November 2004. Firefox leaped by almost a full percentage point over October, according to data provided by Net Applications. Microsoft will need a compelling new browser rather sooner than later. pa href=http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/6lBWVsFQYlSFDpgIRSivYzJ_Wrk/aimg src=http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/6lBWVsFQYlSFDpgIRSivYzJ_Wrk/i border=0 ismap=true //a/pimg src=http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/digg/container/technology/popular/~4/TsSiGC0SQmk height=1 width=1 /br[a href=http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/40381/113/ title=linklink/a] [a href=http://feeds.digg.com/~r/digg/container/technology/popular/~3/TsSiGC0SQmk/Firefox_sails_past_20_market_share_IE_drops_below_70 title=moremore/a]

Bored with alarms firing in the wrong place? GPS-Action from SymbianGuru will fire reminder exactly when you reach the target place, no sooner and no later! Depending on your geographical location obtained from the GPS receiver, GPS-Action will fire alarm, open the application, change profile, launch the website, open a document or a certain application for you, Bluetooth status change included. And if you have no GPS inside your mobile, GPS-Action can also work with CellID information that is available to all devices. http://my-symbian.com/s60v3/software...Auto=565&faq=8

( Image above by Peter Beste. You're welcome! ) The LA Weekly has a feature up about a new book with portraits of very serious Norwegian Black Metal dudes. In True Norwegian Black Metal, photographer Peter Beste captures the "blackest of the black: apolitical and anti-Christian separatist self-preservationists who’d sooner make a lampshade out of their own skin than to try to convert fans." Snip from Siran Babayan's piece: Take, for example, Immortal singer-bassist Abbath strolling through the woods surrounded by moss-covered emerald trees (“That’s essentially his backyard”), or Gorgoroth singer Gaahl standing in front of a snow-capped log cabin. Every turn of the page is a moving postcard of brooks, lakes and forrests. Which begs the question: With all the serenity and breathtaking views, what’s to rebel against? Apparently, Mother Nature makes mean Vikings out of little boys. If Black Sabbath were a product of bleak, industrial Birmingham, it should be no surprise that music this extreme thrives in a country with such high precipitation and so many months of either uninterrupted daylight or darkness. So don’t let the scenery fool you. These are some disturbed and disturbing fuckers, whether it’s guitarist Ymon of Perished with his arms covered in branding marks, or Nattefrost of Carpathian Forest smoking heroin off tin foil or a nude female model being painted in cow’s blood before she’s about to be hung from a cross for a Gorgoroth show in Krakow. Nearly everyone is wearing a scowl, corpse paint and spikes. And Beste’s grossest moment has him shooting Nattefrost smeared in his own shit. Of all the bands featured, Beste focuses on the Tolkien-inspired Gorgoroth and its lead troublemaker Gaahl, who’s been arrested twice for alleged assault and torture, and whose face, with its sunken cheeks, looks even creepier without makeup. And that Krakow gig in 2004 not only included human crucifixes but sheep heads mounted on sticks. (Dude, one photo of decapitated sheep heads would’ve been enough.) Images of Satan (LA Weekly), and there's a terrific slideshow here (NSFW). Here's the Amazon link if you'd like to buy the book. (Thanks Richard Metzger) Previously on Boing Boing: Black Metal for Dummies Black Metal cupcakes More on sociology of Malaysian Black Metal Malaysia bans metal as un-Islamic. For those about to rock: jail ... Cookie Monster Tribute Heavy Metal Band Malaysian metal and the Man: a first-hand account Dave Hill and Black Metal Dialogues...br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=92a61e9f9b046cebd8cb76c657684f61p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=92a61e9f9b046cebd8cb76c657684f61p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=92a61e9f9b046cebd8cb76c657684f61" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/

pemsmallPhoto by stronga href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunggnus" target="_blank"Sung Kim/a/strong/small/embr /br /Given all the silly undertakings stronga href="http://www.weezer.com/" target="_blank"Weezer/a/strong have, uh, undertaken in recent months, it's easy to forget that Weezer are, at the end of the day, a band. A band which, like many bands, makes music. Too much music, as it turns out: as Rivers Cuomo stronga href="http://www.billboard.com/bbcom/news/weezer-raids-vaults-records-xmas-carols-1003917715.story" target="_blank"revealed to Billboard.com/a/strong recently, the veteran power-poppers are cooking up a little odds and ends collection tentatively titled, you guessed it, emOdds and Ends/em.br /br /According to Cuomo, this is "just another fun project. They're great songs, but for some reason they didn't make the final cut for [a] record. They span a vast period of time from the very beginning of our career in the early '90s right up to the present day." There's no word yet on a release for emOdds and Ends/em, but considering Cuomo's own stronga href="/article/news/146861-rivers-cuomo-talks-alone-ii-weezer-that-hair" target="_blank"emAlone II/em/a/strong clearing house comp just hit shelves last week, it may be a minute.br /br /Due much sooner according to Rivers are Weezer renditions of six beloved Christmas carols, including "O Holy Night", set to appear span style="text-decoration: line-through;"on a holiday benefit comp/span as downloadable add-ons for the iPhone game stronga href="http://tapulous.com/taptap/" target="_blank"emTap Tap Revenge/em/a/strong. Because nothing brings good tidings like you burying your face in some electronic gadget.br /br /But wait, there's more: Cuomo spilled the (pork and) beans on what could well prove a career-defining moment for the songwriter. Yes, Rivers has apparently written a song with teen pop sister act stronga href="http://www.alyandaj.com/" target="_blank"Aly amp; AJ/a/strong. Who knows when (or how) we'll ultimately hear it, but as Rivers told Billboard.com, "It was such a blast to remember how teenagers approach songwriting. Their minds just work so fast and they have no fear and no ego." We'll sound the alarm once he starts wondering about the clothes they wear to school, how they decorate their rooms, and, um, stronga href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ise4axZMDxo" target="_blank"yeah/a/strong.br /br /Weezer's camp couldn't confirm any of the above at this time, so we'll just have to take Rivers at his word for now./p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/OqYKDPr9V7EAuV-jj66B_aJBbWs/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/OqYKDPr9V7EAuV-jj66B_aJBbWs/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/UJWZY5R7J4c" height="1" width="1"/

( Image above by Peter Beste. Youre welcome! ) The LA Weekly has a feature up about a new book with portraits of very serious Norwegian Black Metal dudes. In True Norwegian Black Metal, photographer Peter Beste captures the blackest of the black: apolitical and anti-Christian separatist self-preservationists who???d sooner make a lampshade out of their own skin than to try to convert fans. Snip from Siran Babayans piece: Take, for example, Immortal singer-bassist Abbath strolling through the woods surrounded by moss-covered emerald trees (???That???s essentially his backyard???), or Gorgoroth singer Gaahl standing in front of a snow-capped log cabin. Every turn of the page is a moving postcard of brooks, lakes and forrests. Which begs the question: With all the serenity and breathtaking views, what???s to rebel against? Apparently, Mother Nature makes mean Vikings out of little boys. If Black Sabbath were a product of bleak, industrial Birmingham, it should be no surprise that music this extreme thrives in a country with such high precipitation and so many months of either uninterrupted daylight or darkness. So don???t let the scenery fool you. These are some disturbed and disturbing fuckers, whether it???s guitarist Ymon of Perished with his arms covered in branding marks, or Nattefrost of Carpathian Forest smoking heroin off tin foil or a nude female model being painted in cow???s blood before she???s about to be hung from a cross for a Gorgoroth show in Krakow. Nearly everyone is wearing a scowl, corpse paint and spikes. And Beste???s grossest moment has him shooting Nattefrost smeared in his own shit. Of all the bands featured, Beste focuses on the Tolkien-inspired Gorgoroth and its lead troublemaker Gaahl, who???s been arrested twice for alleged assault and torture, and whose face, with its sunken cheeks, looks even creepier without makeup. And that Krakow gig in 2004 not only included human crucifixes but sheep heads mounted on sticks. (Dude, one photo of decapitated sheep heads would???ve been enough.) Images of Satan (LA Weekly), and theres a terrific slideshow here (NSFW). Heres the Amazon link if youd like to buy the book. (Thanks Richard Metzger) Previously on Boing Boing: Black Metal for Dummies Black Metal cupcakes More on sociology of Malaysian Black Metal Malaysia bans metal as un-Islamic. For those about to rock: jail ... Cookie Monster Tribute Heavy Metal Band Malaysian metal and the Man: a first-hand account Dave Hill and Black Metal Dialogues...br style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=92a61e9f9b046cebd8cb76c657684f61p=1img alt= style=border: 0; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=92a61e9f9b046cebd8cb76c657684f61p=1//a img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=92a61e9f9b046cebd8cb76c657684f61 style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/

p style="text-align: center;"a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126888/gt5_qjgenth.jpg?113081" rel="lightbox[article126888]" title="Gran 20Turismo 205 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126888/gt5.jpg 3F113081 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img alt="Gran Turismo 5 - Image 1" title="Gran Turismo 5 - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126888/gt5_qjgenth.jpg?113081" align=""/anbsp;br/pbrWell, what do we have here? Seems like the almost-forgotten a href="http://ps3.qj.net/category/Gran-Turismo-5/cid/3284"span title="Gran Turismo 5" style="font-style: italic;"Gran Turismo 5/span/a is still alive and kicking. We may have not been hearing much about this for a while, but a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/scee/1257" id="tag" title="Sony Computer Entertainment Europe"SCEE/a's James Armstrong has jumpstarted the title once again in our idling streams of consciousness.brbrAccording to him, in an interview with Spanish publication El Financiero, a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/sony/880" id="tag" title="Father of PlayStation"Sony/a expects span style="font-style: italic;"GT5/span to be released by Christmas of next year.. For real?!?! Well, we can't say. But that's what he said, and inasmuch as we'd like to have that spark of hope reignited within us, we can't help but be wary about this new pronouncement.brbrAfter all, we've all been burned, oh, just a couple bajillion times before on this game's launch date, right? Plus, this particular dateline's a couple of seasons off from the recently-rumored Spring 09 release. Come on, guys. Make up your mind.brbrAnyway, we shall soon see how much water this one holds. Maybe when a href="http://ps3.qj.net/tags/polyphony-digital/9124" id="tag" title="Game Developer"Polyphony Digital/a concurs, then we know we've got golden eggs in our hands. But until then, put on those skeptics' hats for your own protection.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"Related Gran Turismo 5 Articles:br/spanullia href="http://ps3.qj.net/Rumor-Gran-Turismo-5-in-Spring-2009-/pg/49/aid/126021"span title="GT 5 in Spring 09?" style="font-style: italic;"Rumor: Gran Turismo 5 in Spring 2009?/span/abra href="http://ps3.qj.net/Yamauchi-Gran-Turismo-5-will-be-released-sooner-than-expected/pg/49/aid/125567"span title="We're not really expecting anything now" style="font-style: italic;"/span/a/lilia href="http://ps3.qj.net/Yamauchi-Gran-Turismo-5-will-be-released-sooner-than-expected/pg/49/aid/125567"span title="We're not really expecting anything now" style="font-style: italic;"Yamauchi: Gran Turismo 5 will be released sooner than expected/span/abr/li/ulspan style="font-weight: bold;"/spanbrbrimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/qj/ps3/~4/0Nfi1JIxE0U" height="1" width="1"/

pKevin Martin, the outgoing FCC chairman, has pushing for a controversial free wireless internet plan, as part of the agency's plan for the next slate of spectrum auction, a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122809560499668087.html?mod=rss_whats_news_technology" title="reports WSJ"reports WSJ/a. At its December meeting, FCC wants to put forth a plan to offer free, adult-material-free wireless Internet service to all Americans, despite objections from the wireless industry and some consumer advocacy groups. The plan involves that the winning spectrum bidder set aside a quarter of the airwaves for this free service, and would also charge for a faster wireless Internet connection. The free service could be slower and would be required to filter out pornography and other material not suitable for children, the story says. The consumer groups object to the filtering part, for which FCC has a runaround: adults could opt out of the filter and access all Internet sites. /p p FCC could also discuss some other digital-media related plans, including the evergreen-debate of cable unbundling. The agency has however shelved plans to consider some other controversial issues, including the broadcast flag request by Hollywood studios, which wants to offer copy-protected theatrical releases sooner on TV. /p p /p piCheck out the best business jobs in digital media. a href="http://jobs.paidcontent.org/"Go here/a for paidContent.org Job Board./i/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=5LLnCm"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=5LLnCm" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=705qO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=705qO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=TsSSO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=TsSSO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=MGB1o"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=MGB1o" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=1e8iO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=1e8iO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=1m6qO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=1m6qO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/471409360" height="1" width="1"/

Nintendo have added SPACE INVADERS GET EVEN (Taito, 1 player, 500 Wii Points), Pit Crew Panic! (Hudson Entertainment, 1-4 players, 800 Wii Points) and METAL SLUG 2 (NEOGEO, 1-2 players, 900 Wii Points) to the Wii Shop Channel. Let the latest additions to the Wii Shop Channel be your guide: Take command of a UFO in an epic space battle, get your engine revving as the leader of a frenzied pit crew, or storm the battlefield in a high-tech military mêlée. With all this excitement, you may be ready for another vacation day sooner than you think.