I read it for the articles - Study shows nearly half of time on web is spent viewing content (as opposed to sending e-mail, searching, shopping, etc.), up from 34% in 2003. The study doesn't say so, but I bet this increase has something to do with pizza porn. «– NSFW, duh.

Under-reported story of the month - Workers at a drinks hut on a Dutch beach fished an 8-foot tall Lego man out of the sea. The giant, undoubtedly bent on world conquest, appeared to be heading for England. The beast now stands next to the drinks hut, biding his time. If we had any available military, I'd suggest that they be put on high alert.

A nation yawns - Blu-ray outselling HD-DVD 2-to-1. Really, format wars are so 1986.

Format King - The compact disc turns 25 today, and like all 25-year-olds, it's best days are behind it and it will soon be dead.

Making people shit themselves in style - Taser introduces the latest in portable incapacitation--the C2 personal protector ($350). Now you no longer have to choose between delivering a 50,000-volt charge to scramble someone's brain and being fashionable. Laser-sighted.

Finally! - TSMC says MSFT to use 90nm DRAM process for Xbox! Just thought you should know.

AHHH! - A Shepard tone - a "sound consisting of a superposition of sine waves separated by octaves... [creating] the auditory illusion of a tone that continually ascends or descends in pitch, yet which ultimately seems to get no higher or lower." It's freaking me out.

Seattle in Hyperstereo - Super genius Steve Lodefink of Finkbuilt has posted a couple of hyperstereo images of Seattle. Instructions and more examples on Finkbuilt.

Kill me - The Internet is too slow. Please send bandwidth.

My Long Personal Nightmare is (Almost) Over - TiVo finally releases a somewhat reasonably-priced HD DVR. I waited for the new Comcast software, which arrived last week. Shockingly, it still sucks. Looks like I'm going to have to bite the bullet. Go to hell, DCT6412.

We all watched Revenge of the Nerds, right? And we wanted those nerds to KICK SOME ASS! Nowadays, nerds prefer the term “geek.” And while geeks also tend to be socially awkward, we still want them to kick some ass designing our software and answering difficult questions—but stop talking after a few minutes. Well, Ignite Seattle is a bi-monthly event for geeks to stand before a few hundred of us regular folk, share their esoteric brilliance, and then shut the fuck up. Tonight features 16 mercifully brief lectures, including the future of nanotechnology in healthcare and iPhone mind control. I haven't been to an Ignite Seattle yet, but it draws up to 400 people and the full bar makes it sound a fuckload better than reading Wired.

Capitol Hill Arts Center, 1621 12th Ave, igniteseattle.com, talks begin at 8:30 p.m., free.

The FCC approved rules today for the sale of some juicy bandwidth, voting to require "open access" to at least some of the megahertz, but stopping short of the request from some consumer groups and Google that some of it be reserved to be sold wholesale.

The commission approved a much-debated ''open access'' provision, pushed by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, and supported by the two Democrats, that will allow customers to use whatever phone and software they want on about one-third of the network to be auctioned.

That rule seems to have some small tinge of consumer protection, but it's not enough, and the big telcos and cable companies will probably buy it all up. Sadly, come 2011 or so, these waves will probably be penetrating your walls (and bodies) in no more of a free and open way than they are now.

''It's a small benefit way off in the future that conceals a really blown opportunity to bring prices dramatically down and increase broadband speeds enormously through competition,'' said Gene Kimmelman, vice president for federal affairs for Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports magazine.

So--The news isn't as bad as it could have been. Yay!

The average American worker wastes 1.7 hours--nearly 20%--of their workday online. The average Slog reader, significantly more.

Grad students at NYU are working on getting your plants to call you when they're thirsty. "We hope that the system will help people learn how to take better care of their plants over time and maybe not even need the phone calls after a while."

Computer learns baby talk. "Wow, that's really annoying," say researchers, and turn it off.

The CNN/YouTube debates, as imagined by local funny man Matthew Baldwin, aka The Defective Yeti. Bueno.

Twitter. I still don't get it.

It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.

For only $125, this umbrella's handle will light up when it's going to rain, so you don't forget to bring it with you! Wow!

Here's what you do: Take your computer into a room near your (roommate|(girl|boy)friend|boss|worst enemy). Open this page in 15 browser tabs, about 1 second apart. Crank up the volume, lock the door, and go buy more RAM.

It's tough. It's waterproof. It can be powered by a foot pump. It has a small screen built for reading in the bright sunlight of the deserts or the mountains. It will, in theory, allow Andean farmers to check the price of potatoes before going to market and Libyan teenagers to read Moby Dick online and guerillas all over the world to play peaceful games of pong with their adversaries. Right now it costs $176. Its brain-daddy, Nicholas Negroponte, is trying to get it down to $100.

But it's finally here.

Oh, and Intel has decided to stop playing Rapacious Capitalist and trying to compete with their rival laptop-for-poor-kids (Intel's Classmate PC cost $225). They've joined Negroponte's nonprofit.

It's hard for me to imagine a foot-powered internet-trolling laptop for $100, but persons knowledgeable about computers can check the specs here.

This has never happened before.

Huge Stock Alert
Sym: FDKE
DICT(NAME);
This is an easy tripler
It'll be $5 before end of the week

Even if I wanted to do something, I have no idea what I'd do with this information.

I still lovelovelove my pink Nintendo DS Lite. I haven't yet hit the two million points mark in Tetris (my high score is currently 1.6 million, level 70-something... so close!), but I did finally beat Yoshi's Island. Now I need a new game. Suggestions? I'm thinking the New Super Mario Bros.

Even more tempting than a new DS game, though, is the idea of finally caving, accepting the video game geek I really am, and buying a Wii. I really want a Wii. I'm really good at Excite Truck and bowling, and my Mii is totally cute. But I haven't been able to justify spending almost $300 on dumb video games.

That is until I saw this. If anything's going to push me over the edge, it's this:

Colorwarepc.com will custom paint your Wii for $99. They'll paint your laptop or iPod too.

I want. I really, really want.

Holy holy crap. There's a brand new website where you can copy and paste any YouTube link into a player, and scribble captions, quotes and/or graffiti all over the video. Any video! It's kinda cornball fingerpaint style, but once you finish, you can submit it, and a new URL is available to embed on your own blog, or email to your pals.

It's called RAKUGAKI. If the site first appears in Japanese, you can click it over to English in the upper left.

- Some tips for better “scribbles” include hitting pause before you start drawing, and taking multiple passes on a clip. Each drawing will fade after a few seconds of video, and you can adjust the color, size and transparency of the brush to potentially achieve some cool effects.

I smell a SLOG contest. Maybe people want to add some comments to Walk it Out...

Or tell us why the Dramatic Chipmunk is so damn surprised? Or maybe Ecce Homo wants to add some commentary to Gays on Crystal...

Viva la YouTube Revolution!

The Week in Geek - Now iPhone free! (though partially written and researched on an iPhone)

Nabaztag/tag is the most cumbersomely-named robotic internet rabbit to ever sport an internal microphone and RFID reader. It's freaking me out, and yet I can't look away. "Hey! Someone has told me that that they are thinking of YOU!" Maybe that someone would like to buy me a $189 freakout rabbit? $189?!?

"Mileage Runners" game the system to score tons of frequent flier miles - "Mileage Running isn't good for the planet." That's true. But neither is not mileage running, so you're pretty much fine/screwed either way. I say go for it.

Pocket Rocket!

Pocket Rocket!

Pocket Rocket!

Socket Pocket!

I can see my mortality from here! - Man flies 193 miles in his lawn chair in Oregon, because he always wanted to jump on clouds.

CakeCubeBox360PS2 - Sorry, video game nerds, but this woman is now married. You missed your shot.

Happy Birthday, Computer Virus - It's been 25 years since 9th grader Richard Skrenta wrote the first computer virus for his Apple II. Yay.

I know I said no iPhone, but fuck it. iPhone haters will love this anyway.

And finally, some perspective. You probably know that matter is mostly made up of empty space. The distance between your average atom's nucleus and the cloud of electrons whizzing around it is vast, vast, vast relative to the size of its components. Vast. Some guy with a website was having trouble picturing this fact, so he made a web page to illustrate it. The page depicts a single hydrogen atom, with its single electron represented by a single pixel. The nucleus (a single proton) is 1000 pixels in diameter. The distance between them? 50,000,000 pixels. At the standards 72 pixels per inch, that's 11 miles. Wow.

As the saying goes, "You ain't shit."

Ladies and gentlemen, the Washlet.

(Mildly and temporarily NSFW, thanks to a row of behinds with smiley faces on them displayed during the intro. And thank you, Slog tipper Keith.)

The drama continues...

And: What happens when you key it, smush it, and drop it on concrete? PCWorld finds out.

I feel pretty safe in saying that this is the first Slog post written on an iPhone. I'd recount the hilarious story of how I came to have this phone, but it's too damn hard to type on this crazy keyboard.

Learning curve aside, this thing is fucking cool.

As we all know, there's really only one weeky-in-geeky story this week, and that of course is the introduction of this revolutionary, mind-bending product.

Okay, very funny.

Really, it's the iPhone. For sale in Seattle in less than 5 hours, blah blah blah blah. I freely admit that I want one pretty badly, but still--blah blah blah blah.

Seriously though, there hasn't been any other technology news this week.

Those cereal straws are fucked up, though, right?

Note: To celebrate the release of the iPhone, this installment of The Week in Geek has been totally phoned in. Ha! Eat it.

(Updated below.)

The City of Seattle is providing free wireless Internet access in the Columbia City and the University District business districts. The City's Wi-Fi pilot project also includes four downtown Seattle parks: Occidental, Freeway, Westlake and Victor Steinbrueck, as well as the City Hall lobby area. This is a pilot project. Users can log-in using seattlewifi for the ssid. (More info.)

When will the entire central city be covered by a free network? My money's on the tail end of 2008.

UPDATE: Glenn Fleishman, a local writer who covers Wi-Fi at wifnetnews.com, as well as writing about it and other tech issues for the New York Times, the Economist, and Popular Science, says I shouldn't hold my breath:

There was a brief halcyon time when cities with lots of urban poor and lower middle-class residents put out "bids" for city-wide Wi-Fi that read like this: "Come and build our networks on your own dime. We'll give you utility pole access (if we can). We'll anoint you. We might even move some city telecom business over to you (no guarantees, bud). But you have to pay in a bunch of money for digital divide initiatives and meet really imposing service guarantees."

And EarthLink, MetroFi, Kite, and a few others--including giants IBM and Cisco--did pour forth the money. Now, about two years in, no major city network is complete, although several are well underway (Portland, Ore., and Philadelphia, notably). The companies building these networks are all guarded about their next moves; EarthLink's new CEO (the previous one died in January from cancer) may choose to not build new networks. And there's just not a lot of interest in building networks without much more of a commitment from cities to buy services.

In a city like Philadelphia or even San Francisco, it turns out that there's relatively poor and uneven broadband penetration with cable and DSL, and not enough competition to spur low enough rates to move people from dial-up to broadband or no access to broadband.

Seattle is pretty well situated, and we have a much more middle to upper class set of residents in the city proper.

The city's fiber-optic proposal that they put out last year to a bunch of bidders included an option to build out a Wi-Fi network. None of the responses seemed to have included this.

Shakespeare's Sister, AKA Melissa McEwan, AKA that fat, pinko, LIBERAL (gasp!) lesbo bitch (according to her dedicated trolls), has suffered a denial of service attack. More tech-savvy people than I will have to explain exactly what this means, but for my purposes, it means that one of my all-time favorite blogs, Shakesville.com, is out of service. Updates available at her old place, Shakespeare's Sister. Drop 'Liss a line and pledge a donation so Shakesville can be up and running again soon.

Welcome back to the Week in Geek. Apologies for the hiatus, but geeks are busy and don't always get around to writing these dumb posts each week. Also, there was that whole Freaky Friday thing, and some kind of drinking conference in Portland.

Anyway, enough excuses. The past three weeks have been chock full of all kinds of geek news, so let's get started.

Apple posts iPhone Guided Tour videos, e-mails with "Dooooooood" as subject line increase by 900%.

AT&T adds 2000 temporary store staff to handle the expected crush of people with $600 burning a hole in their pockets.

AT&T says rate plans will be announced before 6/29, assuring we'll know how much to get on that payday loan next Thursday.

Should IT departments be wary of iPhones on their networks? Huh? This guy thinks so.

Apple announced last week that anyone can develop applications for the iPhone, as long as those applications aren't, you know, applications. In response, Mac application developers freaked right the fuck out.

iPhone to sport a glass screen instead of original plastic, making it more scratch-resistant and less shatter-resistant.

iPhone now polling 4th in 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

iPhone expected to lead a revolution in touchy-touchy tech toys, ultimately leading to even more revolutionary devices like big ass tables.

New Apple phone also promises to revolutionize personal transportation and home entertainment.

AT&T and Apple stores have modified their hours for iPhone Day (formerly known as June 29th). Fuck yeah! Modified hours!

Man spots iPhone on a California train, snaps photo with his inferior piece of shit "cell phone."

Apple announces iPhone battery life to be better than expected, stock goes up $4.

Wine Director at "prominent restaurant" describes first-hand iPhone experience. His restrained conclusion? "The Apple iPhone is a magical device that for the first time seemlessly blends art, architecture and electronics...," and then something about Natalie Portman.

And that's the news. Busy couple of weeks, no?

Watch this space next week for news from the front lines. Though really, I don't see what all the fuss is about. It looks like a pretty ordinary phone to me.

So long expanded funding for human pluripotent stem cell research.

Using the thoughts of George W Bush as a jumping off point for a scientific discussion is like taking firearm safety advice from Dick Cheney.

Still, a handful of points:

The vast majority of embryonic stem cell research has nothing to do with creating new stem cell lines, or destroying embryos.

In vitro fertilization (test tube babies) is terribly inefficient, resulting in more human embryos than could ever be used to make babies. Most of these excess embryos are eventually bleached and sent down a drain. IVF is basically an unregulated industry in the United States.

The embryos used to make stem cell lines are stopped at the blastocyst stage, a pre-implantation stage that forms 3-5 days after fertilzation. These embryos only have about 150 cells and are significantly smaller than the head of a pin. If not placed in a uterus, they will die on their own after about 14 days total waiting in a dish.

No matter how hard scientists have tried, adult stem cells cannot do many things that embryonic stem cells can do. Want human heart cells (to replace those lost after a heart attack), insulin-producing cells (to replace those lost in diabetes), or dopamine-producing neurons (to replace those lost in Parkinsons)? Human embryonic stem cells are the only definitely established source for these cell types.

See, I told you I shouldn’t let Bush provoke me. For something a bit more fun, I present you surfing rats:

Tip of the hat to Tom Robey at Hope for Pandora.

The online music community (words that should cause any rational human being to cringe) was all a-twitter last week over the news that Icky Thump, the forthcoming full-length release from the White Stripes was leaked by Chicago radio station Q101.  According to DJ Elektra, the on-air “personality” responsibly for the faux pas, the hourlong unauthorized broadcast was a “lovefest” for the band.

Jack White didn’t agree.  In fact, Jack White was pissed.  Upon receiving the news that his new record had been broadcast in its entirety, he phoned the radio station from Spain and ripped the idiotic DJ a new one.  It must have been a hell of a conversation; Elektra was rattled enough to post details about the tongue lashing in her blog.

It’s common knowledge that records (along with gossip items, titillating photos, and “insider facts”) get “leaked” all the time by companies and publicists, with hopes of getting an early buzz going.  These leaks are very rarely actual leaks--more often than not, a single that makes its way to the airwaves well before release date is the not-so-covert work of an A&R schmuck.

This was not the case with Icky Thump.  White, notorious for his exacting ways both in and out of the studio, insisted on limited access and tight controls on advance copies of the record.  The folks at Q101 did not have an official advance copy of the record, nor did they contact White’s label prior to airing the entire record in one shot.  The broadcast was an illegally obtained download, apparently forwarded to the station by an enthusiastic fan.

The whole incident brings up a lot of issues pertaining to Digital Rights Management and puts yet another chink in the armor of record labels struggling to deal with the very real fact that they are losing revenue generated by record sales on an hourly basis.  It also raises important questions about the responsibility of folks manning the airwaves.

I’m not shedding any tears for the major-label pimps who have yet to figure out how to deal with modern technology’s affect on their business.  They’ve screwed enough artists and music buyers over the years and leaner times are a good way of forcing a new business model.  I am, however, bummed for Jack White.  Dude is not happy with the crappy recordings that are making the rounds and I don’t blame him.

The record is a big, giant-sounding piece of work, filled with everything from mariachi horns to bagpipes.  White continues to channel the spirit of the mighty Led Zeppelin, and I’m not talking about the Robert Plant-esque eight and some change he’s packing in his front pocket.  Icky Thump should be heard the way it was meant to be heard, in all its bombastic glory, not some tinny-sounding third generation rip off the radio.

And, yes, I plan on buying the record when it is released on June 19, even though the clean-as-a-whistle copy I have (don’t ask) will blow your balls off.

Smile, you're on Google Maps! - Google Maps introduces "Street View," street-level photos of major cities available on their mapping application. Of course, if you happen to be wandering by (or sunbathing) when the Google Van rolls by, you're in the system forever. Predictably, some people are all upset about violations of their fantasies of privacy. Listen: If you're in public, you're not in private. Public != Private. Got it? If you want to cheat on your wife, wear a ski mask like everybody else.

Be sure to check out some of the many hilarious discoveries made so far on Google Sightseeing, Street Viewr, and Threat Level.

Drop in Bucket - Spammer asshole arrested, spam continues unabated.

Oh Please, Oh Please - After at least two years of taunting, the Comcast-Motorola-TiVo DVR is threatening to launch later this summer. Now I only have to manage to avoid taking a sledgehammer to my current Comcast DVR before then. Not going to be easy.

Damn, that's cool - A TED talk on Photosynth - a mind-blowing photo viewing thingie which sadly only works on Windows PCs.

Billionaire Summit - Jobs and Gates share a stage, say nice things about each other, don't get in fist fight. Video and exhaustive and pointless recap here.

Robot Family - These are weird.

I'm learning a new programming language this week. Here's my first stab at it:

HAI
CAN HAS STDIO?
I HAS A VAR
IM IN YR LOOP
	PLZ OPEN FILE VAR+".TXT"?
		AWSUM THX
			VISIBLE FILE
		O NOES
			INVISIBLE "ERROR!"
		UP VAR!!1
	IZ VAR BIGGER THAN 10? KTHXBYE
IM OUTTA YR LOOP
KTHXBYE

Most hated made-up, thinks-its-cool-and-webby-hip-but-totally-sucks-ass word of the week: Webinar.

Fuck that word.

Nothing happened this week, except I took the day off on Friday.

Wait, that's today.

I'll leave you to discuss the wide-ranging implications of this:

Hey, so I'm a geek.

I realized this the other day, and it's hard to admit because I always thought I was cool.

No, I don't like the Lord of the Rings movies or speak Klingon, but I do have a crush on Kevin Rose and I get excited about scoring over a million points in Tetris on my Nintendo DS, which I did the other day.

My high score in the Standard Marathon game is 1,440,356. It was level 50 something. Or 60 something. I can't remember.

Basically, that means I'm awesome. I mean, right? Am I? Is that good? What's your high score? Can I make money for being this good at Tetris? If so, where do I sign up? Will Kevin Rose be there?

I never should've bought this Nintendo DS. I knew it was going to ruin me...

brought to you by Florbl Pro

Hardcore Accessibility - This week saw the launch of SoundsDirty.com, a porn site for the blind. In addition to steaming-hot audio, they have a "Zoom Room", where those with only partially impaired vision can "enlarge the part that [they] want to see most." The site appears to be a great improvement over past missteps in this area.

Naked Google - Appeals Court rules that thumbnail porn is fair use! Yay thumbnail porn!

Patent Armageddon - Microsoft claimed this week that various flavors of Linux and other open-source software violate 235 of their patents. Since they can't innovate their way out of paper bag anymore, they figure they can maintain their strangelhold on the world by patenting the idea of showing stuff on a computer screen in a little box. Bravo.

Jungle Music - Local online retailer Amazon.com announced that they will soon launch a music store featuring DRM-free music to compete with Apple's iTunes. Anything that's DRM-free is good.

iWantOne - Apple's much-anticipated iPhone gets FCC approval, making it officially legal to sell it in the U.S., which they'll start doing late next month. In related news, I hate my phone.

Halo 3 Beta drops, thousands of geeks call in sick.

The Power of Bullshit - Tech site Engadget posts false info about iPhone and Mac OS delays, Apple stock drops 2.2%.

And finally, local wiseacre newsweekly launches super-freaky reader review system on restaurant listings, and there is much rejoicing.

Monty Python reference! Geek Out!

Command of the Week: if ($ENV{'SSH_ORIGINAL_COMMAND'} =~ m'fuck' ) { print "I hate you."; }

I don't know about your geek-week, but my geek-week was busy as hell, so please excuse the following frankly uninspired post.

"I like it the same as dipping hot Cheetos in ice cream."

The science of emoticons - Japanese scholar discovers differences between American and Japanese emoticons, draws wild conclusions about difference between American and Japanese people. (^_^) != :-)

The number - Geeks of the world continue to find creative ways to point out how retarded it is to claim to own a particular number. These clever guys have decided that if the movie industry can own numbers, so can the rest of us.

Here’s how we do it. First, we generate a fresh pseudorandom integer, just for you. Then we use your integer to encrypt a copyrighted haiku, thereby transforming your integer into a circumvention device capable of decrypting the haiku without your permission. We then give you all of our rights to decrypt the haiku using your integer. The DMCA does the rest.

My integer is below. By looking at it, you have violated federal law. Isn't this fun?

53 F1 F4 8C BB 14 07 B2 36 CC D0 F2 05 F8 7E 58

Are we safe yet? - The Transportation Safety Administration lost a hard drive containing social security numbers and bank account information on 100,000 employees.

iPods kill - High school student Jay Thaker holds iPods near old people, some die. Ok, not really. He did discover that the music players emit electromagnetic energy, which can interfere with pacemakers. This revolutionary finding proves at last that the iPod is, in fact, an electronic device. Thanks, Jay!

In other iPod news: Apple files patent for fancy new iPod, Internet widely notes same.

And finally, to prepare you for the weekend, here are some handy tips for maximizing your survival time if you should fall into a black hole. Note: you'll need a rocket. If you're running round crossing event horizons without a rocket, you deserve all the spaghettification you get.

Command of the week: more savagelove

NOTE: Some of the items in The Week in Geek may have been posted elsewhere on the Internet before appearing here. If you discover such an item, please let us know about it in the comments!

The big news this week is of course the way-too-well-publicized cracking of the HD-DVD encryption. This story has been around the world and back 892,000 times so far, and next week it will be forgotten. If you bought a clever t-shirt, you have 20 more minutes to gain any kind of cool points wearing it. After that, points will be deducted.

Moving on!

Awwww - Google rebranded their "personalized home page" service as "iGoogle" this week. Now, in addition to adding your local weather and favorite blogs to your homepage, you can make it super cute!

Here's mine.

Where all your pedophilic dreams come true - This week Disney launched Disney Xtreme Digital, a social networking site for preteens. It's unclear whether one has to be an xtreme preteen to sign up, but what is clear is that despite whatever security controls they think they have, the whole enterprise is bound for tragedy.

Speaking of Internet predators, the Brussels police are apparently investigating a case of virtual rape in the freakishly popular nerd-world Second Life. I don't know what to say about this.

The 11th Annual Webby Awards were announced his week, and The Stranger didn't even win ONE! Now I know how.. whoever.. feels.

Ironic! - Business 2.0 Magazine loses June issue and has no backup. Ha!

Fat kids to be encouraged to play more video games at school. This can't miss. Seriously, if your video game-obsessed kids are getting fat, maybe you should stop feeding them so much, and take away their video games. Just a thought.

Command of the week: mv blog damnblog

That's right.

As everyone already knows, some enterprising 12-year-old (I'm guessing) recently cracked the encryption scheme for HD-DVD, and the not-so-enterprising folks at the AACSLA, are now engaged in a massive, expensive, and obviously useless quest to rid the world of this dangerous string of text integer.

The EFF explains the situation better than any of us can, or wants to. The Times gives a good overview of the fracas as well.

Digg.com, after a brief and wildly unsuccessful attempt to prevent the number (run!!! the number!!! protect the children!!!) from being posted on their site, relented and decided to let the chips fall where they may.

So today was a difficult day for us. We had to decide whether to remove stories containing a single code based on a cease and desist declaration. We had to make a call, and in our desire to avoid a scenario where Digg would be interrupted or shut down, we decided to comply and remove the stories with the code.

But now, after seeing hundreds of stories and reading thousands of comments, you’ve made it clear. You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company. We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be.

All of this nonsense is of course the result of one of the most nonsensical laws in our history, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Some enterprising folks have also translated the number into hex colors, and started selling (illegal!) t-shirts.

WARNING: Looking at the following colors may be a federal crime.

OMFG! It's the Stranger's first ever Week in Geek!

Geek quiz: If you know why this photo is funny, you win.

VOIP safe, for now -- Appeals court issues a stay in Verizon v. Vonage, but the future of cheap internet phone calls is in doubt. Fuck Verizon.

China scans students -- Chinese college uses fingerprint scanners to take roll, attendance rises to 95 percent.

Continuing their strategy of entering markets 5 years late (see Zune, the), Microsoft takes aim at Adobe's Flash.

Storage Porn -- Ooh, baby.

Despite the inexcusable use of the word "faire", Maker Faire participants make cool shit: like a life-sized version of the classic mousetrap board game that drops a 2-ton safe instead of a plastic basket.

Happy Geekiversary! -- As Star Wars turns 30, thousands get painful reminder of just how long they've been living in their parents' basement.

Paparazzi got you down? Tired of your random prancings around town ending up on your idiot friends' myspaces? Get yourself some FlickrBlockrs!

Command of the Week: sudo lsof -i | grep LISTEN

And finally, here's Jodie Foster--in teenaged triplicate--singing Je T'attends Depuis la Nuit des Temps.