The Null Device
2000/8/6
Nick Hornby talks about the movie adaptation of High Fidelity, and bags those complaining about its Americanisation:
After a while, this complaint started to get on my nerves a little: it was as if the book offered anything only to those who lived somewhere between the Seven Sisters and Holloway roads, and setting the film in Kentish Town, let alone Chicago, would be a grotesque betrayal of the book's theme - a theme that could be summarised neatly as: "Bloody hell! I've been to that pub!"
The opt-out form for controversial web cookie consumer profiling site Coremetrics. (via rebeccablood.net)
e2fsprogs, the Linux filesystem utility suite, now contains something called resize2fs, a now GPLed utility based on code written for Partition Magic. Should be useful...
A group is trying to rehabilitate one of the most potent and reviled icons of the 20th century. No, not the Golden Arches; the swastika; which was widely used in many cultures as a symbol of good luck before the Nazis adopted it. Indeed, it was even in common use in America prior to World War 2. It will be interesting to see whether Friends Of The Swastika have any luck. (NYTimes; requires registration)
A popular BBC radio DJ commented that the centenarian Queen Mother "smells of wee". DJ Sara Cox has been allowed to keep her job at the BBC; a punishment has not yet been announced (and probably won't be). And to think that just a few centuries ago, it would have been the Bloody Tower for her.
No copyright-enforcing proprietary file formats for the Chinese Government, which is unveiling a MP3 site. No, not an attempt to sink the US economy, Bruce Sterling-style, through piracy, but a promotion of (government-vetted) Chinese music artists.