Best. Coffee Mug. Ever.

Consider it ordered….

Battlestar Sitrep:

$9.95 at Split Reason. [HT battlestar blog]

Hackers Warn Texas of Coming Zombie War

i09:

“Over the weekend, Austin, TX drivers received some important warnings
from their road signs about the impending zombie invasion. And the
hackers who did it may know something we don’t about the undead.

The
road signs, which normally warn drivers about traffic conditions,
displayed these warnings: “Zombies ahead . . . the end is near . . .
run for cold climates!” Some signs also warned of Nazi zombies. While
city officials claimed to FOX News that the tampering could lead to
jail time, nobody is going to get in trouble for warning the world
about zombies. The company that owns the signs, Sterling Construction,
would have to file a complaint with police for any legal action to be
taken. Sterling owner Wayne Haggard told local KVUE-TV, “It’s Austin.
We have a sense of humor. Let it go.”

Though Austin officials
claim that an act of direst hacking was required to tamper with the
signs, sign-hackers say that isn’t true. Most of these signs, including
the ones owned by Sterling, have a default password. Anyone can walk up
to the sign, type the default into the control panel, and reprogram it.

There is a reason why some say default passwords are a hacker’s
best friend. However, I would argue that our pranksters haven’t really
done an impressive hack until they’ve either brute forced a non-default
password, or figured out a way to route internet traffic through the
signs. Come back to me with your “sign hacking” when you’ve turned one
of these road signs into a zombie computer,
OK? That way, instead of flashing “Zombies ahead!” the sign would flash
its normal message but send the “Zombies ahead” warning to your iPhone.

Not that I am advocating anything unlawful. I am just trying to suggest a better zombie warning system.

SOURCES:

Dallas News (with clip from KVUE-TV of the signs)

FOX News

Microsoft SongSmith Produces Comedy Gold

Microsoft research group created a piece of software called SongSmith that lets you sing into it and then the application creates music based on your singing. The project got dumped, but that didn’t stop the research team from making this horribly hilarious commercial (also note that the girl is singing into a not-so-disguised Mac laptop!):

They eventually released the software, and now the interwebs have taken over. People are taking the vocal tracks from popular songs, inputting them into SongSmith, and letting Songsmith generate the background music, with hilarious results. Here are some of the best ones:

Creep by Radiohead

Wonderwall by Oasis

Roxanne by The Police

Sgt Pepper’s Lonely
Hearts Club Band by The Beatles

Eye of the Tiger by
Survivor

Runnin’ with the Devil
by Van Halen

Just What I Needed by
The Cars

White Wedding by Billy
Idol

World’s first commercially cloned dog delivered to delighted Floridians

DVICE:

Meet Lancey, the first commercially cloned dog, delivered to Edgar
and Nina Otto on Monday. The Ottos bid and won an auction to receive a
genetic duplicate of their beloved Labrador named Sir Lancelot, who
died in January of 2008. They stored the donor dog’s DNA, and from
that, his identical twin, created by BioArts International (no, it’s
not called RePet, The 6th Day fans), was born November 18th.

“Sir Lancelot was the most human of any dog we’ve ever
had,” said Nina Otto. “He was a prince among dogs. We can’t believe
this day is finally here,” she said. “We are so happy to have little
Lancey in our family. His predecessor was a very special dog. We are
thrilled beyond words!”

Dogs are notoriously difficult to clone (the first dog ever cloned was born in 2005),
not only because of their infrequent and unpredictable ovulation,
opaque ova, and poorly understood physiology, but also because of
man’s-best-friend ethics rules that are much more stringent than those
for livestock such as sheep and cattle. Want a clone of your dog?
There’s one more spot available, but get ready to pony up $180,000. How
much for a human?”

Via Press Release, and Best Friends Again

Real Sitcom: A Vampire, A Werewolf And A Ghost Share A House

i09:

“The BBC’s Being Human puts three temperamental twenty-somethings together in a Bristol flat in Bristol. The only catch: they’re a ghost, a vampire, and a werewolf, under the same roof. Comedy gold? Watch for yourself.

On February 1, the BBC premieres the new comedy series Being Human. (Get it? Because none of them are.) To be honest, I don’t know why it’s taken so long to get this show into motion — who doesn’t want to see a ghost a vampire and a werewolf try and balance curses, blood hunger pains and dating?

Here are the character bios from the BBC:

Mitchell (Vampire)
Aidan Turner plays the good-looking and laid-back Mitchell who, in contrast to George, has the gift of the gab and an easy confidence with the ladies. But he is also a blood-sucking vampire struggling with going cold-turkey from the blood he craves.

George (Werewolf)
Russell Tovey reprises his role as the lovable George, battling with his double identity as a mild-mannered and geeky hospital porter who for one night a month is transformed into a flesh-hungry, predatory werewolf.

Annie (The Ghost)
Completing the flat-share trio is Annie, played by Lenora Crichlow, a talkative ghost lacking in self-confidence and desperate for company. Annie is still pining after her boyfriend, whom she was due to marry before the fatal accident that left her with her ghostly affliction – and who happens to be the landlord of their flat.

Enjoy this clip, and the BBC is hosting the pilot on their site. I’d like to take this time to say: Thank you, BBC, for making my drunken TV wishes come true:

[BBC via Quiet Earth]

Neil Gaiman Announces Graveyard Book Film by Neil Jordan

/Film:

“Neil Gaiman appeared on this morning’s Today Show to discuss Coraline, as well as his newly Newberry winning The Graveyard Book. Shortly before he went on air, Gaiman twittered that he had been given the go ahead to reveal who was set to write and direct a big screen adaptation of The Graveyard Book and once he was in the hot seat, he was good to his word.

Rather fantastically, the name he gave was none other than Neil Jordan.”

Gmail Goes Offline with Google Gears

Lifehacker:

“Today Gmail Labs released a new feature that bridges the gap between desktop and web-based applications like never before: Offline Gmail. You can now access your Gmail from your browser any time, whether or not you’re online.

Offline Gmail uses Google Gears to download all of your email to your desktop (every last gigabyte). Using Gmail in offline mode is exactly the same as using it normally—except that when offline mode is enabled in your browser, Gmail is that much faster.

“Composing emails in offline mode puts them in your outbox, and those emails are automatically sent once you’re back online. Offline Gmail even has a very cool (though poorly named) “flaky connection mode,” which is sort of like a middle ground between online and offline Gmail. While in flaky connection mode:

[Gmail] uses the local cache as if you were disconnected, but still synchronizes your mail with the server in the background. Our goal is to provide nearly the same browser-based Gmail experience whether you’re using the data cached on your computer or talking directly to the server.

The upshot to flaky connection mode is that your computer doesn’t have to hit Google’s servers to access old emails, which generally will mean a faster, more responsive inbox.

I’ve been using Offline Gmail for a few months now, and I noticed the speed differences immediately. It takes a while for Gears to download all of your old email, naturally, but once it has, it keeps your offline cache in sync with your online email pretty seamlessly. Check the offline Gmail FAQ for more, and if you give it a try, let’s hear how it’s working for you in the comments.”

New in Labs: Offline Gmail [Official Gmail Blog]

Star Wars Horror Novel Being Released

May be the first Star Wars novel I read (oh wait, I did read the Thrawn Trilogy way back when)…

Filmschool Rejects:

“We don’t talk a lot about books here at FSR, due mostly to the fact
that at least half of our staff are illiterate bastards. But once in a
while some literary news comes along that’s too good to pass up without
sharing. So it is with the latest novel set in the Star Wars expanded universe…

“Deathtroopers” is an upcoming Star Wars horror novel by
Joe Schreiber. No, that’s not a misprint… a Star Wars horror novel is
due out October 27th of this year. Are you smiling as broadly as I did
when I first read that phrase? There’s currently no plot synopsis of
any kind, but Schreiber has a few things to say about it on his blog, including the fact that it takes place immediately before A New Hope (aka Star Wars Episode IV).

I had the time of my life on this one, I have to say.
I’m doing the final edits now, and I’ve tried to make it into exactly
the kind of book you’d want to read if you were a child of the 70s who
grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy and really digs horror in the vein of The Shining and Alien, with a little dose of William Gibson mixed in.”

V Returns As Family Drama

i09:

“Fans
of rodent-eating lizards with ulterior motives, your day has come. ABC
has finally officially greenlit the pilot for the revival of 1980s
big-hair SF series V, courtesy of The 4400’s creator Scott Peters.

We told you about the planned revival back in October last year,
but it’s taken this long for the alphabet network to order a pilot that
revamps the original show’s Nazi metaphors into something a little bit
more contemporary. This time around, the show will center on a female
Homeland Security agent, instead of Marc Singer’s heroic cameraman, and
the “tension within the family” when her son falls for the aliens’ talk
of coming in peace despite their distinctly un-peacelike plans.

No
word as yet whether we should expect a return of Willie, the friendly
“Visitor” who was in part responsible for the alien-human hybrid baby
that still freaks me out when I think about it, even now.”

ABC greenlights sci-fi pilot [Variety]

Press event coming next month: Amazon Kindle 2 on the way?

DVICE:

“As you gaze at this spy shot of the alleged Amazon Kindle 2
e-reader, read the tea leaves along with us: Amazon just announced a
press conference at New York’s Morgan Library & Museum, scheduled
for Monday, February 9th. Now what do you think the company will be
rolling out at a library? Hmm?

According to those in the know, the newest Kindle will lack that strange angular chin of its predecessor,
and will be thinner but a bit longer. There’s also talk of a
larger-screen version for students. The new Kindle’s going to shed some
of the strange quirks of the Kindle 1, including accidental page turns,
too. We have a feeling this is going to be great.

If I were Amazon, I would have scheduled the event for three days
later, placing the press event and big rollout on February 12, 2009,
the 200th anniversary of the birthday of that famed book reader and statesman extraordinaire, Abe Lincoln.”

Via CrunchGear