This just in: DDR TV show for CBS kids!

Uh. What the fuck did you do at E3, Xeni? Take pictures of yourself the entire time?

Oh and check out the google translation of Xeni's friend chester's blog. Really classy stuff on after-pornochanchada. FIGHT THE FIGHT! DEFEAT CENSORWARE IN SCHOOL! THE VOICES OF BLOGGERS MUST BE HEARD!

My friend Kathryn Cramer wants everyone to know that she has uncovered legislation brought forth by rethuglican Michael Fitzpatrick to ban www.myspace.com in public schools!!11eleventy!!1!21

And not just myspace, but "Neopets, Flickr, AIM, YouTube, Yahoo! Groups, Blogger, Odeo, Slashdot -- and a whole lot more!"

Special fearmongering clue: "It would kill Wikipedia except that it's commercial only."

Alright, first. What kind of dumb fuckhead goes to Wikipedia for social networking? Have you seen the people who hang out there? Not exactly a haven for the ladies so it's off my social networking list.

Second, whether or not you agree with filtering in school libraries, don't you think that children ought not to be chatting with their buddies over the internet with our tax-payer funded bandwidth pipes on school time?

Xeni's friend Danah Boyd had this answer for the world (as published on LA times)

"Teens — particularly those from poor families or rural areas — need school and library computers to gain access to social networking sites, she said.

"Of course there are bad situations. But … I can tell you a number of kids who have been molested in school by teachers," Boyd said. "Does that mean we don't send kids to school?""

Uh... even I don't have a witty retort for fucked up nonsense such as that. Obviously Xeni's friend Danah is in a little fantasy world where myspace is akin to the government paid-for institution known as EDUCATION.

Really this is too much fun, but I promise this is my last post on the subject. I thought it would be neat to really sort of put a general comparison on Xeni Jardin's popularity on the internet so that we all are aware of how little effort it takes to make money off of being an extremely minor celebrity:

Xeni vs Bodily Odors

Xeni vs Other bloggers (that spot on the bottom is interest generated by us here, I suspect)

Xeni vs Non-notable celebrities

Xeni vs horrible diseases

Xeni vs One-hit-wonder musicians

Xeni vs Countries you've never heard of

The list was surprising to me, not because of Xeni's lack of popularity, but because it touches a point to how the microcosm of the internet works. It's amazing how one who has such a surprising lack of popularity in the world at large influences so much behind the scenes. Don't believe me? Look at this and then compare it to this.

The "Lonely Island" guys have Xeni to thank for their success. Seriously. Do you think they would have made it on SNL otherwise? I doubt it, the surges in their popularity directly coincide with the posts that Xeni makes to boingboing.

Why did Xeni notice the "Lonely Island" guys? Was it because they were unique and exciting and "creative commons"? No. Becuase one of the members of the Lonely Island guys, Akiva Schaffer, is related to self proclaimed hacker, Micah Schaffer; one of Xeni's friends (the same guy who uploaded that video of Xeni at e3 to YouTube).

Now they have an SNL gig. Chalk one up for the web 2.0 overlords.

There will be some who think I'm spouting conspiratorial nonsense. Yes, I am. On the other hand I didn't even mention asmallworld...

Who's the greatest self-promotional whore of them all?



If the graphs were led to be believed, then it looks like the backlash had begun long before we entered the fray.

Hear that Xeni? Your 15 minutes are ticking and time's almost up...

Thanks google trends!

Disclosure: I agree with Xeni on Network Neutrality. I'll still slam Xeni because its obligatory, but just because Xeni believes in one thing doesn't mean that I necessarily zag the other direction because I'm blinded by hatred. Read on for further details -- MQ

Xeni's latest internet plight is so-called "Network Neutrality". She's been explaining that big companies are vying to introduce fees to regulate the flow of internet traffic by presumably doling out preferential bandwidth to certain sites (or more appropriately, certain services. More on this below).

Let me tell you those companies aren't dumb. Xeni makes it sound like the big telcos are really out to stifle the voice of bloggers and what rights they have. Infact, Xeni and her mob squad have even leveraged the charge that the companies want to sell preferential bandwidth directly to certain websites. This, as near as I can tell, isn't based on any fact and is drawing attention away from the real problem with what the phone companies are *really* doing.

The phone companies *do* want to stifle voices, but not the voices of bloggers or Microsoft or Google. What this comes down to is that the premium services that phone companies want to charge for are two big threats to their industry: VPN (tunneling protocols), and more importantly VoIP (which has the potential to be passed through a tunneling protocol). Two things that they've already set a precedent for trying to block before the FCC stepped in.

I actually agree that network neutrality legislation is a good thing but I think Xeni is hurting the real core of the argument by leveraging crazy accusations and general all purpose doomsaying. "OMG BLOGGERS ARE GOING TO BE STIFLED!!!11" Who the fuck thinks that the phone companies give a shit about bloggers you dumb piece of garbage. They care only about one thing: profit. VoIP == bad. Protocols that allow VoIP to pass through without them reaping the benefits == bad. Get the drift?

As a big proponent of VoIP (why the hell are you reading this, go install an Asterisk server) I sincerely hope that the phone companies don't get their mits all over the internet in such an exploitive way. I also sincerely hope that arguments from people like Xeni Jardin and their mob squad don't fuck it all up by overgeneralizing the real problems at hand allowing the phone companies to counter with claims such as this.

Oh, and spread the word. Seriously. And don't worry, Xeni still sucks.

MY TOTALLY AWESOME "HACKER" FRIEND JAKE TOLD ME TEH YOUTHZ0R ARE TAKING ACTION TO FIGHT MILITARY RECRUITERS!

Besides just saying, "no", of course, because that would be the straightforward approach. I could be making a stretch here, but I'm guessing the kind of dorks who feel the need to create a website to "fight military recruiting" aren't exactly the first kids picked in dodgeball.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Wait til these dudes figure out they can't drink in pubs. I can't wait to see the website for that!

I invite everyone here to check out these pictures on flickr, and their accompanying description.

Picture 1 - Wil Wheaton and Xeni Jardin on floor of E3 convention, mit phonecams and video-game-induced hallucinations.
Picture 2 - Death by videogame. Crashing on the floor at E3 gaming convention in Los Angeles, playing games on my phone. Shot by Jacob Appelbaum.

Now watch this video:



That's fucking hysterical. Here's what pisses me off (I own a Treo 650, just for reference so I'm qualified say a bit about what I'm seeing here).

In the beginning Xeni isn't even holding the phone the right way, Jacob has to tell her to turn it around. (This could have been a slip, but I like to think that she doesn't even know what she's holding)

She shows the phone twice, and clearly it's not even turned on at all. She may not even know how to turn it on. However this is beside the point because the photo is clearly intended to give the vibe that she's actually using the phone.

Xeni clearly doesn't know how to use the phone because the Treo 650 is Palm OS 5 based. What does that have to do with anything? Because if she had actually been using the phone at all she would be holding the stylus in her hand. Clearly you can see the stylus placed in its slot. Trust me it's like second nature with a Treo 650, the first thing you do after unlocking it with the center button is take out the stylus.

Jacob: "Put your phones together like.. like facing together like you're photoblogging!"

Thanks to the commentator that pointed the video out to me. (Found) You rock dude. This is one of the best examples highlighting Xeni's idiocy I've seen. Way to go for the geek cred, Xeni!! Next we'll find out that she's really a plastic mannequin that doesn't even exist.

Why is it that we fund NASA? I mean it's an orgnization that is known for its bloated projects. Millions of dollars of taxpayer paid NASA projects so that we can lob metal objects into space, often with hilarious results.

I'll tell you why, because when you ask NASA to innovate on possible ways to launch things into space, they'll give you well thought out reasonable answers like loading a big-assed containers filled with highly combustible rocket fuel. (God bless America!)

You ask a military guy to think of something and they'll give you the slingatron.

Slingatron you say? That sounds interesting what's it do?

"Well it's really kind of designed as a global strike tool for launching projectiles at high velocities across the globe... but ya know you could always possibly use it for launching objects into space... maybe... if such a thing existed."

Sounds lovely. I won't address the myriad of technical issues involved (mostly because I'm just as qualified as Xeni to comment on them), but perhaps quoting the author of the book "Weapons Grade : How Modern Warfare Gave Birth to Our High-Tech World" isn't the best source to look for inspiration into the spacecraft launching industry, Xeni.

At least not until the Air Force starts asserting their manifest destiny in space.

But let's get one thing straight: Military innovation is good for one thing and one thing only, finding better ways to kill people and coordinating those skills together. There are going to be crossovers (radar, GPS, DARPAnet) that improve our quality of life, but for the most part if it doesn't involve dropping a bomb or finding a more efficient way to drop a bomb then the military is may not your best source for inspiration...

After Xeni awoke from her sleeping medication induced coma over the weekend, she took the time to post a plug for one of her buddy's new books. Intelligent Thought: Science versus the intelligent design movement.

Fortunately Xeni was kind enough to include a quote that summarizes the entire book for all of the lay-people out there.

School districts across the country — most notably in Kansas and later in Pennsylvania, where the antievolutionist tide was turned but undoubtedly not stopped—have been besieged by demands to "teach the debate," to "present the controversy," when, in actuality, there is no debate, no controversy...

Way to preach to the choir, Xeni and Co. I'm sure you'll win over lots of those evil intelligent design proponents with that one.

-- NEWSWIRE --
HILLA, IRAQ - BBIA news service (5/9/2006)
Written by: Xeni Jardin
Co-written by: Ric Romero

This just in: The government is really bad at handling money in Iraq!!!!

Especially when you give 200,000 dollars in cold hard cash to a woman and then she abruptly dies.

According to the linked article, "those who knew and worked with Ms. Holland, whose efforts on behalf of women had won her recognition, said it defied belief that she could have lost track of so much money."

Authorities reported that the loss of so much money was a blow to humanitarian work for women in Iraq and as a result they were forced to shut down the Hilla Nail Salon/Internet Cafe.

--- snip ---

My favorite part of the article? "So much [money] was available, often in shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills known as "bricks," that it was stashed all over the compound, the inspector general said in earlier reports. Millions were held in filing cabinets, a footlocker, even a safe in a bathroom, investigators found."

and you wondered why any of it was missing? I can't even trust the food I leave in the refrigerator at work.