K5 has lasted longer than the vast majority of sites on the internet that are not corporately funded or those stupid blogs that no one reads that someone with some sort of medicated complex keeps up for no logical reason.

Well here we go. We are going to install and RUN scoop on a modern communist debian system. And the best part is that it works.... And it's really not that hard to tweak. I'm using SUN's virtual box, as I have no interest installing Debian on my laptop.

Stargate: Universe (SGU) is the latest television series based on the movie Stargate. SGU is set primarily on the spaceship Destiny, which is 100,000 years old and billions of light years away from Earth. The crew is entirely human and traveled to Destiny via a wormhole which needed to be powered by the core of a planet. They have communication with Earth, and the technology used to do this is fuel for the producers's fantasies. They use ancient technology in the form of stones that allow them to swap bodies with people over vast distances instantaneously. The bodies remain where they are, but the consciousnesses are transferred for as long as the machine the stones are placed on remains active. If you've ever wondered what it would be like to swap bodies with one of your co-workers and have sex with your wife using his body, SGU is the show for you. The most recent episode (available on Hulu or Google Search) has this happening with the commander of the Destiny, Col. Young. However due to a glitch his colleague returns to his body momentarily in the act of coitus with Young's wife.

Perhaps due to the popularity of certain rhythm games, the electric guitar seems to be making a bit of a comeback. I've been playing mine for most of my life, and like many others I love heavy, distorted guitar sounds and big, crunching power chords. Root-fifth power chords are easy to learn and easy to teach, but why are they so ubiquitous? And why root-fifth, anyway? How does distortion combine with musical intervals in order to generate big, bassy tones? A theory of distortion and musical intervals, with particular application to the electric guitar, is presented inside.

                                     /\            _______                  /  \           /       \          5     /    \        __/_________\__      #     /  /\  \          (o)-(o)----             /\  \/   \          |(__      |      E     /  \       \       O  /\ ____/ /\     N     /    \  /\   \    /\  G   \_____/  \   I     /  /\  \/  \   \   /  \  G              Z     /\  \/  /   /   /  /    \  \            A     /  \    /   /   / /  /\  \  F          G /\  /   /\  /    \  / \  \/  /\  R        A /  \/   /  \/      \/  \    /  \  O      M /   /\   \   \  /    \  G      /    \/\   \    \/  /\  \        \      /\  /     \  \/  /\        \     \ \/      \    /  \       /      \  /\  /   /    \      \/\    /   /\ /  \/   /  /\  \        \  /   /  \ \      /\  \/  /         \/   /    \  \    /  \    /              /      \   \  /\  /   /        \/    /   /\   \    \/  \/   /        \/\/  /   /  \  /     \      /         /\/\ |    \   \/      \    /           /\   \    |       \  /            /\    |   |        \/            /  \__/   /                        \        /                       \______/

In days of old when knights were bold and toilets weren't invented, I wrote a k5 article about my adventures in self-publishing. In it I wrote, "I recommend self-publishing for anybody whose temperament and objectives resemble mine. All others should beware." That's still pretty my much point of view. Below the fold, I've updated & revised that original story & added some additional reflections based on the eight years of self-publishing experience I've amassed since then (including six years of making my books available for free download under Creative Commons license).

  _______   _______   _______   __________ _________ _______   _______  /       \ /       \ /       \ /          \         \       \ /       \ |         |         |         |   \________\ \_______\       |         | |     |   |     |___|___  |___|___   ___|      |   |     |   |     |___|___ |         |     /    ___\ /    ___\  |  |      |   |         |     /    ___\  \_______/ \________/\________/\____/    \____/     \_______/ \_______/ OGG FROG MAGAZINE #4                                 2009 MELT-DOWN SPECIAL!                __...''''''''...__            .'''                  '''.          '  :                      :  '        '    '                      '    '       .   .'                         '.   .   ENOUGH WITH THE INJUSTICES!      .   .                             .   .      :  : .'''''''-.._      _..-'''''''.   :  If you thought my wall-of-text      |  :( .-''''--.. )    ( ..--''''-. )     memos were bad, just wait until      : ..-|  .----.  '.____.'  .----.  |__ :  you see the legal brief I've      .--. ' ( ( *) )  |    |  ( ( *) ) '.--.  been cooking up on the company      |  |  . '----' _.'    '._ '----' . |  |  dime for the last 4 months.      '.     '-----'' '      ' ''-----'    .'         |                                   |  REFORM OR PERISH MOTHERFUCKERS!       . |           '        '          | .         '-'          '.________.'         '-'         :      . ''            '' .     :    Below the fold: my dick        '      :                    :     '        :      :    .---....---.    :     :      _.:      :    '----------'    :     :    .'   .     :                    :    . __| \ .' '._  :                    : _.'   '. '.     '''                   ''' |\__     :  '.      '.               .'   .' /      \   '.       '-..........-'    |  /       |____)-._                   ./  /                '--.._________...-''--'

K5's buggy formatting code broke the submission after I moved it to vote, so here is a repost.                                                                ____                                                             __/____\__                                                               O--O-|                                                               C    |                                                              /|___/ \_                                     ____                    /         \                                   / o o  \                 : .         \                                     \______/       OOOo      :__       \  \                                     /  | | \       |  |  __ /  _     .'_\_ \ OOOo                                   \  | | /       |   ''  |\ /_._)       '--|  |                                  __\ ^ ^/__      |____.__`-'_.'._____..____|__|          

In 2008, the U.S. telephone relay service (TRS) industry pulled in around 30 million dollars in revenue, 16 million of which was profit. If you've ever had to dial 711, or received a phone call from a 'relay service' then you've used it before. The TRS exists as a mandate of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Their mission is to assist the hearing or speech disabled to communicate with their fellow citizens over the phone, typically by using a TTY* device. The industry is governed by the Federal Communications Commission, and is funded through NECA, the National Exchange Carrier Association, who get their money from you, in the form of taxes on your phone bill. Ultimately, every penny that the TRS industry makes is from taxes, which makes the fact that the TRS system is completely broken all the more appalling. From ignoring the needs of the deaf customers it was designed to help, to aiding and abetting scammers all over the world. Want to learn more? Check out Stop Relay Abuse. Or, make a call for free anywhere in the US (requires flash, doesn't play nice in firefox). You don't even have to prove you're disabled, and it's completely anonymous for now. Did I mention federal law makes it illegal to talk about the content of any call, even if it's criminal activity? The only exception is the nebulous term 'national security', otherwise it takes a subpoena just to learn the IP address your call was placed from. Isn't it grand?

I'm usually on the lookout for interesting writing on programming, which cuts through the piles of "best practices", cargo-cult nonsense, and inane technical details, to something interesting to read that's also relevant to actually programming. I can say unhesitatingly that Yosef K.'s blog is the best on the internet meeting that description. Sure, he comes from a particular perspective--embedded systems programming--but is interested in and knowledgeable about broader areas, and generally manages to get to the heart of interesting issues and tradeoffs. And the works-at-a-real-company-doing-actual-embedded-systems-programming angle gives him some grounding in actual programming that you might not find in some academic takes (I say this as someone in academia).

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label This week in search and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

This week brought a number of new features to the fore.

Google Translate
The biggest and most visible release this week was our update to Google Translate. New changes to the interface help you translate instantly and see translations as you type. We have also introduced both input and output transliteration: for selected languages, our tool will show you letter by letter how a word or phrase appears in a different language as you type. We have also added text-to-speech, so you can figure out how to pronounce new words as you learn them.

Rich snippets in Japanese
On the topic of international launches, at our Searchology event in May we announced the launch of rich snippets, which webmasters can use to help Google show more useful information from the page. For example, if you are thinking of trying out a new restaurant and are searching for reviews, rich snippets could include things like the average review score, the number of reviews, and the restaurant's price range. Starting this week, this feature is available in Japanese.

Flu shot finder now on results pages
Following in the footsteps of last week's launch, we have now added our flu shot finder to the search results page.

Example searches: flu shot, h1n1 shot, flu vaccine

Site hierarchies in search results
Google usually shows a green web address, or URL, at the bottom of each search result to let you know where you're headed. Tuesday we began rolling out an improvement that replaces the URL in some search results with a hierarchy showing the precise location of the page on the website. The new display offers valuable context and new navigation options. For example, on the eHow.com result below, you can see that this page is in the Martial Art Techniques section.

Example searches: venn diagram, how to punch harder, hodgkins lymphoma, keurig

Hope you enjoyed this week's new features. Stay tuned for more!

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search

This is part of a regular series of posts on search experience updates that runs on Fridays. Look for the label "This week in search" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

 This week brought a variety of changes, including a flu shot finder to keep you healthy during this year's flu season. And since you'll be healthy, you can enjoy updates to our movie showtimes feature and go out and have fun.

Flu shot finder
We launched a flu shot finder with the goal of helping people find where they can get their fall flu shots. At the moment we have data for shot locations in 20 states. We'll be increasing our coverage to all 50 states. We're just getting started with this project, so stay tuned for improvements.

You can find flu shots at www.google.com/flushot.

The ability to lock SafeSearch
We launched a feature that lets you lock your SafeSearch setting. When you lock SafeSearch, two things will change. First, you'll need to enter your password to change the setting. Second, the Google search results page will be visibly different to indicate that SafeSearch is on and locked:

That way, if you're taking care of kids, you'll be able to verify that SafeSearch is on from clear across the room! Just look for the colorful balls in the upper right corner.

You can lock your SafeSearch by visiting our Search Settings page in the Settings menu in the upper right corner of www.google.com and clicking "Lock SafeSearch".

Updated movies showtimes
We launched an update to the movies showtimes feature, which now includes movie posters to enrich our movie results. When you click on the result, you'll get a more comprehensive summary of the movie as well as the ability to view theater locations on a map and sort by genre.

Example searches: movies, where the wild things are, 2012

Adding World Bank data to search
We have added World Bank data to search. This makes finding global facts like life expectancy, electricity use and birth rates a lot faster and easier. The Public Data feature also lets you make comparisons across countries. Here's what the feature looks like when it appears in your search results:
Example searches: the worlds life expectancy, electricity use germany

Hope you enjoyed this week's new features. Stay tuned for next week!

Posted by Johanna Wright, Director of Product Management, Search

Last week the Google Apps for Education team headed to Denver for EDUCAUSE 2009 where the higher education community meets annually. It was at this conference three years ago that we first unveiled Google Apps for Education. Since then, we've witnessed staggering growth in the world of cloud computing in education. Lots has happened over the past year especially: more than 100 new features have rolled out in Google Apps, we've engaged well over six million students and faculty (a 400% increase since this time last year), launched free Google Message Security for K-12 schools and have integrated with other learning services such as Blackboard and Moodle.

These developments are just the beginning. According to the newly-released 2009 Campus Computing survey statistics, 44% of colleges and universities have converted to a hosted student email solution, while another 37% are currently evaluating the move. Of those that have migrated, over half — 56% precisely* — are going Google.

To toast the students and faculty that are shaping this movement, we hosted our customers and EDUCAUSE conference attendees at the Denver Public Library. Check out the photos to see what these schools have to say:



We also did something different this year and invited some student ambassadors from schools using Google Apps to come to Denver and share how using Apps on campus helps make their lives easier. Daniel Miller who works at University of Washington's Ethnic Cultural Center uses Calendar to let students on campus know about his organization's events. Sociology major Robin Brown uses forms in Docs to collect data for her class surveys at Notre Dame. Taylor Bell at Boise State relies on Gmail's filters and gadgets to seamlessly access to his Calendar, Docs, Tasks and Chat. After losing his journal, Vaughn Parker at Temple University created a Calendar to keep track of his assignments and share them with his classmates and professors. (There are many more of these student stories, too).

Every year, more schools move to Google Apps so they can spend their time focusing on students, not servers; on higher learning, not higher costs. If you're a school, you can go Google, too. Check out www.google.com/appsatschool to learn more.
*Update on 11/20: Among 4-year universities and colleges, the number is slightly higher, with 59% choosing Google Apps.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Product Marketing Manager

This is part of a regular series of Google Apps updates that we post every couple of weeks. Look for the label "Google Apps highlights" and subscribe to the series. - Ed.

Over the last two weeks, we've made improvements across Google Apps, some geared for individuals, others meant for business customers.

Green Robot icon in Gmail Labs
The green, orange and red chat bubbles in Gmail signal if your contacts are online, idle or unavailable, but as more people sign in from mobile devices, it's becoming harder to tell when someone is actually online at a computer or just connected with their phone. The Green Robot feature in Gmail Labs helps you spot when you might want to tailor your exchanges with more succinct messages for people who are signed in with Android-powered devices. Look for the green beaker icon at the top of Gmail to enable Green Robot and other Labs features.

Site templates
On Tuesday we launched templates for Google Sites. The templates gallery is filled with useful example sites ranging from wedding websites to corporate intranets, which you can copy and customize so they're just right. This lets you create a useful, visually appealing collaborative workspace in seconds. And if you have a great site other people would find useful, you can submit it to the gallery. If your business uses Google Sites, templates you submit stay private within your company.

More overflow storage for less
If you're using Google Apps to store photos and manage large volumes of personal email, you'll be happy to hear we're now offering more extra storage for less. Our new overflow storage plans start at $5 per year for 20 GB. For the most avid shutterbugs, the 16 TB plan is enough space for roughly 8 million high resolution pictures!

Improvements to Sync for Outlook
Last week, we released an update to Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook, our tool that lets companies stop running Microsoft Exchange while still letting some employees use the familiar Outlook interface. Now, employees can sync multiple calendars between Outlook and Google Apps, and look up free/busy information from Exchange for co-workers who haven't migrated to Google Apps yet.

Google Apps Premier Edition innovation – Year in review
Businesses using Google Apps not only save money compared to running their own email systems, but also their employees get access to innovation at a much faster pace than with conventional business technologies. We've launched over 100 improvements to Google Apps in the last year, and on Thursday I hosted a webcast to recap noteworthy recent updates for businesses, including push email, contacts and calendar support for BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Android, Sync for Microsoft Outlook, offline access and more. If you missed the webcast, you can watch it on YouTube.

Who's gone Google?
This week I'm pleased to welcome a new crop of companies, schools and public agencies that have recently switched to Google Apps, including Delta Hotels, Michigan State University, the City of Orlando and the Office of the New Mexico Attorney General. The Motorola Mobile Devices Division deployed Google Apps to its employees this week, and the Los Angeles City Council recently voted unanimously to move 30,000 city employees to Google Apps.

We hope these updates help you get even more from Google Apps. For details and the latest news in this area, check out the Google Apps Blog.

Posted by Jeremy Milo, Google Apps Marketing Manager

When school media specialists and educators make an effort to become familiar with the social-networking web sites and technologies that today's students use each day, they can forge important learning connections with their students: That was one of the key messages to come out of the American Association of School Librarians' annual conference, held Nov. 5-8 in Charlotte, N.C. Key words: educational technology, AASL, library media specialist, school library, school media center, 21st century learning

Three school districts and a coalition of charter schools have agreed to be test kitchens for some radical ideas for improving teacher quality -- from paying new teachers to spend another year practicing before getting their own class to letting student test scores affect teacher pay. Key words: Bill and Melinda Gates, educational technology, school technology, school funding, teacher quality, Gates Foundation

In July we announced that we were working on Google Chrome OS, an open source operating system for people who spend most of their time on the web.

Today we are open-sourcing the project as Chromium OS. We are doing this early, a year before Google Chrome OS will be ready for users, because we are eager to engage with partners, the open source community and developers. As with the Google Chrome browser, development will be done in the open from this point on. This means the code is free, accessible to anyone and open for contributions. The Chromium OS project includes our current code base, user interface experiments and some initial designs for ongoing development. This is the initial sketch and we will color it in over the course of the next year.

We want to take this opportunity to explain why we're excited about the project and how it is a fundamentally different model of computing.

First, it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs.

Second, because all apps live within the browser, there are significant benefits to security. Unlike traditional operating systems, Chrome OS doesn't trust the applications you run. Each app is contained within a security sandbox making it harder for malware and viruses to infect your computer. Furthermore, Chrome OS barely trusts itself. Every time you restart your computer the operating system verifies the integrity of its code. If your system has been compromised, it is designed to fix itself with a reboot. While no computer can be made completely secure, we're going to make life much harder (and less profitable) for the bad guys. If you dig security, read the Chrome OS Security Overview or watch the video.

Most of all, we are obsessed with speed. We are taking out every unnecessary process, optimizing many operations and running everything possible in parallel. This means you can go from turning on the computer to surfing the web in a few seconds. Our obsession with speed goes all the way down to the metal. We are specifying reference hardware components to create the fastest experience for Google Chrome OS.

There is still a lot of work to do, and we're excited to work with the open source community. We have benefited hugely from projects like GNU, the Linux Kernel, Moblin, Ubuntu, WebKit and many more. We will be contributing our code upstream and engaging closely with these and other open source efforts.

Google Chrome OS will be ready for consumers this time next year. Sign up here for updates or if you like building your operating system from source, get involved at chromium.org.

Lastly, here is a short video that explains why we're so excited about Google Chrome OS.



Update at 8:55PM: Watch the video of our Google Chrome OS event, which took place earlier today.

Posted by Caesar Sengupta, Group Product Manager and Matt Papakipos, Engineering Director

This year, it's especially important to have clear information on what you can do to prepare for the flu season. With this in mind, we are happy to share a new feature for the U.S. which allows you to more easily find locations near you for getting both the seasonal and H1N1 flu vaccine. After expanding Google Flu Trends to a total of 20 countries and 38 languages, allowing more people to see near real-time estimates of flu activity, we began brainstorming with the U.S. Department for Health and Human Services (HHS), their flu.gov collaborators and the American Lung Association on the flu shot finder and other ways Google can be helpful to people this flu season.

You can check out the flu shot finder at www.google.com/flushot. The same tool will also be available shortly on www.flu.gov and the American Lung Association websites. It's important to note that this project is just beginning and we have not yet received information about flu shot clinics for many locations. In addition, many locations that are shown are currently out of stock. We launched this service now in order to help disseminate information about locations where vaccines are available, and also to make more vaccine providers aware of the project so that they can contribute.


Especially given slower than expected vaccine production, we think it's important to bring together flu shot information in a coherent manner. We've been working with HHS, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and state and local health agencies to gather information on flu vaccine locations across the country, particularly for the H1N1 flu vaccine (both the nasal-spray vaccine and the shot). At the moment we have data for locations of flu vaccine directly from 20 states and counting. We are also continuing to add information from chain pharmacies and other providers in all 50 states; today, you'll find results from chains such as Walgreens, CVS and PDX participants, such as Kmart, Duane Reade, WinnDixie and Giant Eagle.

Of course you should still call flu vaccine providers ahead of time to find out more about availability and eligibility for the two vaccines.

We hope to continue providing you with relevant information to help keep you and your loved ones healthy.
Update on 11/19: We just added the flu shot finder as a search feature on Google.com. Now, if you search for terms like [flu], [flu shot], [h1n1 shot] or [flu vaccine], information will appear at the top of your search results, including flu tips from flu.gov as well as the flu shot finder box with an expanding map that displays locations where you can receive seasonal and/or H1N1 flu shots.

Posted by Roni Zeiger, M.D., Product Manager and Jennifer Haroon, Product Marketing Manager

When I first started at Google, Craig Nevill-Manning, engineering director here in New York, said to me: "The Google homepage doesn't belong to us. It belongs to the millions of people who use it." Besides the fact that Craig can make one of those insanely cool leaf patterns in his latte, I find the simple truth of his statement inspiring. I often refer to it as a guidepost for our work.

So when we got together with the search team to brainstorm ways to talk about our latest innovations (like music in search results), we decided to feature them through stories inspired by our users. Because while we're proud of the innovations we're making in search, we're proudest of the things people use search to accomplish. In other words, the best search results don't show up on a webpage — they show up in somebody's life.

So in that spirit, we made a bunch of videos. There's one about grandma dipping her toe into technology. One about friends taking a Kerouac inspired road trip. And yes, there's even one about Bruce Wayne.

Here's the first one:


You can see them all here.

As they say in the movies, all the characters in these videos are fictional, any resemblance to persons alive or dead are purely coincidental.

We hope you enjoy them.

Posted by Robert Wong, Google Creative Lab

"Software isn't like music or books. It's too complicated for a third party to act as an intermediary between developer and user. And yet that's what Apple is trying to be with the App Store: a software publisher. And a particularly overreaching one at that, with fussy tastes and a rigidly enforced house style. How would Apple like it if when they discovered a serious bug in OS X, instead of releasing a software update immediately, they had to submit their code to an intermediary who sat on it for a month and then rejected it because it contained an icon they didn't like?"


Ad: "Hackers & Painters" by Paul Graham