Ralph Lauren photoshop fail

http://www.ralphlauren.com/frontdoor/index.jsp?videoflash=false&flashversion=0

Thumbs down for Ralph Lauren crimes against free expression and for photoshop fail.


“Dude, her head’s bigger than her pelvis” – Boing Boing



“First they came for the supermodels,
but I didn’t care because I wasn’t a supermodel…’

Ralph Lauren didn’t like people mocking their poor photoshop skills  and ordered their lawyers to suppress it  by drawing upon that shining example of American ‘liberty’ the DMCA.  

Boing Boing replied:

So, to Ralph Lauren, GreenbergTraurig, and PRL Holdings, Inc: sue and be damned. Copyright law doesn’t give you the right to threaten your critics for pointing out the problems with your offerings. You should know better. And every time you threaten to sue us over stuff like this, we will:
a) Reproduce the original criticism, making damned sure that all our readers get a good, long look at it, and;
b) Publish your spurious legal threat along with copious mockery, so that it becomes highly ranked in search engines where other people you threaten can find it and take heart; and
c) Offer nourishing soup and sandwiches to your models

See:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/09/xeni-on-rachel-maddo.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/08/ralph_lauren_photoshop/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect

Pandorabots – chat bots


“Pandorabots is an experimental software robot hosting service based… “

I love the concept and admire the hard work, but these bots have a long way to go before they can pass the Turing test.

The news section is regularly updated (monthly), with news about commercial chatbots for major players such as AOL as well as providing tools for the open source community

Update 2022: well the chatbots have evolved and nice to see that the company is still operational. They have added voice recognition which is a nice touch but I’m still waiting for one to pass that elusive Turing Test. Perhaps if they name one Wintermute?

Check out their latest offering here:

https://home.pandorabots.com/home.html

iCab – Internet Taxi for the Mac

http://www.icab.de/

iCab -“Internet Taxi for the Mac”

Update 2022 – I used this browser for a while but to be honest it hasn’t kept up with the main Mac browsers like safari and Chrome.

Also as shareware it doesn’t make sense to pay for something that you can get free elsewhere.

The additional features such as kiosk mode, malware alerts, download manager, source code viewer etc. are also available elsewhere at no cost.

Real-Time Testing of Internet Filtering in China

http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/test/

No longer works use this instead:

http://www.chinafirewalltest.com

If you like to roam the web bear in mind that if you were in the People’s Republic of China you couldn’t go where you liked. Find out if your favourite site is blocked in China – if you like news or ‘Adult’ content then it probably is.