Category: Intellectual Property
Sexy dancing robot ladies look at you, in some clever artistic commentary on CCTV society
If you want the thrill of seeing a woman dancing on a stage but without the risk of being seen entering the establishment or having to make eye contact with a live female, here’s a perfect futuristic solution.
This collection of moving, gyrating, female-like components can be seen in action at the Mutate Britain exhibition, where you can stare all you want without being made to feel sad or guilty because…
Santa baby, forgot to mention one little thing – a potentially lethal fake imported Nintendo DS
Don’t ruin Christmas by purchasing a cheap fake Nintendo DS off the internet and have it explode and burn down your Christmas tree and, subsequently, the entire house and a bit of the neighbour’s house.
That’s the slightly over-dramatic warning being issued by HMRC today, which says it’s intercepted “hundreds” of fake Nintendo products on their way into the UK, including the old DS and the lovely DS Lite – products that include…
Unsentimental Alton Towers coldly flogs off chunks of its Corkscrew rollercoaster on eBay
A reader who calls himself “Stretchy” has just alerted us to this awesome bit of history-making eBay activity – Alton Towers is flogging off the front car of its long-running Corkscrew rollercoaster.
The description over at Alton Towers’ site says you’re getting “The most unique Christmas present EVER!” if, by some incredible longshot, you happen to have a friend or family member who’s just asked for a bit of a closed rollercoaster as one of their Christmas presents this year…
'Pirates of the Amazon' Firefox extension will worry online retailers
An enterprising group of young coders have developed a Firefox add-on which does something rather worrying – adds ‘Download 4 Free’ buttons to Amazon pages. When you click the button, it’ll work out what product you’re looking for, and take you to a page on the Pirate Bay that’ll let you download it for free.
It works for CDs, DVDs, games, books and any other product that can be converted to a digital format. The team behind it claim they want the extension to “be a counterpart to the current models of media distribution”, and to “redistribute the wealth”. I’m not sure that’ll wash before a judge, to be honest.
Atari abandons filesharing lawsuits
Following the news the other week that some pensioners had been accused of downloading pirated games, Atari has abandoned its ‘sue-your-own-customers’ strategy, developed in conjunction with trigger-happy lawyers Davenport-Lyons.
Although the company maintains that it will “always retain and reserve the right to protect our intellectual property from illegal copying and piracy”, this is a positive step from a company realising that the only thing it’s actually getting out of the campaign of intimidation is bad press.
Will other companies follow? Codemasters is the biggest games publisher still associated with the troubled law firm. With any luck, it will wake up too, and realise that bringing legal action against its customers is far more trouble that it’s worth. There are many other options for making money with games.
I’m off to go buy some Atari games.
Atari (via TorrentFreak)
Related posts: Pensioners ‘caught’ pirating games | Atari and Codemasters join video game piracy legal fight – £300 fines on the way to 25,000 game-sharers
eBay Nutcase of the Week: DJ/The Shamen man Mr C flogging his entire record collection for £75k
DJ Mr C, AKA the bleach-haired proto-Eminem out of early-90s dancey/ravey band The Shamen, is flogging his entire remaining record collection – with a starting price of £75,000.
Here’s what your £75k gets you, along with an interesting look into the personal life of Mr C himself…
ATTENTION AMERICANS: Monty Python launches official YouTube Channel
Monty Python’s Flying Circus, the only television programme the United Kingdon has ever produced, is now yours to freely watch and link to from your blogs via an official YouTube Channel – with the remaining Pythons saying “we want you to click on the links, buy our movies & TV shows and soften our pain and disgust at being ripped off all these years.”
24 clips are currently up there for endless playback, including stuff from the movies, live performances and modern interviews with the depressingly old-looking stars. Here’s one from the Life of Brian, seeing as we’re allowed to now and it’s Friday.
There’s something in it for them – each clip comes complete with an embedded Amazon link…
eBay Nutcase of the Week: Person pays $10,000 for digital picture of a "seven legged spider"
The beginning of this story is mildly amusing. An Australian man called David Thorne attempted to pay an outstanding bill of $233.95 by sending the utility company a drawing of a spider he made on his computer – which he valued at precisely $233.95.
The utility company replied to his email in a very serious manner, saying it was “unable to accept drawings as payment” and a whole heap of internet hilarity entailed as the conversation between David and the poor admin assistant was beamed around the internet.
Then things start to officially go TOO FAR. David Thorne gave his spider…
One-eyed artist plans Borg-like installation of webcam into her spare eye socket
San Francisco-based artist Tanya Vlach lost an eye in a car accident in 2006 – now she’s planning to replace her standard-issue fake eye with a webcam. Preferably wireless – and with a 3x zoom. And infra-red support so she can see what she does in the dark.
Here’s what Tanya asked for in an advert she placed for a suitable technician for the job…
Musebin looking to Twitter-ise the world of music reviews
Newly launched Musebin seems to fancy itself as a Twitter rival, targeting the music-blogging scene with its angle of one-line music reviews.
As well as the idea of a limited 140-word verbal workspace, Musebin rips-off another popular internet thing – voting. The community can give every post a Yay or Nay, ensuring that spam and nonsense is swiftly voted…
