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Weekly Poll: Over the election yet?

We’ve suffered the longest pre-election campaign in Australia’s history, and then an abnormally long 6-week “official” campaign instead of the usual 5. Finally, it’s the last week before polling day. Are you over the whole thing yet?

Or are you only now deciding to get interested? Or perhaps you’re looking forward to one final orgy of campaigning. Which is it? Go to the website to vote!

[poll id=”13″]

Last week’s results: From the choices offered, most voters thought John Howard was the most disconnected from voters. Yes, Prime Minister, you are the problem, it seems. However a few people recognised that the Australian Democrats have had their day.

[Yes, I know the weekly poll hasn’t been weekly lately. It was a non-core promise. Deal with it.]

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A sordid tale from the dot-com boom

Photograph of Marc Collins-Rector from Florida sex offenders registerAh, this story has it all, but where to start? Money, drugs, underage sex, venture capital, Hollywood stars, Interpol and dodgy TV programs!

The chap in the picture is Marc Collins-Rector, and the rather unflattering photo is from the Florida sex offenders register. Back in the dot-com boom, he founded a company called DEN (or >en) for “digital entertainment network”.

“TV is dead,” he proclaimed, because we’d all be streaming video off DEN. Somehow he got millions in venture capital funding, even though most people were still on dial-up and video streaming just wasn’t happening. Most of the money, it seems, went on drugs and parties where… ahem! young men were invited when they were perhaps not of appropriate age.

Some $12 million was spent on a TV series called Chad’s World. Yet the pilot episode is “low-rent porn” quality rather than “network TV”.

For a highly amusing and somewhat smutty summary, check out this parody video of DEN’s business model.

Needless to say, it all imploded — but this investigative report makes for compelling reading. If only because it’s like watching a slow-motion car crash. And because the key characters are still out there, and involved in new business ventures which on the surface sound less than salubrious too.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the pointer. I think.

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Limit Telephotography

Dugway by Trevor Paglen

Trevor Paglen has created some beautiful photos of remote military installations using a process he called limit telephotography.

Limit-telephotography involves photographing landscapes that cannot be seen with the unaided eye. The technique employs high powered telescopes whose focal lengths range between 1300mm and 7000mm. At this level of magnification, hidden aspects of the landscape become apparent.

The image at right shows the US Army’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Proving Ground at Dugway, Utah, from a distance of 22 miles.

Paglen was also involved in the project Terminal Air, which explores the interconnections between government agencies and private contractors involved with the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.

Hat tip to 3 Quarks Daily.

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Colossus reborn! And the race is on…

Photograph of Colossus computer

Colossus, the world’s first programmable digital computer that Alan Turing and the team at Bletchley Park used to crack the German Enigma code in WWII, is being rebuilt.

And what’s even more cool, it’s going to be used in a race against a modern PC to crack codes!

Tony Sale and his team of British vintage computer enthusiasts have a job a head of them, as the original Colossus machines were destroyed at the end of WWII. However the surviving Colossus engineers have been found, and they’re on the case.

Hat tip to Boing Boing.