Boing Boing: July 7, 2007 Archives

Deliciously detailed visual representation of Apple form factor evolution from 1976 to 2007, from the Apple I to the iPhone: Link, by Edwin Tofslie. Shown above, a detail of the first few. The whole chart is a 3435 x 2280 jpeg, with about 100 items.

Fursuits and /b/tards clash outside furry-con at Pittsburgh hotel. "Yiff in hell," reads the protest sign. Link.

16-year-old drummer of San Francisco punk rock band (Tinkture) loses most of her hand Wednesday night after someone tosses live fireworks at her in Dolores Park. Link. Her father wants to know who is responsible for maiming his daughter, and offers a $20K reward: Link.

San Diego cops arrest guy withdrawing cash from bank because he was wearing life-sized, gun-shaped belt buckle. “They called me an idiot and said 'I can't believe you were wearing that right now.'” Link.

Rare genetic mutation causes whippet dog to resemble Schwarzenegger: Link

Steampunk Barbeque Dreadnought: 1.5HP International Harvester Steam Tractor, with built in barbeque grill (complete with rotisserie), a built in steam powered ice cream maker, and hot dog launching air cannon run off a compressor, also powered by the steam engine. eBay Link.

Accused Texas downloader lady sues RIAA and Sony BMG Music, claiming they employed unlicensed private investigators and knew they were ignoring state laws. Link.

1,000 immigrants sworn in as US Citizens in DisneyWorld on July 4: Link.

Wading pool drain sucks out 6-year-old girl's intestines. Link.

All my sweet childhood memories of Alvin and the Chipmunks destroyed by new CGI movie. Now they're rapping, photorealistic assholes: Link, Link 2, Link 3

(Thanks, Chris, Kevin Evans, Ted Nugnt, David Chasteen, Michael Hayes, Landon, Kevin, Tavie, The Wicked One, Dustin)

Reader comment: Pete Mortensen says,

I took the big JPEG of Apple's products by Edwin Tofslie and turned it into a visual map of Apple's overall product family over time: Link. You can see families appear grow, and contract - it really tells quite a story. Interestingly, Apple goes into chaos in about 1987, the second Jobs leaves, and only fixes itself once he comes back full time, 1998.
I've uploaded the huge PDF (made in Keynote, of course) to Scribd, where it can be viewed at various levels of zoom in Flash or downloaded as a PDF, and I have this link to where the source file can be downloaded and edited into its own new map, rearranging as people disagree with my choices.

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Yesterday I wrote about the Steorn's failed demonstration of its Orbo perpetual motion device for the Huffington Post.

With a track record of zero, you would think the perpetual motion school of applied phyics would have shut down long ago. Not so. Today, there's a company in Dublin, Ireland, called Steorn, which claims to have developed a device, called Orbo, which violates, or at least effectively skirts around, the laws of thermodynamics. They say once the technology -- which allegedly exploits hitherto unknown properties of magnets to generate free energy from nothing, is refined -- it can be used to power cars, electronics, and just about anything that needs energy to make it run.
Recently Steorn announced it would unveil Orbo, at, of all places, a London art gallery on July 4. However, the demonstration was a failure, because Orbo failed to work. Steorn's official explanation sounds remarkably like the excuses offered by all fringe inventors after their machines fail to work in front of an audience: "We are experiencing some technical difficulties with the demo unit in London. Our initial assessment indicates that this is probably due to the intense heat from the camera lighting."

Link

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