I want a dead simple and dirt cheap touch screen web tablet to surf the web. Nothing fancy like the Dell latitude XT, which costs $2,500. Just a Macbook Air-thin touch screen machine that runs Firefox and possibly Skype on top of a Linux kernel. It doesn’t exist today, and as far as we can tell no one is creating one. So let’s design it, build a few and then open source the specs so anyone can create them.

Here’s the basic idea: The machine is as thin as possible, runs low end hardware and has a single button for powering it on and off, headphone jacks, a built in camera for video, low end speakers, and a microphone … It would be great to have it be built entirely on open source hardware, but including Skype for VOIP and video calls may be a nice touch, too.

[... blah blah blah ...]

We’ll organize a small team of people to spec this out … we’ll spec out the hardware and get people to help write the customized Linux and Firefox code. Once we’ve completed the design we’ll start to work with the supply chain company to get an idea on the cost of the machine (the goal is $200), and hopefully build a few prototypes. Anyone who contributes significantly to the project would get one of those first prototypes. If everything works well, we’d then open source the design and software and let anyone build one that wants to.

See that part I’ve emphasized where they say their goal is to make their retarded, deformed iPod Touch/Dell love child cost $200? As a hardware designer who has actually designed stuff that’s, you know, real, I have one thing to say to that.

HAHAHAHAHAHA!

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Not Hot
“You know schnauzers? Your beard feels like a schnauzer on Daddy’s balls!”

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What many swimmers consider to be an annoyance was celebrated last week in Denver, where 15 people competed to see who was the best belly flopper. After three rounds of flopping, Greg Hoffman came out the winner at the 10th annual contest, which was held at Water World.

Performances were judged on style, performance and the size of the splash. Hoffman won a free trip to Cancun, Mexico.

Check out the slide show of hot photos.

He should be named Greg Hotman.

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I flipped it over on its stomach and immediately called the Toronto Wildlife Centre hoping they’d have useful advice on what to do. As I listened, the little bird writhed in pain. After about a minute it stopped. She had died. I hung up.

I thought I should bury her, but that seemed silly. At the very least, it felt wrong to leave her there so I picked her up and put him on the grass. Her limp body felt surprisingly warm.

I’ve been thinking about that little baby bird for two weeks now. I watched her die.

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Father Lucien Larre, who was inducted into the nation’s highest order in 1983 for his work with troubled youth, said in a news release yesterday that he felt “compelled in conscience to return my Order of Canada.”

The priest, based in Coquitlam, B. C., said he did not want to show disrespect to the Governor-General or to condemn Dr. Morgentaler, but added, “I believe in my heart that he is horribly wrong and the advisory committee made a terrible mistake.”

Too bad he didn’t return his Order of Canada in 1992 when he was convicted of child abuse or last year when his psychologists’ licence was suspended because he posed “an immediate risk to the public”.

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Isn’t Mark adorable?

I had a fun, but exhausting Pride weekend. Check out all of my Pride Sunday photos at Flickr.

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Photograph courtesy Dominic Chan.

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