Head over to nin.com to grab the new Nine Inch Nails album “one hundred percent free” and herald in the death of the traditional recording industry! Just enter your email and Trent will send you a link to download the album in a variety of formats and including a PDF with artwork and album credits. The Slip is also licensed under a creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike license, meaning you’re free to share, remix and redistribute it in almost any non-commercial way you see fit. On the minimalist blog post announcing the release, Trent proclaims “thank you for your continued and loyal support over the years - this one’s on me.” Cheers!

theslip.nin.com

This morning at 4:37am a magnitude 5.2 earthquake shook the Midwest and Southenrn Illinois. Local news channel WAVE-TV was on the air as their studio began to shake during the weather report. Its funny, as the weatherman nervously continues through his weather report as studio lights shake overhead and external cameras bobble around, and his female co-anchor considers hiding under her desk.

View Video [USA Today]

Additional videos from the studio [WAVE-TV]

In addition to providing all their music as high quality, unrestricted, DRM-free mp3s, you can also find some freebies at the Amazon.com Music Download store. Unlike those other freebies you download, these freebies are totally legit… no need to worry about the RIAA knocking down your door and violating your nether-cavities.

Sure, a bunch of the freebies are duds, but with some patient searching you can find a gem. Case-in-point, I urge everybody to grab a copy of “Dead Sound” by The Raveonettes from their newest album Lust Lust Lust. I first heard this duo on Letterman and got hooked to their distortion-laden ’50s style rock-n-roll mixed with a modern Indie sound and vocal harmonies. See kiddies, I can sound like I’m hip to the music scene, too.

Robot technology sure has come a long way since those plastic toy’s that shot sparks out of their mouths that we use to play with as kids. The following are three videos from the interwebs displaying what happens as these androids cross the “Rise Of The Machines” threshold.

Our first entry from Japan is a bulky, human-shaped robot that can jump up to its feet from lying flat on its back, all Jackie Chan-style. Unlike Jackie, this robot hasn’t quite mastered the standing-up and kicking ass part, to which we should be thankful.

Are people with Ophidiophobia (the fear of snakes) equally afraid of robot snakes? Now is the best time to find out, since the Biorobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University have developed just that: robot snakes! These wriggly guys can shimmy up walls, swim through water and even scale the inside of a drain pipe. The best part in the video comes when it climbs a dude’s leg!

Finally, as the creepiest of the creepiest, comes the BigDog developed by Boston Dynamics for the US Department of Defense. This four-legged robot is more of a mule then a dog, in both size and function, designed with the idea that it will help soldiers carry heavy loads over rough terrain. And rough terrain it can handle, indeed! Its advanced sensors help it stay upright under any condition, even when forcibly kicked in the side by someone in this demonstration. Skip to the middle of the video to see it slip and slide over a patch of ice, to which I could not stop laughing simply because it looks like a real animal! You almost feel bad for it as it struggles to regain its footing!

Via Gizmodo, Gizmodo, Gizmodo

Add another desktop wallpaper site to the pile: Social Wallpapering is a community desktop background site featuring almost 3,000 (and growing) high quality images for standard, widescreen and dual-monitor setups. Most images are photographic, with a few digital and 3-D illustrations thrown into the mix. Social Wallpapering is a cut above the rest, featuring easy to use filtering and even an RSS feed to subscribe to the latest uploads.

www.socwall.com

On Wednesday, February 20th, sometime around 9:36pm CST, (coincidentally, nearly the same exact time as the total lunar eclipse) the Navy successfully hit the decaying spy satellite USA-193 with a missile launched from a ship somewhere in the Pacific Ocean.

45-minutes ago from the AFP:

The US Defense Department said late Wednesday it had successfully used a ship-board missile to shoot down an out-of-control spy satellite before it plummeted to Earth.

“At approximately 10:26 pm today (0326 GMT Thursday), a US Navy Aegis warship, the USS Lake Erie, fired a single modified tactical standard missile 3, hitting the satellite approximately 247 kilometers (133 nautical miles) over the Pacific Ocean as it travelled in space more than 17,000 miles (44,000 kilometers) per hour,” the Defense Department said in a statement.

The Pentagon reports that it could be 24 hours before they know if their primary objective, to destroy the large fuel tank full of toxic hydrazine propellant, was successful or not, though they do report viewing an explosion on impact.

Debris from the explosion will begin falling and burning up in the earth’s atmosphere immediately, and could continue for days. I don’t know about you, but if you’re in the projected ground path of where the satellite should have been, thats a ripe invitation to head outside and watch for an impromptu meteor debris shower over the next few nights.

On any accord, let’s pray to the Gods of All Things Awesome that somebody is going to share some video of the missile-on-satellite action. Please!

US shoots down rogue spy satellite - AFP

President Bush has approved a plan by the Pentagon to use a Navy missile to shoot down the defunct spy satellite that has been falling from orbit since late January. Originally, the National Security Council considered letting the satellite re-enter the earth’s atmosphere on its own accord, betting on the fact that whatever small chunks weren’t burnt to a crisp would land harmlessly in an ocean or unpopulated area. Turns out, they don’t want to take that chance. “This is all about trying to reduce the danger to human beings,” Deputy National Security Adviser James Jeffrey said in an AP story. I’d bet that its also about the fact that this is a spy satellite after all, and they can’t have that top-secret equipment, no matter how crispy, fall into the wrong hands.

No specific date has been set, yet it is probable that the window of opportunity to blast the satellite before it enters the atmosphere will be within the next two weeks. My hope is that they will let us know when to expect the “PEW! PEW! PEW!” action so we can all grab our lawn chairs and enjoy the fireworks.

The Associated Press: US Plans to Shoot Down Broken Satellite

On Tuesday February 12th, the United States Senate approved a bill that provides immunity to telecommunications companies that helped the government with its controversial warrantless wiretapping program. From the Chicago Tribune:

The Senate legislation would allow government agents in certain circumstances to monitor communications without first obtaining a warrant.

Most controversially, the Senate version contains a provision that grants such large telecommunications companies as AT&T and Verizon retroactive civil immunity for allegedly cooperating with the NSA after Sept. 11. About 40 lawsuits have been filed against the companies alleging violations of wiretapping and privacy laws.

Here is a link to the official voting record. YEAs=31, NAYs=67, Not Voting=2. Voting “Nay” is in support of providing immunity.

For you Campaign 2008 watchers, here’s how the candidate senators voted:
Clinton (D-NY): Not Voting
McCain (R-AZ): Nay
Obama (D-IL): Yea

The bill, comprised of amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, now goes to the House for a potential showdown with the White House. The House version offers no protection for the telecom industry and more restrictions on the government’s power. The president has threatened to veto the bill unless it is close to the Senate version.

[Chicago Tribune - Senate OKs eavesdropping bill with immunity for telecoms]

“What I Killed Today” is a blog belonging to a veterinary technician who documents every animal they euthanize from day to day. Some posts are rather blunt, simply stating the what and why. Yet many are enough to make a grown man cry, such as:

Saturday, December 08, 2007
a 16 year old pomeranian. the family was present in the room. they were wearing very formal clothes, all black, as if they were attending a funeral. i tried not to make anything of it but, during their grieving, they stated that they were actually on their way to a funeral for a friend who had died - a 44 year old woman with a nine year old daughter. they were sobbing, i cried as well and felt no need to hide my tears. the dog wimpered with the injection and tried to fight it a bit. then he laid down and rested.

I found this post, the only one accompanied by a photo, especially haunting:

Monday, August 01, 2005
Barn owl with a broken femur. It held the mask in place with its good foot as I anesthetized it.

whatikilledtoday.blogspot.com [via BoingBoing]

After much tribulation, Petco.com refunded me for my 300+ dead mealworms.

The tribulation came in when trying to contact the Petco.com “Customer Support.” Contact forms found on Petco.com, which idiotically limit your complaint to only 1500 characters, once submitted, apparently get delivered to Pluto, because I received no response. Fed up with the contact forms, I went searching for an actual physical email address. Naturally, none exist anywhere on Petco.com. The email listed on my packing slip, cs@orders.petco.com, turned out to be invalid. Finally, I found through Google references to orders@petco.com, decided to give it a shot, and finally got through to someone.

So, hey Petco, thanks for living up to the Live Food 100% guarantee and giving me a refund, but if you’re not going to check your website form submissions, how about listing some email address on your site? Woof.