6 minute trailer for Lord of the Rings Return of the King Extended Edition or LOTRROTKEE as I like to call it. (via.) Sort of like the preview, but has more new footage.

Really cool pamphlet on going to the mall. Check it out. (via.)

This was always going to happen - The Red Cross has found evidence of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo bay.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion “tantamount to torture” on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo.

The team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantánamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called “a flagrant violation of medical ethics.”

Link to New York Times article.

The bbc has reported that Half life makers Valve have won a legal case that stops Vivendi distributing their games to Cyber Cafes

full story here.

You think the new Band Aid single is crap, but want to support the charity, what do you do? bandaiddilemma.net has the answer. (via.)

See you later. I’m off to live on Mimas, under the glow of Saturn’s Rings. Link to photo from Cassini-Huygens probe. Full size jpeg. Link to BBC News article on the subject. (via.)

Thats it, both of Bewley’s Dublin cafes close forever this evening. From RTE:

Bewley’s two remaining cafés in Dublin will close their doors for good this evening with the loss of 234 jobs.

The company says the cafés on Grafton Street and Westmoreland Street have cumulative losses of more than €4m and cannot be continued as going concerns.

Bewley’s Café on Westmoreland Street opened its doors in 1896 and the famous Grafton Street café has been in business since 1927. At 6pm this evening they will close for the last time.

Link to full story. Such a shame.

Very nice tool. Goto http://www.music-map.com/ and you are presented with a box asking for the name of an artist. Type one in and you are presented with a map of related/like artists. Very handy for discovering new stuff that you will like. http://www.musicplasma.com/ is another one, and cooler. Screeny of musicplasma:

Ok so I left out a word in the title of this post. Check out the NSFW 6.8 meg America: Fuck Yeah flash movie. (via.)

A very well written plan for solving the Iraq problem and a lot more courtesy of George Saunders in The New Yorker. I’ll summarise:

• All Americans go to Iraq to help
• Palestinians go to West Coast of America
• Israelies go to East Coast of America
• Canada go to Israel/Palestine build nice houses
• Kosovars go to Canada

(via.)

This is great; it’s old but it’s good. Channel 4 asked loads of celebrities their favourite swear words. The way it’s edited together is priceless, keep watching for Zach Braff’s (JD off Scrubs) excellent conclusion to the ad. Link.

Whatever you do, if you are applying for a visa [of anytype] for the States, don’t smile.

“The subject’s expression should be neutral [non-smiling] with both eyes open, and mouth closed,” says a rule cited in the rejection of a visa photograph of a tooth-showing person from Cleveland. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services explained that “no expression” is the standard for such photos.

The Clevelander’s attorney advised Pittsburgh colleagues last week to warn their clients about new, more stringent specifications for immigration photos.

The no-smile regulation is part of a wider policy that went into effect in August. As of Sept. 1, no three-quarter-angle photos, the old standard for immigration documents, and no smiling faces are permitted.

But most people won’t know they’re not supposed to smile unless they visit the U.S. State Department’s Web site and read the lengthy set of instructions for photographs, including colors permitted for the background, proper lighting, directions for eye height, head orientation, and the necessary “natural expression” with no squinty eyes or flashing teeth.

“A smile with closed jaw is allowed but is not preferred,” the instructions add.

Full article on Post-gazette.com. (via.)

Interesting article from C-Net about the major search engine players (Google, Microsoft, Yahoo) gearing up to launch search engines for video.

Google’s effort, until now secret, is arguably the most ambitious of the three. According to sources familiar with the plan, the search giant is courting broadcasters and cable networks with a new technology that would do for television what it has already done for the Internet: sort through and reveal needles of video clips from within the haystack archives of major network TV shows.

The effort comes on top of Google’s plans to create a multimedia search engine for Internet-only video that it will likely introduce next year, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. In recent weeks, Mountain View, Calif.-based Google has demonstrated new technology to a handful of major TV broadcasters in an attempt to forge alliances and develop business models for a TV-searchable database on the Web, those sources say.

Sounds amazing. If anyone can, Google can. Link to article. (via.)

BBC is reporting on a few new details relating to the ‘cell chip’ which will power the PlayStation 3 which is due in 2006.

The three firms claim that the Cell chip will be up to 10 times more powerful than existing processors.

When put inside powerful computer servers, the Cell consortium expects it to be capable of handling 16 trillion floating point operations, or calculations, every second.

The chip will power the PS3, but it will power workstations & servers. Link to article.

New Strongbad; following on from the events of 118, Strongbad gets a new computer; Lappy 486!

Wikinews is now available in a demo version here. Looks good. This sounded like a really good idea (we reported it here when it was announced) so I’ll be keeping an eye on it to see how it develops. Link to Wired News article on the subject which gives a good overview of what it is, how it came into being and where its going.

Check out this CraigsList post, chap almost gets run over by a big white SUV…but then there’s karma at work. Enjoy. (via.)

Great news from the world of medicine today:

South Korean researchers say they’ve used stem cell therapy to enable a paralyzed patient to walk after she was not even able to stand for the last 19 years.

Link to article. This is why this kind of research is so important, it promises incredible breakthroughs like this. (via.)

Bizarre slightly disturbing but very well done flash animation. http://www.fat-pie.com/salad5.htm

Cool 3d tv technology from Japan - the tv is a cylinder and can be viewed from any angle. Link. (via.)