It occurred to me that I have a great way to prove the mighty powers of Nostradumbass.

[SB digg, reddit]ICANN has announced their intent to allow the registration of new gTLDs in a repeated auction process, starting for the princely sum of $100,000 for a handful of letters.  In IRC in debate the question came up how many vanity 1st level domains (hereafter vanity 1ld) would be purchased.

[digg-reddit-me]For the purposes of competition – and there’s no money involved, I just said gambling to whore diggs and such – a vanity 1LD is defined as a gTLD which represents the name of a person, company or organization.  This means that .porn is not a vanity 1tld, even though it’ll certainly be owned by a pornographer, because it’s named for its content.  By contrast, .microsoft is a vanity 1LD, as is .billclinton (which probably won’t get bought; I’m just being thorough in definition and Bill has a good sense of humor.)  If a 1LD is assigned on basis of trademark, it’s pretty much in like Flynn.

So.  Where’s the psychicitudeness?

I predict that approximately 950 vanity 1LDs will be purchased in the first auction.  (This has the startling price tag of ninety five million dollars minimum.)

Anyone want to play The Price is Right with me?  Place your bet in comments (preferably as a trackback; this is a new domain and I could use some rank).  Whoever gives the nearest answer to the number that turns out to be correct wins.  (No price is right rules; going over isn’t different than going under.)

Incidentally, if you guys are worried I’ll edit my post after the fact, just check Internet Archive for the day before the auction.  I can’t cheat; I’m being watched by www.bigbroth.er .

Bring it.  950.

So, I handed over some webspace to a guy on IRC who was converting books from Project Gutenberg for use with the bookreader in MoonShell for the Nintendo DS. He was trying to share a few books I recognized and they’re all legal, and his webspace was fail, so I figured I’d be goodbear and share.

Lo and behold, I take a look at the space I gave him – http://moonbooks.stonecypher.net/ – a few weeks later. He’s already got 150+ books up. Very rarely am I as happy with someone to whom I give resources as I am this time. This is a great example of shared resources being put to very good use. In particular, Brandon asked me what authors I liked, and when I name-dropped Ambrose Bierce, he went and converted what appears to be everything Bierce ever wrote, including a personal favorite called “Write it Right.”

Bravo. Makes me wonder who else I should be helping out, and I gave out another account today. We’ll see if it’s also put to good use.

It’s been a good year for holy-crap technologies.  This one – an MIT tool called ASSIST - boggles my mind, and it’s given me some seriously woot ideas.  I’m filing it under Nintendo DS because, even though it’s not a game, that’s just the ideal platform for a better-developed such tool.

[youtube]NZNTgglPbUA[/youtube]

The YouTube video is short, but there’s a longer one at the main page. 

Lots of blogs aggregate my blog, and most of them – surprisingly, even the homebrew scene aggregators – haven’t set this yet. So, let me just spread the love: the Wii will be released November 19, 2006 at a price of $250. Many details were given. Some games will use the DS as a controller, just as the GameCube used the GBA as a controller (examples from the past include Donkey Kong Country 3, and Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, which actually required a GBA for a controller.)  Nostalgic NES games will be $5, SNES for $10, and N64 for $15.

There’ve been a lot of good media clips lately.  This one, well, it’s pretty good.  Some of the lead-in visual gags are a bit tired, but they’ve also got several really good, really inobvious visual gags, so give them the benefit of the doubt.

[youtube]ewrif4WhHfY&NR[/youtube]

Some movies. There are three, so I’m hiding them behind the more button. Don’t mind the name, or the black-and-whiteness; you want to see these.
Read the rest…

For those who haven’t noticed, the dev channels from efnet for Nintendo hardware have moved to irc.blitzed.net . Affected are #dsdev, #gbadev, and #wiidev.

I’m looking for beta participants for my PC client!  See http://blog.sc.tri-bit.com/archives/151.

I’ve got a potential buyer for my PC and Nintendo DS Sudoku clients, so I’ve been working on them fairly exclusively.  I’m kind of hoping to have news about them soon, because in particular the PC client has a bunch of fairly odd new features which I am quite proud of.  But, first I have to get them sold.

The DS WiFi Lib spurred by the DS WiFi Bounty is starting to bear fruit! Bronto has begun work on a functional, operating email client which uses pop3 and smtp in standard fashion. The results are surprisingly appealing.

And it was homebrew that pulled it off (see also,) based on the stack I made happen for the DS. PS: I love taking credit for other people’s work and money based on nothing more than being a highly successful loudmouth. Word to Big Bird. PPS: PSP: your time is now. Make your peace.