The computer graphics team responsible for creating the special effects in movies such as The Matrix, Mission Impossible and The Last Samurai have decided to put the entire team up for sale on Ebay following moves to sell off the entire team from technology company Discreet.

As I write, the bidding is currently at $560, with two days to go.

More at BBC News.

Update: the winning bid was $910.

Regulars will notice that the “comment on this” option does not appear on this particular Copydesk entry, or the on the entry below.

I have introduced a new system whereby a “comment” option will only be added to entries that I feel are worthy of soliciting comments.

Archived entries will be unaffected by this change

Newsmap:

“..an application that visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator by providing a tool to divide information into quickly recognizable bands which, when presented together, reveal underlying patterns in news reporting across cultures and within news segments in constant change around the globe.”

Update: MSPs have voted against ordering BBC Scotland to hand over untransmitted tapes to the Fraser Inquiry into the Holyrood building.

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Scottish First Minister Jack McConnell’s urges caution over the Conservative Party’s demands for the BBC to hand over crucial interview tapes to the Holyrood Inquiry:

“Let’s be very cautious about crossing a line that instructs, or requires, or compels, broadcasters to hand over information to parliament.

“I do have really serious reservations about Scotland’s new parliament instructing our independent national broadcasting company to hand over information that journalists have obtained.”

Update on Gavin Sheridan’s weblog libel threat from the so-called self-help guru Dr. John Gray:

Gavin has decided to reject Gray’s request to remove the post in which he referred to Gray as “a fraud” and will not be posting a correction on his website.

He has sent a letter to this effect for the attention of Gray’s lawyer monkeys Phillips, Erlewine & Given LLP.

Good on him.

However, I suspect that this will not be the end of the matter.

“The fan letters are perfectly preserved. They are not in the least bit dusty or crushed. The system used to file them is, in fact, extraordinary. Each fan box contains perhaps 50 orange folders. Each folder has the name of a town or city typed on the front – Agincourt, Ontario; Alhambra, California; Cincinnati, Ohio; Daly City, California, and so on – and they are in alphabetical order inside the boxes. And inside each folder are all the fan letters that came from that particular place in any one year. Kubrick has handwritten “F-P” on the positive ones and “F-N” on the negative ones. The crazy ones have been marked “F-C”.”

The Guardian’s Jon Ronson took an enviable trip inside the mind of the late Stanley Kubrick when he received an invite to the Kubrick estate and was let loose among the fabled archive.

Spim is the new Spam:

“Unwanted messages sent to the users of instant messaging programs“.

Barry Kennedy gives us some insight into his trip around Africa.