Right now, News Corp is asking Time Warner Cable to pay $1 per month for each subscriber. If not, they'll pull the plug on Fox content as soon as the current retransmission agreement expires on Dec. 31st. There's too much for both sides to lose for them not to come to some sort of agreement before then, but in the meantime, a plague on both their houses for playing chicken with your House reruns.

The rest of the ad goes on to say:

At midnight New Year's Eve, FOX has threatened to pull the plug on Time Warner Cable customers—withholding FOX programming unless we give in to their demand for massive price increases.

We think FOX is going too far—especially in today's economy—and we're glad you agree. Over 600,000 unique visitors have gone to our website RollOverOrGetTough.com. And the overwhelming response has been to 'Get Tough.' With your support, we're standing up to FOX to hold down the cost of cable TV.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience and remind you to visit RollOverOrGetTough.com for the latest information on which channels may no longer be available as of January 1, 2010. There you'll find a helpful guide to alternative sources for FOX programming—so you can continue to watch many of your favorite shows.

And please note that not all programming is at risk in all areas: visit RollOverOrGetTough.com and enter your zip code to see a list of channels at risk in your area. Time Warner Cable is working hard to reach an agreement. WE've offered FOX a reasonable price increase that protects our customers' pocketbooks. But we are not giving in to FOX's excessive demands.

Don't let FOX hold your TV hostage.

Visit our website today. Together, we can fight the FOX price increase.

[NY Times]

To be fair, old WinZip was never really shareware. Given that it never stopped working, it was more akin to really naggy donationware, with a stern warning instead of the customary sad, human plea. It goes without saying that new trial has a hard time limit, but by now it's been rendered more or less irrelevant by better, free-er alternatives, including Windows' built-in archiving software. WinZip plumbed the depths of human stinginess, and never found the bottom. Thanks for trying!

Anyway, five years is pretty impressive, but I'm willing to bet you guys can do better: who among you, cheapskate Gizmodians, has hobo-hitched the WinZip train the furthest? [Reddit]

UPDATE: Reader Ed G. wins by half a year. Keep sending! If there's a day one, Windows 98-having WinZip trial downloader out there, I want to find him.

The Coast Guard evacuated the crewman from a unnamed US Navy Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine. The submarine was cruising through an undisclosed location off the the coast of Washington, on September 29, 2009. They called the Coast Guard at 5:50PM, and the Jayhawk helicopter intercepted the submarine at 7:12PM, picking up the crewman, and moving him to the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, Oregon.

Each image links back to the original post containing the answer.

Hint: Once you find out what it is everything makes sense. Don't over think it. [Click to see the answer]


Doc Brown's flux capacitor? A blinged-out religious relic from the future? A Tron 2.0 prop? [Click to see the answer]


Jellyfish attacking an undersea monster? That would be cool, but the reality is much simpler, and more beautiful. [Click to see the answer]


Ready for some mystery? The answer is... [Click to see the answer]


The engine room of the next Enterprise? A glimpse at the heart of some new particle accelerator? The lens of a new US military laser? [Click to see the answer]


While it may look a bit like Galactica's CIC it's probably older than you are. [Click to see the answer]


It looks like a gigantic bird hunting device but it will actually let you become one with nature rather than destroy it. [Click to see the answer]


Some kind of circuit board close up? No. A nuclear power plant's control panel full of gauges and labels? No, that's not it either. [Click to see the answer]


No, that's not the moon... [Click to see the answer]


A shot from the Iron Man sequel? A costume from a 22nd-century staging of Swan Lake ? My new back tat? [Click to see the answer]


They aren't shiny radio dishes or deadly antimatter arrays in Area 51. [Click to see the answer]


A huge version of Darth Vader's light saber? Close, but not quite close enough. [Click to see the answer]


Is this a cosmic dover over the skies of California? Maybe the aliens are telling us to chill out. Or perhaps the Holy Ghost went to grab some In-n-Out. [Click to see the answer]


Is this the entrence to Jason Chen's secret lair where the Gizmodo magic happens? Maybe a place to lock up anyone with the swine flu? What on Earth requires a HAL 9000 to keep guard? [Click to see the answer]


At first glance I thought this was a NASA image of some sort, maybe a solar flare. I even wondered if I could get a high-res version in turn into a poster. Then I found out what it actually is. [Click to see the answer]


Tattoo under a powerful microscope? One near some feminine naughty bits? No. [Click to see the answer]


This is a tricky one. What's the QR Code on that flag our little Android friend is waving? [Click to see the answer]

If you want to rap along to what these boys are calling "a Mac fanboy's anthem about Apple culture and products," here are the words:

(Shortayyy) Ahh shit!
Get your laptops ready, it's about to go down
Everybody on YouTube, watch the f***in screen
But stay on this muthaf***in page
We runnin this - let's go

I'm on a Mac, I'm on a Mac
Everybody look at me
Cause I'm clickin on a Mac
I'm on a Mac, I'm on a Mac
Take a good hard look at the muthaf***in Mac!

I'm on a Mac, muthaf***a, take a look at me,
Straight iPhone'in hard, got the 3G
Bumpin iTunes, CoverFlow to be exact
You can't stop me muthaf***a, cause I'm on a Mac!
Eat a virus bro
I'm on a Mac Pro
We rockin 8 cores hard
Watch the screen go
I got my SuperDrive
And my mighty mice-es
I'm pluggin girls
You at work, pluggin in devices
I'm on a tandem fixie
And a 64-bit
Friends are jealous
Cause Parallels can run their sh*t
But this ain't P.C.,
this is real as it gets
I'm on a Mac, mutherf***er
don't you ever forget!
I'm on a Mac and,
it's runnin fast and,
I bought a neopreen green scuba sleve sham
I'm the king of the Jobs, on a Mac for real
If you're on a PC, then you're not C.E.O.

Get the f*** up, this Mac is real!
F*** a Zune, I'm on a Mac, motherf***a!
F*** right click, multi-touch, motherf***a!
I'm on iChat with my boys, motherf***a!
These turtlenecks ain't cheap, motherf***a!
Hey, y'all, now I'm an Apple whiz
I never need to learn what a driver is
Gonna say goodbye to all viruses
Like a Nano in pink, anything is possible!
Yeah, never thought I'd be on a Mac
It's like a streamlined good-for-you crack
Wozniiiaaaaak, look at me ooohhhh

I'm on a Mac, I'm on a Mac
Take a good hard look at the muthaf***in Mac!

Yeah, this is almost amusing enough to make me want to order a muthaf****in Mac despite it not being the best time to shop for those. [Thanks, Peter!]

The answer is E.) A photographer, trying repeatedly to make us sick to our stomachs.

The Moscow Bridge, which is actually in Kiev, Ukraine, sits on pylons that are only about 500 feet high, which is lower than the Golden Gate Bridge's, and less than half the height of France's Millau Viaduct, the world's tallest suspension bridge. The Moscow Bridge has, however, earned the coveted title of Tallest Bridge With Fresh Photos On the Internet Today, so there's that. [Vitaliy via English Russia]

According to the YouTube credits, the script for this tale was a group effort by Comics & Cartoons, a 4chan community, but nevermind the script, I don't think the story would've been the same without the fantastic imitation of Raw Shark. [Thanks, Matt!]

While I know that this video was filmed under controlled conditions, a room set up by researchers with safety measures to keep the fire from spreading, I still can't watch it without glancing over at my own Christmas tree and shivering. [Wired]

The images are from the Landsat 7 satellite, which used a combination 8 spectral bands to produce the final products seen here. We picked four of our favorites, but any one of them would make a stunning fine art print for one's home. Treat yourself, minimize that Excel window and waste a few minutes subsidized by our planet. [webdesigner depot via presurfer via boingboing]

Is this really the most effective way to do this? [via Ace of Spades HQ]

You can click the image for a bigger version.

This is actually making me suspect that I've been lurking in all the wrong corners of the web, because I have no idea when House became a meme. [Flickr via Ace of Spades HQ via Neatorama]

Update: As some of you have pointed out, this image is a collection of memes loved by the fantastic folks of reddit and created by the talented licenseplate as part of the reddit secret Santa gift exchange. Licenseplate actually emailed me to say that there is a "final version" of the poster coming soon (and it sounds like it'll include even more of the craziness adored by redditors as well as the rest of us.) So, we'll keep an eye out.

Oh, and it turns out that the poster next to Pedobear is Karmanaut, reddit's resident comment karma hog. I think I haven't been lurking over there enough if I missed that reference.

The US Cyber Challenge in which Adair participated is a huge competition with the goal of hacking your opponents' computers while defending your own from attacks. It's not just a silly game for the sake of showing off either: The competition is designed to find talented individuals and recruit them to defend our country, companies, and computers from evil-doers' cyberattacks.

Neat competition, but I still wonder if Adair's frustration was because he didn't win or because of a lame joke. [CNN]

Update: Adair has emailed me to set the record straight. He explains that this isn't frustration or annoyance we're seeing. It's the "21st century's version of Rodin's The Thinker."

Reprinted with permission from The Oatmeal

The folks at io9 think that the "zombie cyborg" has gone too far with this bizarre photo shoot, and I think I would agree if I actually knew what the message she's trying to convey is. Anyone got a clue?

[Daily Mail via io9]

Ok, maybe the part about this commercial being catchy isn't such a great thing. Excuse me while I crawl back under a rock where I'm safe from things like this seasonal torture. [Thanks, OMG! Ponies!]