• Today and tomorrow: Catch the tail end of Mashup Camp in Mountain View, even though you missed lunch. Remember: "Camp" is what the kids are calling conferences. [Mashup Camp]

Tired of camps about actual from-scratch products, Valley developers, pundits, and businessfolk mixed it up at Mashup Camp, the two-day "unconference" about remixed tech. Laughing Squid tentaclemaster Scott Beale kindly let me abuse his pics from Monday.

Scientists find the secret cause of flame wars. Surprise! It's not Kirk vs. Picard. [Slashdot]
Community loans, free from the influence of rich banks. Funded by rich venture funds. [alarm:clock]
Did Barry Diller buy Ask.com just to kill Jeeves? Coolest. Acquisition reason. Ever. [Search Engine Journal]
Mashup Camp gets an overflow camp — Mucho Camp, hosted at Social Text — and becomes a wee bit less indie. [Mashup Camp]
A suggested slogan to combat "Googling": "Yahoo that bitch!" [Yahoo 360]

When Mashup Camp calls itself "the unconference for the uncomputer," is that like 7-up being "the uncola"? The upcoming camp sounded pretty indie at first. But after sponsorships from Adobe, AOL, eBay, Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, and Sun Microsystems, it was more like Mountain Dew Code Red: another industry-approved "camp"-branded conference. No prob, that's still fun, and admission is free.