Ever find yourself wondering how you should respond to the trials and tribulations of everday life? The answer to most all of these problems can be answered by asking your self "What Would Jimmy Buffett Do?"
Now you can share your convictions with the world! We are the premiere provider of WWJBD? apparel and merchandise. Printed by our fine friends at CafePress, you'll find hats, shirts and so much more!
A recent deep-sea scientific expedition of Australian and New Zealand scientists turned up some rather exciting new species. The Norfanz Voyage ran from early May until June of this year and turned up such creatures as coffin fish, black corals and serpent stars, Pacific Spookfish and Giant Rattails. One of the more interesting specimens is the Jewel Squid (Histioteuthis sp. above). This odd creature has a number of notable traits, not the least of which is their outlook on life. While spending most of their lives hanging about on a 45-degree angle; their larger eye keeping a look out for predators up from them and their downside covered with small lights that it uses to simulate the weak surface light to render it invisible to prey below it. A creature that would make Q from the Bond films quite proud.
You find the most amazing things while Googling for answers to life's funny little questions. I nearly fell out of my chair when I say this one...
I was doing a search to find some drivers for a WiFi card and many of the links that were returned were for instructions from different companies and universities on how to properly configure your PCMCIA card to work with the wireless networks at these facilities. Pretty tame stuff you might say but NO!
Check out this screen shot of the PDF file from an un-named University in Texas! Doesn't telling the world what the WEP key is for your network defeat the purpose of having the a WEP key installed in the first place? Part of their Strategic Intent is to "The university emphasizes education and research in engineering, science, technology and management while maintaining programs of focused excellence in other academic areas." And these clowns are supposed to be teaching the best and the brightest of tomorrow's generation of leaders? Lord help us all!
Tom's Hardware Guide (THG) has a great article online now for those currently trying to make the hard choices about setting up a home network. You owe it to yourself to check this out even if you only want to confirm choices you've already made!
The Register reports that
the copyright crusader (Professor Lawrence Lessing), has resorted to SPAM on his
birthday to get people to sign the Eldred petition;
designed to allow us mere mortals to Reclaim the Public Domain. While he didn't
use a conventional spam list, The Register reports that many people in the Prof.'s address
book received this mailing up to 13 times!
Lessing is known for this tireless efforts against big business (primarily
Disney) for their continued efforts to prevent certain "properties" of theirs
from entering into the public domain. These entertainment congolomerates have
been succeeded in getting the US Congress to extend the term of all copyrights
by an additional 20 years (via the Sony Bono Copryright Term Extension Act).
You can check out more about the Eldred movement and the Public Domain
Enhancement Act at http://eldred.cc/.
The new FTC "Do-Not-Call" List appears to be opening for registrations earlier than thought. The FTC Press Release says online registration will be available "on or around July 1." and that "Companies will face an $11,000 fine for each telemarketing call that violates the FTC's new consumer-protection provisions." This is great news for all of us out there having to slog through numerous calls from phone "spammers" at all hours of the day and night. We'll post the URL to the registration site as soon as it is available. [UPDATED 6/9/03] Residents of the state of California can now pre-register for this national opt-out list. You'll find the information here.
Following on the heels of such successful sites as Am I Hot or Not? and AMI Bios or Not? is the ultimate in peer rating systems: Am I This or Not? This site allows you to create your own ??? or Not? site and ranks your new site against others based on the number of images in your database. Some of my favorites are:
Of course most of the fun of these are in the name and not the images themselves. They tend to have broken links or just lame pictures in them but certainly worth 5 minutes of your time!
A user on SlashDot reports that :"According to a recent update on the Dshield.org mailing list, apparently the Fizzer Task Force has gained control of the Geocities webpage from which Fizzer updates itself. From an IRC-Security mailing list: 'We have also postted a Fizzer cleaner to the actual URL that the bot downloads its updates from, as a self extracting and running executable.' The Fizzer-uninstaller posted there creates the file '%WinDir%\uninstall.pky', which then causes Fizzer to remove all of its registry keys. Looks like the Fizzer worm will soon come to an end." Great work to those involved. Now if only all the new viruses could be so easily eradicated!
A japanese geek seems to have struck a blow for all geeks unable to land a good woman... build one!
This lone "inventor" has molded his ideal woman out styrofoam with a PVC pipe endoskeleton. And best yet, she boads a motherboard where her "sweet spot" would be and a HD instead of a heart!
I'm not too sure about the red gloves (an obvious attempt to hide a failed attempt at making adequate hands) and the military garb, but the gun in the right hand and the Lara Croft-esque thigh holsters are a nice touch.
I suppose if nothing else, this guy has shown his abilities as a foam sculptor. The detail in the face and hair are remarkable.
Tired of telemarketers calling up all the time? Perhaps if we all followed this guy's lead, we could get through a dinner in peace.
The gentleman who wrote this great handbook on suing telemarketers (admittedly at only $500 a pop) is an attorney as well so there is a little trust in the validity of this information.
MisterHouse is an opensource home automation program that runs on PERL to control devices around your house AND announce what it is doing for you if you wish.
If you are a big X10 geek, you really might dig this one!
Scientists who cracked the gentic code of the SARS virus have credited the Internet with making this discovery possible.
"Scientists from the Michael Smith Genome Sciences Centre of the B.C. Cancer Agency say their achievement relied on rapid communication with scientists around the world. The key to that collaboration was ordinary e-mail, said Steven Jones of the Vancouver-based research agency in a teleconference Thursday sponsored by Science magazine."
Go to Google and type your home telephone number into Google's search bar & click the search button . . . . MapQuest returns with a physical location of your phone number!
People could use this feature to locate your home address, and receive explicit directions on how to get there from anywhere in the country.
I've already removed our number from this database. You will probably want to as well! You can remove your name off this database by doing the following:
Type in your full phone number -- using dashes -- like this: 555-123-4567.
If your number appears in the mapping database, an icon resembling a telephone will appear to left of the entry on the results page.
Click on this icon and it will take you to a page containing a description of the service, and a link to request your number be removed!
Recheck your phone # to be sure it has been removed.
Also, if you have children, please check their phone
Last year, March 2002 to be precise, a U.S. District Court in Missouri ruled that it was ok for fax spammers to jam your fax machine with unsolicited commercial faxes (UCF). The basis of the claim was that the constitutional right of the faxers' free speech outweighed your right to not spend money receiving these pieces of garbage.
However, an Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has just overturned this ruling ensuring that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) remains intact. This is great news on the e-mail spamming from because current spammers have always argued that their right of free speech has outweighed end recipients cost of supporting this flood of crap.
Now that the courts have supported this, with any luck our legislators will get up off their butts and push legislation through that punishes senders of UCE the same way it does for UCF!
Nothing like whiling away your work day watching the gentle swaying of underwater plantlife or the slow drifting movements of tropical fish across your cubicle. No more fish screen savers I'd bet!
Of course, if you wanted to increase the productivity of the environment, perhaps you left lose a pihrana or two to chase the other fish. Get's the right message across for those workplaces that thrive on a dog-eat-dog level of competitiveness.
The Register, a tech news website based in the U.K., reports on a U.S. con artist that actually fell for one of the 419 scams to the tune of $750,000! This is truly a case of the karmic phrase "What comes around, goes around" coming true.
Relying on a facsimilie of the check he was to be sent, Carl Fratzke proceeded to scam 1/4 of a million dollars from his friends and ponied up the remaining $500,000 out of his own ill-gotten gains.
AllAfrica.com reports that a Namibian couple died after being run over by two vehicles in late February. It appears that the couple was... well coupling in the middle of the road when they were first struck by an all terrain vehicle and then again shortly by a bakkie at 0030 hours.
A local constable is reported as being unaware of similar instances of coitus terminus by way of vehicles. The driver of the bakkie stated that this was "a typical example of people indulging in alcohol. No persons in their sober minds will lie having sex in the middle of the road."
Looking to "dig up the dirt" on your favorite dead celebrity? Interested in finding the grave of a long lost relative that you can't get there to see?
Well, then you just have to check out the Find A Grave website. What was originally designed as a celebrity grave site database now lists the locations of 3.7 million grave sites and headstones!
The site allows you to not only leave virtual flowers or tributes at the grave site, but you can also sponsor a grave if you wish. This is really helpful if you want to visit Grandma's grave without having those distracting ads bother that "special time" with your Nana.
During this time of national rememberance, our hearts and prayers are with those who lost a loved one to the tragedy of 9/11/01. We also send to our troops around the world our love and appreciation for ensuring our future, our freedom and our safety.
A recent deep-sea scientific expedition of Australian and New Zealand scientists turned up some rather exciting new species. The Norfanz Voyage ran from early May until June of this year and turned up such creatures as coffin fish, black corals and serpent stars, Pacific Spookfish and Giant Rattails.
I was doing a search to find some drivers for a WiFi card and many of the links that were returned were for instructions from different companies and universities on how to properly configure your PCMCIA card to work with the wireless networks at these facilities. Pretty tame stuff you might say but NO!
