When Varg the police dog was sent into a Norwegian confectionery factory to track down two intruders, his sense of taste got the better of his sense of duty. The German Shepherd nearly ate himself sick
Microsoft forgot to renew their hotmail.co.uk domain. A Good Samaritan renewed it for them, but was unable to get a response from anyone at Microsoft. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it
Internet search engine Google has unveiled free software that lets people search the web quickly — without launching a web browser
The FTC has shut down D Squared, a company that’s been spamming via the Windows Messenger Pop-Up Service. In some cases, ads would pop-up every 10 minutes, and only advertised a $30 product that disabled similar pop-up ads. The FTC is slamming the extortion gauntlet on them. Interestingly, the FTC only caught onto all this because one of their own commissioners was among those getting spammed
Way back before he became editor of Doing Freedom! Magazine, Carl Bussjaeger wrote a short story for the publication: Postage Due…
Dear Postal Customer:
The United States Postal Service is chartered by the federal government as the sole carrier of routine correspondence within the United States. This position has been uniformly upheld by the Courts, ruling that private carriers may not offer general correspondence service. Accordingly, we at the USPS have recognized our responsibility for all such correspondence carried by various providers utilizing the Internet. We have determined that it is within the scope of our charter to regulate messaging via electronic mail; the Postal Service has primary authority over correspondence, regardless of the medium, whether paper or electronic.
Therefore, we have reviewed your electronic postal usage for the past year and have billed you accordingly for the postage due.
While it was intended as humour, enough people took it seriously that he may have inadvertently triggered one iteration of the email postage urban legend.
Joshua Lane of Animated Bliss has personally verified the info with John Sirabella, President of Media Blasters:
AnimeWorks is ready to rain down Zim’s doom upon the heads of animation fans everywhere with its release of Jhonen Vasquez’s Invader Zim. Anime fans have been screaming for this DVD release since Zim first aired on Nickelodeon in 2001 and now it’s finally here. Coming Spring 2004 will be the first of three double disc sets and a limited edition boxed set which promises to send fans’ blood racing through their veins like giant radioactive rubber pants. The pants command them!
Experts at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth have worked out for the first time the true extent of the damage Guy Fawkes would have caused if his daring deed had not been foiled on 5 November 1605. They found that within a radius of about 40m, everything would have been razed to the ground. Within 110m, buildings would have been at least partially destroyed. And some windows would have been blown out even as far as 900m away
Law enforcement officers currently search for prints by dusting a crime scene with fluorescent powder. This sticks to the oily residue left by the fingertip, showing up the whorls and ridges. But sometimes the prints are not clear enough to finger a suspect. A new dust being developed at the University of Sunderland is made of sticky nanoparticles could help. The nanoparticles are tiny glass spheres between 200 and 600nm in diameter. As well as being speckled with a fluorescent dye, they are coated with hydrophobic molecules, which are repelled by water and attracted to oil. So they fix tightly to the fingerprint
I was wandering through the hallowed halls of the Pagan Prattle today and ran across an old article. It was about some loony fundamentalist in New Mexico indulging in that favourite pastime of all nut cases who wish to keep their flock in the dark — book burning. While Harry Potter was the draw card, Stephen King, Eminem, AC/DC and Snow White were also rubbing shoulders on the pyre.
While the story wasn’t news to me, it had featured locally about the same time, the comments it attracted were fascinating.
It seems the title of the post is a magnet for fuckwits from both sides of the camp. Some of them were rabid enough to have required a stern pointing and laughing at by Feòrag, which is always amusing, but most of the mouth breathers proved too stupid to get the humour.
All you can really hope is that the worst offenders are too busy leaving inane comments on web sites that they don’t get around to passing their wit and intelligence onto another generation.
The Green Man has dug up another nugget of web goodness.
Simon Waldman was flicking through the November 1938 copy of Homes & Gardens magazine when he found an article on Hitler’s mountain retreat. Noting that the British interiors magazine described Hitler in glowing terms, as if he were the Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen of his day, Waldman thought the article worthy of observation and posted it in his blog. Then the shit hit the fan.
Telia, one of Sweden’s largest ISPs, has started blocking computers that send spam. The computers that Telia will block are primarily those that have been infected with ‘trojans’ which are being used, without the customer’s knowledge, to send enormous amounts of spam
Troubled software maker Novell has announced plans to acquire Germany’s SuSE Linux for US$210 million in cash, and entered talks with IBM to extend agreements between IBM and SuSE
OzEmail is giving away little information about an ‘upgrade’ which has prevented customers from accessing their e-mail via the web
Stepan Riha has some great Movable Type plugins available, as well as some handy hacks, two of which I’ve just added. One to avoid duplicate comments and the second the avoid duplicate trackback pings, both hacks work comfortably with Jay Allen’s MT-Blacklist
People with urinary incontinence could one day use a remote control to keep their bodily functions in check. Scientists from the University of Melbourne say they are close to making replacement sphincters operable by remote control — via Die Puny Humans
Three dozen protesters howled and prowled the sidewalk outside the Alaska Board of Game meeting in Spenard on Monday, hoping to raise enough ruckus to stop the board’s planned resumption of aerial wolf kills. Nevertheless, the Game Board today is expected to authorise the first aerial predator control program in Alaska in more than 15 years, using a new state law that allows private pilots to participate
Modern-day medicinal use of leeches is limited to the treatment of blood clotting problems after surgery. Dr Gustav Dobos, from Kliniken Essen-Mitte, and colleagues maintain that leech saliva contains anti-inflammatory substances and other chemicals, which could relieve symptoms of arthritis
The ABC is under pressure to join a national internet peering network to relieve internet service providers of the cost of delivering the public broadcaster’s content to subscribers
Found an addictive little interactive Java toy via HogBlog. Tease the plague of flea, you know you want to…
Interesting, and very wiggly, fake stereoscopic photos using animated GIFs to rapidly switch between left and right images.
Jon Bower has some great portraits of Japanese non-conformists at Meiji Jingu subway.
Hilarious story about an experiment in which a San Francisco Bay Area 5th grade class listens to Radiohead, then draws what they hear. Some of the resulting images look like they could pass for actual Radiohead album covers.
And who can resist the lads of Thailand who get down with their funky selves by sticking unusual objects through their cheeks.
British chocolate manufacturer Cadbury Schweppes said it hopes to chip away at the world’s litter mountain with candy packages that dissolve in water. Biodegradable trays that look like plastic but are made of water-soluble cornstarch polymer, developed by Plantic Technologies Limited, will be used for Cadbury’s Milk Tray chocolates sold in Australia
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