Bell Labs is now part of Lucent Technologies, and can be found at www.bell-labs.com, having apparently missed its chance to claim the belllabs.com domain, which now belongs to Bell Laboratories, the world leader in rodent control technology. So much for its reputation for anticipating future technologies
A rare feathered visitor to Britain survived a grueling 15-hour journey from Norway, only to be eaten by a birdwatcher’s cat on arrival
Download a template, fill in the boxes in felt pen, scan it and submit it and Fontifier will automatically convert it into a truetype font based on your handwriting
Don’t know who or what Alpen is, but I love that they use studded, leather clad, masked, whip-wielding, bondage loving teddy bears as an advertising campaign.
I wonder if there are plans to merchandise the bears with the product. The NRMA had costumed teddy bears available, but they run more along the lines of aviatrix — Royal Flying Doctor fundraiser — than dominatrix — via Forget to Remember
A very cool cartoon from Queen of Wands, highlighting the problem women have when dealing with moronic tech store personnel, who are condescending little arseholes who wouldn’t know one end of a computer from another and are just intent of trying to scam what they incorrectly perceive as an easy mark.
Also worth a look at the pair of amusing cartoons that precede and follow this gem.
Now all I need is an RSS feed of this site and I’ll be a happy camper.
The so-called Patriot Act II was discovered last year and the public outcry that ensued was enough to get the bill tossed out the window. One of the goals of that act, however, has made it into law under the radar of the community at large. The retarded monkey boy has Intelligence Authorisation Act for Fiscal Year 2004 (the relevant section is 374) into law, which among other things, grants the FBI the power to obtain financial information without a court order from a judge. It also expands the definition of financial information
to include business such as car dealerships, jewellery stores and insurance companies. The law prevents the business that hands over the information to the FBI from telling their customer about the request
Bucking recent trends in portable devices that include web access and camera-enabled mobile phones, a study finds that more people are opting for simplicity
A federal judge in Philadelphia is hearing a challenge to a controversial state law that has led to more than 1 million innocuous web sites being accidentally blocked
SecurityFocus has published a hack that can be used to unlock Microsoft Word documents that have been password protected. The secure
file can easily be edited and the original password re-inserted, removing any trace of the modification. Dell uses password protected Word files to send quotes, which could make for a messy legal battle. This feature, known as Password to Modify
, is not the password protection on the document itself, just the protection that restricts unauthorized editing of the file. This hack allows someone to download such a file, edit it, and restore the password… effectively allowing changes to the file to go potentially unnoticed
The UK tabloid The Daily Star stole a story from RetroCrush entitled The Worst Sex Scenes Ever: A Look At The Most Unsexy Sex Scenes, then passed it off as their own. It was picked up by at least 30 other media outlets and The Daily Star was credited with the story. When pressed on the issue, the News Editor was quoted as saying: Well, if it’s on the internet it’s up for grabs. You can’t copyright anything on the Internet.
Webmaster and writer of the article Robert Berry is calling for legal assistance
A tiny flexible fibre invented by Australian scientists from the University of Sydney‘s Optical Fibre Technology Centre could change the way the human body is seen, and lead to the development of personal computers that run on light
James Glassman and TCS have given birth to something quite new in Washington: journo-lobbying. It’s an innovation driven primarily by the influence industry. Lobbying firms that once specialized in gaining person-to-person access to key decision-makers have branched out. The new game is to dominate the entire intellectual environment in which officials make policy decisions, which means funding everything from think tanks to issue ads to phony grassroots pressure groups
Test-Aankoop, a European consumer watchdog body, is suing the world’s largest music companies for selling copy protected compact discs that won’t play in car stereos and on computers — via Die Puny Humans
Had a comment spammer hit one of the non-MovableType contact forms this morning and realised that there was no IP address listed for the weasel — never needed it before, so it wasn’t part of the forms. Had a chat to sbszine who, never one to believe in reinventing the wheel, suggested glomming the code from MT. We now have IP address reporting functionality for all the forms on the site
Forget the industry spin — the numbers prove that, for Australia, CD-Rs and MP3s are not hurting record sales in the slightest — based on a recent Australian Record Industry Association survey. It would be interesting to see what the numbers for the US or UK say
Microsoft was sued again this week. Game developer Mythic Entertainment has accused the Beast of Redmond of infringing its trademark and engaging in unfair competition. It claims that Microsoft’s up-coming online multiplayer role-playing game Mythica infringes on its name and trademark
The Cobalt community was handed a lifeline when Sun Microsystems released the Cobalt code under an open-source licence
Mark Allen was selling dangerously strong
magnets for $5 a throw, unfortunately he’s sold out, but you can still get them from All Ellectronics.
These are neodymium rare earth magnets with a magnetic field strength in the 45MGOe range. 45MGOe! I’m not kidding around here! Should two become co-joined by mishap, they are very very difficult to pull asunder. These magnets will fly eagerly through the air to reach each other, possibly crushing your fingers in the process. Let us be honest with each other — I’m simply not responsible enough to have these around.
As much as I’d love one of these babies, I’m not responsible enough to be allowed anywhere near them either.
Everyone’s seen the media fall over themselves with a stream of unsubstantiated video game equals violence drivel, but Penny Arcade decided to do something to counter the claims that all gamers are violent miscreants with no sense social responsibility. Penny Arcade delivered over US$200,000 worth of donated toys and games, plus a cheque for US$27,000, to the Seattle Children’s Hospital. The media response was barely a blip and the single television account got every detail wrong — via Wil Wheaton Dot Net
A New Mexico couple returned home from a week-long vacation to find the legs of a dead man dangling from their ceiling. Carl Smith, 81, the former husband of the woman who lived in the home, was stuck in an air conditioner duct, cause of death has yet to be determined
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