The most valuable supply of worthlessness on the web
Anything that catches my fancy as a topic I want to cover. Truly random crap.
(via Freewarewiki)
I have not personally used this, but it comes recommended from the folks at Freewarewiki and Fran Bott, webmistress of GammawGeek. The firewall is free for personal use, from Fileseclab. You can also buy source code and 6 months support for personal use $480 or commercial use for $3800. From what little I’ve read about this, it appears to be a decent alternative to ZoneAlarm.
[tags]PC security, Free firewall[/tags]
Covering, in their own words, the good, the bad, and the ugly, Engadget gives a look back at 30 years of Apple history. Pictures included. It’s a lengthy write-up, and it highlights some of the best and worst things Apple has done, plus just a touch on the beginnings of Apple.
Has it really been 30 years since two buddies named Steve sold off their prized possessions (Woz’s HP calculator and Jobs’ VW van) to raise money and launch a company? Has it really been 30 years since the two Steves, tired of selling blue boxes, built the Apple I and began selling it for $666.66? Yes, it has, and if you don’t believe it, just compare Jobs’ hairlines from ’76 and today. And while the company has become known for many things, from its groundbreaking GUI to the iTunes Music Store, we know Apple has always been a hardware company at heart. So here’s to you, Apple: the good, the bad and, yes, the ugly from the past 30 years. Happy Birthday.
Yes, these pretty LCDs fall under the good category. On the other side, you have things in the bad like the Lisa and the Newton. And I wasn’t even aware of a couple of the items to make the ugly list. Good reading, though.
[tags]Apple, computing history[/tags]
(via MAKEzine blog)
Parts list, instructions, build motivation, blueprints, and loads of pictures to guide you at the builder’s site. Even some guidance on mistakes to avoid if you decide to build your own/
So I you are planning a project like this here are a few tips so you do not make the same mistakes I make:
- Use more powerful motors or motor if you build a single engine craft
- Get already made fans do not try to build you own
- Use light components, this is the most important it has to be a light as possible
- If you do not know what you are doing, get some plans off the internet, try Universal Hovercraft they have got some good stuff
[tags]DIY, hovercraft[/tags]
Here are a few articles from livescience.com that caught my eye over the week-end:
Crews have called 75 times in the last six months for additional manpower to handle morbidly obese patients, said Chris Piper, a western regional spokesman for Greenwood, Colo.-based AMR. He said the largest patients weighed more than 500 pounds.
As I’m tipping the scales at roughly 50 pounds above where I should be, I am painfully aware of how overweight we are in America. But 500+ pounds is just tragic.
More, plus details of why these are nano-tech items in the full article
Nearly one in five Americans think cheating on taxes is morally acceptable or is not a moral issue. Some 10 percent are equally ambivalent about cheating on a spouse. In a survey by the Pew Research Center released today, 88 percent of respondents said it was morally wrong to have an affair. Not reporting all income on taxes was called morally wrong by 79 percent of the people.
As children grow up, the outer mantle, or cortex, of their brains thicken and thin as new neural connections are being made and then pruned to become more efficient. Using brain scans, researchers have found that the cortices of kids with high IQ scores thickened faster and for a longer period of time than children of average intelligence.
You know, that last one explains a lot about me… 🙂
(via Engadget)
As I write this, I am mere moments away from drooling. I have no need for it.
I have no practical reason to get one. But it’s shiny, and pretty, and I could whip it out and show everyone that mine is the biggest. Of course, it is $15,000. Is carrying a 64 Gig flash drive worth that? No, but if I had cash to burn, I’d still get one just for geek coolness.
[tags]USB Flash, 64 Gig[/tags]
(via Snopes)
Ben Stein is great. He is entertaining and intelligent. When he has something to say, it’s usually worth reading. So tonight, I’m posting a link back to an article he wrote on the faux patriotism of the Hollywood “elite” at the Oscars. A brief snippet follows:
I did not see every second of it, but my wife did, and she joins me in noting that there was not one word of tribute, not one breath, to our fighting men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan or to their families or their widows or orphans. There were pitifully dishonest calls for peace — as if the people we are fighting were interested in any peace for us but the peace of the grave. But not one word for the hundreds of thousands who have served and are serving, not one prayer or moment of silence for the dead and maimed.
Basically, the sad truth is that Hollywood does not think of itself as part of America, and so, to Hollywood, the war to save freedom from Islamic terrorists is happening to someone else. It does not concern them except insofar as it offers occasion to mock or criticize George Bush. They live in dreamland and cannot be gracious enough to thank the men and women who pay with their lives for the stars’ ability to live in dreamland. This is shameful.
[tags]Ben Stein, Hollywood[/tags]
Another fine contest at Worth1000. This time, entrants are creating fake magazine covers. So many entries entertain, and so little space to give samples here. Let’s pick a couple of good ones.
[tags]Worth1000[/tags]
(via boingboing)
I have got to get me one of these shirts. Only $8 for your standard sizes, plus $3-$5 for larger or smaller sizes (like XL, XS, and children’s sizes).
[tags]DRM shirts, Anti-DRM[/tags]
(via boingboing)
Pardon the mangling, but some filters won’t even let the term through when that ‘0’ is replaced with an ‘o’ and the ‘r’ and ‘o’ are switched. Makes a dirty word, I guess. Anyway, some folks over at Oprano.com are building a timeline of pr0n. Interesting, but far from comprehensive – quite incomplete, in fact. Still, fun to read.
1st century BC – Kama Sutra was created
1440 – Gutenberg Press Invented
1928 – Dr. Ruth was born.
1953 – Hugh Hefner starts Playboy. . .
1993 – World Wide Web goes live.
1994 – Sex.com was registered by Gary Kremen
1995 – First confirmed blowjob in the White House.
1995 – Sex.com was stolen by Stephen Cohen
[tags]Pr0n[/tags]
(via boingboing)
If you’ve read much of what I post, you might have picked up on the fact that I think Digital Restriction Mangling is a bad thing. I knew I wasn’t the only one, but here is someone who is really dedicated to hating DRM.
Welcome to the “official” I Hate DRM site. Over the last couple of years and especially over the last couple of months, the DRM issue has really received a lot of press. I created this site because, as a consumer, I am fed up. I feel like all of the entertainment that I love is slowly being eroded away by overly greedy companies. This website is meant to be a platform to capture how DRM is changing the way paying customers are receiving content. I want to hear your complaints, your horror stories, your whatever…even your good stories if you have one.
. . .
I created this site because I could no longer sit back and let this stuff happen without saying something. The single consumer has little power and I didn’t know what else to do without going overboard. So I figured I would start up a site and dedicate it to the horror stories around DRM. My hope is that, at some point, someone from one of these companies realizes that DRM only hurts paying customers.
[tags]DRM hate[/tags]
(via Dubious Quality)
David Berlind at ZDNet has come up with a name change suggestion for Digital Restriction Mangling (DRM – real meaning Digital Rights Management). Instead, he proposes calling it CRAP instead. A fitting name, and very accurate.
Hi, I’m David Berlind, Executive Editor at ZDNet. Today, we’re going to talk about a rather uncomfortable subject, CRAP. That’s right, CRAP. Now, CRAP stands for Content, Restriction, Annulment and Protection. It’s my catchy buzz-phrase for a technology that’s really called DRM. Now DRM technically stands for Digital Rights Management, and it’s a rather cancerous technology that technology vendors are actually building into most of the products that we’re buying today.
So for example, if you own an iPod, it’s got CRAP in it. That’s right, it’s got this technology that will restrict what you can do with your content, allows the owners of the content to annul that content-in other words, take it away from you-or protect it from being copied out onto the internet.
[tags]DRM, CRAP[/tags]
(via boingboing)
You know, it appears that you really can buy just about anything on ebay. Check out the auction in German, or, if you can’t quite make that out, see the auction in English. And for the half of my readership that don’t know what an Enigma machine is, read all about it on Wikipedia.
[tags]Enigma, Crypto hardware[/tags]