March 2008
So You Hacked Our Site!? | The Daily WTF →
Not too long ago, I added my company, Inedo, to the federal government’s Central Contractor Registration system. I don’t know, I just didn’t want to miss out on all the fun every one seems to havewith government work. Whenever one signs up for virtually any government thing, a deluge of companies somehow manage to find to out. The CCR is certainly no exception…
Techdirt: Yet Another Author Discovers Giving Away... →
We’ve been posting a ton of examples lately of authors giving away ebooks for free and seeing that it noticeably increases sales of their actual books. By this point, I’d think that such stories are old hat and don’t need to be repeated.
A depressing survey of what high-schoolers don't... →
When did Columbus set sail for the New World? Who wrote The Canterbury Tales? In the Bible, what is Job known for? Who was Adolf Hitler?These aren’t exactly brainteasers, but when the new education-advocacy group Common Core posed these and 30 similar questions about history and literature to 1,200 17-year-old high-school students [questions listed in the article], it discovered that...
February 2008
Malware removes rival rootkits | The Register →
Miscreants have created a strain of malware capable of removing rootkits from compromised PCs, only to install almost undetectable backdoor code of its own. The Pandex Trojan stops previously installed rootkits from working by removing their hooks into system calls. Pandex then installs its own rootkit component, detected by Trend Micro as Pushu-AC. document.write('\x3Cscript...
WikiAnswers - What does it mean to be Rickrolled? →
I followed this link and got Rickrolled! To be Rickrolled is when browsing internet forums, one comes across a link in a thread expecting to find one thing, but ends up at a website which has nothing to do with the topic being discussed in the thread. The name Rick refers to 80s pop singer Rick Astley. This refers to the ebaumsworld epidemic where people linked a “really awesome...
Techdirt: Can Someone Explain Why Google's Free... →
Google got a bunch of press earlier this week for giving out “free voicemail accounts” to the homeless. I tried to ignore the story, but it keeps getting written about, and it seemed like there were a few points worth making. First of all, this concept isn’t new. Almost five years ago, we wrote about Cisco doing the same thing. There’s a whole organization, called...
WatchWhat Happens when a Bull Terrier Meets a Horse ? (via Metacafe) [noticeably lacking in excitement…]
The Superficial | Prince Harry gets screwed by... →
Matt Drudge broke the news that Prince Harry was currently serving in Afghanistan. Prince Harry was really stoked to be fighting terrorists and thought it would honor his mom’s memory. Well, now he’s getting brought home because of the media coverage. I’m sure Prince Harry can’t wait to thank Matt Drudge with a grenade to the nuts. The AP reports: He was originally due to...
Cocaine galore! £7m of Colombia's finest washes up... →
· Suitcase sized packages worth £1m each · Theory that they have floated from Caribbean
“Learning to dislike children at an early age saves a lot of expense and...”
– The Quotations Page
The photography of Irving Penn. - By Philip Gefter... →
Irving Penn photographed so many prominent cultural figures of the 20th century that, over the years, he came to be regarded as an equal among them. But his stature grew not just because of his venerated subjects—he advanced the genre of portraiture. Jean Cocteau
Techdirt: Patents, Copyrights And Trademarks, Oh... →
[An excellent introduction to the nuances and differences between these three basics of intellectual property rights…]
Neatorama | Trivia: ZIP Code 12345 →
The ZIP code 12345 belongs to the world headquarters of General Electric in Schenectady, New York. Every year, GE gets thousands of mails from children who believed that it’s only logical that Santa Claus has the ZIP code 12345.
RIAA Keeps Settlement Money, Artists May Sue |... →
Despite collecting an estimated several hundred million dollars in P2P related settlements from the likes of Napster, KaZaA and Bolt, prominent artists’ managers are complaining that so far, they haven’t received any compensation from the labels. According to a lawyer, some are considering legal action.
