"Come on, we'll go out for drinks and have a great time. I'll find a woman for you at the bar"
I go, nothing happens, I drink, nothing happens, I stay for hours, nothing happens, I go home feeling the effects of a little alcohol, tired, depressed, alone.
What a great way to spend an evening.
Sunday, July 30, 2006
Friday, July 28, 2006
A followup to the "The dealership stole my car" story
If you didn't read it on digg earlier, Bill Heard Chevrolet in Nashville sold a guy a truck and then stole it that night and told him that he could have it back if he paid them more money. First it was $10,000, then it was $11,000. The plot thickens. . .
Bill Heard Chevrolet in Sanford, FL (North of Orlando) has done some nasty shit too. When someone would take a car out for a test drive, they would take the keys of the car they were trading in so the dealership could figure out its value. If the customer decided they didn't want the new car, the dealership would refuse to give them the keys to their old car back. One woman (stupidly) panicked and bought the new car, but another one called the cops and reported her car had been stolen. The cops showed up forced them to give them her keys back.
GM was so embarrassed that they threatened to make the dealership pay for the thousands of cars on their lot (if you didn't know, dealerships make payments on their new cars, they don't buy them outright) which would have cost them millions of dollars as well as losing the right to be an authorized GM dealer. Too bad it never happened.
read more | digg story
Bill Heard Chevrolet in Sanford, FL (North of Orlando) has done some nasty shit too. When someone would take a car out for a test drive, they would take the keys of the car they were trading in so the dealership could figure out its value. If the customer decided they didn't want the new car, the dealership would refuse to give them the keys to their old car back. One woman (stupidly) panicked and bought the new car, but another one called the cops and reported her car had been stolen. The cops showed up forced them to give them her keys back.
GM was so embarrassed that they threatened to make the dealership pay for the thousands of cars on their lot (if you didn't know, dealerships make payments on their new cars, they don't buy them outright) which would have cost them millions of dollars as well as losing the right to be an authorized GM dealer. Too bad it never happened.
read more | digg story
Monday, July 24, 2006
Specter prepping bill to sue Bush
(Republican) Senator Arlen Specter is going to try to stop Bush's "Signing Statements," which is are yet another violation of the "checks and balances" system that the U.S. Government is supposed to have.
If you aren't familiar with what a signing statement is, when Bush signs a bill into law, he puts a note like "I don't have to comply with this law." So, Bush doesn't agree with a law, he signs it with a signing statement thereby altering the actual letter of the law and preventing any sort of veto override by Congress.
You know, It's kind of like crossing your fingers when you tell a lie.
For those of you that say "other presidents have done this before". Sure, but to compare the last successful U.S. President with Bush, Clinton only used it around 80 times while Bush is already over 110.
I've also read that there are more than 800 specific items that he has put into signing statements while all other Presidents combined have only used about 600. I'll try to find a link. . .
[UPDATE]
Here's more info:
The American Bar Association has denounced the signing statements.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15106725.htm
It also compares the volume of statements as I mentioned before
read more | digg story
If you aren't familiar with what a signing statement is, when Bush signs a bill into law, he puts a note like "I don't have to comply with this law." So, Bush doesn't agree with a law, he signs it with a signing statement thereby altering the actual letter of the law and preventing any sort of veto override by Congress.
You know, It's kind of like crossing your fingers when you tell a lie.
For those of you that say "other presidents have done this before". Sure, but to compare the last successful U.S. President with Bush, Clinton only used it around 80 times while Bush is already over 110.
I've also read that there are more than 800 specific items that he has put into signing statements while all other Presidents combined have only used about 600. I'll try to find a link. . .
[UPDATE]
Here's more info:
The American Bar Association has denounced the signing statements.
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/15106725.htm
It also compares the volume of statements as I mentioned before
read more | digg story
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Honda Formula 1 car hits 400 Kph
They set an unofficial record of 400 KM/hour, but it wasn't official because they couldn't make the run twice. They did, however set a few records on the way.
Even more amazing than that was back in 2001, Gil De Ferran set a closed course speed record of 241.428 mph (388.540703 kph) during a qualifying lap at the California motor speedway for what is now known as the Champ Car World Series (cart.com). He was racing for Penske Motor Sports and guess what type of engine he had. . .yep, a Honda.
An article about the race can be found here:
http://www.motorsport.com/news/article.asp?ID=81115&FS=CHAMPCAR
read more | digg story
Even more amazing than that was back in 2001, Gil De Ferran set a closed course speed record of 241.428 mph (388.540703 kph) during a qualifying lap at the California motor speedway for what is now known as the Champ Car World Series (cart.com). He was racing for Penske Motor Sports and guess what type of engine he had. . .yep, a Honda.
An article about the race can be found here:
http://www.motorsport.com/news/article.asp?ID=81115&FS=CHAMPCAR
read more | digg story
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
Fuel price set to reach £1 per liter
Once you do the conversion to USD, that is about $8.30 per gallon. Now you have to remember that one of the reasons the Axis of Lies (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz) invaded Iraq was to secure the oil supply there to keep prices low and thereby keep the global economy stable.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Sunday, July 09, 2006
Skilled-worker shortage: fact or fiction?
This article in Network World discusses the skilled-worker shortage that we keep hearing about. As a Comp. Sci. degree holder, a few years experience with multiple platforms and languages, this is a subject I've had to deal with on more than one occasion. Most companies with job postings never even call me back even though I meet (at a minimum) most of the requirements.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Monday, July 03, 2006
Net Neutrality: Senator Shows EXTREME Lack of Knowledge
Senator Ted Stevens shows just how much of a moron he really is. He is a worthless person taking up space (as well as taxpayer money) in the Senate. All he does is have some corporate lobbyist say "vote against this" and he does without even knowing what the heck he's voting against.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Wednesday, June 28, 2006
Democrats lose political map case
US state lawmakers can redraw electoral maps to favor their own parties at any time, the Supreme Court has ruled. Lets see if Democrats can get away with this any time soon.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Friday, May 12, 2006
Flashback
I just remembered something that happened in 5th grade. Since I was nearly a year younger than everyone else in my class, I was pretty much the shortest one in the room. My 5th grade teacher had the entire class sing the Randy Newman song "Short People" to me. If you aren't familiar with the lyrics, they go "Short people got no reason to live."
By the way, the same teacher went to the church I was forced to go to as a kid and would always preach to us.
By the way, the same teacher went to the church I was forced to go to as a kid and would always preach to us.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
BlueFrog = Anti-Spam
In case you haven't heard, spam (unsolicited e-mail) is a major problem that no-one seems to be able to solve. American politicians, most of which have probably never sent an e-mail themselves, passed a law (called CAN-SPAM) stating that if you send out solicited or unsolicited e-mail, you must allow the person to opt-out of receiving any further messages from you. Of course I'm summarizing, but you get the point.
That all seems fine, but the major problem is that the people sending out spam know that they are difficult to track down, and they feel that it's their right to consume more than 50% of e-mail traffic with promises of larger genitalia.
Why am I talking about this? There is a company called Blue Security that is attempting to offer a way to force the spammers to stop sending messages to people that don't want them. Apparently a few of the larger spammers are complying with the requests, but during the last week, it seems that a bunch of the leeches have joined forces and are currently initiating a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) that basically kills all traffic going to the web sites of Blue Security. It seems that the spammers don't like receiving approximately 500,000 messages requesting that a user be removed (one message for each e-mail account registered with Blue Security).
The second phase of the attack is (apparently) the people that are registered with Blue Security are being targeted with more spam, but that would only generate MORE traffic back to the spammers requesting opt-outs on behalf of the end-users.
Why would they do this? Greed and laziness are good motivators. Spammers get paid a lot of money for flooding the Internet with crap (greed), and it doesn't take a lot of effort on the spammers part to actually send out the messages (laziness). Asking them to stay out of my inbox and spamfolder by finding a real job would apparently be too much to ask, so until then we will need to use tools like Blue Security to keep them in check. Therefore, I ask that anyone reading this go to http://www.bluesecurity.com, download the software, register your e-mail accounts, and fight back. Sticking your head in the sand will only make matters worse.
That all seems fine, but the major problem is that the people sending out spam know that they are difficult to track down, and they feel that it's their right to consume more than 50% of e-mail traffic with promises of larger genitalia.
Why am I talking about this? There is a company called Blue Security that is attempting to offer a way to force the spammers to stop sending messages to people that don't want them. Apparently a few of the larger spammers are complying with the requests, but during the last week, it seems that a bunch of the leeches have joined forces and are currently initiating a Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS) that basically kills all traffic going to the web sites of Blue Security. It seems that the spammers don't like receiving approximately 500,000 messages requesting that a user be removed (one message for each e-mail account registered with Blue Security).
The second phase of the attack is (apparently) the people that are registered with Blue Security are being targeted with more spam, but that would only generate MORE traffic back to the spammers requesting opt-outs on behalf of the end-users.
Why would they do this? Greed and laziness are good motivators. Spammers get paid a lot of money for flooding the Internet with crap (greed), and it doesn't take a lot of effort on the spammers part to actually send out the messages (laziness). Asking them to stay out of my inbox and spamfolder by finding a real job would apparently be too much to ask, so until then we will need to use tools like Blue Security to keep them in check. Therefore, I ask that anyone reading this go to http://www.bluesecurity.com, download the software, register your e-mail accounts, and fight back. Sticking your head in the sand will only make matters worse.
Thursday, April 27, 2006
Device allows Digital Camcorders to record straight to an iPod
A forthcoming product will provide an interface between a Digital Camcorder and your iPod so you don't need to mess about with tapes.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Monday, March 27, 2006
Wind Power Becoming Cheaper Than Conventional Power
Wind energy power is now cheaper than convention sources in at least two areas: Austin, Texas and Colorado. A newly published report says that this trend is will likely be seen in other parts of the U.S.
When will the rest of the country see the advantage of wind/solar? First they need to get over the "it ruins the view" crap. A lot of morons, Walter Cronkite included, don't want wind power from a wind farm that would be 6 miles offshore because they say that it would ruin the natural beauty of the horizon. The fact that the windmills would appear at most 1mm to humans seems to be moot.
read more | digg story
When will the rest of the country see the advantage of wind/solar? First they need to get over the "it ruins the view" crap. A lot of morons, Walter Cronkite included, don't want wind power from a wind farm that would be 6 miles offshore because they say that it would ruin the natural beauty of the horizon. The fact that the windmills would appear at most 1mm to humans seems to be moot.
read more | digg story
Monday, February 20, 2006
Movie studios may be moving against region encoding hacks, other exploits
A brief investigation into the matter suggests that Disney, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, Time Warner and and Universal Studios are pursuing the company for being "hacker-friendly," inasmuch as the company has developed products that allow savvy users to bypass the limitations imposed by content owners.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Wednesday, February 08, 2006
A Young Bush Appointee Resigns His Post at NASA
Now all we need is the entire Republican party to resign for the same reason (incompetence). . .
George C. Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday. Common sense has prevailed.
read more | digg story
George C. Deutsch, the presidential appointee at NASA who told a Web designer to add the word "theory" at every mention of the Big Bang, resigned yesterday. Common sense has prevailed.
read more | digg story
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
The Diebold vs. Honesty saga continues
In yet another flagrant display of how scared Diebold and the Republican party are of a voting fraud investigation, Alaska has refused to turn over the vote results that are supposed to be PUBLIC RECORD. Anyone should be able to go down to their registrar's office and ask to see the vote results, but for some reason, Diebold has this shield of invisibility. Could it be that the former head honcho over there is a huge supporter of Republicans? This is the guy that publicly stated that his company was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President".
The Democratic party is simply trying to investigate voting irregularities, which happened in other districts that used Diebold machines. If there was no voting fraud, turn over the data and prove it. Otherwise it's a "The lady doth protest too much" scenario.
For those of you thinking "Bush won, get over it", I say this: Just because he "won" doesn't mean that he, or his political party, aren't capable of fraud. Were the roles reversed and Gore or Kerry had won against Bush, and fraud were suspected, wouldn't you want an investigation just to be sure that the next election will be more accurate? Otherwise, we are politically nothing more than a banana republic (and I'm not talking about the store at the mall).
By the way, Diebold's primary competitor is a company called ES & S and it's owned/run by the brother of the owner/honcho over at Diebold (the Urosevitch brothers). Together the count around 80% (if not more) of the votes in this country, and based on what Alaska's government says, those votes are off limits.
The Democratic party is simply trying to investigate voting irregularities, which happened in other districts that used Diebold machines. If there was no voting fraud, turn over the data and prove it. Otherwise it's a "The lady doth protest too much" scenario.
For those of you thinking "Bush won, get over it", I say this: Just because he "won" doesn't mean that he, or his political party, aren't capable of fraud. Were the roles reversed and Gore or Kerry had won against Bush, and fraud were suspected, wouldn't you want an investigation just to be sure that the next election will be more accurate? Otherwise, we are politically nothing more than a banana republic (and I'm not talking about the store at the mall).
By the way, Diebold's primary competitor is a company called ES & S and it's owned/run by the brother of the owner/honcho over at Diebold (the Urosevitch brothers). Together the count around 80% (if not more) of the votes in this country, and based on what Alaska's government says, those votes are off limits.
Saturday, January 21, 2006
New Senate Broadcast Flag Bill Would Freeze Fair Use
Hollywood now wants their old business model frozen into a law to prevent any technology newer than their "historical" distribution method from being created. This would have prevented iPods and Tivos from ever being considered. Yet another corp. shill acting like a senator
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Friday, January 13, 2006
U.S. details tax breaks for hybrid cars
Finally, congress is giving tax breaks for fuel efficient vehicles as opposed to Hummers. If you didn't know, for the last few years, people buying Excursions and Hummers got a huge tax break while people that bought fuel efficient cars got nothing.
"The credit, which was enacted by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, may be as much as $3,400 for those who purchase the most fuel-efficient vehicles."
read more | digg story
"The credit, which was enacted by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, may be as much as $3,400 for those who purchase the most fuel-efficient vehicles."
read more | digg story
Monday, December 19, 2005
Apple's FireWire gets nod from High Definition Audio Video Network Alliance
For many years, I've wanted audio and video equipment to use a standard digital connection. Imagine a world where the speakers, DVD player, and TV Audio all plug into a bank of firewire ports on the back of the stereo. It doesn't matter which one because the stereo configures everything automagically and all the signals are digital.
read more | digg story
read more | digg story
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Star Trek Computer Interface (LCARS)
All I can say is "where do they find the time to do this. . .oh, right, they don't date":
The LCARS Standards Development Board at http://www.lcarsdeveloper.com features near-exact replications of the LCARS interface seen on Star Trek (particularly Voyager). As you'll see on the site, there's more to LCARS than just random colors and numbers, everything actually means something! You can even learn how to pilot the USS Voyager!
read more | digg story
The LCARS Standards Development Board at http://www.lcarsdeveloper.com features near-exact replications of the LCARS interface seen on Star Trek (particularly Voyager). As you'll see on the site, there's more to LCARS than just random colors and numbers, everything actually means something! You can even learn how to pilot the USS Voyager!
read more | digg story
Saturday, December 03, 2005
Shareaza spyware?
I was using the P2P program Shareaza the other day (downloading non-copyrighted files, I assure you) and I noticed that my anti-virus software was filtering outgoing mail. The strange part about that is that I don't have a web client configured (I use Gmail). I began trying to figure out which application was trying to send the mail and it turned out that it was Shareaza which is not supposed to have any spyware. The scary part was that the message was being sent to a Russian domain.
I couldn't find the e-mail that was trying to be sent (by checking in AVG's outbox), and after a quick search through the source code, I couldn't find any reference to a .ru address. I'm going to assume that the application has been hijacked somehow, but I used the opportunity to wipe the hard drive and make sure my file system was intact.
UPDATE: after doing some searching on spyware in Shareaza, I managed to find these comments suggesting that it does, in fact, contain spyware:
http://www.download.com/Shareaza/3641-2166_4-9062723.html
UPDATE 2: I managed to find this posting on Shareaza's Wiki:
http://wiki.shareaza.com/static/Troubleshoot.Email
Basically, a computer that Shareaza is trying to connect to is using port 25 as it's "listening" port. This is reserved for SMTP, but when you put Shareaza into "Random Port mode", 25 could occasionally come up. Based on this info, Shareaza does NOT (currently) have spyware.
UPDATE 3: In case you didn't know, the Shareaza domain has been hijacked by scammers, and they have released a version of Shareaza that is loaded with spyware. Do not use Shareaza unless you get it from Sourceforge
http://torrentfreak.com/scammers-move-to-seize-shareaza-trademark-080302/
According to Wikipedia, here is the latest info:
I couldn't find the e-mail that was trying to be sent (by checking in AVG's outbox), and after a quick search through the source code, I couldn't find any reference to a .ru address. I'm going to assume that the application has been hijacked somehow, but I used the opportunity to wipe the hard drive and make sure my file system was intact.
UPDATE: after doing some searching on spyware in Shareaza, I managed to find these comments suggesting that it does, in fact, contain spyware:
http://www.download.com/Shareaza/3641-2166_4-9062723.html
UPDATE 2: I managed to find this posting on Shareaza's Wiki:
http://wiki.shareaza.com/static/Troubleshoot.Email
Basically, a computer that Shareaza is trying to connect to is using port 25 as it's "listening" port. This is reserved for SMTP, but when you put Shareaza into "Random Port mode", 25 could occasionally come up. Based on this info, Shareaza does NOT (currently) have spyware.
UPDATE 3: In case you didn't know, the Shareaza domain has been hijacked by scammers, and they have released a version of Shareaza that is loaded with spyware. Do not use Shareaza unless you get it from Sourceforge
http://torrentfreak.com/scammers-move-to-seize-shareaza-trademark-080302/
According to Wikipedia, here is the latest info:
Domain takeover / transfer
On 19 December 2007, the project's domain name, shareaza.com, was redirected to an unrelated site, promoting the download of an spyware client known as ShareazaV4.[4] As a result, the original project was forced to move their home page to SourceForge.net.
Since 1 January 2008, the new domain takes advantage of Shareaza's built-in automatic update feature to suggest to users that the ShareazaV4 application is an update to Shareaza. This vulnerability was fixed in Shareaza 2.3.1.0.[5]
The La Societe Des Producteurs De Phonogrammes En France (SPPF), the representative of recording labels in France, has taken legal action against Jonathan Nilson since his name was under the domain shareaza.com at the time.
Attempted trademark takeover
On January 10, 2008, the new owners of Shareaza.com, Discordia Ltd (iMesh Inc.[6]), filed for trademark registration of the Shareaza name, claiming that the first-ever use of this name was on December 17, 2007.[7] The Shareaza Development Team urged users of the program to send Letters of Protest to the patent office and set up a legal defense fund.[8]
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