Support Our Troops

From my Dad, he's retired now and has a little bit too much free time: As we all know, the Taliban considers it a sin for a man to see a naked woman who is not his wife. So next Sunday at 2:00 eastern time all American women are asked to walk out of their houses totally naked, to help weed out any neighborhood terrorists. Circling your block for at least an hour is recommended for this antiterrorist effort. All men are to position themselves in lawn chairs on the tree lawn to prove they are not Taliban by demonstrating they think its ok to see nude women other than their wife, and to show support to all American women. And, since the Taliban also does not approve of alcohol, a cold six-pack at your side is further proof of your patriotism. It is our duty to the American people to unite in the effort! [Comment on this Post]

Child Rapist Wins Oscar Award

Here's the feel good story of the year, child rapist Roman Polanski -- who cannot set foot in the United States without going to jail -- won the Academy Award for best director on Sunday night for his Holocaust drama "The Pianist." Polanski, who fled the United States for France in 1978 as he was about to be sentenced to prison for having sex with a 13-year-old girl, won the Oscar in his third nomination as best director. That's his second Oscar post-fleeing the country.

The film won overwhelmingly positive reviews for its portrayal of one man's chance survival of the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto and of the random killings, daily demeaning brutality and deprivation that took place there. Yet Polanski was widely considered an underdog in this year's Oscar race due to lingering controversy stemming from his 25-year-old statutory rape conviction. This is because, in 1977, a grand jury charged Polanski with giving a drug to a minor, committing a lewd act upon a person less than 14, rape of a minor, rape by use of a drug (Quaalude), oral copulation and sodomy. All the charges are felonies.

Polanski was originally indicted on six counts, including rape, but pleaded guilty to a single count of having sex with a minor, punishable by up to 20 years in prison. But the judge in the case made public remarks indicating he intended to impose the maximum penalty on the director. Why? The movie director was allowed to plead guilty to a lesser charge of engaging in unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor at the request of the girl's mother, who wanted to protect her daughter from the publicity expected to accompany such a trial. Why not read this screenplay - its biographical.

The Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, which prosecuted Polanski, has said the status of his case remains unchanged and that he faces arrest as a fugitive from justice if he returns to the United States. In the meantime it's nice to see that we can forgive and forget - even reward! Fuck you Polanski. [Comment on this Post]

Remove MSN Messenger in Windows XP

If you have both MSN Messenger and Windows Messenger and want to remove the lame-duck version of Windows Messenger here is the easiest way to do so.
Simply go to c:/Program Files
Rename the MESSENGER folder to MESSENGER-NOLOAD
The name doesnt matter but this lets you know why you did it when you look back a year later. Reboot and BAM! Only MSN Messenger starts up. Remember to get the patch for MSN messenger from Patchou - it removes the advertisement and logs your chats.[Comment on this Post]

ReplayTV Files Bankruptcy - Again. VIVA TIVO!

Well, they had denied this was going to be necessary, but now they've decided they simply can't make it work. ReplayTV maker Sonicblue has filed for bankruptcy with plans to stay in business just long enough to sell everything off. They've signed a tentative agreement to sell the ReplayTV division and their MP3 device division of to D&M Holdings (makers of Denon and Marantz) for around $40 million, but even that's not definite. It's unfortunate for a number of reasons. It would have been nice to see them survive, as they've been more consumer friendly than many other firms. Also, they've been at the forefront of the legal battle to explain to Hollywood the importance of fair use rights. Even with their recent change in senior management it had looked like they were going to continue to fight their legal battles. Now... it's up in the air what will happen to both the products and the lawsuits. [Comment on this Post]

Benetton is Big Brother?

I wrote about the pending introduction of RFID tags a few months ago. Guess what? Philips Semiconductors' RFID chip will be embedded into the label of every new garment bearing the name of Benetton's core clothing brand, Sisley. Philips' I.CODE ICs will be incorporated into smart labels attached to garments during manufacturing. By storing information about the style, size, color and intended destination of items, the I.CODE chip allows Benetton to track individual items of clothing "from manufacturing, warehouses to retail stores," said Christophe Duverne, vice president of marketing and sales at Philips Semiconductors' Identification group.
Since I.CODE ICs are embedded into garment labels, they would remain attached for the life of an each piece of clothing. As the use of RFID chips moves closer to consumers, some worry about privacy issues raised by the tracking capabilities of RFID technology. Duverne said standards groups are looking for a uniform way to "deactivate" the RFID function after clothes with smart labels are purchased by consumers. [Comment on this Post]

European Geocaching on Hold Soon.

A tip for civilians - you can always tell when the shit was really about to hit the fan because GPS accuracy will change massively when compared to a know coordinate point. That said, Space Daily is reporting that the U.S. government may be degrading GPS satellite signals, to cripple Iraqi forces' ability to use those systems during the war. This could potentially reduce accuracy from ~3 meters to over ~100 meters. Users depending on GPS systems may want to do sanity checks on any data returned by those systems during the war. The U.S. will do this by increasing the inaccuracies on the civilian C/A code, turning back on S/A (Selective Availability), by having the satellites deliberately and randomly return inaccurate information on where they are. S/A degrades GPS accuracy to only 100 meters 95 percent of the time and 300 meters the other 5 percent of the time. This will not effect the military P code." [Comment on this Post]

Latest in Cellphone Technology

OK, you gotta give this a read. The author writes: "I am the coolest stud at the MIT univeristy. I hacked an old-school telephone handset on my cell phone. Now I walk around Cambridge MA, looking like a phat pimp!" But don't stop there, make sure you read his Playa Hata page too. Very witty humour - and the links are not what you think.[Comment on this Post]

More Information About Computer Batteries Than You Ever Care to Know

Got Questions About General Battery Information? This site covers:
Battery Definitions
Battery Care and Use Instructions
Battery Don'ts
Different Types of Battery Chemistry
Memory Effect
Battery Upgrading
Battery Not Charging
Maximizing Performance
Battery Ratings (Volts & Amps)
Battery Life Span
Battery Recycling
Main Batteries
CMOS (Clock Batteries)
RAM (Resume Batteries)
Laptop Burn Time
"Smart" Batteries
NiCad Batteries
Sealed Lead Acid Batteries
Nickel Metal Hydride [Comment on this Post]

The Return of Bloom County!

RUN don't walk to MyComicsPage.com - Fans of Berkeley Breathed's BLOOM COUNTY and OUTLAND will be amazed and delighted to hear that uclick has undertaken a unique and historic re-launch of these classic comic strips, which originally ran from 1980-1995. The historical references alone are worth the price!

Beginning today, March 17th, subscribers to My Comics Page will be able to read BLOOM COUNTY on a highly-accelerated one-week-every-two-days re-publication schedule. Six daily strips will be offered one day, a Sunday strip the next, alternating back and forth until the entire BLOOM COUNTY collection is digitally back in print.They also intend to re-publish the full run of Breathed's 1978-1979 college strip ACADEMIC WALTZ, which has long been unavailable.

One caveat: it's subscription-based. However, for $10, I'd call it a huge bargain. I've already signed up and was pleased to find a few other strips that dont run locally either![Comment on this Post]

Great Free Utility Programs

Analog X is a great website with free downloads that everyone, regardless of their skill level will find useful. HEre are some blurbs from the site: Everything audio awaits you here; from a program to let you scratch like a DJ, to DirectX Audio plugins, to a speech synthesizer, they're all right here... If you're reading this, then you use the network; would you like to use it better? From proxy servers to the fastest traceroute on the net, only AnalogX brings 'em to you for free... Whether you're working on audio compression, developing new algorithms, or just playing around, you'll find all the tools you'll need to make things go smoothly right here... Whether you're working on audio compression, developing new algorithms, or just playing around, you'll find all the tools you'll need to make things go smoothly right here... Now, unless you're going to do all of this in silence, you're going to need something to listen to, and AnalogX is your one-stop shop! Find all of the available music, in MP3 format... [Comment on this Post]