30 Nov 2007
Eau de Chien? Yes, Fragrances for Dogs

Ya know, my border collie like to slick herself up with a scent I'm pretty sure she refers to as "Sexy Beast" - a combination of anything dead in the pasture and a fresah cow pie.

And while I can assure you that I don't spend $60 every time she gets so adorned, I do spend about $1.25 on shampoo to clean it off her.

Now $60-a-bottle luxury dog scents make pets more palatable for the workplace.

(link) [ New York Times]

23:11 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

29 Nov 2007
Bracelet found in chicken after 25 years

Proof positive that a chicken will, in fact, eat almost anything ....

AP - It won't fit him anymore, but a Massachusetts man has his metal identity bracelet back after it was found inside a chicken gizzard in this southern Minnesota city — more than 25 years after he lost it in his grandfather's barn.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

23:14 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

28 Nov 2007
New toilets-- drive 'em to believe 'em

Same shit, different day.

His [Scott Kelly's] Philadelphia company urges its customers to install high-efficiency toilets, which use 20 percent less water than the previous generation of low-flow toilets. So the firm installed one such toilet in its own restroom, and customers who try it out are impressed.

(link) [CNN.com]

07:32 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

27 Nov 2007
Vista Makes CNET UK's List of 'Worst Consumer Tech'

Having wrestled with Vista at work for nearly a year now, I can assure you that I will never install it on a machine I own . It worse than pointless, it's positively aggressive in it's stupidity.

Several anonymous readers writes pointed us at CNET UK's Crave blog for a list of what is or was, in their opinion, the worst consumer tech in history. Vista comes in at number 10, in company with Apple's puck mouse (number 6) and Sony's CD rootkit (number 9). According to Crave: "[Vista's] incompatibility with hardware, its obsessive requirement of human interaction to clear security dialogue box warnings and its abusive use of hated DRM, not to mention its general pointlessness as an upgrade, are just some examples of why this expensive operating system earns the final place in our terrible tech list." That's gotta hurt a little, coinciding as it does with Apple's Don't Give Up On Vista attack ad.

(link) [Slashdot]

08:04 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

US woman fingered for Porky Pig drugs outrage

Perhaps the folks who set up these "test names" should be charged with sex crimes themselves. It's obvious they were fucking Goofy...

They say your past always catches up with you in the end - something one Sue Jones of Grand Junction, Colorado, can certainly attest.

(link) [The Register]

07:52 /Humor | 2 comments | permanent link

25 Nov 2007
Worship

All worship is rememberance.

We remember the gods and goddesses.

We remember our ancestors.

We remember word and deed.

We remember stock and stone.

The Well is our remembering.

Our memories are in the Well.

Our memories are the Well.

The Tree is nourished by the Well.

We grow and thrive within the Tree.

We are fed by our memories.

We are sustained by our worship.

All worship is rememberance.

21:45 /Asatru | 2 comments | permanent link

24 Nov 2007
Loose Bull

Well, we had some excitement and no mistake last evening - we had dinner with Mom and got home about 7:30pm, full of pizza. I had stopped by the mailbox on the way in, and there was a letter for Kris in there, so after I did the evening chores, I decided to run it over to her. Fed the cats, gathered eggs, filled up the stock tank and came back in to get the letter and go. I hadn't actually opened a gate to the paddock in all of this - just the one to the pasture to close the chickens in for the night. But when I came back out ...

Chip, our 2000+ pound Highland bull was gently grazing - behind the driveway! The paddock gate had popped open, probably after being butted by something, and both he and Maeg (the herd cow) were loose, in the dark, and headed for Mitchell's corn stubble field! Yikes!

Dashed into the house, got Lorraine and dashed back out, pausing only long enough to grab the stock stick. Lorraine got down to the gate and kept Hammer from escaping as well (that would've been a true disaster) and I got west of Chip and Maeg and started moving them back.

All in all, it went remarkably smoothly and took very little time - perhaps fifteen minutes. After we got them back, I rehinged the gate (temporarily - I'll take a better look this morning), and drove a barn nail into the gate post and chained it shut as well. But I can assure you that for those fifteen minutes, my heart was pounding faster than it had for quite a while ...

09:16 /Home | 0 comments | permanent link

Apple pays $10m to end iTunes patent clash

Somebody, somewhere has to stand and make a fight over transparent blackmail like this - I thought maybe IBM had done so with SCO, but that case was too narrowly focused (and dealt more with copyright).

As long as companies like Apple and M$ just roll over and surrender to these demands because the cost of coughing up the extortion is less than the cost of beating it in court, we'll continue to be plagued by patent trolls and other con artists.

Apple has agreed to pay Burst.com $10m to settle the patent infringement challenge the smaller US company launched against it in April 2006.

(link) [The Register]

07:57 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Open Source Warfare

It seems to me that this is a case of the State no longer having a complete monopoly on warfare - indeed, the State itself is morphing into a new institutional form (the terrorist cell).

In any event, if you're looking for a reason to doubt humanity's survival capability, look no further. The idea of basement nukes should scare the living daylights out of anyone.

Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3. Need satellite photos? Download them from Google Earth or Microsoft's Virtual Earth. Need to know the current thinking on IED attacks? Watch the latest videos created by insurgents and posted on any one of hundreds of Web sites or log on to chat rooms where you can exchange technical details with like-minded folks.

(link) [IEEE Spectrum]

via Slashdot

07:52 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

Have we sealed the universe's fate by looking at it?

Ah, the arrogance of humanity! If the quantum 'Zeno effect' is in fact operational here (and there's a good reason to doubt that it is - see the quip from Max Tegmark near the end of the article), then why are humans the ones who've reset the clock, and not some alien species from another galaxy?

The real reason this isn't even mentioned is, of course, that it doesn't make nearly as good a headline.

Have we hastened the demise of the universe just be looking at it? That's the startling question posed by a pair of physicists who suggest that by observing and measuring dark energy we may have accidentally nudged the universe back to a point early in its history when it was more likely to end. The researchers in the US came to the conclusion by calculating how the energy state of our universe might have evolved.

(link) [EurekAlert!]

07:37 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

23 Nov 2007
Wounded Soldier: Military Wants Part Of Bonus Back

Un-freaking-believable.

The U.S. Military is demanding that thousands of wounded service personnel give back signing bonuses because they are unable to serve out their commitments.

(link) [KDKA]

via Dispatches from the Culture Wars

13:08 /Politics | 0 comments | permanent link

22 Nov 2007
Mayor Resigns, Claims Abduction By Satan Worshippers

Wow - he just got a dose of truth serum (note the interesting lack of any details there) and all of a sudden his former life comes flooding back ... and who were this Satanic abductors, anyway, and where are they now?

Isn't another way to say "lacking credibility", "incredible"? It fits!

The mayor of an Arkansas town resigned on Wednesday, claiming he was abducted and brainwashed by Satan worshippers nearly three decades ago.

(link) [Northwest Arkansas News]

13:02 /Humor | 0 comments | permanent link

Big Content asks presidential candidates for more restrictive copyright laws

Good grief - cluelessness knows no bounds.

The Copyright Alliance, which counts the MPAA and RIAA amongst its members, has sent letters and questionnaires to presidential candidates in an effort to determine where they stand on issues relating to intellectual property law.

(link) [Ars Technica]

12:54 /Copywrongs | 0 comments | permanent link

Dream Food

Excellent thought for Thanksgiving Day: quality over quantity, indeed.

Agribusiness has morphed into a plate-centric culture, consuming as much as you can, the cheaper the better. The things I seek on my life list may be gone in the wake of an industrialized food system. Mass production and economies of scale make farms look like factories; perfection is lost in the abundance. I want to believe that, in the end, quality still matters.

(link) [Los Angles Times]

via MyAppleMenu:Reader

10:08 /Agriculture | 0 comments | permanent link

21 Nov 2007
Leopard security bug puts Mail users at risk

Proving that M$ has no monopoly on stupidity ...

Programmers have reintroduced a yawning security hole in Leopard, the latest version of Apple's highly regarded operating system, after having patched it more than 20 months ago in an earlier version, a researcher has warned.

(link) [The Register]

07:52 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link