This is the kind of science-fiction-like technology that I love hearing about! I don’t suffer from allergies much, but GoddessJ does, several times a year. This should make her very happy.
Amusing Spam
The latest roundup of accidentally-humorous spam messages.
There’s one here with the subject line of “Aniston Likes the Sound of Singing Inmates”. If “Aniston” is the name of the spammer, he (?) had better like it a lot, because this stuff is good for a long stay behind bars. Maybe he can start a chorus… or at least a duet.
There are two with only “Re:” in their subject lines. The contents are funny though: “Your penis will be big enough to hang your clothes to dry.” (Thanks, but it already is.) And “With Penis Enlarge Patch you will be able to scratch your back with your dick.” (How the heck would something that long be enjoyable, for either you or your partner?)
Then there are the two gems. Both have identical text, barring the URLs and the random garbage at the end:
Subject: Big your piano, be a real man Chicks always laugh at me and even guys did in the WC toilets! Well now I smile 🙂 at them because I took megadlk for 6 months and now my disk is much bigger than NATION average piano size . :p
“WC toilets”? What kind of toilet is that? “…my disk is much bigger…”? I’d see a doctor about that, bud. And although I’ve (rarely) heard it referred to as a skin-flute, I have to admit that “piano” is a new one on me. But what’s even funnier is the sender names… the first was “Danial” (he can’t spell his own name?), the second was “Kathy”… if “Kathy” is telling me that she’s a real man now, I don’t think she’s my type. 😉
Two Getaway Plans That Didn’t
I love it… two would-be carjackers who tried to steal a manual-transmission car, but had no idea even how to start one, and a pair of would-be bank robbers who planned to float away down a river in innertubes — one of which had a hole in it.
Encrypted File Systems, Part 5
As described earlier, I’ve been trying to come up with a way to make the automatically-mounted TrueCrypt-encrypted home directory, on my Ubuntu Linux machine, also automatically unmount when I log off. I’ve finally done so, and I’ve learned some fascinating things about Linux in the process. Continue reading ‘Encrypted File Systems, Part 5’ »
“Titanic Lamp”
This is rather sick. Very amusing, but sick nonetheless.
The Battle of Endor — as a Hallowe’en costume
I’ve always enjoyed creating my own elaborate Hallowe’en costumes, the more high-tech-looking the better. But this guy has me beat by a mile.
Biometric Door Locks
We’ve had an older (and non-biometric) version of this for several years now — one with a numeric keypad instead of a fingerprint scanner. I saw it in action at an acquaintance’s house, and geek that I am, installed one on our own door soon thereafter. It’s quite useful, and if the batteries ever do wear out, you can always use a key.
(I happen to like the belt-and-suspenders approach, thank you… it’s like always keeping a backup, a lesson that I [like anyone who uses computers] learned the hard way a long time ago.)
Confirmed: APC tracks e-mails
It should come as no surprise, but APC, the manufacturers of the uninterruptable power supplies that I use, has just confirmed that they track their e-mailed newsletters. The message at the top of the one I got today was:
Hi HEADGEEK, we noticed that you haven’t opened our PowerNews e-mail newsletter in 6 months. PowerNews offers the latest product information and great promotional offers.
In point of fact, I do read the newsletters, or at least skim them, whenever one comes in. But as I use Thunderbird, which blocks remote images by default, they don’t get any confirmation of this. And quite honestly, I prefer that they don’t. I realize that any business is going to want to know how well it’s advertising is working, so they’ll want to track it, but I don’t want them tracking my e-mail reading habits. Companies know too much about me, and people in general, already.
Armour Plated Sturgeon Could Send You to the Surgeon
I think I’m going to start a new organization, People for the Ethical Treatment of Humans (PETH). It’s obviously needed.
The WebOS
Anyone who studies Microsoft quickly figures out that it’s collective corporate personality is paranoid. Anything that even might be competition someday is either bought up or crushed mercilessly. It didn’t make sense to me at the time, but that’s how it viewed the Internet at first, and why it moved to kill off Netscape.
It seems that it only managed to delay the inevitable, though. There are apparently at least twenty functional WebOSes now, according to Frantic Industries, ten reviewed here and another ten here. The long-rumored (and long-denied) GoogleOS probably will happen, sooner or later.