::: Tuesday, June 29 ::: Cool: IE flaw may boost rival browsers It's about time. 11:06 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Friday, June 25 ::: Whoa: A softer world Such a simple concept. Just a simple photo or two overlaid with simple words set in a simple font. And yet, so funny, so profound, so warming, so deranged, so... unsimple. Art defined. 11:19 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Thursday, June 24 ::: Damn: Court Blocks Spyware Law Looks like DoubleClick has passed the flaming asshole torch. 9:20 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Yep: Consumers revolt against LCD monitor pricing Isn't supply and demand a wonderful thing? Really though with good quality 17" CRT's going for around $100 and 19" monsters a few bones more, why pay more than the cost off your computer for a far inferior viewing experience? Yes, desk space is valuable, but there's gotta be a limit. 9:13 AM CST  ::  tell me a story w00t: Win a Part in the Hitchhiker's Movie! I wonder if it's too early to view this contest as a sign that the movie might actually be made this time? [link courtesy of The Reg] 9:00 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Eh: Organizer cancels Comdex 2004 While it's somewhat sad to see how far Comdex has fallen considering the show's past prominence, I'm not convinced it really has a role in the post-bubble tech marketplace. With other expos like E3 and CES stealing so much thunder on the consumer end of things and IT professionals who are so short-staffed that they can't leave their desks, there's just not much call for such a mass-market driven hypefest. Maybe they can take this year off and find some focus for future shows. 8:43 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Wednesday, June 23 ::: Hmm: Rocket Fuel Found in Moo Juice Perhaps California cows aren't quite as happy as we've been led to believe. Could it be that advertisers are *lying* to us? Oh, the scandal! 9:24 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Tuesday, June 22 ::: Hmm: Importing your Mbox info GMail For later review. Sounds spiffy. 3:15 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Sweet: glassdog Lance is back! And his site looks like a serape designed by a chihuahua on acid! Not that there's anything wrong with that. 2:25 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Sigh: DRIV3R Review The good news is that Driv3r has finally been released. The bad news is that it apparently sucks. EGM was somewhat more kind in their latest issue, but you could tell they were a little down about the reality of the game compared to its soaring expectations. It seems like more and more multi-million dollar games are failing these days. I'm not sure where the blame lies, but the industry can't continue like this forever. Eventually there has to be a sea change. Microsoft is putting their considerable talents toward online gaming while Nintendo and Sony are betting on a high-end portable market. The sad fact is that I don't care about either one of these verticals and I'm fairly certain I'm not alone. I just want reasonably priced console that can play games I enjoy and I'm getting to the point where I really don't care from whom I have to purchase that experience. 10:45 AM CST  ::  tell me a story Whoa: Blind Get Earful of Spam Daily I've never stopped to consider how bad the spam situation must be for the blind. I guess that's where services like KnowSpam really shine. 10:28 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Friday, June 18 ::: Hmm: How Microsoft Lost the API War I need to chew on this one for a while before commenting too much. Joel obviously has a very deep historical perspective when it comes to Microsoft, but I'm not entirely ready to waive all cynicism and swallow the party line on this issue. Regardless, though it's entirely too long, the article is worth the time for developers. 1:32 PM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Monday, June 14 ::: Sigh: How Windows XP SP2 Affects SQL Server Long story short? SP2 completely kills SQL server if you are using TCP/IP. But, really, who uses TCP/IP anyway? Seriously though, if SP2 really "turns off" TCP/IP and UDP, I would expect a bunch of network apps to fall over. If that turns out to be the case, I can't see many enterprises installing it. The labor to manually work-around all of the network issues will far outweigh the benefits. It stands to reason that if Microsoft closed all those ports for security reasons and then network admins are going to be forced to reopen those same ports, then security isn't a valid reason to install SP2 anyway. I think it all boils down to Microsoft needing to pass the buck. After SP2 they can tell enterprises, "our OS is secure, your sysadmin opened all those ports". 1:43 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Shocker: Backdoor program gets backdoored Hmm... who would have thought that the author of a highly distributed freeware trojan wouldn't be trustworthy? I mean, if you can't trust a trojan author, who can you trust? 1:09 PM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Friday, June 11 ::: Ta-dow: User Agent Switcher Extension Ever get one of those "Go away you dirty Mozilla User!" messages while surfing? Well, this fixes that problem nicely. It's unforunate, however, that it doesn't allow you to insert expletives into the offending sites logs. That would rock. Update: Looks like I spoke too soon. You can customize your own UserAgent (select "Options" from the User Agent Switcher menu) so you could, in theory at least, leave some creative tracks in their logs. [taken indirectly from Bryan] 3:42 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Scary: Phishing Scam Archive This site has an amazingly comprehensive list of phishing attacks including screenshots. Quite a useful resource for impressing the importance of email diligence on newbies. 2:53 PM CST  ::  tell me a story There is no entry for synonym in the Microsoft Word Thesaurus. 2:45 PM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Wednesday, June 9 ::: Mozilla Tip In the original Netscape you could kill animated gifs after a page was fully loaded by pressing the stop button. When Mozilla came out I was sad to note that they removed this very useful feature. Well, it turns out they didn't remove it completely. You can replicate this behavior by pressing Escape. Between this tip and installing the "Click To Play" Flash blocking extension for Mozilla I never have to suffer aneurysm-inducing ads while attempting to read web-based news. 4:43 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Sweet: Website Analysis Isn't a Game Either this is a *really* cool idea or I'm easily amused. Maybe both. 3:10 PM CST  ::  tell me a story Amen: Why the FCC should die I couldn't agree more. 3:04 PM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Monday, June 7 ::: Rock on: Breakin' Transformers Just in case you missed it. [Requires Flash] 9:35 AM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Friday, June 4 ::: Uhm: Creed Breaks Up Getting our power back last night was the best thing that happened this week, but this ranks a close second. Unfortunately, Scott Stapp isn't likely to just go away as quietly. 1:53 PM CST  ::  tell me a story ::: Thursday, June 3 ::: Sorry for the lack of activity here lately. As you may or may not have heard, Indiana was hit by some fairly nasty weather last weekend. Thankfully our house was not in the path of any of the tornadoes, but we have been without power for most of the last five or six days. As you can imagine, this makes blogging difficult. Hell, it makes eating and showering difficult. I'll try and get back here as soon as I can. 9:23 AM CST  ::  tell me a story dinoneil[at]newdream[dot]net