Happy New Year |
|
CNN.com - Sick passenger had many doctors |
What?! No liability concerns from the docs? |
Washington Post: Banning Sale of 'Downer' Meat Represents a Change in Policy (washingtonpost.com) |
For years, the politically potent and well-financed cattle and meatpacking industries have held sway in the debate over the practice of slaughtering and marketing non-ambulatory, or downer, cattle. They repeatedly blocked efforts by urban Democrats and a handful of moderate Republicans to end the practice -- which provides producers with millions of dollars of profits each year but also represents the biggest potential source of contaminated meat. |
SFGate.com: Phil Goldman -- entrepreneur, WebTV founder |
I met him in a reorg meeting once. I wonder what the cause of death was.
|
PC Week: Rise in LCD-Panel Prices Squeeze PC Makers and Consumers |
This is what TV manufacturers have been waiting for decades - a real reason for consumers to upgrade their cathode ray tubes. Billions of dollars of cash flow to come in to home electronics stores as people toss out the old CRT technology for LCD/Plasma/LCoS/DLP displays. |
John Robb's Weblog - It's A Wonderful Life repatriation |
Sad to see the capitalists find a loophole and sneak their fingers back into the pie after they let it go. The bright side is that the movie is dated and not in a good way. I like "A Christmas Story" these days. "I triple-dog-dare you." |
MSNBC - ‘Christmas Story’ still charming after 20 years |
Article has a nice "where are they now" section about the actors from the movie. |
MSNBC - Are we safe from mad cow disease? |
Nice to see the turnaround time on testing for mad-cow is over 2 weeks and they still haven't confirmed that it is mad-cow.
|
NY Times: Investigators Outline Parmalat’s Efforts to Hide Liabilities |
Italians are showing the world that they, too, can play in the billion-dollar financial shenanigan shell-game.
|
MSNBC - Canada keeps marijuana possession illegal |
The lame duck session of the Chretien era is over and some sanity returns to the courts. |
NY Post: UNDERGROUND WITH THE RAT |
|
New York Post Online: Chris Byron FREDDIE MAC'S MISSTEP |
|
MSNBC - A High Price for a Popular Spice |
Vanilla extract prices go through the roof - almost as much as some of those resurrected Internet stocks - due to bad weather and low crop yields. But the home bakers and consumer goods companies are having to literally eat the costs since they have no pricing power.
|
NY Times: Toy Retailers Find Prices at Wal-Mart Tough to Beat |
|
NY Times: Three Stars of 'Seinfeld' Boycott a DVD Deal |
|
NY Times: Dumpster-Diving for Your Identity |
|
MUTE - Simple, Private File Sharing |
Third generation P2P network, communication is obfuscated so it's much harder to trace the people who are downloading/uploading. |
NY Times: Parmalat on Edge as Bank Says It Doesn�t Have $4.9 Billion |
Man, this looks really bad.
|
CNet: Software glitch brings Y2K deja vu |
This is weak engineering. The developer who came up with this code obviously did not test the code very well. The QA team involved owns some of the responsibility. I guess they never tested to see if their code would work beyond 2003. Nice going. Will the developer who wrote and barely debugged this code face the music for this bug? I doubt it. Here's the FAQ page: PTC "Timeout" Issue Frequently Asked Questions. Jan. 10 2004, "inifinity" will arrive. |
CNet: Court: Net music subpoenas not authorized | CNET News.com |
This should slow down the RIAA.
|
Macintouch - Digital Cameras |
|
Mercury News | 12/18/2003 | Wal-Mart launches online music store |
200K songs @ US$0.88 for the trial version. It officially opens next spring. Apple made iTunesMS available thru AOL now. |
The Globe and Mail - Scott to receive gold |
Woo hoo!!! She should get a big ceremony to replace the stolen gold medal ceremony she was deprived of. That it's taken over one year to resolve this is sad.
|
NY Times - Microsoft and Spitzer Sue Alleged Spam Ring |
I was just thinking how nice it'd be if Eliot Spitzer would go after spammers as fervently as he has pursured stock market abuses. The lawsuit targets Scott Richter, #3 on the Spamhaus ROKSO Spammer list. |
The Globe and Mail - Lost in Translation chosen Toronto critics' favourite of 2003 |
Huh??? This film is one of the worst films I've seen this year. It was mediocre to begin with but all the movie critics' praise made the viewing a total letdown - this film is vastly overrated. Bill Murray is the highlight in the gfilm but it's not one of his better performances - CaddyShack comes to mind. For Yuppie trash who are moaning about how boring their upper-middle class or better lives are. |
National Post - Rogers doubles Internet speed |
National Post - Rogers doubles Internet speed:
Fast forward one week...In the Globe and Mail: Bell to boost DSL speed:
BitTorrent and other P2P systems should like the increased upload speeds. Now about those bandwidth caps... |
NewsForge | City of Austin pilot proves OpenOffice.org works - Updated |
NewsForge | City of Austin pilot proves OpenOffice.org works - Updated:
But the king of user-centred computing reviews, Walt Mossberg, has this to say about StarOffice and its lesser cousin,OpenOffice. StarOffice Improves Performance, but Still Can't Rival Microsoft:
|
MSNBC: Online job scammers steal millions |
One way around the security checks that online shops are using is to use local residents as dropoffs and have them forward the packages out of the country. Scary. Why people would hand over their SIN and bank account numbers is beyond me - unless they needed the bank account for direct deposit?!
|
San Jose Mercury: Sun co-founder to leave Cisco post |
Hmmm. Bill Joy leaves Sun, Andy Bechtolsheim leaves Cisco...
CNet has some more info: Cisco's brain drain continues
|
San Jose Mercury: After long manhunt, a huge payoff |
|
MSNBC: Hussein confidant became informant |
|
HNN: How Do We Know that Iraq Tried to Assassinate President George H.W. Bush? |
|
MSNBC: Keeping the capture secret 14 hours |
|
Microsoft.com: KB 833786: Steps that you can take to help identify and to help protect yourself from deceptive (spoofed) Web sites |
|
AP: A villain vanishes |
|
TheInquirer.net: The real cost of offshore outsourcing |
|
CNet.com: CD-burning software prompts patent suit |
Optima Tech seems to have a patent on treat-CD-R-like-a-hard-disk software - stuff like Roxio DirectCD or Ahead's Nero InCD. |
NY Times: The Growing Market for Bigger Buttons |
The baby boomers are going to force a change in product packaging and design as their senses become less flexible. |
NY Times: A Small Piece of Fiber on Ground Yields Big Payoff for U.S. |
|
Copyright Board Freezes Private Copying Levies for 2003 and 2004 |
Blank DVDs aren't included in the levies at all. |
Awful Plastic Surgery |
Wow |
National Post: Low incomes, big returns |
The largest bank in Canada dips its toes into the lowly cheque-cashing business. |
CNet: Virginia files felony spam charges |
#8 on the Spamhaus's Top Spammers for November 2003 |
CNet: Microsoft workers cash options for $382 million |
|
Seattle Times: Similar bogus ads examined by FBI |
Old school scams. At the last minute, put an ad in the paper touting great deals on plasma TVs, etc., take the credit card orders and never ship the product. Downside: The bad guys now have your CC# and probably your name and address. |
NY Times: At I.R.S., a Systems Update Gone Awry |
The current IRS debacle has been making waves for a couple of years now. It doesn't make the consultants on the job, Computer Sciences Corporation, look good. I don't think the IRS managers of this contract and the consultants are communicating very well.
|
BugTraq: Internet Explorer URL parsing vulnerability |
If you display the File.Properties dialog for that page, the real URL appears. Dec 12 update: The Secunia text exploit puts a null terminator after the 0x01 character which stops the display of the full URL. However, in the File.Properties dialog, you can still see that there's crud after the ".com". |
BusinessWeek: Boeing: What Really Happened |
|
NY Times: Trampled Shopper Has History of Injury Claims Against Stores |
|
America West moving faster than the hub-and-spoke airlines |
From USA Today, America West fliers supersizing seats, this program allows passengers to upgrade their coach seats to first class in the four hours before a flight takes off. I saw this on PBS's NBR TV program. A web article can be found here, America West to put ads on tray tables |
Neowin.net: Microsoft -- No security bulletins for December |
|
NY Times: Fund Inquiry Informant Discloses Her Identity |
|
NY Times: Airline Economics: Fasten Your Seat Belt |
|
BusinessWeek: U.S. Programmers at Overseas Salaries |
I don't think most real programmers are as greedy as the Internet boom made them out to be. I'd expect MBAs to be more willing to jump ship for more $$$. For techies, it's the programming challenge that's more important. The employers are in control these days. But when the economy starts improving, this type of employer power will wane.
|
Washington Post: AOL Cuts Jobs in Consolidation Move |
|
National Post going to subscription-based access |
If they get the same response as the Ireland Times, then this is a big mistake.
Vin Crosbie's analysis of charging for access for newspapers: The Albuquerque Journal as a Bad Paid Content Model |
CNet: MS to drop older products |
Win98, Office 2000, Office XP Developer, and SQL Server 7 are among the products put out to pasture. Nice way of getting Sun to do some of your dirty work. |
NY Post: Chris Byron: FILING FAILURE FALLOUT |
|
Seattle Times: Wal-Mart changes the face of business in Mexico |
|
NY Times: 2 Makers of Flu Shot Say They Are Out of Vaccine |
Nothing better to cause a panic than the news that the product is scarce! |
Toronto Star: Cannibal's confession shocks court |
|
Seattle Times: 'Ultra' trail runners embrace wild and wintry days |
|
MSNBC: AN orange a day may fight cancer |
|
Linux vulnerabilities galore |
If the guys who are making the software can't keep their servers safe, what chance do customers have??? Debian: userland can access Linux kernel memory
Gentoo alert 200312-01 (rsync.gentoo.org). Don't forget that one of the GNU Savannah servers was also compromised. |
SiliconValley.com: Streisand loses fight against online aerial photo |
She lost the fight and tons more people saw her home than if she had just kept quiet. Brilliant strategy. Maybe she's going to sell the house? Her lawyers still get paid whether she won or lost...
|
National Post: Support for gay marriage at 31% |
No idea if the questions asked in the survey, by the National Post, a conservative newspaper, were similar to the questions in the previous surveys. If you look at support for some sort of legal union for gay people, then the majority of respondents support the idea.
|
National Post: Too many generals spoil the forces: study |
|
Globe and Mail: Ontario auditor warns of dangers |
Obviously each dept has their own priorities. There should be some minimum level of service that each dept is required to meet.
|