A Duke University engineering graduate built himself a prototype beer launcher.

Recent College Graduate Invents Beer-Tossing Refrigerator

It took the 22-year-old Cornwell about 150 hours and $400 in parts to modify a mini-fridge common to many college dorm rooms into the beer-tossing contraption, which can launch 10 cans of beer from its magazine before needing a reload.

A video can be seen here: Beer Launching Fridge Catapults Those Brewskis Right Into Your Hands

Our cousins across the pond are much more comfortable with Big Brother than we are in the States.

British town's pubs scan fingerprints to spot louts

Revellers in a British town are to have their fingerprints scanned when they enter pubs and clubs in a scheme aimed at weeding out drunken troublemakers.

Just recently the City of Houston wanted to install cameras downtown to put additional technological resources in the hands of police officers. This intent came under fire by Houstonians as Big Brother trying to spy on ordinary citizens.

In the course of debate it was mentioned that New York City has an expensive CCTV system, as do several other cities. The ACLU is still not convinced.

Even the idea of red light cameras in Texas spurred many vigorous debates over government spying.

Yet in the UK such technology is everywhere. London boasts the largest and most elaborate CCTV system anywhere.

American's just aren't as comfortable with the possibility that the system would be used against them, perhaps deviating from its intended person. After all, its people who set policy and people who enforce it. The idea that such invasive technology would be misused for nefarious purposes is not at all out of the realm of possibility.

I don't think I would volunteer for the finger scanner.

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British town's pubs scan fingerprints to spot louts
Mayor not stopping at red-light vote

Your cell phone records can be had by snoops for a small fee. News.com has an article about the problem: News.com - Agencies probing sales of cell phone data.

The Washington Post also has a story describing the methods and proliferation of data brokers:

How prolific is the problem?

"There are probably 100 such sites" known to security officials at Verizon Wireless that offer to sell phone records, said Jeffrey Nelson, a company spokesman, who said Verizon is always trying to respond to abusive practices. He said that the company views all such activity as illegal and that "we have historically, and will continue to, change policies to reflect the changing nature of criminal activity," though he declined to be specific.

So how do databrokers get the data?

Experts say data brokers and private investigators who offer cell phone records for sale probably get them using one of three techniques.

They might have someone on the inside at the carrier who sells the data. Spokesmen for the telephone companies said strict rules prohibiting such activity make this unlikely. But Joel Winston, associate director of the Federal Trade Commission's Financial Practices Division, said other types of data-theft investigations have shown that "finding someone on the inside to bribe is not that difficult."

Another method is "pretexting," in which the data broker or investigator pretends to be the cell phone account holder and persuades the carrier's employees to release the information. The availability of Social Security numbers makes it easier to convince a customer service agent that the caller is the account holder.

Finally, someone seeking call data can try to get access to consumer accounts online.

Telephone companies, like other service firms, are encouraging their customers to manage their accounts over the Internet. Typically, the online capability is set up in advance, waiting to be activated by the customer. But many customers never do.

If the person seeking the records can figure out how to activate online account management in the name of a real customer before that customer does, the call records are there for the taking.

Resources
Washington Post - Online Data Gets Personal: Cell Phone Records for Sale
News.com - Agencies probing sales of cell phone data

At lunch today a friend and I were discussing the proliferation of technology and its impact on the world at large. In the discussion I brought up the ambiguous use of the terms "web" and "internet". I mentioned that the two are indeed separate, but not mutually exclusive, terms. I explained the difference of the two as Webopedia describes:

The Difference Between the Internet and the World Wide Web
Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web (a.k.a. the Web) interchangeably, but in fact the two terms are not synonymous. The Internet and the Web are two separate but related things. The Internet is a massive network of networks, a networking infrastructure. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. Information that travels over the Internet does so via a variety of languages known as protocols.

The World Wide Web, or simply Web, is a way of accessing information over the medium of the Internet. It is an information-sharing model that is built on top of the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. Web services, which use HTTP to allow applications to communicate in order to exchange business logic, use the the Web to share information. The Web also utilizes browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Netscape, to access Web documents called Web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Web documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.

The Web is just one of the ways that information can be disseminated over the Internet. The Internet, not the Web, is also used for e-mail, which relies on SMTP, Usenet news groups, instant messaging and FTP. So the Web is just a portion of the Internet, albeit a large portion, but the two terms are not synonymous and should not be confused.

So there you have it. I expect that in the future you will use the terms correctly. Alternatively you can use the fun term: interweb!

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Webopedia Explanation

No, not really. And let's be honest, 'wasteland' was the first 'w' word I could think of to follow 'world wide' and be a parody on 'www'. So it's still early and I'm not at my best yet this morning.

Nonetheless, the interweb can pose a cornacopia of security threats to your network and devices. And with all of the blogs and chat rooms out there flaming EVERYTHING, it's refreshing to find an interpage like Happy News.

If you need help with your technology terminology or definitions, check out Webopedia. And yes, Webopedia is different from the publicly contributed Wikipedia. Just a clarification, Wikipedia is not necessarily 'open source', though many people refer to it as such. Need a word of the day or the definition of non tech words? Head on over to Merriam Webster's.

Now it's time for that cup of coffee.

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Wikipedia
Webopedia
Happy News
Merriam Webster's

I use Wikipedia quite a bit, knowing full well that content is contributed from the public at large. I've always found that, when cross referenced, Wikipedia is fairly accurate. Naturally people disagree and some have their own agendas. The following article is a welcomed reassurance that Wikipedia compares well to encyclopedias. If anything, Wikipedia offers a good starting point, as does Google, for information.

Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica
In Media 2.0

The journal Nature says the open-access encyclopedia is about as accurate as the old standby.

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Study: Wikipedia as accurate as Britannica
Wikipedia

The Economist has a really good article on the governance of the internet.  

Recently foreign countries have voiced an opinion that governance should be taken away from the United States and given to the U.N.  The Economist argues that the U.N. is slow and inefficient and once even voted against the creation of the internet.  Now they want to control it.

Whatever.  I agree with The Economist.  It’s a good article worth a read.

Resources:
The Economist: Article on Internet Governance

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I was duly corrected by my father that the computer he bought was a C128, not a C64.  

Resources:
Commodore 164 (Wikipedia)
Original Blog: C64

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Wikipedia’s featured article for today is on the Commodore 64.  I fondly remember when my father brought ours home in ’86.  Good times.  This machine put me on the path I’m on today.  Ah, to reminisce.

The Commodore 64 was a popular home computer of the 1980s. Announced by Commodore Business Machines in January 1982 and released in August of that year at a price of US$595, it offered unprecedented value (sound and graphics performance) for the money. Aggressive pricing of the C64 by Commodore was one of the major catalysts for the video game crash of 1983. Approximately 15,000 software titles were made for the Commodore 64, including games, development tools, and office applications. It is also credited with popularizing the computer demo scene. With estimated sales between 17 and 25 million units by the time it was discontinued in 1993, the C64 became and remains the best-selling computer model of all time.

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The Economist’s Technology Quarterly features a short article on Anti-Hurricane Technology:

Anti-hurricane technology
Jun 9th 2005
From The Economist print edition

How can you slow down a hurricane? Moshe Alamaro, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has a plan. Just as setting small, controlled fires can stop forest fires by robbing them of fuel, he proposes the creation of small, man-made tropical cyclones to cool the ocean and rob big, natural hurricanes of their source of energy. His scheme, devised with German and Russian weather scientists and presented at a weather-modification conference in April, involves a chain of offshore barges adorned with upward-facing jet engines. Each barge creates an updraft, causing water to evaporate from the ocean's surface and reducing its temperature. The resulting tropical storms travel towards the shore but dissipate harmlessly. Dr Alamaro reckons that protecting Central America and the southern United States from hurricanes would cost less than $1 billion a year. Most of the cost would be fuel: large jet engines, he observes, are abundant in the graveyards of American and Soviet long-range bombers.

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I got a new camera phone so I'm going to be out and about taking pics.

Check out photos from Friday… next time I’ll try to document better!

Here’s the full link:
http://www.t-mobilepictures.com/mister_cbond/20050812 and the passcode is “derka”

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ISG decided, after their inspection of PCs, to issue everyone headphones as part of a training software rollout.The same guy who has twice been scorned by Das Keyboard was walking around handing out the boxes of headphones.

Yeager and I were knee deep in code in his office when the headphones were issued out.When I returned to my desk there were two sets of headphones.We understand it as the ISG guy paying homage to his new master, Das Keyboard.



The saga will continue!!!


Previous articles on Das Keyboard:
1.Das Keyboard Waits in Ambush
2.Das Keyboard DOWNS ANOTHER!!!
3.Das Keyboard's First Strike
4.Das Keyboard Has Arrived
5.Das Keyboard

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Below is Das Keyboard laying in ambush, waiting for its next victim:



The tally looms overhead to serve as a warning to those who may fall victim next!!!



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So the same guy who Das Keyboard splashed yesterday loses again today.

We received an e-mail from our project secretary which answered two questions:
a). who was the guy from yesterday?
b). is he coming back?

ISG is currently sending a ISG employee to check out your computers for sound cards in preparation for a major software rollout.Please allow them a few minutes to check your computer.

He was hovering around my cube while I was talking to someone, so I asked him if he wanted access.He nodded affirmative then says something to the effect "I don't like your keyboard, so I brought my own."To up the ante on todays takedown, I asked if he was from the IT department.Again, he affirmed my question, setting himself up.I then asked "You're in the IT group and you don't know your way around a keyboard???"LOL!I had a couple of people snickering.

I'm not mean.My humor's simply sophisticated.To further complicate matters I told him the KVM switch was under my desk.I don't think that tripped him up, though.It's a shame, I should have left the switch on my laptop and left the building.That would have been awesome.


Previous articles on Das Keyboard:
1.Das Keyboard's First Strike
2.Das Keyboard Has Arrived
3.Das Keyboard

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Score One for Das Keyboard.

So I brought Das Keyboard into work, along with my laptop today.(I've previously posted about Das keyboard not once, but twice).

Depending on what I'm working on and whether or not I wish to use two monitors, I'll unplug the periphials from the F+ machine assigned to me by ISG and plug them into my laptop.This allows me to configure for dual monitors.Today I retired the plain old keyboard to a drawer and began using Das Keyboard.

After returning from a meeting this afternoon, Chris, who sits in the cube next to me, explained that an ISG guy came by and tried to log onto my machine (whilst in the meeting).Apparently he had some serious issues with Das Keyboard and vocalized them to someone on the other end of the phone.Additionally he couldn't log onto the domain, which is funny because my laptop isn't configured to join any domain.Apparently the fact that both my laptop and the issued machine are on my literal desktop didn't help him to figure out how I had all this hardware configured.

HA!

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Das Keyboard has arrived and it's everything I hoped it would be.

On the plus side the keyboard was designed in Texas...

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The ultimate keyboard.

I had to order one just to prove my status.It's an all black keyboard with blank keys.





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I'm anxiously awaiting NASA's return to flight.

The AP reports (FOX News).



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This is a neat project.The Houston Chronicle TechBlog featured this article in Saturday's edition.The project is detailed on extremetech.com

Essentially what's described is how to build a computer to control a smoker to maintain a constant temperature so maintaining the fire manually is not neccessary when slow smoking.

Project Description
Instead of tending the fire yourself, a small control system can tend it for you, controlling the air flow to maintain a set temperature. You could enhance our design to warn you to add fuel during a very long smoke cycle.

Figure 8-1 shows the smoker we use. It's a slight enhancement of the common horizontal design, hanging a separate firebox on the left of the main smoker. The separate firebox keeps the direct radiant heat from the coals away from the meat, letting the hot smoky air do the cooking. The placement of the firebox lower than the smoker causes the upwards convection flow of the heated air to draw air into the smoker and then up the flue. The air inlet and flue damper are manually adjustable to control airflow and therefore the rate of combustion, which determines the internal smoker temperature.

There is a lot of technical knowledge required to modify a smoker, but it's interesting to look at.Personally I'm going to stick to the art form as I know it: manual tending to the smoker.

A general smoker:


The modified smoker:


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If you come across leetspeak (elite speak), you may take solace in the fact that you've wandered into an area of low self esteem. Leet is spoken by kids who did not invent the technology nor understand the complexities of the networks and software, yet think that their ability to surf and download 'w4r3z' makes them 'kewl'. Riiiiight.

I look down upon those who always take the short cuts. If you take the time to learn the keyboard then typing out a complete sentence will take you no time at all. Anyone who uses leetspeak is cheating themselves and inflating their little egos. And by the way, until you can unplug your mouse and only use a keyboard you've not mastered anything on your machine. Remember DOS? There was no mouse. The mouse is a crutch, everything has a keyboard shortcut. If the software doesn't allow for quick use of the keyboard, then it's written by amateurs and should be binned... but I digress.

Microsoft has published a guide for parents to recognize leetspeak.

Script kiddies and retards that think that playing video games somehow increases their knowledge make me laugh. THAT DOESN'T MAKE YOU A HACKER!

End.

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January 28, 1986... just after lunch Mrs. Shipps 1st grade class at Durrance Elementary School in Orlando, Florida retired to the outside trailer classroom to watch STS-51-L takeoff from launch pad 31-A at Kennedy Space Center (near Cape Canaveral)... less than a minute after take off the entire class was outside watching the entrails of the Solid Rocket Boosters trail off in their separate ways. Most of us had seen the shuttles launch before, our fathers sitting with us on the roof of our homes on clear evenings...

Everyone knew then that tragedy had met the crew of the Challenger...

February 1, 2003: I had barely rubbed the sand out of my eyes when I turned on FOX News to learn the fate of STS-107... they had just broken up over Texas...

Astronauts have been my heros ever since I can remember. Even now I get teary-eyed thinking about the risks they face for the greater good of mankind. How can you not be fascinated with space travel? The risks and the rewards are both so great and yet incomprehensable to those of us who have never taken the time to appreciate it.

Space flight is inheritanly dangerous. No doubt. I hope NASA has once again been spurred to do EVERYTHING it can to mitigate the risks against my heros.

The AP reports (From The Houston Chronicle) about NASA's return to manned spaceflight.

The future doesn't belong to the fainhearted, it belongs to the brave...

...we will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved good-bye; and slipped the surly bonds of Earth and touched the face of God - Ronald Reagan

Fallen Heros:
Challenger 1986
President Reagan's address to the nation (Challenger)
Columbia 2003
President Bush's address to the nation (Columbia)

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ICAAN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is finally considering the use of 'xxx' as a domain suffix for pornography related web sites. The article was reported by the Associated Press.

AP mentioned that the blue film industry is a $12 billion a year industry. I never realized how massive the industry is.

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