I guess this is kind of a continuation of yesterday’s post… I have one invitation to Gmail to give away. So, if you read this site and you’d like a free, 1 GB e-mail account, then either e-mail me or post a comment below.
This would be perfect for someone with a silly Yahoo.com account, like for example progrock_nutball. Let me know if you’re interested.
Scrivs over at Forever Geek is giving out an invitation to GMail to anyone who links to his site. Since I visit the site daily and enjoy the content. I’d be glad to link to it.
If you’re at least a little bit geeky, you’ll probably enjoy his site. He covers news on several different topics like Gadgets, Programming, and Open Source. Lately, he’s been reviewing a lot of Anime. I haven’t watched much anime since Robotech (back then we still called it Japanimation), but some of the new stuff looks interesting.
Here’s a bit of a warning for all of you Internet Explorer users out there. CNET News has an article up right now called Researchers warn of infectious Web sites. In it, they discuss two flaws in Internet Explorer that could let someone take over your computer. The difference this time is that you can get infected just by browsing the web. Here’s the meat of the article:
…online organized crime groups are breaking into Web servers and surreptitiously inserting code that takes advantage of two flaws in Internet Explorer that Microsoft has not yet fixed. Those flaws allow the Web server to install a program that takes control of the user’s computer.
And in case you’re wondering why your computer is running so slow and you’re getting so many popups, this article addresses that, too:
Earlier this month, an independent security researcher found an aggressive advertising program, known as adware, that installed itself onto a victim’s computer via the same two flaws in Internet Explorer.
Nice. At this point you’re saying to yourself “It’s OK, I have antivirus software!”
The group also pointed out that the malicious program uploaded to a victim’s computer is not currently detected as a virus by most antivirus software.
Ouch. So what’s my advice? Simple, don’t use Internet Explorer. Go to http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ and install Firefox.
Firefox is the best web browser I’ve ever used. It’s a great way to avoid all of the flaws in Internet Explorer and at the same time introduce yourself to some open-source software.
History was made today.
Scaled Composites became the first private company to launch a manned craft into space this morning. Mike Melvill piloted SpaceShipOne 62 miles above the Earth’s surface to the edge of space.
He experienced three minutes of weightlessness. While weightless he opened a bag of M&M’s and watched them float around the cockpit.
After that, he landed successfully back where he started in the Mojave desert.
You can get all of the details in this CNN.com article.
Things like this restore my faith in humanity.
According to this CNN.com poll, over 30% of the people in the US are idiots who will believe what ever they’re told. I didn’t believe it myself, but these numbers don’t lie. Click this image to see for yourself:
What makes this even more interesting are the other stories involved. On the one hand we have the report from the 9/11 commission. Here’s a quote from their report:
The panel said it found “no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.”
Then we have the words of the Bush administration:
President Bush repeated his administration’s claim that Iraq was in league with al Qaeda under Saddam Hussein’s rule…
At this point, I would have a lot more respect for the President if he would just own up to it. Sometimes you just have to say “Sorry, I messed up.” But I don’t think Bush is that kind of person. I think he’ll stand by his original statement no matter what.
There’s something very rewarding about growing your own food.
We started off by growing our own herbs. But I don’t think herbs really count as food. After all, an herb is basically just a weed. You can snip off a few leaves occasionally to use while cooking, but you can’t exactly make a meal of it.
Last year we planted a tomato plant, but it never produced any fruit. I remember seeing a few blooms on it, but shortly after they appeared a storm came through. The storm either blew or washed all of the blooms off the plant. Therefore, we grew no tomatoes last year.
Undaunted by last year’s failure, we bought two plants this spring and put them in containers on our front porch. Our plants fared much better this year. Each one had countless blooms followed by 10-20 tiny little tomatoes. Finally, the tomatoes have begun to ripen. Here’s a picture of the very first tomato that we picked:
Yes, it tasted as good as it looks. So far we’ve picked about 10 tomatoes from our two little plants, and there are plenty more still growing. If we keep this up we might just have to become farmers.
Let me start off by saying that Paige and I have a wonderful relationship. I can’t imagine spending my life with anyone else.
We’ve never had any problems that we couldn’t talk about rationally and work through (no matter how much money I just wasted on an amp, or a Corvette, or some computer part). Our views on most issues are very similar, and when they differ we can always discuss the topic and see both sides.
It’s sometimes interesting to get a peek into the lives of other couples who aren’t quite as like-minded as we are. With that in mind, here’s a site I just stumbled accross today – Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. I think that’s the longest domain name I’ve ever seen. Here’s just one example of the kinds of things these people argue about:
Our sink is blue and we’re not talking about it. It happened over a week ago; I was leaning over the sink, brushing my teeth, when I noticed that there was a sort of lazuline patina that had seeped over most of the surface. Margret hasn’t mentioned anything about this. Why she hasn’t is that she’s obviously tried to clean the sink with, well, I don’t know, some fluid used for stripping entrenched cerriped colonies from the hulls of submarines or something (they were probably offering three bottles of the stuff for the price of two at Aldi). She is waiting for me to mention it. But I am a wily fox, and will be doing nothing of the sort. I’m no wet-behind-the-ears, naive youth anymore, not by a looooong way, and I can perfectly see the spiked pit the seemingly innocent words, ‘Did you know the sink’s blue’ are covering. It would go – precisely – like this:
Me: Did you know the sink’s blue?
Margret: Yes. I did. I used a jungle exfoliant produced by the Taiwanese military to clean it, and it discoloured the surface.
Me: Oooooooo. K.
Margret: Well maybe, just maybe, if you cleaned the sink once in a while…
You see what she did there? Now I’m facing a whole day of ‘When did you last…?’ Well, not this canny fellow – not this time, my friends.
Our sink is blue and we’re not talking about it.
Be sure you have plenty of free time before you visit this page. I’ve been reading for a long time now and I’m only half way through it.