computers
oracknows | July 8, 2007As I mentioned yesterday, I recently perused all the e-mails that Gmail had flagged as spam and to my dismay found a lot of legitimate e-mail, including mailing list e-mails and Movable Type e-mails notifying me of comments being caught up in the filter. However, I found something scarier than that. In fact, I found perhaps the scariest spam that I've ever encountered.
Did you know that spammers are claiming to be selling chemotherapeutic agents from India? Check it out:
From: euroasias@ricmail.com
Subject: Anti-Cancer Drugs
Date: July 6, 2007 10:32:56 PM EDT
To: [ORAC]
EUROASIA's TRANS…
oracknows | July 6, 2007A bit of blog housekeeping here...
Normally, I find out about new comments on my blog through e-mail notifications that get sent to me shortly after you, the reader and commenter, post your comments. I find it much easier simply to scroll through the e-mails and see what the reaction is to my posts and to note any comments to which I think a response from me is warranted. In addition, usually about once a day, I check the "Junk Comments" folder on Movable Type to see if there are any comments that fell victim to the spam filters that I need to retrieve and publish. (As an aside, the most…
oracknows | May 14, 2007While trolling the deepest, darkest, most vile racist parts of the Internet, as I am wont to do looking around for new Holocaust denial idiocy to take down, I came across something unexpected, so unexpected that it made me curious. Basically, Bill White, Commander of the American National Socialist Workers' Party, apparently annoyed that he can't edit Wikipedia pages to conform to his racist views, proposed a strategy for "destroying" Wikipedia. Apparently, according to white racists, Wikipedia is full of "Jewish bias," whatever that means.
I'm sure there must be Wikipedians out there. (Heck…
oracknows | October 15, 2006Accept Jesus, Forever Forgiven?
Maybe, but I suspect that even the most devout Christian would doubt whethere even Jesus Himself would see fit to forgive the headache- and seizure-inducing design of the front page of this particular Christian site.
Don't come complaining to me if you need to lie down and take some aspirin after viewing the rather--uh--colorful site at the link above. You have been warned.
Maybe you would find this more soothing instead.
oracknows | October 14, 2006Admit it.
We're probably all guilty of this at one time or another. Come on, 'fess up. You've done it too. I bet at some point in your life you've used one of The 7 Worst Fonts.
Especially Comic Sans MS. Even I've used that font a couple of times.
Does anyone else have suggestions for fonts that should be added to the list?
oracknows | September 23, 2006Oooh, I have to get me one of these!
Of course, the specs would have to be more up to snuff with what one can purchase these days. Even so, I wonder if anyone could put one together with a Mac.
oracknows | September 1, 2006The latest edition of the History Carnival has been posted at Frog In A Well.
Even though I've been on vacation and blogging (not to mention blog traffic) has been light other than reposts, someone actually submitted something I posted, thus keeping someone linking to me in my absence. I hope the lack of activity is due to lots of people being on vacation at the end of August and my relative lack of new material and that things will perk up after Tuesday. In the meantime, I'm taking it easy and counting down the few remaining days of vacation.
In actuality, though, the only reason I didn't…
oracknows | August 12, 2006After my experience with using (or, as at least one of my readers has suggested, misusing) my blog to get an article to which my university does not provide online access, it occurred to me just how much our means of accessing the scientific literature has changed in the last decade and just how radical those changes have been. Again, those who are old farts with me may remember that a little more than 10 years ago at the institution where I did my residency, we could do electronic searches of the Medline database, but it wasn't over the Internet. Basically, the library bought access to…
oracknows | June 9, 2006From AppleInsider:
But when it comes to battling for headlines, Leopard may have its work cut out for it -- sources maintain that around precisely the same time, Mr. Jobs will also take the wraps off Apple's most powerfully stunning Macintosh to date: the Mac Pro.
Aside from speculation that the Intel-based Power Mac successor would conform to Intel Corp's "Core" architecture, there have been few reports about the machine. Until recently, Apple's professional line of desktop computers stood at the pinnacle of its product portfolio, showcasing both the Mac's beauty and its brawn.
In speaking…
oracknows | May 5, 2006Continuing on a theme, physicians can be really clueless sometimes; case in point, what happened at my medical school a couple of days ago.
The university that I work at is pretty large. It has three campuses several hundred, if not over a thousand, faculty members spread out between the campuses. Like many large universities, it has multiple mailing lists which are used to distribute information and make announcements. There are mailing lists for the basic science faculty, for graduate students, for medical students, for the residents of various departments, for staff members, and for…
oracknows | April 9, 2006
Lucky bastards living in Manhattan. You'll soon have a flagship Apple Store that will be open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.
Bastards.
Is it just me, though, or does the store thus far bear an uncanny resemblance to a Borg ship?
This is one case where I'd gladly be assimilated.
oracknows | April 7, 2006It's rare for me to be gone so much in such a short period of time. Two meetings in two weeks, one in San Diego and one in Washington, DC, and I'm bushed. One thing that continually irks me on the two or three occasions each year when I go to meetings is how blatantly hotels rip customers off for high speed Internet access. Most of the hotels that I end up staying at for these meetings are pretty nice hotels. Some of them are even very nice. You'd think that they'd throw in high speed Internet access and/or wi-fi as part of the package. After all, even a budget hotel chain like the Baymont…
oracknows | April 5, 2006So now it's all becoming clear what a major part of the reason for Apple to change over to Intel chips was. Yesterday, Apple released software that will allow the new Intel Macs to run Windows XP:
SAN JOSE, Calif. - To broaden its appeal in a Windows-dominated world, Apple Computer Inc. unveiled software Wednesday to help owners of its new Intel-based Macs run not only its own operating system but also Microsoft Corp.'s rival software.
Apple's shares surged as Wall Street bet the move would help Apple grow its current worldwide personal computer market share beyond the current range of 3…
tlambert | November 2, 2005 A couple of my students have created a cool web page that lets you create beautiful lace patterns with a few clicks of a mouse. Well, pictures of lace patterns, but you can print out instructions for crocheting them.
It also lets you create really ugly laces, but if you keep rating the patterns it creates it will learn (via an evolutionary technique) what patterns people think look nice and be able to produce more of them. Try it out!
tlambert | October 8, 2005The Sydney Morning Herald reports
The High Court Computer games enthusiasts are free to modify their Playstations to run cheap games bought overseas or online, following a landmark High Court ruling.
The court found that "mod-chips"- used to override technology that prevents consoles running games not purchased in Australia - are legal.
The decision follows a four-year battle between Eddy Stevens, a Sydney mod-chip supplier based in a backyard at Kensington, and the electronics giant Sony, which claimed the chips were overriding its copyright protection technology.
Kim Weatherall has the…
tlambert | January 9, 2005 According to my logs, about half of the visitors here are using Internet Explorer. There is a critical security hole in Internet Explorer that allows a web site you visit to take over your computer. Secunia has the details and a test to see if you are vulnerable. If you are, the best solution is to switch to another browser. I recommend Firefox. It's free, has many more useful features than Internet Explorer, and you can have it installed and running in a few minutes. (Via Slashdot. PC World has more details.)
tlambert | November 17, 2004 Tech Central Station has an article by Robert McHenry criticising Wikipedia for inaccuracy. Yes, this Tech Central Station. McHenry found an error in the Wikipedia article on Alexander Hamilton. Of course, within hours of his pointing out the error, it was fixed. Unlike the numerous and far more serious errors you see in Tech Central Station.
Incidently Tech Central Station is drafted by a lobbying company that works for Microsoft. And Microsoft Encarta is a competitor to Wikipedia. And McHenry was Editor in Chief of the Encyclopedia Britannica, another competitor to…
tlambert | July 2, 2004 Tom Giovenetti, the president of the Institute for Policy Innovation has responded to my story on the Microsoft-funded think tanks attack on open source. It's rather an odd response---he's angry that I dared to suggest that they were funded by Microsoft, but he's not going to deny it. Anyway, here it is, with my comments:
* Your journalism is as lousy as your software.
My software works fine, thank you. First, you accuse IPI of taking money from Microsoft, but you have no facts or proof. True, you'd LIKE us to do your homework for you, but in…