The Chick From Just Shoot Me

Limited Pie. I will very rarely deviate from the core pie mission to write about markets and trading - I thought I'd answer the question of why I started this blog, why I am blogging about trading and why I think blogging is a revolution on the Internet, and not just an evolution. [It's my blog and I can write if I want to, write if I want to, write if I want to. You would write to if someone blogged you.]

iMac delivers the goods. This review of the Apple iMac flat-panel computer joins a chorus of raves, from the cover of Time magazine to the self-described geeks at cable's TechTV network. [Plenty of people have described me as a geek, thank you very much.]

Human Virus Scanner. During our research for “Don't Cross the Memes” we encountered several potent memetic viruses. Six months later we have perfected a simple yet effective human virus detector. Scan yourself, or scan your friends. [I am so sick. No medication could cure this. You're soaking in it.]

3Com To Deliver NIC-based Firewalls. Running the firewall on the NIC also prevents “secondary attacks,” where a malicious worm, for example, takes control of a desktop or server and uses it as a launching pad for further attacks. Such malicious outbound data flows will be detected by the Embedded Firewall. [It's about time someone developed this.]

Frying foods on PC components. With everything completed, I shut down the PC, took the tray off the heatsink, promptly removed the egg and put it onto my bread with a little brown sauce and woo hoo - food time. [Tomorrow we learn how to make a lobster bisque with your printer.]

InformationWeek's Three Topics. While going through a stack of InformationWeeks yesterday, it struck me that you could divide the magazine's contents over the past few months into three evenly divided piles. [I finished reading David's new book last night. It may have been small pieces, but he's still "got" the big idea.]

Corporate Death Penalty? Should there be such a thing as a corporate death penalty? Historically corporations that commit massive fraud have been fined, sometimes enough to cause bankruptcy. Bankruptcy however can allow for a corporation to continue its existence and restore itself to solvency just as a person can do so. [Yeah, but we'd wind up losing 99% of corporate America if we instituted something like this. Not that Michael Moore would mind.]

On the Lam. Our new lambs are arriving today. I'll put up the Lamb Cam so you can see them. [We want goat cams! We want goat cams!]

FlashSwitch v1.0 [300k] W9x/2k/XP FREE. Did you know that you could turn Macromedia Flash on and off? Well, you can, but you'll need this program. A tiny box sits in your System Tray (programs seem to like that thing), and all you have to do is click on it to turn Flash-y Web content on or off. This is really nice to have if you're not in the mood for lots of moving and dancing pictures - when you just want to surf the more, let's say, “stable” sections of the Web. “The program will expire in approximately 6 months after downloading from FlashSwitch's official site. Another time-limited demo or a commercial version will be available by then.”

Go Beyond Downloading. 10 Ways To Improve Your PC Video Experience provides a diversity of solutions from cheap to not so cheap to manipulate videos with your PC. If I can just find… [My left shoe.]

Free Software Magazine. This issue include articles on the history of PostgreSQL, introduction to Jabber, Treecc, and E2K, the Qt/Embedded GUI toolkit, database presentations using XML/XSLT and context, and more.” [Ah, nobody likes free software.]

Will Microsoft Cut Off the Clones? The idea sounds incredible, perhaps a little crazy: Why would Microsoft want to stop licensing its OS to hardware manufacturers and start selling its own brand of PCs? What evidence is there that this might happen? [I still say that the only way they'll survive is if they release the source code to everyone.]

Four Words That Could Ruin Anime. Lifestyle is the key. The shows and graphic novels have an incredibly loyal following. When his animators began wearing T-shirts emblazoned with anime characters he'd never seen before, Kasanoff got interested. [If you don't have the Right Stuf, you don't have nothing. Wait, I shouldn't be using no double negatives.]

NEWS - Summary software. At Columbia University, researchers are working on software that can do what members of the Fourth Estate often struggle with: Write a lead paragraph. [The popcorn you've been eating has been...]

CanÂ’t Get No Satisfaction? Unique offer to 'buy-out'existing hosting contracts for companies that are experiencing problems or are unhappy with their existing hosting provider. [I hope they're ready to take on 99% of the world, because I've yet to meet someone who is 100% satisfied with their IPP]

HTML Shrinker 2.50. The Plugin Site is pleased to announce Version 2.50 of HTML Shrinker. HTML Shrinker is a tool for reducing the size of various web, wap and script files with great efficiency and enormous speed. As a result web or wap sites will load faster, need less web space, less bandwidth and server perfmance. Thus HTML Shrinker continually helps saving web hosting fees. [FrontPage must die. GoLive can die with it. Oh, and let's not forget about every other WYSIWYG code bloater on the planet.]

Pioneer 10 phones home. The NASA spacecraft Pioneer 10 contacted controllers on Earth Saturday, 30 years to the day… [It's spyware! Someone, quick - call the press!]

See currently loaded drivers in XP. What's the quickest way (in Windows XP) to get a list of the currently loaded drivers (including module names and descriptions)? Get out of the GUI; you're better off at the command line for this tip. Browse to your desktop folder for simplicity's sake (usually found at C: Documents and Settings [Username] Desktop). Now, at the command line, enter: “driverquery /V > drivers.txt” (sans quotes). That /V provides a more “verbose” output. Other notable switches include /FO (which formats the output as a table, list, or comma separated values) and /SI (which provides details about any signed driver). Open that freshly-created drivers.txt file and you'll be in business. On a more entertaining note, do you remember the music that played when you first started Windows XP? Ya know, the one that sounded like an Enigma tune? If you wanna hear it again, you can find it at C: WINDOWS \ system32 \ oobe \ images \ title.wma. Of course, if you want to free up 3 MB worth of space, you can delete it and the intro.wmv file sitting next to it. Eat your heart out, Enya.

Monsters Inc. - More Footage. Although Disney already sold about 15 million copies of several VHS and DVD versions of “Pearl Harbor” last year, Chapek believes the new cut of the movie could be one of the biggest sellers this year. [Toy Story was pretty unique - everything else seems to be a copycat. I don't care how they animated all of those beast hairs.]

Update: Internet License Plate Gallery. Our license plate gallery is hot - and we're not the only ones who think so! Thanks to all your great submissions. Cruise on in, and take a look at both our brand new award and your latest plate entries. [Personalized plates were cool - in high school. Actually, I'd love to get one again.]

A movie about They Might Be Giants. As if you needed another reason to go to SxSW, the movie about They Might Be Giants will premere there. [Dangit! Why did I have to start Gnomedex!?]

Jeffrey Zeldman Presents. The Desktop Pictures collection, long a mainstay of this site’s Steal These Graphics! department, has been retired, as those creaky old images (1995–1997) no longer reflect what we do. The old pages, sans pictures, are still online, but are no longer linked from the living matrix of this site. [Please, pardon his icons.]

Scientists Develop Holodeck. Canadian scientists have opened a powerful computing lab they said will help speed up research into diseases like cancer and diabetes by allowing researchers to view three-dimensional models of cells in a room similar to the holodeck in the Star Trek television series. [Leave it to those wacky Canadians. Now we can get virtually drunk. Sign me up!]

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