ChefMayhem of the brilliant Haunted Mansion fansite writes, "Next month, DoomBuggies is hosting its 10-year anniversary bash at Disneyland Park in the Blue Bayou in New Orleans Square. We rented out the restaurant for the evening, and the custom menu features items such as "Bride's Beating Heart Red Pepper Bisque," Filet Mignon and Shrimp, and "Graveyard Chocolate Coffins." We have WED Imagineer X Atencio and a few other Haunted Mansion legends lined up to speak at the program. We hired the Hitchhiking Ghosts to join us. We tracked down the Randotti heir, who's going to talk about designing and creating early souvenir skulls and tombstones for Disneyland, and we're giving away an authorized Randotti product as a special gift to each attendee. We're hosting a free raffle to registrants that will offer 1 out of every 10 attendees the opportunity to take a behind-the-scenes tour of Club 33. And after the park closes, we're taking a private, after-hours ride through the Haunted Mansion to close out the evening."
Come join with like-minded fiends at DoomBuggies' 10th Anniversary
graveyard smash! While our original registration deadline is past, a few
cancellations have left a small number of tickets available - so come
join us! Attendees at our Swinging Wake will have a rare opportunity to
hear stories directly from some of the famed imagineers who originally
worked with Walt Disney and created the Haunted Mansion - in a personal
setting with amazing food and wonderful people. This is truly a rare
opportunity for fans of Disneyland and Disney history.
bcmbyte writes "IBM in recent months has been hit with lawsuits filed on behalf of thousands of U.S. employees who claim the company illegally classified them as exempt from federal and state overtime statutes in order to avoid paying them extra whenever they worked more than 40 hours per week. The good news for those workers is that IBM now plans to grant them so-called "non-exempt" status so they can collect overtime pay. The bad news: IBM will cut their base salaries by 15% to make up the difference."
By Luke Anderson Sometimes I wonder if the people from the RIAA and the MPAA ever sit down and fabricate new ways to pin poor sales of music and/or movies on today’s youth. Actually, after reading... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 12:41 pm
The countdown is on for the first regular space tourists to rocket into space after the new Virgin Galactic aircraft were unveiled in New York. They will carry six passengers along with two pilots into... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 11:58 am
This is my local newspaper, called The Villager . If you live in Greenwich Village, NYC, you probably read The Villager. But there are several problems with The Villager (which was voted NY State's "Best... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 11:51 am
By Evan Ackerman I’ve never thought that the iPod earbuds were that great, but I guess they’ve become something of a tech fashion statement. If you’d like to leave people in absolutely... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 11:42 am
By Luke Anderson I don’t really have any issues downloading pictures from my digital camera to my computer. Mostly because I just pop out the SD card and insert it into the card reader in my PC.... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 11:40 am
By Evan Ackerman You know, I think the product pictures above pretty much say it all when it comes to these two gadgets. Push the button, and one of them will provide one of forty sketchy pick up lines,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 11:28 am
By Evan Ackerman Isn’t she a beauty? This is Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo, the solar system’s first commercial passenger spaceship that we know of. It was just announced on Wednesday,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 11:17 am
MELBOURNE (Reuters) - An Australian teenager who hosted a wild party that caused a near-riot after 500 guests saw his Internet invitation has decided to turn professional and will host a... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 11:10 am
Record companies' revenue from digital music sales rose 40% to 1.45 billion over the past year, but the growth is still failing to cover losses from the collapse of... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 11:02 am
LONDON (Reuters) - Sales of music fell at a faster rate in 2007 than 2006 despite digital sales soaring, and the gatekeepers of the Web must act if the industry is to beat piracy, the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 10:59 am
Record companies' revenue from digital music sales rose 40 percent to $2.9 billion over the past year, but the growth is still failing to cover losses from collapse of international CD... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 10:00 am
The record industry has called on internet service providers and governments to take stronger action against digital piracy. By Owen Gibson Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 9:57 am
A lively and sometimes scrappy debate on whether global warming is fueling bigger and nastier hurricanes like Katrina is adding an edge to a gathering of forecasters here. The venue... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 9:45 am
Climate change is occurring far more rapidly than even the worst predictions of the UN's Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change, Al Gore said on Thursday. ... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 9:20 am
Industrial conglomerate Siemens AG said Thursday it saw a huge rise in first-quarter net profit, bolstered significantly by a sale of assets and beating analysts' expectations. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 9:07 am
Yahoo Inc. , is in early discussions with major record labels over offering unprotected MP3s either for sale or for free as part of an ad-supported service, two record company executives familiar with... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 24 Jan 2008 | 8:23 am
coondoggie writes "The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration this week announced a $3 million, three-year program that to test the use of unmanned aircraft to measure hurricanes, arctic and Antarctic ice changes and other environmental tasks. The agency said the drone aircraft would be outfitted with special sensors and technology to help NOAA scientists better predict a hurricane's intensity and track, how fast Arctic summer ice will melt, and whether soggy Pacific storms will flood West Coast cities. Starting this summer, unmanned aircraft will take instruments on research flights that are too dangerous or too long for pilots and scientists."
Today in my ongoing series of photos from my travels over the years: a mountain of scrummy mushrooms on sale at a Helsinki street-market, taken very early in the morning. I ate some very good mushrooms on that trip.
Link
Matt sez, "Al Wynn, a cosponsor of last year's COPE Act which would have gutted net neutrality, released a fake news video to rebut charges of corruption. The funny thing is that he reiterates the charges in the video, something you don't do as a politician. I've also included a picture of a fundraiser invitation by various telecom PACs, including the Verizon Good Government Committee."
Link
(Thanks, Matt!)
Mario sez, "Michael Swanwick does this way cool thing where he writes a short short story, then puts it in a bottle and seals it, then destroys all other drafts and incarnations of the story, thus creating a unique object that you would have to destroy if you wanted to read the story."
After the story is placed in the bottle, I sign and date the glass with a diamond-tipped pen. Then I cork the bottle and Marianne covers the top with sealing wax. After writing a letter of provenance, I destroy every copy, physical or electronic, other than the one inside the bottle. It is now, in the original, unspoiled sense of the word, unique.
Finally, I give it away. Usually to a charity auction or such, but sometimes to a friend. The owner of the bottle, whoever he or she is, can either read the story or else possess the object -- but cannot do both.
Here's a clever strategy for grocery-store coupons from The Simple Dollar: sit on your coupons for a month, then spend them. Coupons are often the leading edge of product promotion, which features progressively deeper savings. By waiting a month, you can apply your coupons to an already discounted price. Food prices are up -- do something about it.
He gave me a tip: he said to take the coupon section out of the Sunday paper and put it aside for four weeks - don’t even bother to look at it. Four weeks later, open it up and clip everything that’s even remotely of interest, whether you’d buy it normally or not.
At that point, take the wad of coupons to the store and just look at the shelves. Magically, most of those coupons you have will sync up very well with stuff that’s already on sale on the shelves. When you combine the sale price and the coupon, you’ll usually be able to get items for next to nothing.
Why does this work? Coupons in the newspaper are usually the first wave of a product push from large companies. They’ll put out coupons to start bumping up the sales, then they’ll move onto sale prices later on in the promotion. The reason for doing these in waves is so that the overall product sales trend looks solidly positive and not just a big spike with a fall-off. Plus, coupon users who use the product, like it, return to the store, and notice the item on sale are often willing to buy the item again. I’ll admit to noticing this working for me in the past with products like V-8 Fusion.
William Gibson's been to see Cloverfield, and he's made note of a visual miscue that tells us the film was not "made by native science fiction minds." Hollywood sf is far removed from written sf, largely due to stuff like this -- tossed off, poorly-thought-through fit-and-finish details that miss opportunities to really conjure the future.
I saw Cloverfield last night, and nothing about it bugged me more than those quotes around "Central Park" on the DoD evidence tag that opens the film. It immediately tells us that this film has not been made by native science fiction minds. If Central Park is no longer called Central Park, but is officially referred to as "the area formerly known as 'Central Park'", but the DoD still exists, we know that this is not a *far-future* evidence tag. So if Central Park is now known as "The Killing Fields", or "The Ghastly Black Glass Ocean", then *tell* us. Those quotes are extraordinarily clumsy (and the card itself is typographically unconvincing).
ancientribe writes "Microsoft issued a year-one security report on its Windows Vista operating system today, and it turns out Vista logged less than half the vulnerabilities than Windows XP did in its first year. According to the new Microsoft report, Vista also had fewer vulnerabilities in its first year than other OSes — including Red Hat rhel4ws, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS, and Apple Mac OS X 10.4 — did in their first years."
NewsCloud writes "Germany's data-protection commissioner, Peter Scharr told a European Parliament hearing on online data protection that when someone is identified by an IP, or Internet protocol, address, 'then it has to be regarded as personal data.' Scharr acknowledged that IP addresses for a computer may not always be personal or linked to an individual. If the E.U. rules that IP addresses are personal, then it could regulate the way search engines record this data. According to the article, Google does an incomplete job of anonymizing this data while Microsoft does not record IP addresses for anonymous search."
The Apple Macintosh, 24 years old as of Jan. 24, is one of the great computer success stories of all time. But Apple has had its share of duds and flops, as this gallery of failed Apple products shows.
Alex Rivera's eye-opening film delivers a message at Sundance: As technology marches forward, the gulf between the haves and the have-nots will widen into an ugly abyss.
Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama's campaign attempts to defuse false rumors by encouraging supporters to send debunking e-mail blasts to everyone in their contact lists. But the plan could backfire, according to professors who've studied urban myths.
Whether you're a musician, DJ or producer, you'll want to check out our picks for the hottest music tech on the show floor of this year's music-merchants conference.
The Apple Macintosh, 24 years old as of Jan. 24, is one of the great computer success stories of all time. But Apple has had its share of duds and flops, as this gallery of failed Apple products shows.
An anonymous reader writes "Netcraft has written about a website offering free phishing kits with one ironic twist — they all contain backdoors to steal stolen credentials from the fraudsters that deploy them. Deliberately deceptive code inside the kits means that script kiddies are unlikely to realize that any captured credit card numbers also end up getting sent to the people who made the phishing kits. The same group was also responsible for another backdoored phishing kit used against Bank of America earlier this month."
Anonymous Coward writes "Boosting the ranks of federal employees who telework is a slow, sometimes painful process, despite numerous incentives and legislative edicts lobbed at U.S. agencies over the years. Take the situation at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), which last month was ordered by a federal arbitration panel to allow its legal instrument examiners to telework on a pilot basis. ATF was against letting these specialists telework because it says the material they need to remove from agency offices in order to telework posed a security risk. The Federal Service Impasses Panel (FSIP) became involved at the request of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), which successfully argued its case for allowing the examiners to telework on a pilot basis."
The pricey Nokia E90 Communicator had identity issues: It's great for creating text documents like a laptop and makes crystal-clear phone calls on par with iPhone.
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Come join with like-minded fiends at DoomBuggies' 10th Anniversary graveyard smash! While our original registration deadline is past, a few cancellations have left a small number of tickets available - so come join us! Attendees at our Swinging Wake will have a rare opportunity to hear stories directly from some of the famed imagineers who originally worked with Walt Disney and created the Haunted Mansion - in a personal setting with amazing food and wonderful people. This is truly a rare opportunity for fans of Disneyland and Disney history.
Matt sez, "Al Wynn, a cosponsor of last year's COPE Act which would have gutted net neutrality, released a fake news video to rebut charges of corruption. The funny thing is that he reiterates the charges in the video, something you don't do as a politician. I've also included a picture of a fundraiser invitation by various telecom PACs, including the Verizon Good Government Committee."
Link
(Thanks, Matt!)
After the story is placed in the bottle, I sign and date the glass with a diamond-tipped pen. Then I cork the bottle and Marianne covers the top with sealing wax. After writing a letter of provenance, I destroy every copy, physical or electronic, other than the one inside the bottle. It is now, in the original, unspoiled sense of the word, unique.
I saw Cloverfield last night, and nothing about it bugged me more than those quotes around "Central Park" on the DoD evidence tag that opens the film. It immediately tells us that this film has not been made by native science fiction minds. If Central Park is no longer called Central Park, but is officially referred to as "the area formerly known as 'Central Park'", but the DoD still exists, we know that this is not a *far-future* evidence tag. So if Central Park is now known as "The Killing Fields", or "The Ghastly Black Glass Ocean", then *tell* us. Those quotes are extraordinarily clumsy (and the card itself is typographically unconvincing).
