Arrgh...

I hate cars. I totally hate them, with a passion. It never fails, just when you think one is running alright and everything is fine... BAM!!
I had a problem a few months back with the power window on the passenger side of my truck (this is not the actual truck (mine is magenta), just a picture I found so you could see what it looks like). It was stuck down, and I couldn't get the power window to roll back up! I could pull it up so that it was closed at least, but it would slide back down if you hit a bump. So it turns out that the regulator for that window had died, and after a few days and $500 (or so) dollars, it was fixed. Well, now (of course) the DRIVER side window is broken - only this time, I can't get at it to pull it back up! So it's stuck ALL THE WAY DOWN, and folks, it was a COLD drive to work today. I'm very annoyed and pissed off, and since I'll bet the regulator on that window is dead (cause it just figures it will be), it looks like I'm also out another $500...

iPod users are not as likely to steal music

According to a study conducted recently, owners of Apple iPods are less likely to steal music than users of other MP3 players. The survey of US and UK music buyers reveals that even though 25 per cent of people admit to downloading music from file-sharing services, only seven per cent of iPod owners do so. I guess we iPod owners are just an honest bunch, eh? This sure would seem to contradict Steve Ballmer's opinion of iPod users, back in 2004 he told reporters in London that "The most common format of music on an iPod is 'stolen'". Oh well, I guess you can't be right all of the time, right Steve?

Email spam on the decline - uh yeah... sure it is

Here's another quick post for today - I found a funny opinion article written for The Guardian that seems to think that spam emails are on the decline. Right - SURE they are :) I get quite a bit of spam still, but I'll admit that very little of it ever hits my inbox. The majority of it is filtered out by the spam filters I use - my ISP provided accounts (which are POP accounts) I pull down with Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5, and it has a really great built in junk mail filter. I also have a Google Gmail account, and their spam filtering works really well too. I still get spam - but I can just delete it easily and never really have to look at it much. Which is nice, since I'm not looking to buy any penny stocks, or help out the Nigerian Finance Minister, or increase the size of my member.

Computer problems driving UK citizens to alcohol and smoking to cope with the stress

Howdy all - sorry I haven't posted in so long, but I've been pretty busy recently. Having to come back to work after a vacation sucks, hard. Anyhow, I was reading this article from BBC News about a poll conducted by UK charity Developing Patient Partnerships about what causes stress for them. 30% responded that 'IT Problems' cause them the most stress, and out of the 1000 people polled, 27% of men and 23% of women said they would light up a cigarette in such situations. And more than a third of men and a quarter of women have a drink to cope with stress. So it looks like computer woes are leading people in the UK to ruin - I know that my problems make me wish I could have a few drinks every now and then!

Best wishes for a Happy New Year!

Here's hoping that everyone out there (all three or four of you who read this blog) has a wonderful New Year - get out and party tonight like it's 2005! I'll be taking next week off, and will be working on my New Year's resolution... get a new job (I really need one). I definitely need the time off, it'll hopefully help me start 2006 right. So here's to Auld Lang Syne and all that - Happy New Year everybody!

AOL's Top Ten list of Spam e-mail subjects

AOL published it's yearly list of the top ten spam email subject lines recently, and here it is -

1. Donald Trump Wants You - Please Respond
2. Double Standards New Product - Penis Patch
3. Body Wrap: Lose 6-20 inches in one hour
4. Get an Apple iPod Nano (or PS3 or Xbox 360) for Free
5. It's Lisa, I must have sent you to the wrong site
6. Breaking Stock News** Small Cap Issue Poised to Triple
7. Thank you for your business. Shipment notification
8. Your Mortgage Application is Ready
9. Thank you: Your $199 Rolex Special Included
and 10. Online Prescriptions Made Easy

In this article from InformationWeek.com, they talk about the list and also mention that AOL is reporting that they blocked an average of 1.5 billion spam messages each day. The total number of emails blocked in 2005 was OVER 556 billion. Damn! Are enough people actually BUYING penis patches to justify sending out that much spam? Seems like the problem is only getting worse, but the article also mentions that the average amount of spam that actually reached their user's mailboxes declined 75% over last year. Well, that's something, I guess.

Wish I'd come up with this idea...

Alex Tew, a 21-year old student from a small English town, came up with one hell of an idea to come up with money to pay for his education. He decided to start a website, appropriately named milliondollarhomepage.com, and sold it as a billboard site - anyone who wants can buy 1 pixel on the page for $1. So a 10x10 section would cost $100, etc. He sold a few sections to some friends and family, and with the $1000 those sales raised he issued a press release. Which was picked up by the news media, spread around the Internet, and soon advertisers for everything from dating sites and casinos to real estate agents and even The Times of London were putting up real cash for his pixels, with weblinks to their own sites of course. So far he's raised $936,700 - in only four months. Damn, that's quite a lot of money!! If you want to get in on the action, you'd better hurry - there's only 63,300 pixels left.

Coming to a PC near you - an unpatched Windows flaw that exploits Windows Meta File (WMF files) - The zero-day exploit

It's time yet again to watch what emails you open, which sites you visit, and what IM's you click links on VERY carefully! A flaw in the way Windows XP and Windows 2003 Server OS handles Windows Meta File (WMF) files has been exploited, and it can affect your PC even if your copy of Windows XP is fully patches and you run up-to-date anti-virus. As of this writing, Microsoft has no patch ready to fix the flaw in Windows, and the exploit is rampant on thousands of malicious websites. Read more about it here.
There is a workaround available, thanks to Verisign's iDefense. I've copied the procedure (and the possible drawback) below.

According to iDefense, Windows users can disable the rendering of WMF files using the following hack:

1. Click on the Start button on the taskbar.
2. Click on Run...
3. Type "regsvr32 /u shimgvw.dll" to disable.
4. Click ok when the change dialog appears.

iDefense notes that this workaround may interfere with certain thumbnail images loading correctly. The company notes that once Microsoft issues a patch, the WMF feature may be enabled again by entering the command "regsvr32 shimgvw.dll" in step three above.

Hope that helps you if you are worried about this - and I think you should be!

A well deserved honor - TIME names Battlestar Galactica the best show of 2005

And I'd have to agree - it was the best show of 2005. Here's a link to the article so you can read the rest of the list. I don't agree with everything (come on - How I Met Your Mother? Except for Neil Patrick Harris that show blows!!) but most of it is right on the money. Although I would have put My Name Is Earl up higher on the list. The new season of Battlestar Galactica starts on January 6th - and I can't wait!!

Track Santa's progress using Google Earth

Have Google Earth? You can use it to track Santa today - it started 2pm GMT. Here's a link to the post about it from the Google Blog. If you want to download Google Earth, just click the Google Earth link above!

Proof that I work for truly bad people

Cause here I am at work today, posting to let you all know about it. I had the day scheduled off, but apparently that's not good enough for the higher-ups around here! I can't get into it too much unfortunately, but suffice it to say that you can just call me Dante Hicks today, cause "I'm not even supposed to BE here today!!"

Merry Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus/Yule/etc.

I'm going to be unavailable for the next few days most likely, so I thought I'd pop in for a quick post to wish one and all a very happy (insert holiday here). I'll be posting again as soon as I can to let you all know how my holiday went, and whether or not I ever got into the holiday spirit (which is currently still up in the air as of this writing). So here's wishing a very merry (whichever) to all, and I hope you all get what you're looking for from the holiday!

The 'must-have' toys of the last 100 years

So we can pretty safely assume that the 'must-have' item of the year is the Xbox 360, but do you know what the 'must-have' toy of the 60's was? Or the 1900's? Well, click here to find out!

Here's your funny webpage for the day - The Turnpike Prank

Found this page this morning and I had to share, cause it's hilarious!
Click the link to read all about The Turnpike Prank - it almost made me spit up coffee all over my keyboard!

Google adds music search feature

This article from the Google Blog explains it all, and it's a very neat new built in function of Google. Let's say you go to Google and search for 'The Beatles'. Well, as you'll see if you just clicked on that link you'll have a picture of The Beatles at the top of the search results, and a music search-specific link for them as well. Clicking the link will take you to an expanded music search with album covers and links to specific albums and songs - as well as links to buy them online from iTunes or Amazon or Rhapsody (and others as well). Pretty slick!!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas??

Eh, I don't know... Maybe it's just me, but I'm not in much of a Christmas mood recently. And it's not like I've got a huge amount of time to try and change that, seeing as how it's only ten days till Christmas! It's snowing outside right now, and you would think that the prospect of a white Christmas would improve my mood, but I can't get over what a pain in the ass it is to have to drive through it and shovel it. It was so much easier when we were kids - the entire kid year was centered around Christmas, and you spent so much time anticipating it that it became a magical event. And I'm not talking about just getting presents, because as great as getting tons of fun stuff for Christmas was, it was the whole experience that was more fun for me. All the traditions you would have, like in my family we used to travel to my paternal grandparents home on Christmas Eve, and spend the afternoon and evening with them that opening presents from them and having a Christmas dinner. We'd go back to our apartment that night and spend Christmas morning at home, opening presents and having brunch and playing with new toys, finally getting ready to go over to my maternal grandparents house to spend the rest of Christmas Day with them. Maybe it's all the time with family I miss, since now that we are spread out across the country it's just impossible to all get together for the holidays except in small groups. Hopefully getting to spend time with my immediate family and with my wife's family next week will improve my mood. I certainly don't want to be a Scrooge at Christmas!

Creepy!! The Miss Digital World beauty pageant

It's deeply weird, yet technically interesting idea, I suppose - here's an article from Wired about the finalists in the Miss Digital World pageant. If this catches on, the models might one day be 100 percent photo-realistic. Right now, they look sort of... off.

Sony rethinking it's anti-piracy policy

After weeks and weeks of criticism, Sony BMG head of global digital business Thomas Hesse says they are 're-evaluating' their use of anti-theft software (also known as Digital Rights Management or DRM). Good idea I think, seeing as how their XCP anti-piracy programs installed themselves onto your PC and then acted like a rootkit - a program which helps an intruder maintain access to a system without the user's knowledge. Even better, they released a removal program which actually makes the problem WORSE. More information about the whole debacle can be found here.

'Podcast' to be added to the New Oxford Dictionary

In lighter news today, the BBC is reporting that the New Oxford Dictionary is officially adding the word 'podcast', which is defined as "a digital recording of a radio broadcast or similar program, made available on the internet for downloading to a personal audio player". It'll be added to the online version of the dictionary early next year. Podcast has been included in the Oxford Dictionary of English since last summer. Podcast beat other words up for consideration, like 'lifehack' and 'rootkit' for inclusion. Like Slashdot notes in their post about this development, "Guess no one needs to know what a rootkit is." Heh.

A very sad anniversary : 25 years since the death of John Lennon

It's true - on December 8th, 1980 John Lennon was shot outside his apartment building by a mentally disturbed fan named Mark David Chapman. Lennon died on route to the hospital. So today marks the 25th anniversary of that event, and this article from CNN.com really helps explain the impact of the event to those born since, or are to young to remember it well.