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This is news to me... Symantec owns a nuclear bunker in the UK where they monitor intrustions. Here in Santa Monica, we just have a locked set of cubicles in an office park. We may not be safe from a nuclear strike, but at least we have windows. 
I caught Fiona Apple last night at the Wiltern. What a great show. This is just the fouth day of the tour, so she had a flub or two, like starting a song too early and introducing the wrong song. No big deal. But what a great voice backed by a great band and great songs. She sounded great.
Apparently, she's talking a lot less between songs this tour and that just suits me fine. I really couldn't believe how many songs they covered, drawing a number of songs from all three albums. Top notch.
Since settling down with wife and children, I have to say I can't remember the last real concert I've been too. And it must have been a generation by now ... instead of holding up lighters for ballads, kids (these days :-) hold up their cell phones. Or maybe they were all using their camera phones to take pictures, but it was the same effect. Hunderds of little blue screens lighting the room.
The Wiltern is now sadly branded as The Wiltern LG. The interior of the theater is done in a great 1930's art deco style, reminding me of The Pantages, another great L.A. theater. But LG?? Does it really make sense to put a washer and dryer in the middle of the theater? In fact, someone ask me why there was a washer and dryer out in the lobby. Really bad marketing. That's why.
But that's not Fiona's fault. Catch her if you can. I hear she'll be on Saturday Night Live on December 10th and then opening for Cold Play after she finishes this tour.
Apple stock is at an all time high. Any wonder why?
From Amazon's Electronics Top Sellers list:
1. Apple 2 GB iPod Nano WhiteNow I know 9/11 changed a lot of things, but when did the CIA start spying domestically?
I've been getting mailed the W32.Sober.X@mm!zip worm for the last few days. There are a number of things that stand out here.
From: Department@cia.gov Date: Fri, 25 Nov 2005 20:24:02 UTC Subject: You_visit_illegal_websites Dear Sir/Madam, we have logged your IP-address on more than 30 illegal Websites. Important: Please answer our questions! The list of questions are attached. Yours faithfully, Steven Allison ++++ Central Intelligence Agency -CIA- ++++ Office of Public Affairs ++++ Washington, D.C. 20505 ++++ phone: (703) 482-0623 ++++ 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., US Eastern time question_list.zip (54k)
This official looking email was sent to me yesterday. At first glance, the mail looks like it came from PayPal. It's from "service@paypal.com" and uses the same template and logo as PayPal. But there are a number of giveaways.
"Click here to verify your account" link points not to paypal.com but some "dsl-x.y.z" link.
And look at all the misspellings:
Unauthorized access to your PayPal account!
We recently noticed more attempts to log in to your PayPal account from a foreign IP address.
If you accessed your account while traveling, the unusual log in attempts may have been initiated by you. However, if you are the rightfull holder of the account, please visit Paypal as soon as possible to verify your identity:
Click here to verify your account
You can also verify your account by logging into your PayPal account at https://www.paypal.com/us/.
If you choose to ignore our request, you leave us no choise but to temporaly suspend your account.We ask that you allow at least 72 hours for the case to be investigated and we strongly recommend to verify your account in that time.
Thank you for using PayPal!
The PayPal Team
Clicking on the link brings you to a site that looks exactly like PayPal. You will notice in your browser the the url is for the above mentioned "dsl-x.y.z" link, but the bottom line is that you have to be really careful when you click on an email. Web sites like PayPal will never ask you to verify your credentials.
My friend Stuart's ultimate goal was to make money in his sleep. If his customers resold his software, and he made a small commission on each of those sales, he would make money in his sleep. Well, that was 90's and now there's a whole new way to make money in your sleep. Web advertising.
How do you make money with web advertising? Start a blog. Make it interesting. Attract an audience. Then sign up with Google or Yahoo to have them place targeted advertising on your website. When someone views your website and clicks on an advertisement, Google or Yahoo will pay you. Pennies a click. Now it doesn't sound like much, but with a big enough audience it adds up.
There's relatively few top flight bloggers that get the tens of thousands of hits a day needed to make a tidy sum. But if you're one, you can make $100 per day. Like Russell Beattie, who blogs about technology in the mobile [phone] space.
Unfortunately this site, humble little Big Frog doesn't make nearly as much. But I'm averaging $20 per month which is enough to pay for this website and a Starbucks or two. Not bad for a night's rest.
Sign up today.
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Visual News allows you to easily add any of its channels as an inline javascript slide show. Just insert this tag anywhere within your web page:
To "change" the channel, just replace the integer "3" with the following:
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One of the costs in hosting a website is bandwidth – the amount of data downloaded from your web site. While browsing thru the access_log file, which lists what files are being downloaded, I noticed a number of entries from some of the social web sites. Entries that were just pointing to an image, not a web page. What to do? Point them to something else.
If you have the ability to create a .htaccess file on your web server, just add these lines:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([a-z0-9\-]+\.)?myspace\.com [NC,OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} ^http://([a-z0-9\-]+\.)?xanga\.com [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpe?g|png)$ /images/monkey.gif [NC,L]
Now all image requests from myspace look like this:
None of the projects is ready to be sold as a final product, but the database audit and security appliance is being tested on the networks of real Symantec customers. The system is part of Symantec's "Advanced Concepts" group, which fills a gap between research and actual products. It could be offered as a product when the market is deemed ready.It sure is a change to work for a company that actually gets press."The intent of Advanced Concepts is to do projects we feel don't face many hurdles from a technological perspective, but where there is some uncertainty from how this is going to play out in the market," Trilling said.
The database audit and security appliance plugs into a company's network and logs all traffic to databases on that network. The log can aid companies in their audit and compliance programs, but the appliance also flags anomalous queries. These queries could be a sign of an attack or an insider accessing data he should not have access to, Symantec said.
In 'wrongful life' suit, disabled woman blames doctor for letting her be born
A blind and deaf Australian woman who claims she never should have been born is suing a doctor for a lifetime of suffering in the country's first "wrongful life" suit.
Alexia Harriton, 24, is seeking compensation from the doctor who misdiagnosed rubella in the first trimester of her mother's pregnancy, claiming Olga Harriton would have aborted her had she been aware of the potential birth defects arising from the illness.
Lawyers for the Sydney woman argued in Australia's highest court Thursday that Dr. Paul Stephens is liable for the costs arising from a lifetime of medical treatment that Harriton needs to survive.
Beware of the slippery slope.
After a six month hiatus, Visual News (VNews) is back. VNews reads RSS feeds from Yahoo! News and groups related photos from different feeds based on keywords. Some examples are Hot Chicks and Chaos. My code is totally rewritten so it is much easier for me to add new feeds.
How do they do this?
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Witnesses say Angela Keathley and Renee Thomas were engaged in some type of sexual activity inside a bathroom stall at Banana Joe's around 2:20 am Sunday. Another woman waiting to use the bathroom got into an argument with the pair. Police say Thomas punched the woman in the face. When Thomas was arrested, she gave police the name of another Panthers cheerleader. |
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You may not believe in pirates, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Pirates fired rocket-propelled grenades and machine guns at a U.S.-owned cruise ship carrying more than 300 people in the Indian Ocean on Saturday but the vessel escaped and no one was hurt, its owners said.
Men in two small boats approached the Seabourn Cruise Line ship Spirit about 100 miles off the Somali coast, fired on it and tried to board in an apparent bid to rob passengers and crew, cruise line spokesman Bruce Good said.
Take a look at the Spirit here.
With two one undefeated team in Los Angeles, Saturday can't come soon enough. Who needs the NFL with the excitement of USC holding on to #1 and UCLA coming from behind in just about every victory.