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| Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com. |
| Secret sins of a Web surfer |
| 1:48:58 am mst / 13 March 2001 found by paul / filed in culture / source Irish Times 40 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| There are now a number of online confessional websites such as Absolution-online.com catering to Roman Catholics who are reluctant (or unable) to attend a real-time confession with a priest. Unfortunately for the penitents, the Church does not recognize the validity of online confessions. |
| With the proliferation of independent sites competing to offer religious services while bypassing the Church hierarchy, it's truly a case of the "Cathedral vs. the Bazaar"... |
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| Your name on the net |
| 5:04:51 am mst / 13 March 2001 found by paul / filed in culture / source BBC News 172 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| From the article: "Once upon a time, finding someone with the same name as you was a pleasant novelty. Today, the internet has transformed every one of your namesakes into a potential enemy..." |
| The EgoSurf site mentioned in the article is also pretty entertaining. |
| read 1 comment |
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| The Story Behind Tux the Penguin |
| 8:58:08 am mst / 13 March 2001 found by paul / filed in operating systems / source Wired 105 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| How did Tux the Penguin become the official logo for Linux? Short answer: Linus Torvalds had a "fixation for flightless, fat waterfowl". Click through to find out more. |
| Funniest quote: When discussing the logo choice with others, Linus wanted a contented-looking penguin, "suggesting that 'contented' means that the penguin 'has either just gotten laid, or it's stuffed on herring.'" |
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| Nothing to :-) about? |
| 10:49:06 am mst / 13 March 2001 found by paul / filed in internet / source Fox News 190 hits / 0 comments / 1 e-mail |
| When Despair.com (publisher of the hilarious "Demotivators" series of calendars) applied for a trademark on the frowny-face emoticon :-( they never expected that it would actually be approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office. The company then issued some parody press releases warning internet users not to use the emoticon without their permission, but a lot of people have apparently taken their "warnings" a little bit too seriously. |
| Soon, pirates will be swapping banned emoticons on Napster and Gnutella... |
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| Even smaller DeCSS program |
| 1:16:40 pm mst / 13 March 2001 found by paul / filed in digital media / source Register 88 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| Charles H. Hannum has written a tiny C program to perform decryption of the DVD CSS algorithm which is even smaller than the 7-line PERL script announced last week (442 bytes vs. 472 bytes). His program also reportedly runs faster, making the playback smoother. Here's the source text. |
| As David Touretzky asked, "So what's the MPAA gonna do now? This code is small enough to put on a cocktail napkin. Commit to memory. Knit into a scarf. Whatever. It cannot be suppressed." |
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| Even programmers get the blues |
| 5:18:01 pm mst / 13 March 2001 found by diana / filed in business / source Salon 61 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| The dot-bombemy has finally trickled down to the programming market, where salaries are dropping and recruiters must be called rather than warded off with a stick. However, the market hasn't totally tanked: the experienced, hard-core, backend programmers are still in good shape. It's mostly the newbies who were getting inflated salaries and multiple job offers who are having trouble finding work. |
| Well, it couldn't have been too bad for those junior programmers to be earning obscenely inflated salaries for a few years! |
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| Wireless Phone and Palm United in Smartphone |
| 9:38:39 pm mst / 13 March 2001 found by diana / filed in handhelds / source Wall Street Journal 37 hits / 1 comment / 0 e-mails |
| Mossberg reviews the Kyocera Smartphone, a phone with a fully-functional, genuine Palm built in. The only serious problem seems to be that the screen is a bit narrower than a regular Palm. As he says, "all in all, however, the Kyocera Smartphone is the first really good PDA-equipped phone I've seen." |
| Personally, I think that I'd rather add a phone to my Palm (through a Visor module) rather than add a Palm to phone. |
| read 1 comment |
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| Pi Day! |
| 11:06:36 pm mst / 13 March 2001 found by diana / filed in science / source exploratorium.edu 129 hits / 0 comments / 0 e-mails |
| March 14th is Pi Day. Predictably, the pi-related festivities (whatever they may be) start at 1:59. Join the fun, bake a Pi Pie! |
| I've been waiting for this holiday all year! |
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