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The Minority Report for Real

Well, besides the tell the future part.

If you've seen the Minority Report with Tom Cruise, then you'll remember the scenes where he was moving windows and screens around using his fingers. Seems that Jeff Han from NYU has come up with an interface based on it. The image manipulation is badass.

BSG's First Two Seasons in 43 minutes

A friend of mine, Josh, is hosting a Frak Party which is a viewing party for the season premiere of Battle Star Galactica. This is season three of the show, so if you haven't seen any episodes yet, you can still get caught up by watching the Story So Far (free on iTunes).

Ex-Pres Clinton delivers smackdown

This past Sunday, Chris Wallace interviewed former President Clinton. Boy did that backfire.

Clinton pointed out that he is asked a certain set of questions, and his Republican counterparts are not asked the same questions, that he got closer to killing bin Laden than anyone else has yet, that the same Republicans that are blaming Clinton for bin Laden are the same Republicans that say that he was too obsessed on trying to stop bin Laden years ago.

The interview is worth watching. But on top of that, is Keith Olbermann's Countdown segment (if you want to watch the video, open the link in Internet Explorer).

Halliburton Blood Money

We've all heard of Halliburton. We all know that they've been granted multi-billion dollar no-bid contracts by the US government.

Watch this:

Renaming resources by gender

The airliner pushed back from the gate, the flight attendant gave the passengers the usual information regarding seat belts, etc. Finally, she said, "Now sit back and enjoy your trip while your captain, Judith Campbell, and crew take you safely to your destination."

Ed sitting in the eighth row thought to himself, "Did I hear her right? Is the captain a woman?"

When the attendants came by with the drink cart, he said "Did I understand you right? Is the captain a woman?"

"Yes," said the attendant, "In fact, this entire crew is female."

"My God," said Ed, "I'd better have two scotch and sodas. I don't know what to think with only women up there in the cockpit."

"That's another thing sir," said the attendant, "We no longer call it the cock pit." "It's the Box office."

Funny error message

At work, we use an email appliance, that can report back certain errors. This is the last 5xx series error that we got from aol.com:

550 We would love to have gotten this email to <redacted>@aim.com. But, your recipient never logged onto their free AIM Mail account. Please contact them and let them know that they're missing out on all the super features offered by AIM Mail. And by the way, they're also missing out on your email. Thanks. (at Tue Sep 19 16:54:12 2006)

A little bit of geek humor for you.

My blackberry is borked

Rather recently, I have been having problems with my blackberry 7250. Every time I hang up the phone, I get the following error

Uncaught exception:
java.lung.NullPointerException

It's not like my blackberry is running Windows and is unreliable. Well, I guess it is unreliable to a point. I think it might have to do with the fact that I loaded Yahoo! IM, SRA Ramble, Google Talk and Maps, Sprint IP Relay, and something called eFile which lets me browse my blackberry in a Windows Explorer-like interface.

Has anyone else experienced widespread NullPointerExceptions or their phone?

Let's talk about ineptitude

A few weeks ago, there was a knock on my door, and it was the UPS guy. He said he had a package for me and was there for a pickup. I said that I had no package for him to pick up, but I accepted the package that he had for me. Upon opening it, I found a Fujifilm FinePix S-9000 digital SLR camera. Pretty nice!

The problem was, that I didn't order it. After digging through the box, I found the packing slip, and it was indeed shipped to me, purchased by me, and apparently billed to me. Who knew? I certainly didn't!

So, I've been (rather unsuccesfully) been trying to get UPS to pick it up so that I can return it to Sears.com. I've had numerous conversations with customer service at Sears, gotten a new credit card, and many many info notices from UPS saying that they've attempted to pick up a package. The problem is, apparently that someone in the chain of command is incompetent and unable to successfully change the pickup address from my home to my office.

This has been testing my patience as I've had a $700+ camera at my desk in a box for a few weeks now, and I can't get UPS to pick it up here at my office. As a last resort, I'm going to take this camera, and drop it off at a sears brick and mortar store so I can get credit for it. My credit card company has already reversed the charges, and Sears as admitted that this was an error.

One thing that I don't understand, is how my credit card number was compromised, and why, if someone had it, would they purchase this particular camera (it doesn't have a removable lens and is refurbished), and ship it to MY HOUSE! Seems that they wanted to be caught!

Plus, I found the camera for just over $300 somewhere else on the internet while I was looking for a review of the camera!

Turn off the microphone!

Rumors are flying that Google is going to start eavesdropping on users. Apparently, they want to serve up ads based on background noise, whether it's TV, radio, or your cell phone ringing. Expect some resistance from the likes of the EFF. Perhaps even ad-aware, Spybot S & D or even Norton will flag the google eavesdropper.

This reminds me alot of the old Sun Solaris vulnerabilty where /dev/audio was used to eavesdrop on people standing near their Sun servers.

Make your official seal!

The folks over at Says-it.com have created an application that allows you to create an official seal for your website. It's pretty cool, and here's mine!

The shark is because my girlfriend calls me shark.

1. Because she thinks I'm a pool shark (and sometimes I am)


2. Because I'm a scuba diver, and can breath underwater

via

Crocodile Hunter is dead

Steve Irwin, more well known as the Crocodile Hunter, is dead.

Kroike!