WowWee's WiFi-enabled Rovio

Now, this is something that I think I could use. You know when you go away on vacation and you're worried about your house burning down while you're gone? Having this robot would be worth it just to check to make sure your house is still there.

It has a Northstar GPS system and it knows where it is in the room and can locate it's recharging station on your command. You can use the Internet, cell phone or game console to control it's actions.

It has a bi-directional microphone so you can speak to people who are in the room with the robot. ("Hey burglar get out of my home! I'm calling the police." or "Warning you have violated the sanctity of my home prepare to be annihilated!")

It will be available in the summer for $299 which isn't too much for eyes and ears into what's going on in your home while you're away. Which could be very convenient when you want to check up on your teenagers while you're away. ("I thought I told you no parties while I was away, miss! You are so grounded and don't even think about touching Mommy's Rovio! It better be in one piece when I get home.")

Here's a video of Rovio in action.

Crosswalk.com hacked by atheist

On Sunday:

Instead of the largest Christian website in the world (2.5 million views a month; 200,000-plus subscribers), people who visited www.crosswalk.com this morning found a single, crudely designed static page featuring cheesy-looking burning crosses and a message from the hacker directed to “Christian sheep,” talking about how Christianity sucks and is nothing but lies believed by idiots and so on. The message was maybe 50 words long. (It was also about impossible to read, since, as the hacker/author readily admitted, English is not his first language. He’s from the great country of Finland.)

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Google warning for The American Spectator

What's up with the Google warning for The American Spectator? (click on graphics to view warning message).

Bubble 2.0

Didn't anyone learn from the first tech bubble?

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IE7 -- program or virus?

Ouch!

Nothing says greek...

Like a Segway Polo match televised broadcast live on the Internet.


Update: Nothing says idiot like misspelling your title!

Google co-founder to marry on a private island

Wow! Google has some serious money.

Google co-founder Larry Page is set to marry his girlfriend, Lucy Southworth, this weekend on a tiny private island in the Caribbean, US media reports say.

Six hundred guests are reportedly due to attend the ceremony on Necker Island in the British Virgin Islands, owned by the best man, Sir Richard Branson.

Ms Southworth is a doctoral student at Stanford University in California.

Mr Page, who has an estimated fortune of $18.5bn (£9bn), co-founded search giant Google with Sergey Brin in 1998.

Since listing in August 2004 shares in the firm have risen sevenfold and it is now valued at over $220bn (£108bn).

Mr Brin, who is the joint fifth-richest person in the US along with Mr Page, got married in the Bahamas earlier this year.

Mr Page, 34 and Ms Southworth, 27, have reportedly been dating for over year. It is not known if they have signed a pre-nuptial agreement.

mylo™ Personal Communicator

Isn't it cute? You can surf the web with it, play MP3 or WMA files, talk over the Internet using Skype, IM, email and plays MPEG-4 video files! All for less than $200.

The creator of the Internet's website has been hacked

Wouldn't you think Al Gore would have better online security?

A blog set up to promote former U.S. Vice President Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth, has been hacked and is hosting links to Web sites hawking online pharmaceuticals.

The links appear to have been created as part of a scheme to boost the Web traffic for sites that promote the drugs, security experts said Monday. They contain titles such as "Xanax On Line," "Viagra," and "Buy Valium Online."

Cyber scammers have been using this technique for months now, packing hacked Web sites with links to their products in hopes of bumping up their rankings on search engines like Google and Ask.com. Another similar tactic, known as "comment spam," involves flooding the comment sections of Web sites with these types of links.

[...]

Once they gained access to the site, criminals could have easily added malicious exploit code to the blog, and that code could have been used to infect visitors' PCs with computer viruses, said Roger Thompson, CTO of Exploit Prevention Labs. "It just shows how tricky it is to secure a Web site," he said. "I think we're a bit lucky it's not shooting exploits."

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Cyber Monday Sales

Cyber Monday is the first day that many people return to their computers after the Thanksgiving Day weekend and buy stuff online.

With a holiday season that is expected to be the weakest since 2002, and numbers of new online customers leveling off, more Web retailers have been pushing special offers and promotions to draw consumers.

As the online holiday shopping season officially kicks off Monday, a number of retailers are hosting one-day sales or special offers for the occasion. The Monday after Thanksgiving, tagged "Cyber Monday" by the National Retail Federation, marks the first big online shopping surge for many merchants, as consumers go back to their work computers.

Toys "R'' Us Inc. will hold a one-day online sale and rival eToys.com will launch a two-day sale. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will begin five days of online-only sales.

Online jeweler Blue Nile Inc. will give customers 20 percent off purchases paid through PayPal, eBay Inc.'s electronic payment division. Target Corp., Circuit City Stores Inc., Sears Holdings Corp., Crate & Barrel, the Discovery Store and Overstock.com Inc. are among dozens of retailers offering free shipping that day.

Here's a sampling:

At Staples:
Canon® PC170 Copier $74.98 which is half off the price.

DYMO® LM150 Labeler $19.99 also half off.

Nikon® Coolpix L14 Digital Cameras under $100

Edge™ Portable Drives 50% off

I/O Magic 40GB Portable Drive $24.98 another half off

InVion 4.3" GPS $179.99 that's a hundred off

Walmart:
Xbox for $399

Acer Aspire AS4315-2843 14.1" Widescreen Laptop PC w/ Intel Cel… $498.00

Virgin Super Slide with Bonus Bluetooth $48.00

1 Carat Diamond Round Stud Earrings in 14kt White Gold $448.00

HP Deskjet F2110 All-in-One Printer & HP 21 Ink $40.00

Ghirardelli Gifts Box $12.00

Playhut Thomas the Tank Play Vehicle $10.00

Best Buy is only offering free shipping on select items.

Here's a website that links to all kinds of sales.

Inspiron™ 1721 Notebook $949 after $235 instant savings

Circuit City:

Guaranteed in-store pickup in 24 minutes!

Acer Aspire 4315-2490 14.1" Widescreen Laptop $399 (though, it's a Celeron)

HP Pavilion dv6449us 15.4" Widescreen Laptop Computer $739.99

Firefox Exploit can Hack Gmail

EEP!

Mozilla has taken another security blow with the discovery that Google user accounts can be accessed through a dangerous Firefox exploit.

The vulnerability, which is still in the wild some 10 days after its discovery on gnucitizen.org, allows hackers to access Google accounts, including Gmail, with cross-site scripting attacks.

A client or server-side exploit can be inserted into .zip files via open document formats from Microsoft Office 2007 and OpenOffice, and uploaded to a server where the Firefox JAR protocol extracts the compressed data.

According to the Web site, affected platforms range from Web mail clients, collaboration and document sharing systems and other Web 2.0 applications from large software vendors including Google and Microsoft.

[...]

While Mozilla has not issued a solution to the problem, application firewalls and proxy servers can be used to block Windows Universal Resource Identifiers (URIs) that contain the JAR protocol, while Web administrators can use a reverse proxy to prevent malicious content from being uploaded.

Users can download a NoScript add-on for Firefox to block JavaScript and executable content from untrusted Web sites, and can secure their Google accounts by remaining signed out whenever possible.

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Craig’s List is a haven for prostitutes

Internet prostitution:

The world's oldest profession is going high-tech and prostitutes are now soliciting their customers over the internet. A DeKalb County prosecutor said that this new method is making it tougher to make arrests.

Solicitor Robert James said the problem is spiraling out of control, in part, because the website content is federally protected.

[...]

James said many of the online call girls are bypassing pimps and inviting potential customers to meet them at a location selected by the prostitute.

Pimps being put out of business? That's a plus as far as I'm concerned. Why can't they just set up an appointment to meet the women and then arrest them when they are solicited?

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Tags: Craig's List

Glassbooth.org

If you are having trouble finding a candidate, you can let a website pick one for you:

If you pick your presidential candidate by issue, there’s a new tool in the online toolbox for you: Glassbooth.org.

After you click a few times to indicate where you stand on matters from the Iraq war to abortion, the site will come up with the candidate who most closely matches your views. You can read a bit more about their positions and you can also see how closely the views of other candidates match yours.

Last time I tried one of these websites, it picked Huckabee. I don't think the website got the fact that I'm looking for a president who doesn't look for government to solve our problems or who is willing to raise taxes instead of cutting spending.

And this one is even worse. The candidate that they believe best matched my issues was...wait for it....it's really funny....McCain! Can you believe it? Oh. My. Heck! Are they for real? What kind of match is this?

Abortion and Birth Control	very similar	find out why
Trade and Economics	very similar	find out why
Iraq and Foreign Policy	very similar	find out why
Gun Control	very similar	find out why
Taxes and Budget	very similar	find out why
Civil Liberties and Domestic Security	similar	find out why
Crime and Punishment	similar	find out why
Social Security	similar	find out why
Immigration	very different	find out why

With Tancredo and Guiliani as my number 2 and 3.

So I tried it again with more emphasis on the abortion and illegal immigration issues and I, of course, got Huckabee:

Trade and Economics	very similar	find out why
Gun Control	very similar	find out why
Iraq and Foreign Policy	very similar	find out why
Taxes and Budget	similar	find out why
Crime and Punishment	similar	find out why
Abortion and Birth Control	similar	find out why
Immigration	different	find out why
Social Security	different	find out why

With Tancredo and Hunter as 2nd and 3nd choice.

So, I weighted it for a stronger emphasis on taxes and abortion and got...Duncan Hunter

Immigration	very similar	find out why
Abortion and Birth Control	very similar	find out why
Gun Control	very similar	find out why
Taxes and Budget	very similar	find out why
Iraq and Foreign Policy	similar	find out why
Trade and Economics	similar	find out why
Social Security	different	find out why

BTW, his trade and economics position is not similar to my position because I'm for unrestricted free-trade and he is not.

McCain was second and Tancredo was third. As you can see the candidate that I think must closely matches my position is Thompson, yet he was never a possibility as far as this tool was concerned. Is it rigged against him? Let me know if you get him as a possibility.

Update:"Back to You" a casualty of the strike?

I have been getting commenters on this post about the "Back to You" sitcom who say that the show has not been canceled. Here's what was reported in the AP:

Sitcoms that will stop the cameras include "Back to You," starring Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton, which will not return from a planned hiatus, said Chris Alexander, a spokesman for 20th Century Fox Television.

And here are the comments:

shadowbarry:It's NOT a "casualty" of the season. The showrunners CHOSE to strike after telling the entire crew of their decision. And more power to them. Fox will continue to air the new episodes as well as reruns. And it's still scheduled to air after Amercian Idol in Jan. So that's not a cancellation either. It's a postponement. By choice. I know this because I am a member of the crew.

SomeoneWithInfo: It was NOT cancelled. The press worded the situation wrong and it's' been spreaking around the net that it was cancelled. FILMING was cancelled - NOT the show.

Anonymous commenters or the MSM, who do you trust is right? Hmmmm...decisions, decisions!

Make your own Hollywood sign

Make your own here.

(via who made a very funny Nineveh sign -- maybe I should have made a Sodom or Gomorrah sign :-)

Top 100 Conservative Political Websites of 2007

Here. Two observations:

1. Even with all their popularity, blogs still rank behind MSM.
2. Politico should not be on this list, it's not a conservative website.

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Most Fans Paid $0 for Radiohead Album

Is anyone surprised? Why would you pay if it's being given away for free? The band still intends to release a CD, it'll be interesting to see how many copies they sell.

Radiohead let its fans decide how much to pay for a digital copy of the band's latest release, "In Rainbows," and more than half of those who downloaded the album chose to pay nothing, according to a study by a consumer research firm.

Some 62 percent of the people who downloaded "In Rainbows" in a four- week period last month opted not to pay the British alt-rockers a cent. But the remaining 38 percent voluntarily paid an average of $6, according to the study by comScore Inc.

Radiohead broke with its past practice of releasing its music in CD format and through a major record label when it released its seventh studio album online itself. The biggest wrinkle was the band's decision to let fans pay as much or as little as they wanted to download a copy.

[...]

Among U.S. residents, about 40 percent who downloaded the album paid to do so. Their average payment was $8.05, the firm said.

Some 36 percent of the fans outside the U.S. who downloaded the album opted to pay; on average, those fans paid $4.64, according to the study.

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Update: Weblog Awards

Well, my dilemma over voting for the Best Conservative Blog has been resolved. John Hawkins has thrown his support behind another candidate, so that frees me up to vote for Newsbusters.

Craiglist Murder

Wow! This is scary and sad:

A woman who went to inquire about a nanny job advertised online was found dead in the trunk of her car, police said.

The body of Katherine Ann Olson, 24, was found in her car at a Burnsville park late Friday, Police Capt. David Muelken said. She was last seen by friends Thursday morning, when she went to meet someone in Savage about a nanny job. Investigators said she had found the ad on the Internet bulletin board Craigslist.org.

A 19-year-old Savage man who police believe placed the ad was being held pending charges, police said. Authorities did not release his name but said charges could be filed as soon as Sunday.

GODSurfer

Another Digg-type Christian site.