Genetic engineers at the world-renowned Tweek-e-Gene Institute in Boulder, Colorado, announced today the successful production of the world’s first live custom-designed human Manga-baby. The baby, a healthy boy weighing 2.3 lbs. and measuring a lanky 38 inches from head to toe, will be named Ichi the Killer. Trend-spotters confidently predict Ichi will be the first boulder in a virtual landslide of specially-ordered designer Manga-babies.

Read the rest of the article here

I’m at a loss here. The DSL at my place is flakey at best.

A while back I tried installing my DSL modem in my office only to have it reset all the time and give me massive CRC error, every time I would update the stat page the CRC errors were growing. THis lead me to believe that I had a bad pair on the telephone cable coming to the room, so I tried wiring up a different pair and it still was having issues so I figured it was a bad cable.

I had a brand new run of 5e cable pulled from my MPOE to my office and my connection is more stable then before but I’m still getting CRC errors.

before with in 10 minutes I was well over 20,000 so this isn’t as bad. Now I know cable length plays a part but I’m not running cat 3 I’m running cat 5e and it’s not cheap cable but I’m only running about 40 feet if that much, so what gives. When I had the DSL modem in the other room I was running a only 3ft from the MPOE and I had maybe 5 CRC errors in 4 months, No I can’t move the modem back it has to live in it’s new location, but I’m at a loss at why I’m getting such a crappy signal to the modem from the outside world. I have only 2 jacks wired up one has a filter and the phone attached to it while the other is the direct link to the modem with no filter since I don’t need a phone on it. I am going to try adding a filter to ir but it didn’t seem to help at all in the past.

I also wish that SBC/AT&T or whoever the hell they are this week would upgrade the circuits down here in Cambrian area of San Jose since the speeds are terrible.

While skinning headlines today I found this little gem on retroCRUSH via fark.

Some of the posters are frightening

Google is one of those companies I love to hate. Some of their products I love using some of them scare the fuck out of me.

I got this from todays EFFector online and it’s kinda spooky. As with everything look into it your self since this is just one opinion, but it’s down right scary.

* Google Copies Your Hard Drive – Government Smiles in
Anticipation

Consumers Should Not Use New Google Desktop

San Francisco Google announced a new “feature” of its
Google Desktop software that greatly increases the risk to
consumer privacy. If a consumer chooses to use it, the new
“Search Across Computers” feature will store copies of the
user’s Word documents, PDFs, spreadsheets and other text-
based documents on Google’s own servers, to enable searching
from any one of the user’s computers. EFF urges consumers
not to use this feature, because it will make their personal
data more vulnerable to subpoenas from the government and
possibly private litigants, while providing a convenient
one-stop-shop for hackers who’ve obtained a user’s Google
password.

“Coming on the heels of serious consumer concern about
government snooping into Google’s search logs, it’s shocking
that Google expects its users to now trust it with the
contents of their personal computers,” said EFF Staff
Attorney Kevin Bankston. “Unless you configure Google
Desktop very carefully, and few people will, Google will
have copies of your tax returns, love letters, business
records, financial and medical files, and whatever other
text-based documents the Desktop software can index. The
government could then demand these personal files with only
a subpoena rather than the search warrant it would need to
seize the same things from your home or business, and in
many cases you wouldn’t even be notified in time to
challenge it. Other litigants–your spouse, your business
partners or rivals, whomever–could also try to cut out the
middleman (you) and subpoena Google for your files.”

The privacy problem arises because the Electronic
Communication Privacy Act of 1986, or ECPA, gives only
limited privacy protection to emails and other files that
are stored with online service providers–much less privacy
than the legal protections for the same information when
it’s on your computer at home. And even that lower level of
legal protection could disappear if Google uses your data
for marketing purposes. Google says it is not yet scanning
the files it copies from your hard drive in order to serve
targeted advertising, but it hasn’t ruled out the
possibility, and Google’s current privacy policy appears to
allow it.

“This Google product highlights a key privacy problem in the
digital age,” said Cindy Cohn, EFF’s Legal Director. “Many
Internet innovations involve storing personal files on a
service provider’s computer, but under outdated laws,
consumers who want to use these new technologies have to
surrender their privacy rights. If Google wants consumers to
trust it to store copies of personal computer files, emails,
search histories and chat logs, and still ‘not be evil,’ it
should stand with EFF and demand that Congress update the
privacy laws to better reflect life in the wired world.”

Google can and should design its technologies to avoid these
problems in the first place. For example, searching across
computers can be accomplished without Google having to keep
copies of those computers’ contents. Alternatively, Google
could encrypt the stored data such that only the user has
access.

“Google constantly touts its creative brainpower. More
privacy-protective technologies are surely not beyond its
reach, so long as its engineers make that a design
priority,” added Bankston.

For more on the new version of Google Desktop:

For more on Google’s data collection:

For this release:

I know some people will be offended but this is just too well done.