Well I promised my parents I would post this if it happened, and it did. Everyone here congratulate my step-father, who is the PAO in charge of spearheading the Lockheed Martin Joint Strike Fighter project and securing the contract with the US Government (more) to build the next-gen fighter jet. Think Harrier Jet for the 21st century basically.

Pics! (Thanks Oog)

As some of you may have known, the moritorium on internet taxes by state and local governments is set to expire in about 3 weeks. A change like that could dramatically impact sales on the internet as well as of course local state tax revenues. A few senators have just filed a motion to extend the tax-free situation on internet sales for another two years though (yay). Apparently a big problem is the state tax system is just too complex (imagine that!)

Under a 1992 Supreme Court decision, states cannot require out-of-state retailers such as catalog companies to collect sales taxes unless they have a physical presence in the state.

Generally speaking, I get stuff online because it's cheaper... but you throw taxes in there and internet vendors are gonna have a much tougher time competing with prices. Then what?

Exactly how many times have we seen articles like this? (Ok probably never on Shack, but what the hell today we're just freakay!) Maybe this is the good one though. Scientists have just developed a molecule (called icon) that travels through a blood stream and kills the blood vessles that feed cancerous tumors. Basically starving cancer to death. In addition it actually causes the cancers to create more icon cells along the way causing a chain reaction. Thanks Jack you big lug!

The process eliminated human melanoma and prostate cancers in the tested mice. The first trials in people are planned for next year. Drugs that inhibit the growth of the blood vessels that feed cancer have received wide attention in recent years, though early results reported last spring showed less promise than had been hoped for. The new therapy, developed by researchers Alan Garen and Zhiwei Hu at Yale University, takes a different approach, attacking the cells lining the blood vessels in tumors rather than trying to prevent the growth of new blood vessels.

Some good news for websurfers... The FTC is actually going after people (Thanks /.)who set up those popup "traps" that  make it difficult to get out of. Before you say it... yes everyone here knows how clever you are by using task manager or a popup stopper. We are amazed! The guy in particular who got nailed here was one of the types who register typo domain names (Like shakcnews.com) and was raking in nearly a million bucks in revenue.

"After one FTC staff member closed out of 32 separate windows, leaving just two windows on the task bar, he selected the 'back' button, only to watch as the same seven windows that initiated the blitz erupted on his screen, and the cybertrap began anew," the FTC said in its complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, in Philadelphia.

I'm beginning to get tolerant of pop-under ads on a few pages I enjoy (Assuming I only get one for the entire day) but it's good to see the abusive pages getting cracked down on.. at least a little.

Well, since I'm sure a bunch of you here at Shackdot watched Enterprise last night, I figured I'd put up a story for people to talk about it (even on such an exciting newsday!).

I'm sure none of you are asking what I thought. WELL, I'm not quite sure if I liked it or not. I guess I'll need to see more to find out. I definitely like Scott Bakula as the captain, that I'm sure of. I also liked the Suliban as the main enemy, and it's creepy with the events as of late and the fact that the Suliban are based on the Taliban (as mentioned in interviews with Rick Berman).

And the vulcan chick is a major hottie, but the gel scene was a little gratuitous. Also, I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that all the tech on the "old Enterprise" is newer looking than anything we've seen from the "future." Add to that dumbed down writing like the Klingons having their own language but sharing the same names as everyone else for random star systems. And this "temporal cold war" scares me - Trek writers are typically pretty bad with time travel continuity.

On a plus note, with the exception of Commander Hicky McHickerson, the whole crew seems pretty competant and enjoyable. What do you guys think? update Jack - Oh, and I forgot. Lose the damn theme song, and the dog was good.

Yeah ok, that headline is kinda a lie. A story on ZDNet about broadband "bootleggers" who are starting a hip new trend of setting up wireless broadband access areas for free. Apparently it's being compared to Napster (But really, what isnt compared to Napster?) as the cool new thing.

The perk comes courtesy of community groups that are extending Internet access through the 802.11b wireless networking standard, sometimes known as Wi-Fi. [...] But the free underground networks have generated a phenomenon reminiscent of the Napster craze. Brewster Kahle, the founder of a San Francisco wireless group known as SFLan, has heralded a new "anarchistic cooperation" that will bring free wireless Internet access to the masses.
[ed: and of course, the bad part]
"Voluntary organizations are going to spark action by large corporations," said Alan Reiter, president of the Wireless Internet & Mobile Computing consultancy. "They're going to see this grassroots effort and try to crush it if they can make money by doing so."

Anyone have any first hand experience with this stuff? I've heard about it being offered at airports etc and one friend of mine (DieharD) mentioned that actual ping times were pretty damn good.

This stuff is just gonna keep gettin more and more ugly. This article on ABC pointed out by Kaiser discusses a West Virginia attorney who recently was exposed as funding a secret human cloning lab says he hasnt given up. Sadly he and his wife lost their child a while back, now they are hoping to clone their lost child. A big part of the reasons so many object to clones stems from religious beliefs and ideals. But look at this:

Hunt and his wife Tracy had enlisted the help of French biochemist Dr. Brigitte Boisselier. A leader in the field of cloning, Boisselier is a member of the Raelians, who have a religious commitment to cloning stemming from their belief that life on earth was cloned long ago by a race of alien scientists. [snip]

So, where would we be if the predominant religous beliefs in the world carried that viewpoint? For every "secret cloning project" that has been uncovered, how many more are working away right now?

Here's a good one to ponder returning from the holiday weekend. What would you do if Gateway was bought out by Microsoft and cows took over the world?

Everyone rejoice, Internet Explorer v6.0 has been released. This is the official non-beta (that means no bugs! haha!) of the browser which will make your internet zoom and all kinds of other wonderful things!

Internet Explorer 6 sets a new standard in privacy, reliability, and flexibility. Come see how Internet Explorer is leading the way on the Web.
- Technology Overview
- What's New
- Download Now
- Internet Explorer 6 and Windows XP
- Order CD (U.S. and Canada only)

From what I have heard the browser may have some issues with some of the cookie stuff we do around here. I guess now that it's an official release we will have to up the priority of getting those things compatible.

This is a pretty amusing story about the ad market and the wacky tactics that companies are using to actually obscure competitors advertisements. Oohh. this one too! Thanks ariakaz and Randy Savage

A small victory for people who wish to remain "anonymous" on the internet. A California judge just ruled that Yahoo is not legally obligated to reveal identities of people posting on their boards.

Bummer for all those AOL employees, looks like a few hundred people are going to get the axe so that AOL can meet their financial "goals" for the quarter.

Looks like flash memory prices are dropping big time. Sony is going to be cutting the prices of their memory sticks by 37percent even.. That's a big percentage.

AAAHHHH!!!! (Thanks A-54) So according to a few local TV stations and half the places on the net, the net will fall down and go boom around 8pm EDT. You can read the speculation etc over on CNN , ABCNews , Wired , FOX , CNET , ZDNet and any other place you choose. I like this part:

Computer security experts warn that more virulent variations could dramatically slow Internet traffic, disrupt electronic commerce and e-mail communications and even lead to theft of sensitive corporate or government information.

The exploit involves IIS Microsoft webservers (A patch has been out for over a month, yay admins). Sooo.. here's to the end of the internet. Hopefully everyone has stocked up on batteries and bottled water. Uncle Bink wasnt so crazy for building that 4square mile bomb shelter now was he?

Gotta love stuff like this for the weekend. A recent article on CNET has some statistics on the Code Red virus that was hitting the net the other week. As of the 19th of this month over 350,000 servers had been infected. The exploit proved a point many security experts have been trying in vain to get people to understand. A single virus if done correctly can bring the entire net down to a crawl.

In the end, a design flaw in the worm's programming stymied the attack, but the potential threat of hundreds of thousands of servers flooding the wires with garbage data has resurrected concerns about security among those who consider themselves the guardians of the Internet. The Internet was lucky this time, as this particular Code Red program squandered its advantage and left itself vulnerable to security measures. That will not always be the case, said Vern Paxson, staff computer scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, who analyzed Code Red's quick spread.

The internet is not invincible, and the larger, more complex, and more diversified it gets the more vulnerable it becomes to just a single clever guy working in his basement able to halt the entire thing. Did anyone take a look at those net weather reports while that virus was spreading? It was just a side effect of the virus that so many routers were junking out and lines getting flooded. Imagine what happens when someone actually puts the time into releasing a "net stopper" virus.

Considering nothing hugely exciting going on this morning how about we consider one of those hypothetical questions. Who should oversee the internet? A recent poll of internet users had some wacky responses to all kinds of questions about the net. If we were stuck having some kind of board of commissioners to make decisions about laws and the internet who would you want on that board? Oh here's some other stats

- 79 percent think the Internet makes their lives easier
- 70 percent said they should question most of what they read online
- 64 percent said the government should make laws to protect Web users
- 59 percent don't know whom to contact with Internet problems
- 53 percent of GOP Internet users favor taxation for online commerce
- 49 percent see the Internet as 'impossible to govern'
- 48 percent agree that the Internet 'will always be a risky place'

What do you think? Does this bother you?

Here's a sweet feel good story about how the cut throat mobile phone market has united for a common cause. Gaming! Nokia, Motorola, Ericsson, and Siemens have all agreed upon a protocol to communicate with for mobile gaming. Ok there isnt much story behind it.. but they actually agreed on something. Wouldnt that be something if more competitors agreed on a protocol so they could at least let consumers who buy multiple brands have more fun? I think I saw Sony recently come out with a TV remote that would actually support other brands. (Generally they used to just ignore the other brands...)

How about some big brother to start your morning? The city of Tampa has just started using cameras all over down town which will grab images of your face and compare it against their criminal database. Thanks Quagmire

European cities and U.S government offices, casinos and banks are already using the so-called face-printing system, but Tampa is the first American city to install a permanent system along public streets, The Tampa Tribune reported Sunday. [...] "Tampa is really leading the pack here," said Frances Zelazny, a spokeswoman for Visionics Corp., which produces the "FaceIt" software. The software has raised concerns over privacy, ethics and government intrusion.

I guess I'm some kind of fruit but this really doesnt bother me much. But then you get to thinking about all the ways this system would be abused and it gets scary...

Hey check it out, Geoff is a Fanboy Fanboy! An article on Tech-Report discusses the wonderful world of 'fanboyism' and talks about how everyone has their own bias (except for me, I am perfectly fair).

Loyalty and bias, the tenets of the fanboy, aren't something that should necessarily be looked down on in every environment [...] Whether or not you buy into Nietzsche's assertion that there is no absolute truth, it's hard to deny the fact that we all have our own personal biases. Whatever fact or truth may exist, we inevitably see it from our own unique perspective. This bias is unescapable, a product of our own individuality and capacity for free and original thought. Everyone has different needs, priorities, and experiences which dictate the way they see the world.

Fanboyism is great. People who are overzealous about a product often bring up compelling arguments that only someone blinded by love could look hard enough to see. (Yeah that was strange... blind looking?)

The guys behind the MP3 format (Thomson Multimedia) are releasing their new MP3 format today being called MP3Pro. The new format they claim is nearly one half the file size of the current MP3 files and has actually improved on audio quality. The downside is that current MP3 players can only detect one of the two 'streams' so it sounds poopy on current players. They are releasing a new player as well as a ripper though today.

The MP3Pro format will be completely compatible with past MP3 files, so a new player will still be able to play songs encoded, or "ripped," with earlier technology, the companies say. But a new level of information has been added that substantially increases the audio quality for a given file size.