Like any red-blooded, masculine man of the male gender, I love PVC weaponry. You should too. If the concept of heading on down to the local Home Depot and transforming $100 worth of random pipe bits into a killing machine doesn’t appeal to you, you’re a goddamn pansy. Also, you’re probably sane and will live significantly longer than I will. Nonetheless you disgust me, and I take comfort in the knowledge that your obituary will be nowhere near as humorous as mine. For those of you who laugh in the face of hypersonic shards of plastic puncturing your spleen, here’s an intimate look at how I’ve kept myself busy for the past week: building a PVC flamethrower.

This is just ridiculous.

RELEASE: Mozilla Foundation Announces More Open, Scriptable Plugins Adobe, Apple, Macromedia, Opera and Sun Microsystems join in push to modernize plugins and create a richer web experience

This sounds like it would be a great step forward in terms of building rich clients in the browser. Looking at the raft of companies involved, I wonder how much of this is motivated by the industry’s fear of XAML based rich webapps taking over?

‘Through 2004, outsourcing will continue to drive the growth in the worldwide IT services market, with IT management and process management growing faster than consulting services and development and integration services,’ Hale said in a statement.

Interesting to see something so many IT workers have been afraid of described as driving growth in the sector. I wonder if we’re just starting to see a new round of consolidation as IT becomes more of a commodity. It seems like a lot of companies have decided that it’s more cost-effective to hire a specialist. Wonder if that’ll create new opportunities for specialists…

assuming that the unconfirmed reports are accurate, we have here a media company infecting users’ machines silently with a file that affects a computer’s functionality, without first obtaining informed consent: a likely violation of pretty much every jurisdiction’s anti-hacking laws. It’s possible to foresee criminal charges being brought at some point: after all, having a good reason for spreading malware has never been much of a defence in court. And a file that alters a computer’s functioning without the owner’s informed consent is the very definition of malware. Because this malware can be transferred from machine to machine on a removable disk, and requires user interaction to spread, it is, quite simply, a computer virus. (A worm, on the other hand, is distinguished by its ability to spread without user interaction.)

It does seem deceptive for companies to limit the functionality of something they’re selling you without making it clear to the consumer before purchase. I wonder if the actions taken by this CD are close enough to the legal definition of a virus to enable some kind of lawsuit.

The remains of a 27-year-old woman from Phoenix have been transformed into six precious stones and are set to be delivered to her family and friends on Friday. LifeGem’s first order could be the start of a new age in the funeral industry.

Fantastically creepy, and yet at the same time kind of practical seeming. At least it’s much less loony than Anna Nicole Smith carting around her dead husband’s ashes in an urn. And, if you’re looking for a small, durable keepsake, it is hard to beat a diamond.

Other crazy burial options listed in the same story include:

• Being turned into a frisbee, like frisbee creator Ed Headrick


• Having Eternal Reefs turn mix your ashes with concrete to make an artificial reef


• Getting sent into orbit like Star Trek creator Gene Roddenbury


• Painted into art, lending new creepiness to those family portraits hanging in the hall


• Turned into comic ink, like Mark Gruenwald from Marvel Comics

In a research note published this morning, the analyst mentions that the company is poised to witness customer base expansion in the forthcoming quarters. The analyst expresses his concern, however, regarding Apple Computer’s limited presence in the low-end markets. The company’s fundamentals remain healthy, Banc of America Securities adds.

This article introduces the first working Xgrid agent for Linux and other Unix systems that can be integrated in any XGrid cluster (managed by OS X). The agent will compile and work on Linux (at least Debian and RedHat), Solaris (minimal testing) and Darwin (tested). You still need an OS X machine for the controller and for using the actual XGrid (with XGrid.app). Also, the user currently needs to ‘be aware’ that the cluster is multi-architecture (since the XGrid controller actually does not know). Examples are provided to show you how to deal with this.

This sounds like a fantastic tool that could make XGrid the standard for scientific clustering applications. Ease of use for the consumers, and utilizing existing resources. Sounds like Apple might not be happy (they’re trying to use XGrid to sell more Macs) but that it could be good for them in the long run. After all, you still need a Mac to run the thing, and it’s a lot easier to get funding for one new computer than 50. And once one’s in the shop…

The United States bowed to broad opposition on the Security Council today and announced that it was dropping its effort to gain immunity for its troops from prosecution by the International Criminal Court.

The United States has decided not to proceed further with consideration and action on the draft at this time in order to avoid a prolonged and divisive debate,’ the deputy American ambassador, James B. Cunningham, said on emerging from the council.

This is good from the point of view of cooperating with the rest of the world and ensuring accountability outside of functioning nation states. I still have strong issues with the potential for abuse of the ICC, however. I’m curious to see if it does become an issue with countries using ICC summonses as yet another tool for attacking each other in the diplomatic realm.

Jason Smathers, a West Virginia man who worked in AOL’s Dulles, Virginia, data warehouse, is accused of stealing a list containing 92 million subscriber screen names. Interim U.S. Attorney David Kelley said Smathers, 24, sold the list to another man, Sean Dunaway, who then sold it to two spammers for $52,000. Dunaway was also charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

Considering the number of people who much have access to these kinds of lists, I wonder (long term) how you can stop people from taking a gamble and trying to make a quick 50k. That’s a lot of money for just about anyone.

Last summer, in response to the success that Linux was having in the Thai marketplace, Microsoft began offering Thai citizens a Thai-localized bundle of Microsoft Windows XP Home and Office XP Standard. As part of the deal, Microsoft also stripped out some unspecified features from both products and slashed the price for the pair to 1,500 Thai Baht, or about $38 U.S. Microsoft Windows XP Home sells at retail for $225; Office XP Standard retails for $499.

It seems odd that Microsoft can offer a product like this in one location, and yet fight so hard in other locations (like the US & EU) that Windows is inseperable, and that the components cannot be stripped out.