Classic DF – 12/18/01

December 18, 2001: [•] Ramadan is over (BTW: I hope that all my Muslim viewers had a joyous Ramadan) and 90% of the war in Afghanistan has been won. However, Mohammed Omar and Osama bin Laden are both still missing. [•] US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warns all US citizens to be vigilant against terrorism as the nutjobs of the world begin to embrace new techniques of inflicting pain on others. [•] US Marines injured by a landmine encourage the world to worry about bigger problems instead of their wounds. [•] The Yemeni military has attacked an al Qaeda camp in its country. [•] Even though al Qaeda appears to have been beaten the US government continues to warn US citizens about the possibility of a terrorist attack. [•] US President Bush had several lesions removed from his face. None were cancerous. [•] Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is asking Arab leaders to meet him in Mecca to discuss Israel and Palestine. Go nutjob leader! [•] Siena Heights University has added a philosophy class that examines how The Simpsons handle theology. [•] India is mulling over its response to a terrorist attack on its government. [•] Arctic weather hits Europe. [•] Somali warlords are attempting to convince the US to attack their country’s government in hopes of achieving power. [•] Ebola continues to ravage Gabon. [•] The ousted government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide attempted to regain control of Haiti, but failed. [•] Oh those crazy civil liberty loving Canadians and their crazy civil liberty loving Canadian ways! [•] Thailand will only issue 17 visas this year in an attempt to stop illegal activities. [•] A heavy earthquake hit Japan and Taiwan creating a small tsunami. [•] Spain has arrested 7 suspected ETA members. [•] Princess Buniah al-Saud, the niece of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, has been arrested on charges of beating her maid. [•] A sewerage spill has closed a portion of Laguna Beach, California. [•] A first-grader who dresses as Santa Claus and distributes small toys in a local mall was kicked out by mall owners since (get this) he’s competition to the official mall’s Santa LOL. [•] The Space Shuttle Endeavour has landed. [•] Serious crime fell in the first 6 months of 2001, but murder went up. [•] An equipment failure has stopped progress in clearing anthrax from the Hart Senate Building. [•] Vivendi Universal has bought USA Networks. [•] Be careful, you could end up buying fake FDNY or PDNY goods. [•] Intel is sponsoring an open source code called OpenCV that they hope will allow computers to see in three dimensions. [•] A Japanese zoo’s panda gave birth to a male cub. [•] Utah has introduced the US’s first voice-recognition based travel information service for telephone users. [•] A genetically engineered mouse has been developed who’s milk contains the malaria vaccine. [•] Chicken feces and diesel fuel: What a mix! [•] CERT is warning UNIX administrators who are running Secure Shell on their systems to make sure that they are using SSH2 (full install not upgrade) with no SSH daemons running and all exploits patched. [•] Microsoft has released Service Pack 1 for Office XP. [•] RSA Security Inc. has developed the Wireless Equivalent Privacy protocol to encrypt individual data packets sent over 802.11 wireless networks thus fixing current security issue. [•] A new drug reduces cold symptoms within a day and knocks one day of the actual disease off. FDA approval is about a year away at best. [•] 3/4 of new HIV cases are resisting treatment. [•] Autism seems to be higher in Silicon Valley. Could tech savvy genes be responsible? [•] Google will allow you to now browse 600 catalogues online. [•] Universal Music Group’s new CDs won’t play in a PC. Their solution: Buy another copy in digital format for the PC through the Net. Hey, why not pay a third time just for fun! Hell, let’s go for four! [•] An ISP is claiming the FBI wants the e-mail logs for data logged by the BadTrans.B worm and sent to one of several e-mail addresses including one hosted by the ISP. Why would they want it? Well, they assert that BadTrans.B is actually the Magic Lantern virus developed by the FBI reported on earlier last week. [•] A captured al Qaeda member turned informant claims that Windows XP has backdoors inserted by the terrorist group. [•] Christmas may be here, but thoughts of September 11th still haunt Americans. [•] Everyone’s favorite anti-CVS group, It’s Our Town, has been sponsoring a gift drive for needy families of Warwick, NY. [•] The US Postal Service switches into high gear to meet last minute mail demands. [•] Will a correction officer who is charged with trash compacting a box of contraband kittens face jail time? [•] Newburgh, NY City Comptroller Ed Weber resigns because City Manager Harry Porr was fired. [•] Cory Jones is found dead in New Windsor, NY and police are ruling it suspicious. [•] Local Catholic school teachers are still on strike, a textile union pickets an employer over a wage dispute, a woman is charged after she crashes her auto with a young child unbelted, ’tis the season for ice, the Milford-Montague bridge toll gets raised, an elderly woman is killed crossing a highway, a high speed chase keeps things interesting for the Ulster County Sheriffs, robbers are defeated by a soda machine, the Sullivan County Family Violence Response Team arrested a man on charges of molesting a toddler, and Wurtsboro Police arrest John Kallajian stemming from charges in Connecticut. [•] Hank Williams Jr. and Kid Rock will appear together on CMT Crossroads. [•] Weezer has begun working on their new album. [•] Charlie Clouser has left NIN, but formed a new band called Revenge of the Triads that includes guitarist Troy Van Leeuwen and bassist Jason Slater from A Perfect Circle. [•] The Chevrolet Corvette Z06 rules, but then again you already know that don’t you? [•] Can’t afford the Corvette? Try the Ford Focus; it rules. [•] The 2002 Maserati Spyder is so damn kick ass that I don’t even have a wise ass comment to get you to click on the link. Just do it. [•] Intel has announced an official Pentium 4 chipset using DDR SDRAM. The new AMD Duron mobile ratchets cheap laptop speeds up to 1GHz. And Toshiba has quit the memory business. [•] Viisage Technology licenses its face recognition technology to the US Army. [•] Apple has released a PowerBook with a CD/DVD burner and more memory. [•] Adobe is putting the final touches on multimedia creation software for Mac OS X. [•] Azazel and I had an excellent time at my company’s Christmas party. The food was great and a good time was had by all! [•] C0il is home for Christmas vacation! [•] Sometimes a song can say it all. [•] Note that there is no planned updates for the next three days as I will be attending a three day seminar on VDSL. The next update will be this Saturday. Talk to you then.

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Classic DF – 12/12/01

December 12, 2001: [•] Al Qaeda has failed to surrender by yesterday’s deadline. [•] Taliban and al Qaeda fighters who escaped Afghanistan left behind clues to where they disappeared to. [•] Federal authorities are checking out university labs to determine the risk of terrorists getting a hold of biological agents. [•] 69 Salt Lake City Airport employees have been indicted on charges of lying to their employers about their immigration status. [•] Despite filling the Hart Building with deadly chlorine gas minor anthrax tainting still exists. [•] Israel refuses to stop killing accused terrorists. [•] US warplanes continue to bomb Tora Bora. [•] The US is expected to announce its withdrawal from a 1972 ABM treaty with Russia. [•] BTW: Check out that AP photo in the aforementioned CNN.com article of President Bush. Look real close. Closer. That’s right– that’s c0il over Bush’s shoulder! Don’t see him. Click the link. 🙂 [•] Myanmar has freed 200 Chinese prisoners as a sign of good faith since Chinese dignitaries are visiting the country. [•] Jamaican police use force to quell violence as gangs continue to fight each other over politics. [•] Zimbabwe’s government has started expelling foreign reporters, beating native reporters, and basically shutting down any sort of free speech. [•] Canada celebrates kicking out Guglielmo Marconi out of Newfoundland after he successfully sent the first trans-Alantic wireless communication 100 years ago. [•] Colombian presidential candidate Luis Eduardo Garzon was marked for assassination by opposition paramilitary forces. [•] Peru is considering overhauling its constitution. [•] Malaysia has named its new king as Syed Sirajuddin Syed Putra Jamalullail. [•] Russian prosecutors are urging for Chechen warlord Salman Raduyev be sentenced to life. [•] Ukrainian reporters have been authorized to carry rubber bullet guns to defend themselves due to the recent rise of physical attacks on journalists. [•] The Pope is asking the US to end its sanctions against Iraq. [•] Iranian students protested government reforms. [•] New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani says that after his term is up next year he’s going to start his own firm specializing in fixing failing companies. [•] The US Coast Guard is searching for 4 missing men who’s boat capsized off the coast of Oregon. [•] Robert M. Schwartz, a leading expert in DNA sequencing, has been murdered. [•] Byron Ashley Parker, a man convicted of murdering and raping a young girl in 1984, has been executed by lethal injection. [•] Police are still looking for the fast food worker reported on yesterday who murdered his coworkers.[•] The Duh Study of The Day: The number of obese children in the US is drastically climbing. We like to eat! What can I say? [•] A Louisiana state law allowing a moment of silence or silent prayer in school has been ruled unconstitutional. [•] Ex-DeKalb County Sheriff Sidney Dorsey has been indicted on charges that he killed his successor.[•] The FBI is upping its online surveillance. [•] Microsoft has unveiled its Corona project, a set of multimedia tools that are intended to deliver digital media over the Net. The software promises to deliver non-buffered media streams with twice the visual quality of the DVD format at half the size with 5.1 audio support. [•] The amount of acid rain and ozone damaging gases in the UK is down 14%. [•] Poachers in Cambodia are driving native species into extinction. [•] The US government is asking fisherman to install devices on their fishing lines to deter albatrosses from getting tangled in the lines. [•] The 9 states who refuse to settle with Microsoft want Office ported over to Linux to increase that OS’s ability to compete (Then again, Mac has had Office for years now and it’s no better off). [•] Compaq refuses to integrate with HP and insists it will release its own independent products whether they stay merged or split again. This is quickly becoming the merger that should have never been! [•] Return to Castle Wolfenstein may lack in story line, but with kick ass graphics and gameplay who cares?! [•] A solar eclipse and a meteor show in the same week? That rules! [•] Mar’s ice caps are melting and eventually the planet may even have water on it. [•] Could a secure computer network elevate doctor’s woes over lack of information about patients? [•] Fox News Channel correspondent Geraldo Rivera has landed in the middle of the debate over whether journalists should carry guns in war zones or not. [•] Part 2 of life as an accused child porn trader. [•] Kourosh Hamidi has been found guilty of trespassing after he spammed his former coworkers at Intel with complaints concerning his dismissal. [•] Using a Microsoft TV product? It’s watching you too. [•] The US military is worried about a new high-resolution map of the Earth since it could reveal military targets. [•] Daniel Searfoss, a man caught using a “sneaker-cam” to look up women’s skirts, just can’t kick his habit. [•] Does the universe have a horizon or does stuff simply get eaten by a black hole? [•] Fired Newburgh Housing Authority chief Julius Bannerman has plead guilty to taking bribes. [•] Michael Zito and Rosemary Hirsch led Middletown, NY police on a high-speed car chase that ended with authorities puncturing the pair’s car tires. [•] Michael D. Bloom is charged with stealing jewelry from his friend, one of the two unions who represent NY Catholic school teachers has reached an agreement with the archdiocese, a landfill is capped, police are looking for 2 suspects who robbed SCCC students, and Michael W. Armato is charged with sexually molesting a minor. [•] Eminem’s upcoming movie has been titled 8 Mile. [•] A list of some of the bands that will be playing New Year’s Eve parties. [•] You can hear a 30 second teaser clip of the new NIN song Still at NIN.com right now. [•] Microsoft Internet Explorer has a security hole that allows downloaded files to run without authorization. [•] Limp Bizkit wants you to remix their song. [•] Why did the Audi A4 make Car & Driver’s Top Ten Autos List? Find out. [•] Dodge will sell the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van under the Freightliner line in the US. [•] The US Senate doesn’t like the DOJ’s settlement with Microsoft. [•] Hackers are trying to push the Xbox to its limits. [•] Microsoft flames Oracle by pointing out that the only site they own that doesn’t run on a Windows server is Hotmail and even that uses Microsoft proprietary programs for UNIX. Ouch. [•] Attention MSN GameZone users: If you don’t switch to Passport you’re screwed. [•] Microsoft has developed an update for Windows XP to support both Bluetooth and USB 2.0. Expect OEMs to start shipping it by early 2002 and an official update by mid-2002. [•] I love you wife and daughter!

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