Category: Interesting

It’s 10-years old today. It started on Usenet, and has come to consume more e-mail traffic than regular mail. A good look at spam’s ugly history.

First the city of San Francisco was giving away marriage licenses to gay couples, and now Multnomah County (Portland for you folks who don’t live here) is planning on doing the same thing. Meanwhile, Bush is trying to ban gay marriages. This could all prove interesting, come election time.

Update on 3/3: They’re discussing this issue locally in Bend as well.

Scientists are looking for ways to defend Earth from large asteroids. I know the solution: Let’s just send Ben Aflek and Bruce Willis after it. If they really have to sacrifice themselves, will they really be missed?

In an interesting move, Yahoo! isn’t just replacing Google results with Inktomi, it decided to create a new engine all their own.

It’s actually done much better than it was before, including features like caching and such that you didn’t see before. It’s even highlighting RSS Feeds. A Google designer wasn’t all that impressed, however.

This is how you might see this site (if you had Protanope color blindness). Vischeck allows you to submit a URL to see what it looks like to color blind people of three different types of conditions see when they see your site. Here’s what UtterlyBoring.com looks like in Deuteranope, and this in Tritanope. My site’s pretty readable in all of them, but it does show me what folks do go through with those conditions.

Thanks to Rick for the link.

Dad’s in-law is caught in a possible compromising situation with 2 year old daughter. The dad knows the guys history of sex abuse, so he immediately beats the registered sex offender up, and kicks him out. He takes girl to hospital, no penetration. But later on, he decides to gun the man down in the street with 9 bullets.

Personally, I think the man should’ve been shot, too, despite the fact that he wasn’t found guilty this time — he was before. I know I would’ve probably had done the same thing if somebody came near my daughters, even if it meant I’d go to jail. Full story on the shooting.

Not only is the science behind the low-carb diets a bit shaky, but people don’t know how to label their food properly, creating a false sense of security:

At Subway we tested the Turkey Bacon Melt Wrap. Subway claims that it has 22 grams of carbs, while our lab results showed it at 28 grams…

At Carl’s Jr., we tested the low-carb Six Dollar Burger, which the company claims has six grams of carbohydrates. Our lab results: 9 grams…

We tested TGIF’s Sizzling New York Strip with Blue Cheese. TGIF claims 6 net carbs and 11 total carbs. Our lab found 20 total carbs…

Low-Carb Emporium claims 15 grams of carbs per bagel. Our lab found triple the carbs — 55. Low-carb Emporium says they just re-did the formulas and will be getting lab reports on new formulas soon.

I don’t want to get into a debate about how well the diet works, as it’s not my place. If I had actually followed through and got my R.D. from Colorado State, then I’d actually form an opinion here. But I do know that the diet’s creating a lot of buzz, it probably works for some folks, but for endurance athletes (like myself — once I recover from my surgery), carbohydrates are still the best way to fuel yourself.

And while there’s good legitimate criticism of the diet out there, it doesn’t help when one of the most vocal “doctor’s groups” denouncing the diet is actually a front for PETA.

I think what gets me is all the people that think that low-carb means “Avoid bread, eat lots of sausage, butter and beans.” That’s smart thinking — you’ll die faster than most. And those folks claim they’re healthy as an ox. Right…an ox with cholesterol-filled arteries.

And then people also get mad when they don’t lose weight fast enough. For christ sakes, people, exercise! Low carb, high carb, no carb, whatever, your body can’t lose wait unless you burn off more calories than you put in — period.

Me, when I get my strength back and try to get back into competitive shape, I’ll go back on the diet that was good for me when I was working out more: 60-20-20 — 60% carbs, 20% protein, 20% fat — give or take a bit either way. It always worked for me, and no sense in screwing with what works.

Update on 2/11: Not only that, but Dr. Atkins was obese and unhealthy when he died.

Couple of interesting links that I came across today. It’s no secret that the folks at Real make it a pain in the ass to download their free player. Site owners are getting upset with it. The rumors are lately that Real is also putting spyware/adware-type of crap in their latest browser. So a couple of major sites have come out to speak against this.

One, according to Boing Boing, BBC made a deal with Real to distribute a spyware-free version of the player via their site. According to the BB post:

The BBC made a unique deal with Real Networks which disposes of their spyware tactics. Basically, if a user clicks on a link to download Real Player from a BBC website, the referrer script sends them to a page where they can download an expiry-free, spyware-free and nuisance-free version of the player. It’s because the BBC have such a stringent public service remit, that it was offensive to charge people a license fee for BBC content, then make them pay all over again for the facility to view/listen to it.

Another major audio provider, CarTalk.com, has decided to ditch Real’s player as well. And they say it the best:

Here’s the problem. In order to hear our audio, you have to go to Real.com and download their “free” RealPlayer. But when you get to the web site, the free player is harder to find than Osama Bin Laden at night. And the site seems to do everything it possibly can to get you to “buy” a player instead. You have to work very hard to get the free player. And we think that stinks. And get this. It stinks so much that it even makes Microsoft look good by comparison. That’s something, huh?

I’m getting sick of RealPlayer issues, too. We use it on our work site (it was the chosen format long before I got here). I’m in the process of refilming all the videos so a) they can be better quality (as I don’t have the originals) and b) so I can encode them in Windows Media format, now that the player is available for Macs. 90% of the site’s traffic is Windows-based, so I’m not too worried about compatibility compared to the RealPlayer problems.

But I think I’m going to follow Neil’s advice and download Media Player Classic along with Real Alternative and just bulldoze the Real software on my system.

Just make the days 28 hours each.