Category: Interesting

A very interesting story on a site I can’t say that I’ve ever been to before: The Center for Public Integrity. The headline: “Phone fund for schools, libraries riddled with fraud.” Apparently the Universal Service Fund is supposed to be used to help schools and libraries get online. Every year, $2.25 billion go into that program. But more and more, a good chunk of that money is lining the pockets of executives and not being put back into schools or libraries. Let’s see…$2.25 billion divided by 50-states equals $50 million. Put that into the general school funding for the states. It won’t entirely fund schools, but it will certainly help.

Find out here. Any bets on how long until Rumsfeld asks to shut down the site?

According to this Boston Globe story, blacks and Hispanics are more likely to be searched, whites are more likely than any other racial group to face drug charges following a search – supporting a claim by minorities that they are searched with less reason. How did they research this? Nearly two years after the state began collecting information on traffic citations to measure possible racial profiling by police, the Boston Globe analyzed more than 750,000 tickets, from every police department in the state.

It cheats. According to this SlashDot comment (mirrored from a blog that has since been Slashdotted), MSIE doesn’t follow the standard protocols for browser-to-server communication. It cheats, and cheats even worse when the server is running IIS. A bit technical, but a very interesting read.

…they don’t know how to apply for jobs.

This post on MegNut.com should be read by anybody considering applying for a job. Some of the stuff seems obvious, but it’s the little things in your job hunts that matter. But don’t do things like this (this was in response to a Craig’s List posting for a software/hardware engineer)…from the post:

Here are some of the things I’ve received to date in response to my posting (note: posting says attachments will not be read, application requires an essay, company consists of two people):

Just a public service announcement: If you see these celebrities on the street, don’t mess with ’em, the cranky ol’ fruit-cakes.

This is what happens when I don’t read SlashDot for a few days, I find all the cool stuff on there. A Space.com article highlights the 10 space mysteries for 2003. Random stuff like Dark Energy, Water on Mars, the origins of the Universe, and whether we’ll survive 2003. Pretty wild (and complex) stuff.

Nabbed via Fark. Apparently the town of Bridgeville, California was sold on eBay for $1.78 milion on eBay (full story). It’s a ghost town, basically. And if you count the fake bids on “>Eminem’s House, it sold for less.

Update: No more comments are allowed on this entry because of the idiots trolls and the morons who think I’m somehow a good friend of Mr. Mathers, and because there are just too many idiots posting asinine “I love you Eminem!” rants. And the comments were getting nasty. I don’t mind the occassional swear word now and again, but keep it in context and sort of tasteful. The comments have all been deleted, discussion closed.

A friend of mine (Dylon Whyte) who makes chainmail has a small part on his site devoted to his Paradoxian tarot deck.

All images were created by him. Some interesting computer artwork.

Their search engine is already pretty cruddy, but here’s another reason to avoid Lycos. The FBI, in a “groundbreaking technological initiative in law enforcement” is going to be placing pop-up banner ads on sites on the Terra Lycos network (which includes those annoying personal pages hosted at angelfire.com and tripod.com, as well as Wired News). These ads are going to be featuring pictures, messages, and reward information for America’s Ten Most Wanted fugitives.

At least the guy they plan on featuring in the ads initially isn’t as scary looking as some of the other folks on the list. Think about it: Would you go back to a site that threw the image of a scary fugitive in your face? Those guys would give me nightmares, and I’d (personally) avoid a site that did that. Hopefully Lycos has thought this through a bit.