Information Salad: Episode #19

This week Eva Longoria broke our hearts, Charlotte Wyatt’s dad gets a chance to care for her, and lots of geek stuff.

Here’s what we tossed up this week:

• Vinny gives us an update on Nanowrimo.
• Vinny highly recommends The Melting Pot
• Slobokan is pissed at Google Adsense.
• We both highly recommend Text Link Ads.
• Josh Wolf lost a request for a re-hearing.
• Charlotte Wyatt’s father is staying at the hospital with her to demonstrate he is able to care for her, but now it seems she has an infection
• The Zune launched. Reviews have been universally lukewarm, moreso because of the horrible software than the hardware itself, which is to be expected. After all… Microsoft is excellent at overpromising and underdelivering in the area of bloatware. Sales have been steady though.
• There is a flaw in the Broadcom wireless driver on many wireless computers.
• Breaking the hearts of thousands of men around the world, Eva Longoria announced she will NOT be starring in a lesbian movie.Eva Longoria is shooting down rumors that she plans to star as Beyonce Knowles’s lover in a new movie.
  

  “Stop the madness” Longoria tells PEOPLE exclusively about the false reports that she and Knowles will play a couple in an adaptation of Sarah Waters’s love story Tipping the Velvet. “Believe me, I would love to work with Beyonce one day. She’s so talented. But this is definitely not something we are doing together. It’s completely and absolutely not true.”

• Borat makes people look bad in his movie. Oh well.
• We talk about reality shows, Amazing Race, Survivor, and Heroes.
• Are there only problems with electronic voting when Democrats lose?- Montana — Where a Democrat won his Senate race but the Republican won the House (1 up for election total)
  - Indiana — Richard Lugar maintains the Senate, but losses in the house to Democrats.
  - Ohio — 12% victory for Democrats in the Senate, and Dems swept governorship and house.
  - New Jersey — Democrats walk away with the Senate, the House, and the Governorship
  - Colorado — Democrats win 4 / 7 House races, and the governorship

  Wonder why we haven’t heard more about the problems?

• We have a new candidate for best ad of the election campaign; this time the utterly ridiculous Vito Fossella from Staten Island, NY. (http://www.insignificantthoughts.com/fosella.mp3)
• It seems you are lord of your castle everywhere, except Colorado.
  

  Colleen and Rodger Sauve, both smokers, filed a lawsuit in March after their condominium association amended its bylaws last December to prohibit smoking. “We argued that the HOA was not being reasonable in restricting smoking in our own unit, nowhere on the premises, not in the parking lot or on our patio,” Colleen Sauve said.

• Pahrump, Nevada passed a law making it illegal to fly a foreign nation’s flag by itself. Do we really need more laws? Seriously…
• By the time you hear this podcast, the Nextel Cup champion will have been decided. Jimmie Johnson leads Matt Kenseth by 63 points, Kevin Harvick and Denny Hamlin are back 90, and Jr is back 115. No one really has a shot at the title.

Tags: Democratic, Denny Hamlin, Jimmie Johnson, Kevin Harvick, Microsoft, Senate, Staten Island, Vito Fossella

Information Salad: Episode #18

This week we’re coming off our high from the “International Election Craptacular”. We discovered there are far more stupid people in the world than we thought. This one moves fast, so hold on.

Here’s what we tossed up this week:

• Vinny talks about Nanowrimo.
• Slobokan talks about moving his blog back to Wordpress.
• w.bloggar is Slobokan’s blogging tool of choice.
• We chat about our International Election Craptacular
• Pledge Banned at California College
  

  Student leaders at a California college have touched off a furor by banning the Pledge of Allegiance at their meetings, saying they see no reason to publicly swear loyalty to God and the U.S. government.

  The move by Orange Coast College student trustees, the latest clash over patriotism and religion in American schools, has infuriated some of their classmates — prompting one young woman to loudly recite the pledge in front of the board on Wednesday night in defiance of the rule.

  …

  Bell said the ban largely came about because the trustees didn’t want to publicly vow loyalty to the American government before their meetings. “Loyalty ought to be something the government earns through performance, not through reciting a pledge,” he said.

• Hips Don’t Lie
  

  A New Jersey woman who fell off a wet bar and injured herself while dancing in a “Shake-It-Like-Shakira” contest is suing the Manhattan bar that sponsored the shake-off.

  Megan Zacher, 22, of Delanco, N.J fell inside Calico Jack’s Cantina on 42nd Street at Second Avenue on July 8, 2006. Her lawyer, Lawrence Simon, said the fall caused a torn ligament in her left knee and required surgery.

  Simon said Zacher and two friends had been in Calico Jack’s about an hour. Zacher had finished one drink and was working on a second, and was dancing on the bar, vying for the $250 “Shake-It-Like-Shakira” prize, when she fell.

  Shakira, pop songstress from Colombia, South America, who also has Lebanese ancestry, is famous for her belly dance moves. Her latest hit is “Hips Don’t Lie.”

  Zacher’s lawsuit says the bar’s operators should have known the contest atop a wet bar was “dangerous.” The lawsuit asks unspecified damages from Calico Jack’s.

• Hot Air introduces Absolute Moral Authority cards! YAY!
• We talk about reality shows, Amazing Race, Survivor, Heroes, and the “cancellation” of 6 Degrees.
• Mac users need to be scared of viruses?
  

  There are reportedly more vulnerabilities that can be exploited in Windows XP than Mac OS X.

  Doesn’t reportedly convey the possibility that there aren’t, but that people just think there are? It does to me.

• We highly recommend AVG Anti-Virus
• Sprint’s Ambassador Program
  

  On the surface, Sprint’s Ambassador Program seems like a great way to get valuable feedback from high-profile mobile users: give free phones and wireless service to 400-odd bloggers in exchange for regular reports concerning their pros and cons. Unfortunately — at least according to two former Ambassadors — there are more strings attached than those that are spelled out in the contract; both designer Eston Bond and consultant Michael Mace claim that they were kicked out of the program because they didn’t write anything positive about the Samsung A920 they were given to test.

• No NASCAR update this week

Tags: AVG, Calico Jack, Colombia, Federal government of the United States, Orange Coast College, Pledge of Allegiance, United States, Windows XP

Information Salad: International Election Craptacular

Join us in this special edition of Information Salad as we chat with Spencer and Stageleft about this year’s election results.

Tags: election

Information Salad: Episode #17

More geek news this week, with talk about Ubuntu 6.10, Firefox 2.0, and Microsoft changing the licensing structure for Vista. We touch on a few political topics as well.

Here’s what we tossed up this week:

• Vinny talks about Nanowrimo.
• Slobokan talks about problems with Ubuntu 6.10.
• Vinny talks about issues with the Google Toolbar and Firefox 2.0.
• Virus Disables Windows Firewall
  

  Hackers have published code that could let an attacker disable the Windows Firewall on certain Windows XP machines.

  The code, which was posted on the Internet early Sunday morning, could be used to disable the Windows Firewall on a fully patched Windows XP PC that was running Windows’ Internet Connection Service (ICS).

  …

  The attacker could send a malicious data packet to another PC using ICS that would cause the service to terminate. Because this service is connected to the Windows firewall, this packet would also cause the firewall to stop working

  Oh yeah, but only if…

  the attacker would have to be within the LAN in order to make the attack work, and, of course, it would only work on systems using ICS, which is disabled by default. Furthermore, the attack would have no effect on any third-party firewall being used by the PC

• Windows Vista now supports moving from machine to machine.
• Vinny is testing Second Rate Hosting and our “high traffic” customer, Flopping Aces.
• Texas Border Watch Test Site
  

  As part of the Virtual Neighborhood Border Watch Program, the State of Texas has been testing video surveillance cameras in different environments along the 1240 miles of Texas/Mexico border using the internet to transmit the images. The last stage of the test is to stress the system by providing public access to eight surveillance cameras.

  I think it’s safe to say the system is “stressed”, I haven’t been able to view a camera all day.

• We have some fun with statistics, in reference to John Kerry’s statements from 1972 and again this week.
• We discuss the NY Times article and their admission that Saddam had a nuclear weapons program.
• We both highly recommend GMail for Mobile.
• We talk about reality shows, Amazing Race, Survivor, Heroes, 6 Degrees.
• NASCAR: Robby Gordon Penalized
  

  Gordon, who owns his own race team, was docked 50 driver points and 50 car owner points, and fined $15,000 for throwing a piece of roll bar padding onto the track during Sunday’s race at Atlanta.

Tags: Google Toolbar, Microsoft, Microsoft Windows, Operating system, Windows, Windows Firewall, Windows Vista, Windows XP