A sneaky little monster...
What's the word on C-Dilla?. A friend on one of my lists wrote:

...found some nasty stuff on C-Dilla - installed as a copy protection tool with Turbo Tax, seemed to cause some nasty stuff on my system running as a system service in Win2000. Searches on various forums turned up some news on it in game software with the claim that it's used as spyware to document and send data ion music and copyrighted material downloads, and that it disables CD-R software from burning copy protected material or copying copyrighted disks...

Since it's tax time I just installed TurboTax on my PC. I had used it on my Mac in the past, but I was having trouble downloading the software (or even ordering it) and I'm still chary of doing my return via the website, so I ran over to Emeryville to pick up a copy of the software at Circuit City, and naturally they only had the Windows version. OK, I've got both machines and as long as I add a .tax extension to the data files from last year's returns over on my Mac, everything should be hunky dory. But a little poking around does show a hidden C-Dilla directory and I don't remember reading anything about that when installing Turbotax, so I deleted it. My friend also said

Claim is it installs to a hidden system sector on disks and is a pain or impossible to remove. About to reboot and see if that's true and it persists and comes back. Sounds like it's made by the folks who brought us Macrovision, the stuff that makes video get nasty when dubbed.

So, did I fail to delete it, I wonder? Or if it's gone now and it's used by Intuit for copy protection, will this inhibit my tax-filing? [Radio Free Blogistan]

Lovely. Now I'll have to go looking on my wife's computer to see what nastly little pest installed with TurboTax. If indeed I find it and further research reveals it to be spyware I will be sure to no longer do my taxes with Intuit.

 

An empty house...

"It is offensive to me," said Brent Rocha, the missing woman's brother. "Basically (her husband, Scott,) is saying he doesn't care about the life he had with Laci. It seems like he just abandoned that life so easily. It definitely doesn't make sense." [ModBee] 

Yogi copyrights style...
Hot, sweaty and scandalous. Bikram Choudhury, founder of the fastest-growing style of yoga in America, has copyrighted his poses and is threatening to sue anyone who teaches his "hot" style without permission. Is this enlightenment? [Salon.com] 

Off we go, into the wild blue yonder...
Starchaser unveils manned spacecraft prototype. Starchaser, a British company competing for the X Prize, unveiled Thursday a small capsule the... [spacetoday.net]

After looking at pictures of the capsule I'm sure the guys wife is asking the question asked of most great inventors, "Are you NUTS???"

 

A Wi-Fi world!...
Tuning Into the Hype About Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi Internet access is popping up in all kinds of businesses, including fast-food restaurants and coffee shops. But do customers really want it? By Elisa Batista. [Wired News]

Hell yah we do! The problem with the article is, they assume Starbucks to be the model place for Wi-Fi. A better place would be an eating establishment where people go for lunch, dinner, or hang out with friends. Having been a geek for all my life, some of my most enjoyable times have been community surfing with friends or playing online games.

The other problem with the article is their understanding of Wi-Fi. Many of us have been wardriving/walking in the search for the holy grail of Wi-Fi, free access. Who wants to pay for T-Mobile's overrated, overpriced service?

 

War news...

For those of you who haven't found them already, Tim Bray points to some great news links to keep you up to speed on the War in Iraq.

Don't Watch the War on TV. We don't get TV at home, so I've been following the war (a bit obsessively, I will admit) on the Web. I was on the road the last couple of days and spent several hours in my hotel room glued to the news channels watching the war on TV. The conclusion is: don't watch the war on TV, the Web is way better.... [ongoing]

 

Kim Jong Il's infamouse blog...

KIM JONG IL has started blogging.  [Instapundit]

Actually The Phil  pointed me at this a week ago. I laughed until I cried. Everyone at work was looking at me but I couldn't help it. ROR.

 

A sad, sad state...

No Pants Fridays. Anybody care to join me?... [C:PIRILLO.EXE]

Quick! Somebody get that guy a job before he REALLY starts to lose it! I wonder if this could be a side effect of the hair dye.

 

From the depths of the ocean...
Super squid surfaces in Antarctic: "A colossal squid has been caught in Antarctic waters, the first example of Mesonychoteuthis hamiltoni retrieved virtually intact from the surface of the ocean." [From the Desktop of Dane Carlson]

Undoubtedly there is a TV movie in the works somewhere.

 

He had what???
An unconfirmed report on NPR just aired that the US has found lots of an anthrax-like white powder near Baghdad. [Scripting News]

Whoa! That's what I like about Dave being on the east coast now....he gets up earlier and post's the news earlier.

 

A war has many fronts...
War hacking continues. Now the Iraqi government's official website, http://www.uruklink.net is off the air, too. It was redirected to http://www.itshappening.com/index_three.html for a while,... [Richard Bennett's Omphalos] 

Our families in harms way...
How well did you sleep last night?. From a relative in Iraq, some (newswire) pictures of how the troops are catching a few winks here and there.... [Richard Bennett's Omphalos]

Great pictures. It's a little scary how in one shot it doesn't look like they're in foxholes but graves. Oh, there's a bottle of pee in one shot too. LOL

 

Can you say
Say you work for a teevee news outfit -- ABC's 20/20, for example -- and you've got a digital camera and you're taking some tourist shots around Camp Patriot. And then, for some reason, you decide to take a few shots of your dick, because ... well, who knows? And then say you lose your camera. And a certain naval officer finds it.

Also, the naval officer updates his blog from Kuwait.
[Ken Layne]

OMG! Hilarious! You have to go read the account of the soldier that found the camera. Just don't do it in front of your boss or he'll wonder what you're laughing about.

 

 

I got it!...
Yvan Eht Nioj. From an episode of the Simpsons: Bart and his friends are turned into a boy band, complete with a video that repeats the phrase "Yvan eht nioj" over and over in the chorus. When Lisa asks what it means, Homer replies that it doesn't mean anything. "It's nonsensical, like 'ramma lamma ding dong' or 'give peace a chance'." Well, I thought it was funny! [Code The Web Socket]

Me too! I guess you had to be there.

 

Apartment for sale!...
Got about 2,000,000 smackeroonies ya' wanna blow? A tried and true Trekkie? A daily WWDN reader? Well the Star Trek apartment, famous in BBS boards everywhere, is up for sale on eBay. Check it. 

Too cool for mainstream...
Brad Sucks. >>  Letting people download, listen to, and share one's music just might be the key to becoming a working musician in "the post-Napster universe."  [Coolstop Daily Pick 4/3/03 via scottandrew.com] [jenett.radio]

I dig this guys music. I've been turning my friends on to it and they seem to really like it too. Tres cool sirs.