aubreyturner.org

The 1911 market has just gotten a little more crowded with the entry of SIGARMS and their GSR 1911.

The lines of the slide near the muzzle retain the feel of their other pistols despite it being a 1911 clone.  The addition of the picatinny rail is also a handy feature.  MSRP is $1077.

New blogger Gnu Hunter came across my site and saw my previous rantings on the topic of spam and thought I’d be interested in his analysis of Bill Gates’ junk mail solution.  Bill seems to think he can solve the spam problem in two years through the use of micropayments.  Gnu analyzes just a few of the problems with this approach.

Given that spammers are unscruplous bastards who will lie, cheat, and steal to get their crap into our inboxes, I’d still like to recommend stringing a few of them up by the toes and bleeding them slowly to serve as an example to others.

Boots usually gets really excited when I pull out the Pup-Peroni container.  However, for the past couple of days she has been reluctant to take them from my hand.  I wondered why until yesterday when she started to take one from me and I felt a shock from static electricity.  It turns out that static electricity will pass through a Pup-Peroni strip.  I guess the previous times the charge had been low enough that I didn’t feel it, but her mouth is a lot more sensitive than my hand.

I feel bad about shocking her, but at least now I know to put them down instead of trying to get her to take it from my hand (at least until summer when we resume our normal 90% humidity level).

NASA may reconsider the decision to abandon the Hubble.

NASA (news – web sites)‘s chief agreed Thursday to review his decision to cancel the Hubble Space Telescope (news – web sites)‘s final servicing mission and let it deteriorate and go out of operation. The decision comes after the space agency was bombarded by pleas to save the craft.

Adm. Hal Gehman, chairman of the board that investigated the Columbia shuttle breakup last year, will “review the (Hubble) matter and offer his unique perspective,” NASA Administrator Sean O’Keefe said in a letter to Sen. Barbara Mikulski, who released a copy of the letter.

Of course that statement could just mean, “we’re trying to stall in the hope that people will leave us alone.”

Link via Slashdot.

Despite being scum,  spammers are some clever bastards.

Someone told me about an ingenious way that spammers were cracking “captchas”—the distorted graphic words that a human being has to key into a box before Yahoo and Hotmail and similar services will give her a free email account. The idea is to require a human being and so prevent spammers from automatically generating millions of free email accounts.

The ingenious crack is to offer a free porn site which requires that you key in the solution to a captcha—which has been inlined from Yahoo or Hotmail—before you can gain access. Free porn sites attract lots of users around the clock, and the spammers were able to generate captcha solutions fast enough to create as many throw-away email accounts as they wanted.

The link to Boing Boing is from Slashdot, where I found this in the comments.

They’ve harnessed the power of horniness, but for evil. If only that unlimited power could be harnessed for good—it would be like having controlable fusion and all of the heavy water we’d ever need.

Amazingly clever, those evil spamming bastards.

To borrow a phrase, “Heh.”

A company in Denmark is developing a flower that changes color when planted near a landmine.  They have genetically encoded the plant to react to nitrogen-dioxide (which is emitted by the explosives in the landmine) by turning red. 

When I first saw this I immediately wondered just how they would sow the seeds, but the article mentions either clearing a path using conventional methods or using a plane. 

Link via Slashdot.

Meet Kozo, the sumo-wrestling dancing hippo.  (I disclaim all responsibility for any song that gets stuck in your head if you follow that link.)

Thanks to my friend Rodney for the link.

Spoons noted a few days ago that Amazon.com was taking campaign contributions for the 2004 presidential race.  I took a look at the page and saw a lot of candidates I’d never heard of.  But in terms of angry looking, forget Howard Dean.  This guy wins the award for angriest looking candidate.  He looks like the guy who’s always yelling at people for being on his lawn.

You’d think that our august ‘leaders’ in Washington would have better things to do than waste everyone’s time with this nonsense:

A bill before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee could outlaw the shipping of cigars through the U.S. mail. The Senate has already passed its version of the legislation, and major cigar retailers and the Cigar Association of America are lobbying to keep it from being passed. “

The nature of the cigar business doesn’t lend itself to the level of retail penetration that cigarettes get, which makes mail order and internet sales very important.

I’m getting sick and tired of these damn government busybodies sticking their noses into the tiniest thing that is pleasurable.  If these bastards get their way I’m going to have to drive all over the damn place to get my occasional stogie. 

You know, it’s the little things that slowly push you over the edge…

What is it with Brazilians and Nazi references?  (see fourth paragraph, provided you make it that far   )