What's up with the smiley spam I've been seeing lately? Anyone else run into emails where the subject contains only a smiley :) and there's nothing in the body? The email server implements greylisting (go spamd!), so the messages are being retried by the delivering system. Anyone know what the scoop is?

The Planetary Society is offering to send your name to the moon. Scheduled to launch between November and December of this year, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's objectives are to find safe landing sites, locate potential resources, characterize the radiation environment, and demonstrate new technology. It costs nothing, it's fun, and you'll receive a certificate showcasing your support of the mission. The deadline is July 25, 2008 for the submission of names. If you had signed up for "Send your name to Mars", your name is now on the surface of Mars aboard NASA's Phoenix mission which landed on May 25, 2008.

Onomatopoeia aficionados, I'm totally stumped. How do you spell the sound a wookie makes?
 

So I'm thinking of getting something like this, which was the first Google result I found:

http://www.privacycorps.com/products/?id=4

Anyone have experience with this or similar products? I had thought of setting up an Asterisk box and doing all that crap, but for 40 bucks an appliance type of device is hard to beat for cost effectiveness. Any others I should consider?
 

Thanks to Shadow Wrought.

Post a comment to this thread, and I will:

1. Tell you why I befriended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, etc..
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7. In return, you must post this in your Journal/Blag/whatever.

I don't know what happened to #6. I think it and #0 eloped, abducted the shaker of salt, and are off on some tropical island sipping margaritas. Also, my answers are memory-dependent but I'll do my best.
 

The recent story on female shark reproduction really drove home what I've been seeing in others comments recently. Slashdot is now quite obviously eliminating certain tags, such as:

http://slashdot.org/tags/lasers (only one shark article?)
http://slashdot.org/tags/frickinlasers (zero found?)
http://slashdot.org/tags/fud (zero found!)
http://slashdot.org/tags/notfud (zero found!)
http://slashdot.org/tags/slashvertisement (zero found!)

Not that I don't blame the effort to increase the quality of tags, but it seems like all the historically popular tags have been retroactively wiped out rather than taking the approach of having a higher threshold for future articles. Tags such as yes/no/maybe are of little value other than a popularity war at the time the article is active and it seems logical to exclude these as simply tag trolling. However, what if someone wants to do a search on what the Slashdot community thinks are slashvertisements, or are articles spouting FUD? Just can't do it, and a potentially useful zeitgeist measure is lost.

So once again, Slashdot jumps the shark? :)
 

As of this posting, user 999378 (texashouston) is the person with the highest account number. Only 622 more users until the millionth. Any bets as to the what the name will be?
 

As this is my second journal entry, I'm clearly not a huge journaler but this is certainly fun!

Inspired by Grub who stole it from Nizo who stole it from heliobacter...

1. Think of the first word that comes to mind when you think of me.

2. Go to: images.google.com and search for that word.

3. Reply to this post with one of the pictures on the first page of results* (but do not tell me the word).

4. Put this in your own journal so that I can do the same.
 

Every week, I get someone replying in regards to my sig letting me know that you don't get karma for funny moderations. Thank you, I know. If you're one of them, then you obviously didn't get my sig. It has nothing to do with humor/humour. The rest, I leave up to you. Reproduced for your edification and in case I think of something better:

--
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.