According to ABC News, a Icelandic 16 year old teenager called the White House main switchboard (202-456-1414) posing as Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, The President of Iceland. After answering some questions about President Grímsson, the switchboard operator connected him to a high security private phone number that he wasn't suppost to connect to but Bush's secretary said that they would call him back later. Instead, the police showed up, took him down to the police station, and questioned him for several hours. The police say they were ordered by the American government to "find the leak" or be he would banned from ever coming to America. (To the Icelandic people: If this is how our government treats you, then you are not missing anything. Go visit Canada instead.)

Strangely enough, the boy had the phone number for a few years now. (He should post it online.)

I bet if he would have used Lech Kaczyski as his alias, they would have treated him differently.

There is no denying that 2007 will be written down as the Year of the Recall. Tainted pet food. Lead in toys. And now Make Magazine has learned from one of it's subscribers that some electronics may be housing counterfeit capacitors. These fake parts could be in anything from motherboards to TV remotes.

A shipwreck is no laughing matter, unless an ironic twist of fate is involved. The shipwreck on November 23rd in the Southern Ocean had the good fortune that everyone aboard the MS Explorer was safely evacuated and in good spirits.

As if the writer's strike isn't the least of Hollywood's troubles, Larry Carroll reports that bootleg DVD copies of American Gangster were released before the movie but how it was bootlegged has changed the rules of Internet Piracy.

Unlike such piracy favorites as the 2004 thriller "Mindhunters," the copies of "Gangster" are crystal-clear, with none of the "property of" burn-ins that typically indicate its origin. Aside from a few minor audio pops here and there, it seems no different than the eventual DVD that Universal would release itself.

Such events may be a sign that pirates are working at the studios.

On Tuesday, October 16, WHDH-TV in Boston reported that their city was under siege by another bomb threat, this time posted on the 4chan website.

4chan was closed this weekend. At the time this article is being written, it recently reopened. So far, no word as to why they were shut down.

As if all the things that have occured this year with Boston and 4chan were not enough, the combination of both Bomb Scares and Internet Hate Machines is ironic.

Someone at Sony just doesn't get it. Last week, Kotaku reported that Sony would ban talk about homebrewing on their website. Surely this would prevent people from hacking the PSP for making their own programs right? WRONG! Kotaku also reported last week that while Sony was banning homebrew hacking, someone hacked the PSP Slim.

When will Sony get a clue and realize that whenever they say no, hackers will do it anyway just to piss them off?

I'd certainly like to use a homebrew of a PDF reader for the PSP and find a way to upgrade that tiny piece of memory that makes using the browser just about useless.

If you could find a picture next to the phrase "copyright infringement" in the dictionary, a screenshot of the Super Chick Sisters would be right next to it. This foul play has gamers fuming, not in disgust like PETA wanted, but angry because PETA commited the most clear definition of copyright infringement in what is yet another attempt by the extremist animal rights group to brainwash children.

The game was orignially a protest against Kentucky Fried Chicken, but Nintendo executives may cook PETA extra crispy when the cease-and-desist papers are written.

Meanwhile, this game has entices meat-eaters to eat more animals instead of let them live. As this post is being written, I'm having a tuna sammich. Mmm...killing Flipper sure is tasty.

Acording to Paul McNarma of NetworkWorld.com A conference was held in May this year by a marketing firm Cohen & Grigsby to on how to NOT hire American tech workers but hire foreign workers WITHOUT stating benefits and intial pay intentionally. The goal was to undermind the H-1B visa immigration laws enforced in this country.

"Our goal is clearly not to find a qualified U.S. worker ... our objective is to get this person a green card," Lebowitz tells his audience.

And how does an employer go about doing that in light of the legal obligation to first search for a qualified American? It's all about where you search, he says.

"Clearly we are not going to find a place where the applicants are most numerous, we're going to find a place where - again we're complying with the law - and hoping and likely not to find qualified worker applicants," Lebowitz says.

And if despite looking in all the wrong places a gem of an American candidate pops up anyway?

"If someone looks like they are very qualified, if necessary schedule an interview; go through the whole process to find a legal basis to disqualify them," he says.

That's just a taste; there are lots more.

Lebowitz prefaced that first remark - the one about the objective being "not to find a qualified U.S. worker" - by saying, "this may sound funny."

Don't know about anyone else, but I didn't even crack a smile. It doesn't sound funny. It sounds like it ought to be illegal. At the very least, it sounds like Congress should be tightening the screws on current law before increasing the number of H-1Bs.

If that doesn't boil your blood, there is a YouTube video where he and a few other people talks about breaking immigration laws and leaving American tech workers unemployed!

Oh God fearing, Christian America. Creating a long list of websites to protect children from the "many dark places that may lead their souls astray from the path of God" including Lego.com (for Blasphemy), The Florida Marlins (for Beastiality and/or interracial relationships) The First Ammendment of the US Consititution (Offensive political material) and Slashdot (also for Offensive political material and Blasphemy since 2005). It's a world of sin out their and it seems Net Authority does a better job protecting the evils of the Internet for lazy parents than the good of the internet where parents are present.

Who ever runs their little Jesus Camp needs to get a life...oh wait that's right. It's a sin to have one. Sucks to be them.

Is it so wrong to learn how to play the guitar? According to RIAA: Yes. According to NPR, a record company ordered YouTube to remove videos of a man who offered to show people how to play the guitar because the songs he was teaching violated copyright infringement rules. How could this constitute as infringement if most musicians usually experiement to find something that sounds familiar? I've never had a guitar lesson in my life but I know how to play Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here". Does that make me a music pirate? I can play of Bill Withers' "Lean on Me" (which is listed as #205 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) on piano but don't own a copy of the music sheets or the record. Does that make me a pirate?

The thing about education that RIAA forgets is that they can take away these videos but it is too late to stop others from teaching their friends for free. You can take a away a man's instruments but you can not take away the knowledge of how to use them to play music.

The Associated Press reports that Taser International and iRobot Corp. are working on the first armed robots

However some observers fear such developing killer robots could ultimately lead to robots capable of deciding on their own when to shoot and kill.

John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org stated "It is not the first step in that direction, but I think at some point toward the end of the next decade, you're going to start seeing RoboCops, or a Terminator."

SaveTheInternet.com reports that the Federal Trade Commission fumbled the Network Neutrality Act on June 27. However, the FTC defended it actions saying that their decision was not a give-in to the big telecom and cable companies. Instead, the FTC report urges caution on Network Neutrality Regulation.

While this news is disappointing, the FTC's decision appears to be thought out and a message to remind people to not let the subject of Net Neutrality be abandoned by the general public so corporations could undermind the interest of consumers.

Nearly a year after the release of my Java software tutorial, my long awaited follow up has arrived. Introducing the GCC and GLUT tutorial. I have recieved over 100 hits since it was posted nearly 24 hours ago, this was after I announced it on a few USENET groups, my blog, and on DeviantArt. (Yes, they have an OpenGL group at DA.) Lets see if Slashdot can real in some big hits.

So what is in this tutorial? Pretty much everything I could think of. It is primarly for C++ programmers, but the batch files can be modified for C users. This is just a step by step guide to installing Dev-C++ and GLUT. My advice is to not use Dev-C++, just the Windows version of GCC that comes with it. (I recommend using VIM as the text editor, NOT Notepad! (VIM for Windows kicks butt!)) The tutorial also explains that if you have an SSH accound with a webhosting provider using UNIX or Linux (such as Dreamhost), you can connect to a remote host and program from handheld devices such as a Blackberry. (Maybe not OpenGL, but C and C++, most definitely! Try doing that with Java!)

I've included batch files that users can download even modify to make using GCC for windows eaiser. One thing that I talk about is using the archive program (ar) for creating libraries from modules and making changes to each file one file at a time rather than entering in a long list of modules.

If you've ever wanted to begin programming but were wise enough not to buy into that phoney balogna "you can be a game programmer" crap they sell on TV, then you will want to read this tutorial!

This morning while listening to the Bob and Tom radio show, you may have heard Al declare the world premere of the "White and Nerdy" music video on AOL this evening. Well, because the video was leaked out onto the Internet before the premere, Al canceled the premeire according to his blog on MySpace. The video had found its way onto YouTube as well as several songs from his latest album that Al did not approve of. Al canceled the premiere just hours before it was scheduled to go online.

According to Al's MySpace Blog:

I can understand songs leaking, but a video? How'd THAT happen?

RIAA has ordered YouTube to take down the video which was uploaded onto the P2P video website called SingingFool.com.

The fact that an entire video was pirated before the album's release should raise security concerns for AOL users and could delay Straight out of Lynnwood, schedule to be released September 26.

Someone at AOL has some explaining to do!

The FBI raided several offices including the son of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens in a crime that involves--of all things--a series of tubes!

At least six Alaskan state legislators had their offices raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, including Alaskan State Senator Ben Stevens, son of U.S. Senator Ted Stevens. Ben Stevens is the Republician senate president for the Alaskan state senate. The Feds seized up to 12 boxes that the investigators labeled as evidence from a state office building in Juneau Thursday evening.

A warrent was issued to investigate possible ties between Alaskan lawmakers in Juneau and a large oil field services and construction company whose executives are major contributors to political campaigns based in Anchorage.