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Wouldn't want to let anyone take over your system with yacc. Seriously.

But ./ is already taken over with yak. Seriously.

I always thought the geek brain was based on token ring topology with the different nodes responsible for:

• eat
• sleep
• video games
• pr0n

all running round robin =)

If spam is a "whopper" of a problem, and burger king's "whopper" is a cheeseburger, then...

ICANN has cheezburger?

Funny aside: my captcha is "verified", something which these domains were not.

obviously, solar energy is the ultimate renewable energy source

Actually, there's already a way to turn solar energy into crude oil : grow plants, bury dead plants deep underground, wait several millions years, extract oil.

You do realize oil *is* solar energy right?

A number of readers wrote in to make sure we know about Microsoft's change of heart regarding IE8. The new version of the dominant browser will render in full standards mode by default. Developers wishing to use quirks mode for IE6- and IE7-compatible rendering will have to opt in explicitly. We've previously discussed IE8's render mode a few times. Perhaps Opera's complaint to the EU or the EU's record antitrust fine had something to do with Redmond's about-face.

dptalia writes "Later this year, at ShopRite supermarkets in the eastern US, Microsoft will be rolling out computerized shopping carts. These carts will allow people with a ShopRite card to enter their shopping list on the ShopRite site from home, and then pull up the list on their grocery cart when they swipe their card. The new carts will also display advertisements depending on where in the supermarket the cart is, using RFID technology to help locate it."

bukharin writes "'w00t', the "small word that packs a pretty big punch", has been named Word of the Year for 2007 by dictionary gurus Merriam-Webster. Visitors to the Merriam-Webster website were asked to vote for one of 20 commonly searched words and phrases. Facebook was the runner-up. Previously honored geek words include google (runner-up in 2006) and blog (winner in 2004)."

narramissic writes "With Windows 7 due in late 2009 or 2010, many businesses may choose to wait it out rather than make the switch to Vista. According to some analysts, Vista uptake at this point really depends on how good Vista SP1 (due in Q1, 2008) is. If it doesn't smooth over all the problems, companies are much more likely to stick with XP. And that holds especially true for those businesses that follow the every-other-release rule." Note for Microsoft: Allow us to natively disable trackpads.

An anonymous reader writes "You're doing something interesting. The phone rings. You get up, pick up the phone, and hear only silence. It could be a slasher waiting outside your house, but it's probably an errant computer at a telemarketer. This article describes how some are fighting back by setting up websites to track the worst telemarketers by their caller ids. The article mentions whocalled.us (one of the funnier urls I've ever seen), 800notes.com and numberzoom.com . One intrepid guy is even writing a program to check these sites when the call comes in before ringing the phone."

Actual Reality writes "It is ironic to me that much of the same sentiment that thwarted the nuclear power industry back in the 80's is partially responsible for reviving it. Nuclear power is very clean compared to any power source that burns fuel. The US has missed several advancements in nuclear technology. We can only hope that environmental concerns will not again stifle our progress."

mrneutron2003 writes "The RIAA has officially backed a move by the recording industry to reintroduce the CD single. Populated with three songs and a ringtone, this brilliantly clueless idea is to be marketed as a 'ringle,' complete with an even more clueless retail price of $6-7 per CD. Apart from the fact the industry hasn't agreed on how the ringtone is to be redeemed (Sony BMG, the initial proponent of the idea, is the exception here), the pricing puts it way out of line with legitimate digital music downloads." At $7, retailers would enjoy a profit margin they haven't seen since the days of cassette tapes and vinyl.

Raver32 writes with a link to the Space.com site, and an article discussing an extra-solar planet that looks a lot like ours from a distance. At least, its orbit does. The planet is located about 300 light years away, in the constellation Perseus. It circles its giant red star every 360 days and was discovered by 'looking for wobble', the shift in a star's movement that hints at orbiting planets. "The discovery could help astronomers understand what will happen to our sun's brood of planets when it exhausts its store of hydrogen fuel and its outer envelope begins to swell. When that happens in an estimated 5 billion years, our sun will be so big that it will engulf the inner planets and most likely Earth. But long before that happens, life on our planet will have perished and its seas will have boiled away."

An anonymous reader writes "The Senate Commerce Committee has stepped in and approved a legislation asking the Federal Communications Commission to 'oversee the development of a super V-chip that could screen content on everything from cell phones to the Internet.' Since the content viewed by children is no longer restricted to TV or radio Sen. Mark Pryor, D-Ark., the sponsor of the Child Safe Viewing Act, feels that the new law is necessary. 'The bill requires the FCC to review, within one year of enactment, technology that can help parents manage the vast volume of video and other content on television or the Internet. Under the 1996 Telecommunications Act, TV makers are required to embed the V-chip within televisions to allow parents to block content according to a rating system.'"

Measurement of flight speeds of 138 species of bird reveals that mass and wing loading do not scale according to aerodynamic theory but vary significantly depending on phylogeny.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/07/070717014442.htm

CNN has a mostly dismissive story that reports some of the problems Vista users are still having six months after the official release.

Highlights: Gripes over what doesn't work with Vista eclipse positive buzz. Some Vista users are "upgrading" back to Windows XP.

"I can't live in Vista if the software that I use in my life for productivity does not work," said [Microsoft enthusiast] Pirillo, in the third minute of a 52-minute video he posted on YouTube. ... Vista tested even Pirillo's savvy. He fixed the hobbled printer and other problems by installing VMware, a program that lets him run XP within Vista. But when his trial copy expired, he decided the solution was too clunky -- and too expensive.

Microsoft said it had distributed 40 million copies of Vista ... but Forrester Research analyst J.P. Gownder estimated just over 12 million U.S. consumers would have Vista by the end of the year, out of about 235 million PCs in the country.

This is great stuff to see in CNN, despite all of the M$ can't lose language around it. They are no longer able to hide the slow sales and problems, now they have to make excuses.

The rest is standard M$ party line. Complaints about programs and devices that don't work are belittled as "rants" and "sport." Blame is placed squarely on device makers and other software vendors. Finally, we get a dreamy eyed Microsoftie:

Everybody wants there to be a repeat of Windows 98 ... At the time of Windows 98's launch, broadband access to the Internet was catching fire and consumers were pumped up about getting a faster, cheaper computer.

The year all the Windows 95 machines mysteriously died? No thanks, I'd rather my last faster cheaper computer kept working. That's why I use Debian. The only thing catching fire here is Microsoft's market position.