Well first of all to those that got caught in the huge mess I made of updating the site I am sorry about that. I think that all is better now or at least I hope so. And as you can see if you are also a regular visitor to my other site The Barrel was down for a little over 6 hours today due to a server failure. And as if having two count them two sites going wonky on me, I had to go out and shovel over 6 inches of a possible 1-2 inches of snow off of my driveway and walks. Okay I know what you are saying go back to bed and start over, right?  Nope not me I had to attempt to help someone else with their computer problem. Lets just say that continued the “not a good day” theme with a vengence. So as I type this, which by the way I hope will work, all sites are up and running, my friends computer is running and well again, and now I am going to go out and shovel the rest of the snow that has continued to fall. For the rest of you I really, really hope that your day is going a lot better than mine.

Today is; Lame Duck Day

Quote of the Day; “I take my wife everywhere, but she keeps finding her way back.”

Henny Youngman (1906 – 1998)

Word of the Day: loathe ‘lO[th] (verb)

: to dislike greatly and often with disgust or intolerance : DETEST

Today in History; The board game Monopoly first went on sale.(1935)

Astronaut Alan Shepard hits three golf balls on the moon. (1971)

Todays Birthdays; 1895 George Herman “Babe” Ruth, the greatest baseball player of all time

1911- Ronald Reagan, 40th U.S. President (1981-1989)

Todays Tidbits posted here today due to connection problems over at The Barrel.
Have a good day and a better tomorrow folks.

Cory Doctorow: Want to get out of your Verizon contract for free? Consumerist has a step-by-step, “aggressive” script that looks iron-clad:

Use this aggressive step-by-step script for leaving your Verizon contract early, without paying $175, in under 30 minutes.

No longer will Verizon get to think they can carve their logo in your head for life.

The play turns on Verizon’s recent raise in basic text-messaging rates from $.10 to $.15. We’ve laid out these steps before, but we enjoy Roosh’s confrontational style. He created the script based on previous Consumerist posts and comments. He talked to three different reps in thirty minutes. Within an hour after hanging up, his phone was off.

Read how it’s done, inside…

Link

Source: HOWTO Get out of your Verizon contract for free

BBC columnist Bill Thompson warns readers that new DRM technology, especially that found in Vista, is damaging the freedoms that the internet was based on. “The freedom of expression that was once available to users of the Internet Protocol is being stripped away. Our freedom to play, experiment, share and seek inspiration from the creative works of others is increasingly restricted so that large companies can lock our culture down for their own profit. [...] governments and corporations around the world are making a concerted effort to dismantle the open internet and replace it with a regulated and regulable one that will allow them to impose an ‘architecture of control.’”

Source: Vista a Threat to Internet Freedom?

A quick installation and configuration guide proving that an integrated service mail server such as AXIGEN can be set up in a matter of minutes. The article also offers a step by step procedure to integrate AXIGEN with Antivirus and Anti-spam open source applications, mainly ClamAV and SpamAssasin.

Source: 15 Minutes to Install a Mail Server with Antivirus and Antispam

Linux Genuine Advantage™ is an exciting and mandatory new way for you to place your computer under the remote control of an untrusted third party!

[Be sure to check out "Linux Genuine Advantage™ has been cracked by computer hackers!" at the bottom of the page. - TC]

Source: Linux Genuine Advantage™

Students at De Montfort University in Leicester, England, have teamed up with Penguin Books to create the very first “wiki” novel. The “wiki” novel is a work of fiction that can be added to by anyone across the globe using the Web site, www.amillionpenguins.com, which is the same as the books title. Until the end of the month anyone can help write A Million Penguins. After just a few days the novel is already in its seventh chapter. The idea for the novel is also part of a study module at the university involving students based across the world.

Source: British Students, Penguin Books Create ‘Wiki’ Novel

By Jonathan Roberts

This last week I’ve been trying my hand at a bit of DVD authoring and I thought I’d pass on everything that I’ve found out! A couple of the most useful tools are command line based, hence the title, but I’m also going to talk about a fantastic GUI that brings these bits and pieces together.

Source: freesoftwaremagazine.com

This release brings the exciting new features developed by the Google Summer of Code 2006 participants, as well as tons of other improvements across the board.

Source: inkscape wiki

To help make kids aware of alternatives to proprietary software, the Ile-de-France, the political district of greater Paris, will be giving 175,000 school children and apprentices a USB key loaded with open-source software.

Source: news.znet.com