BigConna.com

From Entensity.net

1. Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
2. You know stuff about rifles, tanks, motorcycles, and airplanes.
3. A five-day vacation requires only one suitcase.
4. You can open your own jars.
5. Dry cleaners and hair cutters don't rob you blind.
6. You can go to the bathroom without a support group.
7. You don't have to learn to spell a new last name.
8. You can leave the motel bed unmade.
9. You can kill your own food.
10. You get extra credit for the slightest of thoughtfulness.
11. Wedding plans take care of themselves.
12. If someone forgets to invite you to something, he or she can still be your friend.
13. Your underwear is $10 for a three-pack.
14. If you are 34 and single, nobody notices.
15. Everything on your face stays its original color.
16. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough.
17. You don't have to clean your apartment if the meter reader is coming.
18. Car mechanics tell you the truth.
19. You can quietly watch a game with your buddy for hours without ever thinking: "He must be mad at me."
20. Same work...more pay.
21. Gray hair and wrinkles only add character.
22. Wedding dress: $2000. Tuxedo rental: $75
23. You don't mooch off others desserts.
24. You can drop by to see a friend without having to bring a little gift.
25. If another guy shows up at the party in the same outfit, you might just become lifelong friends.
26. Your pals can be trusted not to trap you with: "So...notice anything different?"
27. You are not expected to know the names of more than five colors.
28. You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
29. You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
30. The same hair style lasts for years, maybe decades.
31. You don't have to shave below your neck.
32. Your belly usually hides your big hips.
33. One wallet and one pair of shoes, one color, all seasons.

(Computerworld) An employee looking to steal confidential information from his employer sneaks into what should be a secure back room after hours. He pulls charts and files from a top-level financial meeting and slides them into his briefcase before heading back out.

What the insider doesn't know is that his shoes picked up hundreds of tiny radio frequency identification (RFID) chips that had been scattered across the floor. As he passes by an RFID reader near the front door of his office building, security will be alerted that he had accessed a secure area. The evidence is all over the soles of his shoes.

Sound a little like a scene from a James Bond movie? It's not.

Nox Defense, an arm of SimplyRFID Inc., said it has created an invisible perimeter-defense system designed to track things and people in real time -- all without their knowledge. The system that is made up of several technological pieces -- RFID chips the size of grains of sand and an RFID and video camera surveillance system.

"The key to an effective surveillance system is intelligence in the equipment itself," said Carl Brown, president of Nox Defense. "It does no good to install a thousand video cameras if a thousand people have to watch them all day. ... Everybody is doing surveillance nowadays everywhere. They just don't have a setup that tells them what is important video to look at. RFID technology will tell you when something was moved, where it was moved, and then you can check the corresponding video."

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In 1986, Peter Davies was on holiday in Kenya after graduating from Northwestern University.

On a hike through the bush, he came across a young bull elephant standing with one leg raised in the air. The elephant seemed distressed, so Peter approached it very carefully.

He got down on one knee and inspected the elephant's foot and found a large piece of wood deeply embedded in it. As carefully and as gently as he could, Peter worked the wood out with his hunting knife, after which the elephant gingerly put down its foot. The elephant turned to face the man, and with a rather curious look on its face, stared at him for several tense moments. Peter stood frozen, thinking of nothing else but being trampled. Eventually the elephant trumpeted loudly, turned, and walked away. Peter never forgot that elephant or the events of that day.

Twenty years later, Peter was walking through the Chicago Zoo with his teenage son. As they approached the elephant enclosure, one of the creatures turned and walked over to near where Peter and his son Cameron were standing. The large bull elephant stared at Peter, lifted its front foot off the ground, then put it down. The elephant did that several times then trumpeted loudly, all the while staring at the man.

Remembering the encounter in 1986, Peter couldn't help wondering if this was the same elephant. Peter summoned up his courage, climbed over the railing and made his way into the enclosure. He walked right up to the elephant and stared back in wonder. The elephant trumpeted again, wrapped its trunk around one of Peter legs and slammed his stupid ass against the railing, killing him instantly.

Probably wasn't the same elephant.

(IDG News Service) A California district court has shut down a controversial Web site in the U.S. that allows whistle blowers to post corporate and government documents online anonymously. A site known as Wikileaks.org has been taken offline in the U.S. due to a court order from the U.S. District Court in San Francisco. However, the site remains online in other countries, including Belgium and Germany.

The order in the U.S. came after a Swiss bank, Julius Baer, earlier this month filed a complaint against the site and San Mateo, California-based Dynadot, Wikileaks' domain-name registry, for posting several hundred of the bank's documents. Some of those documents allegedly reveal that Julius Baer was involved in offshore money laundering and tax evasion in the Cayman Islands for customers in several countries, including the U.S.

The court ordered that "Dynadot shall immediately clear and remove all DNS hosting records for the wikileaks.org domain name," according to court documents. It also said that Dynadot should prevent the domain name from resolving to the wikileaks.org Web site or any other Web site or server other than a blank park page until further notice.

According to its Web site, the purpose of Wikileaks, founded in 2006, is to develop "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis." Wikileaks has been plagued by controversy since its inception, coming under fire from institutions whose confidential documents have been posted on the site and from critics who have questioned the motives of the site's founders. Still, others have praised the site for supporting the free dissemination of information.

Wikileaks posted a press statement on its site about the U.S. order, calling it "clearly unconstitutional" and said it "exceeds its jurisdiction."

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Russell: Whats going on? just got off work
Jacob: just eating a salad and watching sex and the city. how gay am i?
Russell: This                              gay

Offering to send 15902685-15902687-large.jpg

Transfer of file 15902685-15902687-large.jpg complete

BigConna: recognize anyone?
Jacob: yeah
Jacob: christina brittany and justin
BigConna: damn, you're good
Jacob: duh
BigConna: and probably gay
Jacob: probably

BigConna: recognize anyone?
Dycus: no
Dycus: why?
BigConna: look again
Dycus: I did, go ahead and tell me
BigConna: there are three future pop superstars in that picture
BigConna: jacob got all of them
BigConna: because he's gay
Dycus: ugh, I dont care
BigConna: he's totally gay, though
BigConna: don't you think he's gay
Dycus: why dont you tell me who I should be looking for
BigConna: jacob's pretty gay, huh
Dycus: I think its pretty gay to send a gay picture and then be all gay about not telling me who the gay ppl are.
Dycus: dont be gay.
BigConna: i think i just had a breakthrough
BigConna: jacob's gay
Dycus: is that mcaulken?
Dycus: six feet under is a good series btw.

From TorrentFreak.com

"The popular BitTorrent site Mininova just released a set of new features, including music torrent streaming. The new music streaming feature uses a Java applet developed by BitLet, which is easy to use and compatible with all Java-enabled browsers.

Mininova Launches Music Torrent Streaming, Video Up NextWith the new music streaming feature users can listen to individual music tracks, streamed from .torrent files. It is integrated in the featured torrents section, which lists all the distributors that take part in Mininova’s content distribution platform.

If you want to stream music torrents that are not listed in the featured section, you’ll need to use the Bitlet website. The service currently supports mp3 and ogg/vorbis files.

BitTorrent streaming is not restricted to music files, and indeed, Erik, one of the founders of Mininova told TorrentFreak that they are currently looking into the possibility of video streaming via BitTorrent as well. He said that Mininova will start a private BETA test of the BitTorrent video streaming integration in a few weeks.

Together with the music streaming capability, Mininova published some other new features including comment tracking, which gives users an overview of all the comments they recently made. Another new feature that might come in handy is the manual refresh of the seeder and leecher statistics that logged in users now have.

4327 tracks in playlist, average track length: 4:09
Playlist length: 299 hours 59 minutes 28 seconds

Playlist files:

1. 8 Bit Weapon - Spacelab (4:54)
2. ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Another Morning Stoner (4:33)
3. ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Mistakes And Regrets (3:46)
4. A Poet Named Revolver - Cicadas (2:15)
5. A Poet Named Revolver - Ex-Meadows (3:34)
6. A Poet Named Revolver - Georgia Car Wreck (2:34)
7. A Poet Named Revolver - Goner (2:14)
8. A Poet Named Revolver - Gypster (3:27)
9. A Poet Named Revolver - Hate (3:59)
10. A Poet Named Revolver - In the Very Bed (3:43)
11. A Poet Named Revolver - Postwar Pop (2:43)
12. A Poet Named Revolver - Sorry, Son, Dogs Die (3:03)
13. A Poet Named Revolver - South Gallatin (3:10)
14. Above & Beyond - Alone Tonight (4:08)
15. Adam Ant - Wonderful (4:22)
16. Aimee Mann - How Am I Different (5:03)
17. Aimee Mann - Invisible Ink (4:59)
18. Aimee Mann - Just Like Anyone (1:20)
19. Aimee Mann - One (3:04)
20. Aimee Mann - Save Me (4:31)
21. Aimee Mann - Two of Us (3:32)
22. Aimee Mann - Wise Up (3:28)
23. Akron/Family - Moment (5:20)
24. Alphaville - Forever Young (3:50)
25. America - Lonely People (2:26)
26. Amon Tobin - Easy Muffin (4:31)
27. Amon Tobin - Four Ton Mantis (Bonobo Mix) (4:15)
28. Anders Ilar - Rourei (5:46)
29. Andrew Bird - /=/ (1:05)
30. Andrew Bird - /=/=/ (1:08)
31. Andrew Bird - A Nervous Tic Motion Of The Head To The Left (4:59)
32. Andrew Bird - Armchairs (7:02)
33. Andrew Bird - Banking On A Myth (4:28)
34. Andrew Bird - Cataracts (3:12)
35. Andrew Bird - Dark Matter (5:07)
36. Andrew Bird - Fake Palindromes (2:52)
37. Andrew Bird - Fiery Crash (4:12)
38. Andrew Bird - Heretics (3:33)
39. Andrew Bird - Imitosis (4:00)
40. Andrew Bird - Masterfade (4:10)
41. Andrew Bird - Measuring Cups (2:51)

(ZDNet Blogs | Between the Lines) - Virgin Galactic on Wednesday unveiled designs for SpaceShipTwo and the WhiteKnightTwo, two vehicles that are designed to usher in private spaceflight. The technology behind the system will have an open architecture “like Linux,” said officials.

In an event at the American Museum at Natural History in New York (see gallery), Virgin Galactic unveiled the first product of venture to manufacture a reusable spacecraft and its launch craft. In July 2005, Burt Rutan, President of Scaled Composites and Sir Richard Branson, founder of the Virgin Group of companies, formed a company to manufacture and design SpaceShipTwo, a suborbital craft, and WhiteKnightTwo, a launch system.

“Our vision of White Knight 2 would be part of a much longer development program. Have open architecture like Linux to allow other people to develop new vehicles and revolutionize new industrial uses of space,” said Will Whitehorn, president of Virgin Galactic, Virgin’s spaceline.

Whitehorn clarified the open architecture point a bit: He said that if interested parties come to Virgin and Scaled Composites they can use key points such as WhiteKnightTwo’s wing to build new aircraft. “We will work with people that come to work with us to do new things with the WhiteKnightTwo. If people come to us we’ll work with them.”

Whitehorn added that interested parties are already in discussions about building off of the properties of WhiteKnightTwo, but wasn’t going to name names. Overall, Virgin Galactic wasn’t detailing technical details behind the spaceship effort.

Read more:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=7678&tag=nl.e589

(Computerworld) -- A progressive Washington think tank today blasted the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the Bush administration for failing to invest in and develop a robust broadband network in the U.S. that can support consumers as well as first responders and anti-terrorist teams.

"The policy of relying on market forces that the Bush administration claimed for seven years would propel broad access is irresponsible and insufficient," Mark Lloyd, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress (CAP), said in a statement on the CAP's Web site.

"The result of administration neglect, industry intransigence and the incompetence of the Federal Communications Commission ... has left the American people and most policymakers with no clear idea where broad services are deployed in the U.S.," said Lloyd, who is also an affiliated professor at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute.

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