Archive for the 'Potpourri' Category

Why You Shouldn’t Share Your Internet Connection With Neighbors

Thursday, December 29th, 2011

Wireless TowerIn the linked article, Kim Komando gives several good reasons for not sharing your wireless internet connection with neighbors. An important one being that if the neighbor does anything illegal, the police arrest you and confiscate your computer equipment. (On the other hand, if you’re the one doing illegal stuff over the internet, I’ve actually heard people suggest that it’s a good idea to leave your wireless router unsecured—so there’s reasonable doubt concerning who performed the crime.)

Link: http://www.komando.com/…

Stupid User Stories

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011

Any Key

The linked article has 10 stupid computer user stories, told by a computer support person. Many of them are too old to be relevant in today’s computer-savvy world, but my favorite is “The janitor’s closet”.

Link: http://www.techrepublic.com/…

Earth’s Population Reaches Seven Billion People

Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

EarthOctober 31st, 2011 was the official day that the human population reached 7 billion. The last 2 billion of that happened in less than 25 years, and we’re on track to hit 8 billion in the next 15 years or so.

Link #1: http://en.wikipedia.org/…
(via Slashdot)

Link #2: http://en.wikipedia.org/…

Offshoring Not Always an Advantage For Small Businesses

Friday, August 19th, 2011

Made in USA LogoCertainly it’s much less expensive to offshore your manufacturing to Asia, but some US businesses have said, “Enough!” due to quality problems, production delays, intellectual property concerns, and the large lead time from prototype approval to delivery. These businesses have returned to domestic manufacturing sources. Note that this situation mainly applies to small businesses with relatively low manufacturing volumes—apparently the Asian companies don’t consider them important enough to worry about. But it’s not just small companies. The linked article also explains how Chinese wages are not as low as they used to be, and that offshoring, which used to be a no-brainer, is not necessarily the best business decision to make.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

Do Not Try This at Home: Sticking Your Head Into a Particle Accelerator

Friday, June 3rd, 2011

Particle AcceleratorRussian scientist Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski has the distinction of being the only person to ever stick his head into a running particle accelerator. The linked article explains all.

Link: http://www.todayifoundout.com/…
(via mental_floss)

Problem Exists Between Chair and Keyboard

Sunday, May 22nd, 2011

Idiot Inside LogoComic strip writers David Waisglass and Gordon Coulthart have hit upon the true limiting factor of computer technology: PEBCAK. This ranks up there with placing USER=ID-10-T in the config.sys file. See the linked article for the actual comic strip.

Link: http://comics.com/…

How a Cat Drinks

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

CatLong-time Chad’s News readers will recall this post, where we learned that a dog’s tongue bends down instead of up when drinking water. If that wasn’t weird enough, the linked article explains how a cat drinks—turns out that its tongue doesn’t even penetrate the surface of the water.

Link: http://arstechnica.com/…

“Rhymes With Orange” Does Some Tech Funnies

Sunday, February 20th, 2011

OrangeRhymes With Orange is an offbeat, syndicated comic strip that periodically comes up with some real gems. The December 31st strip gives a peek at how children view books in the age of the Kindle and iPad, and the January 2nd strip spoofs life in the age of Google.

Writing School Papers for Profit

Tuesday, February 15th, 2011

BooksThe author of the linked article is a man who writes customized academic papers for pay. He’s practically a machine when it comes to researching a topic and pounding out the paper, and his work runs the gamut from English 101 to graduate theses. I know that cheating happens, but what surprised me the most is how blatant it is. The article is lengthy but well worth the time spent.

Link: http://chronicle.com/…
(via Neatorama)

Can Piracy Actually Boost Sales?

Wednesday, December 1st, 2010

BooksAuthor Steve Lieber discovered that bootleg copies of his graphic novel, Underground, caused a huge boost in sales of the print version.

Link: http://torrentfreak.com/…
(via Lifehacker)

Thief Returns Data

Friday, November 5th, 2010

ThiefA professor at a Swedish university had his laptop stolen. It contained 10 years of academic work, which he had not backed up. But disaster was averted when the considerate thief dumped all the data to a USB drive and mailed it to the professor. The man should purchase a lottery ticket, with luck like that.

Link: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…
(via Slashdot)

Death Waiting to Happen–And It Did Just That

Saturday, October 30th, 2010

Speed Limit SignEight people crammed into an extended-cab pickup, none of whom were wearing seat belts, and with at least one person in the bed of the truck. Driver lost control and rolled the truck. All eight passengers were ejected—two died, two were in serious condition, and the remaining four were all hospitalized. Sigh…. There should be a Darwin Award in there somewhere.

Link: http://www.denverpost.com/…