|Absolute Value|

With everyone wanting to try out Google’s brilliant (sic) Gmail, I propose a solution that everyone will like.

Surely someone out there has an email account with Gmail with a generic name such as “email1″ or “tester”. I believe that the greater public should be allowed to test and view Google’s email system. Therefore if anyone has one to share, please post a comment here and lets share! Have a look at Gmail Swap for some other interesting ideas.

Lets dub this campaign Gmail for Free.Come on people, share the information. Remember Information wants to be free!

A new BOFH article has appeared on The Register today. It can be viewed here.

Interesting Reading. It seems that my life is encapsulated in these stories.


Enjoy

Microsoft’s UK website was hacked again, according this this story at The Register

A nice picture of what it looked like can be found here.

Hmmmm. Isn’t a phrase “Secure Microsoft” an oxymoron. Surely there’s a Googlebomb somewhere there.

For a short entry and some “Geek Humor” here is a link to a funny RFC. Will the Avian Transport method take over?

Here is an updated version that enables Quality of Service.

Came upon a nice little web “thingy” today. Called Freecache. Quoting from Slashdot:

“Finally the solution for slashdotting, or just the poor man’s Akamai? Freecache from the Internet Archive aims to bring easy to use distributed web caching to everyone. If you’ve a file that you think will be popular, but far too popular for your isp’s bandwidth limits, you can just serve it as http://freecache.org/http://your.site/yourfile instead of the traditional http://your.site/yourfile and Freecache will do all the heavy lifting for you. Plus your users get the advantage of swiftly pulling the file from a nearby cache rather than it creeping off your overloaded webserver.”

Now the funny thing is: I just tried to visit Freecache and the site has itself been slashdotted. If thats not irony, I have no idea what is. They say that they can do the heavy lifting but if they can’t handle a single slashdot article, I have no idea how they expect to handle any high amount of traffic.

The operation timed out when attempting to contact www.archive.org

Sony dropped the price of their PS2 today. This is sure to put further pressure on Microsoft to reduce the price on the XBox

This comes on the back of a $209 million loss of the entertainment side of Microsoft. The entertainment division of Microsoft is and has been a money loosing venture ever since they started trading.

However, as an XBox owner, I can still see positives. The XBox platform and especially XBox Live, the online gaming side, is incredible. The extra level this adds to gaming can never be underestimated. This puts XBox on another level with relation to other gaming platforms. However, the PS2 is still more popular with regards to sales. This can however be partly attributed to the earlier entry into the market by Sony.

The beauty behind Microsoft and it’s XBox, is that it will never surrender easily because of the $50 billion piggy bank that Microsof has. So the XBox will always have a sugar daddy to fall back on to keep it afloat. I was going to say that Microsoft never pulls out of anything but Microsoft just backed out of the WiFi equipment market. Slashdot has the story.

Enough about Microsoft though. The Redmond giant has a large part still to play in the soap opera that is “All things Techie” and hopefully it will stopped getting fined for long enough to put out some seriously good applications and geek goodies.

After every flight, pilots fill out a form called a gripe sheet, which conveys to the mechanics problems encountered with the
aircraft during the flight that need repair or correction.

The mechanics read and correct the problem, and then respond in writing on
the lower half of the form what remedial action was taken, and the pilot
reviews the gripe sheets before the next flight.

Never let it be said that ground crews and engineers lack a sense of humor.

Here are some actual logged maintenance complaints and problems as
submitted by Qantas pilots and the solution recorded by maintenance
engineers.

By the way, Qantas is the only major airline that has never had an accident.

(P = The problem logged by the pilot.)
(S = The solution and action taken by the engineers.)

P: Left inside main tyre almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tyre.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit.
S: Something tightened in cockpit.

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent.
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That’s what they’re there for.

P: IFF inoperative.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you’re right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search.

P: Aircraft handles funny.
S: Aircraft warned to straighten up, fly right, and be serious.

P: Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Mouse in cockpit.
S: Cat installed.

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding
on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from midget