Month: July 2007

Twitter Posts for 2007-07-14

  • http://tinyurl.com/2fw2sb Share Web invites, good idea. Site is getting slammed at the moment. #
  • 9 Pownce Invites … direct message me if you want one. #
  • http://tinyurl.com/362x9o Dear god, worst…page…design….ever. #
  • Reading some Harry Potter…then off to bed. #
  • a nice relaxing Saturday! Grabbin some coffee, and my Harry Potter book. #
  • Done running errands, lunch eventually, more reading…I’m addicted to Harry Potter. uh oh. #
  • Yea! Rain! Finally…I am serious, I am glad it’s raining. #
  • It looks like I am going to read Harry Potter in 1 day (600+ pages). Pretty good right? #
  • http://tinyurl.com/2bq6gt Custom ringtones on your iPhone #

Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised

Surgeon General Sees 4-Year Term as Compromised

Former Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona told a Congressional panel Tuesday that top Bush administration officials repeatedly tried to weaken or suppress important public health reports because of political considerations. The administration, Dr. Carmona said, would not allow him to speak or issue reports about stem cells, emergency contraception, sex education, or prison, mental and global health issues. Top officials delayed for years and tried to “water down” a landmark report on secondhand smoke, he said. Released last year, the report concluded that even brief exposure to cigarette smoke could cause immediate harm.

A sad and disgusting look at the Bush administration. As if we didn’t already hate these incompetent assholes enough already. Nothing like going out of your way to lie to America even when you know it could cause grave harm. Gotta love our president…yet another reason to impeach the bastard.

Twitter Posts for 2007-07-10

  • Just got home for a great jazz concert (Chris Botti and Diana Krall). Tired, head to bed soon. #
  • http://tinyurl.com/3e3aj9 Facebook going public. Good for them. MySpace needs some serious competition. #
  • http://tinyurl.com/2owvt4 Did hell just freeze over? Bush considering gradual withdrawal from Iraq?! #
  • 4 1/2 hour orientation this morning…now THAT is boring. #
  • new Harry Potter comes out tonight! Going to see it Thursday! So pumped… #
  • http://tinyurl.com/33m3gb FCC may open the 700 MHz spectrum for a “truly open broadband network”. VERY cool. #
  • http://tinyurl.com/yrujyc Facebook has double in 2007. We’re only in July! Wow! #
  • DON’T UPDATE VISTA – It breaks custom visual styles. Damn it! #
  • http://tinyurl.com/3yk9z7 Next Gen Windows “Top Suggestions being Considered” list…some cool stuff. #
  • I long for the day when applications won’t steal focus from eachother. I HATE that. #
  • http://tinyurl.com/3699fg Harry Potter movie review! ZOMG! #

Become a GoogleBot to Access Any Site

Become a Googlebot, get a Free Pass

The Problem:
Sometimes you conduct some search on Google and the engine returns a number of results, but when you try to open the ones that looks the most promising you get a registration page. One thing that you can do is click on the cached content to view the page directly from Google’s cache. But what if you want to view another page from the same site, not present in google’s cache?
The Solution:
It’s evident that there are some sites that allows Google but not you. So why not disguise yourself as Google? Thats exactly what we will do by changing the browser’s user agent to Googlebot.

Check out this site for a handy tip that will let you access just about any website (including those that require you to register for an account or any other access problems. I haven’t give this a shot yet, but I have heard from several people that it does indeed work as advertised. You need to alter your settings to the following:
User Agent: Googlebot/2.1
Compatible: http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html
Check out the site above to see how you can change your settings to the Googlebot user agent.

Swarm Behavior – Group Intelligence

Swarm Behavior

A single ant or bee isn’t smart, but their colonies are. The study of swarm intelligence is providing insights that can help humans manage complex systems, from truck routing to military robots.

Totally random article, but I thought it was pretty interesting. Keep in mind that group intelligence can also turn into it’s very ugly cousin “group think“. Interesting to think what a plethora of seemingly unintelligent things can do in great numbers.