The San Jose Mercury News is reporting the US Justice Department has asked a Federal court to force Google to provide them with search data for one million random IP addresses, and all search data for a one week period. Think about that…if you use Google once a week, your data will be going to the Feds. Why do they need this information? To protect the children! More specifically, to defend the Child Online Protection Act, a law which was struck down in 2004 when a Federal court ruled it “too broad”. Won’t someone please think of the children?

The government indicated that other, unspecified search engines have agreed to release the information, but not Google.

So if you search with Yahoo, MSN, or one of the myriad also-ran engines, you may already be a winner! And don’t forget, every search engine out there plants a cookie in your browser. Unless you clear out cookies on a regular basis, some of them will persist for 30+ years. So if you’ve been searching for anything the Feds might find interesting, it would be trivial for them to subpoena all searchees associated with the cookie on your machine. But that should only worry those with something to hide…

Day 1–Ackme-Our Man on the Ground

Ackme is on the Space Coast of Florida to witness the launching of the New Horizons Mission. Continuing Story on Alien Jesus Command

The first Intel iMacs have made their way from Apple Store shelves into the hands of early adopters, and some of those users have submitted Xbench benchmarks. There are also some anecdotal benchmarks available in the MacAddict Forums. Comparing the iMac Intel to the Powermac G5 (both at 2.0Ghz) yields a very mixed bag of results. In a few categories, the Intel CPU is twice as fast as the G5. In most others, the G5 is a bit faster. Obviously we’ll need more than a few submissions to make a real judgement, but if the MacBook performance is pretty close to the iMac at similar clock speeds it’ll be pretty close to having a Dual 2.0 G5 sitting on your legs. Close enough to replace that G5 tower with a MacBook? I’ll let you know when I figure that out for myself.

New Horizons: First Mission to the Last Planet

Rocket: Atlas 5 (AV-010)
Payload: New Horizons
Date: January 17, 2006
Site: Complex 41, Cape Canaveral, Florida

This Tuesday:
Time: 1:24-3:23 p.m. EST (1824-2023 GMT)

Man sues chatroom pals: I was humiliated beyond what ‘no man could endure’ – CourtTV.com – Top News

“Gillespie, 53, claims that Marlowe and Bob Charpentier, a 52-year-old Oregon resident, insulted him and harassed him in the AOL chatroom called ‘Romance %u2014 Older Men’ to the point where it inflicted ’severe emotional distress and physical injury that is of a nature no reasonable man could be expected to endure it.’”

George Gillespie is a total pussy. Sue me, ya wanker.

The internet has always been a mean place. Chat, IRC, usenet…anywhere you interact with people who sit miles away, faceless.
It’s not a place for the weak. You know what I did when I found usenet to be beyond what I could deal with?
I stopped doing it.

Fuck George Gillespie and let’s hope this case gets tossed out pronto.

CNN.com – Stardust of yesterday – Jan 12, 2006:

“(CNN) — NASA’s Stardust space probe is racing toward Earth, carrying a tiny payload of cometary and interstellar dust — particles that scientists believe are leftovers from the creation of our solar system.If all goes as planned, Stardust will release the 100-lb. capsule carrying the samples at 1 a.m. ET on Sunday. It would enter Earth’s atmosphere about four hours later and parachute to the ground in Utah at 5:12 a.m. ET.”

I certainly hope it goes allright. In space speed, the Desert Command is barely a hiccup away.

Nikon UK has issued a press release stating that they’re discontinuing all their large format and enlarger lenses, and most of their camera bodies and manual focus lenses. Nikon anticipates the existing product stock will be gone by mid-summer 2006. Although the press release is UK specific, it certainly implies that this will be a worldwide shift.

So what’s left? The F6 body in the UK, the FM10 worldwide, and a moderate assortment of manual prime lenses to fit. If Nikon’s abandoning film to the competition, we can expect the rest of the top camera makers following suit over the next year or so. Film is officially a boutique hobbyist niche now kids, and those zany Soviet cameras that are all over Ebay are going to start looking pretty good.

Kevin Sites in the Hot Zone From Yahoo! News: “”

“In November 2004, Sites became a flashpoint of controversy for one of the biggest stories of the current Iraqi war, when as an NBC News correspondent he videotaped a U.S. Marine shooting a wounded Iraqi insurgent in a Fallujah mosque. After the video’s airing, Sites was both praised as a journalist willing to reveal the harsh realities of war – and vilified as a traitor to both the Marine unit in which he was embedded and to his country.

Sites’ controversial and award-winning war blog, www.kevinsites.net, was one of the first to combine text, digital images, and audio to provide readers with an intimate, behind-the-lines look at the war in Iraq and how it was being covered.”

CNN finally gave him the boot for this above story and he disappeared from the airwaves.

Kevin is Yahoo’s first dedicated journalist and they’ve given him an incredible website. Kev supplies the incredible stories and pictures.
Keep an eye on this one.

The Blog | Danielle Crittenden: The Secret Presidential IMs: Clinton Disappoints His Pupil | The Huffington Post: “”

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Bush and Bill have a li’l chat.

Jason Mecier describes himself as a mosaic artist, but that title hardly does justice to his amazing celebrity portraits. He crafts images of all the greats out of common household items. Definitely a step above garage sale macaroni art, and there’s something for everyone. Whether you prefer Farrah by herself or all three Charlie’s Angels, Showgirls or The Golden Girls, Mecier’s bean, yarn, and candy portraiture will leave you speechless.