SATURDAY, 3/17/2001, 7:00pm HST by Raul and Penfold

There's a thread in the pdabuzz.com forums that talks about sightings of the planned Samsung SPH-1300 phone/PDA hybrid. Pretty neat looking device with *gasp* a color LCD. VERY interesting ...

Well it's been two days since he officially replaced Diane Chang, but the Honolulu Star-Bulletin's new editorial page editor has already shown what in my opinion is a highly unprofessional style. It all has to do with this letter to the editor (Dear 'Governer'), with this accompanying snide commentary, called the "Editor's scratchpad".

If you have not read them, take the time to do so now, or else the rest of my ranting will not make any sense.

[rant]
Who the hell does this guy think he is? His entire ranting is based on assumptions, not facts, and he dares hold the writer to a standard he himself does not even follow? Where is his proof that this high school student is representative of the rest of the students taught by local teachers? This kid could be an ESL student in his first year of instruction. What would THAT say about the quality of education teachers in Hawaii are providing? This kid could have had strong Hawaiian Creole English as his home language all his life, which, due to its syntactic makeup, presents its own significant challenge to a standard English educator. Heck, this kid could have had HAWAIIAN as his first language, which is the official language of the state.

Letters to the editor are, as a general rule, edited themselves, as the Bulletin puts it, "for clarity and length." Yet Mr. Halloran chooses to not edit this letter and worse yet REFERS TO HIS OWN COLUMN after it to make his own point. This is disgusting because not only is Mr. Halloran not doing his job -- by leaving sections intentionally unclear, as he points out in his babbling -- but he is also subverting the student's message and intent.

The letters to the editor section is INTENDED FOR THE READERS. This writer should be commended on his initiative for writing in to a newspaper, arguably the greatest public forum in this country. What is this kid to think, having exercised his first amendment right and his duty as a citizen to police government, now that he has been publicly ridiculed? Mr. Halloran may hide behind the fact that he didn't print the kids name, but that produces a problem of its own. The kid obviously felt strongly enough about his opinion to sign his name to it. To remove it as if it were something to be ashamed of is plain arrogance.

Mr. Halloran's comments amount to a double standard. Many members of his own profession make the same errors in their writing. In my short time as a journalist, I have seen literally hundreds of errors in unedited copy -- and edited copy as well. Mr. Halloran committed a grievous error himself when he assumed this kid to be from a typical (white middle-class) upbringing in which English is the first language spoken in the home and in which education is considered of primary importance. Assuming that the kid's errors were the result of cognitive flaws rather than "honest" slips of the finger was another error. Some of the mistakes in the letter could have found their way into the letter through other means, not the least of which was the editing process during publication.

How do you think the extra "n" ended up in the signature to his column? Does Mr. Halloran not know how to spell his own name?
[/rant]

Even in the fish world, they're still faking it. Check out the story here.

SATURDAY, 3/17/2001, 11:58am HST by Penfold
The "Twiddle with the Camera" Edition

Just a quick image for you to see from the new digital cam.

Burble burble burble.

FRIDAY, 3/16/2001, 11:45pm HST by Raul
The Forgotten Post

This was supposed to go up this morning but I guess I forgot. The ironic thing is all I had to do was change am to pm, and the time was right.

Geek.com has posted up some pre-release info about the new Palm M500 and M505.

Napster sit rep

Napster's court-enforced attempt to prevent up to 135,000 songs from being shared using its software has dramatically cut the number of downloads from the service.

An old Reg article I forgot to post: Are Christian games better than secular shoot'-em-ups?

UH regents OK tuition hike

Cries of "shame," "bullshit" and "fuck you" echoed through Campus Center last night following a Board of Regents meeting that approved a tuition increase for university students.

Jackpot jacked

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) -- For want of a dollar, $7.9 million was lost. A 22-year-old Utah man failed to put a dollar coin into a Nevada slot machine and it cost him a jackpot worth $7.96 million. Instead he walked away with a $10,000 consolation prize.

FRIDAY, 3/16/2001, 8:58pm HST by Penfold
The "All Zen" Edition

Saw the new morning Star Bulletin today. Not much different then the old one, but the colors are much more vibrant and the paper stock is thinner.

What happens when you mix South Park and Star Wars Episode 1 together? This. To view the movie, click here.

You've heard it said many times before, "I'm so drunk." Well how about putting it to the test. Check it out here.

Looks like the Swiss are getting wise and relegalizing it. Hmmm, now you can travel to Switzerland or The Netherlands on your next pot adventure. Check it out here.

When I read this story, all I could think about was the infamous Hawaii Kai Taco Bell and their taco suprise.

THURSDAY, 3/15/2001, 8:58pm HST by Penfold
The "AM/PM" Edition

Ever wonder why the Advertiser said that two newspapers couldn't survive in Hawaii, and now there's four.

This just in: Raul's Mom said that, according to the recording at SB customer service, "Due to production difficulties and numerous traffic accidents, we have ceased production of the Star Bulletin for today, March 15."

Hercules Geforce3 with a Blorb. Coming soon to a store near you.

Just when you though it was over, this shows up.

With the XFL headed for the shitter. Vince McMahon is blaming the announcer Jessie Ventura for being a crappy anouncer. Read about their little squabble here.

Looks like another suit coming. NCR is claiming patent infringment on the PDA. Check it out here. About as silly as the Rambus v. Everybody littigation.

Me Spanky You Long Time

In the spanking department, 37 percent of Thai men and 34 percent of women gave a thumbs up to the bottom swat (a reassuring figure, especially for those in the paddle business).

THURSDAY, 3/15/2001, 7:15pm HST by Raul

I'm at home now, so you can reach me there.

So in a single day, Hawaii has seen the arrival of that rarest of bird -- the NEW newspaper, in an era when papers are more likely to die. And it wasn't just one, but TWO new papers. Just hours after the last Bulletin rolled off the HNA presses (the last ever), the new SB hit the streets, albeit a little late. Also this afternoon, the Advertiser PM edition rolled off the presses in place of the SB.

THURSDAY, 3/15/2001, 8:45am HST by Raul
The "Free at Last" edition

Well the new Star-Bulletin is out on the streets, the new PM Advertiser is going to be out in a matter of hours, and I'm supposed to break out of here later today.

Tef actually alterted me to this one a day or two ago: there's a guy selling a monkey phone call on eBay. What The Reg didn't report, that a lot of you already know from a forwarding I did, is that the original auction had more than one bid over $1 million! That auction has since been canceled.

RIAA: You can't keep us down

Aimster may have knocked its Napster filter bypass software, Pig Encoder, on the head, but the void it has left behind it is rapidly being filled. The latest is Catnap, an open source scrambler/ descrambler that's almost completely transparent to the user.

Spam scam slammed

Californians Michael Persaud, 24, of San Diego and Frank Kriticos, 25, of Santee will answer felony criminal charges of spamming and so earn the distinction of being the first people so charged in that state, according to a story in the local Union Tribune newspaper.

WEDNESDAY, 3/14/2001, 9:58pm HST by Penfold
The "Honey Slug" Edition

New Star Bulletin should be coming out tommorow. It'll be interesting to see what it's like.

Some really weird stuff from Japan, my niggas.

High bandwidth version here.
Low bandwidth version here.

Submitted by Brad

Can DivX become the mp3 of video? Will the advent of broadband and DivX make video piracy a real possibility. Check out Salon.com's take on it here.

Good thing that a lot of the really good pot is grown indoors and this it's unlikely that this FL ditchweed will ever make it here. Check out the story here.

Fresh, hot and steamy from the pages of Salon.com.

Only in Utah, check out Utah's pr0n czar here.
Part two of that earlier story about sex advice columnist here.

WEDNESDAY, 3/14/2001, 12:45pm HST by Raul
The "Still stuck" edition

You might have noticed that the index is getting longer and longer. With a 19100-24600 baud connection, I'm afraid proper archiving would be a ridiculous proposition from here. So as soon as I get home I'll give this page the maintenance it deserves.

Smart Parts has come out with the "latest-and-greatest" electro-semi in the sea of electroguns that have hit the scene in the past two years. You have to poke around their site a bit under the "Catalog" section but there it is. It's a mid-priced piece at $500, which is not a bad deal considering it comes with a Max-Flow reg and a SP ported barrel. I'll be on the lookout for more press on it to report ...

Also: WARPIG has posted up articles on some of the new paintball hardware we reported here earlier, the VForce Mask line and the Tippmann Model 98 Deluxe (with reactive trigger).

A ballistic Reg raid:

Aimster pig encoder killed off

Napster has banned Aimster's attempt to bypass its attempt to filter out songs it's not allowed to let go wandering across its network.

And it's not the only one that's been getting cross about Aimster's Pig Encoder. The 'file sharing via AOL Instant Messenger' software company has apparently received a number of "public and private threats," it noted on its Web site last night.

Palm virusoft more harm that good?

Firms selling antivirus software for mobile platforms are "selling insurance for something that doesn't exist" - an antivirus software firm claims.

And worse, the development of antivirus software for PDAs and other handheld devices could give virus writers ideas for malicious code that they might not otherwise have thought of.

A real virus alert

An new email-borne virus uses a number of fresh tricks designed to fool unwary Internet users.

Magistr is a polymorphic Windows 32 executable file virus which features the facility to reproduce itself within emails with randomly subject, body text and attachment names. It also carries a destructive payload containing code similar to the hardware destroying Kriz virus.

CC fraud museum opens, exposes biggest scam of all

On-line merchants sick of rampant Web credit card fraud and its attendant confiscatory charge-back fees and fines can learn the most popular scams tricksters use and keep abreast of new developments thanks to the AdCops Web site, which presents it all in vivid detail.

Sony has released a new Clié PDA -- the Clié PEG-N700C -- which pushes past what normal PalmOS devices are geared for into PocketPC territory, with digital music and video capabilities. Check the Reg bit here and the PDABuzz discussion thread (in ENGLISH with pics) here.

Here's a really stupid page about some guys who deep-fried their computer. But the really l4m3 thing about it what they replaced this b0x with.

Green gossip

Attention: Paul McCartney. Steven Tyler thinks you should lay off the weed, step away from the bong, drop the joint ... pronto.

Here's a highly informative page on obscuring URLS that outlines techniques used by spam purveyors and scammers to hide their deceit.

We are pretty late on this one, but the [H]ardOCP has an article posted on NVIDIA's new Quincunx HRAA complete with benchmarks.

BTW, I'm moving to another floor, check the members' section for the new room. Or page me.

TUESDAY, 3/13/2001, 8:58pm HST by Penfold
The "Slackin" Edition

Raul is back in effect, so I can start slacking again.

Trademarked emoticons? It could happen, may have actually happened. Read about it here.

Every wonder why pop radio sounds like crap? Salon.com has an idea of why here.

According to sex-advice columnists Americans today aren't much better informed than their grandparents were. Check out what sex advice columnist think about it here.

TUESDAY, 3/13/2001, 2:30pm HST by Raul

Well looking on the bright side of things, at least being stuck in the hospital gives me the opportunity to fully test the ability of my laptop setup to serve as a mobile docking station for the Palm and as a remote posting platform.

Well, Weid bought Nascar 4, which has a skinning function. Check out what a Nascar skin looks like here. It's an early attempt, so it's for informational purposes only.

Well today was the deadline for NHL trades for this season, and some significant movement happened. Here's a roundup:

• The biggest trade of the day: St. Louis landed Keith Tkachuk, one of the game's premier power forwards, from Phoenix in a blockbuster deal that sent forwards Ladislav Nagy, Michal Handzus, and Jeff Taffe, plus a first-round pick in 2001.
• The Buffalo Sabres added ex-Sabre Donald Audette from the Atlanta Thrashers and Steve Heinze from the Columbus Blue Jackets. The all-star Audette and solid-scoring Heinze will help make up for a lack of offense caused by Mike Peca being out of the lineup.
• The Blues also made another big-impact deal, acquiring star Cory Stillman from the Calgary Flames.
• The Ottawa Senators received veteran center Mike Sillinger from Florida, veteran defenseman Curtis Leschyshyn and journeyman defenseman Craig Millar from Tampa Bay..
• A significant non-movement: Eric Lindros did NOT get traded before the deadline, meaning he will not play in the NHL at all this season.

Well Madonion.com had finally let the much-awaited 3DMark 2001 out of the bag. The Squab has screenshots and a link to the download here.

Dot-com implosion hits close to home

We have it on good authority that Future Publishing is to lay off 75 per cent of staff working on its Daily Radar UK content operation as part of an "Internet restructuring".

Also on the Reg: yet another l33t c0d3r makes mincemeat of DVD encoding in less than half a kb of code. For reference, here's a bit on the other guy.

Hmm been thinking about virus hoaxes and Internet myths lately, and decided that I really ought to post up some sites as a service to our readers:

• The Hoax FAQ (Searchable)
• Stiller research alphabetic hoax list
• ICSA labs hoax pages
• Urban Legends and Folklore (links to lots of hoax resources too)

Thanks to everyone who has sent regards or visited in the past few days. The TV gods have been smiling on me lately and put hockey on ESPN Sunday, as well as some pretty decent movies on TBS every day. If you're interested in what's keeping me here, here's a link.

MONDAY, 3/12/2001, 9:58pm HST by Penfold
The "Doing Content Myself AGAIN" Edition

Sigh, nothing witty to put here today.

Raul always bitches and moans about digital cameras not being fast enough. But the Olympus E-100RS digital camera does 15fps, fast enough? Check it out here.

Somemore previews of the up coming Kryo II based vid card. Check it out here. And unlike some other previews, it has benchmark numbers. Looks to be between a GeForce2 GTS and MX.

On a training mission in Kuwait, a US F/A-18 dropped a 500 pound dummy bomb which ended up killing 6 friendlies. Check it out here.

Yes, there is an article with this story, but I just stole it for the pic. Bonus points if you can ID the movie.

Fed up with the ICQ ads? Check out some l33t hax0ring around them here.

"It's says press any key, where's the any key?"

I never read any of his books, but I know my Dad liked them. Robert Ludlum, dead at 73. Read about it here.

SUNDAY, 3/11/2001, 11:58am HST by Penfold
The "Salted Slug" Edition

Raul is in the hospital currently. Might be out on Tuesday. Hospital and room number in the members section.

He is still getting email in the hospital via slugmail.

The UH Rainbows (no, I'm not calling them the warriors) won the WAC championship, which means they automatically get to go the the NCAA tourney. Check their seeding here. Check out ESPN's comments on the Rainbows here.

Congress is poised to push through some bankruptcy "reform" (read screw the consumer) laws to the bankruptcy code. Check it out here.

Being that I now work for a debt collection firm, you'd think I'd support bankruptcy reforms. But if the credit card issuers weren't making so much damm money, I might be more sympathetic. But seeing how quickly credit card companies are willing to give out credit cards to marginal people, I think they deserve to get screwed occasionally through chapter 7.

The Girl Scouts got hax0red. Check out The Register story about it here. Check the defacement here.

Layed off after one day of work. I guess thats the concept of internet time for you. Read about it here.

Hockey Times

Hockey times for the week of 3/11/01

• ESPN-22 Sun, Mar 11, 2001 3:00 PM "Dallas Stars at Colorado Avalanche"
• ESPN-22 Sun, Mar 11, 2001 10:00 PM "Dallas Stars at Colorado Avalanche"
• ESPN2-23 Mon, Mar 12, 2001 2:30 PM "Pittsburgh Penguins at New York Rangers"
• ESPN2-23 Mon, Mar 12, 2001 5:30 PM "Montreal Canadiens at San Jose Sharks"
• ESPN2-23 Mon, Mar 12, 2001 11:00 PM "Pittsburgh Penguins at New York Rangers"
• ESPN2-23 Tue, Mar 13, 2001 2:00 PM "St. Louis Blues at Philadelphia Flyers"
• ESPN2-23 Tue, Mar 13, 2001 11:00 PM "St. Louis Blues at Philadelphia Flyers"
• ESPN-22 Wed, Mar 14, 2001 3:00 PM "New York Rangers at Buffalo Sabres"
• FSWH-21 Wed, Mar 14, 2001 5:30 PM "Los Angeles Kings at San Jose Sharks"
• ESPN-22 Wed, Mar 14, 2001 10:00 PM "New York Rangers at Buffalo Sabres"
• FSWH-21 Thu, Mar 15, 2001 10:00 AM "Los Angeles Kings at San Jose Sharks"
• ESPN2-23 Thu, Mar 15, 2001 2:30 PM "Calgary Flames at Detroit Red Wings"
• ESPN2-23 Thu, Mar 15, 2001 11:00 PM "Calgary Flames at Detroit Red Wings"
• KITV-6 Sat, Mar 17, 2001 10:00 AM