Wal-Mart heir dies in plane crash
John Walton, heir to the Wal-Mart fortune, died when his ultralight plane crashed Monday in Jackson, Wyoming, leaving behind a fortune estimated at $20 billion. No word is yet available on the cause of the crash. Courtesy CNN.
Homeland Stupidity Threat Advisory System
The threat of homeland stupidity: The color-coded Homeland Stupidity Threat Advisory is used to communicate with the public at large through a threat-based, color-coded system so that protective measures can be implemented to reduce the likelihood or impact of homeland stupidity. Now you too can display the Homeland Stupidity Threat Advisory System on your web
IRS loses control of taxpayer and banking data
The Internal Revenue Service has launched an internal investigation into whether taxpayer and financial data it stores may have been compromised, according to a Reuters report. [The] Government Accountability Office said in April that the IRS “routinely permitted excessive access’ to the computer files. The GAO team was able to tap into the data without
Partitioning to dual boot Linux and Windows walkthrough
You can’t have been on the Internet more than a week without hearing about this Linux thing. But in case you haven’t, Linux is an operating system. That’s the software that is your computer, so to speak. Most of you have some version of Windows. Many of you have Mac OS X. And millions of
Keylogger found in Dell laptop is a hoax
Why would Dell be shipping Inspiron 600m laptops with integrated hardware keyloggers? Why are the keyloggers hard-wired to the Ethernet port? And why would the Secret Service refuse FOIA requests about it? Update: The answer is, they probably wouldn’t. This is most likely fake. The images appear to have been taken from here, and the
Freedom fries lawmaker Walter Jones changes mind about Iraq
Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) is expected to introduce legislation calling for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. “I voted for the resolution to commit the troops, and I feel that we’ve done about as much as we can do,’ Jones said on ABC’s This Week. (See also Google News.) Jones made headlines in 2003 for
Why you should distrust authority
Two stories illustrate the dangers of putting your trust in the “authorities.” Crime lab analysts in the Houston Police Department have been faking analysis results on suspected drugs submitted to the lab for testing. The process of creating entirely fake analyses, called drylabbing, is pretty much universally condemned. However, the analysts involved received no more
TSA brands schoolteacher as terrorist
It seems that the Transportation Stupidity Admistration has branded a 57 year old schoolteacher a terrorist after she inadvertently packed a bread knife in her carry-on bag. It seems she was chaperoning 37 students on a trip to California, and had made sandwiches for all of them on the return flight and misplaced one of
GreenZap opens for business
It’s official. On 1 June, GreenZap opened its doors, accepting user registrations and doing business. GreenZap is an alternative method of sending money across the Internet. If you’re looking for an alternative to PayPal, this just might be it. GreenZap offers two types of accounts, a basic GreenZap account and an upgraded Gold account. The
Milton Friedman and 500 economists agree: Legalize marijuana
From Forbes comes the story of a report on the costs of marijuana prohibition. Dr. Jeffrey Miron, visiting professor of economics at Harvard University, estimates that replacing marijuana prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation similar to that used for alcoholic beverages would produce combined savings and tax revenues of between $10 billion and
