I've found this quite handy recently. Several chucks of O'Reilly books are available (legally!) for free on their website. This isn't some random excerpt or the introduction from a book, but full, meaningful chapters about all kinds of subjects. Best of all they organize the material by topics, with descriptive titles about what each parts covers.

Hell yeah!

O'Reilly Book Excerpts

Mayor Siegfried Hauppl has asked visitors to lay off the signs which began to attract outside attention after British and US soldiers passing through in 1945 illuminated the locals as to the English meaning of Fucking, Ananova reports.

Hauppl explained: "We had a vote last year on whether to rename the town, but decided to keep it as it is. After all, Fucking has existed for 800 years, probably when a Mr Fuck or the Fuck family moved into the area. The 'ing' was added as a word for settlement."

We reckon that Fucking has been around a lot longer than 800 years, otherwise there wouldn't have been any Fucks to lend their name to the village in the first place, would there?

Cummings GA, Fucking Austria.

There's a village in Austria...

A movie gallery of actual shredding; from the ordinary but tough, to the surprising.

Videos of a massive industrial shredder destorying all kinds of things... like dishwashers, railroad ties, and a BMW.

SSI Shredding Demonstrations

Cringley's got a great columns about some of our outdated regulation law could cause some serious troubles:

Here's an example of how it will work. Imagine your bank is a medium-sized publicly traded bank headquartered in the U.S. midwest with a national charter (that is, regulated by federal, rather than state, banking authorities). Now imagine your bank is not in compliance with Section 404 of Sarbanes Oxley. Section 404 requires as part of the regular audit process that the bank's accounting firm (generally one of the Big 4) certify whether or not the bank is Section 404 compliant. Accounting firms, having paid billions in penalties recently for overlooking accounting errors at companies like Enron and Tyco, aren't going to be lax about this provision. If the bank isn't Section 404 compliant, which means they haven't applied sufficient internal controls to data, the auditors will report that.

Now what?

Well, if your bank isn't in compliance (many won't be), they'll have to very quickly get in compliance. They'll also have to pay a fine and perhaps one or more officers of the bank will do some time in prison. Really.

But there is a funny thing about banks, and that's the way they are regulated and controlled, which makes possible a very different outcome in the case of a Section 404 violation. Technically, the bank can't even continue to operate, because the legal definition of a bank is as a compliant organization. So a very real possibility is that your bank will be forced to merge with another bank that IS in compliance.

That's the new scam. Big banks with sophisticated IT operations are going to appear at the doors of smaller, less sophisticated, banks literally demanding the keys. They'll take over the building, the tellers, and of course the deposits for a price tag that may well be zero.

That's a heck of a deal for everyone except the bank's current shareholders.

PBS | I, Cringely . August 4, 2005 - The New Robber Barons

For those of you who travel... check these guys out... I just got off a flight from near my house, to Nashvegas...

It was nice... no lines, no security hassles, just a nice clean, flight on a Piper Navajo Chieftan... it was sweet.

I normally don't sleep on airplanes, and I slept for almost an hour of the hour and fifteen minute flight. For those of you who know how big I am, I got to stretch out, there was only one other passenger, and for $240.00, it beat Delta's price to the same city.

Moveover, I flew into John C. Tune Airport, and Hertz had my car waiting... I just walked off the plane, through the FBO (fixed base operator) and got into my car...

Simple, easy, affordable. The way air travel should be.

Can you give us more info about the whole experience. I heard about these guys a few months back, and you are ther first person I know who flew with them.

-They only fly into general aviation right?
-How far in advance did you have to book?
-How was the inside ofthe plane? Good seats? Lots of engine noise?

Arrive Air Service: About Arrive

When they arrived at his crib, McClain allegedly tried to strike a cop with a four-foot sword. After missing, McClain retreated to his basement, where he donned a chainmail armored vest and leather gauntlets to protect his arms. He also added a giant wooden mallet to his arsenal and beckoned officers to come downstairs and get him. "I'm gonna crush your fucking skulls," McClain warned. Then, in a nice rhetorical flourish (for a lunatic, at least), he added, "I have a thousand years of power." That omnipotence, however, was no match for a police Taser, which felled McClain. He was then carted off and charged with felony assault and a misdemeanor count for failing to remain at an accident scene.

By the Power of Greyskull... I... HAVE... THE {ZZZAAAPPPPPPPPPPP}!

Medieval loser tasered by cops.

Nice article on O'Reilly about writing AJAX apps (which are interactive web programs like Google Maps). Walks you through an example.

ONLamp.com: A Simpler Ajax Path

... there were 2 suns in the morning

At 08:15, the B-29 Enola Gay, piloted and commanded by Colonel Paul Tibbets, took off from the tiny island of Tinian in the Northern Marianas, a few hundred miles north of Guam, and dropped the nuclear bomb called "Little Boy" over the central part of Hiroshima. It exploded about 600 meters (2,000 feet) above the city with a blast equivalent to 13 kilotons of TNT, killing an estimated 80,000 civilians outright.

Wikipedia has this picture thats creeping me out of a watch that was stopped by explosion.

60 years ago today...

talian scientists have discovered that the river Po contains the remains of the consumption of more than 4kg of cocaine daily - equivalent to an annual snow festival of 1,500kg per year among the Po valley's five million inhabitants.

The point of all the numbers - published in the net's Environmental Health by a team from the Institute for Pharmacological Research in Milan - is that consumption of charlie in the region is much higher than previously thought. Indeed, the authorities had estimated the daily inhalation of nose candy at 27 doses (100mg) per 1,000 young adults.

These figures have now been literally blown out of the water by the test for benzoylecgonine, a byproduct of the body metabolising cocaine which makes its way into the sewer system in the normal way, and thence to the river Po.

The investigative team described the findings as "staggering", which comes as a bit of a surprise since the river Po benefits from the presence of world fashion capital Milan - generally considered to have the greatest percentage of anorexic models among its population and therefore the planet's highest per capita consumption of Bolivian marching powder.

River Po awash with 'cocaine'

Who is Mike Lynn?

Do you remember the "James Baldwin" I mentioned earlier? James appeared to have information about the Ciscogate saga that no one else had. I believe I know why: James Baldwin is Mike Lynn! And so is one other person.

I found Mike's MemeStreams site, which shows his home page as antinode.net. Who registered that site?

Registrant:
James Baldwin
LeperSouth
18 Great Wood
San Antonio, TX 78232
US

Registrar: NameSecure.com
Domain: ANTINODE.NET
Created on 11-24-2000
Expires on 11-25-2007

An antinode.net archive shows jbaldwin@antinode.net as the contact email. Antinode.net is actually rasterburn.org/~eddy/antinode/, but hardly any of the content appears archived.

I did find one Antinode page that listed an eddy@rasterburn.org as the title for the page. Searching for that email address led me to a post about cars in Atlanta, where ISS is located. Member information for user eddy showed his home page as Antinode.net, his birthday as January 4, 1981 (Mike is 24) and his AIM account as "eophten".

Queries for eophten brought me back another MemeStreams blog that has been -- guess what -- posting stories on Ciscogate! I also found a Sun support forum for a "jbaldwin" using AIM account eophten. Looking back at MemeStreams, the eophten profile listed the real name as "Edward Dertouzas" with homepage http://rasterburn.org/~eddy -- the same site hosting Antinode.net.

So who is Edward Dertouzas? He's a character in a Bruce Sterling book. And James Baldwin? He's probably the author of Go Tell It on the Mountain.

So there you have it. Mike Lynn == James Baldwin == Edward Dertouzas (eddy).!

This guy worked so hard, yet is so wrong. I feel bad for him. As some most Memestreamers (and se2600 hackers) know, Mike Lynn is Abaddon on Memestreams. He grew up in Texas where he met James Baldwin (who is ophten on Memestreams). Mike is currently unemployed while James works for a large ISP as an admin. If Mike and James were the same person, I'm sure Mike's girlfriend Marie would be in for quite a shock!

Oh course, James found this blog entry and decided to make his otherwise boring day more fun by replying to it, as the dual persona of Mike/James.

Comments:
# posted by Anonymous : 12:37 PM

eddy@rasterburn.org speaking:

If you search for me (eddy) you'll also find that I speak regularly in #c on efnet. Mike Lynn is a self described C god... this is probably furthered by the superiority I feel in being present in programming interest channel.

Morever, the current topic in #c is "C Programming & Discussion (key is 'c'): Mike Lynn's, #c op abaddon, Legal Fund, paypal abaddon@io.com". I am incognito and gathering funds and support for my cause. Nevermind that "abaddon" portion, I'm "eddy" remember?

If you're lucky enough to know where I (Mike) live, you might see my VW (which is a cool GTI, thank you very much) in the driveway, but you'll also see a white 240sx tucked away and rusting under the car port. Who said I wasn't interested in cars?

Feel free to contact me by aim or email if you care for more details, those, at least, are correct.
# posted by James Baldwin : 4:55 PM

Of course, my man Kobi (yet another se2600 hacker) stumbled upon this and had to kick James publically in the nuts:

# posted by Anonymous : 5:01 PM

Nice description James, but don't forget to mention the words "James eats it." written (in dust) on the hood of your rusting ass 240sx. Never forget that.
# posted by baudburn : 5:06 PM

Sweet.

I wonder if Marie knows Mike is the same person as James!