Decius wrote:

Jello wrote:

Is this worth going to? Seriously, I mean aside from the drinking.

Well, I'm speaking. :)

I'm with Decius, his rants are awesome; they are always the highlight of the evening (well besides the drinking) Phreaknic rox!! Can't wait :)

Bio

RE: PhreakNIC Technology and Hacker Culture Convention

Happy Birthday to w1ldamg!!!! :D

MemeStreams | Reputation Agent

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Hundreds of looters battled police all weekend at the site of a beer train wreck in violence that left one woman dead, South African police said on Monday as they kept a heavy guard on the remaining alcohol.The train carrying 180,000 crates of beer from South African Breweries derailed on Friday night near Waterval Boven, 124 miles east of Johannesburg, Superintendent Izak van Zyl said.By Saturday morning, police were battling up to 200 people from the nearby township trying to make off with crates of beer.

Police battle looters after beer train crashes - Africa

Since 2002 we've been publishing the httpd log statistics for this site on an annual basis. This gives you some insight into traffic levels, popular pages, and the kinds of search results that bring people to MemeStreams.

From the time we went online (in the fall of 2001) until September of 2003 we saw a fairly constant growth in the number of unique visitors using this site. This year that pattern has changed. The growth, as measured in terms of unique visitors, seems to have leveled off shy of 30,000 people a month, and this year we settled into a static pattern typical of older websites, where more traffic is received in the winter months than in the summer months. As our site is current events focused we also get an occasional boost from popular news stories.

However, while the same number of people are using MemeStreams as were using it a year ago, those people seem to be using it a lot more. In September of 2003 we got 27,825 unique visitors, who visited 101,041 pages on the site. In November of 2004 we got 27,496 unique visitors, but they visited 155,421 pages on the site.

Truth be told, this is probably a more significant change. A lot of those 27 thousand people wash in from a search engine looking for something specific and never return. The vitality of this site is more dependent on the people who stick around a while and actually make use of it. Those people seem to be growing in numbers even as the overall total remains the same.

The main page of the site was hit 259,011 times this year, which works out to about 708 times a day. Thats up from 148,826 last year (which is 408 times a day). Also, in 2003 29% of our traffic came from search engines and 33% came from bookmarks. This year 19% came from search engines and 57% came from bookmarks.

2003 saw the birth of the referrer spammer and they are not going away. The 5 "links from an external page" listed here were the only ones that made the top 20 who I'm absolutely sure aren't spammers. (Honestly, the Netnewswire link may be considered spam, as it is offered by that RSS reader, but its somewhat interesting data and not exactly the same thing as robots that hit your site over and over with no interest in fetching the content.)

If you're interested, you can find the links to older annual statistics here:
http://www.memestreams.net/allabout.html

Happy New Year!

2004 Statistics for www.memestreams.net

May's E3 did little to dissuade the stereotype that the only women working in video gaming do so in camouflage bikinis.Touring the show floor with several female students, Jason Chu, chief operating officer with the DigiPen Institute of Technology, got a taste of the backlash to the industry's testosterone-laden sensibilities.

"We were looking at these posters of women in outfits," Chu recalled. "And one turned to me and said, 'This is why women aren't in games.'"

Blame gaming's nerdy male history or even society's expectations on what men and women can do for a living, but there's no denying that the people who create games are overwhelmingly male. The times, they are (finally) a changing, however. Already well-represented in marketing and public relations, women are now moving into the creative areas of coding, design, art and production.
The purpose of recruiting women is not so they can make games 'about pink fluffy kitties.'

Gaming Tries to Shed Boys Club Image....

Napster, which was transformed into a legal service after turning the music industry on its ear with an unauthorized song-swapping platform, is now giving away MP3 devices to anyone who subscribes for a full year.

On its Web site, Napster said it would give consumers a Rio Chiba Sport portable music device, valued at about $130, if they sign up for the subscription, which is valued at $119.40.
Ummmm No

Napster gives away music players with subscription

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - Michelle Duggar is all smiles after delivering her 15th child, but she may be ready for more, her family says

W0W!! what were they thinking?

Arkansas woman has 15th child

A popular explanation for why we have frequent sex has been challenged by a report published in Science magazine.
According to the Red Queen Hypothesis, sex exists to help organisms protect themselves against parasites.
Ok, now why ask why? d0h!! Yeah sure its all about the parasites, sure.....

Famous sex theory questioned

Damn!! I'm glad I wasnt on his flight!

Pilot nods off during flight, now faces probe

hahahahaha

Mullet Magnets