FBI Secret Data Revealed by Using EXTREME Hacking Techniques!

Yep, who could have possibly anticipated that copy/paste could be such a powerful hacking tool!

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/05/secret-data-in.html

Huh. You can now brew your own whiskey in Washington state

They lowered the annual license cost from $2000 to $100 and loosened up some of the rules on how much you can sell and the ability to hold tastings. They have a very interesting rule that you have to buy at least 51% of your materials from Washington producers, good for local growers, but that rule wouldn't work in every state.

http://seattle.bizjournals.com/seattle/stories/2008/03/17/story6.html


I found it off an article on Wired on whiskey geeks brewing their own. A comment indicated that one guy is "pot brewing" his own rum! I'd be more curious about that than whiskey.

http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/news/2008/05/modern_moonshine

The world's largest book!

Wow. You sometimes stumble upon the weirdest things when you're cruising the intertubes.

It's 7x5 FEET, "...it is printed with a gallon of ink on a roll of paper longer than a football field. The printing process takes an entire 24 hours for each copy. It weighs 133 pounds..." It's $10,000 a copy, and the money is donated to a charity of the author's choice.

I would LOVE to see this some day!

http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcoll/exhibits/bhutan/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhutan:_A_Visual_Odyssey_Across_the_Last_Himalayan_Kingdom

User gets stolen laptop back because of laptop's built-in web cam

I should have posted this last week. Very cool story: owner has Mac laptop stolen when apartment is robbed. Owner works at an Apple store and is smarter than the average bear. Friend calls owner to express surprise that the owner got the laptop back as a chat program shows the owner is logged on. Owner uses a remote-control program, Back To My Mac, to activate the laptop's web cam and take a picture of the guy using said laptop. Picture is turned in to the police, laptop and all stolen possessions are recovered.

You just can't get a happier ending than that! Property recovered, perps do the perp walk and go to jail.

Original article: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/10/nyregion/10laptop.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Slashdot thread: http://entertainment.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/05/11/0133232

And a Macosxhints.com has a post describing better ways of doing it, including rigging it so that it takes a picture every time someone logs on to your computer or opens the lid: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2006120918170984. That's what I'm thinking about doing as my main non-work computer is a MacBook Pro that has said built-in web cam, I want it to also FTP the picture up to my web site when it gets an internet connection.

Now, granted, this is specific to the Mac. But lots of laptops are coming equipped with web cams now, so I would expect there are similar background programs for the Windows and *nix environments.

Minor iPod heart attack

I go to lunch, listening to my iPod all the way. Actually listening to my Kraftwerk list most of the way. Have lunch, get back in car, iPod won't turn on. Plug in to power supply. Still won't turn on.

GRRRRR....

Definitely not good since we're going to Phoenix Wednesday evening and I MUST HAVE TUNES!

I decide that the most likely culprit is that it's overheated, even though the temperature isn't much over 90. So I throw it into the fridge at work for a little bit to cool it down.

Still nothing.

Finally I plug it in to my PC at work to charge it for a while.

STILL nothing.

So I break down and go to the Apple web site to figure out how to do a restart on it.

NOW it works.

*sigh*

Replacing it right now would not have been a good thing, so I'm very glad that it decided to return to the land of the living.