Robot scientist becomes first machine to discover new scientific knowledge

via Gizmodo via Lab Spaces via BBSRC

Wow. gh

"Where bankin’s funner!"?

via My Money Blog via Redneck Bank

OMFG. gh

Hilarious: The Daily Show Makes Fun of CNBC

via My Money Blog via The Daily Show

Hilarious. gh

Illinois restores Pluto's planetary status

via The Register via Illinois General Assembly

Hooray for Pluto! gh

New eBay Fraud

via Schneier on Security via The Consumerist

New? You must not be too familiar with eBay and PayPal policies to think this could be new. I'd be shocked if this kind of thing didn't happen regularly and just wasn't widely publicised. eBay and PayPal (owned by eBay) are very pro-buyer and anti-seller. eBay practically requires sellers to accept PayPal. I say practically because eBay requires at least one electronic payment method, and the only ones they allow at all besides PayPal are Moneybookers and ProPay, which cost to use; Paymate, for Australians only; and your own merchant card processing which costs to have and isn't typically something offered to small-potatoes individuals. PayPal, furthermore, requires sellers to offer refunds in that they will take the buyer's money back from you if you don't give it back yourself.

Sellers, also, can no longer even leave negative feedback for buyers. If a buyer wants to defraud a seller it's very easy—no cleverness needed. Like most security problems the solution is not simple.

PayPal is in business to make money and they won't make as much by having buyers wait for refunds while they spend human resources to research every case. If buyers don't find PayPal easy and safe to use they won't buy as much on eBay because, frankly, there's no competition. Can you name a single other credit card processor that sellers can use without a monthly fee like PayPal? Can you name a single other online auction service that has even half the items listed as eBay? gh

Times Spelling Bee

via The Register

This is brilliant! How are you at spelling commonly-used words? How are you at understanding a British accent? Put the two together and you arrive at the Times Spelling Bee. This isn't nearly as fun for Brits (it might be if they added options for American, Indian and Australian accents) but for us Yanks it's a humorous challenge. gh

Blah-It

via Blah-It

This is the stupidest thing I've seen in a while. gh

In a New Generation of College Students, Many Opt for the Life Examined

via The New York Times

From "'People sitting under trees and talking about stupid stuff—I mean, who cares?'" to "'If I were to start again as an undergraduate, I would major in philosophy. I think that subject is really at the core of just about everything we do.'" gh

Earth to big shots! Any living brain cells in there?

via York News-Times

Meet G. Richard Wagoner, Jr., Chairman & CEO of General Motors. Total compensation last year, $14,415,900.00.

Meet Alan Mulally, President & CEO of Ford Motor Company. Total compensation last year, $21,670,700.00.

Meet Robert Nardelli, Chairman & CEO of Chrysler. Total compensation last year...nobody knows because Chrysler is now a private company and his total compensation package is undisclosed. But seeing as how he was one of the highest-paid executives the year before at Home Depot, making $38,100,000.00 in 2005 and being given a $210,000,000.00 golden parachute when he left, he's probably only working for shites and grins anyway.

Do these men's companies need taxpayers' bailout money? You tell me. gh

Four philosophical questions to make your brain hurt

via BBC News via UNESCO

Thanks to a college chum for pointing this out—I never knew there was a Philosophy Day. gh

What Does It Matter How Many Rows The Barley Has?

via Madison Beer Review

In case you were wondering how different barley affect your beer. gh

What does GHNN stand for?

via Acronym Finder

Evidently this blog is listed in Acronym Finder.

Things are going to start happening for me now. gh

[Wisconsin] State shoppers must pay more

via JSOnline

"If you're looking for the cheapest...door-buster specials on the day after Thanksgiving, it pays to live near the Wisconsin border. It makes it easier to drive across the state line to a store with lower prices in Minnesota or Illinois."

This is ludicrous.

"Thanks to the state's minimum markup law, Wisconsin...shoppers pay more on some of the hottest deals on Black Friday...and other highly competitive shopping days. Wal-Mart [for example] prints different fliers, with higher prices for their Wisconsin stores, to avoid any chance of violating the state's Unfair Sales Act." gh

Palin didn't know Africa is a continent

via The Register via Fox News

Updated 200811141525Z

If that's true, wow, but there may be more to this story. gh

Live Election Results

via WISN.com

Updated 200811051615Z

Take a look at the election map. See a pattern? Remind you of any particular civil war? The southern states are generally Republican, but in this election Florida and Virginia went Blue. Florida might make sense due to Obama's out-campaigning McCain there; Virginia's a border state, and its demographics have changed significantly with all the beltway build-up, so that might explain it. But what's up with North Carolina? Still not reporting? Get with the programme folks...

It is kind of sad, really, that not a single "Deep South" state went Democrat, unless you count Florida or Virginia whose Southern status culturally is debatable. I guess some things never change.

Here's another thought. Voter turnout for this election is reaching record highs. Why? Maybe not because of the importance of this election, or the candidates, or the issues. Maybe it's because four years ago many voters figured they didn't need to bother—thinking there'd be no way W would get re-elected—and look what happened: George Dumber-than-you Bush was re-elected. Maybe people realised they ought to give their two cents in future elections

Click here for more election maps.. gh

Tim Robbins runs into voting trouble

via MSNBC via WISN.com

If it can happen to him it can happen to anyone. Unfortunately, he probably stands a much better chance of getting it corrected in time than just anyone. gh

If Obama had campaigned like McCain...

via MSNBC

Saw this on TV last night. Thought it was amusing.

Speaking of MSNBC, they also have this FAQ-style article explaining some of the basics of the U.S. elections. gh

OWASP EU Summit 2008

via OWASP

Updated 200810141300Z

What's OWASP? For anyone who doesn't know OWASP, it's the Open Web Application Security Project: a worldwide, free and open community focused on improving the security of application software. It is today one of the better known organizations in the Web Application Security arena and promotes several projects (ranging from documentation to open-source tools) and conferences. Its most famous project is the OWASP Top Ten, which lists the 10 most critical vulnerabilities of web applications.

What's the OWASP summit? It's one of the meetings organized by OWASP. The other one is AppSec, that happens around the world each year. The Summit is a gathering whose main goal is, besides promoting the exchange of ideas on web application security, defining the future of OWASP itself. In other words: Do you want to help define the future of web application security? If so, the OWASP Summit is the place to be.

This year, the Summit will happen in November, from the 3^rd to the 7^th, in Portugal. It will offer a great selection of training and technical sessions, regarding the most important OWASP projects and themes. It will also host a business track dealing with the usage of OWASP generated documents and tools by companies worldwide and with the opportunities for these companies to help OWASP's development. It will be a great opportunity to meet the people that make a difference in the web security arena.

In summary, it will be an unparalleled opportunity to learn, share, and network.

To learn more, visit the OWASP Summit web page for the detailed schedule and registration & contact information.

Want to support OWASP? Digg this story. gh

AT&T Asks You To Pay In Advance To Handle Its Credit Problems

via Techdirt via PatentlyStupid

AT&T's customer service sucks bad. Really bad. I had had the same mobile phone service since 1996. First it was Cellular One, then it was Cingular, then finally AT&T. That last change is when it started to suck. They charged me for things I didn't do; services I didn't use. They made it a hassle to add, change, especially remove, and even just understand the services you were getting. My international dialing ability suddenly disappeared. My international roaming suddenly disappeared. My pay-per-use Internet service suddenly disappeared. MMS messaging never really worked. Email never really worked. IMing never really worked. My phone was supported before they acquired Cingular but not after. They couldn't ever figure out when my service contract actually started or ended, and it was made even worse when I tried to upgrade my handset but ended up returning it (I did this three times—their policy is to give you 30 days to try a handset or return it for a full refund and revert to your old contract, if any...it never worked right). Finally I decided to just cancel the account entirely—and by this time I had four lines on a family plan. After many phone calls to customer service trying to straighten out when our contract end dates were (way in the past) and how much we really owed, we found out our service could not be cancelled immediately. They were now billing us a month in advance, and they refused to give us a pro-rated refund. They did promise, however, that from that point on we would only have to pay for whatever service we used beyond what our monthly terms were, and they gave us a final day of service of August 4, 2008.

August 4 came and sure enough our phones stopped working. Then the final bill came...it should have been about $20 or so according to the operator who cancelled for us. Instead it was about $120. There's no way I'm paying that. But I was also tired of talking to their moronic customer service staff and having to reexplain everything every time. So I'm just not sending in any final payment. Unfortunately because of their MONOPOLY (again, history repeats itself) I also have AT&T home phone service. I really don't want to switch to any digital phone service (much to the dismay of my cable TV and Internet provider), mostly because I want my phone to work when the power goes out and I want to know that 911 is going to work. Then there's also the fact that digital service is more complicated, prone to errors and outages, more expensive (after promotional periods)...

Anyway, I did some web searches to try to find other service providers in my town. One I'd never heard of, called Sage Telecom, turned up. I went to their web site and checked them out. Their prices seemed reasonable, and if they were including taxes & fees they were actually a better deal than I was getting from AT&T. I did a few searches for reviews and didn't find anything bad; I did a few searches for articles and didn't find anything bad—they've only been in business a bit over 10 years or so.

So I figured what the hell, and went to their online sign-up form. It didn't work...no idea why...but it gave me a phone number to call. So I did. I talked to a nice woman from Texas with a very cute accent, and she got me all taken care of in just a few minutes. The only surprise was that their online price quotes do not include taxes and fees, so that increased my total monthly charge by nearly 40%—but she gave me 10% off when I said I might not be interested after all. So then I signed up for an unpublished number too, which costs like six or eight dollars extra per month (can anyone explain that?). She even gave me a choice of sticking with my current phone number or picking a new one. I picked a new one.

That was on a Friday, so it would take a couple of business days to get the service hooked up (no charge, and no charge for leaving AT&T either—Sage takes care of it). Now I'm a happy Sage customer and completely rid of that poor excuse for a "service provider," AT&T.

If you haven't already made the leap of faith to digital phone service (thanks for not clogging up the Internet) I'd highly recommend you find out if Sage is available where you live or where you work and give it a try. Tell them The Grumpy Hacker sent you. They'll have absolutely no idea who you're talking about! gh

When Even The Simpsons Make Fun Of E-Voting Machines...

via Techdirt

Funny. gh