Project Insomnia

• http://www.bitgoogle.com/


• http://www.xs4all.nl/~pot/infocom/


• http://www.dogtoyormaritalaid.com/


• http://www.computerpoweruser.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles/archive/c0407/03c07/03c07.asp&guid=4B6E615DF0FC4214B19CFFD80508F124

The Senate dealt a crushing defeat to a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage Wednesday, failing to muster even a simple majority on a procedural move to bring the measure to a vote.

Ladies, gentlemen, Oompa Loompas, thank you all for coming today. As many of you may know the esteemed Mr. Wonka has decided to hand sole ownership of his candy production facility over to me. Mr. Wonka believed that because I was a child I would be naïve and continue to do things around here in the whimsical and shockingly inefficient manner he has. I am here to say that things are not going to be the same at all. After speaking with Mr. Wonka's accountant I have come to discover that the factory here is rarely operating in the black. In fact, Mr. Wonka has basically saddled me with years of debt caused by some of the ridiculous expenses involved in producing our candy here.

Nearly one in 10 of Nader's major donors -- those writing checks of $1, 000 or more -- have given in recent months to the Bush-Cheney campaign, the latest documents show. GOP fund-raisers also have "bundled" contributions -- gathering hefty donations for maximum effect to help Nader, who has criticized the practice in the past.

The donations from wealthy Republicans -- combined with increasingly vocal Democratic charges that they represent a stealth GOP effort to wound Democrat John Kerry -- prompted Nader's vice presidential running mate, Green Party member Peter Camejo, to suggest the consumer advocate reject the money that doesn't come from loyal Nader voters.

Back in the day (the mid 90s), dedicated-loop DSL was the primary means of delivering ADSL service. Now it looks to be poised for a comeback, as Covad this week announced a new dedicated-loop DSL offering in partnership with Speakeasy. Also known as dry-loop DSL and naked DSL, dedicated-loop DSL differs from the more common shared-line DSL in that the service is carried on a dedicated line that does not require voice service. Once regulators began requiring local telephone companies to lease lines in the late 90s to DSL providers such as Earthlink and Speakeasy, dedicated-loop DSL fell by the wayside, as it was more expensive and required the ISP to come out and do a custom installation.

With Covad and Speakeasy planning on offering a 6.0/768 dedicated-loop DSL package soon, it may put pressure on the ILECs to improve their offerings, or even to follow the lead of Qwest in offering naked DSL.

A computer science researcher has highlighted the shortcomings of Microsoft's latest patch for its Internet Explorer browser by identifying another way that online vandals could run malicious programs on a Web surfer's computer.

Microsoft on Friday released a fix that's designed to protect computers from one of three flaws that, together, could be used to digitally slip past a PC's security through the browser. This weekend, however, a security researcher identified another flaw that could serve the same purpose and that isn't fixed by Microsoft's patch.

"They chose to address only one part of the problem," said Jelmer Kuperus, a computer science student in the Netherlands who posted the code for the work-around. "They should have seen this one coming."

CNET reporter Robert Lemos zeroed in on why the attack was so scary. "This time," he wrote, "the flaws affect every user of Internet Explorer." That's about 95 percent of all Net users. No matter how well they had protected themselves against viruses, spyware, and everything else in the past, they were still vulnerable to yet another flaw in Microsoft's browser.

Scob didn't get me, but it was enough to make me ditch Explorer in favor of the much less vulnerable Firefox browser. Firefox is built and distributed free by the Mozilla Organization, a small nonprofit corporation spun off last year from the fast-fading remnants of Netscape, which was absorbed by AOL in 1999. Firefox development and testing are mostly done by about a dozen Mozilla employees, plus a few dozen others at companies like IBM, Sun, and Red Hat. I've been using it for a week now, and I've all but forgotten about Explorer.

The changes are designed to deter people from creating multiple e-mail accounts with the purpose of reselling or trading them, according to a source at the company. The policy alterations do not target people trying to barter Gmail invitations, which allow people to sign up for a new membership.