C.S. Magor's blog

I don't know how many people out there are aware of the move that eBay is presently making in Australia. At present, eBay is applying for immunity from prosecution under the Trade Practices Act. They intend to limit payment options on eBay to Cash on Delivery (COD) and Paypal. For a good portion of online business COD is not an option; so in effect, they intend to limit eBay users to Paypal.

I have returned after a break, which I at least feel is well deserved.  If you frequent Uberreview, the site where most of my writing goes, you will have seen a ton of my work; but I had not done anything here. This was for numerous reasons unrelated to blogging. I had to write and grade a ton of papers and I had to prepare two new freelancers for work as medical and scientific editors.

In other words, I have been a busy man, but I will have a few free hours this next week in which I can start to work on some new posts.

All the way from Russia comes this car which is utterly unremarkable except for the fact that it has one of the most awesome Mario Brothers murals I have ever seen. The detail is great and it is good to see a diehard Nintendo fanboy that is not afraid to show his or her true colors. [Console Newz via Albotas, New Launches]

The folks over at TASER have a new patent on their hands that it looks like they will be putting into their stun guns before too long. It is an embedded camera, designed to capture the circumstances under which the less-lethal device is used.

After watching the Don't Tase Me Bro video and countless others like it, most of us have the sense that the TASER is being overused. If you ask me, voicing an opinion or being visibly upset is not a reason to be tased. These are less-lethal weapons that should be used to prevent the use of deadly force. In other words they are weapons that can be pulled out in place of guns, not because reasoning with a person is too inconvenient.

While I doubt that an onboard camera will bring unwarranted tasings to a complete stop, it is likely that it will decrease them, which makes this a very nice patent. [The Danger Room via DVICE]

If you are currently testing Mozilla Firefox 3, it is high time that you downloaded the update, Release Candidate 1. If they are putting out release candidates, then there is a pretty good chance that we are going to see a real release before long. [Life Hacker]

Paul Osborne, a 44-year-old Englishman was so devastated at the thought that his wife of 24 years might be having an affair, that he packed her things, put them on the curb. It all started with some rumors that he heard and allegedly confirmed by snooping through her email account. He gave her a second chance, but again became convinced and this time took more drastic action: he put her on eBay.

According to Paul: “In a fit of rage I put the advert on eBay. I later took it off because I realized it wasn’t the right thing to do. I was just so angry.”

We can all agree that it was the wrong thing to do, but you have to feel for the guy, who after being married for 24 years discovered emails in his wife's account between her and another man where, "They had been discussing their sex life together and making plans for the future."

For future reference John, the appropriate course of action would have been to consult a competent divorce attorney. [Daily Telegraph]

It seems that the mighty Wall Street Journal was a tad premature in the announcement that Dell was canning the XPS brand. It seemed doubtful that they would, when you consider all of the facts. You only have to look at the limited market presence of Alienware outside of Western computing markets to understand why.

Scientists of the Guandong Academy of Agricultural Sciences claim that sending seeds into space can result in vegetables of unusual size as are shown in the pictures in this article. The 21lb tomatoes, nine-inch chilies and 210lb pumpkins that are featured in the pictures are allegedly the benefit that results from spending two weeks in orbit.

USAF Col. Charles W. Williamson III has proposed a plan for a massive military-controlled botnet that could be used to launch attacks at hostile networks. His vision involves turning otherwise unusable machines into a powerful cyber-weapon, stripping them down to the bare essentials and turning them onto aggressors.

In his own words:
"America needs a network that can project power by building an af.mil robot network (botnet) that can direct such massive amounts of traffic to target computers that they can no longer communicate and become no more useful to our adversaries than hunks of metal and plastic."

In Col. Charles W. Williamson III's plan, the hard drives of the military botnet machines would be removed in order to conserve power and create a more environmentally-friendly weapon. Does it sound like a good idea? Think about it carefully and then consider the following.

The botnets that are used in attacks on government networks tend to be comprised of hijacked computers belonging to regular folks like you or me. It is our computers that the good Colonel would like to render into hunks of metal and plastic, not those of some aggressive foreign state or tangible adversary. [Armed Forces Journal via The Register]

Microsoft is set to make some significant changes to Internet Explorer 8 that should see the browser secured against ActiveX exploits. The changes will make the browser much more convenient than it previously has been, as users will be able to install ActiveX controls without Administrator rights. The onus will be on publishers to prepare their programs in order to meet new security requirements and will work for Windows Vista based systems.