Chaos Magnet

Virus catches child porn offender

The other day Sarah told me she was a bit disturbed because she'd received an email from the FBI saying they'd found that she had visited illegal web sites. Having received many of these fake emails (usually purporting to be from the CIA, interestingly) my reaction was "please tell me you didn't open the file that comes with the email." Fortunately, my wife is saavy enough not to open weird attachments, so all was well, and I told her about the source of these emails: a virus, worm, or scam, take your pick.

But apparently a 20 year old in Germany had a guilty conscience, and when he received a similar email, his first reaction was to turn himself in. Police charged him on discovering child pornography on his computer.

Graduation: it's not just for soldiers anymore

Well, I'm back from South Carolina and Sean's graduation from Basic Combat Training. After all those years of official school papers coming home and talking about "your child" it was a bit jarring, to say the least, to receive a packet of information talking about "your Soldier".

In fact, it seems to me that the two days we spent with Sean -- Thursday on the base, and Friday, after graduation, off the base in the hotel, where all he wanted to do is relax -- seemed almost geared just as much at easing parents into the idea that their children belong to the Army now as anything else.

I'm still not used to it, not really.

Pardon my dust

You may notice two sets of "Technorati tags:" headings, with the second one being empty. I'm in the process of installing a new MT plugin (Tagwire) that will automatically add the tags from the keywords field, so I don't have to do it manually like I have been. Unfortunately, there's no easy way to go back and add the keywords to previous postings, and I'm too tired to go directly into the database, so sorry, but it'll just have to be that way for a while, until the new postings start to pile up.

Sorry about that!

Nerdier than I thought

I have always known that I'm somewhat of a nerd, but thanks to Curt, I now know just how much of a nerd I really am. Turns out that in the 87th percentile, I'm a High Nerd, a bit nerdier than I thought, but not as nerdy as I hoped. (Don't ask me why that seems like an accomplishment.)


Technorati tags: nerd | nerd test

Welcome to the Lars Homestead

Somebody submitted this anonymously to the Vanguard Science Fiction Report: The Force Is Strong In Tunisia. I knew in the back of my head that George Lucas had chosen a Tunisian hotel as the Lars Homestead, for some reason it never occurred to me that you could actually stay there.

Technorati tags: Star Wars | George Lucas | Tunisia | movies | science fiction | fantasy

Random House goes digital

Random House is going digital. The publishing company has witnessed what went on in the music industry, and has decided to beat Pirates to the punchby providing a way to legally access their books electronically.

"The technology was adopted before there was a business model for legitimate sales," [Richard Sarnoff, president of Random House's corporate development unit] says. "That created a fertile ground for piracy, and it became ingrained in consumer behavior."

are also worried about plans by an Google & Co. to scan library books and make the content available online. And as an author, I'm in agreement with being concerned.

Technorati tags: publishing | digital | books | Random House | publishers | Google

Spot the fake smile

Via 100 Bloggers -- email me if you want to participate -- check out Spot The Fake Smile, a psychology experiment that lets you decide which of 20 smiles are genuine or fake. The rationale is interesting. I won't give it away, but apparently they're controlled by different areas of the brain and different muscles.

Technorati tags: smile | fake smile | spot the fake smile | science | spychology