Humor

A woman from Washington DC is suing Best Buy for $54 million after it lost a laptop she'd put in for repair. The company already gave Raelyn Campbell the full replacement cost of her $1,100 laptop plus a $500 gift card as compensation. However, ... she's suing for costs including the replacement of software, music, pictures and other data, plus the actions she's had to take to protect against identity theft. Her laptop included material such as her will and tax returns which could have been used for such purposes. (Source: computerworld.com ) She's detailed her case at the tongue-twister-named ... (view more)

Love Facebook? Many do. The social networking site can officially be proclaimed the web's new number one phenomenon, drawing the young and old into a complex and entertaining framework that employs concepts from dating to games to, of course, ... photos. Unfortunately, all that popularity makes it a dangerous place -- a bit like downtown NYC -- and vulnerable to some pretty significant flaws. (Source: itbusiness.ca ) According to security analyst Elazar Broad, another critical vulnerability has been discovered in Facebook's Aurigma ImageUploader control. It's not the first problem to affect this ... (view more)

From what I've learned about the legal profession -- as it has been derived from Law and Order repeats and My Cousin Vinny -- being held in contempt of court is not a good thing. It generally means you've done something particularly heinous to upset ... a judge, like having your cell phone go off during proceedings. That sure would irk a judge -- especially if it was his own phone. British judge Charles Byers was in mid-session this past week when -- to his chagrin -- a cell phone blurted its cacophony of rings and twings mid-session. As mentioned, in many cases this can completely bring a court ... (view more)

Internet users trying to satisfy their primal urges are helping drive technological advances, according to a British researcher. Dr. Trudy Barber of the University of Portsmouth is an expert on cyberspace and subcultures. She says today's unraveling ... underground revolution can be likened to the way explicit films made video recorders popular among consumers in the late 1970s. Barber gave some interesting examples of this current revolution, including phone hanky-panky and people who actually wire themselves up to their computer so that fellow Internet users can press a button to give them ... (view more)

Can't get the sandman to stop by? Quit calling the guy. According to reports from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, talking on a cell phone before heading to bed can prevent a person from getting a good night's sleep. Ironically enough, ... the study was funded by mobile phone companies. Research performed by Sweden's Karolinska Institute and Wayne State found that radiation emitted by the average cell phone can cause more than just headaches, confusion, and car accidents -- it can also lead to insomnia. (Source: usatoday.com ) How, you ask? Researchers found that using a cell phone ... (view more)

Little bit worried about that one-night stand last weekend? Don't thank your partner -- he or she are probably never going to call you again, anyhow -- but instead think on one of America's most celebrated explorers. In a surprising and fascinating ... new study, researchers have discovered that Christopher Columbus or one of his men likely introduced syphilis to Europe. Unlike today, syphilis was not just a common and annoying ailment during the fifteenth century. When it reached Europe during the twilight of the 1400s, it spread quickly amongst randy Europeans, eventually killing thousands. ... (view more)

Facebook has come under much scrutiny since its popularity exploded during 2007. With the year rounding out, we can think back to all the buzz created by a social networking site that asked for an individual's private details and then neatly handed ... them to Microsoft's advertising division. Questions of voyeurism and greed continue to dog Facebook. Now, a controversial study is examining the controversial web site. Researchers at Harvard University have decided that they'd like to know what the racial and ethnic interests of Facebook users might be. The analysts recently gained access to the ... (view more)

The Queen has opened her own channel on YouTube. The British monarch will use the site to broadcast her annual Christmas Day message, which celebrates its 50th anniversary on television this year. Last year's message was, for the first time, ... available as a podcast. A spokesperson for Buckingham Palace said, "The Queen always keeps abreast with new ways of communicating with people. She has always been aware of reaching more people and adapting the communication to suit. This will make the Christmas message more accessible to younger people and those in other countries." Ironically, this year' ... (view more)

The holiday dust is settling and industry observers are beginning to tally the season's winners and losers. One of the winners, it seems, are 'e-cards', the emailed greeting cards that your friends send you with those corny graphics, animations and ... music. In previous years, e-cards might have been fun, sure, but you wouldn't really use them for important occasions. This year, however, it would seem that e-cards are becoming "OK" for traditional events like Christmas. According to American Greetings, one of the biggest e-card producers, e-card utilization has increased by 10% this year. ( ... (view more)

The theme behind Jack Finney's "The Body Snatchers" has been replicated in movie after movie since 1956. Each remake advances the same basic theme: aliens are taking over people one by one and it's almost impossible to tell who has been taken over ... and who hasn't. With the arrest last month of John Kenneth Schiefer, 26, we learned that there are aliens taking over our PCs too. Schiefer, or "Acidstorm" to his friends, pleaded guilty to using the snatched identities of over 250,000 "zombie" PCs to conduct identity theft and fraud. Schiefer and accomplices used 'bot' software to compromise ... (view more)