For a mere $294 you can have one of your own through the company’s website! Or, for those who were mesmerized by their infomercial, operators are standing by! What’s really odd about their site is that the video on the page stops part way through. Must be a slick marketing trick I’m not aware of.

And you just know there will be third-party, ‘personal’ attachments made for this. IF you know what I mean…

Click photo.

This Episode’s Topics:

• Frozen: spiked shoes and pigs
• Davos – a rich persons circle jerk drinking club
• More financial times, the exodus from UK to Switzerland, and taxes
• Our rant on U.S. politics and the Pres. candidates
• John’s Superbowl prognostications (well, unless…)
• More on Adam’s travel adventures with cellphone broadcasts, the TSA and CBP
• Hide the salami, and the wine, and the reindeer, and…
• How to buy a jet with a TRS-100
• Cool tales of “ancient” computers

Tech Dirt – 2/1/08:

A few years back we wrote about states that were passing inexplicable laws requiring anyone selling goods on eBay for others to get an auctioneer’s license, something that can be quite costly and sometimes requires a long-term apprenticeship. It appears just such a law is being used in Pennsylvania to go after a very successful eBay seller (via the Agitator).

The story in that case is even more ridiculous, since the woman in question only began selling goods on eBay in order to be able to stay at home with her young daughter who was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Even though the woman stopped (and got a job outside the home) as soon as the state notified her that she was illegally selling goods, the state is still moving forward prosecuting her. While the state told the reporter that the maximum fine the woman faced is only $2,000, her lawyer read the charges in a way that suggested she could be on the hook for up to $10 million.

Found by Aric Mackey who suggests that podcasters adopt this policy. Millions would be made.

Global giants including Apple and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp are believed to be considering rival bids for the internet company Yahoo, which has received a $44.6bn offer from Microsoft.

The conglomerate InterActiveCorp was another company named as a potential bidder for Yahoo, which is said to be unwilling to give in to Microsoft without a fight…

Yahoo chief executive and co-founder Jerry Yang is understood not to be Microsoft’s greatest fan, and would be prepared to line up another ‘white knight’ rather than concede to Ballmer.

It is believed he would be particularly open to a rescue bid from Steve Jobs’ Apple Corp, having openly expressed his admiration for the firm in the past.

Tee hee.

Motorists nostalgic for the time they could sit tight while attendants braved windswept garage forecourts to fill their tanks may yet see those heady days return — compliments of a Dutch robot.

Dutch inventors have unveiled a 75,000 euro car-fuelling robot they say is the first of its kind, working by registering the car on arrival at the filling station and matching it to a database of fuel cap designs and fuel types.

A robotic arm fitted with multiple sensors extends from a regular petrol pump, carefully opens the car’s flap, unscrews the cap, picks up the fuel nozzle and directs it toward the tank opening, much as a human arm would, and as efficiently.

I can picture a cold, snowy night when I would prefer stopping at a filling station with one of these. Who do I pay? And how?

Is information warfare to blame for the damage to underwater internet cables that has interrupted internet service to millions of people in India and Egypt, or is it just a series of accidents? When two cables in the Mediterranean were severed last week, it was put down to a mishap with a stray anchor. Now a third cable has been cut, this time near Dubai. That, along with new evidence that ships’ anchors are not to blame, has sparked theories about more sinister forces that could be at work. When two cables were cut off the Egyptian port city of Alexandria last week, about a 100 million internet users were affected, mainly in India and Egypt.

The cables remain broken and internet services are still compromised. It was assumed a ship’s anchor severed the cables, but now that is in doubt and the conspiracy theories are coming out. Egypt’s Transport Ministry says video surveillance shows no ships were in the area at the time of the incident.
Online columnist Ian Brockwell says the cables may have been cut deliberately in an attempt by the US and Israel to deprive Iran of internet access. Others back up that theory, saying the Pentagon has a secret strategy called ‘information warfare’. But Mr Budde says it is far more likely to be a coincidence. “It is absolutely strange, of course, that that happens. At the moment it really looks like bad luck rather than anything else,” he said.

Three cables severed in less than a week? Hmmmmm. Update: Now there are reports of a fourth cable severed.

“Iran is back online, but… its traffic is now passing through the UK and the US, the latter controlling the 13 primary routers. Can you say wiretap?” queries another.

thanks to Eric for update

A bill that would force some Mississippians to back away from the buffet, or any restaurant, has begun its trip through the 2008 Legislature.

House Bill 282 would prohibit restaurants from serving food to anyone who is obese, based on criteria from the state Department of Health…

A 2007 report put that state’s obesity rate at 30.6 percent – the worst in the nation.

Fat Chance? Har.

Sorry guys, you never existed.

 
I wonder how this kind of poll would do in the US? As if I don’t already know the answer.

Quarter of Brits think Churchill was myth: poll

Britons are losing their grip on reality, according to a poll out Monday which showed that nearly a quarter think Winston Churchill was a myth while the majority reckon Sherlock Holmes was real.

The survey found that 47 percent thought the 12th century English king Richard the Lionheart was a myth.

And 23 percent thought World War II prime minister Churchill was made up. The same percentage thought Crimean War nurse Florence Nightingale did not actually exist.

Three percent thought Charles Dickens, one of Britain’s most famous writers, is a work of fiction himself.

NSA Poster – that means every one of you

Members of the British Parliament have been shocked to discover that one of their number was bugged by the secret service, violating the forty-year old “Wilson doctrine” that offers MPs immunity from the sort of snooping they are happy for the rest of us to be subject to.

Two conversations between Tooting MP Sadiq Khan and his constituent and childhood friend Babar Ahmad were apparently recorded in the prison where Mr Ahmad is being held.

He is on remand while awaiting deportation to the United States on charges relating to his support for terrorism. Mr Ahmad faces no charges in the UK…

Perhaps it’s time to teach our elected representatives how to use the latest encryption and anonymising tools so that they can protect themselves from the surveillance state they have created?

Or perhaps they would like to do us all a service and dismantle it.

Of course, such a thing would never happen here in the Land of the Free. Right?

Right..?

Bezeq Israel Telecom, the country’s dominant phone company, has launched a service that would block calls to porn and other “improper” destinations in a bid to attract ultra-Orthodox customers.

Avi Gabbay, Bezeq’s chief executive officer, said at a news conference the company had invested $500,000 on the new “Kosher phone line” service, which initially will be free and has been approved by Israel’s leading rabbis.

He noted that although the main market will be the ultra-Orthodox — who typically live in their own communities and refrain from many secular activities — the service will be open to all.

“Obviously our main customer is the ultra-Orthodox but a lot of parents don’t want their children to be exposed to these kinds of numbers,” said Itamar Harel, vice president of Bezeq’s residential customers division.

I wonder if narrow-minded theology produces the need for such a “service” – or if the narrow-minded are just being opportunistic about offering the service, figuring theology makes a market?

Listen to Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens debating blasphemy at last year’s Guardian Hay Festival – blogs.guardian.co.uk: One of the most talked-about events at last year’s Guardian Hay Festival was the Blasphemy Debate, chaired by Joan Bakewell and inspired by the Incitement to Religious Hatred Bill, which had been announced in the Queen’s Speech the previous month.

The speakers at the debate were the actor and writer Stephen Fry and the journalist Christopher Hitchens, and their frequently heated discussion covered issues of freedom of speech, religious tolerance, multiculturalism and orthodoxy. It was a fascinating, thought-provoking and – as you’d expect from two such consummate orators – extremely entertaining event, and as a warm-up to this year’s Hay Festival, the good people at Radio Hay, the festival’s online broadcaster, have kindly allowed us to offer you the chance to hear it for yourself. Click here to listen to the debate on your computer (MP3; 78mins).

Warning! coarse language.

Somehow I think this is a bad idea, with one strong wind it looks like it might flip over.

msnbc.com

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – Hidden camera footage broadcast by a crime reporter Sunday apparently showed Dutch student Joran van der Sloot admitting he was with American teenager Natalee Holloway when she died on a beach in Aruba in May 2005, and that he called a friend and asked him to dispose of the body at sea. “She suddenly didn’t do anything anymore,” Van der Sloot said of the 18-year-old Holloway in a conversation with a man he believed to be his friend.

Holloway vanished just before she was due to fly home to Alabama, at the end of her high school graduation trip to the Caribbean island. No trace of her has been found since. The exchange, in Dutch, was recorded in a car that had been rigged with three hidden cameras by Peter R. de Vries, a Dutch television crime reporter who claims the footage solves the mystery surrounding Holloway’s disappearance. It was shown on Dutch television. In the video, Van der Sloot said he panicked and tried but failed to revive Holloway after she began shaking and then slumped to the sand.

He then used a pay phone next to a hotel’s swimming pool to call a friend with a boat to dispose of the body, he said. “The ocean is big,” he added. Van der Sloot said his friend assured him he had taken care of Holloway’s body and that the police were not going to locate it. “They will know nothing,” Van der Sloot quoted the friend as telling him. In the images, Van der Sloot speaks matter-of-factly about the case, saying at one point, “I’ve not lost any sleep over this.” In a telephone interview with a Dutch news show Friday night, Van der Sloot acknowledged that he had discussed his alleged involvement in Holloway’s disappearance with a friend, but insisted it was a lie and he had nothing to do with the case.

Is this kid really so stupid as to confide in a crime reporter? He could have gotten away with murder, and may still. It almost seems like he wanted to get caught. Either that or he is thumbing his nose at the system.