Techfun

Forward Slash 
Contributed by mstrebe on Wednesday December 31, 2003 @ 01:42AM from the uncanny-accuracy dept.
Matthew writes: At the beginning of each year, SlashNOT predicts the top 10 tech trends. The 2004 predictions are:

Anti-spam software will finally become useful, allowing you to blame it for not getting e-mail from people you don’t want to talk to.
Every [...]

Asian nations have reacted swiftly to the discovery of madcow disease in the United States.
Japan, the world’s biggest importer of US beef, announced a temporary ban.
It came less than three hours after US Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said initial tests had shown that a cow from northwestern US state of Washington may have [...]

A meme is a unit of information (a catchphrase, a concept, a tune, a notion of fashion, philosophy or politics) that leaps from brain to brain to brain. Memes compete with one another for replication, and are passed down through a population much the same way genes pass through a species. Potent memes can change [...]

In the very beginning I used Lynx and laughed at people using graphical browser’s because at dial-up speeds back then it took a very long time for image heavy pages to load. Then I broke down and used NCSA Mosaic to visit web sites that had image maps and other things that did not [...]

I came across this through a post about a post about a post on morons.org
It’s a thread about a poll called “America’s Poll on Homosexual Marriage” by the ever present American Family Association. There is a great posting in this guy’s journal: griffen it’s worth a glance.
Direct link to the specific thread at: [...]

Published on TaipeiTimes
Link to Original Article
Killer whale movie star Keiko catches pneumonia, dies
AP , OSLO, NORWAY
Sunday, Dec 14, 2003,Page 1
Keiko, the killer whale star of the Free Willy movies, has died, his caretakers said early yesterday.
The 10.6m-long, 6-tonne whale died after the sudden onset of pneumonia in the Taknes fjord in Norway, Friday afternoon.
His handler, [...]

15 December, 2003
     A memorial for the thousands of gay men killed by Nazis in the Second World War has finally been given the go ahead in Berlin.
     The memorial, which is funded by Germany’s government and will be placed in the Tiergarten Park area of the city, is the result of fierce arguments between gay rights [...]

Towey Suggests Groups Lack Concern for the Poor
From: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43967-2003Dec7.html
By Alan Cooperman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, December 8, 2003; Page A23
H. James Towey, director of the White House’s Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, has stirred up a pot of trouble by suggesting that pagans don’t care about the poor.
Wiccans, Druids and other pagans across the country, [...]

Got home from the Christmas Party out in Porter’s at Brian’s parents house and my key got stuck in our apartment’s deadbolt lock.
It is still in there partly the rest is on my keychain still. since it’s sheered off and its after 9:00pm on a Saturday Bri is now on his way to Lowe’s [...]

“The Product is you.” –Adbusters Media Foundation
The Electronic Privacy Information Center has a great site up that focuses on consumer profiling by businesses with the help of the big three credit reporting agencies. Federal laws allow them to sell information about you and there is no way you can “opt-out”.
http://www.epic.org/privacy/profiling/