Online Home of Derek Meister
The New York Times is reporting the the parents of Terri Schiavo have given permission to use a list of names and addresses of those who donated to their cause to conservative direct-marketing firm Response United.
The firm is looking to charge $150 per month for the names of 6,000 donors and $500 per month for the email addresses of 4,000 people who responded to an email from Terri’s father, Bob Schindler.
Researchers at the University of California Berkeley and Universitas Sam Ratulangi in North Sulawesi, Indonesia, have discovered two species of octopus native to the Indian Ocean which can disguise themselves through the use of six of their tentacles. The other two tentacles are then used to ‘walk’ along the bottom of the ocean in order to fool predators used to their normal method of eight-legged travel.
The species Octopus marginatus wraps its tentacles around itself in the shape of a floating coconut, as can be seen in this video, while this footage shows the Octopus (Abdopus) aculeatus species spreading its six tentacles out in the pattern of floating algae and skuttling off.
Internet telephone services, such as Vonage, Dialpad, Skype and others, are quickly becoming a very popular way to use Voice over IP technology to provide cheap, and even free, telephone service across broadband connections.
Unfortunately, the growth of this industry has also helped criminal scam artists, as reported in a recent CNN Money article.
Because the technology behind internet telephone services is new, and because the connections are made across the open network of the Internet, it’s easier for the criminal element to penetrate and manipulate the system compared to the older proprietory landlines of the telephone companies. This has resulted in situations where scam artists have been able to make telephone calls that appear to be coming from corporations such as banks and credit card companies. The criminals then convince unsuspecting customers, who believe they’re talking to legitimate company representitives due to falsified Caller ID information, to give them sensitive account information they can then use to steal from.
When high-profile companies like Western Union have been fooled by these high tech scam artists, it’s a warning sign for consumers to beware telephone calls asking them for account details. As a customer, you should remember that your bank and credit card company should already have your information in their systems, so they shouldn’t be calling you up to ask for it over the telephone. If a caller insists on getting the information, you should consider hanging up and calling the support line for the company the caller is claiming to represent. While the potential scam artist can easily fool the current Caller ID system, they’ll have a hard time taking over incoming telephone calls to the legitimate company, allowing you to make sure you’re dealing with a legitimate request.
Internet telephone networks will go a long way towards making voice communication cheap for everyone, but like most technology the benefits come with the potential for abuse, so as a consumer, stay alert.
According to CBC News, a Canadian teacher at Langruth Elementary School in central Manitoba has put into place a controversial program in which children accussed of bullying fellow students are forced to wear embarrasing helmets with the words “Loser” and “I’m Stupid: I Bully” emblazened across the front.
This, of course, sparked the expected action from the parents of the kids, who admitted that they harassed another boy in their class.
“I’m not saying my kid’s a saint and if there’s discipline in school, discipline the kid,” said Anthony Strong, father of one of the bullies, “But don’t humiliate the kid in front of the rest of the students.” Another parent, Jackie Sutherland, claims that her son, “sometimes pokes fun at other children but isn’t a bully.”
Clearly, these parents are part of the problem, as they don’t understand how bullying often results in humiliation by the victims that hurts worse than the physical injuries, nor do they understand that most simple punishments do nothing to curtail the destructive behavior of the school bully mentality.
BBC News has an article up reminding everyone of a special date in stock market history, the effects of which are still being felt now.
Five years ago today, on March 10th, 2000, the Nasdaq index of leading technology shares hit it’s highest point ever, marking the beginning of the downward turn in their prices and bursting the so-called dotcom bubble.
This was, as BBC News writer Jorn Madslien states, “the end of an era, where online entrepreneurs behaved like snooty rock stars in their meetings with venture capitalists.”
The information technology workforce found itself without the employment demand to face the flood of incoming workers and recent graduates attracted to the promise of big money in the field of computers, networks and the “Internet economy”.
Of course the naysayers who pounced on the chance to declare the Internet economy dead weren’t correct either. While the days of blockbuster IPOs for small Internet startups is over, e-commerce has become a common source of income for many companies small and large.
With the increasing broadband Internet user-base, online transactions, be they dealing with your bank accounts through the web or purchasing music from online retailers, are now everyday acceptances by most consumer and corporate sectors.
In the end, the Internet economy is still here, just without the rock star hype.