The Front Page

Format all of your url requests to wikipedia as coming from a mobile device. They have not turned that off. Essentially, instead of typing en.wikipedia.org type en.m.wikipedia.org. This will get you through to the article you need.

I am not disclosing this to skirt opposition to SOPA, I am fully against it. But I think the point has been made adequately. Be sure to send a letter to the reps demanding that they oppose these ripoff measures.

Along the lines of Jimmy Kimmel's Halloween trick on the kids of America, he asked parents to give their kids a Christmas gift, something the kids wouldn't like, and send the video to his show. Wait til the last kid, he's freakin' hilarious.

Apparently, millions (or more) Android phones are running a background process that cannot be stopped via the OS front end, yet you are not NOTIFIED that it is even running on your device. It is trapping every keystroke and godz knowz whatelse. Thanks to independent computer researcher Trevor Eckhart, WIRED, and the Electronic Freedom Foundation for helping to publicize this interesting turn of events.

In a nutshell, the intrepid Mr. Eckhart found a secret program running on his phone that was trapping all of his keystrokes and gestures and logging them for reportage to a company known as CarrierIQ. When he went public, CIQ went medieval on his ass with threats of enduring pain and ruin. The EFF came to his legal rescue and WIRED printed the story.

There is something to be said for a free press. Read about it here.

Seems to me this ought to be flat out illegal. What do you think?

It is hell getting old. As many readers of these pages know, I was back East for the past couple weeks with my family in Illinois, tending* to my Mother in Law, Margaret. She has been in declining health for the last few years, the last 6 months being especially hard after the loss of my Father in Law, Louis. As often happens at the end of a person's life, multiple problems seemed to compound for my dear friend until the point where it became apparent she could no longer fight the inevitable. But let me tell you: death did not come easy.

She battled degenerative bone disease with a knee replacement, diabetes, macular generation unto near total blindness, and a host of other ailments that I will not dwell upon save to say that they were all fought bravely by this marvelous woman.

Though our hearts break, we rejoice that we were in her time. Nothing will ever extinguish her laughter or her love in our memory.

We love you, Margie.

*I use "tending" loosely, here. Honestly, it was Deb tending for her Mom, along with her sisters. My job was to help lift. It was an honor.

A couple of my old squadron mates from VX-9 have started a local "for-sale" shopper site, sorta like the swap sheet but its all online. From what Jason Johnson told me, they are getting quite a few hits already. Anyway, I am ALWAYS happy to plug local websites with the idea being that keeping it in the valley is always better. Anyway, if you have something to sell or if you are interested in buying or renting anything, check out rcswapit.com.



In other news, I received word recently that Amazon, having reached accord with the state of California, has reinstated all California affiliates, including iwvnews. So I will be putting the Amazon ads back up. Remember that this site receives a small amount for every purchase from Amazon that you make by clicking through this site.

As long as I am going to be putting the ads back up, I am also going to incorporate google adsense ads into the site. This is going to be provisional and will only remain so long as the implementation is NOT obtrusive to users and does not slow things down any more than they already are. Let me know if any of the ads are harshing your mellow.

Anyway, all of this will probably happen in the next week, depending on how my schedule goes. The Google adsense incorporation is custom-knitted into my software package that I run here, vbulletin, and since it is time for an upgrade of that anyway, I will do the whole shebang at the same time. So the site will be down a little this week, hopefully not for long, but we all know how that goes, don't we?

Cheers,
your humble host

This is the funniest video I have seen in a while. Is the species getting ready to seek revenge for all those Turkey Clubs?

http://www.news10.net/video/default....=1206869017001