The Null Device
2003/1/31
Another part of the Windows web browsing experience us Linux users miss out on: Malignant toolbar installs itself into Internet Exploiter, redirects home page/web searches to xupiter.com (owned by a shadowy Hungarian company, apparently) or the sites of businesses who paid them for placement (and who are, I would guess, unlikely to be highly ethical), and downloads pop-up gambling games behind your back. The toolbar resists attempts at uninstallation, and the programmers keep changing its code to keep one step ahead of anti-spyware tools.
Healan said some installations probably occurred when people clicked "OK" in a pop-up box without really knowing what they had agreed to, or when they meant to close the pop-up window.
Apparently SBS is airing a documentary on Wesley Willis tomorrow (Saturday) evening, at 10pm. I probably won't catch it as I'm DJing that night (and my TV reception is quite poor). (ta, Cos)
Horror train smash in NSW; 9 killed and many more injured as a peak-hour commuter train derailed between Sydney and Wollongong. And here we were thinking these sorts of things happened only in backward third-world countries like Egypt and England.
George W. Bush's Axis of Evil as extreme holiday destination.
North Korea was nowhere near as tough as I thought it would be, but Cuba was a real disappointment because it's so touristy.
Iraq should be popular as Egypt as a tourist destination; it's got the Garden of Eden, the first ever city, the Hanging Gardens, yet hardly anyone visits.
On the third day (in Iran) three guys burst in while we were talking to some students. They took us back to the hotel and turned our rooms over. When they found cameras, tapes and tourist visas, they decided that we were spies.
The amusing account of a journalist who listened to the entire 24-CD Throbbing Gristle box set in one sitting.
Worried that if I just sit around my flat listening to Throbbing Gristle all day, I might start baying myself, I venture outside. This proves to be the biggest error of judgment I have made since embarking on the project in the first place. It's difficult to know exactly what would be the ideal activity to engage in while Throbbing Gristle provide the soundtrack. But I can reveal that shopping in central London is not among them. A journey by Tube is even more like a descent into some netherworld of the damned than usual. The heaving crowds of Oxford Street, nerve- jangling at the best of times, are rendered nightmarish.
(via Cos)
Well, it looks like I'll be doing another DJ set this weekend; this time, it'll be on Saturday evening, at the Season/Squipplepippy gig. (Btw, isn't "Squipplepippy" a cool name for a band?) Right; time to buy a Discman that works properly.
The World's Oldest Multinational Corporation: The local branch office of the Catholic Church has attracted criticism after officially supporting a visit by an American psychologist who claims that homosexuality is an illness and can be cured.
Meanwhile, it has recently emerged that, on the other side of the world, a religious organisation has been rounding up single mothers, sexual abuse victims and orphans as well as girls who were too dangerously pretty to be allowed out, stripping them of their identities, forbidding them to speak, and forcing them into slavery, making a tidy profit of their labour. Is this in Saudi Arabia? Nigeria? Or perhaps one of the excesses of the Taliban? No; it's the work of the Catholic Church in Ireland, and its "Magdalene Laundries", the last of which closed way back in 1996.