Cody Taylor

“I’m a capital ‘D’ Dumbass,” says Howell, who has practiced law for 23 years.

On the other side of these fears is everything we desire; from our dream job to immense success to happiness. So how do we get to the other side? We need to escape! Here are 9 ways to go about it and not let fear stop you.

General Electric Co reported a 44 percent drop in quarterly profit on weakness at GE Capital and its lighting and appliance units, as the U.S. conglomerate and economic bellwether closed out one of the toughest…

alphadogg writes “The Downadup worm — also called Conflicker — has now infected an estimated 10 million PCs worldwide, and security experts say they expect to see a dangerous second-stage payload dropped soon. ‘It has the potential to infect about 30% of Windows systems online, a potential 300 to 350 million PCs,’ says Don Jackson, director of threat intelligence in the counter threat unit at SecureWorks. The worm, first identified in November and suspected to have originated in the Ukraine, is quickly ramping up, and while Downadup today is not malicious in the sense of destroying files — its main trick is to block users from accessing antivirus sites to obtain updates to protect against it — the worm is capable of downloading second-stage code for darker purposes.”

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failcomm writes “I’ve been talking with my son’s (middle-school) computer lab teacher about a ‘time capsule’ project. The school has a number of ‘retirement age’ PCs (5-6 years old — Dells, HPs, a couple of Compaqs), and we’ve been kicking around the idea of trying to preserve a working system and some media (CDs and/or DVDs), and locking them away to be preserved for some period of time (say 50 years); to be opened by students of the future. The goal would be to have instructions on how to unpack the system, plug it into the wall (we’ll assume everyone is still using 110v US outlets), and get the system to boot. Also provide instructions on how to load the media and see it in action; whether it is photos or video or games or even student programs — whatever. So first, is this idea crazy? Second, how would we go about packing/preserving various components? Lastly, any suggestions on how to store it long term? (Remember, this is a school project, so we can’t exactly just ‘freeze it in carbonite’; practical advice would be appreciated.)”

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bk- writes with news that documents from the “Vista Capable” class-action lawsuit against Microsoft indicate the software giant could be on the hook for as much as .52 billion in upgrade costs. “[University of Washington economist Keith] Leffler came up with his total upgrade costs by calculating how much it would cost to upgrade each of the 19.4 million PCs with 1 GB of memory and graphics cards or onboard chipsets able to run Aero, according to Keizer. Leffler put the maximum cost of upgrading the desktops at 5, while positing that the notebooks’ integrated graphics would be more tricky to replace and would cost between 5 and 0 per unit. The total price tag for Microsoft would thus range from .92 billion to .52 billion and in some cases would include complete replacements of notebooks that could not be feasibly upgraded, Leffler testified. Microsoft in its response argued that giving litigants ‘a free upgrade to Premium-ready PCs would provide a windfall to millions.'”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Willie Nelson invites his good friend Snoop Dogg on stage in Amsterdam to help him perform Superman. The video footage doesn’t start until about 30 seconds in, probably because whoever was filming didn’t realize the lens cap was on.