http://www.myphonegames.co.uk/
http://www.nokia-mobile-games.com/...
http://www.mobilegames.tv/
http://www.wildjava.co.uk/
http://www.javajunkie.co.uk/
http://www.gamespot.com/mobile
http://www.coolmobilegames.com/...
http://www.mobilelead.net/
http://www.newphonegames.com/
http://javagames.ring4tonez.com/site/ind...
http://www.wickedphonegames.com/...
http://www.thegamesarcade.com/
http://www.mobmadness.co.uk/mobile-phone...
http://www.theunlocker.co.uk/mobile_phon...
http://www.mobile-games.eu.com/...
http://www.gamemobile.co.uk/
http://www.freemobilephonegames.co.uk/...
http://www.gamemobile.co.uk/games.htm...
Thursday, March 15, 2007
The Key to Dumbledore's Past
There has been a lot of speculation as to the significance of the village of Godric's Hollow. My theory is that Godric's Hollow is/was simply Dumbledore's home. The house the Potters occupied is gone, but Dumbledore's childhood home - the ancestral home of Godric Gryffindor - remains. Jo said Dumbledore's family would be a profitable line of inquiry and this is why.
In the same interview, she also said that while Dumbledore attended Hogwarts, he was mostly self-taught. How does this happen? Because he is from a powerful wizarding family that hands down knowledge of magic and spells like other families hand down recipes.
When James and Lily Potter needed to be hidden, Dumbledore arranged for them to be hidden in a place he thought was safe: his own village. Sirius Black providing his own home for the Order of the Phoenix and then invoking the Fidelius charm might be thought to foreshadow this assumption.
Consider why Dumbledore remains so committed to Hogwarts even though he could have been anything (even Minister of Magic). He stays because Hogwarts is his legacy, passed down through the Gryffindor line.
Why is Dumbledore "confident" (505, HBP) that there are no other Gryffindor artifacts that could be Horcruxes? He knows because he is an heir of Gryffindor - he and his brother, Aberforth.
Aberforth now emerges as the member of the Order of the Phoenix that we have not "met properly" (July 17, 2005, Edinburgh "cub reporters" press conference). Aberforth is now the sole remaining heir of Gryffindor. I believe that in the early chapters of the next book Aberforth will make this known to Harry, and he will take Harry to Godric's Hollow. Surely this is where Dumbledore was when he was absent from Hogwarts. But what was he doing there? Rufus Scrimgeour was sure anxious to know. (349, HBP) I think this is where Harry will find clues on how to proceed.
My theory also supports some beautiful character development for Harry. He grows from uncertainty about his Sorting in Book One, to proclaiming to be "Dumbledore's man through and through." (348 HBP) Could there be a truer Gryffindor?
Because Jo has said so little about Godric's Hollow, it stands to reason that we would have far more questions than answers. Here are some things that I am still wondering about.
1. Has Aberforth inherited the same magical ability that Dumbledore had?2. Did Hagrid get to Godric's Hollow quickly because he had been there in the past? Dumbledore did say he would trust Hagrid with his life... (14 SS) What about his secrets? Perhaps there is a magical way to get between Hogwarts and Godric's Hollow of which we are not yet aware.
3. Will Harry find Sirius' flying motorbike parked in the garage? I sure hope so.
4. Has Fawkes flown home to Godric's Hollow to mourn Dumbledore's passing?
5. We know Harry's parents are buried in Godric's Hollow. Are they buried in Godric Gryffindor's/Dumbledore's family cemetery?
6. Will this all end where it began - back at Godric's Hollow? Time will tell, as I'm sure Jo will not be giving out many hints!
I hope my theory sets you to thinking and rereading (that is the best part)! All will be revealed soon. Book Seven - 07/07/07 - we can only hope!
Fun Things To Do In An ElevatorFun Things To Do In An Elevator
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Wednesday, March 14, 2007
The Best-ever Freeware List
1 Best Free Web Browser
The just released Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) is a competent browser with enough features to meet the needs of most users but is difficult to recommend due to on-going security concerns. In the past IE has been a focus for security attacks and there is little to suggest this will change with the release of IE7. Additionally, Microsoft have a poor track record for speedily fixing IE defects and this has left users open to drive-by attacks and other forms of zero-day exploits.
There are several excellent alternatives with the new Mozilla Firefox V2 [1] a solid first choice. It's safer than IE, so safe in fact that many users have reported no spyware infections since they started using the product. It's also browses a tad faster than IE, is very stable and is more standards compliant. The program loads slower than IE but once running, it positively zips along. With tabbed browsing and over 1000 free extensions (add-ons) that allow you to customize your experience, it provides most users with a major surfing upgrade. Firefox is now my everyday browser though I still leave IE on my PC for the occasional web site that's designed around IE's non-standard features. If you need any further convincing then check out my IE to Firefox migration guide [2].
An equal first choice is Opera [3]. It's a speed demon; probably the fastest of all the common browsers. But it's much more than that; it's full featured, standards compliant and safe. Just as Firefox is extensible through add-ins, Opera can be enhanced using Widgets, though there are not nearly as many of these available as Firefox extensions. Then again, it doesn't need as many extensions as a lot of the features added by Firefox add-ins are already available built into the standard Opera browser. There's just so much to like about Opera V9 that you could easily create a case that it's better than Firefox. Indeed, if I could get an Opera replacement for some of my key Firefox add-ins, I'd probably switch.
Users who don't want to drift too far from the Microsoft stable can get some of the feature advantages of Firefox and Opera by using one of the many customized shells for Internet Explorer such as Maxthon [4] and Avant [5]. Their main selling feature for these products used to be tabbed browsing but now that this is available in IE7 it's hard to create a case for their general recommendation. Still if you need a specialized feature they are worth considering. On the downside these shells share most of the same security problems as IE as they utilize the IE engine.
Last but not least is the K-Meleon browser [6], a slimmed down cousin of Firefox that's optimized for Windows. Of the four browsers I use regularly on my different PCs, K-Meleon is the quickest loading and along with Opera, the fastest for surfing. On the downside there are only a limited number of add-ons and plug-ins available so you are pretty well limited to the features available in the standard product. If you are the type of person who prefers performance to bells and whistles you should definitely try K-Meleon.
=>index
[1] http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/ (5.6MB)
[2] http://www.techsupportalert.com/firefox.htm
[3] http://www.opera.com/ (4.6MB)
[4] http://www.maxthon.com/index.htm (1.9MB)
[5] http://www.avantbrowser.com/ (1.86MB)
[6] http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/ (6MB)
2 Best Free Anti-Virus Software Updated 8th November 2006
There are two equal recommendations in this category. First there is AVG Antivirus 7 Free Edition. This product [1] has been continuously refined since it was first released in 1991 and the recently released V7.5 makes further improvements to an already solid product. Additionally, it's relatively small, light on resources, has regular automatic updates and handles email scanning. There is a free and a pro version, the only difference being that the free version has a few non-critical features disabled and has no direct technical support.
Equally effective is the free Avast! scanner [2] though its funky media player style interface is not to everyone's taste. Avast! also required periodic re-registration while AVG does not. However Avast! does not seem to suffer the signature file update problems that plague some AVG users.
A possible third choice is the AOL Anti Virus Shield [3]. This is a cut down version of the top rated Kaspersky AV and is being made available for free to all uses not just AOL members.
On first sight it seems like an unbeatable deal but it's not quite what it seems. First this really is a "lite" version. It lacks the important html and heuristics modules present in the full Kaspersky product so the protection afforded against hostile web sites is actually inferior to AVG and Avast!. Gone, too, is the ability to create rescue disks and to fully manage the quarantine area. The configuration options are also more limited.
Secondly the End User License Agreement is worrying. AOL basically reserves the right to spam you. I'm not aware of this actually happening but you need to be aware they have the right to do so.
By default AOL AVS installs the AOL search bar in Internet Explorer as part of the AVS install. If you don't want it, make sure you opt out during installation.
So on balance I'm cautious about recommending AOL AVS. If you can however, live with the limitations then you'll be rewarded with a first class scanner.
Both AVG and Avast! are excellent free products that will meet the needs of most users. However neither can be considered to be the best available. That title belongs to commercial products like NOD32, F-Secure, the full version of Kaspersky AV and others. They are however capable packages and offers the financially challenged a real alternative to the major anti-virus suites.
However if you use these free products in conjunction with a free on-demand scanner, you can achieve a level of detection approaching that of the best commercial products. Further improvement is possible by creating a layered defense using additional free security products such as AVG Anti-Spyware (formerly Ewido).
On-demand scans should be run regularly, at least weekly, to check for viruses and other malware that may have been missed by your main scanner.
If you don't use AOL AVS as your main AV product then this should be your the top choice as an on-demand scanner as its detection is outstanding. You should though, disable the AOL AVS real time monitor otherwise you may run into conflicts with the monitor on your primary AV product.
Another top recommendation for an on-demand scanner is AntiVir Personal Edition Classic [4]. It offers significantly better detection rates than either AVG or Avast! but the lack of email scanning precludes recommendation as a primary scanner. However as an on-demand scanner, it's first rate. If you use it in this role, make sure you disable its resident virus guard during installation to prevent it interfering with your main AV scanner. Even so , it's quite an intrusive product -you will certainly be well aware of its presence. Note that the recently released V7 unfortunately introduces a time limited license though apparently this will be renewable.
Yet another good option for on-demand scanning is the free version of the commercial AV product BitDefender [5]. It's a first class product with outstanding detection rates but as the free version lacks an email scanner and a resident virus guard, it's only really suited for use as an on-demand scanner rather than your main AV product. There are some other limitations as well. First it has an annoying habit of detecting malware products that have been quarantined by other security products and you can't exclude these areas from subsequent scans. Secondly, it is only available on a one year non-renewable license.
=>index
[1] http://free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php/doc/2/ (16.0MB)
[2] http://www.avast.com/eng/avast_4_home.html (8.8MB)
[3] http://www.activevirusshield.com/antivirus/freeav/index.adp? (13.9MB)
[4] http://www.free-av.com (8.7MB)
[5] http://www.bitdefender.com/PRODUCT-14-en--BitDefender-8-Free-Edition.html (13.2MB)
3 Best Free Adware/Spyware/Scumware Remover Updated 2nd November 2006
A couple of years ago most folks relied on SpyBot Search and Destroy and Ad-Aware for spyware protection. Alas spyware has evolved so quickly that these once outstanding products are no longer up to the task of providing primary protection though they remain useful as secondary, on-demand scanners.
The new generation of malware requires a new generation of defensive products. Such products need to provide stronger active protection and broader spectrum detection. The best anti-spyware programs, WebRoot SpySweeper and Spyware Doctor are both commercial products but there are two capable free products that I can recommend.
The first is Microsoft's Windows Defender program [1] which is currently available as a free beta. Defender is the latest re-incarnation of the excellent Giant Antispyware product that Microsoft purchased late in 2004. Based on my tests, Windows Defender is not as effective as its immediate predecessor but still has solid protective capability. I tested it on several drive-by download sites and its multiple real time monitors provided reasonable (though by no means watertight) defense. It appears to be a little vulnerable to polymorphic malware in particular and for this reason I suggest it should be used in combination with regular on-demand scans from the free AVG Anti-Spyware. My other reservation about Windows Defender is that it consumes quite a lot of your processing power. If you have a modern PC this should not be a problem but older machines will definitely suffer a performance hit.
Note that you need a legal version of Windows XP SP2 to run this program. I've been told cracked versions of Defender that will run on any XP SP2 PC are currently circulating on the P2P networks but I'd approach those with caution. The idea of a cracked security program strikes me as an oxymoron.
My second choice is Spyware Terminator. Unlike Windows Defender it works with all versions of Windows so it's the stand-out choice for Windows 9x users. It's no slouch either. Like Windows Defender it has strong active protection. Indeed with its built in HIPS system that warns you of any unrecognized intruders, it has stronger protection against unknown threats than the Microsoft product. This was confirmed on some tests I ran on drive-by download sites where Spyware Terminator proved to be impregnable.
Spyware Terminator has it's own spyware detection engine but gives you the option of using a second engine based on the Open Source ClamWin anti-virus program. ClamAV is not the most effective AV scanner on the market but it's certainly competent and the additional protection can only be a plus.
On the downside Spyware Terminator is slow to scan and can slow down your PC a tad though not as much as Windows Defender. I've also heard reports that support via the free forum is poor.
Choosing between Windows Defender and Spyware Terminator is not easy. As of today I thing Spyware Terminator has the edge but it's difficult to see how free product like this can remain viable, particularly in a high support product class such as anti-spyware.
=>index
[1] http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=435bfce7-da2b-4a6a-afa4-f7f14e605a0d ( 6.4MB)
[2] http://www.spywareterminator.com (2.3MB)
4 Best Free Browser Protection Utility
There's a scumware plague at the moment. All it takes is a visit to a pushy web site or a "loaded" shareware install and next minute your Internet Explorer homepage has been changed, your default search setting altered, unwanted ads pop up on your screen and worse.
If you use Windows 2000 or later my top recommendation for safe browsing is a free program called Sandboxie [1] that creates a special contained "sandbox" environment on your PC. While browsing within the virtual sandbox provided by Sandboxie you are totally corralled off from other parts of your PC. So any files you download are isolated to the sandbox. Similarly, any programs that are executed only do so within the sandbox and have no access to your normal files, the Windows operating system or any other part of your PC.
Usage is remarkably simple. To start a sandboxed browsing session you just click the Sandboxie icon from the Quick Launch tray and this will launch your default browser in the sandbox. You can then use it in the normal way to browse to sites or download files.
If you downloaded a file it will install normally but again will be corralled off from your real PC. Anything it writes to your hard drive, any changes to the Windows Registry or changes to the Windows startup will be held in a separate area within the sandbox. Similarly, any new processes running in your computer memory will be sandboxed.
After you have finished browsing you can right click the Sandboxie icon and delete all sandboxed files and processes and your PC will be returned to the same state it was in before the browsing session. If you want retain particular downloaded files you can save them permanently before clearing the contents of the Sandbox.
The advantage is clear: any spyware, trojans, keyloggers or other malware products that infected your PC while browsing will be eliminated.
Sandboxie works fine with all browsers but requires Windows 2000 and later. It can cause problems on some PCs so backup before installing.
Users of earlier Windows versions may want to check out SpywareBlaster [2]. It's is not a sandbox but rather is a program that changes some settings in your computer to help prevent an initial infection. It provides protection against thousands of malevolent products that use ActiveX based exploits, block hostile sites and discards unwanted cookies as well. SpywareBlaster is most effective with Internet Explorer but can be used with Firefox as well. though this may be overkill as Firefox doesn't need to be protected against ActiveX exploits. Once it has changed your setting SpywareBlaster doesn't really need to continuously run on your PC other than to provide automatic updates. These can however be initiated manually. SpywareBlaster is free but the update service costs $9.95 annually.
A companion program to SpywareBlaster is SpywareGuard [3] that provides active protection. It is a monitor that checks programs before they are run for malware behavior and also does some signature checking as well. However of late SpywareGuard seems to have been rather neglected with no new updates for more than a year so I can only give it a qualified recommendation.
An alternative to SpywareGuard is to use one of the free intrusion prevention and detection utilities listed here. These provide active protection against infection and work very effectively in concert with the passive protection provided by SpywareBlaster.
=>index
[1] http://www.sandboxie.com Free for personal use, Win2K and later, 310KB
[2] http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareblaster.html Freeware, all Windows version, 2.5MB
[3] http://www.javacoolsoftware.com/spywareguard.html Freeware, All Windows versions, 913KB
5 Best Free Firewall Updated 2nd November 2006
No other single product class seems to cause as much angst to average users in their installation and day-to-day use as Firewalls. For such users, Kerio Personal Firewall is my top recommendation as it seems to cause the fewest problems yet manages reasonable protection as well.
Kerio dropped the product in late 2005 but thankfully Sunbelt Software, the makers of the excellent CounterSpy anti-spyware scanner, picked it up and will continue making it available under the name of Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall [1] . Note that the free and paid versions of Sunbelt Kerio are the same. If you don't buy the product some advanced features are automatically turned off after 30 days. The product will also nag you every time you start it. For some this is a small price to pay for a great free firewall. For others it's a real turn-off.
If performance rather than ease-of-use is your criterion then the Comodo firewall [2] is the top contender. The firewall itself is very robust and it comes with a well designed intrusion detection system as well. Comodo also supports internet connection sharing, while the free versions of Kerio and ZoneAlarm do not. On the minus side the IDS is initially rather talkative and this can unnecessarily alarm inexperienced users. Additionally Comodo has been known to conflict with some other security products though more recent versions seem to be better in this respect. For the technically initiated this is an outstanding free product and an easy first choice. Note that Comodo requires Windows 2000 or XP SP2.
Also technically impressive is the Jetico Firewall [3]. It rates highest on the leak tests of all firewalls but personally I find it awkward to use. It may however, be just your cup of tea.
Another tricky product is NetVeda Safety.Net firewall [4] however its performance is quite outstanding and it offers application control and content filtering as well. This highly capable product deserves to be better known and experienced users should definitely put it on their short list.
I no longer recommend the free version of the ZoneAlarm firewall [5]. First it is a very basic product compared to the commercial ZoneAlarm Pro version. The leak-test performance of the latest free version is extremely poor while the Pro version is excellent. Second, it can be a troublesome program on some PCs.
=>index
[1] http://www.sunbelt-software.com/Kerio.cfm (7.3MB)
[2] http://www.personalfirewall.comodo.com/ (8MB)
[3] http://www.jetico.com/index.htm#/jpfirewall.htm[ (2.7MB)
[4] http://www.netveda.com/consumer/safetynet.htm (6.3MB)
[5] http://www.zonelabs.com/store/content/company/products/znalm/freeDownload.jsp (9.0MB)
6 Best Free Trojan Scanner/Trojan Remover Updated 13th November 2006
My top recommendation here is AVG Anti-Spyware [1], a product formerly formerly known as Ewido until it was acquired recently by GriSoft.
Ewido started life as an anti-trojan scanner but has been repositioned as an anti-spyware scanner by the new owners and the new name reflects that re-positioning. Whatever ever it is called it is an excellent anti-trojan and a fine anti-spyware program as well.
On my tests over at www.anti-trojan-software-reviews.com Ewido/AVG Anti-Spyware emerged as was one of the few products that could detect polymorphic and process injecting trojans that were totally missed by many anti-virus products. Unfortunately the free version of AVG Anti-Spyware doesn’t have a memory monitor and this omission significantly reduces the level of active protection provided. However the on-demand scanner is excellent.
I recommend that all average PC users who don't have an anti-trojan scanner download AVG Anti-Spyware and scan their PCs weekly. I suspect you may be surprised at what you will find. AVG Anti-Spyware is also pretty good at removing some spyware infections so bear that in mind next time you encounter a spyware product you can't remove with normal anti-spyware products like Ad-Aware.
Note that AVG Anti-Spyware only works with Windows 2000 and later so Win 9X users should consider the free version of a2 (a-squared) anti-trojan as an alternative. It's not quite as effective as AVG Anti-Spyware but is still an excellent product.
High risk PC users such as P2P file sharers and frequenters of hack sites, should however consider the industrial strength protection of Trojan Hunter or the full version of AVG Anti-Spyware both of which offer the active protection they need.
Note: The free version of AVG Anti-Spyware is actually the same as the paid version but after 30 days the active protection (i.e. memory monitor) becomes non-functional, automatic updates are disabled and kernel level self protection is turned off.
=>index
[1] http://www.ewido.net/en/download/ (6.17MB)
[2] http://www.anti-trojan-software-reviews.com/review-ewido.htm <= review of Ewido
7 Best Free Rootkit Scanner/Remover Updated 6th February, 2007
Rootkits are a special kind of software tool used to hide trojans, viruses and other malware from your anti-virus scanner and other security products. Unfortunately, they are extremely effective which means that some of you reading this will be infected even though you believe your PC to be totally clean. Thankfully there is a new class of security product now available called rootkit detectors that use specialized techniques to detect these dangerous intruders.
Most of these detectors require quite a bit of technical skill to interpret the results but one of the simplest to use is also amongst the most effective. It's called BlackLight [1] and is currently available as a free beta from F-Secure. The beta will expire on the 1st of April, 2007 but you can use it freely up to then. I suggest everyone download this product and scan their PC. The chances of you being infected are small but for five minutes work it's not worth taking the risk.
BlackLight will detect most rootkits missed by AV scanners but is can't provide perfect detection; no rootkit detector can. That's why its' advisable to use more than product.
If you are an experienced user you should check out SysInternals RootkitRevealer [2]. It uses a totally different different technique to BlackLight so by using both products together you'll be getting excellent overall detection. RootkitRevealer is however, harder to use than BlackLight and is a bit prone to false positives so take care before deleting detected items. If in doubt, consult the SysInternals RootkitRevealer forum. [3]
Another useful rootkit detector for experienced users is GMER [4] though please read the documentation carefully before using. I like this product a lot but it's not for everyone. So if you are the type that simply likes to press the "scan" button then stick with BlackLight ;>)
Currently the biggest guns in the rootkit detection war are two free Chinese products called IceSword [5] and DarkSpy [6]. They are not really detectors like the other products rather they offer a set of tools that can help reveal the presence of a rootkit. These tools include a special process viewer, startup manager and port enumerator that are not fooled by rootkits. It's left to the user though, to interpret the results. In the hands of an skilled user, these are amazing tools but not much use to beginners. The Chinese download sites are slow so I've given local download links [5], [6].
The reality is that at the present time, full protection against rootkits may require the use of multiple products. For details see my article on rootkits [7].
=>index
[1] http://www.f-secure.com/blacklight/ Free beta, Windows 2000 and later, 808KB
[2] http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/RootkitRevealer.html Freeware, All Windows versions, 210KB
[3] http://www.sysinternals.com/Forum/default.asp
[4] http://www.gmer.net/ Freeware, Windows NT and later, 450KB
[5] http://majorgeeks.com/Icesword_d5199.html Freeware, Windows XP and later, 1.9MB
[6] http://www.softpedia.com/get/Antivirus/DarkSpy-Anti-Rootkit.shtml Windows 2000 and later, 626KB
[7] http://www.techsupportalert.com/rootkits.htm <= How to deal with the threat of rootkits
8 Best Free Intrusion Prevention and Detection Utility for Home Use Updated 21st December, 2006
These days all users face a real risk of malicious programs secretly installing themselves on your computer. Anti-virus and anti-spyware products dramatically reduce the chance of infection but are not perfect. In particular they are prone to miss new malware products not yet included in their signature databases. They can also fail to detect malware programs that are cleverly disguised to avoid detection.
To prevent these malevolent programs from slipping by your AV and anti-spyware programs you need additional defenses such as a Host based Intrusion Prevention program (HIPS). These programs pick up intruders by their behavior rather than by their characteristic fingerprint. They are not limited to detecting specific malware products but can target a wide range of interlopers. For the most part HIPS programs all work in a similar manner; they stop any suspicious behavior and then ask the user whether they want to allow it. This, as we shall see, can be a mixed blessing.
Unfortunately most HIPS programs, including the popular free programs WinPatrol and Prevx, generate a lot of warning messages many of which are quite cryptic. These messages tend to alarm many less experienced users who feel there is something wrong and simply don't know how to respond. That's why these products are only suitable for the very experienced (and very patient).
Thankfully a new generation of HIPS programs has emerged that use white lists, black lists, policies and behavior analysis rules along with other techniques to reduce the number of messages and the load on the user.
A prime example of this class of product is the free Cyberhawk program from Novatix. I use it on one of my PC's and it only occasionally issues warnings and even then the warnings are usually real and need to be taken seriously. In essence it provides a vital additional layer of protection to my AV and anti-spyware scanners at little cost in terms of annoyance and no cost in terms of my wallet. It is the stand-out free product in the HIPS category. Note: A number of readers have reported browsing performance problems after installing Cyberhawk. I've not found that myself but be aware that this may be a problem on some PCs.
There are some solid other contenders. Blink Personal from eEye [2] is a HIPS with a firewall as opposed to products like Comodo and ZoneAlarm Pro that are firewalls with HIPS. It's a useful tool for advanced users though I found Cyberhawk to be more effective and yet simpler to configure and use. Blink is also only free for non-commercial use.
Among the commercial software HIPS I like Prevx1 [3]. Prevx1 is actually free to use for detection but you'll need to pay if you want to have remove malware. It offers a similar level of protection to Cyberhawk. The most impressive HIPS I've tested is the $29 DefenseWall [4]. It's performance is outstanding though it's lack of documentation will be a minus for many users.
=>index
[1] http://www.novatix.com/cyberhawk/ Freeware, Windows 2000 and later, 4.7MB[2]
[2] http://www.eeye.com/html/products/blink/personal/index.html Free for personal use,Win2K and later 26.7MB
[3] http://www.prevx.com/products.asp $21.95, Win2K and later, 8.2MB
[4] http://www.softsphere.com/ $29, Win2K and later, 1MB
9 Best Free Anonymous Surfing Service Updated 2nd November 2006
There are lots of reasons folks have for wanting to surf anonymously, ranging from simple paranoia to possibly being murdered by a malevolent foreign government. Whatever the reasons, commercial services that offer anonymity are doing real well. However one of the best services JAP [1], is totally free. In fact JAP is perhaps a little too good. That's why the German Police insisted in 2004 that a backdoor be put into the product to allow interception of child pornographers. This was done but subsequently removed as a result of court action by JAP.
An alternative to JAP is a system called Tor [2]. It not only allows anonymous browsing but anonymous P2P, email, IM, and IRC chat as well. Given the US Navy origin of Tor, the suspicion arises that this system may indeed have a permanent backdoor. However the source code is now publicly available so that suspicion can perhaps be set aside. More worrying was a raid by German police in September 2006 involving the seizing of some Tor servers in that country. Again, pedophiles were the supposed target but who really knows.
Whatever, both JAP and Tor offer a level of secrecy that is better than many commercial systems though not watertight. However expect your surfing to slow down as you'll be relayed through a chain of servers particularly with Tor which has been ground to a near standstill by BitTorrent users seeking to hide from the RIAA. Note: the latest V5 release of JAP now allows Tor users to use JAP as a software access point.
A recent development is the release of TorPark [3], a special version of the Firefox browser that has been configured to work with the free Tor anonymizing service and run directly from a USB flash drive. It's a neat idea; just plug in your USB stick to any PC with a USB port and Firefox V1.5.0.7 is automatically launched, set up for secure and private surfing.
The most obvious application is internet cafes, public terminals or indeed any PC including your own where you don't want to leave any trace of your private surfing activities. However, what attracts me is not so much the privacy side as the security potential. That's because TorPark creates a secure encrypted connection between the PC you are using and the Tor servers. This allows you to safely transmit information without fear of interception. This makes it ideal for surfing on open Wi-Fi networks. Previously, secure surfing on such networks required the use of private VPN networks, an option only available to corporates, the well heeled and the technically savvy. Now, using TorPark, any surfer can reap the same security benefits for their browsing.
=>index
[1] http://anon.inf.tu-dresden.de/index_en.html Freeware, Any Windows system with Java, 107KB
[2] http://tor.eff.org/ Free BSD License, All Windows, 4.6MB
[3] http://torpark.nfshost.com/index.php Freeware, Windows NT and later, 9.27MB
10 Best Free Software Suite
The Open CD site [1] offers for free a wonderful collection of just about every application software product you need to run a PC including the latest version of OpenOffice. Many of these freebies substitute admirably for expensive commercial products. There is Abi Word as an alternative for MS Word, OpenOffice for MS Office XP, Thunderbird for Outlook, The Gimp for Adobe Photoshop, 7-zip for WinZip and many more. If you then add to this collection some of the other utilities from my "46 Best-ever Utilities" collection you will have all the software you'll ever need without spending a cent. Note: All of the Open CD utilities can be downloaded for free as a CD ISO image. If you have a slow connection you can purchase the CD for a as little as $1.99. In addition to the Windows versions, the CD also contains the same collection of programs implemented under a version of Linux called Ubuntu that can be booted and run directly from the CD. That way you not only get to try all these great programs you can try Linux as well, without interfering in any way with your current Windows installation.
Update: the folks at Ubuntu [2] are now giving away free CDs containing the latest version of Ubuntu Linux together with most of the programs on the Open CD. They will send you the full Ubuntu installation CDs plus a live CD where you can run Ubuntu directly from the CD. You can order as many CDs as you want and you don't even have to pay the mailing costs! When you get your CDs read this this simple introduction to Linux [3] before starting.
=>index
[1] http://theopencd.org
[2] https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
[3] http://www.paulstamatiou.com/2005/10/24/how-to-ubuntu-linux-for-novices/
The Best Poems of All Times
"Daffodils" (1804)
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
What wealth the show to me had brought:
And dances with the daffodils.
This is my all time favourite
PIPING down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
'Pipe a song about a Lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again;'
So I piped: he wept to hear.
'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
'Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read.'
So he vanish'd from my sight;
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
I Wandered lonely as a cloud
- That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
- A host, of golden daffodils;
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
Continuous as the stars that shine
- And twinkle on the Milky Way,
- Along the margin of a bay:
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
The waves beside them danced; but they
- Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
- In such a jocund company:
What wealth the show to me had brought:
For oft, when on my couch I lie
- In vacant or in pensive mood,
- Which is the bliss of solitude;
And dances with the daffodils.
By William Wordsworth (1770-1850).
This is my all time favourite
Reeds of Innocence
By William Blake
1757-1827PIPING down the valleys wild,
Piping songs of pleasant glee,
On a cloud I saw a child,
And he laughing said to me:
'Pipe a song about a Lamb!'
So I piped with merry cheer.
'Piper, pipe that song again;'
So I piped: he wept to hear.
'Drop thy pipe, thy happy pipe;
Sing thy songs of happy cheer!'
So I sung the same again,
While he wept with joy to hear.
'Piper, sit thee down and write
In a book that all may read.'
So he vanish'd from my sight;
And I pluck'd a hollow reed,
And I made a rural pen,
And I stain'd the water clear,
And I wrote my happy songs
Every child may joy to hear.
The Night the Bed Fell
The Night the Bed Fell
James Thurber
I suppose that the high-water mark of my youth in Columbus Ohio, was the night the bed fell on my father. It makes a better recitation (unless, as some friends of mine have said, one has heard it five or six times) than it does a piece of writing, for it is almost necessary to throw furniture around, shake doors, and bark like a dog, to lend the proper atmosphere and verisimilitude to what is admittedly a somewhat incredible tale. Still, it did take place.
It happened, then, that my father had decided to sleep in the attic one night, to be away where he could think. My mother opposed the notion strongly because, she said, the old wooden bed up there was unsafe; it was wobbly and the heavy headboard would crash down on my father’s head in case the bed fell, and kill him. There was no dissuading him, however, and at a quarter past ten he closed the attic door behind him and went up the narrow twisting stairs. We later heard ominous creakings as he crawled into bed. Grandfather, who usually slept in the attic bed when he was with us, had disappeared some days before. (On these occasions he was usually gone six or eight days and returned growling and out of temper, with the news that the federal Union was run by a passel of blockheads and that the Army of the Potomac didn’t have any more chance than a fiddler’s b****.)
We had visiting with us at the time a nervous first cousin of mine named Briggs Beall, who believed that he was likely to cease breathing when he was asleep. It was his feeling that if he were not awakened every hour during the night, he might die of suffocation. He had been accustomed to setting an alarm clock to ring at intervals until morning, but I persuaded him to abandon this. He slept in my room and I told him that I was such a light sleeper that if anybody quit breathing in the same room with me, I would wake instantly. He tested me the first night – which I had suspected he would—by holding his breath after my regular breathing had convinced him that I was asleep. I was not asleep, however, and called to him. This seemed to allay his fear a little. But he took the precaution of putting a glass of spirits of camphor on a little table at the head of his bed. In case I didn’t arouse him until he was almost gone, he said, he would sniff the camphor, a powerful reviver. Briggs was not the only member of his family who had his crotches. Old Aunt Melissa Beall (who could whistle like a man, with two fingers in her mouth) suffered under the premonition that she was destined to die on South High Street, because she was born on South High Street and married on South High Street. Then there was Aunt Sarah Shoaf, who never went to bed at night without the fear that a burglar was going to get in and blow chloroform under her door through a tube. To avert this calamity - for she was in greater dread of anesthetics than losing here household goods – she always piled her money, silverware, and other valuables in a neat stack just outside her bedroom, with a note reading: "This is all I have. Please take it and do not use your chloroform, as this is all I have." Aunt Gracie Shoaf also had a burglar phobia, but she met it with more fortitude. She was confident that burglars had been getting into her house every night for forty years. The fact that was never missed anything was to her no proof to the contrary. She always claimed that she scared them off before they could take anything, by throwing shoes down the hallway. When she went to bed she piled, where she could get to them handily, all the shoes that were about her house. Five minutes after she turned off the light, she would sit up in bed and say "Hark!" Her husband, who had learned to ignore the whole situation as long ago as 1993, would either be sound asleep or pretend to be sound asleep. In either case he would not respond to her tugging and pulling, so that presently she would arise, tiptoe to the door, open it slightly and heave a shoe down the hall in one direction. Some nights she threw them all, some nights only a couple pair.
But I am straying from the remarkable incidents that took place during the night that the bed fell on my father. By midnight we were all in bed. The layout of the rooms and the disposition of their occupants is important to an understanding of what later occurred. In the front room upstairs (just under gather’s attic bedroom) were my mother and my brother Herman, who sometimes sang in his sleep, usually "Marching through Georgia" or "Onward Christian Soldiers." Briggs Beall and myself were in a room adjoining this one. My brother Roy was in a room across the hall from ours. Our bull terrier, Rex, slept in the hall
My bed was an army cot, one of those affairs which made wide enough to sleep on comfortably on by putting up, flat with the middle section, the two sides which ordinarily hang down like the sideboards of a drop-leaf table. When these sides are up, it is perilous to roll too far toward the edge, for then the cot is likely to tip completely over, bringing the whole bed down on top of one, with a tremendous banging crash. This, in fact, is what precisely what happened, about two o’clock in the morning. (It was my mother who, in recalling the scene later, first referred to it as "the night the bed fell on your father.")
Always a deep sleeper, slow to arouse (I had lied to Briggs), I was at first unconscious of what had happened when the iron cot rolled onto the floor and toppled over on me. It left me still warmly bundled up and unhurt, for the bed rested above me like a canopy. Hence I did not wake up, only reached the edge of consciousness and went back. The racket, however, instantly awakened my mother, in the next room, who came to the immediate conclusion that her worst dread was realized: the big wooden bed upstairs had fallen on father. She therefore screamed, "Let’s go to your poor father!" It was this shout, rather than the noise of my cot falling that awakened Herman, in the same room with her. He thought that mother had become, for no apparent reason, hysterical. "You’re all right, Mamma!" he shouted to calm her. They exchanged shout for shout for perhaps ten seconds: "Let’s go to your poor father!" and "You’re all right!" That woke up Briggs. By this time I was conscious of what was going on, in a vague way, but did not yet realize that I was under my bed instead of on it. Briggs awakening in the midst of loud shouts of fear and apprehension, came to the quick conclusion that he was suffocating and that we were all trying to ‘bring him out.’ With a low moan, he grasped the glass of camphor at the head of his bed and instead of sniffing it, poured it over himself. The room reeked of camphor. "Ugf, ahfg," choked Briggs, like a drowning man, for he had almost succeeded in stopping his breath under the deluge of pungent spirits. He leaped out of bed and groped toward the open window, but came up against one that was closed. With his hand, he beat out the glass, and I could hear it crash and tinkle in the alleyway below. It was at this juncture that I, in trying to get up, had the uncanny sensation of feeling my bed above me! Foggy with sleep, I now suspected, in my turn, that the uproar was being made in frantic endeavor to extricate me from what must be an unheard-of and perilous situation. "Get me out of this!" I bawled. "Get me out!" I think I had the nightmarish belief that I was entombed in a mine. "Gugh," gasped Briggs, floundering in his camphor.
By the time my mother, still shouting, pursued by Herman, still shouting, was trying to open the door to the attic, in order to get my father’s body out of the wreckage. The door was stuck, however, and wouldn’t yield. Her frantic pulls on it only added to the general banging and confusion. Roy and the dog were now up, and one shouting questions, the other barking.
Father, farthest away and soundest sleeper of all, had by this time been awakened by the battering on the attic door. He decided that the house was on fire. "I’m coming, I’m coming!" the mournful, resigned not of one who is preparing to make his Maker. "He’s dying!" she shouted.
"I’m all right!" Briggs yelled to reassure her. "I’m all right He still believed that it was his own closeness to death that was worrying mother. I found at last the light switch in my room, unlocked the door, and Briggs and I joined the others at the attic door. The dog, who never did like Briggs, jumped for him – assuming that he was the culprit in whatever was going on – and Roy had to throw Rex and hold him. We could hear father crawling out of bed upstairs. Roy pulled the attic door open, with a mighty jerk and father came down the stairs, sleepy and irritable but safe and sound. My mother began to weep when she saw him. Rex began to howl. :What in the name of God is going on here?" asked father.
The situation was finally put together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Father caught cold from prowling around in his bare feet but there was no other bad results. "I’m glad," said mother, who always looked on the bright side of things, "that your grandfather wasn’t here."
This is my favourite English Chapter I've ever read. We had it back in my 7th grade.
The Little Girl and the Wolf
The Little Girl and the Wolf
by James Thurber
One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come along and she was carrying a basket of food. "Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother?" asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood.
When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.
(Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.)
by James Thurber
One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come along and she was carrying a basket of food. "Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother?" asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood.
When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.
(Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be.)
101 useless facts that you most likely didn't know and most likely won't need to know ?
1. Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) was born on and died on days when Halley's Comet can be seen. During his life he predicted that he would die when it could be seen.
2. US Dollar bills are made out of cotton and linen.
3. The "57" on the Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of pickle types the company once had.
4. Americans are responsible for about 1/5 of the world's garbage annually. On average, that's 3 pounds a day per person.
5. Giraffes and rats can last longer without water than camels.
6. Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks so that it doesn't digest itself.
7. 98% of all murders and rapes are by a close family member or friend of the victim.
8. A B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.
9. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp (marijuana) paper.
10. The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.
11. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
12. Benjamin Franklin was the fifth in a series of the youngest son of the youngest son.
13. Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13. Paraskevidekatriaphobia means fear of Friday the 13th (which occurs one to three times a year). In Italy, 17 is considered an unlucky number. In Japan, 4 is considered an unlucky number.
14. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
15. All the chemicals in a human body combined are worth about 6.25 euro (if sold separately).
16. In ancient Rome, when a man testified in court he would swear on his testicles.
17. The ZIP in "ZIP code" means Zoning Improvement Plan.
18. Coca-Cola contained Coca (whose active ingredient is cocaine) from 1885 to 1903.
19. A "2 by 4" is really 1 1/2 by 3 1/2.
20. It's estimated that at any one time around 0.7% of the world's population is drunk.
21. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades = David ; Clubs = Alexander the Great ; Hearts = Charlemagne ; Diamonds = Caesar
22. 40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
23. Every person, including identical twins, has a unique eye and tongue print along with their finger print.
24. The "spot" on the 7-Up logo comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was an albino.
25. 315 entries in Webster's 1996 dictionary were misspelled.
26. The "save" icon in Microsoft Office programs shows a floppy disk with the shutter on backwards.
27. Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin both married their first cousins (Elsa Löwenthal and Emma Wedgewood respectively).
28. Camel's have three eyelids.
29. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day.
30. John Wilkes Booth's brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son.
31. Warren Beatty and Shirley McLaine are brother and sister.
32. Chocolate can kill dogs; it directly affects their heart and nervous system.
33. Daniel Boone hated coonskin caps.
34. Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.
35. 55.1% of all US prisoners are in prison for drug offenses.
36. Most lipstick contains fish scales.
37. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
38. Dr. Seuss pronounced his name "soyce".
39. Slugs have four noses.
40. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
41. The Three Wise Monkeys have names: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Speak no evil).
42. India has a Bill of Rights for cows.
43. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die. If you keep your eyes open by force, they can pop out. (DON'T TRY IT, DUMBASS)
44. During the California gold rush of 1849, miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years, it was deemed more feasible to send their shirts to Hawaii for servicing.
45. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by taking out an olive from First Class salads.
46. About 200,000,000 M&Ms are sold each day in the United States.
47. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
48. Over a course of about eleven years, the sun's magnetic poles switch places. This cycle is called "Solarmax".
49. There are 318,979,564,000 possible combinations of the first four moves in Chess.
50. Upper and lower case letters are named "upper" and "lower" because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the upper case letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the lower case letters.
51. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
52. The numbers "172" can be found on the back of the US 5 dollar bill, in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
53. Coconuts kill about 150 people each year. That's more than sharks.
54. Half of all bank robberies take place on a Friday.
55. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before it.
56. The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
57. The first bomb the Allies dropped on Berlin in WWII killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
58. The average raindrop falls at 7 miles per hour.
59. It took Leonardo Da Vinci 10 years to paint Mona Lisa. He never signed or dated the painting. Leonardo and Mona had identical bone structures according to the painting. X-ray images have shown that there are 3 other versions under the original.
60. If you put a drop of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
61. Bruce Lee was so fast that they had to slow the film down so you could see his moves.
62. The largest amount of money you can have without having change for a dollar is $1.19 (3 quarters, 4 dimes, and 4 pennies cannot be divided into a dollar).
63. The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA".
64. IBM's motto is "Think". Apple later made their motto "Think different".
65. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white, due to low budget.
66. The original name for butterfly was flutterby.
67. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law, which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
68. One in fourteen women in America is a natural blonde. Only one in sixteen men is.
69. The Olympic was the sister ship of the Titanic, and she provided twenty-five years of service.
70. When the Titanic sank, 2228 people were on it. Only 706 survived.
71. In America, someone is diagnosed with AIDS every 10 minutes. In South Africa, someone dies due to HIV or AIDS every 10 minutes.
72. Every day, 7% of the US eats at McDonald's.
73. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, which Motorola got their name from.
74. In the US, about 127 million adults are overweight or obese; worldwide, 750 million are overweight and 300 million more are obese. In the US, 15% of children in elementary school are overweight; 20% are worldwide.
75. In Disney's Fantasia, the Sorcerer to whom Mickey played an apprentice was named Yensid (Disney spelled backward).
76. During his entire life, Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting, "Red Vineyard at Arles".
77. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
78. One in ten people live on an island.
79. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
80. 28% of Africa is classified as wilderness. In North America, its 38%.
81. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
82. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
83. Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson", Humphrey Bogart NEVER said "Play it again, Sam" in Casablanca, and they NEVER said "Beam me up, Scotty" on Star Trek.
84. An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.
85. Sharon Stone was the first Star Search spokes model.
86. The sound you here when you put a seashell next to your ear is not the ocean, but blood flowing through your head.
87. More people are afraid of open spaces (kenophobia) than of tight spaces (claustrophobia).
88. The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.
89. There is a 1 in 4 chance that New York will have a white Christmas.
90. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
91. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
92. Back in the mid to late '80s, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered 100% compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
93. $203,000,000 is spent on barbed wire each year in the U.S.
94. Every US president has worn glasses (just not always in public).
95. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
96. Jim Henson first coined the word "Muppet". It is a combination of "marionette" and "puppet."
97. The names of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with (not counting the words "North" and "South).
98. The Michelin man is known as Mr. Bib. His name was Bibendum in the company's first ads in 1896.
99. About 20% of bird species have become extinct in the past 200 years, almost all of them because of human activity.
100. The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
101. About 14% of injecting drug users are HIV positive.
2. US Dollar bills are made out of cotton and linen.
3. The "57" on the Heinz ketchup bottle represents the number of pickle types the company once had.
4. Americans are responsible for about 1/5 of the world's garbage annually. On average, that's 3 pounds a day per person.
5. Giraffes and rats can last longer without water than camels.
6. Your stomach produces a new layer of mucus every two weeks so that it doesn't digest itself.
7. 98% of all murders and rapes are by a close family member or friend of the victim.
8. A B-25 bomber crashed into the 79th floor of the Empire State Building on July 28, 1945.
9. The Declaration of Independence was written on hemp (marijuana) paper.
10. The dot over the letter "i" is called a tittle.
11. A raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continuously from the bottom of the glass to the top.
12. Benjamin Franklin was the fifth in a series of the youngest son of the youngest son.
13. Triskaidekaphobia means fear of the number 13. Paraskevidekatriaphobia means fear of Friday the 13th (which occurs one to three times a year). In Italy, 17 is considered an unlucky number. In Japan, 4 is considered an unlucky number.
14. A female ferret will die if it goes into heat and cannot find a mate.
15. All the chemicals in a human body combined are worth about 6.25 euro (if sold separately).
16. In ancient Rome, when a man testified in court he would swear on his testicles.
17. The ZIP in "ZIP code" means Zoning Improvement Plan.
18. Coca-Cola contained Coca (whose active ingredient is cocaine) from 1885 to 1903.
19. A "2 by 4" is really 1 1/2 by 3 1/2.
20. It's estimated that at any one time around 0.7% of the world's population is drunk.
21. Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great king from history: Spades = David ; Clubs = Alexander the Great ; Hearts = Charlemagne ; Diamonds = Caesar
22. 40% of McDonald's profits come from the sales of Happy Meals.
23. Every person, including identical twins, has a unique eye and tongue print along with their finger print.
24. The "spot" on the 7-Up logo comes from its inventor who had red eyes. He was an albino.
25. 315 entries in Webster's 1996 dictionary were misspelled.
26. The "save" icon in Microsoft Office programs shows a floppy disk with the shutter on backwards.
27. Albert Einstein and Charles Darwin both married their first cousins (Elsa Löwenthal and Emma Wedgewood respectively).
28. Camel's have three eyelids.
29. On average, 12 newborns will be given to the wrong parents every day.
30. John Wilkes Booth's brother once saved the life of Abraham Lincoln's son.
31. Warren Beatty and Shirley McLaine are brother and sister.
32. Chocolate can kill dogs; it directly affects their heart and nervous system.
33. Daniel Boone hated coonskin caps.
34. Playing cards were issued to British pilots in WWII. If captured, they could be soaked in water and unfolded to reveal a map for escape.
35. 55.1% of all US prisoners are in prison for drug offenses.
36. Most lipstick contains fish scales.
37. Orcas (killer whales) kill sharks by torpedoing up into the shark's stomach from underneath, causing the shark to explode.
38. Dr. Seuss pronounced his name "soyce".
39. Slugs have four noses.
40. Ketchup was sold in the 1830s as medicine.
41. The Three Wise Monkeys have names: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Speak no evil).
42. India has a Bill of Rights for cows.
43. If you sneeze too hard, you can fracture a rib. If you try to suppress a sneeze, you can rupture a blood vessel in your head or neck and die. If you keep your eyes open by force, they can pop out. (DON'T TRY IT, DUMBASS)
44. During the California gold rush of 1849, miners sent their laundry to Honolulu for washing and pressing. Due to the extremely high costs in California during these boom years, it was deemed more feasible to send their shirts to Hawaii for servicing.
45. American Airlines saved $40,000 in 1987 by taking out an olive from First Class salads.
46. About 200,000,000 M&Ms are sold each day in the United States.
47. Because metal was scarce, the Oscars given out during World War II were made of wood.
48. Over a course of about eleven years, the sun's magnetic poles switch places. This cycle is called "Solarmax".
49. There are 318,979,564,000 possible combinations of the first four moves in Chess.
50. Upper and lower case letters are named "upper" and "lower" because in the time when all original print had to be set in individual letters, the upper case letters were stored in the case on top of the case that stored the lower case letters.
51. There are no clocks in Las Vegas gambling casinos.
52. The numbers "172" can be found on the back of the US 5 dollar bill, in the bushes at the base of the Lincoln Memorial.
53. Coconuts kill about 150 people each year. That's more than sharks.
54. Half of all bank robberies take place on a Friday.
55. The name Wendy was made up for the book Peter Pan. There was never a recorded Wendy before it.
56. The international telephone dialing code for Antarctica is 672.
57. The first bomb the Allies dropped on Berlin in WWII killed the only elephant in the Berlin Zoo.
58. The average raindrop falls at 7 miles per hour.
59. It took Leonardo Da Vinci 10 years to paint Mona Lisa. He never signed or dated the painting. Leonardo and Mona had identical bone structures according to the painting. X-ray images have shown that there are 3 other versions under the original.
60. If you put a drop of liquor on a scorpion, it will instantly go mad and sting itself to death.
61. Bruce Lee was so fast that they had to slow the film down so you could see his moves.
62. The largest amount of money you can have without having change for a dollar is $1.19 (3 quarters, 4 dimes, and 4 pennies cannot be divided into a dollar).
63. The first CD pressed in the US was Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA".
64. IBM's motto is "Think". Apple later made their motto "Think different".
65. The mask used by Michael Myers in the original "Halloween" was actually a Captain Kirk mask painted white, due to low budget.
66. The original name for butterfly was flutterby.
67. The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law, which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.
68. One in fourteen women in America is a natural blonde. Only one in sixteen men is.
69. The Olympic was the sister ship of the Titanic, and she provided twenty-five years of service.
70. When the Titanic sank, 2228 people were on it. Only 706 survived.
71. In America, someone is diagnosed with AIDS every 10 minutes. In South Africa, someone dies due to HIV or AIDS every 10 minutes.
72. Every day, 7% of the US eats at McDonald's.
73. The first product Motorola started to develop was a record player for automobiles. At that time, the most known player on the market was Victrola, which Motorola got their name from.
74. In the US, about 127 million adults are overweight or obese; worldwide, 750 million are overweight and 300 million more are obese. In the US, 15% of children in elementary school are overweight; 20% are worldwide.
75. In Disney's Fantasia, the Sorcerer to whom Mickey played an apprentice was named Yensid (Disney spelled backward).
76. During his entire life, Vincent Van Gogh sold exactly one painting, "Red Vineyard at Arles".
77. By raising your legs slowly and lying on your back, you cannot sink into quicksand.
78. One in ten people live on an island.
79. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery has in it to begin with.
80. 28% of Africa is classified as wilderness. In North America, its 38%.
81. Charlie Chaplin once won third prize in a Charlie Chaplin look-alike contest.
82. Chewing gum while peeling onions will keep you from crying.
83. Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson", Humphrey Bogart NEVER said "Play it again, Sam" in Casablanca, and they NEVER said "Beam me up, Scotty" on Star Trek.
84. An old law in Bellingham, Washington, made it illegal for a woman to take more than 3 steps backwards while dancing.
85. Sharon Stone was the first Star Search spokes model.
86. The sound you here when you put a seashell next to your ear is not the ocean, but blood flowing through your head.
87. More people are afraid of open spaces (kenophobia) than of tight spaces (claustrophobia).
88. The glue on Israeli postage is certified kosher.
89. There is a 1 in 4 chance that New York will have a white Christmas.
90. The Guinness Book of Records holds the record for being the book most often stolen from Public Libraries.
91. Thirty-five percent of the people who use personal ads for dating are already married.
92. Back in the mid to late '80s, an IBM compatible computer wasn't considered 100% compatible unless it could run Microsoft's Flight Simulator.
93. $203,000,000 is spent on barbed wire each year in the U.S.
94. Every US president has worn glasses (just not always in public).
95. Bats always turn left when exiting a cave.
96. Jim Henson first coined the word "Muppet". It is a combination of "marionette" and "puppet."
97. The names of all the continents end with the same letter that they start with (not counting the words "North" and "South).
98. The Michelin man is known as Mr. Bib. His name was Bibendum in the company's first ads in 1896.
99. About 20% of bird species have become extinct in the past 200 years, almost all of them because of human activity.
100. The word "lethologica" describes the state of not being able to remember the word you want.
101. About 14% of injecting drug users are HIV positive.
Great Moments in Physics
The following concerns a question in a physics degree exam at the University of Copenhagen.
"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied:
"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use.
On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:
"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer."
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sqroot (l / g)."
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."
The student was Niels Bohr, the only person from Denmark to win the Nobel prize for Physics.
"Describe how to determine the height of a skyscraper with a barometer."
One student replied:
"You tie a long piece of string to the neck of the barometer, then lower the barometer from the roof of the skyscraper to the ground. The length of the string plus the length of the barometer will equal the height of the building."
This highly original answer so incensed the examiner that the student was failed. The student appealed on the grounds that his answer was indisputably correct, and the university appointed an independent arbiter to decide the case. The arbiter judged that the answer was indeed correct, but did the problem it was decided to call the student in and allow him six minutes in which to provide a verbal answer which showed at least a minimal familiarity with the basic principles of physics.
For five minutes the student sat in silence, forehead creased in thought. The arbiter reminded him that time was running out, to which the student replied that he had several extremely relevant answers, but couldn't make up his mind which to use.
On being advised to hurry up the student replied as follows:
"Firstly, you could take the barometer up to the roof of the skyscraper, drop it over the edge, and measure the time it takes to reach the ground. The height of the building can then be worked out from the formula H = 0.5g x t squared. But bad luck on the barometer."
"Or if the sun is shining you could measure the height of the barometer, then set it on end and measure the length of its shadow. Then you measure the length of the skyscraper's shadow, and thereafter it is a simple matter of proportional arithmetic to work out the height of the skyscraper."
"But if you wanted to be highly scientific about it, you could tie a short piece of string to the barometer and swing it like a pendulum, first at ground level and then on the roof of the skyscraper. The height is worked out by the difference in the gravitational restoring force T = 2 pi sqroot (l / g)."
"Or if the skyscraper has an outside emergency staircase, it would be easier to walk up it and mark off the height of the skyscraper in barometer lengths, then add them up."
"If you merely wanted to be boring and orthodox about it, of course, you could use the barometer to measure the air pressure on the roof of the skyscraper and on the ground, and convert the difference in millibars into feet to give the height of the building."
"But since we are constantly being exhorted to exercise independence of mind and apply scientific methods, undoubtedly the best way would be to knock on the janitor's door and say to him 'If you would like a nice new barometer, I will give you this one if you tell me the height of this skyscraper'."
The student was Niels Bohr, the only person from Denmark to win the Nobel prize for Physics.
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