Month: December 2004

Neowin is Appealing to the masses and we stand 100% behind them and the cause:

Reuters is now reporting that 120,000+ people are dead as a result of the tsunami that hit countries on Boxing Day.
There are tens of thousand of people still un-accounted for, and the
real figure could be much much higher. Hundreds of thousands of people
are still at serious risk from disease and they desperately need your help and support. In all, as many as five million people are without homes. 

Please, spare what you can. International Aid Organisations can
make a difference. They need your donations urgently. With donations,
they can help get vital supplies like clean water and drugs to the places most badly hit.

This is a tragedy on a global scale and badly needs a strong global response. More information on how you can best help can be found here. You can donate direct to Sarvodaya, a charity dealing with one of the worst hit countries, Sri Lanka, via Paypal, here. Another Sri Lanki based charity accepting Paypal donations is Karuna.

View: Hub of Information : Tsunami relief @ Google | Constantly updating coverage of the tragedy
Video: Amateur Videos of Tsunami coming in 1 | 2 | 3
View: Photos Packs 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Hosted at Cryptome.org; contain graphic images)
View: Donate via Paypal – Sarvodaya(Sri Lanka) | Karuna(Sri Lanka)
Screenshot: Scale of the damage : before and after at Banda Aceh Sat. Photos

Source: Neowin

Originally posted by Doobie-Won from GEEK OUT

A decade-long Wal-Mart barcode crime ring has been busted (how often do you hear that?); the scammers were
apparently replacing UPC bar codes for high-priced items with homemade bar codes for cheaper stuff, then selling or
returning the items, defrauding the company of $1.5M in the process. Two couples were arrested, although authorities
say there were up to 30 accomplices. We’re not sure what this shows more of—the ingenuity of the criminals, or
cluelessness of Wal-Mart employees.

[Via BoingBoing]

Originally posted by Donald Melanson from Engadget

We have a feeling Xzibit’s gonna go lay down some serious smack on whichever fed (heretofore referred to as “the
man”) fined Pimp My Ride’s West Coast Customs $16,000. Dude, all they did was start removing airbags and installing DVD
players and LCDs in the remaining cavities! What’s your problem! Actually, we can kind of understand why the man did
this, safety regulations and all, but we’re pretty sure West Coast Customs is operating under the logic that if you
drop $20,000 on mods into your beat up jalopy (or H2, alike), then you’re probably going to drive a little more
carefully than the average road-warrior. But that that’s not actually been our experience driving on the roads with
such people it neither here nor there, is it?

Originally posted by Ryan Block from Engadget

ThinkSecret is about as reliable a source as you can get for these things, and they’re saying that next month Apple
is going to introduce a new iMac codenamed “Q88” that will retail for $499 and come without a built-in monitor
(something Apple should have done a long time ago, only the high-end PowerMac G5 desktops come without displays). The
new ghetto budget Mac is supposed to have a 1.25GHz processor, 256MB of RAM, either a 40GB or 80GB
hard drive, and a combo drive. Apple’s main motivation for swimming into the shallow end of the pool? To capitalize on
iPod owners who own PCs but say they would switch to a Mac if it were less expensive.

Originally posted by Peter Rojas from Engadget

So Time Warner Cable is apparently yakkin’ it up with Sprint, looking to buy cell service time on their network to
offer it up to their customers; they want to put it on trial in Kansas City in Q1 2005. What’s weirder is that their
consumer media, communications, and service offerings would then make Time Warner Cable (Time Warners, er, cable-TV
unit) otherwise unparalleled in their prolificacy, they being the only company to offer broadband, television, landline
phone, and cellphone service. All crappy, too.

Originally posted by Ryan Block from Engadget