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As if flying wasn’t already bad enough…
The Federal Communications Commission said that at its Dec. 15 meeting it will discuss possible revisions to rules prohibiting cell phone use on commercial flights. That’s the first step of the process needed to lift the ban.
Cell phone use has been banned due to concerns about how it could affect an aircraft’s navigation. And cell phones sometimes have trouble working when the plane is at cruising altitude because phone towers aren’t built to project their signals that high.
Let’s see — uncomfortable seats, screaming babies, boring people* who insist on talking for the entire flight, bad food (or no food) — I know, let’s add cell phones to the mix — oh yes that will make flying much more pleasant.
*I know there are many interesting people who fly, but I’m almost never seated near them.Firefox users ignore online ads
(via the The Laporte Report)
Firefox users ignore online ads, report says:
Internet Explorer users are at least four times as likely to click on Web ads than Firefox users, a German advertising technology company said last week.
The company, Adtech, found that during October and November, only 0.11 percent of Firefox users ever clicked on an ad, compared with around 0.5 percent of IE users. The percentage of IE users clicking on ads varied depending on which version of the browser was being used, the company said: from 0.44 percent of version 6.x users to 0.53 percent of version 5.5 users. The survey was based on 1,000 Web sites in Europe that use Adtech’s ad server.
…
David Hallowell, a Mozilla contributor, said this trend may have emerged because nontechnical Web surfers, who tend to be IE users, are more likely to click on pop-up ads by mistake, because they think the ad is a system dialog box.
“People click on (pop-up) ads because they think the system’s trying to tell them something,” Hallowell said. “The average Firefox user is more aware that they’re ads, not system dialogs.”
Does this mean Firefox users are four times smarter than Internet Explorer users?
First Mate “like the coffee” Starbuck
(from the summaries of great literature for people with short attention spans dept.)
(via Studio 360)
Here’s a two minute summary of Moby-Dick:
Moby-Dude.
Republican Family Vaues
(from the it’s OK if you’re a Republican dept.)
The Korea Times: New US Homeland Chief Fathered Daughter in Korea:
Bernard Kerik, the man tasked with protecting the United States from the threat of terrorist attacks, fathered a daughter with a South Korean woman while serving on the peninsula in the mid-1970s, U.S. media reported over the weekend.
Kerik, who was selected to replace Tom Ridge as secretary of the Homeland Security Department on Thursday, had the baby with a woman identified as Sun-ja after arriving in South Korea as a 19-year-old military policeman in December 1974, according to several reports.
The baby, named Lisa, was born in 1975. But Kerik deserted her and her mother when he left the country in February 1976.
I wonder if the American press will pick up this story…
Friday Cat Blogging (2004-12-03)
It’s Friday. This is a cat. You’re reading a web log.
Jim Chappell
(from the is there anything on this web site about Inspirational New Age/Smooth Jazz romantic piano music evoking beauty and tranquility..? dept.)
I am not, nor am I related to this Jim Chappell.
Return of the King Extended Edition Trailer
(from the too cool not to share dept.)
The trailer for Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King Extended Edition can be found here.
The Screen Savers
Out of morbid curiosity, I endured the premiere episode of the new incarnation of The Screen Savers. Here’s my review (I’m stealing a bit from a classic Bloom County strip):
G4TechTV’s recently retooled The Screen Savers has brought the word “bad” to new levels of badness. This show just oozed rottenness from every bad segment… Simply bad beyond all infinite dimensions of possible badness.
Well maybe not that bad, but lord, it wasn’t good. Yes, it was that bad.
Medically Supervised Anecdotal Study
I heard this phrase in a radio advertisement:
In a recent medically supervised anecdotal study, over 96% of the participants
who took Product X*, reported an increase in libido and erectile strength.
What is a medically supervised anecdotal study?
Why not have a real clinical trial of Product X?
Probably because a real clinical trial would show Product X
is no better than the potions and elixirs sold at 19th century medicine shows.