Ready For FDA Approval

Why Learning English in America is Important

Pam Anderson in Good Hans

The truth behind why Pam Anderson had to leave Hans Klok’s Las Vegas show finally revealed: she needed new, more reliable implants:

Who Was S. W. Erdnase?

Published in 1902, The Expert at the Card Table is apparently the classic text on card manipulation, also known as cheating. The author wrote under the pseudonym of S.W. Erdnase. A hundred years later people are still searching for his true identity.

Erdnase is such as awkward false name that it seems reasonable to guess that it’s a reversal or some other anagram of the author’s true name. The Wikipedia entry names Franklin Andrews and Wilbur Edgerton Sanders as candidates for being Erdnase, and ends with this teaser:

Research for an upcoming documentary has uncovered correspondence between noted physicists and authors Stanley Wesley Stratton and Robert Andrews Millikan on the subject of conjuring and crooked gambling. In 1896 Stratton suggested a textbook on the subject. Further evidence suggests that Millikan and Stratton hired Professor Hoffman to write the book based (partly) on notes they provided.

An August 16, 2000 Wall Street Journal article by Rachel Emma Silverman, “Into Thin Air: Writer Reveals Magic Tricks, Then He Disappears” gave popular coverage to Erdnase. I don’t have access to the article, but summaries say it mentions Erdnase candidate Wilbur Edgerton Sanders, as well as a James Andrews and an Edwin Sumner Andrews.

Todd Karr has much more information about what is known and what is supposed about Erdnase. He offers his own best guess as to the author’s true identity:

On November 23, 1901, shortly before the publication of The Expert at the Card Table, the Fort Wayne News reported on a scam perpetrated in Kokomo by “A stranger giving his name as E. S. Andrews of the Brandon Commercial Company, Chicago.” The news report stated that the con man had a clever collections-agency scheme that succeeded in bilking forty local merchants and physicians.Andrews had come to Kokomo three weeks prior and convinced the businessmen and doctors to hire him to collect their debts. Each participant paid Andrews a “membership fee” of $15 (or about $900 total). The newspaper reported that “Before leaving, Andrews collected several accounts from debtors, all of which he took with him, the merchants or physicians receiving nothing.”

We thus have a candidate whose name is a precise reversal of the pseudonym S. W. Erdnase, a con man based in Chicago who was clever enough to swindle businessmen and doctors, and someone who appears to have had over $900 in his pocket just before The Expert at the Card Table was published.

Another article lists several candidates, and claims that “erdnase” would translate to “earth nose” in German. That could be a clue pointing towards mining engineer Wilbur Edgerton Sanders, though it seems like a bit of a stretch.

Mystery Hole?

Anyone else find the title of this trick a little more than amusing?

Good Night? I Don’t Get It!

So, why is this video sweeping the Internet like wildfire? Why am I receiving countless emails linking to it? Is it because she’s a bimbo? Is it because of the penis lollypop? Is it the boob shake? I don’t get it… Maybe you do.

from tinypic.com posted with vodpod

First Look at the New G.I. Joe Movie!

Our spy in Hollywood has sent to us the VERY FIRST LOOK at Stephen Sommers‘ G.I. Joe movie, hitting theaters next summer!

It’s pretty rough footage and could always end up on the cutting room floor, but this clip is intriguing nonetheless – first off, you get a broad sense of what the plot is going to be, which has been kept under wraps up until now.

G.I. Joe hits theaters August 7, 2009.

April Fool’s, tools.

BitTorrent Busts Comcast BitTorrent Busting

Unhappy that Comcast is busting BitTorrents, BitTorrent has decided to bust this BitTorrent busting.

On Friday, as reported by TorrentFreak, a quartet of BitTorrent developers – including three staffers at BitTorrent Inc. – proposed a new extension to the popular P2P protocol that would circumvent Comcast’s self-described “reasonable network management.”

Last May, an independent researcher named Robb Topolski revealed that the big-name American ISP is preventing users from “seeding” BitTorrents and other P2P files. When one machine finishes downloading a file and promptly attempts to upload that file to another machine, Comcast sends out a duped “reset flag” that breaks this peer-to-peer connection.

The proposed BitTorrent extension would use encryption, or “obfuscation,” to keep Comcast from pulling this trick. “The goal is to prevent internet service providers and other network administrators from blocking or disrupting BitTorrent traffic connections,” the proposal reads.

Will Comcast come back with a new system that works around this workaround? We wouldn’t be surprised. The company continues to insist that its BitTorrent busting is merely an effort to “manage” its network, arguing that such “management” is well within the rules laid down by the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC).

“We have a responsibility to provide all of our customers with a good Internet experience and we use the latest technologies to manage our network so that they can continue to enjoy these applications,” the company once told us.

But don’t let Comcast fool you. The BitTorrent community should do everything it can to bust Comcast’s BitTorrent busting. And so should the FCC.

Just last week, in a new filing with the FCC, Comcast said that it only “manages” P2P uploads – and that it only “manages” uploads “when the customer is not simultaneously downloading.”

This has led some to wonder why Comcast has received such harsh criticism for its behavior. “Who cares if Comcast prevents P2P uploads?” these voices say. “Users can still download whatever they want.” But clearly, these voices don’t understand BitTorrent.

For one thing, if Comcast prevents its users from uploading files, that prevents all sorts of other people from downloading. “In a peer to peer network, for every single byte being uploaded, there is someone immediately downloading that byte. If Comcast stops or delays an upload, then somebody else’s download is also stopped or delayed,” Topolski says. “If every ISP immediately decided to block P2P uploads, then all P2P downloads immediately stop.”

But that’s the small point here. If Comcast prevents its users from uploading, it also throttles the downloads of those very users. “BitTorrent communities often require a byte-for-a-byte exchange to ensure that its members give at least as much as they take,” Topolski continues. “A download may take 10 minutes to complete, but it takes 60 minutes to ‘pay back’ those bytes because of the slower upload speeds provided by most ISPs.

“By cutting off connections once they have finished downloading, Comcast is preventing these community members from maintaining a fair ‘1:1 ratio’ standing in these communities. Because these community members have not yet ‘paid back’ the bytes that they previously downloaded, they cannot start any new downloads.”

What’s more, Topolski insists, Comcast isn’t telling the truth when it says that it only interferes with uploads when users aren’t simultaneously downloading. “Comcast starts interfering as soon as any of your downloads switches to an upload mode,” he explains. “It doesn’t wait until all your downloads are done.

So, let’s say you’re downloading two files: File A and File B. Once File A has finished downloading, Comcast will immediately prevent it from being uploaded – even if File B is still downloading.

Yes, some will say that Comcast has a right to manage its network, to keep traffic flowing smoothly. But that doesn’t mean it has no choice but to bag BitTorrents.

“The question is what does management mean?” Topolski says. “Does it mean not selling more accounts than you’re able to supply with your available bandwidth? That’s definitely a form of management.”

You could also argue that Comcast is a business, that it has to make money. Fine. But at the very least, it should tell its customers what’s what.

When Robb Topolski first told the world that Comcast was bagging BitTorrents, the company vehemently denied the allegation. A good eight months passed before it admitted to “delaying” P2P traffic – and even this was half a confession.

Here’s hoping that new BitTorrent extension arrives tout de suite. ®

Danny Bonaduce Gets Slapped Video

Some old dude picks a fight with Danny Bonaduce in a gym and ends tossing the first punch/slap. Pretty damned funny:

from www.break.com posted with vodpod

Who Would Have Thought…