The IDG News Service is reporting that Firefox users are "fighting back" against "phishing" by downloading an anti-phishing toolbar.  Anyone sophisticated enough to know what "phishing" means should be keen enough to avoid it, but I suppose the makers are hoping sys admins will deploy this on their network for the computer illerate -- and that sounds like a fine idea.

One functionality feature I've noticed is that "phishing" sites are blocked based on user feedback, so I theoretically could report shinydonkey.com as a phishing site and it would be blocked from everyone with this toolbar.  They apparently have a review policy in place to prevent legitimate sites from being blocked, but if I'm a "phisher," you'd better believe that I'm going to start researching ways to flood that reporting engine so that it becomes impossible for them to filter through the reports to find legit sites.

I've realized recently that the Bull cartoons I used to host on this site were the Shiny Donkey equivalent to crack cocaine.  They provided a brief thrill, they weren't particularly good for you and they kept people coming back day after day.  In the spirit of forming addictions, I'd really like to create a new daily update to Shiny D but I'm not quite sure where to start.  All of my best work tends to come at someone else's expense, like the Bull jokes.  Since Bull massively disses this site by never posting anything, perhaps those should come back?  None of the other characters seem strong enough to go out on their own.  I mean, would anyone in their right mind really want to see Jimmy the Used Condom in a hilarious office drama?  Or Stan the Carrot host a cooking show?

Mayhap it's time for Marc & I to resurrect a few AWP characters for just such a feature...

I've been thinking about buying a pet fish for a little while and have decided on a Percula Clown Fish (recently made popular by Finding Nemo).  They're really beautiful fish and despite requiring a saltwater tank, I've heard they're actually not too difficult to care for.  If I buy one (or two), I will need a whole host of other fish tank items, though.  I've read that they form almost symbiotic relationships with sea anenomes, so if I put an anenome in the tank they'll take care of each other.  Also, I know there's a wide variety of tank-cleaning animals (snails, hermit crabs, shrimp) you can buy to simplify tank maintenance and I would love to do this if it will make care easier.

And on the subject of pets, Michelle keeps leaving her clothes in the basement near the washing machine (and 5 feet from the litter box) and is consistently **** off at me when the cats inevitably poop on them.  You'd think after the second or third time she would just stop leaving piles of clothes there, but there was a pile there this morning!  I guess I don't really blame the cats, 'cause my childhood cat used to pee on the rug, in the basement, you name it.  So compared to her, my cats are angels.  Anyway, aside from not leaving clothes on the floor, how else might one discourage cats from disposing outside of their box?

And our dog has started a new habit of wandering into the closet and ruining Michelle's shoes.  Again, this is my fault because I always leave the closet door open to let it breathe (or in case a cat has wandered in there and is hiding).  Maybe I should spray her shoes with bitter apple spray?  Maybe I should just let the dog live in the garage?

Wow, not only was he riding a motorcycle, but it's been confirmed that KWII crashed while he was popping a wheelie. This clip was taken by a surveillance camera just seconds before he lost control of the bike, hit a curb & tore his ACL.  Take a good look, kids: this is the exact moment KWII lost 5 million dollars.

I've written a Win32 wrapper for nmap, everyone's favorite packet sniffer, that can be packaged with C# & .NET applications (nmap.dll).  I'd like to package this tool with the "open source" and "100% freeware" silent installer for WinPCap 3.1 Beta 4, but the kind gentlemen who run that site want $650 for it.  They provide a silent installer for version 3.0, but it doesn't work with XP SP 2 or 2003 SP 1, hence their BS extortion tactics for version 3.1.  If anyone has a tip on how to get the silent installer (or how to build one from scratch), please pass it along...

When did open source & free stop meaning free?  Whatever happened to the good old days of "click here to contribute" links that were easily ignored?  Ah, times...

Just what is the "Star Wars Flu?"  Is it a nasty virus that geeks spread in the wee small hours of May 19th at the midnight screenings?  Is it an illness that makes your skin green & your ears grow?  Nope, it turns out "Star Wars Flu" is a silly buzzword for the millions of people who have called in sick over the past 2 days because they were either sleeping in from a midnight showing or they were so into the movie they went to see it again!

I almost had the "Star Wars Flu," but instead I had the "Star Wars Bad Traffic" and made it into work at 10:45 on Thursday.  I would have been on time, man, but traffic was "really backed up."

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=1738&ncid=1738&e=4&u=/zd/20050519/tc_zd/152359

That kid who rocked the world with his debut music video, "the superbowl is gay," is getting his own show on MTV.  Yes, you read that correctly.  Apparently, that odd little video clip was enough to get this kid noticed...  One can only hope his skit show lives up to the deep range and comedic timing he showed in "the superbowl is gay."  To keep up with MTV's internet-based shows, HBO will be developing a reality series dubbed Hello, My Future Girlfriend this summer while Spike! is re-branding itself as the All Your Base Are Belong To Us Network.  Ok, those last two news bits aren't real... but would you be surprised if they were?

Meanwhile, FOX still isn't sure if Arrested Development, arguably one of their best programs, is coming back.  We're supposed to get an answer this week, but apparently TV executives are stupid enough to do a "superbowl is gay" show, so I'm not holding my breath...

Cleveland.com has jumped on the multi-page article bandwagon.  For those who don't know what I'm talking about, several websites (sportsillustrated.com, NY Times) have recently split all of their news stories into 2-3 pages (btw, sportpickle.com has an awesome take on this: 450-Word SI.com article spread over 238 pages).  The thought process here seems to be "more clicks=more ad revenue."  Hasn't it occurred to anyone else, though, that "more clicks = less people reading the entire article?"

When I passed this observation on to the cleveland.com webmaster, he replied with the following:

"Like many other news sites such as The New York Times, we have found it necessary to go to the multi-page format. We appreciate comments from our readers as cleveland.com is continually growing and evolving, and your input is important in that process."

Is that NY Times reference supposed to be a namedrop?  Should I suddently decide this is a great practice because "the paper of record" is doing it?  I guess it's nice that they read my feedback and responded, but c'mon, this is a really, really bad idea.  I'm far less interested in reading the whole article if I can't simply scroll through it.  And I'm not alone...

Visual Studio .NET 2003 and Visual Source Safe are a match made in hell, specifically designed to torment poor .NET developers of all faiths.  However, I finally came across a creative cluge that seems to defeat the foul VSS beast and thought I'd share it:

http://www.avocadosoftware.com/csblogs/dredge/archive/2005/02/09/VSNET_VSS_AddToVSS.aspx?CommentPosted=true#commentmessage

Basically, you have to do everything outside of the straightforward, automated Visual Studio approach, but once you've done that, things seem to work as expected.  The most effective trick I found was deleting the csproj files prior to opening the solution.  That was my own addition to the article at the very bottom, but that was a big breakthrough.  It got rid of those absurd "_1" location prompts.

Reflecting on this cluge, I've finally started to wonder if perhaps my solution & class libraries SHOULD be in the "documents and settings" folder while still keeping my web projects in the web root.  I've always wanted to keep all solution files under one roof for easier management but trying to do so has been an absolute nightmare.  I figured that with multiple versions of items floating around, it would be desirable to house each version in its own folder.  But maybe not...

Anyone looking to trade oasis bootlegs, please check out my list & e-mail me:

http://www.shinydonkey.com/oasis.htm

My apologies to Shiny D regulars for boring you with this post, I just want the search engines to index my trading page!

Or at least her writers are and she has the guts to delivery these sweet jokes.  Check it out

http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20050501-105521-4706r.htm