February 2008 Archives

When it comes to comedy that touches base with my generation, Family Guy does it on a superb way. In fact, many of the jokes themselves would not be understood by anyone but those that have experienced most of what has gone on while growing up in a GenX GenY period.

That's why Family Guy - Blue Harvest Special Edition holds a great place in our hearts. It's a comedy spoof off of the most loved science fiction series of all time. What's interesting is that they even use the name "Blue Harvest", which is the code name for Episode IV during production.

It's in all technicality not a movie. It's more of a special edition episode, and the first hour episode in the history of Family Guy (including the commercials). Running time is actually about forty-seven minutes. This episode is the first of season six.

The storyline.... well.. everyone that's seen Star Wars will recognize all of the major scenes. In fact, it's done in great detail with the usual amazing timing of lines where it just goes from one thing to another and you can't stop laughing. The uncut version has some deleted scenes where they make some more political jokes, or what not and it has the usual crass language and humor found in your usually late night "M" rated Family Guy.

Definitely not for children, but for those that recognize much of the humor behind it, Seth MacFarlane pokes fun at much of the things while we grew up. And with that, you just can't help but laugh.

When you need a gradient, where do you go? What do you do?

Well, most people rip open their trusty graphics package. Myself, I would probably go with GIMP. But what if you just need a gradient quick? Then GradientStudio could be it. The key to all your troubles.

This application allows you to create gradients and export them as a bitmap or jpeg, and allows you to export the color codes along with html tables. On top of that, you can add gradients directly to images which makes it the supa-gradient-extraordinaire. Freeware for Windows.

I recently was outraged with Comcast paying people to go to a FCC meeting and thus not filling the room up so that those that were interested in what the FCC had to say about Net Neutrality could not participate in the meeting.

So I went and filled out a pre-written form at Save the Internet. What really bugged me though is that after it was all over?

The next day, I get this email from the Free Press E-Activist Network about supporting the cause. Here's the thing. When I signed the form, I saw that it said had it already checked the box to add me to their mailing list. That's not an opt-in. That's a forced opt-in. Opting-in is the actual move of actually checking the box. What else bothered me? This line:

Add me to the Free Press E-Activist Network so I can receive occasional emails about important media reform developments

I've since unsubscribed from the network, and hopefully it'll actually remove my email unlike some email lists I belong to where they harass you even though you've managed to opt-out and unsubscribed from pretty much every single user automated service they have (nonprofits have some weird software out there that keep coming back to ask you for things).

Word to the wise. If you have a cause, people will join it if they believe in the same thing that you do. But don't overdo the whole email opt-in just to gather people. Let people be proactive. In the end, if you had a supporter but you annoyed them in some fashion, then that's the end of your support.

I'll still have to look into how to get off those lists for that one nonprofit technology network. Ick.

Photo Credit: (krisandapril)

JotSpot after being acquired by the giant internet juggernaut, Google, has been reborn as Google Sites. Sites is a part of the Google Apps suite which of course is free for the Standard version unless you want support where then you will have to shell out a hefty fifty Washingtons annually.

Having played with both JotSpot and Google Sites, I can say that perhaps the framework is there but nothing else is really. TC even reports the same where JotSpot's structured templates have been ripped out and now it's mainly just embedded files from the other Google office suite.

I did however find this quote interesting:

In an interview today, Google's Management Director of Enterprise Matthew Glotzbach called the combined products under Google Apps a "Microsoft Sharepoint killer" because it's allowing businesses to collaborate without all that expensive Microsoft software.

Be it as it may, Google Apps is starting to shift from its fledgling status into a more mature product line. As long as the applications that are provided in the suite stay true on their course to more mature products, there is a good chance that Sharepoint will have a run for its money.

As is though, Google Sites barely compares to some of the more feature rich wikis out there. The only great thing about it is the fact that you can do a bit more collaboration and embed Google Docs and such inside it. Otherwise? I for one am not seeing the beauty of it compared to the old JotSpot. Maybe more use will change my mind.

Anyone that watches enough television has seen the Mac vs. PC television advertisements by Apple. Gabriel Schwarzer has written a parody of the well-known television commercials in South Park style. This definitely will at the very least crack a smile on your face if you've ever experienced any of the issues shown in the parody. Without further ado:

The problem with sleeping and hibernation of a Macbook or Macbook Pro is that you basically get one of the other. Sleeping is good but if you're almost out of battery life, then it's really not feasible and you might lose your work.

On the other hand, hibernation saves your battery but recovery is terrible since it has to take everything it saved to disk and load it back into RAM. Joy above pleasurable joy.

So what the preference pane SmartSleep does is it actually has settings where you can set a default time so that if there is X amount of battery time left or percentage wise, then it will switch between sleeping and hibernation. This way, you're never left without the most optimal solution and thus keeping your battery going for as long as possible before needing a charge. Not a bad thing to have around, eh?

Funny how the ages seem to change. Once there was records. Yes, those 45 rpms.

Then 8-tracks.

Then tapes.

Then CDs.

We won't even go into the slight tangents of mediums such as MDs (that I own a few of by the way along with two portable players and a sound system attachment). With each generation of music, there were different types of mediums that dictated how the younger generations would grow and evolve. In this current decade, digital downloads are slowly but surely giving CDs a run for its money. Don't believe me? No problem. Let's take a look at the facts.

1. Apple iTunes is the number two seller of music behind Walmart based on volume sold in 2007.


2. 48% of teenagers didn't buy a CD in 2007, up from 38% in 2006.

The reason for the actual move towards the digital medium is the same reason why my generation could program a VCR better than the generation before. The technology adoption factor. In this age where young people have more of a knack to have their fingers fly across a cellular keypad than us "old folks", is also the showing of the end of a old era and the beginning of a new.

iPods, and other portable media players flooded the markets as GenX and GenY have grown up and started their own families and ... well, the truth of the matter: got jobs. With that, the youth that are growing up as children of these generations are also inundated with the technology adoption. Younger kids with mobiles and music players is a signal for another changing of the guard.

Myself? Have always been a technology adopter and will continue to always be one. The only music I bought this year was off of iTunes unless they didn't carry the imports. Lately, they have actually been introducing a lot of Asian music which is another sign that things are changing for the better. Why bother with physical media anymore? In this age, it's about the size of your storage, not the size of your collectibles.

A side project of Ben Gibbard, one of the guys behind Death Cab for Cutie, this electronic indie pop group was recommended to me first by my loving sister. Yes, she does know my taste in music, eh?

In any case, when I first heard them, I was going nuts over it since I'm a big electronic freak and DCFC was the rage. So when you hear Such Great Heights, you'll know what I mean. While the entire album is great indie electronic, I believe I would have supported this group by getting Give Up for just that particular song. As usual, I got my fix on . If you willl notice soon enough with the next couple of album reviews, that I must be going through an electronic phase. Dance and trance. Gotta love it.

Ever since GLUG (Greensboro Linux User Group) started back up for 2008, I've been starting to toy with Debian again. Don't get me wrong, I've been running predominantly an Ubuntu workstation for some time now. But I haven't really messed with kernels and such for a while.

In between my day job, and my current two business projects of Merchant's Mirror and Five18, along with prepping for a network build out and grant proposals for my nonprofit (Phoenix Networks) my time has been severely limited.

But I broke out the tiny lil' Sony Vaio I got as a present years ago and re-installed linux on it. First I tried fluxbuntu, but it just had too many issues that I didn't care to deal with. So I went back to the old favorite of Debian. Things definitely have changed since I last seriously tweaked kernels and such. There have been a lot of new projects that have come and gone... heck, Gnomemeeting is apparently now called Ekiga. Who knew!

Apparently the computer is so old that the CMOS battery died. Don't feel like fixing it, but maybe one day. I got most things running including my favorite fluxbox and all sorts of commandline goodies. hostap is still throwing back some issues, but I'll have it hammered out when I get some time to look at it. It's good to tinker in the wild world of linux.

All in all, it's a great feeling. Have this little Celeron 333 purring again. And it's pretty amusing when you're booting up with a mere 128M ram. Maybe I'll actually use this as a notebook for working on some database code eventually. In any case, it's good hit the grease again.

Sometimes, it's just annoying to look at this gigantic monstrosity of a URL. Just plain and very frightening. That's why there are redirection services like TinyURL. What it does is that it redirects a small, tiny url to the giant one. Probably through a database query.

This allows people to not only shorten URLs, but also mask the originating URLs. Obviously this comes in handy as seen with Twitter where the messages are limited to 140 characters. Not unlike SMS services (character limitations), except that SMS doesn't have need for such things like TinyURL.

If you're like me, and a keyboard cowboy, then this wouldn't be for you. But for those of you that reveled in the fact that Windows came after the command line hell of DOS, then this is for you. Most times, you can switch between applications by using the Alt -Tab shortcuts.

So what this little standalone program allows you to do is to have your mouse send the Alt-Tab keys and actually change applications without having to hit those two keys. Maybe some people like it, not really for me. But don't let me stop you from using it if you like mice. Like I said: keyboard cowboy.

Growing up, I got to hear about patents a lot. Heck, dad has had his name on a fair share of them and I've seen the plaques to prove it.

At the time, patents were used in such a way to protect your intellectual property from other corporations from stealing your ideas and creating knock-offs. There are pretty specific laws on what you can do, once a patent is handed out and how things such as reverse engineering is limited to a certain percentage that can be very similar and so on, so forth.

These days though? You just see what I deem as frivolous lawsuits that are spent basically on the basis of trying to reach into the pockets of larger corporations. In fact, there are corporations out there, that their whole business is based on filing patents and then suing. Sounds pretty unethical to me, and you would imagine that the Patent Office wouldn't hand out such patents.

There are certain things that can or cannot be done in a certain fashion, but trying to sue a larger corporation or FUD a smaller one is just... well, pansy. Maybe it's just me.

But it sounds like there needs to be patent oversight. It wasn't long ago that I remember reading about someone that had set up a patent for the warp drive. I'm not sure if it's true or not, but if it was? That's just ridiculous.

This is truly a time where if the government was supported to do anything with the Patent Office, it would tighten the reins. No more just handling out patents because people pay the money for the application. A lot of these things need to be contested. And if people start lawsuits that are proven to be just stretching the boundaries of the law just to make money from the lawsuit instead of actual protecting intellectual or actual tangible property, then there should be black marks set against those individuals or corporations. Maybe it's just my opinion, but the world doesn't need more stupid things going on that hurts technological innovation. It needs less.

And in my opinion, without more oversight on how patents are handed out and how they are used, it devalues the point of a patent altogether. At least in my eyes.

Photo Credit: (niallkennedy)

The problem organizing pictures is that searching out similar images and categorizing is a real pain. With MyPixelVault, you can set up keywords and schemes to define themes. Pretty fun stuff if you have a a lot of images that you have to sort through and keep track of.

Not exactly something I need to do usually, but for some, it's probably useful. Freeware for Windows.

Sometimes, it pays to find out where an IP address is located. While this only gives you an approximation in physical location, it's worthwhile to know that certain IPs are located in a certain latitude/longitude and more importantly, the city, state, and country.

Network Location Tool does just that. Give it an IP address and watch the mash-up with Google Maps at work. It's definitely pretty amusing to actually see how close your virtual IP address is compared to your physical location. You'd be surprised that while it's not exact, it should be pretty darn close.

When you need a Creative Commons licensed picture, usually scouring Flickr is a good way to go. But it's still a pain in the rear and you still have to go through the trouble of setting up the sizes and such.

With a plugin like PhotoDropper, all of this is more intuitive and without having to use multiple windows and cut and pastes. It interacts directly with your WordPress installation and allows you to keyword search for those much needed photos to help embellish your posts.

Redline was one of those action films that was... ehhh. It wasn't bad, but I was heart-broken at all the nice cars that seemed to take a fall in the movie. Overall, I felt the plot was pretty sorry and not quite on the level of Fast and Furious although you could tell that it was what they were going for.

The entire movie mainly kept you on your feet due to the racing. The opening scene was actually pretty sweet, only because I had never thought of a sports car racing through with infrared and no lights. Seriously dangerous, but on the other hand, it's a very interesting type of thought at night.

A lot of the whole "underground racing" type scenarios that they posed were pretty unrealistic since most underground racing doesn't happen with million dollar vehicles and the high stakes in the movie. Nor does it have quite the luxurious lifestyles tied to it. Very sensationalized. That's where the Fast and Furious franchise has caught a bit of the more realism.

All in all, it's a decent B-action film in my honest opinion, but didn't quite make par when it came to great racing movies.

When I first read about this, I figured it was some image maker. My second thought was... boy, they're in for a treat since DLS forgot to mention the more advanced scraping now that implements some OCR technologies.

Needless to say, this method does make it simple to create images of your email to put on a website and it does deter most text scraping from pulling emails. Unfortunately though, in the same fashion that spammers are overcoming captchas, scrapers are now turning to OCR to actually deal with images. And in that sense, Spam Proof Email Generator, doesn't quite live up to the "proof" part of the name. Regardless, a little protection is way better than none when you're riding through spam's neighborhood.

Stanford has stepped up and is now using more of their endowment to help students with their tuition. Good news for families that don't make more than $100,000 income since there tuition will be free and if the total income is less than $60,000 then room and board is also included.

I think this is a wonderful change for Stanford as a private university that charges over $30,000 a year in tuition and where about seventy-five percent of the student population is on some sort of financial aid or another.

This act is actually a response due to the fact that school endowments are tax exempt and a senator raised the issue that if the public wasn't seeing enough of a return from the endowments and that raised the question of whether or not they should be tax exempt.

All in all, this is terrific news since it means that more qualified high school students won't be turned away due to financials to schools that they are suited for. And that's the way education should be.

If you own a small business, and you've been looking for some Windows software for asset management, then Pyxis could be the thing you were looking for.

It's a pretty simple interface, and learning curve is pretty... well... let's just say it's not too steep. All the data is stored in the XML format, so don't think that your assets are encrypted or something. You can however, store pictures, comments, and all sorts of other identifiable information. There's even custom fields in case the ones they have in there just don't fit too well. Freeware for Windows.

Secret (??????) is a movie directed and starred by international pop star, Jay Chou. It's a sweet romance where it's about a gifted high school student that transfers to a new school that is well known for its pianists. This student falls in love with another when he hears the a sweet melody that she plays, but she can't tell him anything about it, and only that it's a secret that cannot be told.

This movie itself has a lot of personal experiences and elements from Jay's life. For instance, there is references to Chopin, whom is Jay's favorite composer. There are other interesting things that happened particularly with the high school scenarios.

What really got me to this movie was actually the music video that was supposed to promote the movie. Below, you'll see the actual mv for it and you can see why he's one of the hottest singers in Asia due to his amazing ability to write beautiful songs:

Death Cab for Cutie is another band that those of us with roots in the Seattle area have been listening to for a long time. Originating from Bellingham, they're one of the few indie pop rock bands that's been around the Seattle area for a long, long time.

One of their most famous songs is Soul Meets Body that hit the US Modern Rock chart at #5. Most famous of the indie underground is probably, I Will Follow You Into the Dark that has been on the charts in both the US and the UK.

While having listened to them a while, have never owned any of their music. So I went and bought the iTunes Original from ... you guessed it. . Go figure eh? The greatest part of this album is that for those people that either have never head DCFC, or are getting reacquainted, it has songs from their last two albums pretty much along with some self made videos and some commentary. Twenty some odd tracks for the price of a regular album which is actually a great deal.

If you're looking for a free vector drawing program for MacOSX, look no further than DrawIt Lite.

It comes with your basic features such as your usual drawing and CoreImage filter support and a couple other types of things. Basically it allows you to get your drawing going but you won't be able to run with certain things like "perspectives" or "beveling".

In any case, it's definitely a good way to take a look and see if the pro version is worth your time. I'm personally still waiting for my favorite vector drawing program to make it to MacOSX (XaraX), but I might be waiting for a long long time.

When there's a great font out there but you have no clue what it is.... an interesting method of find out which one it is can be done via Identifont.

Identifont has broken down the fonts into simple characteristics and allows you to take a look and find which font it is based on these characteristic patterns. While it's not fool proof, it's actually pretty accurate. What's unfortunate is that there are a whole bunch of other fonts out there that are not exactly .... easily described. Because of that, I would imagine that's why the font selection in the database is only 6575 at the time of this writing.

Everyone has made this out to be a format war. And it is. It's Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD. And with the recent developments, no one knows where HD-DVD stands, but it sure seems like it's at death's door doesn't it. Even has a deathwatch going for it now.

Here's the thing. What consumers are letting go of is a monopoly on format. If there are multiple mediums, this allows each format to compete and drive prices down. Currently, with the "winner" taking most of the market? You can guarantee you won't be seeing players drop in price anytime in the near future.

How does that help consumers? What about media? Your Blu-ray mediums aren't going down in price. Why? Because there's nothing to force it down.

If Toshiba really wants to get back into the game, they should just give away players. Seriously. The more consumers that have a player, the more chances you will have for media to take hold. Remember when Microsoft took a loss for every Xbox that came out to get it into the hands of players? Same thing. And there's still the advantage of all of the movies and television shows that are already out there on HD-DVD already.

A lot of people are blowing the horn on the HD-DVD. And while I think that there's a glimmer of hope, I don't believe corporate Toshiba would take such a risk unless a lot of capital has already been sunk into pushing this format and there was no other choice. Don't get me wrong either. I'll definitely be getting Blu-ray at some point. But having both will only give me a stronger selection in the long run as a consumer. But also looking after the needs of a consumer, I find that Toshiba just rolling over would be a bad move for all of us.

Fat lady might be humming some scales, but she hasn't sung yet.

Photo Credit: (ern)

Sometimes it's interesting to figure out where certain phone numbers come from, especially since now you can transfer any number to any area so it might not actually tie via the area code and prefixes anymore. It used to be that you could tell what area you were in due to the three digit prefix (those of you from the BBS days would know what I'm talking about).

Well, Phone Number Geolocator seems to use the same type of scenario and tracks numbers down based on the NPA (area code) and NXX (prefix). What's interesting is that if you dial a lot of phone numbers, then you'll already know a few of these area codes and their locales that are tied to it, but due to the fact that numbers can be transferred and taken with you these days, it's not necessarily accurate anymore.

Sometimes, while it's great for users, the worst part of IT is when users introduce unknowns. Unfortunately at the end points, you can't prevent certain types of mediums from being put on the network. USB Blocker helps prevent that from happening by restricting use of removable storage devices from connecting to the endpoints.

This integrates directly with Active Directory as group policies and doesn't require any installation on the client side. If you run a network that requires SOX, GLBA and HIPAA compliance, then this would allow you to comply with those regulations. It also assists in hardening your security against theft, and helping prevent the introduction of viruses/malware to the network that bypasses the corporate virus and malware scans.

The House of Representatives is stopping a surveillance bill in its tracks after the Senate passed it with flying colors. This has in turn angered House Republican leadership enough to actually walk out mid-session for not voting on the bill that was supposed to replace the temporary Protect America Act.

But in light of it all, here's one of the key points that is holding the vote up. The Senate bill granted immunity retroactive to the telecommunications companies that were involved and to be involved in any domestic spying. And as you may know, in all technicality, this is illegal as of current due to privacy laws that does not allow the government to spy on its citizens. In granting immunity to such businesses while does increase national security, also increases the chance of tipping a system of checks and balances and gives a means to corrupt actions.

Just take a look at the recent fiasco with Blackwater in Iraq. It seems that they are under a lot more scrutiny due to certain actions because American security contractors in Iraq are not under the "same" rules as the military. In essence, immunity seems to open the door to all sorts of bad behavior.

Is this something that we as Americans are willing to chance? Truthfully, from my perspective, I'm more for a "don't ask, don't tell" policy. I know that the NSA is more than likely capturing information regardless. It's a world where information is power, and if no one else proves that.... Google does. But this type of cloak and dagger stuff should never see the light of day. As a citizen, I want to be oblivious to the techniques used to protect the country and never should it interfere. In bringing domestic surveillance to the table, you turn the whole "protection" into a nasty thing that no one on either side of the table will like or love.

The RESTORE Act was passed back in October of 2007 for the House, which excluded the telecommunications immunity. But the executive branch has fired back saying that it's too cumbersome and that the House could be jeopardizing "the security of our citizens."

Telecommunication corporations shouldn't be granted immunity no more so than civilian contractors in Iraq should be. If they were, then there needs to be severe oversight so that someone would be held accountable if things went south. The key point here is that instead of holding people accountable for their actions, the accountability is being thrown out the window. And therein lies the problem. What a headache, eh?

As a Windows administrator, the problem with users usually results in the fact that they haven't changed their passwords or have ignored the warnings. But if you have something like Password Expiration Notifier, it scans the Active Directory and for the user accounts that are about to expire their passwords within a certain amount of days, then it helps you as an administrator to actually be more proactive.

This tool can also email account owners. The reason why you would do this, is because sometimes certain users only use their accounts for email.

This movie has two of my favorite action actors. Jason Statham, and Jet Li. The movie itself starts out action packed and doesn't pause for an instance. In fact, there is a whole lot of gun fighting and hand-to-hand because the storyline revolves around FBI agents investigating an assassin named Rogue whom works for the yakuza, but then starts perpetuating a war between the Triads and the yakuza.

I have to say that it's interesting that with these movies, they're starting to portray asians with actual asians. They even speak the languages, although there was still a mix of Cantonese with Mandarin. I'm guessing that they were hoping that people didn't catch the whole dialect thing.

Movies like this have come a long ways. Even better yet, I'll be getting a copy of War (Widescreen Edition) [affiliate] to complete my Jet Li movie collection (for now).

Want to collaborate on a document? Google Docs just not doing it for you? Wish it was pretty much real-time?

Gobby, baby. Gobby. That's totally what you're looking for.

If you take a look at what it does, it's actually very useful for a revision control system except without revisions since the merging is pretty much right away. I'd be curious as to how it takes into account if two people edit the same thing. But regardless, this is super useful for people that are far away, but need to collaborate on a documentation. Real-time fun... or annoyance. However you see collaboration editors.

For linux, and open source.

There's always a need as a network administrator to reset user passwords. But what about when a set or subset of people or domain needs to be reset? It's just not fun to go through each user one by one. No problems. Bulk Password Reset, will set you up in a jiffy.

Reset passwords to your heart's content. Freeware for Windows.

More figurines are available for sale, and this time from the Nintendo classic, Legend of Zelda series. Each of these are hand painted and hand cast. The first is the Skull Kid, whom took Majora's Mask from a merchant whilst the merchant was paying him no attention.

The second is our Link in adult form, the main character of the Legend of Zelda. Both of these figurines are authentic Nintendo collectibles and limited editions. In fact, there are only 2,500 of each. At a Benjamin a pop, they're rather pricey. But that's what you pay for when you collect collectibles.

AWN, or Avant Window Navigator, is an open source dock bar like the dock for MacOSX. But instead, it's for Linux. Oh yes, the mighty Linux.

Basically it operates almost exactly like the Dock bar for MacOSX. You can drag applications to and from it and use it as a launchbar, and everything else. Along with Compiz and Beryl, you can't go wrong with the eye candy for Linux. And it's not a resource hog. Which should be a huge plus.

In any case, you'll definitely want to take a look at it. Even the peeps at DLS have given some thumbs up to this baby. And if DLS gives props, you have to check it out at least, right?

I think I finally have found the DSLR camera that I want. While I'll probably have to hold off on such an extravagant purchase, this would be one of the few cameras that I would stray from the powerhouse brand of Nikon. Not that Sigma is a bad brand by any means. Oh no. Sigma is in actuality very well known in the photography world but has always been a little bit outside the reach of amateur photographers.

The Sigma DP1 has a FOVEON X3 sensor that is also found in the SD14.

Unfortunately, with every great thing comes some caveats. This compact DSLR comes with a fixed 16.6-mm F4 lens. Hmm. Maybe I'll hold out a little longer for Sigma to come out with something that allows you to change out the lens on the same body structure. In case you're looking to get one of these 8.5 oz. beauties, be prepared to shell out about eight hundred dollars.

Most users that are more familiar with Windows or other GUI based operating systems, don't like command line. Or console. Or both.

Great thing that there's QT based open source applications then in this case. Such as QGRUBEditor. What it does, is it allows you to edit the GRUB configuration. Don't know what GRUB is? It's basically the way most flavors of linux now use as a bootloader. Still don't know what it is? Don't worry about it. Requires QT4 and Imagemagick it seems. Otherwise, you should be golden.

With all of the political campaigning and the talks about how there's going to be tax refunds, it's absolutely amazing to me that there isn't anyone that makes any mention of the soaring gas prices.

Here's the thing. Ever since Katrina, gas prices has never dropped again. And there hasn't been a single politician that has complained about this. Why? Katrina has long been here and gone. The levels of crude refining are back to norm and all the excuses of pipelines or Alaska oil having issues has since past.

It was only a bit ago that I filled up at $2.90 per gallon. Others around the country suffer through above the three dollar mark. Who needs a tax refund? I'd more appreciate it if Congress stepped in and called this price raising a farce and dropped gas prices by a dollar. In fact, if anyone campaigns for economic relief, there should be a stand taken against big oil. If you still feel that they deserve it, then let's take a look at the numbers:

Exxon and Chevron aren't the only two oil giants to report impressive earnings recently. Conoco (COP, Fortune 500), the nation's third-largest oil company, trounced profit estimates by nearly 25% when it reported last week. And Royal Dutch Shell PLC, Europe's largest oil company, reported a 60% increase in profits Thursday.

And they (big oil) get tax incentives to actually do all of this. In fact, there's absolutely no oversight by Congress at all, which is part of the issue why this is happening. Good luck getting the executive branch involved either. Look at their backgrounds. Both the Secretary of State and the President have ties to the oil industry. Presidential candidates haven't even began to touch this subject of which would technically affect the entire voter block.

Talk about a big white elephant in the room that no one's talking about.

Photo Credit: (Bryan Burke)

Sometimes you need a crucial watermark for your pictures. But what about all of your huge Flickr account? No problem.

PicMarkr allows you to grab them from your Flickr account, or upload them and perform mass batch manipulation. Watermark all of them at once, or one at a time.

It's free, and you can do it as much as you want with text, image, or tiled watermarking. If you feel like this is a tool that you've just been missing out on, then of course the developers would definitely be appreciative of a donation.

As Windows administrator, you will run across some users that go inactive for a period of time.

Well, if that's not just annoying, here's a nice little tool that you can run that will provide scheduled reports on who hasn't logged in f