By David Pescovitz at 11:11 am Sunday, Aug 20
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This kitty, named Sebastian, was given a gold grill by his human companion, dentist David Steele. Apparently, Sebastian has such a severe underbite that Steele was concerned the teeth could be easily damaged. So he capped them in gold. Each tooth cost around $900. From the Associated Press (via a Herald Bulletin
article):
Two weeks ago, veterinarian Larry Owen tranquilized the cat at the Alexandria Animal Hospital about 30 miles northeast of Indianapolis so Steele could do the dentistry work, which took about 15 minutes to complete.
Owen said putting gold crowns on teeth can be done for any pet with a dental problem.
"Mostly, though, it was a fun thing to do," Owen said.
Ummm... Did Sebastian think it was fun?
Link (Thanks, Sean Ness!)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:18 am Sunday, Aug 20
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Amid sends us this link to "a Flickr set from the collection of artist Ray Aragon showing layout and background artists during the production of Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians. Also includes photos of them during lunch hour exploring the Zorro set on the Disney backlot."
These photos, from the collection of Ray Aragon, were taken in June and July 1958 at Disney Studios. Most of the artists in these pics worked in the layout and background departments at Disney. At the time they were completing work on Sleeping Beauty and beginning production on 101 Dalmatians.
Link
(
Thanks, Amid!)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:15 am Sunday, Aug 20
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Google has re-lauched Writely, the online word-processor they recently bought, in public beta. Writely does
everything most things Word does, for free -- and saves its output as PDFs and even RSS feeds (subscribe to a word-processor doc!). It features collaborative editing -- multiple editors on the same doc at once -- and can be used as the editor for writing your blog, saving out to a post instead of a file on your machine. This is a great-looking program for people who have always-on Internet, and for so long as you don't worry about the NSA demanding that Google turn over its Writely files as part of some "security" procedure. Also: if I were a Google China user, I'd have some doubts about this, given that Google has shown that when it comes to China, keeping the government happy is more important than delivering the best product it can.
Link
(
via Vertical Hold)
By Cory Doctorow at 6:09 am Sunday, Aug 20
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A security researcher deliberately infected a PC with a botnet worm, then monitored it via a network proxy that caught all of its communications with the botmaster that had enslaved it. The machine was hijacked into sending mountains of spam from "dozens of IP addresses and using forged sender addresses," "advertising everything from pornography to fake Rolex watches and pharmaceuticals."
"I have two machines here running in an isolated network. I infect one with the malware, and I have the other machine pretending to be the entire Internet," he explained.
The second machine, known as a sandnet, is a custom-made tool for analyzing malware in an environment that is isolated, yet provides a virtual Internet for the malware to interact with.
"I can sit back and see all the interaction up to point where it [the infected machine] joins botnet's control channel. Then I can take that information, go outside and replicate it. I can see what the real server is doing to get an entire picture of the operation," Stewart said.
Link
(
via /.)
By Cory Doctorow at 5:52 am Sunday, Aug 20
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Two brown men were forced off a plane by a bunch of non-brown British passengers who became convinced that they were behaving suspiciously and were therefore terrorists. Shocking -- who'd have thought that putting signs everywhere telling you that you were in danger of terrorists and that terrorists were everywhere and that you should look out for suspicious terrorism behavior would turn normal people into witch-hunting racist mobs?
The extraordinary scenes happened after some of the 150 passengers on a Malaga-Manchester flight overheard two men of Asian appearance apparently talking Arabic.
Passengers told cabin crew they feared for their safety and demanded police action. Some stormed off the Monarch Airlines Airbus A320 minutes before it was due to leave the Costa del Sol at 3am. Others waiting for Flight ZB 613 in the departure lounge refused to board it...
Passengers noticed that, despite the heat, the pair were wearing leather jackets and thick jumpers and were regularly checking their watches...
Half an hour later, police returned and escorted the two Asian passengers off the jet...
Websites used by pilots and cabin crew were yesterday reporting further incidents. In one, two British women with young children on another flight from Spain complained about flying with a bearded Muslim even though he had been security-checked twice before boarding.
Link
(
Thanks, Amit and Andrew!)
