Wow. From now on, when anyone asks me why I can’t do more to track down spammers, I’ll show them this article

Spam Hunter - Forbes.com

He started to obsess about who could produce such a spam onslaught without being detected. Then he dug a little, then more, then even more. So began the strangest and most frustrating year of Peterson’s 39-year-long life. In the course of his spam hunt he broke several laws, engaged the help of shadowy hackers, hid months of activity from his wife and boss, neglected work and ended up losing half his annual bonus. He contacted 20 agents in nine government agencies in the U.S., China and India but failed to engage any of them in a serious quest for the culprits.

Calvin College - News - Calvin Students Research Kent County Congregations

When Tim Brom 07’ set out to build a budget supercomputer with Calvin computer science professor Joel Adams, he didn’t know the product of his efforts might end up in his checked baggage headed for England.

Stolen From: Slashdot | Student and Professor Build Budget Supercomputer

Detroit Grand Prix: Take A Hot Lap Of The Detroit Grand Prix Course In A Corvette Z06 - Jalopnik

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Oh, if only I was this eloquent in the eighth grade …

"My Ill-Conceived Jr. High Love Letter" by Patrick Cassels on CollegeHumor

I was going through some of my notes from junior high the other night and came across a love letter I wrote to Jessica King, this really pretty girl who sat two rows in front of me in my 8th-grade U.S. History class. In retrospect, my romantic sentiments could have been better expressed.

Stolen From: Who’s Scruffy-lookin? « The Official Star Wars Blog

Ubuntu 8.04 - Hardy Heron has just been announced on the Ubuntu-devel-announce list. Not only will the Ubuntu community continue to do what it does best, produce an easy-to-use, reliable, free software platform, but this release will be an Long Term Support version with updates available until 5 years after the release date.

read more | digg story

FOXNews.com - Wayward Emu Corralled in Parking Lot - Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment

Employees of a Wal-Mart Supercenter used shopping carts to corral a wayward emu outside the store Monday about 6 a.m., West Bend police said.

Link: The Perils Of Retail - Consumerist

Chewie Hands off Lightsaber to NASA « The Official Star Wars Blog

Luke Skywalker’s original Jedi lightsaber makes its way into space (for real) with NASA astronauts on the space shuttle Discovery in October. To commemorate the historic event, Star Wars characters visited the Oakland International Airport where Chewbacca handed the lightsaber over to NASA’s Space Center Houston during a special ceremony on Aug. 28, 2007.

Me fail English? That’s Unpossible!

Stolen from: Miss Teen USA contestant talks about maps, schools, other things - VIDEO - TV Squad

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No. No. No, no, no, no, no. Dear God, please no!

Keanu Reeves is Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still Remake « FirstShowing.net

We were the first ones to break the news that a Day the Earth Stood Still remake was on the way, and now we bring you the next bit of news related to the remake. The Matrix star Keanu Reeves has signed on to play Klaatu, the humanoid alien that lands on Earth.

Slashdot | Storm Botnet Is Behind Two New Attacks

We’ve gotten a number of submissions about the new tricks the massive Storm botnet has been up to. Estimates of the size of this botnet range from 250K-1M to 5M-10M compromised machines. Reader cottagetrees notes a writeup at Exploit Prevention Labs on a new social engineering attack involving YouTube. The emails, which may be targeted at people who use private domain registrations, warn the recipient that their "face is all over ‘net" on a YouTube video. The link is to a Storm-infected bot that attacks using the Q4Rollup exploit (a package of about a dozen encrypted exploits). And reader thefickler writes that the recent wave of "confirmation spam" is also due to Storm, as was the earlier, months-long "e-card from a friend" series of attack emails.