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Alex, you lucky bugger you! The creative kid will reach $1 million next week when his ebay auction for the last 1,000 pixels ends. How crazy is that?!

For the math helpless out there, that means the milliondollarhomepage has hit 999,000 pixels sold, and at a dollar each, that means Alex has made a whopping $999,000 just by selling pixels. Man, I hope his little helper elves are getting what they deserve. A lot of work went into this whole operation.

A little excerpt from his Jan 1, 2006 blog post:

First things first, happy new year! It’s been an unbelievably exciting and busy few days with the recent surge of interest in the site. In the last 48 hours alone, the site has received over 1 million unique visitors, and yesterday was ranked 127th on Alexa’s list of ALL websites, in terms of traffic. I’ve never seen anything like it. The additional interest has been incredible, with literally thousands of new e-mails, tonnes of phone calls, media interest, and an avalanche of pixel orders that has taken the site [almost] to the finishing post.

Congrats to you Alex! I bet you’re enjoying the New Year in your own unique way.

From a recent InformIT newsletter:

The iPod is slick, small, and holds a ton of music. The PSP is a powerhouse that does everything. Which comes out on top? Seth Fogie tells you why the PSP is king, while Matthew David throws his vote to the iPod. Read both sides of the story and judge for yourself.

Not sure what the point of the comparison is really, but hey, you might find something in the articles interesting.

Sudoku puzzles are crazy popular these days. For those who don’t know what a sudoku is (source: wikiHow):

Sudoku is an addictive game sweeping the world. It is very fun to play, but can be tricky at first. The object is to put the numbers 1-9 in every row, column, and 3X3 square block.

If you enjoy them, then you might like this article.

From BusinesWeek.com’s “Cyber Monday, Marketing Myth”:

Do a Google search on “Cyber Monday,” and you get as many as 779,000 results. Not a bad haul for a term that was created just a week and a half ago to describe the jump in online shopping activity following the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday. While Black Friday is the official kickoff of the traditional retail season, the story goes, online retail really takes off the following Monday.

Just one problem: It’s not true, at least for many online retailers. Contrary to what the recent blitz of media coverage implies, Cyber Monday isn’t nearly the biggest online shopping or spending day of the year. It ranks only as the 12th-biggest day historically, according to market researcher comScore Networks. It’s not even the first big day of the season.

For most online retailers, the bigger spending day of the season to date was way back on Nov. 22, three days before Black Friday. What’s more, most e-tailers say the season’s top spending day comes much later, between around Dec. 5 and Dec. 15.

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This is a brilliant way to help educate students! Too many IT-related educational programs are way too lax on what they teach, how updated classes are, and how hard they push students. I really wish I would have been taught more about security in my MIS program or that more security classes were offered at least. Check out what Iowa State is doing…

Iowa State University will be victimized by hackers this weekend, and school officials are just fine with that. That’s because the hackers will be applying their demonic talents to help educate a new generation of network security professionals during the Big 12 School’s 2005 Cyber Defense Competition.

The contest, one of a handful of such events across the country, will pit 11 teams of four to six Iowa State students against each other in a battle to see who’s best at fending off a variety of network intrusions. The idea is to simulate the conditions young networking geeks will encounter as future IT professionals. “Hopefully, the network teams keep the network up and running, and stay one step ahead of the hackers, just like in the real world,” says Nate Evans, a senior computer science and German major who’s student director of the competition.

Read the rest over at SecurityPipeline.

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Wired has an interesting article up that presents the worst software bugs in history. Overall, it’s a very interesting read (even if you are not a geek).

Last month automaker Toyota announced a recall of 160,000 of its Prius hybrid vehicles following reports of vehicle warning lights illuminating for no reason, and cars’ gasoline engines stalling unexpectedly. But unlike the large-scale auto recalls of years past, the root of the Prius issue wasn’t a hardware problem — it was a programming error in the smart car’s embedded code. The Prius had a software bug.

With that recall, the Prius joined the ranks of the buggy computer — a club that began in 1945 when engineers found a moth in Panel F, Relay #70 of the Harvard Mark II system.1The computer was running a test of its multiplier and adder when the engineers noticed something was wrong. The moth was trapped, removed and taped into the computer’s logbook with the words: “first actual case of a bug being found.”

Sometime today (Monday, Nov 14), Threadless will have another one of its $10 t-shirt sales! These sales usually overload the Threadless servers. This time, though, they are only announcing it to newsletter subscribers to help keep the load down a bit.

I need to do my best to resist this time, but I might have to buy a shirt for my dad. Christmas is quickly approaching afterall.

As of now, the sale hasn’t started yet, but it will any time now I suppose. So, go start browsing and be ready to buy! ^_^

If you’re a geek, you have probably heard about the crap Sony decided to pull and continues to pull with its DRM software. If not, check out Mark’s Sysinternals Blog. This is definitely worth a read since the way this case plays out might really reveal a lot about the future of DRM.

Here are the blog entries discussing the issue so far…

Sony, Rootkits and Digital Rights Management Gone Too Far

More on Sony: Dangerous Decloaking Patch, EULAs and Phoning Home

Sony’s Rootkit: First 4 Internet Responds

Sony: You don’t reeeeaaaally want to uninstall, do you?

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I found this bit of writing in the CounterSpy Newsletter (Oct 18, 2005 - Issue #14) interesting. I am a fan and user of Sunbelt’s award-winning and highly regarded CounterSpy anti-spyware software, so I thought I’d share.

I have worked with a couple different security software companies including Sunbelt. It may surprise you to know just what goes into creating the structure and infrastructure of such an organization. Because once you tread into the security sector your business life will never be the same.

Unlike other software applications where new versions and upgrades could be considered a luxury, security application upgrades are complete necessity. Our labs go full throttle 24/7. Spyware makers are always looking for that edge and we have to be a step ahead.

Research & Development is a non-stop process. When you are dealing in “life” critical products, you operate at a totally different level, knowing that countless computers and their owners from home to enterprise count on you for protection. And let’s not forget Tech Support. Unlike many other outfits, Sunbelt support is not outsourced to foreign lands. When you reach one of our guys, they intimately know the product and the problems you might encounter.

The purpose of the above is to give you a short inside glimpse of what we are doing, how we are doing it and in short for you to know that we take this job very seriously. Here is a video of our Support organization. Meet the experts that help you!

Link: underground.sunbelt-software.com

So if your job gets stressful at times, just imagine how stressed these guys and gals get every day… that might make you feel better.

I highly recommend CounterSpy - it’s only $20, works very well, has won a lot of awards and praise - if you need an anti-adware / anti-spyware solution… and who doesn’t?

Have you ever gotten an unsolicited e-mail (aka spam) or seen a pop-up that tried to hook you into entering or providing personal and/or financial information? If so, then someone tried to hook you with his/her phishing scam.

Imagining the rampant ignorance on the web pains me to say the least, but all of us who know better need to help those who are slow, silly or stupid. Some of these phishing attempts are really quite tricky and convincing. I’ve been mostly attacked by these via spam. I have seen numerous phony PayPal and Citi e-mail look-a-likes in my inbox over the last couple years.

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