Blogulate » Offbeat News

The World’s Most Expensive French Fry

thinkdj — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 18:17:59 +0000

A unique ‘limited edition’ french fry called the “Lincoln Fry” contains the profile of Abraham Lincoln (sort of!) and has appeared in a McDonald’s ad in the 2005 Super Bowl. It has been auctioned on eBay and was sold to the Golden Palace Casino.

The proceeds of nearly $22,000 went to the Ronald McDonald House Charities, making the Lincoln Fry the world’s most expensive iconic French Fry of all time.

10 things to do before you die – eBay

thinkdj — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 17:10:04 +0000

10 heart-thumping, hair-raising, adrenalin-pumping experiences you wouldn’t want to miss. And you can win them for just Rs.1* each.

#Bid on one/more experiences #Track the bidding action and raise your bid

ebay.in has come up with a new auction – 10 things to do before you die. It starts with “Co-pilot a L39 Combat Air Craft in Russia” , all the way to “Climbing the Great Pyramids in Egypt”

Auction Experiences :

Auction starts: 3rd March’08 | Auction ends: 12th March’08

Auction starts: 4th March’08 | Auction ends: 13th March’08

Auction starts: 5th March’08 | Auction ends: 14th March’08

Auction starts: 6th March’08 | Auction ends: 15th March’08

Auction starts: 7th March’08 | Auction ends: 16th March’08

$9214 ebay bid for AOL 1.0 Startup disk

thinkdj — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 08:11:11 +0000

Todd Farmer of West Chester, PA, sold his AOL 1.0 startup disc for over $9,000 in an online ebay auction this week.

Mr. Farmer explains, “that disc served me well. It’s a 5 1/2″ floppy, double-sided, double-density with all the original packaging. This bad boy wasn’t free for me or anybody back then, so I wasn’t about to throw it away.”

Mrs. Farmer quotes “He’s had that stupid thing framed and hanging in the front room ever since before I knew him, and we’ve been married eight years. I kept trying to sneak it in to the trash, but he kept fishing it back out. I guess the last laugh’s on me, we’re going to Hawaii now.”

Tokyo skyline from 1969-2004 in 10 seconds

thinkdj — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 06:01:50 +0000

Witness the progress of Tokyo’s Shinjuku from 1969-2004. That’s right.. A man took photographs of Tokyo’s Shinjuku from 1969-2004, that’s over 35 years.. and made it into a 10 second clip.. This view is of Tokyo’s Shinjuku ward from 1969 – 2004. Here it is

Bible on supersmall chip

thinkdj — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 04:42:22 +0000

Researchers in Israel say they have succeeded in putting a version of the Bible on a chip smaller than a pinhead. Its 300,000 words in Hebrew were inscribed on a silicon surface at the Haifa Institute of Technology. The 0.5sq-mm (0.01sq-in) nano-Bible was written on a silicon surface covered with a thin layer of gold (20 nanometers thick – 0.0002mm).

Google wins over Perfect 10’s copyright infringement case

thinkdj — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 05:10:25 +0000

Adult magazine Perfect 10 earlier filed a copyright infringement claim against Google alleging that Google was crawling the Perfect10.com website and created thumbnails of copyrighted images that were later displayed in Google Image search results.

Google did store the thumbnails but argued that image thumbnails were protected under the copyright doctrine of fair use.

Now a court has also said that using thumbnail-sized images of pictures does not constitute infringement, even when the images are copyrighted.

Sea-monster carcass?

thinkdj — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 17:56:34 +0000

Recently came across the old news of Plesiosaur Carcass Netted in 1977. I found it quite interesting and appealing too..

On April 25, 1977, a fishing vessel named the Zuiyo-maru of the Taiyo Fishery Company Ltd. was trawling for mackerel about 30 miles east of Christchurch, New Zealand, when a large animal carcass became entangled in its nets at a depth of about 300 meters (almost 1000 feet). As the massive creature, weighing about 4000 pounds, was drawn toward the ship and then hoisted above the deck, assistant production manager Michihiko Yano announced to the captain (Akira Tanaka), “It’s a rotten whale!” However, as Yano got a better look at the creature, he became less sure. About 17 other crew members also saw the carcass, some of whom speculated that it might be a giant turtle with the shell peeled off. However, no one on board could say for sure what it was..

MORE..

MySpace Hoax drove teen to suicide

thinkdj — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 08:51:02 +0000

Megan Meier, a Missouri teen , had committed suicide by hanging herself at age of 13 last year. Recently, her parents learned that the boy she’d been corresponding with on MySpace (the one who unexpectedly began calling her a fat slut and said “the world would be a better place without you”) was actually a hoax created by the parents of a former friend. The parents of Megan Meier hope the people who made a fraudulent profile on MySpace will be prosecuted, and they are seeking legal changes to safeguard children on the Internet.

Megan Meier

Via : drudge.com/news

The Ubuntu naming convention

thinkdj — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 03:34:24 +0000

Guess there is an alphabetical naming convention for Ubuntu releases. The very first two releases were named Warty Warthog and Hoary Hedgehog (remember ?). Then came Dapper Drake (6.06), the first long-time support release. Then, the Edgy Eft (6.10), followed by Feisty Fawn (7.04) and the now, the Gutsy Gibbon (7.10). Also, the next release is announced to be Hardy Heron (8.04) expected in April 2008.

So, here it goes :

Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake)
Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy Eft)
Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn)
Ubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon)
Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) [expected : April 2008 ]

Google indexes just 0.02% of world’s information

thinkdj — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 08:42:29 +0000

The Berkeley’s School of Information Management Systems calculated how much unique information was produced in 1999 and again in 2002 (measuring the volume of unique data created in the world each year saved to film, disk, optical, and paper).

The 1999 study estimated that about 3,000,000 TB of unique information were produced that year.
The later study estimated that about 5,609,121 TB was produced in 2002.
Assuming the same growth rate to present, about 11,278,629 TB of new information were produced in 2006.

In November of 2006, Google released a paper which mentioned that Google’s web index at the time was 800 TB and Bigtable as a whole was approx ~1085 TB.

Volume of Information predicted in 2006 : 11,000,000 + TB
Volume of Information indexed by Google : 1,000+ TB
% of Information of the world indexed by Google ~ 0.02 %

[ Via KnowledgeBid ]