http://www.ComputerBob.com/journal_archive/2006/02.php .
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Here's some potentially good news for those of us who live in hurricane zones. Supposedly, starting this summer, the U.S. Air Force and Department of Defense are planning to use huge bombs to try to disrupt the development and reduce the intensity of certain hurricanes. I hope it works, but it seems to me that it might be more effective to bomb the hurricanes when they first start to form off the west coast of Africa, instead of waiting until they're huge and dangerous. Or just create temporary black holes that would absorb the hurricanes and send them to other dimensions. Yeah, that would be better. Except for the people in those other dimensions.
You've probably experienced it. Someone says or does something mean or rude, but instead of wittily rebuking them, you just smile and say something lame. Later, you think of What I Should Have Said.
Do you watch the TV show, 24? From what I could tell, it seemed like the kind of show that I would probably like, but for some reason, I've never seen it. But if it's as formulaic and predictable as it's portrayed in How To Write The Perfect "24" Fan Fic Episode/Season, then maybe I'm better off not watching it.
It's cute, but it makes me think that either:
What do you think?
This site uses a valid Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) for both layout and presentation. If you've ever used CSS, you know that it can be very efficient for many uses, but it can be very tricky to code correctly for complicated things like this site's context-sensitive left navigation menu. Experiments With Cascading Style Sheets is a nice, clean site that demonstrates several kinds of interesting, useful CSS layouts.
Telephone company, MCI, sent a guy in West Virginia too many spam snail-mails, apparently causing him to have some serious anger issues. Now he describes, step-by-step, how he exacts Legal Revenge Against Spam Snail-Mailers.
Last night marked the end of NBC's 17-day coverage of the pomp and splendor of the 2006 Winter Olympics. Coincidently, last night also marked the end of 17 days in which I never watched NBC.
In the 2+ years that my wife and I have lived in The Sunshine State, we've probably seen more out-of-town guests than we saw in
the 17+ years that we lived in The Frostbite State. I wonder why that is. Anyway, one of our favorite places to take guest is the
rotating restaurant on top of one of the hotels on the Gulf Coast. A couple in San Diego has an even better idea: they live in a
rotating home.
You'll probably see one in your neighborhood pretty soon, because you know what they say: What goes around, comes
around.
How would you like a new design for your Web site? You could create your own design like I did, or you could go to Open Source Web Design. There you'll find about 1500 Web designs that you can download and use for free. You can also upload your own Web designs if you want to share them with others.
In the past, I've seen individual animated GIF files that show how internal combustion engines work, but Animated Engines has 19 animations, including internal combustion, steam and stirling engines. So that's how 2-stroke engines work -- using both ends of the piston along with a flywheel! Very clever!
Who are your favorite cartoon characters of all time? Ask 100 people and you'll probably get 100 different answers, depending
their personal taste, as well as when they grew up, how much television they watched as a child, and hundreds of other highly
personal and subjective factors. Still, one guy put together his own list of what he thinks are the
all-time best cartoon characters.
He's wrong of course, since his list includes Scooby Doo, Mickey Mouse, Fat Albert, and a few other clinkers. Plus, he doesn't even
mention Huckleberry Hound, Felix the Cat, Beany and Cecil, Jonny Quest, Yogi Bear, Krazy Kat & Ignatz Mouse, Pixie & Dixie
& Mr. Jinx, or Quick Draw McGraw.
My Web browser is Firefox 1.5. Today, I decided to check its security by visiting Browser Security Test. It took about one minute for it to run 11 different online tests on my browser. Their conclusion? My browser has no security vulnerabilities; not even low-risk ones. Yeah, that's what I thought.
Have you ever seen a speed stacking competition, in which kids compete by quickly stacking and unstacking plastic drinking cups? Like me, you probably missed that night of NBC's Olympics coverage. Here's an amazing video (WMV format) of a little girl setting a new world's record in speed stacking. After that, she went on to become a millionnaire, running a shell game on the streets of New York City.
Years ago, while leaving a bowling alley, I accidently walked through a large, unmarked plate glass window that was right next
to the glass exit door. It happened in such slow motion that I had time to think that someone was playing a joke on me by somehow
pushing my nose flat against my face. Then, what seemed like a few seconds later, I saw large shards of glass slowly waterfall
right in front of my face. The joke ended and time sped back to normal when I watched one of those shards slice down into
my left knee. Now researchers who are familiar with stories like mine are studying whether people have the ability to
control time with their minds.
To me, it would make more sense to hypothesize that the human brain, when it senses danger, goes into some sort of turbo mode
(possibly fueled by adrenaline). In that state, it processes data much faster than normal, thus giving the impression that time has
slowed down. At least that's what my brain does. Turbo mode ON! (Quickly looks around...) Turbo mode OFF!
It's probably the most technically advanced article to which I've linked in a long time, but for those of you who need to know, Tech Section: How To Troubleshoot Any Networking Problem contains a lot of valuable information.
If you like optical illusions, you'll love 61 Optical Illusions & Visual Phenomena, and you'll really love Real Time 3D Illusion. Just don't stare at them for too long, or you might get a real 3D headache.
Did you know that the British Royal Family are shapeshifting reptilian aliens? Did you know that the Nazis landed on
the moon in 1942? Did you know that Kentucky Fried Chicken makes black men impotent? You can learn more about these and other
crazy theories in the
Top 10 Wackiest Conspiracy Theories.
No offense intended, but if the royals could shapeshift, why would they look the way they do?
In the past several months, I've received countless spam emails that pretend to be giving someone else "a really hot stock tip." The way the scam works is that I'm supposed to think that I received "inside information" by mistake, and that will make me want to invest in the company that it touts. Now, spammers and scammers are using the same techniques with answering machines and fax machines. Read "Wrong Numbers" and Stock Tips On Your Answering Machine to learn how to recognize the scams.
I hope you're aware of Ten Things That Will Change The Way We Live. Even better, I hope you've found a way to invest in a few of them.
My wife likes to watch American Idol on TV, but I usually find something else to do. I've been blessed -- or cursed, depending on your point of view -- with an unusually good ear for musical pitch, and it's frustrating to me that the show's judges can't hear that most of their favorite contestants have really poor intonation -- they do pretty well on the midrange notes, but they sing flat on the low notes and sharp on the high notes. In fact, even most popular singers don't sing on-pitch, but hardly anyone notices that Bette Midler and Cher sing flat, Celine Dion and Pavarotti sing sharp, and Streisand, Bocelli, Elvis, Diana Ross, and Madonna sing both sharp and flat. Personally, I'm not a big fan of bluegrass music, but I like to listen to Alison Krauss anyway, because her voice is unpretentiously clean and clear, and her intonation is perfect.
You're at a restaurant, trying to have a conversation with your friends or your significant other. A few feet away, a
talking head on television is loudly blabbing away about the stock market, last night's sporting events, or the atrocities du jour
in Insanestan.
Groups at other tables are multiplying the background noise by shouting at each other, trying to be heard over the television.
Wouldn't it be nice if you could surreptitiously "zap" that TV off? Now you can, with
a tiny $20 device.
If someone turns it back on, secretely turn it back off so they'll think there's something wrong with it. Then, just for fun, use
the device to turn the TV back on right before you leave.
Have you ever considered building your own PC, but were scared that it might be too difficult or technical a task for you? Using lots of closeup photographs, computer memory manufacturer Corsair shows you, step-by-step, how to build a high-performance gaming box. A few of their steps are specific to the particular hardware that they chose for their PC, and may not apply to whatever specific hardware you might choose, but if you read all of their steps, you'll have a really good idea whether or not you should try building a PC yourself.
Here's a fun idea. A guy has organized all of Billboard magazine's pop music charts, starting from 1940, so you can find out what was the #1 song on the day you were born, the day you graduated high-school, the day you got married, the day you got out of prison, or any other day.
Find out pop legend Paul McCartney's real first name, along with
the first names of other famous people.
Unfortunately, they're wrong about TV's MacGyver. His first name was Angus, not Agnus. Don't worry, I already
wrote and told them.
Do you like my site's color scheme? I spent many hours choosing these colors. If you see a color scheme that you like on any Web page, you can find out exactly what colors it uses by entering its URL at I Like Your Colors.
Back in the Frostbite State, I lived about 1/2 mile from a company whose eclectic, oddly shaped buildings looked like God had shaken them in His hands and rolled them onto the site like dice. A few of the Most Unusual Buildings On Earth have that same act-of-God look.
Even if you could solve one of them every ten seconds without stopping, it would take you 317.1 years to solve all
one billion mazes. Amazing.
Whether you're a newbie or a long-time computer user, you'll probably find things that you didn't know in How Computers Work, a detailed, illustrated book that you can view online, download, or purchase in print.
A chemical engineer in New Jersey has invented a better way to desalinate water. Good! Maybe those salt water futures that I bought will finally start to pay off. Now if I could just find someone to buy my dirt futures.
Today is
Presidents' Day in the U.S..
Traditionally, Americans spend the day celebrating the birthdays of Presidents Washington and Lincoln by purchasing mattresses,
carpeting, and electronics "at crazy low prices." I often wonder how much truth is in the unflattering caricatures
that the media portray of our presidents. It would be really educational to spend a day with one of them, to see what
they're really like in person. I just can't decide whether I'd want to get to know the dimwitted clumsy boob, the
naive ineffectual wimp, the whiny out-of-touch lapdog, the narcissistic lying adulterer, or the privileged moronic puppet.
According to its Web site, the Portable Apps Suite "is a collection of portable apps including a web browser, email client, web editor, office suite, word processor, calendar/scheduler, instant messaging client and FTP client, all preconfigured to work portably and be easy to back up. Just drop it on your portable device and you're ready to go... When your U.S.B thumbdrive, portable hard drive, iPod or other portable device is plugged in, you have access to your software and personal data just as you would on your own PC. And when you unplug the device, none of your personal data is left behind." It sounds like a perfect solution for techies, travelers and anyone who uses public computers.
Remember the Segway, the highly anticipated transporter that many people predicted would completely change the way cities would be built in the future? Now the Segway's creator has invented two devices that some people are predicting will completely change the entire world's economy in the future: a water purifier and a power generator.
If you have a teenage child, or if you remember being a teenager, you might find a lot of humor (and truth) in Rules For Students.
It's been good advice for many generations, but now a research study has shown it to be true: If you have a complex decision
to make,
sleep on it. Apparently, your
conscious mind gets confused easily and can't be trusted to correctly analyze complex data. In contrast, your subconscious mind is
good at slowly deliberating all of the details and reaching a better decision. I've always slept on major decisions and when
solving complex problems; in fact, I've been sleeping on a few for the past several weeks, and one for about six months. I also use
my subconscious mind whenever I write a new
piece or create a new presentation. After I finish my very best draft, I leave it to my subconscious to edit it while
I sleep at night. Each morning -- and sometimes even in the middle of the night -- I wake up and make several editorial changes.
After 2 or 3 days and nights of that process, "it feels like it's done," which is my subconscious' way of telling me that it is
satisfied with it.
"Thank you! Thank you! Please sit down... Thank you! You're so kind! I'm so surprised! I didn't even prepare an acceptance speech!
I am both humbled and honored to receive this prestigious international writer's award. I'd like to thank my publisher, my lovely
wife, and of course, my subconscious mind."
Like nearly all technology, they were relatively expensive when they first came out, but now, even large-capacity U.S.B flash drives (AKA Thumb Drives) are very affordable. If you're looking for excellent things to do with yours, take a look at 23 Things To Do With A Thumb Drive.
A few years ago, I saw something on TV about the dangers of using Teflon cookware, but I had forgotten why it is dangerous. Ditch Your Teflon reminded me.
Nearly everyone has experienced nightmares that are so scary that you force yourself to wake up. But have you ever had
a dream in which you knew that you were dreaming, but you chose to continue dreaming instead of waking up? Years ago,
I had a scary nightmare, in which I was about to crash my speeding car into a tree. For some reason, instead of waking up, I told
myself that since it was my dream, I could control it. So I sped through an entire dense woods by just "thinking" my car
between the trees. A few nights later, I took control of one of my dreams and flew over the little town where I lived, swooping
and soaring at will through the night sky. I still remember the "pit of my stomach" sensation as though I really was flying, and
the incredible details I saw when I looked down at moonlit houses, streets, churches, and trees. After a minute or so, I decided to
"land" inside someone's house by passing right through their roof. I looked around their living room for a few seconds and then
suddenly became very self-conscious that whoever lived there would see me. I considered making myself invisible, but I wasn't
confident that I could do that, so I woke up. Another time, I had a "falling" dream -- the kind where you're falling from a high
place, but you wake up right before you're going to hit the ground. But in that dream, instead of waking up, I chose to stay asleep
and hit the ground. It didn't hurt a bit; in fact, I think I bounced a little before I stood up and walked into a different dream
scene. Researchers call those types of self-aware experiences
lucid dreams, and once I started
having them, I had several of them, over a period of several weeks. The funny thing was, I noticed that my lucid dreams
left me feeling exhausted, like I had worked all night instead of sleeping. So, even though it had been fun, I made a conscious
decision to stop controlling my unconscious mind, and stopped having lucid dreams.
Things Everyone In IT Should Know also contains some good stuff that pretty much everyone should know.
Writing is one of my favorite things. I'm lying. Actually, writing can be a painful, meticulous process, but as I say on my Favorite Quotes page, "The agony of writing is erased by the joy of having written." So, having written is one of my favorite things. Those of you who have given birth to a child probably understand what I'm saying. If you want to be a better writer, you can find some good tips and advice in Elmore Leonard's Ten Rules of Writing, and in One Simple Rule for Improving Your Writing.
An old Frank Sinatra love song says,
I've Got You Under My Skin.
Now, one pair of young lovers
has actually done it.
While the Internet has just about any information you might want, it also provides many ways for others to steal your identity. Prevent that from happening by learning 6 Ways To Protect Your Online ID.
This weekend, instead of watching TV or reading a book, why don't you read a script, or even act out some scenes with a group of your friends? Simply Scripts has "links to hundreds of free, downloadable scripts, movie scripts, screenplays, and transcripts of current, classic and maybe a few soon-to-be-released movies, television, anime, unproduced and radio shows." You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talkin' to? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here.
If you could generate about one million amps of electricity, what would you do with it? One guy uses it to
shrink coins.
Cool.
Although it was written for professional Web developers, 10 Things A Web Developer Should Do For The Client would also make a great to-do list for anyone who has their own Web site.
A UK man went bankrupt turning his apartment into a replica of the Star Trek Starship Voyager. And his wife left him, too. Insert your own lame geek joke here.
Over the years, millions of people have received scam email messages, claiming to be from some royal Nigerian guy, offering
millions of dollars in exchange for helping him transfer some money out of his country. But first you had to send him some "good
faith" money, or your bank account information. Apparently, a lot of greedy people fell for that scam. The other day, a court in
Lagos convicted one of those Nigerian scammers of 48 crimes and
sentenced him to 376 years in prison.
Let's hope he won't have Internet access in prison.
Happy Valentine's Day. How much do you know about the history of Valentine's Day?
Ford is working on a hybrid F-150 pickup truck that stores excess energy in hydraulic cylinders, a process that is 300% more efficient than storing it in batteries. Even though the new truck would weigh 65% more than a Toyota Prius, it would get the same 60 miles per gallon in the city as the smaller vehicle. That's 4 times the mileage of a gasoline-only F-150.
Are you mentally bright and physically energetic? Sorry, we can't use you. We're looking for someone who's mentally bright but physically lazy.
U.S. immigration officials arrested a Haitian woman who was carrying a human head in her airline luggage to ward off evil spirits. She was charged with "failing to declare the head on a customs form and transporting 'hazardous material'." Let this be a lesson to you. To avoid problems when you go through U.S. Customs, be sure to declare the human heads in your luggage, and remember to keep them in sealed plastic bags.
Okay, It's a dumb little diversion, but when we're checking the TV Guide channel, my wife and I like to read the
scrolling list vertically, to see if we can combine the names of the programs on two adjacent channels into one funnier
program name. Tonight, on channels 14 and 15, I found the best one I've ever seen: The Anatomically Correct World of...
Government Access Programming.
Beginners' guides for Windows XP often contain interesting information that might even be useful to experts. See if 99 Performance Tips for Windows XP contains information that you could use.
When you switch off an electric light or appliance in your home, the electricity typically stops instantly. It was a whole different story when someone switched off 500,000 volts of electricity. And if you like that, you'll love High Voltage Sparks and Arcs.
Former Apple Computer evangelist, Guy Kawasaki, offers some really good advice on being an admirable person, in
How to Be a Mensch.
Long-time readers of this Journal know that I've wanted to switch my main PC from Windows to some version of Linux for the past few years, but I haven't yet found a user-friendly Linux distro that meets my needs. My Linux Desktop describes one guy's positive experience in switching from Windows XP to Kubuntu Linux. He doesn't do all of the tasks that I do on my computer, and he does do a bunch of tasks that I never do, but his article gave me a few ideas to try some day.
This one is worth looking at just for its photos of the world's 3 largest man-made islands in the world -- The Palm Islands of Dubai.
Someone built a ten-foot-long lens, attached it to a camera with a shutter speed of 1/100-millionth of a second, and took some
interesting
Photos of the First Few Microseconds of an Atomic Blast
from seven miles away. Please do not try this at home.
If you want to become a better writer, How to Write Successfully for the Web contains some good advice. My own personal advice is that writing is like any other activity: if you want to get better at it, do it all the time -- and it's a lot easier to be a good writer if you learn to be a good thinker first.
Have you seen the next level of virtual reality? Download and watch this amazing WMV video of a man demonstrating how his company's technology seamlessly adds 3D animation to live video.
Rapper and controversy addict, Kanye West, says that the Bible should be revised,
so that he can be in it.
I guess he doesn't realize that he's already mentioned in the first half of
Proverbs 17:7.
Every month, millions of people visit the Microsoft Update site, to download and install all the latest Windows security fixes. If you have more than one Windows computer, or if you've ever had to reformat your computer's hard drive and reinstall Windows, then you know what a pain it is to have to re-download all of those Windows updates over and over. Well, from now on, you can download and burn a security and critical update CD from Microsoft. That way, you'll have all of the current updates on a CD, to make it fast and easy to install them onto multiple computers and to reinstall them onto a computer after you've reinstalled Windows.
Where do you live? Where do you wish you lived? Sperling's Best Places makes it easy to compare several important factors from all kinds of places in the U.S., to help you find your best place.
You've probably met some pretty strange people over the years, but I bet none of them were anywhere near as strange as
The Top 10 Most Eccentric People.
A couple of months ago, an 8-year-old boy climbed Mount Everest. (Why wasn't that kid in school?) If you think that's impressive, an 85-year-old woman is planning to climb Mount Everest some time this Spring, along with her little dachshund, Daisy. Of course she is; and I'm planning to walk to the moon with my little dachshund, Max.
Murphy's Law says that anything that can go wrong, will. Now there's a Murphy's Law Calculator that will tell you the odds of something going wrong in a particular situation. Ironically, the more you count on the calculator to be right, the higher the odds are that it will be wrong.
A Swiss company has developed an entirely new type of sleeping pill that
increases REM sleep.
When asked for his reaction to the new drug, REM frontman, Michael Stipe, said, "It's too bad they went to all that trouble --
we're shiny happy people, and we already get plenty of sleep."
Are you still using expensive commercial software on your PC? You might be able to replace some of it with free open source software.
My wife's and my dream home has once again surpassed our expectations. Our county considers 12 inches of rainfall within 24 hours to be a 100-year event. Last Friday, we got close to 15 inches of rain in only 8 hours, and even though the water was 3 feet deep in some neighborhoods, we stayed high and dry.
A commercial spin-off of the British Ministry of Defense has patented an ink-jet printer cartridge filled with
exploding ink. It's safe in
liquid form, but becomes explosive when it dries. What's the best type of paper to use with exploding ink? Bond... James Bond.
A Japanese company says that the blood that it manufactures is sterilized and will not carry bacteria or viruses. If it gets approved for human use, the man-made blood should alleviate the world's blood shortage. Let's all hope it also satisfies the unspeakable cravings of the world's living dead.
Highly intelligent people call it heuristics. Everyone else just calls it good advice. Mental Heuristics is a lot of good advice.
A group of British scientists have voluntarily
infected themselves with hookworms,
to see if it cures their asthma and allergies. You may remember that a few years ago, the same group of scientists used
leeches on themselves to see if they could suck out evil spirits.
In older versions of Windows, if you were unable to delete a file because Windows said it was in use, you could reboot your computer to a DOS prompt and manually delete the file before restarting Windows. Windows XP doesn't give you that DOS-booting option, so it can be very difficult to delete files that XP thinks are in use. It's a good thing someone has written a series of steps that describe how to delete files in Windows XP.
It seems to make a lot of sense. Instead of chasing a bad guy at high-speed, which often puts innocent people in danger, police will soon have the ability to shoot a GPS device onto the fleeing car, and then track its movements on a computer. Unfortunately, what will probably happen is that as soon as the bad guy sees that the police are no longer chasing him, he'll ditch his GPS-ed car and carjack a different vehicle.
Speaking of cars, what ever happened to the prediction that we'd all be driving
flying cars
by the year 2000? I haven't even seen a prototype yet, but apparently,
somebody's already got one.
It took him 35 years to do it, but an 82-year-old man has invented an extremely efficient, ecologically friendly transmission that could be used in everything from a blender to a helicopter, and would increase every automobile's gas mileage by 20-30 miles per gallon. Take a good look, because this will probably be the last time you ever see or hear anything about it.
If you had already read Speed-Reading Techniques, then you would have already finished reading this introduction to it, too.
According to researchers who studied their brain waves, Democrats and Republicans both tend to
ignore any facts that they disagree with,
and make their decisions based on their own prejudices. No matter what the research says, I don't think that's true.
Is a brain parasite named Toxoplasma altering the personalities of three billion people? Maybe.
Inspired by the horrendous damage inflicted by hurricanes and other natural disasters, architects and builders are creating new building materials and designing storm-proof homes.
Leave it to New Yorkers to think of a new way to
annoy each other.
Everyone who lurks or participates in online forums, chatrooms, or collaborative communities has seen them many, many times: posts that contain no intelligent reasoning or discussive value, but still manage to "stir up" other participants' emotional responses. No Opinions? No Problem offers tongue-in-cheek advice on how to write useless posts.
A few weeks ago, I took my dog, Mini, to the vet to get her teeth cleaned -- a surgical procedure that requires dogs to be under general anesthesea. Afterward, it took 3 weeks of antibiotic treatment to get rid of the nasty upper-respiratory infection that she caught during that procedure. Maybe some day, a newly developed dental device will reduce dogs' (and humans') need for dental cleanings.
I've never used illegal drugs, and I'm sure you haven't either, so this next question is purely hypothetical. If you had a bunch of marijuana, and someone you knew stole it from you, would you report the robbery to the police?
WESTERN UNION
STOPS SENDING TELEGRAMS
STOP REFOCUSES MAIN BU.S.INESS ON MONEY TRANSFERS STOP CHANGES NAME TO WESTERN UNION FINANCIAL SERVICES INC STOP MU.S.T STOP WRITING
THIS WAY STOP
A device driver is a piece of software that enables Windows to communicate with a specific device, like a sound card, a modem, or a printer. If you install a device driver in Windows XP, it will load and use up some of your system's resources every time XP starts, even if you don't use that particular device any more. Fortunately, you can remove unused devices in Windows XP.
If you're looking for some very interesting conversation starters, or if you enjoy strange trivia, Weird Facts is the site for you. I wonder if all of those things are true, because everyone knows that 37.52% of all facts published on the Internet are made up by the people who publish them.
See if you can find me in this article on Fox News, where I thank the author for writing this other article.
With an estimated net worth of $47 billion (U.S.D), Microsoft's Bill Gates is so rich that his tax return
causes a problem
for the U.S. government. According to Gates, "My tax return in the United States has to be kept on a special
computer because their normal computers can't deal with the numbers." I have a similar problem with my tax return. When I
type my measly yearly income into my tax software, it says, "You're kidding, right?"
A few weeks ago, I saw a show on PBS in which a woman told how to make money by selling things on eBay. I didn't watch the whole show, but the part that I saw contained some good ideas. You can get much the same information by reading Secrets Of Selling On eBay.
You're at a movie, in a restaurant, or standing in line at the bank, and someone a few feet away is talking loudly on their cell phone, oblivious to the fact that they're bothering everyone around them. Have you ever wished that you could somehow "zap" their phone and end their conversation? Well, there's a device that can do it, but no one knows if it will ever be legal for use in the U.S..
Several years ago, I researched the possibility of investing in a company that developed biometric authentication systems. The field was relatively new at the time, with many competitors and no obvious "best technology," so I chose not to invest in that company. Now a team of university researchers has discovered that Play-Doh Can Foil 90% Of Most Fingerprint Scanning Security Systems, like the ones used at Costco, Target and Wal-Mart. As disturbing as that sounds, it's even more disturbing to think that criminals have their own teams of university researchers.
Here's a brain teaser to test your intelligence. Don't worry if you can't figure it out -- many people can't. Give
yourself two minutes to answer the following question, then highlight the answer area below to see the correct response.
Question: Why has
February always been the shortest month of the year? Answer: Because February has always
had fewer days than the other months. Were you intelligent enough to not let the pre-question information make you doubt the
obvious answer?