If you have missed knowing about the 'declaration of war' from Anonymous, Jess Lee does a good job of summarizing the story. In short: some people don't like the Church of Scientology and have been waging a virtual war on the Church's various electronic presences. After some of that, someone called for a live action: protesting in front of CoS facilities. It happened this weekend.
posted to MetaFilter by phearlez at 9:53 AM on February 11, 2008 (171 comments)

Both Find a Flu Shot and Flu Clinic Locator will let you punch in a date & zip code and find a bunch of locations near you in the U.S. selling the vaccine. For the first time in three years there's plenty to go around. The CDC estimates that everyone who might want one will be able to get one. And you probably want one. According to wikipedia "36,000 people per year in the United States die from influenza, and 114,000 per year are admitted to a hospital as a result of influenza. According to estimates by the World Health Organization, between 250,000 and 500,000 die from influenza infection each year worldwide." That's 5 to 10 times as many civilian casualties as the Iraq conflict in 1/3 the time. [more inside]
posted to MetaFilter by phearlez at 3:01 PM on October 5, 2006 (50 comments)

Microsoft acquires Winternals Software. It's impossible to know what the repercussions will be, but you can be sure it won't take long for every possible worst-case scenario to be predicted. Any why wouldn't it? The possible loss of invaluable FREE tools like the Registry Monitor, Process Explorer, Port Monitor and File Monitor is a little scary - both have saved my developer hide on several occasions. Will they get folded into Vista? Will they still be available as PowerToys? Unknown. "Microsoft is still evaluating the best way to leverage the many different technologies that have been developed by Winternals" The site's a little slow right now - I wonder if that's people madly downloading copies of the current versions out of fear they'll go away any moment?
posted to MetaFilter by phearlez at 10:39 AM on July 18, 2006 (49 comments)

Virtual Tresspassing is yet another Google maps mashup, but one of the minority (at least that I have found) that let you add markers of your own that are persistent and visible to others. Is it at all useful? Who cares, I was a cute kid and I don't have to risk PMITA prison like a common street tagger - I can be leet and from da streetz while remaining a pasty-faced geek.
posted to MetaFilter by phearlez at 10:20 AM on April 19, 2006 (10 comments)

Our desire for the freakshow is on the wane, or at least it seems that way based on some recent closings. Is it the difference in admission costs? If the EH's relative value calculator is to be believed, that 1841 dime museum should only cost about $2.10 to get into in 2003, not five bucks. Even for free on MetaFilter only about twenty people care to discuss freaks. Perhaps we've just gotten used to seeing this kind of thing on sponsored television and don't want to travel to see it. It's certainly not because our tastes have gotten so much more evolved. Perhaps our threshold for how whack something has to be before we consider it freakish has been raised somehow...
posted to MetaFilter by phearlez at 8:57 AM on November 28, 2005 (12 comments)