SurfiOnline

AUSTRALIA took a step towards building the world’s tallest structure, a solar electricity plant measuring 1000 metres, as experts reported that it would be commercially viable.

The tower would be visible 100 kilometres away and would create 1200 jobs during construction, falling to 50 thereafter.

It would stand atop a transparent solar collector seven kilometres in diameter. It works by heating air at the base – which is about 30 degrees celsius hotter than air at the top of the tower and the resulting convection force creates a powerful updraft which generates clean power, enough to service 200,000 houses.

Anyone for the pent-house suite?

Read More World’s tallest tower for Oz?

Microsoft has quietly circulated the specifications for its next-generation Xbox video-game console, indicating how the company plans to carry on its war against dominant player Sony.

Microsoft launched its Xbox console 20 months after the PlayStation 2 debut. By the time Microsoft sold 1.5 million consoles, Sony had sold more than 20 million PlayStations. To date, Microsoft has sold 13.7 million Xboxes, while Sony has sold more than 70 million. In the United States alone, console sales amounted to $3 billion in sales last year.

News Source and Specifications: Mercury News

The MyDoom virus has triggered a new wave of attacks on company websites. It is also looks like a new front in a war waged by those who want to preserve the open-source Linux operating system.

But, in the case of the MyDoom computer worm, the motivation seems clearer.

It has attacked a company based in Utah called SCO, bringing down its website with a barrage of data sent from countless computers into which the worm had been insinuated, unbeknownst to the users.

News Source and Read More: BBC News

Stressed up? Like popping bubble wrap?

Well, you should feel right at home here:

http://fun.from.hell.pl/2003-11-24/bubblewrap.swf

For those of you with th need for a counter, as well as a timer, try the following version:

http://www.virtual-bubblewrap.com/bubble-wrap.swf

It doesn’t sound quite like bubble wrap, but its still very satifying.

Got Bubble Wrap?

NEW YORK—Linux is everywhere. it’s in your Web server. It’s in your data center. It’s in your desktop, your laptop and your handheld. It may soon be in your car and home appliances. It’s being used by NASA to operate the Mars rover.

“In the early 1980s, we saw the transition to the PC, but I believe Linux has now matured to the point where it will be taking over as the next form of computing,” said Sam Greenblatt, senior vice president and chief architect of Computer Associates International Inc.’s Linux Technology Group, in Islandia, N.Y. “We are into the Linux generation.”

News Source: eWeek – What’s Next for Linux

[Thanks to CookieRevisted for bringing this to my attention]

On February 2, Microsoft released a critical security update to eliminate newly discovered vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer that could allow remote code execution.

This cumulative security release applies to all flavours of the NT Operating System above NT4, as well as Microsoft Windows XP.

Read the Microsoft Windows Security Bulletin Summary for February 2004 for more information.

- You’re likely to survive any battle in any war unless you make the mistake of showing someone a picture of you sweetheart back home.
- Should you wish to pass yourself off as a German officer, it will not be necessary to speak the language. A German accent will do.
- The Eiffel Tower can be seen from any window of any building in Paris.
- People of TV never finish either their drinks or their cigarettes.
- A man will show no pain while taking the most ferocious beating but will wince when a woman tries to clean his wounds.

- When paying for a taxi, never look at your wallet as you take out a note – just grab one at random and hand it over. It will always be the exact fare.
- If you lose a hand, it will cause the stump of your arm to grow by 15cm.
- Kitchens don’t have light switches. When entering a kitchen at night, you should open the fridge door and use that light instead.
- During all police investigations, it will be necessary to visit a strip club at least once.
- Mothers routinely cook eggs, bacon and waffles for their family every morning, even though the husband and children never have time to eat them.
- Cars and trucks that crash will almost always burst into flames.
- A single match will be sufficient to light up a room the size of a football stadium.
- If a killer is lurking in your house, it’s easy to find him. Just relax and run a bath – even if it’s the middle of the afternoon.
- Medieval peasants had perfect teeth.
- Although in the 20th century it is possible to fire weapons at an object out of visual range, people of the 23rd century will have lost this technology.
- All single women have a cat.
- Any person waking from a nightmare will sit bolt upright and pant.
- Even when driving down a perfectly straight road, it is necessary to turn the steering wheel vigorously from left to right every few moments.
- One man shooting at 20 men has a better chance of killing them all than 20 men firing at one.
- Creepy music coming from a graveyard should always be closely investigated.
- If a phone line is broken, communication can be restored by frantically beating the cradle and saying, “Hello?, Hello?”
- Most people keep a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings – especially if any of their family or friends has died in a strange boating accident.
- It does not matter if you are heavily outnumbered in a fight involving martial arts – your enemies will wait patiently to attack you one by one by dancing around in a threatening manner until you have knocked out their predecessor.
- When you turn out the light to go to bed, everything in your room will still be clearly visible, just slightly bluish.
- Dogs always know who’s bad and will naturally bark at them.
- Police departments give their officers personality tests to make sure they are deliberately assigned a partner who is their total opposite.
- When they are alone, all foreigners prefer to speak English to each other.
- Action heroes never face charges for manslaughter or criminal damage despite laying entire cities to waste.
- No matter how badly a spaceship is attacked, its internal gravity system is never damaged.
- If there is a deranged killer on the loose, this will coincide with a thunderstorm that has brought down all the power and phone lines in the vicinity.
- You can always find a chain saw whenever you’re likely to need one.
- Rather than wasting bullets, megalomaniacs prefer to kill their arch-enemies using complicated machinery involving fuses, pulley systems, deadly gases, lasers and man eating sharks that will allow their captives at least 20 minutes to escape.
- Having a job of any kind will make all fathers forget their son’s eighth birthday.
- All bombs are fitted with electronic timing devices with large red readouts so you know exactly when they’re going to go off.
- It is always possible to park directly outside the building you are visiting.
- Guns are like disposable razors – if you run out of bullets, just throw the gun away. You can always buy a new one.
- Make-up can safely be worn to bed without smudging.
- A detective can only solve a case once he has been suspended from

The MyDoom computer virus knocked out SCO Group’s Web site on Sunday, and the company expects the massive denial-of-service attack to continue until Feb. 12.

SCO said an onslaught of data had made its usual Web site, www.sco.com, “completely unavailable.” The attack began Saturday night and by Sunday morning the software company’s site was completely flooded with requests, Utah-based SCO said.

“This large-scale attack, caused by the MyDoom computer virus that is estimated to have infected hundreds of thousands of computers around the world, is now overwhelming the Internet to requests www.sco.com,” Jeff Carlon, SCO’s director of information technology, said in a statement Sunday.

News Source & Read More: CNN News
Virus Information: W32.Novarg.A@mm

Welcome to the ultimate blog of nothingness. I decided to set this blog up for afew reasons actually.

1. To give Matt something to read and waste his time on the internet at, instead of the GRCB website.

2. Give me a place to post my rants, raves and all of the rest, along with the latest news of course.

3. To try and make a layout which uses no images, and all CSS.. i suceeded!

Anyway, welcome to surfiOnline. I am sure you will find something here that is interesting for you at some stage, maybe in the next few years or something.

The blog software i am using for this site is called bBlog (PHP and MySQL). I would recommend anyone check it out if they are after a very customisable blog system which is also very powerful.. http://www.bblog.com

Anyway, thats it for now.

Chris