Scuttlebutt Pipeline

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It started out as a test in Phoenix, Arizona, but after 90% of the travelers showed a preference for a whole body image scan versus a full body pat down, the whole body imaging machines are being rolled out at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York and the Los Angeles International Airport in California soon after. The Transportation Security Administration will be purchasing, at least, another thirty machines to be placed at various U.S. airports this year.¹

The TSA claims that the images are non-invasive, the faces are blurred to protect one’s privacy, and the person (screener) viewing the travelers is situated in an enclosed booth and cannot see the passengers faces as they enter the machine or leave it. They also assure travelers that images are not stored at all.²

It truly seems like TSA is watching out for traveler’s privacy rights while, at th same time, using the best methods available to keep security tight. At least until you read this segment in the CNN article:

Travelers will continuously and randomly be selected to go through the machine. While signs will inform them of the pat-down option, screeners will not announce that choice. But passengers electing not to go through the millimeter wave machine will be given the option of the pat-down.

We know people are notorious for not reading or paying attention to signs. So if you don’t believe you have a choice in the matter and are told you have to go through the body scan machine or kiss your flight goodbye, what are you going to do? The machine of course! Now if that isn’t underhanded and sneaky I don’t know what is.

1. Taken from this CNN article. For more details, please read this article. [↩]
2. Read this article to get a better understanding on how it works. [↩]

UltimateCoupons.com’s blog, Everybody Loves Coupons, is holding their very first contest and boy oh boy is it a sweet prize - your very own Nintendo Wii!

To enter, all you have to do is write up a small blog entry about the contest, in this post you need to mention that Everybody Loves Coupons is having a contest to win a Nintendo Wii, link back to their blog, and include a text link to their main page with either the phrase “coupons” or “coupon codes”. Once that’s done just drop them an email with your blog’s title and url and you’re entered. It’s that simple. For more details and prize list please see their official contest post.

After you’ve entered, why not browse around their main site which offers a variety of coupon codes from numerous merchants in a wide range of categories?

I have always been a big fan of Japanese cellphones. They’re light years ahead of any model you can get here in the US in terms of function, capabilities, and durability. This just proves it:

The handheld phone, equipped with various devices that can measure your pulse or the amount of steps you’ve taken in a day, dispenses heath advice after you’ve punched in statistics such as gender, age and weight.

And you can also exhale into the phone and it will tell you whether its time to reach for the breath mints.

You can read the rest of the article here. Now while I’m all for being concerned with one’s health I have to raise an eyebrow at the breath tester function bit of it. That just might be going a bit too far.

Of course, if you’re a vampire it might be nice to test people’s breath and see if they’ve eaten garlic recently.

Some of you may recognize the term “Message Sequence Chart” from your school days. It was that annoying technique that teachers loved to make us all use to show how we were going to go about a certain project or paper. That technique was incorporated into what is known as the Unified Modeling Language (UML) diagram and is most commonly referred to as a “Sequence Diagram”.

For some of you it may have been a while since you heard these terms thrown about so let me explain. A sequence diagram displays different processes, steps, or objects that exist and function simultaneously, as parallel vertical lines and horizontal arrows. This is ringing bells now isn’t it? When using this in regards to technology, it also displays the messages exchanged between them and in the order that they occur. Basical it’s the graphical representation of runtime, or if you’re doing this for a school teacher, a very annal step-by-step procedure mapping.

As you can guess, or remember maybe, these aren’t always easy to put together. And more often than not, when it comes to setting up a sequence diagram with multiple processes and messages, you’ll ind yourself making quite a few mistakes and having to start over. Using a sequence diagram tool like this one will not only make your life much easier but it’ll also save you time and money since you won’t have to spend hours revising and editing or pay someone else do create it for you.

I’m not much of a myspace user myself, but when I am there I am rather appalled at the [lack of] quality that a lot of myspace users seem to enjoy displaying on their pages. Hey, just because you have some graphics that look great means that they look great together! That’s where pagefetti.com comes in.

Pagefetti provides a wealth of Myspace layouts, backgrounds, graphics, generators, comdes, pimps, animations, and tweaks. Just about everything you need to give your page a new look that won’t blind your visitors or crash their computers. Don’t believe me? Check out the samples they have displayed right on their main page. Very nice and not at all garish. I would highly recommend that you check out their Myspace layouts, for sure.

What makes this site even more appealing is that it’s all free and there is no registration required. It’s also not limited to Myspace either, they have plenty available for Blogger and Zwinky profile pages well. Plus a fun little toolbar that you can use to find new free stuff.

As for the glitter and animations, they have those too. But remember folks, too much of a good thing can be bad, so try not to go too crazy with all of their fun and cool graphics.