I don’t really know exactly what this means for you. I don’t really know what it means for me either. But I thought I’d just take the time to mention that WordPress just went up in version number which has got mean something groovy. Now if only I could figure out what.

New Orleans, Louisiana (CNN) — BP said Wednesday that efforts to contain and clean up oil gushing from a ruptured pipe in the Gulf of Mexico have made a “measurable difference” even as Louisiana’s governor announced that thick, heavy oil has begun polluting the state’s wetlands and estuaries.

Doug Suttles, BP’s chief operating officer for exploration and production, said at a news conference that the company is “very pleased” with the performance of an insertion tube that was put in place over the weekend to suck crude oil from the well and funnel it to a surface vessel.

The flow rate from the tube has reached 3,000 barrels of crude (126,000 gallons) and 14 million cubic feet of gas a day, Suttles said, adding that crews hope to increase those numbers in coming days.

He said favorable weather conditions have also played a major role in cleanup efforts. About 14,000 barrels of oily water was skimmed Tuesday, and 50 percent of that mixture was oil, he said, adding that crews continue to deploy boom and conduct controlled burns.

But Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana says the efforts haven’t stopped oil from reaching his state’s coastline. Thicker, heavier oil than seen in previous days has blanketed some of the state’s precious interior wetlands, he said, and he called for the Army Corps of Engineers to approve an emergency permit to dredge sand from barrier islands to create sand booms as another line of defense.

“These are not tar balls, this is not sheen, this is heavy oil that we are seeing in our wetlands,” Jindal said.

(more at CNN.com)

It’s been a very active weekend here in my life. It all started once I got off work Friday (though that was busy as hell too.) Courtney came over and we watched Zombieland. Yes, I know I haven’t been updating my MOVIESIGN! page like I wanted to. Just so much gets in the way. The movie is very very good though and I had a great time. A bit more sadness than usual after taking her home. I guess it’s just I feel like I need some closeness right now and am not getting as much as I’d like.

Saturday started early as I changed rooms with my sister and her kidrockboyfriend. It went smoothly enough, though it did take a lot of the day. Sadly my Windows XP machine died in the process. When you press the on button, it sounds almost like a car trying to start up, but never doing so. Another bad thing was that kidrockboyfriend felt he had to go all redneck and burned the bags of ancient stuff I was going to be throwing away. We’re talking childhood and teenage stuff that really ought to have been gone already. So that was pretty awful and bad environmentally.

That evening was DJ Tony Moran at Heretic. While I expected lots of my friends to go, not a single one did. Fortunately, like, a thousand other boys did so I was not alone. The place has changed so much in the last 6 months with all the remodeling. It almost looks classy. The music was good and I just danced my heart out until 4am. Yup, he went an extra illegal hour. Oooooh! I also gave my number to this Latin guy who asked for it. I’d seen him once before on a Wednesday a week ago. We’ll see.

Sunday started early as mom wanted to go to grandmothers and I was thinking since I’d lost my XP machine, maybe my uncle could help me partition my Windows 7 machine and have both operating systems on one computer. Sadly, that didn’t work out so well. Eventually I ended up with a new version of Windows 7 than the one I started with. THAT actually has been working out well. Rather than the 64bit Home Edition, I now have a 32bit Enterprise Edition. It seems to be running my programs that I’d been having a lot of problems with better. But that whole process to get things back to comfortability took until 3am this morning.

Of course, severe thunderstorms came down at 6am this morning, so it’s not like I got much sleep. And there was the truck I had to unload at work at 9am this morning.

So it’s really just been a non-stop kind of thing. I think now that I got most everything situated now, I can go to sleep. Zzzzzzz.

SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Microsoft on Monday had pulled a portion of a Kin video ad showing a teenager “sexting” a photo of his bare chest using the technology giant’s new smartphone.

“Microsoft has deleted the inappropriate portion of the Kin video,” the US firm’s SaferOnline Team said in an apologetic message posted at microblogging service Twitter. “We take sexting very seriously, and are sorry it happened.”

Microsoft last week unveiled a new line of Windows-powered mobile phones called “Kin” aimed at young users which emphasize social networking.

The company came under fire in blog posts at Consumer Reports and other online outlets for the ad that appeared to promote “sexting,” the sending of nude photos of oneself using camera-equipped smartphones, in a Kin ad.

The ad showed a teenage boy taking a picture under his shirt and then sending it to a nearby girl in an email.

Really? Really? Is this what we’re becoming?

Andrey Ternovskiy is at the centre of a bidding war. The 17-year-old Russian is sitting on one of the internet’s hottest properties since Facebook and wealthy investors are offering millions to buy the concept. But the teenager is not selling — not yet, anyway.

Mr Ternovskiy is the creator of Chatroulette, a site that allows users to make random connections with strangers — to see and to speak to them — anywhere in the world. When people visit the site, their webcam is automatically switched on and they are linked to another user.

After this, there are no rules. People can speak through a video link, try to entertain one another, or — as is invariably the case — click “next” to find a more interesting stranger.

Since its launch last November with 500 users, Chatroulette has grown at breakneck speed and now has ten million visitors a month. The expansion has caught the eye of investors who want to buy into the web’s next big thing.

(more at Times Online)

Sony’s PlayStation Network is on the fritz. Microsoft’s Xbox Live network has had its problems. And there was that one Wii system software update that was turning consoles into pretty looking paperweights.

It’s times like this, as we dissect failures in digital entertainment technology, when we have to ask the question: Is it too soon to blame digital rights management?

Two console generations ago, problems like this would have been inconceivable, or at least wouldn’t have had the kind of domino effect they do today. The current PlayStation bug (which is believed to be due to the inclusion of trophies in firmware v2.40) affected games, rented movies, and access to both Netflix streaming and the company’s online storefront–all things that continue to work without issue for users of the newer PS3 Slim hardware. You’d simply never get this kind of problem back when the only thing you could use your system for was to play something off a disc or a cartridge.

Though the main problem is less about progress and more about the security countermeasures put into place to keep consoles or users from doing something they shouldn’t. Using digital rights management has become one of the easiest ways to do this, though it can also make things more difficult for the consumer.

And while DRM may not end up being the culprit in Sony’s snafu, the situation is a startling reminder of how little control we have over these little boxes that are sitting in our living rooms. That’s by design though. All three of the big console makers (Sony, Microsoft, and Nintendo) use various types of security to make sure people do not run downloadable games or content that they have not purchased.

(CNet has more)

As someone who is starting to feel his opinions change about super-techno conglomerate Google, I certainly was interested in reading all about their new Gmail feature called Buzz. Adding Web2.0 Social Networking to my email sounded like a really bad idea. Turns out? It probably is and you’ll want to make sure to turn it off too.

Check here for more and to turn off your gmail buzz, go to the bottom of the screen and look for the words “Turn off Buzz” (it’s right next to “turn off chat”)

Endeavour’s predawn blastoff Sunday begins the final countdown to retirement of the storied spaceships this year, leaving only a few opportunities left to see a shuttle launch in person.

“I’m trying to motivate as many people as I can right now to go and see one of these last handful of shuttle missions that are left and actually see the glory or more importantly just to feel the kind of palpable excitement that everyone has when they actually see humans launch on a big vehicle like the space shuttle and get into orbit,” says Bob Behnken, the lead spacewalker on Endeavour’s crew.

Witnessing the spectacle of a space shuttle launch, its Earth-shaking departure from the Florida spaceport on seven million pounds of thrust, is truly an awe-inspiring sight to behold.

The technological marvel that is the space shuttle, the most complicated machine man has ever produced, leaves the planet with humans strapped inside on the power generated from the controlled explosion of rocket fuels, accelerating from zero to 17,500 miles per hour in less than nine minutes time.

“It’s a different feeling when you watch people launch into space than it is when you watch a Delta or an Atlas rocket take off,” Behnken said.

“So I think that aspect for anybody who’s actually been to a human launch is something that’s always going to be memorable for them. We all watch differently, I think, even if it’s just on the television when we know there are people at the pointy end of that rocketship, that folks are doing something hard and it’s really critical that everything goes smoothly.”

Sunday morning’s planned 4:39 a.m. EST liftoff of Endeavour could be the last shuttle launch to occur at night. If the projected schedule for the four remaining flights later this year remains unchanged, those missions will have morning and afternoon launch times.

Night launches are special treats, lighting up the dark with a man-made sunrise of golden flame. The shuttle streaks across the sky trailing a fiery plume 400 feet wide and 700 feet long from its solid rocket boosters that can be spotted from hundreds of miles away.

(more at Spaceflight Now)

WASHINGTON — Think your kid is not “sexting”? Think again. Sexting — sharing sexually explicit photos, videos and chat by cell phone or online — is fairly commonplace among young people, despite sometimes grim consequences for those who do it.

More than a quarter of young people have been involved in sexting in some form, an Associated Press-MTV poll found.

That includes Sammy, a 16-year-old from the San Francisco Bay Area who asked that his last name not be used.

Sammy said he had shared naked pictures of himself with girlfriends. He also shared naked pictures of someone else that a friend had sent him.

What he didn’t realize at the time was that young people across the country — in Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania — have faced charges, in some cases felony charges, for sending nude pictures.

“That’s why I probably wouldn’t do it again,” Sammy said.

Yet, “I just don’t see it as that big of a problem, personally.”

That was the view of nearly half of those surveyed who have been involved in sexting. The other half said it’s a serious problem — and did it anyway. Knowing there might be consequences hasn’t stopped them.

“There’s definitely the invincibility factor that young people feel,” said Kathleen Bogle, a sociology professor at La Salle University in Philadelphia and author of the book “Hooking Up: Sex, Dating and Relationships on Campus.”

“That’s part of the reason why they have a high rate of car accidents and things like that, is they think, `Oh, well, that will never happen to me,’” Bogle said.

Research shows teenage brains are not quite mature enough to make good decisions consistently. By the mid-teens, the brain’s reward centers, the parts involved in emotional arousal, are well-developed, making teens more vulnerable to peer pressure.

But it is not until the early 20s that the brain’s frontal cortex, where reasoning connects with emotion, enabling people to weigh consequences, has finished forming.

Beyond feeling invincible, young people also have a much different view of sexual photos that might be posted online, Bogle said. They don’t think about the idea that those photos might wind up in the hands of potential employers or college admissions officers, she said.

“Sometimes they think of it as a joke; they have a laugh about it,” Bogle said. “In some cases, it’s seen as flirtation. They’re thinking of it as something far less serious and aren’t thinking of it as consequences down the road or who can get hold of this information. They’re also not thinking about worst-case scenarios that parents might worry about.”

Sexting doesn’t stop with teenagers. Young adults are even more likely to have sexted; one-third of them said they had been involved in sexting, compared with about one-quarter of teenagers.

Thelma, a 25-year-old from Natchitoches, La., who didn’t want her last name used, said she’s been asked more than once to send naked pictures of herself to a man.

“It’s just when you’re talking to a guy who’s interested in you, and you might have a sexual relationship, so they just want to see you naked,” she said, adding that she never complied with those requests.

“But with my current boyfriend, I did it on my own; he didn’t ask me,” she said, adding that she was confident he would keep the image to himself.

Those who sent nude pictures of themselves mostly said they went to a boyfriend, girlfriend or romantic interest.

But 14 percent said they suspect the pictures were shared without permission, and they may be right: Seventeen percent of those who received naked pictures said they passed them along to someone else, often to more than just one person.

Boys were a little more likely than girls to say they received naked pictures or video of someone that had been passed around without the person’s consent. Common reasons were that they thought other people would want to see, that they were showing off and that they were bored.

Girls were a little more likely to send pictures of themselves. Yet boys were more likely to say that sexting is “hot,” while most girls called it “slutty.”

Altogether, 10 percent said they had sent naked pictures of themselves on their cell phone or online.

Criminal charges aren’t the worst consequences. In at least two cases, sexting has been linked to suicide. Last year in Cincinnati, 18-year-old Jessica Logan hanged herself after weeks of ridicule at school; she had sent a nude cell phone picture to her boyfriend, and after they broke up, he forwarded the picture to other girls.

And three months ago, 13-year-old Hope Witsell hanged herself, after relentless taunting at her school near Tampa, Fla. She had sent a nude photo of herself to a boy she liked, and another girl used his phone to send the picture to other students who forwarded it along. The St. Petersburg Times first reported on Hope’s death this week.

Other teenage suicides have been linked to online bullying, also a subject of the AP-MTV poll. Half of all young people said they have been targets of digital bullying.

That can mean someone wrote something about them on the Internet that was mean or a lie, or someone shared an e-mail or instant message that was supposed to be private. Less often, it can be more serious, such as taking pictures or video of someone in a sexual situation and sharing it with others.

The AP-MTV poll was conducted Sept. 11-22, and involved online interviews with 1,247 teenagers and adults ages 14-24. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 2.8 percentage points.

The poll is part of an MTV campaign, “A Thin Line,” aiming to stop the spread of digital abuse.

The survey was conducted by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone and mail polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.

(Ed note: Ah yes, your body is dirty. Your body is sinful. Shame! Shame! Shame!Send all your sexting pictures to pixiesticks@gmail.com)

In a stunning random blow towards transgenders, a Chinese MMO has set up a gender verification process to prevent boys from playing girl characters and vice versa.

But seriously, how good can it be in a society when everyone looks the same?

Haha! Ow! OWWW! Why are you hitting me!

Love love love Windows 7 over all. Yeah, it’s taking some getting used to. I mean you have to change some of your habits and make new ones using the features now at your fingertips. (For instance, that “show desktop” square sure is a long ways away on this big long new flat screen.)

There are more than a few of my, let’s call them Legacy Programs, that are unable to even install on this machine. I don’t know if there is some sort of trick to get them to work or not.

This means I’m losing some of the most basic, yet very functional programs I like to use. AOL Press and Paint Shop Pro 3 to name a couple.

I think instead of ditching my old machine, I should keep it and use it for some little work I need to go back and do from time to time. I mean, just look at that gawd awful banner I made for the NaNoWriMo book sale? Yeah, I don’t know how many 3 dollar downloads something that ugly will inspire.

Maybe out of sheer pity of it’s hideousness, perhaps.

Otherwise, it’s been a mighty good 24 hours or so with the new machine. Got MANY day to day things that I love my computer for up and running in no time flat. It’s good to see a blazing speed again. It really is. And there’s nothing wrong with a flashy new operating system either. Hell, I even made some spreadsheets to help work on those finances I’ve kind of side stepped in order to get this machine.

Of course, NaNoWriMo is just mere days away and you better believe I have THAT file created and ready to go.

Because this is what paying for the interwebs would look like if we didn’t have it:

Pixie got a new computer tonight. Yeah, it’s pretty effing exciting considering the other one is like five years old. So, um, I’ll be working on getting things moved over from one computer to the other.

Here’s the specs:

20 inch flat screen monitor (Mine was 17 and more liek FAT screen)
2.3GHz AMD Sempron
2GB DDR2 RAM
250GB hard drive
NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE video card. (Hurrah, no more integrated!)

Anyway, I gotta go continue getting it up to my high standards of usability and I probably need to learn more about Windows 7. Still, SO EXCITED!!!

Windows 7 is coming and they released a really cheesy MST3K worthy short instructional video to show you how you can hold a release party. Well, damnit if someone didn’t make it better.

riminals running an ATM card-skimming scam made a big mistake this week: They tried to hit the Defcon hacker conference in Las Vegas.

As the conference was kicking off a few days ago, attendees noticed that at ATM placed in the Riviera Hotel, which plays host to the annual event, didn’t quite look right, according to a senior conference organizer who identified himself only as Priest. “They looked at the screen where there would normally be a camera,” he said. “It was a little bit too dark, so someone shined a flashlight in there and there was a PC.”

The ATM looked like a working system, but when people would put their cards in the machine, it would scan their card information and record the PIN numbers they entered. He didn’t know how long the ATM had been at the Riviera.

Conference organizers notified local law enforcement who hauled away the machine on “Thursday or Friday,” said Priest, who said he works as a “civil servant” in his day job.

Credit card skimmers — small devices installed on top of card readers to steal information — and fake ATM machines are a common problem. Once the criminal records the card information and PIN number, he can use that to create a fake ATM card and then empty the victim’s account.

Previously unsophisticated criminal gangs are increasingly using these devices, Priest said. “They’re realizing that this is a great way to make money without getting caught.”

The criminals probably didn’t realize that they were installing their ATM in a hotel that was soon going to be flooded with more than 8,000 security professionals, he added.

They were smart enough to place the machine in one of the few spots in the hotel where there was no security camera to catch them, Priest said. “It was literally right next to the hotel security entrance.”

When goliath AT&T went mano-a-mano with a tiny site called 4chan.org, perhaps AT&T didn’t realize what it’s like to start a fight online. Things have gone from bad to worse to downright despicable ever since AT&T, in a move it said was meant to protect one of its customers from a Web-based attack, blocked access to the 4chan site. Here is what happened.

On Sunday AT&T blocked access to portions of 4chan.org, an image-board Web site that allows users to post uncensored images and content anonymously. Soon after the blockade was detected by 4chan.org its founder Christopher “Moot” Poole posted a statement to the 4chan site complaining about AT&T’s actions and urged 4chan users to “call or write (AT&T) customer support and (AT&T) corporate immediately” to complain about the blocking.

Next, in a statement posted to its Web site Monday, AT&T claims that one of its customers was affected by a DoS (denial of service) from multiple IP addresses related to the 4chan image-board Web site. AT&T has subsequently lifted the block on 4chan (/b/ & /r9k/) and says it continues to monitor for DoS activity.

Interestingly enough, and raising serious Net neutrality issues, is the fact that Poole claimed on his site’s status blog AT&T never contacted him regarding the blockade. To some 4chan users and Net neutrality advocates the blockade had the appearance that AT&T may be blocking 4chan because of content posted on the site, and not for security issues. That is claim AT&T loudly disputes.

Late on Sunday, sometime midway through the ban, a report surfaced on both CNN iReport and Digg claiming that AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson was dead (thank you Businessinsider for the image ). It’s not clear whether this was a 4chan users prank. The iReport suggested Stephenson was found “delirious” outside his home after a party with “male dancers everywhere and the best blow west of Mississippi.”

The prank report also said Stephenson went into a coma in transit, probably due too massive cocaine use. The CNN iReport was taken down shortly after it emerged, although several hundred users voted for the story on Digg.com. Shortly after, personal contact details of AT&T senior staff appeared online, with users being encouraged to contact them regarding the 4chan block.

In today’s statement, AT&T said it didn’t block 4chan because of the uncensored and unfiltered content it features and insisted malicious traffic was to blame.

Poole has posted an update to the saga on his 4chan site’s blog. He is toning down his rhetoric explaining the AT&T and 4chan blockade was all a big mix up. He explains that in 4chan’s effort to thwart a DDoS attack against 4chan (not AT&T) it unintentionally created the appearance to to AT&T network administrators that it was the source of a DDoS attack. Now Poole says he doesn’t blame AT&T for blocking access to 4chan stating in the blog entry: “In the end, this wasn’t a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s part.”

TOKYO (AP) – Her uniform looks good, with striped scarf and blue cap in perfect order, but railway employee Mitsue Endo has one thing to do before she faces the masses—pass the smile test.

Endo, who works at hectic Shinagawa Station in central Tokyo for Keihin Express Railway Co., sits in front of a laptop computer with a digital camera mounted on top. At first she is a bit grim-faced, and the verdict from the company’s smile-rating software is instant and candid.

“Smile: 0″ pops up on the screen.

She breaks into a broad grin and the computer responds cheerfully, giving her a score of 70.

The company has installed the system to help employees check their smiles before heading out to face customers. The test is optional, but at major stations like Shinagawa, the 250,000 riders who pass through per day can be rushed and agitated, and a happy face can go a long way.

“Smiling helps our interaction with the passengers. I think the atmosphere becomes more relaxing with a smile,” says Endo, whose job includes helping lost customers find their way and dealing with ticketing mishaps.

Keihin uses the software at 15 of its 72 stations, concentrating on the busier locations.

Taichi Takahashi, who works in public relations at the train operator, says it gives employees a chance to examine themselves before they go to work.

“I don’t think that we have had much opportunity to stare at our faces that close and for that long to check our facial expressions until now,” he said.

Time Warner Cable Inc. is shelving its plan to bill customers based on how much Internet traffic they generate, following mounting public and political outcry.

Time Warner Cable’s capitulation doesn’t bode well for the future of metered billing of the Internet, in which people who use more bandwidth pay more.

Frontier Communications Corp., a Time Warner Cable rival in one key test market, Rochester, N.Y., also has dropped its plans for metering Internet use.

(Ed note: This is good news. Already in the United States our internet experience is less than that of many European and Asian countries. We need faster and more, not slower and costs extra.)

If I’ve done it right you should be able to subscribe to pixiesticks’ blog as a feed. Apparently you could have done this the whole time over on shotalicious. I’m not really one to know much about feeds, though I’m sure they’re a lot more useful than tweets. (Or so I’ve been told.)

President Obama spoke of economic calamity and war last night in that solemn rite of democracy, the address to the joint session of Congress. And lawmakers watched him with the dignity Americans have come to expect of their leaders: They whipped out their BlackBerrys and began sending text messages like high school kids bored in math class.

“One doesn’t want to sound snarky, but it is nice not to see Cheney up there,” Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) announced as Obama entered the chamber.

“I did big wooohoo for Justice Ginsberg,” Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) broadcast, misspelling the name of the ailing Supreme Court justice. McCaskill could be seen applauding with BlackBerry in one hand.

“Capt Sully is here — awesome!” announced Rep. John Culberson (R-Tex.), spotting the US Airways pilot in the gallery.

Then there was Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.), in whose name this text message was sent at about the time the president spoke of the need to pull the country together: “Aggie basketball game is about to start on espn2 for those of you that aren’t going to bother watching pelosi smirk for the next hour.” A few minutes later, another message came through: “Disregard that last Tweet from a staffer.”

(more at the Washington Post)

(Ed note: As someone who runs two websites complete with comment sections and tag-board, as someone who has a facebook profile and a group for one of the two websites I run, even I have to say enough is enough… I am sick and tired of these motherfucking tweeters on my motherfucking internets!

No. We really don’t care what you are doing EVERY MINUTE OF EVERY WAKING DAY OF YOUR MISERABLE EXCUSE OF YOUR LIFE. If you really were that interesting, you’d need more than 140 characters to tell us.)

Eight is the average age at which children are given their first mobile phone, according to a survey in the UK.

More than a third of children (35 per cent) own a mobile by the time they are that age, the charity Personal Finance Education Group (pfeg) discovered.
Its survey also found that three-quarters of all children aged seven to 15 owned “at least” one mobile.

The charity’s survey highlighted how early children now become financially aware – with peer pressure forcing them to get to grips with money to afford mobile phone ringtones, call costs and computer games.

It found that children as young as seven were offering to do chores in exchange for cash to buy ringtones.

But researchers were also told that by the age of 10, children were shopping online using their parents’ debit or credit cards.

A third of children (32 per cent) have used the internet to buy computer games.

A quarter of the 546 children surveyed have voted in television competitions, which can often cost £1 or more to enter.

But only 18 per cent have bought a book online.

Wendy van den Hende, chief executive of the charity, said: “Children today face a kind of ‘technological tipping point’ forcing them to develop financial awareness at an earlier age.

“It is therefore, vital, that they are equipped with the skills and judgment to make sound decisions about money management from an early age.”

The research also found that average weekly pocket money now stands at £6.32.

The online survey carried out by Populus questioned 1,435 people including 546 children aged seven to 15, 676 parents and 759 grandparents between January 16 and 26.

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (AP) — Computer users doing Google searches during a nearly one-hour period Saturday were greeted with disturbing but erroneous messages that every site turned up in the results might be harmful.

The company blamed the mistake on human error and apologized for any inconvenience caused to users and site owners whose pages were incorrectly labeled.

The glitch occurred between 9:30 a.m. EST and 10:25 a.m. EST, Google Inc. said in an explanation on its company blog. Anyone who did a Google search during that time likely saw the message “This site may harm your computer” accompanying every search result, the company said.

Google said it routinely flags any search results with that message if the site is known to install malicious software in the background or otherwise surreptitiously, a practice aimed at protecting its users. It gets its list of suspicious sites from StopBadware.org, a nonprofit project headed by legal scholars at Harvard and Oxford universities who research consumer complaints.

Saturday’s error happened when the latest update to the list was received from StopBadware but was checked in erroneously in such a way that the warning would apply to all URLs, the company said in a statement.

The glitch was caught by on-call staff and the file was quickly fixed, Google said. Since the updates are applied in a staggered and rolling fashion, the errors began appearing at 9:27 a.m. EST and disappeared no later than 10:25 a.m. EST, with the duration for any particular user approximately 40 minutes, it said.

“We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in to prevent it from happening again,” said Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, in the statement.

(Ed note: Well considering what I’ve been posting on shotalicious.org this week, I suppose it wasn’t really a mistake.)

SILVERADO CANYON, Calif., Jan. 11 (UPI) — A California father says he discovered his 13-year-old daughter sent 484 text messages per day last month — one message every 2 minutes of every waking hour.

Greg Hardesty of Silverado Canyon, Calif., told the New York Post his 440-page cell phone bill revealed his daughter Reina had sent an astonishing 14,528 text messages.

“First, I laughed. I thought, ‘That’s insane, that’s impossible,’” said Hardesty, 45, a reporter for The Orange County Register. “And I immediately whipped out the calculator to see if it was humanly possible.”

Hardesty said Reina had messaged a core of “four obsessive texters,” all girls between the ages of 12 and 13. Luckily, he was on an unlimited text messaging plan or his bill would have been $2,905 at a rate of 20 cents per message, the Post reported.

Hardesty told the newspaper he and his ex-wife have placed restrictions on Reina’s cellphone use, ruling she cannot text after dinner.

When it comes to texting, it appears Reina has much in common with a New Zealand teenager. It was reported last month that Hannah Brooke, 16, of Wellington frequently uses up the 6,000 messages she’s allowed each month and borrows phones from friends to keep on texting.

(Ed note: I’d hit it.)

Arguably the strangest gizmo of election night was on CNN: the “hologram.” It didn’t really add anything to the proceedings except a bizarre flashback to Princess Leia and R2D2 in “Star Wars.”

Jon Stewart had a field day mocking it Wednesday night, as did bloggers online since the technology was “unveiled.” Take Don Reisinger of the The Digital Home on Cnet:

Allow me to explain something to those who probably also get excited about buying a new hammer or watching a new Starbucks open up in their neighborhood: the “hologram” technique made the show look shoddy and stupid, and made Ms. [Jessica] Yellin look like a well-designed video game character.

Here’s engadget’s thoughts:

If you’ve been keeping your eyes fixed on CNN as this election unfolds, then by now you’ve seen Wolf Blitzer doing a “hologram” interview with Jessica Yellin. Not only does this technology seem completely creepy, but it’s without a doubt one of the most useless and unnecessary pieces of phantasmagoric TV ever enacted.

Gizmodo explains the technology:

-35 HD cameras pointed at the subject in a ring

-Different cameras shoot at different angles (like the matrix), to transmit the entire body image

-The cameras are hooked up to the cameras in home base in NY, synchronizing the angles so perspective is right

-Correspondents see a 37-inch plasma where the return feed of the combined images are fed back to them.

-Twenty “computers” are crunching this data in order to make it usable

Washington bureau chief David Bohrman attempted to justify the technology to Wolf Blitzer:

Well, I think it was an ornament on the tree. The heart of our coverage yesterday was calling the races, projecting the presidency and covering those amazing moments last night but television evolves and how we do things evolves and maybe at some point five years or 10 years or 20 years down the road, I think there is going to be a way that television does interviews like this, because it allows for more intimate possibility for a remote interview.

BEAVERTON, Ore. – A new invention could revolutionize solar energy – and it was made by a 12-year-old in Beaverton.

Despite his age, William Yuan has already studied nuclear fusion and nanotechnology, and he is on his way to solving the energy crisis.

It all started with Legos – after he learned nanotechnology to make robots take off. The seventh grader then got an idea inspired by the sun.

“Solar it seems underused, and there are only a few problems with it,” Yuan said.

Encouraged by his Meadow Park Middle School science teacher, the 12-year-old developed a 3D solar cell.

“Regular solar cells are only 2D and only allow light interaction once,” he said.

And his cell can absorb both visible and UV light.

“I started to realize I was actually onto something,” Yuan said.

At first, he couldn’t believe his calculations.

“This solar cell can’t be generating this much electricity, it can’t be absorbing this much extra light,” he recalled thinking.

If he is right, solar panels with his 3D cells would yield nine times more sunlight and absorb 10 percent more energy from the sun – even when it’s cloudy.

“Which would make solar energy actually a viable energy source for the Pacific Northwest,” Yuan said.

While college students have come up with unusual solar cars and the state of Oregon recently unveiled solar panels to power highway lights, Yuan is thinking global.

“It’ll have a really positive impact on society and the environment,” he said.

His next step is to get a manufacturer and market it.

Yuan is flying out to Washington D.C. on Monday to accept a $25,000 scholarship for his research. He earned the Davidson Fellow award, which normally goes to a graduate student.

>> John McCain picked a chick as his VP nomination. Now it’s being revealed that that woman has a preggers 17 year old. Oh, and the VP choice Mrs Palin is totally against anything other than abstinence as a baby preventing method. Oopsie.

>> With Hurricane Gustav winding down, Tropical Storm Hanna runs along the islands in the Caribbean. Landfall could occur in South Carolina by midnight Friday. Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Ike is in the mid-Atlantic hanging out. He was quoted as saying, “Babhabha baa cookie monster.”

>> Time Warner will join Comcast in capping the internet usage of “high end” users. America’s series of tubes will soon get a lot less free flowing.

>> Google is putting out a web browser. It’s called Chrome and it’s supposed to be designed for how the internet works in more modern times. But are they tracking your surfing information? Oooooooh.

Huge OH CRAP moment. I decide to password my computer. It freezes up during the process of making stuff private.

I figure, well it’s been a while since my computer’s been off, so reboot.

When I finish rebooting the computer, login screen appears.

I type in the password. No go.
Despite it being an extremely easy password for me.
No. No. No. No. No!

Thankfully I reboot in safe mode as Admin and nix the password.

I’m thinking the freeze up forced the computer to save a null password.

Suffice to say instead, I think I’ll buy a lock for my door.

A cellphone ringtone that chants “condom, condom!” has been launched in India to promote safe sex and tackle the growing HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The “condom a cappella” has been designed to break down Indians’ reluctance to discuss condom use and to make wearing a condom more acceptable.

Organisers of the campaign, funded by the foundation set up by Microsoft mogul Bill Gates and his wife Melinda, hope the ringtone will become a craze among young Indians.

About 2.5 million people live with HIV in India, said the BBC World Service Trust, the charity behind the ringtone, which was released this month. It can be downloaded at condomcondom.org.

“Ringtones have become such personal statements that a specially created condom ringtone seemed just the right way of combining a practical message with a fun approach,” said Radharani Mitra, creative director of the BBC World Service Trust.

“The idea is to tackle the inhibitions and taboos that can be associated with condoms.”

India is the world’s fastest-growing mobile telephone market with 270 million users according to the latest official figures, up 57 percent in just one year.

Despite making a text message to my roleplayer partner in crime around 3pm this afternoon, the display on my Virgin Mobile Oystr went dark. It never recovered. The cheap ass phone which retails for like 10 bucks, lasted me several years and was just the perfect little phone for me.

I fortunately was quickly able to get a Virgin Mobile Marbl which is going to take some getting used to. I mean, how will I get over the fact I won’t have a 1 inch antenna sticking out the top. Though I did kind of like the way it jabbed me sometimes like a slender shota’s schlong.

The new phone cost a mere 13 dollars. (It was on sale from 20 at Target.) So at least I’m still slumming the bottom rung of the cell phone food chain. Honestly, the only thing I need my cell for is emergencies, to call customers/work on rare occasions, and to trade text messages with friends.

So speaking of which, I lost all my numbers. That’s like the biggest pain in the ass. While I don’t shed any tears for all of those motherfuckers who gave me their number and never answered my calls, I do wished I’d had my contacts written down somewhere. Like on -gasp- paper?

If anyone is out there reading my site who’s phone number I used to have or should now have, please let me know. Email me at pixiesticks@gmail.com. And don’t let losing your entire contact list happen to you!

This public service announcement brought to you by Virgin Mobile. (Not really.)

TOKYO – She is big-busted, petite, very friendly, and she runs on batteries.

A Japanese firm has produced a 38 cm (15 inch) tall robotic girlfriend that kisses on command, to go on sale in September for around US$175, with a target market of lonely adult men.

Using her infrared sensors and battery power, the diminutive damsel named “EMA” puckers up for nearby human heads, entering what designers call its “love mode”.

“Strong, tough and battle-ready are some of the words often associated with robots, but we wanted to break that stereotype and provide a robot that’s sweet and interactive,” said Minako Sakanoue, a spokeswoman for the maker, Sega Toys.

“She’s very lovable and though she’s not a human, she can act like a real girlfriend.”

EMA, which stands for Eternal Maiden Actualisation, can also hand out business cards, sing and dance, with Sega hoping to sell 10,000 in the first year.

Japan, home to almost half the world’s 800,000 industrial robots, envisions a $10-billion market for artificial intelligence in a decade.

TOKYO – Japanese youngsters are getting so addicted to Internet-linking cell phones that the government is starting a program warning parents and schools to limit their use among children.

The government is worried about how elementary and junior high school students are getting sucked into cyberspace crimes, spending long hours exchanging mobile e-mail and suffering other negative effects of cell phone overuse, Masaharu Kuba, a government official overseeing the initiative, said Tuesday.

“Japanese parents are giving cell phones to their children without giving it enough thought,” he said. “In Japan, cell phones have become an expensive toy.”

The recommendations have been submitted from an education reform panel to Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda’s administration, and were approved this week.

The panel is also asking Japanese makers to develop cell phones with only the talking function, and GPS, or global positioning system, a satellite-navigation feature that can help ensure a child’s safety.

About a third of Japanese sixth graders have cell phones, while 60 percent of ninth graders have them, according to the education ministry.

Most mobile phones in Japan are sophisticated gadgets offering high-speed Internet access called 3G, for “third-generation.”

But the panel said better filtering programming is needed for Internet access to protect children.

Some youngsters are spending hours at night on e-mail with their friends. One fad is “the 30 minute rule,” in which a child who doesn’t respond to e-mail within half an hour gets targeted and picked on by other schoolmates.

Other youngsters have become victims of Internet crimes. In one case, children sent in their own snapshots to a Web site and then ended up getting threatened for money, Kuba said.

Cell phones tend to be more personal tools than personal computers. Parents find that what their children are doing with them are increasingly difficult to monitor, Kuba said.

Some Japanese children commute long distances by trains and buses to schools and cram-schools and parents rely on cell phones to keep in touch with their children.

Parents typically pay about 4,000 yen ($39) a month for cell phone fees per child.

Japan boasts a relatively low crime rate compared to other industrialized nations, but some people are concerned that the Internet could be exploited for serious crimes.

For the past fifteen years, Internet service providers have acted – to use an old cliche – as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet.

But ISPs may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop.

At a small panel discussion about digital piracy here at NBC’s booth on the Consumer Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and telecom giant AT&T said the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level.

Such filtering for pirated material already occurs on sites like YouTube and Microsoft’s Soapbox, and on some university networks.

Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider – Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright.

“What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for AT&T.

Mr. Cicconi said that AT&T has been talking to technology companies, and members of the MPAA and RIAA, for the last six months about implementing digital fingerprinting techniques on the network level.

“We are very interested in a technology based solution and we think a network-based solution is the optimal way to approach this,” he said. “We recognize we are not there yet but there are a lot of promising technologies. But we are having an open discussion with a number of content companies, including NBC Universal, to try to explore various technologies that are out there.”

Internet civil rights organizations oppose network-level filtering, arguing that it amounts to Big Brother monitoring of free speech, and that such filtering could block the use of material that may fall under fair-use legal provisions — uses like parody, which enrich our culture.

Rick Cotton, the general counsel of NBC Universal, who has led the company’s fights against companies like YouTube for the last three years, clearly doesn’t have much tolerance for that line of thinking.

“The volume of peer-to-peer traffic online, dominated by copyrighted materials, is overwhelming. That clearly should not be an acceptable, continuing status,” he said. “The question is how we collectively collaborate to address this.”

I asked the panelists how they would respond to objections from their customers over network level filtering – for example, the kind of angry outcry Comcast saw last year, when it was accused of clamping down on BitTorrent traffic on its network.

“Whatever we do has to pass muster with consumers and with policy standards. There is going to be a spotlight on it,” said Mr. Cicconi of AT&T.

After the session, he told me that ISPs like AT&T would have to handle such network filtering delicately, and do more than just stop an upload dead in its tracks, or send a legalistic cease and desist form letter to a customer. “We’ve got to figure out a friendly way to do it, there’s no doubt about it,” he said.

If you’re younger than 35, you’ll probably live long enough to put David Levy’s prediction to the test. Levy says that by 2050 we’ll be creating robots so lifelike, so imbued with human-seeming intelligence and emotions, as to be nearly indistinguishable from real people. And we’ll have sex with these robots. Some of us will even marry them. And it will all be good.

Levy lays out his vision of a Brave New Carnal World in Love and Sex With Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships, which, despite its extended riffs on sex toys through the ages, is a snigger-free book. Levy’s no Al Goldstein. Rather he’s a 62-year-old British chess master turned artificial-intelligence expert persuaded that robot sex can brighten the lives of many, many unhappy people. “Great sex on tap for everyone, 24/7,” he writes on the final page of the book. What’s not to like?

“Chess” and “sex” aren’t words that normally share the same sentence, but in Levy’s case, the one led to the other. A keen chessman since boyhood, by the time he got to St. Andrews University he played at the international level. At the university he got interested in computers and the challenge of programming machines to play chess. Eventually he earned international recognition for his work on chess-playing computers and natural-language software, and in the mid ’90s headed a team that won the Loebner Prize, widely regarded as the world championship of conversational software. Today he owns a firm that develops electronic hand-held brain games.

Designing computers that talk like humans naturally led to the larger question of how humans interact with robots, which are nothing more than computers with arms and legs and a head. The Japanese have taken the lead in developing “partner robots,” machines that, for example, might do household tasks for elderly people. But if you could invent a robot that serves cocktails, could you not invent a robot that would make a superior bedmate?

It sounds like a mighty tall order. A machine with skin that feels like ours? With our physical dexterity? And, most important, with a mind like ours – imperfectly rational, sometimes emotionally intelligent, sometimes emotionally dumb?

“I think it’s a reasonable assumption,” Levy said in a telephone interview from his home in London. He lays out his case in a voice that’s calm, rational, almost flat, more geeky than goatish.

“If one looks at the advances in technology in the last, say, 40 or 50 years, they’ve been immense, and the more we learn about the science and the technology, the quicker it will be to discover even more within that science.”

Smart money never bets against technological advances, but it helps if you stack the deck. “The automaton simulates man when man has been defined in an automaton’s way,” literary critic Hugh Kenner wrote. Is that what Levy does?

“I take a pragmatic point of view,” he said, “partly because in my original field, computer chess, that was how the problem was solved.” Not by making machines that thought like chess masters but by making machines that beat chess masters. Similarly, Levy thinks, robots need only “simulate” human intelligence and emotions “to the point that they are absolutely convincing.” If you can’t tell whether the thing is man or machine, what difference does it make? You’ll treat it as if it were alive. The rest is philosophical hairsplitting.

So who will avail themselves of 21st-century sexbots?

Sad cases, for one, people so physically unattractive or anti-social or isolated or emotionally crippled that they have trouble finding human romance. People who love their computers more than their fellows. Hey, they’re out there already.

“They’re lonely; they’re miserable,” Levy said. “I think society will be a much better place when they have an alternative that satisfies them without doing any harm to other people.”

Add in those who have a satisfying sexual relationship but are simply curious and somewhere between 20 percent and 50 percent of the population will experience man-machine mating at least occasionally, Levy predicts.

He respects the fact that plenty of people, out of moral or religious conviction, will contemplate this with horror.

“But by and large,” he said, “it will be very good for society, very beneficial, and I think that will be the majority view within a relatively short space of time.”

Sexbots may put prostitutes out of business, he notes.

Near the end of the book Levy alludes to a set of vexing questions. If robots become utterly humanlike, must we not treat them as more than machines? So if you marry a robot, can it inherit your estate? If you catch it boffing the mail carrier, can you toss it out with heavy trash? If your robot pops your neighbor in the mouth, who does your neighbor sue?

Levy admits he doesn’t know the answers.

“There are lot of questions here that need a great deal of discussion and consideration from people who are much wiser than I am in the field of ethics, philosophy and law. Clearly the law makers and the lawyers are going to have a field day debating these issues.”

He expects the impetus for creating sexbots to come from the sex-toy industry rather than, say, MIT. Already a Japanese sex-doll manufacturer has announced plans to market a doll with electronics in it, and Levy has read that Japanese companies are working to produce sex robots for people living in outlying fishing villages.

“I think the Japanese are probably working on this more than one would realize from the little that’s been published so far,” he said.

Levy has been amazed at the publicity the Love and Sex With Robots has generated since its release last month. He’s done a dozen radio interviews and a TV interview. Howard Stern raved about the book. So far, no hate mail.

Would Levy himself have sex with a robot? He doesn’t have to ponder the question.

“If there was a robot of the sort I describe in the book, I would certainly want to experience using it for sex, and I wouldn’t regard it as anything untoward,” he said. “I would do it out of curiosity. Not that I have a need for a new sex partner. I’m happily married.”

And the wife would be OK with this?

“Yes, yes, and if she wanted to try one I wouldn’t have a problem with that. I would regard it as genuine scientific curiosity.”

Johnny Chung’s site

SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) — Online pornography hunters’ Internet adventures are already fraught with danger from malicious code many porn sites use to commandeer visitors’ machines or steal personal data.

Now comes a scheme some researchers say amounts to extortion: One site’s threat to disable visitors’ computers with relentless pop-up ads if they don’t pay for a subscription they were automatically signed up for after a free trial.

The threats, reported this week by researchers at security vendor McAfee Inc.’s Avert Labs, affect people who visit the Web site and download software to access a free three-day trial membership.

Visitors do get free access for three days, but the download includes code that then generates a stream of pop-up windows, when the user is online and offline, demanding payment of roughly $80 for 90 days’ worth of additional access.

The windows stay open up to 10 minutes and appear once a day. They appear on top of any open windows and restore to their original size if shrunk or moved, making them impossible to ignore. They also reappear if the computer is rebooted.

The site actually warns visitors they will be billed as full members — and lose full use of their computers if they don’t — unless they cancel the subscription within the trial period. But the warning appears in the full terms and conditions statement, which downloaders aren’t required to read.

Once the fees are paid, the software can be removed with a special file.

“What it appears they are doing is, in my humble opinion, a form of extortion based on the (usually correct) assumption that a person’s computer will be key to many other activities in their daily life,” McAfee researcher Seth Purdy wrote on the Avert Labs blog.

The A380 may have the world’s first airborne double bed, but it won’t be put to the obvious use if Singapore Airlines has its way: “If couples used our double beds to engage in inappropriate activity, we would politely ask them to desist,” said the company’s Stephen Forshaw. “There are things that are acceptable on an aircraft and things that aren’t, and the rules for behaviour in our double beds are the same ones that apply throughout the aircraft.”

In any case, the plane is as yet unchristened: Tony and Julie Elwood from Perth, Australia had booked the first A380 double suite, but hardly had a moment of privacy for a romantic kiss, let alone anything raunchier, as a parade of journalists came knocking on their door. Even so, they weren’t too impressed with Singapore’s strait-laced attitude. “So they’ll sell you a double bed, and give you privacy and endless champagne — and then say you can’t do what comes naturally?” asked Tony, a vigorous 76. “Seems a bit strange.”

“They seem to have done everything they can to make it romantic, short of bringing round oysters,” said Julie, 51. “I’d say they shouldn’t really complain, should they? Though I don’t think they’ll have anything to worry about from us — the flight is so busy with people coming to see the suites, we wouldn’t have the opportunity.”

New York — Confronted by iPhone owners outraged by their costly gadget’s rapid price drop, Apple Inc. CEO Steve Jobs offered a rare apology Thursday and promised early buyers a $100 credit.

The high-end, 8-gigabyte iPhone model debuted in June, with customers lining up and eagerly slapping down $599 for the much-anticipated device.

Jobs announced Wednesday that the price would drop to $399, surprising industry watchers and angering early adopters who spent the next day venting their frustrations on the Internet.

“I have received hundreds of e-mails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale,” Jobs wrote in a letter posted to the Apple Web site.

“Even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price,” he said. “We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.”

Jobs said customers who paid full price for iPhones from Apple or AT&T Inc., with no rebates, will be offered a $100 credit good at Apple’s retail or online stores. He said more details will be provided next week.

Before Jobs’ apology, Apple’s official position had been that only customers who purchased iPhones within the last 14 days were able to get refunds of the price difference. That was no solace to people who rushed out to be among the first iPhone owners.

“Those of us who like to have things immediately pay a premium, but (the price cut) seemed a little severe,” said Melanie Goux, a broadcast designer from Atlanta, who got her high-end iPhone the second day after it went on sale.

She said the $100 credit helps, but, “I’d rather take the money and be able to credit it toward my phone bill.”

Price cuts are common in the cellphone business, but customers do not expect them for at least six months, said Jeff Kagan, an independent telecommunications analyst.

“Sometimes when customers expect one thing and you deliver something else it can bite you in the rear end,” Kagan said.

Jobs said in his letter that this holiday season, the biggest sales time for the wireless business, Apple has a chance to “go for it.”

“It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone ‘tent,’” he said. “We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that.”

Kagan questioned whether a consumer-savvy company like Apple could have been taken by surprise by the reaction to such a dramatic price cut.

“They didn’t announce they were going to give back $100 until all of this hit the wall,” Kagan said. “Did they come up with the $100 today or was that part of the plan and they held back to see if the publicity was negative?”

IPhone owners peppered online forums and blogs with debate about whether the price cut was justified. Some people were furious, while others told of mixed results trying to get refunds or credits by phone or at Apple stores.

After the Jobs apology, many said they felt relief. Others were just dazed.

“It’s like I’ve been stabbed in the back by my best friend and now he’s apologizing,” one poster wrote on the Unofficial Apple Weblog site. “I’ll take the 100 bucks, be happy and never speak of this, but I’ll never trust him again.”

Hybrid embryos containing both human and animal material could be created in British laboratories within months.

The controversial research was given a green light yesterday by the UK’s fertility regulator.

A shortage of human eggs led scientists to seek permission to make hybrid embryos from human skin cells and animal eggs such as those from cows, which are plentiful in slaughterhouses.

Two teams of scientists are poised to start making cow-human hybrids for research into incurable diseases, with at least one project expected to start by the end of the year.

Stem cell expert Dr Stephen Minger, who wants to use the embryos to study conditions such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and motor neurone disease, said the work could “revolutionise drug discovery”.

But the decision by the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority is likely to be subject to a High Court challenge, with opponents claiming the watchdog is not entitled to rule on the issue.

Josephine Quintavalle, of the campaign group Comment on Reproductive Ethics, said last night: “There is a sense from some people that scientists should never be stopped in their tracks.

“Reproduction with animals has been taboo since the beginning of recorded time and that taboo has remained with us for a reason.

“This is tampering at a very basic level.”

Britain is one of the first Western countries to approve such research.

Many AT&T wireless subscribers who slapped down $500 or more for the must-have Apple gadget are just now discovering how big that bill can be. Not the dollar amount, but the sheer physical size.

Internet message boards and blogs are buzzing with talk of paper iPhone bills dozens and even hundreds of pages long. So why is a phone bill so big it needs to be delivered in a box?

San Antonio-based AT&T Inc. itemizes not just phone calls and text messages on its bills, but every data transfer when the handset connects to the network. Much of that happens invisibly as people automatically check e-mail or visit Web sites.

With all the iPhone’s online capabilities, that can add up to a lot of paper.

Justine Ezarik, a graphic designer and blogger from Pittsburgh, posted a video of herself unpacking a 300-page iPhone bill that came in a cardboard box.

Ben Kuchera, gaming editor for the technology Web site Ars Technica in Chicago, said he received a 34-page double-sided bill. He describes himself as a “light” iPhone user and said his bill is likely typical.

“It’s this mind-numbingly long itemized list that tells you nothing,” Kuchera said. He said the bill refers to almost every item simply as “data” that costs nothing under the unlimited access plan.

With Apple being known for elegant design and for being “control freaks making sure they have a hand in every step of the product, I have to imagine somewhere (Apple CEO) Steve Jobs is just aghast at this,” Kuchera said.

While the iPhone brand popularity has drawn attention to these monthly statements, AT&T has long used this billing method.

“It’s no different than with any other bill for any other device or any other service that we offer,” said Mark Siegel, a spokesman for AT&T’s wireless division in Atlanta. “If you do a lot of wireless data and consume a lot of bandwidth, that part of your bill is going to be bigger.”

Receiving the detailed bill is the default option for AT&T subscribers unless they specify otherwise, Siegel said. He said customers can sign up by phone or online for electronic billing or a less detailed paper bill that summarizes charges.

AT&T offered electronic-only billing to new iPhone customers when they signed up, Siegel said.

“It needs to be up to the customer — how much or how little detail they want,” he said. “If you don’t want it, that’s fine. Just let us know.”