23,000 dead and counting. Tsunamis as far away as Somalia.

CNN:

Nate Berkus, a regular contributor to "The Oprah Winfrey Show," said he and a friend were sleeping in a beachfront cottage at Arugam Bay on Sri Lanka's eastern coast when he heard a loud noise and the roof was ripped off.

Berkus, 33, said they were swept into the sea along with debris, animals and other people.

The two grabbed a telephone pole, he said, but lost their grips when asecond large wave hit. Berkus told CNN that he climbed onto the roof of a home; his friend was missing.

Berkus said he and about 50 other survivors -- tourists and locals -- spent the rest of the night in a field, but were without water and food. Many of the group were injured, including a pregnant woman who had broken ribs, he said.

BBC:

"...soldiers were sent to recover bodies from trees where they were dumped by huge waves, as correspondents reported the stench of death was beginning to become overpowering...

.....One man could not find dry ground to bury his wife and two children..."

I'm sure you've seen this before, but maybe those of us on /. can start our own conga. The way the deal works: click on someone's referer link, sign up, pick one of the offers and cancel it as soon as it goes through (i.e., sign up for a free month of AOL then cancel it before they bill you). It requires a credit card, but you won't be charged anything.

The conga part comes in where everyone here uses someone's link to sign up, then leaves their own link. I'm sure you can all find a family member or friend to fill in the gaps if there are any.

Free iPod
Free flat screen TV

I'll give a gmail invite to anyone who uses either of my links.

I've had my address since June. I got a new account yesterday to use for work. I noticed that on my new account the "apply label" menu has been combined with the "more actions" menu, whereas on my old account they are separate menus. I just tried refreshing and flushing the cache, but they're still different. No upgrade for older users?

Update: Three days later I tried to log in and got stuck on the "Loading..." screen. I emptied my cache and the new version (with combined menus) loaded.

Might as well jump on the bandwagon and put this in my own journal (copied and pasted from a comment in StB's). Since when did the icon for the Portables (Apple) section change? Used to be an iPod.

Songs: 4348
Artists: 276
Albums: 262 (anything not part of a full album is given "_misc", otherwise there'd be a lot more)
Size: 25.16 GB, mostly 160kbps AAC and some 192kbps MP3
Time: 16.3 days

First 5 songs:
#1 Crush - Garbage
#34 - Dave Matthews Band
#36 - Dave Matthews Band
#40 - Dave Matthews Band
#41 - Dave Matthews Band

Last 5 songs:
Zwitter - Rammstein
Zoot Suit Riot - Cherry Poppin' Daddies
Zoom - Smashing Pumpkins
Zombie - Cranberries
Zero - Smashing Pumpkins

First 5 bands:
311
4 Non Blondes
69 Boyz
A-ha
A Perfect Circle

Last 5 bands:
Zwan
Yeah Yeah Yeahs
Wyclef Jean
Wrex N Effects

Longest times (excluding audio books):
59:23 Phish - Tower Jam 8/3/03
59:13 Phish - Sound Check 8/2/03
40:33 Phish - You Enjoy Myself 10/31/95
39:04 Phish - 46 Days 8/3/03
35:41 Phish - David Bowie 12/29/04

Shortest:
0:04 Daft Punk - Voyager
0:09 Offspring - Welcome
0:13 Outkast - Spread
0:18 Phish - Ed Sullivan Intro 10/31/94
0:25 Offspring - Time To Relax

Most plays:
Postal Service - Such Great Heights - 69
Postal Service - District Sleeps Alone Tonight - 65
Polyphonic Spree - Light & Day - 61 (it's a guilty pleasure, okay?)
Hot Hot Heat - Bandages - 44
James - Laid - 44

Proudest stat: 4.2 days' worth of Phish

By now you've probably seen the ugly beige of the it.slashdot.org section. In a comment the other day, I found a neat fix. If you obfuscate the URL by changing just the subdomain (i.e., change it to http://shit.slashdot.org/) it'll display the same page but with the old (green) color scheme.

Anyone know of a way to make my browser (Firefox on Windows) intercept incoming it.slashdot.org URLs and rewrite them as xxxx.slashdot.org? Maybe something to add to my style sheet?

Thanks to Abm0raz for the invite, as well as Turg and others for offers and STB for the help.

Unfortunately there is a minimum of 6 characters, so I couldn't get patik@gmail.com (I really wanted an invite so I could get it before it was taken). Oh well. cpatik will have to do. I'm terrible at coming up with nicknames and aliases for myself, though I suppose I shouldn't use my name for everything.

When I get some invites I will post them here.

Subject says it all... I'd be really *really* happy and appreciative if I were to receive an invite :)

My e-mail is craig(at)patik(dot)com

Get it now before it gets posted on Slashdot. Once it's posted, the theme and extension sites will be impossible to reach.

Firefox

Compatible extenstions

Qute theme (the one used up until this release -- most people (myself included) find the new 0.9 theme pretty lackluster and/or ugly)

Update: is Slashdot even going to post it? I've read several modded-down AC comments in other threads about submissions being rejected all day. I guess this story was our reminder, or else Mozilla asked them to wait a couple days.

23 moderations on one post. I'm shocked that so few people share my view on Shrek.

State of the art?, posted to Shrek 2 How-To, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Interesting (+1).
...has been moderated Interesting (+1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Insightful (+1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Insightful (+1).
...has been moderated Insightful (+1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Informative (+1).
...has been moderated Insightful (+1).
...has been moderated Insightful (+1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Insightful (+1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Troll (-1).
...has been moderated Overrated (-1).
...has been moderated Troll (-1).
...has been moderated Underrated (+1).

I got 11 today, and I ended up right where I started at +2.

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (2).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Interesting (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (5).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Overrated (-1).
It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Flamebait (-1).
It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Re:Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (2).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Insightful (2).

Re:Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Re:Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Insightful (+1).
It is currently scored Insightful (4).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Flamebait (-1).
It is currently scored Insightful (3).

Re:Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Informative (+1).
It is currently scored Informative (2).

Keep it up, Europe, posted to Growing Teeth with Stem Cell Technology, has been moderated Troll (-1).
It is currently scored Insightful (2).

(minor Survivor spoiler)

Anyone else notice how network TV ads are giving away too much? Fox commercials regularly give away key points in 24's plot. Just saw an ad on CBS for Survivor, and they basically told us that the merge is happening next episode.

I know it's not the end of the world, but why do they feel the need to give things away? Might as well just wait till the last five minutes to tune in and see who gets voted off.

I know a bunch of you visit Nationstates often (or am I the only one still doing it?). You've probably cursed at that ugly giant yellow ad at the top that only appears when you log in (why?). You probably cursed a second time when you realized your fancy adblocking plugin wouldn't get rid of it. But I figured out how to do it, using a CSS page. IE, Mozilla, and Opera users can do this (here's how).

Paste the following in your .css file:

/* Remove ad table for NationStates */
table[border="1"][width="100%"][cellpadding="2"][cellspacing="4"]
{display: none ! important}

Be sure to remove any spaces in the second line added by the Slashdot lameness filter. The third line should have a space on each side of the exclamation mark.

Restart your browser and the ad should be gone.

So far I've submitted two polls and both were rejected then immediately posted to the main page with some slight modifications. First was the e-mail abuse poll, now the current beer type poll. In both cases a couple options were added and one was deleted, but the poll idea and a majority of the options were ones I submitted.

I guess if your submission isn't perfect for publication the editors reject it then submit their own. Oh well...

Just got my iPod today. Wow. It's so much more small, sleek, and just plain cool than I ever expected it to be. The backlight is awesome. The button sensitivity is perfect. It feels just right in my hand.

Until now I had a Creative Nomad Jukebox. I bought it because it was far cheaper than the then-new iPod, and I figured as long as it wasn't bigger than my Discman it'd be fine. Wrong. Turns out I used it far more than I imagined. The weight/size became a real nuisance, the batteries only lasted 2-3 hours (depending on how many start-ups/shutdowns), and it was extremely slooooow (40 second boot time, very slow response while playing). The iPod's huge price tag (I'm a poor college kid) ate at me, but finally I just couldn't take it anymore.

My Nomad was 20GB and filled to within 200MB of the limit, so I figured I should get a 30GB iPod (they're the price of a new 20GB since they're discontinued). I was pleasantly surprised to find that it boots up instantaneously and the UI is just as fast whether playing a song or not. Pretty sweet.

As a Windows user, I'm still getting used to Apple's "we'll do all the work for you" approach, often getting anxious that it's doing a little too much for me without asking me for confirmation. However, it's awfully nice to just plop the player in the dock and let it auto-sync any new songs or playlists I've made and charge it up all in one go. All that and it barely makes a bulge in my pocket. Pretty sweet, indeed.

Uh oh. Hope I don't have to take a 4-year hiatus to Canada until I turn 26.