• Everyone who ticks him or her off gets a $26,000 phone bill.
• Has won the Publisher’s Clearing House Sweepstakes three years running.
• When asked for their phone number, they give it in hex.
• Seems strangely calm whenever the office LAN goes down.
• Somehow gets HBO on their PC at work.
• Mumbled, “Oh, puh-leeeez!” 295 times during the movie “The Net.”
• Massive 401k contribution made in half-cent increments.
• Their video dating profile lists “public-key encryption” among turn-ons.
• Instead of the “Welcome” voice on AOL, you overhear, “Good Morning, Mr./Mrs. President.”
• You hear them murmur, “Let’s see you use that VISA card now, Professor “I-Don’t-Give-A’s-In-Computer-Science!”

I was quite surprised when I read this bit of news today.

The state government of Illinois has recently declared that Pluto is a planet. The resolution was a way to sidestep the recent ruling of the International Astronomical Union that reclassified Pluto as a part of the Kuiper belt, removing it from the list of planets.

The specific decree reads as “RESOLVED, BY THE SENATE OF THE NINETY-SIXTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that as Pluto passes overhead through Illinois’ night skies, that it be reestablished with full planetary status, and that March 13, 2009 be declared ‘Pluto Day’ in the State of Illinois in honor of the date its discovery was announced in 1930.”

A big reason Illinois is desperately fighting for Pluto’s “planetary” status is because the man who discovered Pluto in 1930, Clyde Tombaugh, is an Illinois native. Having said that I still find it quite hilarious that whenever Pluto passes over Illinois it goes from a part of the Kuiper Belt into a full fledged planet. They should’ve also changed its name from Pluto to Schizophrenia.

Microsoft is still not giving up on the poorly received Windows Vista operating system.

After the Mojave campaign that sought to bring people to notice Vista again, Microsoft is now enlisting Jerry Seinfeld to help in its $300 million ad campaign. The celebrated comedian will be paid $10 million to endorse Vista.

The question is, will the guys at Redmond be able to come up with a deceptively simple, but widely effective ad campaign as the Cupertino guys’ (you know who they are) “Get a Mac” campaign.

Justin Long vs Seinfeld. This could be a one hell of a fight.

One of the most frequent uses we have for our laptops is sending and receiving emails. I still remember the first time I got my own email address (about ten years ago). I was obsessively checking my inbox for any kind of mail — even spam! There was even a forwarded email circulating about how to tell if you are an email junkie. Of course, that was still during the infancy of commercial email, when everyone looked at it as this shiny, new-fangled toy.

Jump a few years back to the present and email has lost its “new toy” sheen. People have now seen its blemishes and ugly spots. First, there is spam, then the proliferation of hoax and scam emails, and of course, there are the trojan and virus infested emails that wreak havoc on your computer.

Harris Interactive recently conducted a survey on the biggest pet peeves that happen in the workplace and, surprisingly, it discovered that the abuse and misuse of emails has now emerged as one of the biggest annoyances at work. According to respondents, they are irritated when officemates use the “reply all” function on emails without thinking. This practice floods inboxes with emails that are not important to people not involved in the communication or the project. Another pet peeve is the use and misuse of blind carbon copies (BCC).

Even though email abuse has risen on the list though, the biggest pet peeve is still gossip in the work environment, with 60 per cent of respondents listing it at the top of their list.

Well, include gossiping via email as an emerging pet peeve in the years to come.

 I’ve contended time and time again that present laws on copyright are outdated and should be changed or revamped in order to more accurately reflect the change in paradigms in terms of intellectual property. The old fogeys at the RIAA and its film counterpart are just being stubborn for trying to go after the fans themselves. It’s a very shortsighted solution in a battle in which they will just lose anyway. We need newer and better alternatives.

The decision of Walgreens to setup kiosks that will allow consumers to make legitimate copies of DVDs through a system that is also designed to discourage piracy is a welcome one, in my opinion.

Changes in how copy protection laws impact on DVDs have made this “experiment” viable and is encouraging not only Walgreens but also other retailers as well to allow consumers to make copies of DVDs in their stores.

This is a win-win situation for both consumers and for movie studios. Burning copies means cheaper costs, while studios also get a cut of the revenues generated for the services — and they don’t even have to spend on manufacturing and shipping costs.

The idea is already generating a lot of buzz and many people are hoping that this is going to become a success. I hope that this is going to become an important step towards the right direction.