7 Movies That Required Scientific Inaccuracy To "Make Sense"

Yes, we know that when it comes to film you have to suspend your disbelief willfully. We accepted that Hamlet spoke to the ghost of his dead father, and we accept that Demi Moore's life was saved by the ghost of her dead husband. You could watch Lord Of The Rings and understand that it's fantasy. But sometimes, you're like "That would NEVER happen" no matter how much disbelief you're willing to suspend. You could suspend 100 disbeliefs, but sometimes, movies will require you to suspend 101 disbeliefs. Here are some movies that say "Here is a thing that can happen." And then you're like "Wait, no. This is untrue." Oh, also, sometimes not the entire movie is scientifically inaccurate, just certain parts.

7.) Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

What It Should Have Been Called:

There Are A Lot More Problems In This Movie Than Just The Science

What Was Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

Indiana Jones decides that it's fun playing in a nuclear test town, so he goes to one. Soon, a nuclear test bomb is dropped, and everything is violently exploded. Indiana Jones is also exploded in the explosion, but he was smart enough to hide inside of a lead-lined refrigerator, which not only throws him about a mile from where it started, but Indiana Jones manages to climb out and say "Not even radiation poisoning can hurt me." Then some dudes scrub down his old, naked, and surprisingly (delightfully) muscular body.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

The truth is, no amount of man-scrubbing would prevent Indiana Jones from being melted by a shit-load of radioactive fallout. Instead of running around with Shia Labeouf, he would be writing his last will and testament. Which would be amazing actually. Can you imagine the stuff he would be able to give away?

6.) Jurassic Park

What It Should Have Been Called:

Mosquito Stomach's Are Amazing At Preserving Anything, Especially DNA

What's Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

Not only is Dr. John Hammond's company able to find one mosquito with enough DNA to build an entire dinosaur but they're able to find countless mosquito's carrying the DNA of countless types of dinosaurs to effectively grow a dinosaur zoo until the dinosaurs realize they are dinosaurs and can eat pretty much whatever they want forever. Also, there is plenty of dinosaur related foliage hanging around and apparently modern day air is exactly the same as air from the Jurassic period and other dinosaur related periods. Over the period of time that the DNA was "preserved" it would have undoubtedly been destroyed and obviously unusable. Which sucks, because who wouldn't want to go to an island of dinosaurs?

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Nothing, unfortunately. No hilarious goat-eating scene, no lawyer getting bitten in half by a T. rex, and certainly no Sam Neill "lips-slowly-parting-to-show-shock" shots.

5.) Lost In Space

What It Should Have Been Called:

One Lost In Space Was Enough

What Was Inaccurate About It:

This one gets more of a pass because it's Lost In Space. If you were lost in space in real life you wouldn't be lost in space for very long because space would eat your soul. The thing that made us really mad was that the guys in this movie are in a predicament and say "We should probably fly through the Sun, because even though space is infinitely huge, our best bet is to simply fly through the sun." The sun is as wide as 109 Earths. The Sun's surface is 5,778º K or 9,990º F, which makes us wonder why Kelvin is even necessary in this scenario because both numbers are ridiculously high. The core of the sun is estimated at 15.6 x 10^6 K. We aren't aware of a substance that the sun can't burn the shit out of. Even if Matt Leblanc has made his spacecraft out of it.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

People would still have hated this movie but been unable to cite the "flying through the sun" scene as reason why.

4.) Speed

What It Should Have Been Called:

Buses Can Do Whatever We Want Them To Do

What Was Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

A terrorist puts a bomb on a bus and the bomb will explode when the bus, after reaching 50 mph, will explode when it goes under 50 mph. This takes place in Los Angeles, a place renowned for its insane amount of traffic. Luckily for police officer Keanu Reeves, the traffic is only a problem for a few minutes, then it goes away. Also, Dennis Hopper is nice enough to put a light on the SPEEDometer to show the exact moment they reach 50 mph and when they will go under 50 mph. Another interesting thing about the bus is that it can fly. It manages to fly over a 50 foot gap of missing freeway. When it hits the ground, the bus yells "Boo-yah!" and continues on, excited that it was the first bus in history to fly. Without a ramp of some sort, the bus wouldn't have made the jump. And if it did, it would have been so damaged it wouldn't have been able to maintain 50 mph. Also, Ferris Buehler's friend Cameron is in it.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Keanu, Sandra Bullock, and Ferris Buehler's friend Cameron all get blown up.

3.) Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

What It Should Have Been Called:

Chinese People Are Magical

What Was Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

Chinese people can't fly.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Non-flying sword fights. Still awesome.

2.) The Day After Tomorrow

What It Should Have Been Called:

We Pollute So Much That The Earth's Climate Will Change In Less Than Two Hours

What Was Inaccurate About It:

The ocean suddenly decides it needs to be warmer than it used to be, which is a problem because ice hates warmth. Then all this polar ice melts and the ocean decides to drown New York City. Jake Gyllenhaal leads everyone to safety because his dad is Dennis Quaid and is the only person in the world who understands weather. Then there is a storm that freezes everything instantly somehow and wild wolves who are apparently taking a vacation to New York City chase Jake and his friends for some reason. Science tells us that while climate change is definitely possible (occurring right now), it wouldn't change the entire globe's climate in a few days. Also, Dennis Quaid manages to walk to New York City through the deadly weather from Washington D.C. to save Jake so Jake and his brother Randy Quaid can be in Brokeback Mountain.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Nothing! Everyone would just be walking around a normal, non-homocidal-weather earth. The action would probably have to fast forward 70 years, showing a world where everyone is sweating, white Christmas's are a thing of the past, and Al Gore, long dead, receives thousands of "Sorry we didn't listen" letters every day on his grave.

1.) Armageddon

What It Should Have Been Called:

Anyone Can Save The World By Landing A Spacecraft On A Gigantic Asteroid And Then Blowing It Up With A Nuclear Bomb

What Was Scientifically Inaccurate About It:

Sure, even Michael Bay said that this movie is implausible. But is that going to stop anyone from taking the opportunity to tear one of his movies apart? Some scientists who saw the movie concluded that there were over 160 things that were retarded. That's how they said it; "We're scientists and the only way we can describe the things in this movie is by saying they're retarded."

Before the gigantic asteroid hits Earth, some smaller asteroids lead the way, where they manage to wreak havoc on only major cities instead of hitting the 70% of surface area the oceans provide, again proving that asteroids can't swim. Then, the world tells Bruce Willis and his friends to be astronauts. They realize they could be astronauts in as little as a few days, completely bypassing the normal "years" timeframe for most pussy astronauts. Then a crew flies a spacecraft directly onto an asteroid that, even though is moving fast, it's not TOO fast for America. Then they blow up the asteroid after drilling into it like it's a piece of the Earth, which it's not.

Other things that made us angry were when Bruce Willis was like; "To find out who has to stay and die we will pull straws." And someone was like "Well, where are we going to get straws?" And another person was like "Good thing I happened to bring my straw collection, complete with a short one, just for this sort of situation." Luckily, Ben Affleck pulls the short one. Unluckily, Bruce Willis decides that Ben Affleck is too important to die and still has to make Gigli and bang Jennifer's Lopez and Garner so he saves his life.

We were most angered by the fact that Bruce Willis was the only character that wanted to kill Ben Affleck.

What Would Have Happened Without Fake Science?

Earth gets murdered.

45 Rules for Creating a Great Logo Design

1. Do not use more than three colors.
2. Get rid of everything that is not absolutely necessary.
3. Type must be easy enough for your grandma to read.
4. The logo must be recognizable.
5. Create a unique shape or layout for the logo.
6. Completely ignore what your parents and/or spouse think about the design.
7. Confirm that the logo looks appealing to more than just three (3) individuals.
8. Do not combine elements from popular logos and claim it as original work.
9. Do not use clipart under any circumstances.
10. The logo should look good in black and white.
11. Make sure that the logo is recognizable when inverted.
12. Make sure that the logo is recognizable when resized.
13. If the logo contains an icon or symbol, as well as text, place each so that they compliment one another.
14. Avoid recent logo design trends. Instead, make the logo look timeless.
15. Do not use special effects (including, but not limited to: gradients, drop shadows, reflections, and light bursts).
16. Fit the logo into a square layout if possible, avoid obscure layouts.
17. Avoid intricate details.
18. Consider the different places and ways that the logo will be presented.
19. Invoke feelings of being bold and confident, never dull and weak.
20. Realize that you will not create a perfect logo.
21. Use sharp lines for sharp businesses, smooth lines for smooth businesses.
22. The logo must have some connection to what it is representing.
23. A photo does not make a logo.
24. You must surprise customers with presentation.
25. Do not use more than two fonts.
26. Each element of the logo needs to be aligned. Left, center, right, top, or bottom.
27. The logo should look solid, with no trailing elements.
28. Know who is going to be looking at the logo before you think of ideas for it.
29. Always choose function over innovation.
30. If the brand name is memorable, the brand name should be the logo.
31. The logo should be recognizable when mirrored.
32. Even large companies need small logos.
33. Everyone should like the logo design, not just the business that will use it.
34. Create variations. The more variations, the more you are to get it right.
35. The logo must look consistent across multiple platforms.
36. The logo must be easy to describe.
37. Do not use taglines in the logo.
38. Sketch out ideas using paper and pencil before working on a computer.
39. Keep the design simple.
40. Do not use any “swoosh” or “globe”symbols.
41. The logo should not be distracting.
42. It should be honest in it's representation.
43. The logo should be balanced visually.
44. Avoid bright, neon colors and dark, dull colors.
45. The logo must not break any of the above rules.

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Desktop Security 101: A Quick Course In Safer Computing

1. Keep your passwords strong, and keep them in your head.

The single biggest computing security problem today, as it has been for decades, is poor selection, maintenance and protection of user passwords. Most systems still rely heavily on passwords for authenticating user access, and human nature being what it is, people tend to choose passwords that are easy for themselves to remember - the dog's name, daughter's birthday, favorite singer, etc. - and in many cases, they will write the password down on a post-it note and stick it on the monitor where they (and anyone else) can see it as a reminder. Or, they will choose a word at random from the dictionary, thinking "no one could possibly guess".

Password "cracking" is a favorite activity of people who get their kicks trying to break into computer systems, and the power of modern computers has given them some very effective tools to do it with. "Cracking dictionaries" can try not only every English dictionary word, but also well-known phrases, slang words, substitutions (e.g., "time2go") and a surprising number of other obscure things. In 2002, Penn Information Security was asked to find out why "zzyzzx" would not meet PennKey password criteria. On investigation, it turned out that it's a word from a popular video game of the late 1980s, and does in fact appear in a number of cracking dicitionaries.

Penn recommends that, in choosing a strong password, you choose one that is at least 6 characters long, but less than 16 (some systems may require them to be longer/shorter), that it be a mixture of at least three of the following: UPPERCASE (A-Z), lowercase (a-z), digits (0-9), special characters (@#$%&*, etc.). It should not contain whole dictionary words, and should avoid names or phrases that people with personal knowledge of you might be able to guess. One technique often recommended is to think of a phrase that has meaning only to you (it can even be nonsensical) and take the first letter of each word to "assemble" your password. For example, "Orange elephants invade Alaska; film at eleven" would yield 'OeiA;fae' as the password. For even better security, replace "at" with "@" and "eleven" with "11", for a password of 'OeiA;f@11'. (Note: "Orange elephants..." is a famous example - don't use this as your password). It's also a good idea to change your password periodically, and some system administrators will require this (and will enforce strong password selection as well). Above all, don't share your password with anyone, and don't write it down - the only secure place for your password is in your head.

It is slowly becoming more common for operating systems (Windows XP, for one) to permit use of "passphrases", which are essentially the same thing as passwords, but can be much longer and can include spaces and punctuation. Though they take a few more seconds to type in, passphrases tend to be exponentially more secure than passwords, especially if you mix upper/lower case, digits and special characters as recommended with passwords. Many people also find that passphrases are actually easier to remember than passwords.

Unfortunately, with more and more computing resources becoming available, we all have more and more different account names and passwords to remember. With the introduction of PennKey in October, 2002, this has become somewhat less of a problem at Penn as more and more campus computing resources provide user authentication via PennKey. It is tempting to try and use the same password for all your accounts, but as noted above, different systems have differing parameters with regard to password length, etc., so it will likely not be possible to have one, single password for everything. More to the point, it is recommended that you not use your PennKey password, or any other Penn passwords for outside computing resources. This helps prevent unauthorized access to your Penn data in the event your "non-Penn" password is cracked.

2. Don't open it - you don't know where it's been...

Without a doubt, the Number One method by which viruses, trojans, worms and "backdoor" programs are propagated is via e-mail attachments, and this is particularly true with computers running Microsoft Windows. More often than not, if you receive an attachment that you weren't expecting, or is from someone you don't know (and don't know why they're sending it), chances are that the attachment carries some variety of "malware" just waiting for you to set it loose by opening the attachment, particularly if the attachment has a filename extension of .exe, .pif, .scr or .vba (this is not a complete list, though). One of the favorite tricks of virus writers, et al, is to hide the virus in an attachment that, when run, produces a clever or entertaining animation on the screen that people like to forward on to all their friends without thinking.

So, in short: if you get an email attachment, unless you feel very confident about what it is, where it came from, and why it was sent to you - DON'T OPEN IT! At the very least, scan it with your anti-virus software to see if anything is lurking inside.

Speaking of which...

3. Get anti-virus software. Use it. Keep it up to date.

Penn makes this very easy to do for Windows and Macintosh users by providing site-licensed copies of Symantec Anti-Virus (SAV) for both operating systems to Penn users at no cost. To obtain a copy, visit the Computing Resource Center and pick up the PennConnect CD, or visit the Supported Products website at http://www.upenn.edu/computing/product/.Once installed, be sure to update the virus signature files (a very easy process) on a regular basis. Weekly, at the very least. Daily is even better, though daily changes aren't always made by the vendors.

Although it is true that unix and linux users (this includes Mac OS X, which is essentially a unix-type operating system) are substantially less likely to acquire a virus infection on their system, it is possible, and Mac- and linux-specific viruses have appeared in the last couple of years. There are anti-virus software applications available for these systems, and some of them are open-source, i.e., free.

4. If you can't trust the source you're downloading from, you can't trust the file.

The ability to transfer files back and forth - "uploading" and "downloading" - has been the backbone of the Internet since its inception in the early 1970s, and with the rise of peer-to-peer ("P2P") networks like KaZaa over the last few years, "file-swapping" and downloading are as popular as ever. In most cases, such as purchasing and downloading application software from a well-known commercial website, there's a high level of confidence that you're dealing with reputable people, and the transaction is usually done using a secured connection. There are many cases, though, where you can't be entirely sure who or what is at the other end, and whether or not you can trust the files you're getting from them. As with e-mail attachments (see #2 above), it's a good idea to run downloaded files through your anti-virus software (see #3 above) before opening or installing them. Also, if you're running peer-to-peer sharing software, get in the habit of reviewing the sharing settings of not only the directory you use for file-swapping, but your entire directory structure to make sure that nothing has been changed without your knowledge. And, be on the lookout for the sudden appearance of files that you don't recognize and/or don't recall downloading. "Mystery" files may be a signal that someone has gained access to your system beyond what you intended.

5. Don't leave a computer you're logged into unattended or unprotected.

This is very important not only when using your personal computer in your office or dorm room, but also when you are using public lab computers that are used by many other people, often in rapid succession. If you forget to log off a lab computer after finishing your session, you give the next person at the keyboard an open door into your account which they can use to read your email, personal financial information and other sensitive data. They could even change your password and lock you out of your own account!

Even in your office or dorm room (especially if you're in an "open suite" or a "cubicle warren"), if you get up and leave your computer unattended for no more than a few moments you provide an opportunity for someone to physically compromise your system. It takes less than a minute to install a backdoor program that will allow them complete remote access and control, or "spyware" that shows them everything you look at on your screen and everything you type on your keyboard.

All the major operating systems provide the ability to "lock" and password-protect the screen and system so that an unauthorized person with physical access cannot tamper with your computer. It's easy to say, "I'll only be gone a minute," only to get roped into that card game going on down the hall, or an extended chat at the water cooler. It's a good habit to get into to either log out or lock the system every time you get up.

6. Data on paper is the same as data on the screen.

Sometimes it's necessary to print out copies of important or sensitive data. If you have sensitive printouts, don't leave them lying around where unauthorized, prying eyes can see them. The data is just as sensitive and confidential on a printed page as it is on a computer screen, and if you don't want it read on the monitor, you probably don't want it read anywhere else. Keep important printouts in a secure location, and when you don't need them anymore, don't just throw them in the waste basket - shred them. Personal shredders ("cross-cut" preferred over "strip") are inexpensive and very useful in not only disposing of confidential printouts, but also junk mail, credit card offers and other printed material that may contain information about you that could be useful to identity thieves.

7. Your operating system needs to live and breathe. Don't let it get stale.

"Hackers" are continually probing and testing for vulnerabilities in all the major computer operating systems (this goes for mainframes as well), and are generally pretty adept at finding them. When this happens, the company that markets and distributes the operating system rushes to develop a "patch" to fix the problem and makes it available at no charge to users of the operating system. The problem is, many users rarely if ever check for availability of patches and system upgrades, let alone apply them. This is why the Code Red (I & II) and Nimda worms were able to spread so rapidly during the summer of 2001. They targeted and compomised systems that were running unpatched versions of Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS), even though the patch had been available for more than a year.

Along with weak passwords and virus-spreading e-mail attachements, unpatched computer systems constitute one of the premier security threats on the Internet. A compomised system threatens not only your personal data, it can be "hijacked" for use in remote proxy attacks such as a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), thereby becoming a threat to someone else's computer. DON'T LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU! All the major operating system vendors, including Microsoft, offer mechanisms that will allow you to regularly check for updates and apply them relatively easily if they are available. Keeping your system at "current patch level" is not an iron-clad guarantee that your system will never be hacked, but it's a heck of a good start

Likewise, there's often a security aspect to individual software applications (word processing, spreadsheet, database, etc.) as well. When updates appear (though they're not usually free in these cases), it's a good practice to see if there's a security update included.

8. Don't use it? Lose it.

All the major operating systems come packaged with all sorts of application and server software (the marketers call them "features"), and a major problem is that not only do they often turn these services on by default, they frequently give you very little explanation about what they do and little flexibility with regard to configuration settings. In general, the more services you have running on your computer, the more potential targets you have for hackers to exploit (see "IIS" in #7 above), not to mention slowing down your computer running things you don't need. These services include well-known, standard things like ftp, telnet, Samba, SQL, SMTP (e-mail server), Apache (web server) and others. If you really have use or need to run, for example, an ftp server, then go ahead and set it up, but make sure you fully understand the configuration, operation and potential vulnerabilities. Otherwise, if you don't need it, don't run it.

When considering what services should be running on your system, here are a few easy rules of thumb:

1. If you don't know what it is or what it does, don't turn it on. In most every case, if you find out later that you need it, you can go back and turn it on.
2. If it's on, and you don't need it, turn it off.
3. If it's off, and you don't need it, don't turn it on.

9. Watch out for those "Social Engineers".

No, we're not talking about extroverted locomotive drivers. "Social engineering" is a term that has come into use in the computer security field over the last few years to describe the activities of what are, essentially, con men (and women). Their game is to get someone to willingly give them privileged information by exploiting some combination of:

A) The innate, good-natured desire to be of help to a fellow human being.
B) The belief that everyone basically honest.
C) The person's current state of being extremely busy and distracted.
D) The belief that bad things happen only to other people.
E) Stupidity.
F) All of the above.

A social engineer is the kind of guy who will walk into a busy office in a manner that suggests he belongs there, announce he's been sent to fix the president's computer, impatiently demand to be shown where it is, then calmly say, "I need his user name and password - what are they?", secure in the knowledge that someone will at least try to get the information for him. Sometimes he'll call on the phone and say, "This is Joe from the Help Desk. There's a problem with your account I'm trying to fix, and I need your password to test it."

In short, social engineers use trickery, subterfuge, human nature and sheer audacity to collect nuggets of information they can put together in a way that tells them more about the "Big Picture", thus making it easier for them to make the "Big Score". To thwart them, it takes little more than paying attention to who is around, what they're doing, and being aware of whether or not it's appropriate for them to be there and doing that. In other words, common sense.

10. Scanning is a two-way street.

At any given time, the Internet is buzzing with people using scanning software to survey entire networks at a time, searching for vulnerable machines to direct attacks at. You may feel like "nothing I have on my computer is worth protecting, and they wouldn't bother with me anyway", but the truth is that any vulnerable machine is a target that can be put to use for all sorts of things when compomised (see "DDoS" in #7 above). And, when you come down to it, some hackers like to take over someone else's system for no other reason than to show that they can.

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Ladies vs Real Women

Ladies - If you accidentally over-salt a dish while it's still cooking, drop in a peeled potato and it will absorb the excess salt for an instant "fix-me-up."

Real Women - If you over-salt a dish while you are cooking, that's too damn bad. Please recite with me, The Real Women's motto: "I made it and you will eat it and I don't care how bad it tastes."

---

Ladies - Cure for headaches: Take a lime, cut it in half and rub it on your forehead. The throbbing will go away.

Real Women - Take a lime, mix it with tequila, chill and drink.You might still have the headache, but who cares?

---

Ladies - Stuff a miniature marshmallow in the bottom of a sugar cone to prevent ice cream drips.

Real Women - Just suck the ice cream out of the bottom of the cone, for Pete's sake. You're probably lying on the couch, with your feet up, eating it anyway.

---

Ladies - To keep potatoes from budding, place an apple in the bag with the potatoes.

Real Women - Buy boxed mashed potato mix and keep it in the pantry for up to a year.
---

Ladies - When a cake recipe calls for flouring the baking pan, use a bit of the dry cake mix instead and there won't be any white mess on the inside of the cake.

Real Women - Go to the bakery - they'll even decorate it for you.

---

Ladies - Brush some beaten egg white over pie crust before baking to yield a beautiful glossy finish.

Real Women - Directions on Sara Lee frozen pies don't include brushing egg whites over the crust, so I just don't do it.

---

Ladies - If you have a problem opening jars, try using latex dish washing gloves. They give a non slip grip that makes opening jars easy.

Real Women - Go ask the very cute neighbor guy to do it.

---

And finally, the most important tip

Ladies - Don't throw out all that leftover wine. Freeze into ice cubes for future use in casseroles and sauces.

Real Women - Leftover wine??!?!?!

Source

Top 50+ Wallpaper Websites

1. Platinum Studio -
   
2. Aeiko.net - An exhibition of nature themed desktop wallpapers created by designers worldwide
3. MoodFlow - Dreams come alive - hand made, dreamy art wallpapers
4. End Effect - About one hundred graphic wallpapers
5. Wooden Fish - Blog with original wallpapers (also wide screen format)
6. Socksoff.co.uk - Wallpapers gallery, with possibility to post wallpaper with back link.
7. Digital Blasphemy - Providing Wallpapers from 1997. Dual-screen wallpapers available 3840 x 1200
8. Neon Sight Japan - Neon Sight Japan Wallpaper Collection 2007
9. Souldcore - HQ original wallpapers, mostly 1280×1024
10. Wallpaper Joe - Desktop wallpapers gallery (mostly 1024×768)
11. VladStudio.com - Great wallpapers, plus tutorials “how to”
12. PimpMyDesk - Main categories - Babes (26) Cars (12) Landscapes (63) Vectors (275)
13. Indeepop.com - Colorful Design Wallpapers
14. Dugnet.com - Linux/penguin’s Wallpapers
15. Artlebedev - Design studio creates HQ wallpapers with symbolic barcode logo on each one of them. The most creative wallpapers I ever seen!
16. InterfaceList - Free High-Resolution Widescreen Wallpaper
17. MacDesktops - Personalize your MacDesktops experience
18. Wallpaper Stock - Huge collection, a lot of categories, ultra high resolutions
19. Quality Wallpapers - Only the very best desktop wallpapers
20. DeviantArt - Collection of wallpapers from designers all over the world
21. Shadowness - Dark side design wallpapers
22. Free Wallpaper - Collected +50.000 wallpapers for you to download
23. Free Digital Wallpaper - 3d and abstract wallpapers, animals, nature, space, humor and places
24. Mapa.co.kr - Some Wallpapers from Japan designers
25. GetSkinned - Stuff for skinning your OS, wallpapers included
26. Shifted Reality - Original 3D and photography wallpapers for your computer desktop
27. Club VAIO - VAIO club, wallpapers included
28. WinModify.com - Wallpapers, skins, icons! Pimp your windows!
29. CrystakXP - Many wallpapers, sometimes - 1920×1200
30. KDE-Look.org - Eye candy for your KDE Desktop
31. Customize.org - Wallpapers community
32. WinCustomize.com - Home for skins, wallpapers, themes, icons and all you need to customize PC
33. NetCarShow - Offers thousands of high quality car pictures and car wallpapers
34. Exotic Car Wallpapers - Thousands of high quality professional photographs of everything automotive
35. Desktop Machine - Cars, babes, movies, bikes, ultra high resolutions
36. Mycarwallpapers.com - Thousands of high quality car pictures and car wallpapers
37. Getcarwallpapers.com - Car wallpapers with high quality to beautify your screens with them
38. 3couleurs - Firefox wallpapers
39. 9x Media - Multi monitor, high resolution wallpapers (3840×1024)
40. Desktop Girls - Hot sexy girls wallpapers
41. Space Wallpapers - Wallpapers of space, spaceships and earth
42. Brodyaga - European cities wallpapers
43. WStaylor.net - Vista wallpapers, plus some images of nature
44. Gamer Wallpapers - Site for all game lovers, tons of game’s wallpapers
45. Michael Swanson’s Blog - Personal blog with macro photos of flowers (till 1920×1200)
46. Arkhipov.com - Personal blog with macro photos of flowers (till 1920×1200)
47. Anime - Art anime wallpapers, mostly 1280×1024
48. Mattosai - Sexy anime girls wallpapers and Hentai pictures
49. Animepaper - More Anime pictures.
50. Wallpaperseek - A beautiful collection of 3d desktop images
51. Boysoncandy.com - Collection of wallpapers with world famous actresses
52. Mandolux.com - Resources for multiple screen walls… only few updates per months, but great photos indeed
53. Mybestdesktops.com - Personnel blog with lovely wallpapers
54. Socwall.com - Social Wallpapering, a community effort to classify, rank, and distribute high resolution images for use as computer wallpaper

source:dezignus

Ask Calvin’s Dad

Calvin’s dad (from Bill Watterson’s comic strip Calvin and Hobbes) is the coolest comic character I ever came across. Whenever Calvin asks him question he often makes up outlandish answers. Here is a collection of some quotes from the comic strip.

Astronomy

Q. Why does the sun set?
A. It’s because hot air rises. The sun’s hot in the middle of the day, so it rises high in the sky. In the evening then, it cools down and sets.
Q. Why does it go from east to west?
A. Solar wind.

Q. Why does the sky turn red as the sun sets?
A. That’s all the oxygen in the atmosphere catching fire.
Q. Where does the sun go when it sets?
A. The sun sets in the west. In Arizona actually, near Flagstaff. That’s why the rocks there are so red.
Q. Don’t the people get burned up?
A. No, the sun goes out as it sets. That’s why it’s dark at night.
Q. Doesn’t the sun crush the whole state as it lands?
A. Ha ha, of course not. Hold a quarter up. See, the sun’s just about the same size.
Q. I thought I read that the sun was really big.
A. You can’t believe everything you read, I’m afraid.

Evolution of Technology

Q. How come old photographs are always black and white? Didn’t they have color film back then?
A. Sure they did. In fact, those old photographs are in color. It’s just that the world was black and white then. The world didn’t turn color until sometime in the 1930s, and it was pretty grainy color for a while, too.
Q. But then why are old paintings in color?! If the world was black and white, wouldn’t artists have painted it that way?
A. Not necessarily. A lot of great artists were insane.
Q. But… But how could they have painted in color anyway? Wouldn’t their paints have been shades of gray back then?
A. Of course, but they turned colors like everything else did in the ’30s.
Q. So why didn’t old black and white photos turn color too?
A. Because they were color pictures of black and white, remember?

Theory of Relativity!!

Q. Dad, will you explain the theory of relativity to me? I don’t understand why time goes slower at great speed.
A. It’s because you keep changing time zones. See, if you fly to California, you gain three hours on a five-hour flight, right? So if you go at the speed of light, you gain more time, because it doesn’t take as long to get there. Of course, the theory of relativity only works if you’re going west.

How things work?

Q. Why do my eyes shut when I sneeze?
A. If your lids weren’t closed, the force of the explosion would blow your eyeballs out and stretch the optic nerve, so your eyes would flop around and you’d have to point them with your hands to see anything.

Q. How do bank machines work?
A. Well, let’s say you want 25 dollars. You punch in the amount and behind the machine there’s a guy with a printing press who makes the money and sticks it out this slot.
Q. Sort of like the guy who lives up in our garage and opens the door?
A. Exactly.

Simple Physics

Q. What causes the wind?
A. Trees sneezing.

Q. Why does ice float?
A. Because it’s cold. Ice wants to get warm, so it goes to the top of liquids to be nearer to the sun.
Q. Is that true?
A. Look it up and find out.
Q. I should just look up stuff in the first place.

Secret of omniscience

Q. How come you know so much?
A. It’s all in the book you get when you become a father.

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Firefox Smart Keywords

Most firefox users know about bookmark keywords - shortcuts you can assign to bookmarks so you can access them from the location bar.

For example, to add a keyword for www.slashdot.org, you’d add a bookmark with the following values:

Whenever you type /. into the location bar and hit enter, you’ll go to slashdot.org.

Old news, right? Well, I was very surprised to learn that quite a few firefox geeks don’t know about the versatility of firefox keywords - specifically, smart keywords.

The basic idea is that instead of adding a keyword for a simple URL, you add a keyword for a search box. You type the keyword followed by your search terms into the location bar, and Firefox re-writes the saved URL to perform the appropriate search on the appropriate site.

For example, say you wanted to add a smart keyword for Wikipedia. You’d right-click on the search box, and click “add a keyword for this search”.

You can make the keyword anything you like. I generally use short keywords - like w here - for sites I use a lot, as a time saver. You might also notice that I’m saving this bookmark in a folder called Searches - I find it helpful to keep all my smart-keyword bookmarks together, just for the sake of tidiness.

Now, to use your smart keyword, you simply type w foo in the location bar, where foo is your search term, and you’ll be handily redirected to Wikipedia’s article on foo.

Neat, huh?

You can add smart keywords for practically any site with a search function. I use one for Google Maps

The Wayback Machine:

And even Urban Dictionary:

If you’re browsing through some sophomoric blog comments and come across an unfamiliar term, it’s certainly a great deal quicker to type Ctrl-T Enter ud feltch Enter than it is to laboriously look up the term by hand.

But, perhaps the most interesting aspect of smart keywords is their versatility. For example, I got a little frustrated with my Wikipedia shortcut - if I misspelled the search term even slightly, I’d end up on a productivity-killing error page. For example, w the last of the mohecans would give me:

This is especially galling, seeing as a Google search for that exact term instantly recognizes what I’m looking for.

Now, this gave me a bit of an idea; why couldn’t I use Google’s search engine in a smart keyword for wikipedia?

It’s possible, but takes a little bit of tinkering. First, create a new smart keyword based around google’s search box, but give it a keyword you want to use for wikipedia.

Now, open up this new smart keyword bookmark’s properties (under Bookmarks > right click > properties). We need to edit the Location property. It should look something like http://www.google.ca/search?q=%s. There may be some other information in there - it’s not important, we’ll be replacing it in a second. The %s value is the part that is replaced by your search term when you use the smart keyword. All we need to do is add some information to tell Google we’re only interested in pages from Wikipedia, so we paste http://www.google.ca/search?q=%s%20site%3Aen.wikipedia.org&meta= into the Location box. Now, when we enter gwiki widget into Firefox’s location bar, we search google for widget site:en.wikipedia.org - every wikipedia page that contains the word widget.

We’re almost there. All we need to do now is tell Google that we don’t want to be shown a search results page, but instead we want to go directly to the first result. We do this by adding &btnI onto the end of our URL. This code tells Google we’re doing an “I’m Feeling Lucky” search. So, the final URL for our smart bookmark looks like http://www.google.ca/search?q=%s%20site%3Aen.wikipedia.org&meta=&btnI.

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39 Web-Based Tools That Don't Require Registration

Online Conversion
FLVIX simply lets you convert video from URL source into a file that you can keep on your desktop and play it on your PC, Mobile, iPod etc. Copy the link of the page with the video on it and paste it into FLVIX textbox; Choose desired format : AVI, MOV, MP4, 3GP, MP3; Click on the convert button, and download the converted file.

Convert text to audio file with vozMe to use free on your site or blog. It is really don't get easier than that: Copy-paste the text that you want to convert onto their textbox, and generate yourself an audio file within seconds.

It's the fastest way to resize and convert your pictures and images. You can apply rotation, add some effects, and more. Just select your picture file, choose some process to apply and click on OK. Fixpicture comes in two versions: Flash or HTML.

Convert any file with the powerful ZAMZAR - Free online file conversion. Select file from your compute or URL to convert, choose the format, and receive converted file by email.

Update:
Convert websites to PDFs with active links and embedded video. htm2pdf is a very, very simple to function app that convert webpages to PDFs!

Generators
Web20Badges is a free set of cool web badges. Choose your desirable badge shape, text and color, then generate your badge, and download it to your machine.

With the famous Loader Generator service, you can generate and customize GIFs that you can use free in your site or blog.

Strip Generator - Fastest way to create a stripe. An Ajax-driven diagonal stripes background tile generator.

Online favicon.cc generator is an editor that allows you to create transparent icon graphics for your site or blog. Choose a color; Click on the squares and paint your icon; Download when you're finished, and put the favicon file into your webserver directory.

LinkBunch lets you put multiple links into one small link which you can share over IM, Twitter, email or even a mobile phone. When the recipient clicks on the tiny LinkBunch link, he/she will be presented with a page that contains all the links that you put in the bunch.

If you own a blog you must know how important is to tag your post with relevant tags. You also know how annoying it can be sometimes... But with Turbo Tagger you can instantly create Technorati tags for your site or blog without spending too much time and effort.

Utility that will evaluate an image and give you the image's primary and complementary dominant colors of an image, how many visually unique colors are in an image, and the top ten visually unique colors in an image.

QuickRibbon is a completely free generator which lets you create a custom ribbon, insert a link in it and place it in the top right corner of your website. It will take you less than 5 minutes to generate your own website ribbon with this trendy widget and add a stylish Web2.0 look to your page.

Create a web 2.0 button in only 4 steps. You can paint your button with preloaded web 2.0 icons, or upload your personal icon and customize the font of the text inserted.

Message Tools
Send free postal mail letters (to anywhere in the US) right from the browser. eSnailer automatically prints, envelopes, stamps, and mails your letters within 24 hours.

forlater is an easy to use e-mail reminders. Just enter your message, your e-mail and a date. forlater will then remind you at the right time.

Note2email is a web application designed to send quick text notes to any email address in the world. No need for password or username. Note it down and send it, as simple as that.

Have fun with your note. Send innovative messages contains photo, video, and music. Share your Onesenss e-cards with family and friends via email.

Video-Mail
Mailmotion is a video-mail platform that enable anyone with a webcam to quickly send video to family and friends. Record a short message (or upload a video file), specify recipient email(s), add some text to you video-mail, and define date to send.

voxlite is a great Flash-based video-mail application that allows you to send a video card using a webcam and a mic. Note that you have 20 minute recording time limit (which is A LOT)

GabMail is a free, easy-to-use video email service that enables anyone with a webcam or video camera to send, reply to and forward messages to anyone with an email address. Each recording can be up to 5 minutes long.

Easy Storage and Sharing Files
TinyLoad, a service that allows you to upload files to multiple services at the same time. With their new Bookmarklet you'll be able to upload files in no time to: MegaUpload, MediaFire, RapidShare, DivShare, BestSharing, SendSpace, Uploading, FileSend, EasyShare, and Amazon S3.

Senduit's service provides users with the ability to upload a file via HTTP-Protocol and receive a custom URL address to download the file from Senduit's servers. This address can be shared by the user freely and can be used to download the file a reasonable number of times.

3 step process to upload large files which can be sent to another person. Your recipient will get a link where he/she can download the file to his/her computer.

FlyUpload is a service which allows you to share video, audio and photos online. You may share anything with FlyUpload. Share files (up to 2GB), Unlimited downloads per 24 hours, Unlimited downloads (2000MB).

with Wikisend you can upload and download lots of files, big files, small files, data files, media files, archives or backups - any files. Share files with your friends using e-mail, MySpace page, your blog, forums etc,.

esyURL purpose is to turn long complex URLs to short easy ones, so they can be shared in blogs, forums, e-mails and so on. Furthermore, you can upload files (in a limit size of 2Mb per file) and receive an esyURL to access it, fast and without registration required.

Text Tools
Orangoo spell check application lets you check for spelling mistakes from any system or computer that has Internet access. You can Spell check text (in 27 languages) or a whole website page (English only).

Textris is a sweet little site for manipulating text in different ways. Alphabetizes, sorts, formats, changes case, uppercase, lowercase, even tools for coders.

In case you need another notepad... EditPad is pretty similar to the one you have on your desktop, web-based version.

TextSnip convert your text into a clean tabbed format allowing you to easily past text/code examples into a blog, form, or any website.

shortText is a simple tool to post text online, with minimum fuss. Write whatever you need and shortText will convert it to easy-to-share URL. You can also add pictures and video to your text.

Quick Statistics of your Site
A tool to check at-a-glance the link popularity of any site based on its ranking (Google PageRank, Alexa Rank, Technorati etc.), social bookmarks (del.icio.us, etc), subscribers (Bloglines, etc) and more. You can also generate a state widget to place on your blog.

BuiltWite is a massive tool that providing all the technical analysis and SEO optimization info you need to know on a site.

Picture this...
If you need an avatar for one of your favorite social network, mypictr helps you to get it in few seconds. First upload your picture, select and crop yourself from it, choose which network, and click 'picturit' to get the result!

A simple tool that turn your photos into cool reflecting images.

kwout allowing you to quote part from any web page as image with an image-map. You can upload the results directly to Flickr, Tumblr, or website. A new feature called 'my-kwout' will let you show the collection of the sources that you quoted via kwout.

Online tool for making anti-aliased rounded corners, for avatars and images.

ResizR is a very useful little helper that allows you to resize an image from your local computer or the web, then download the results to your computer - Free.

Pixenate is simply a great online image editor, that enable you to edit your image with lots of effect tools. When you finish, you can upload your creation directly to Flickr, Myspace, Web, or your own computer.

Last service is my favorite one, I use it constantly so I highly recommend it:
It is actually a Wii application, but it works great on the web as well. Just pick your favorite artist/band, and finetune will play hours of music based on your taste.

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