Vote on the destiny of Barry Bond's record-breaking ball
Hey Buzz,

From MLB.com

Found this on Google today. Marc Ecko (of Ecko Clothing) bought Barry Bonds' 756th homerun ball ($752,467.00) in an effort to let "the people" decide its destiny. He set up vote756.com so you can go online and choose from the following three options:

a) Bestow it as-is upon the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y. Let it be celebrated there for generations as the artifact that resulted in the most traditionally hallowed record in North American sport.

b) Brand a prominent asterisk into the hide of the ball with a hot iron, and deliver it to Cooperstown in that condition--as a way of protesting a record that many believe came with the benefit of illicit performance-enhancing chemicals.

c) Blast it into space on a rocket.

Personally, I'd still choose A. It's not like people are going to forget the controversy; there's no sense in altering/ruining the ball because of it. I do, however, bet that Shalin would pick option C...

Just another interesting Web-democratic movement that also happens to involve sports and rockets. :)

Cheers,
Dr. Karl

Barry Bonds...in space!!!
Okay, not really tech-related--but you could actively help something get put into space! Ecko's Web site doesn't give up-to-the-minute results, but ESPN's poll has space very far behind as an option.

I think Buzz should put all of their differing opinions about Barry Bonds aside, and help to put something into space.

Can I say space one more time? Space.

Frank J. M. Lattuca, Esq.

Nanowires capable of storing data for 100,000 years!
excerpt:
*****
..."nanowires capable of storing computer data for 100,000 years and retrieving that data a thousand times faster" than existing microdrives. Moreover, the "self-assembling nanowire of germanium antimony telluride" consumes less energy and space than current memory technologies... *****

W-O-W!
Shalin

International Talk Like a Pirate Day
Tomorrow is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. Aargh!

David

iBrickr for iPhone
Hello CNET! I have just downloaded iBrickr for my iPhone, and while looking around the file system, I found something AMAZING!!!!

Go to this address in the filesystem:
/System/Library/CoreServices/SpringBoard.app/

And there, you will find under the "D" section that there are default carriers:
AT&T
Cingular
T-Mobile
Vodafone

If somebody already found that out, then I feel really stupid right now. But, if they didn't, then I guess we know which carriers will be announced for the iPhone in the U.K. tomorrow (and hopefully the U.S. too!)

Thanks,
Cody B

Confessions of a firewall administrator
Dear Buzz crew,

The anonymous firewall administrator here. I've been listening to your recent podcasts with the topic of blocking advertisements on Web sites and I am now beginning to feel as if I might have done something morally wrong. Let me explain. You see there is one thing in the world that seems to be a constant in all IT departments. The need for more Internet bandwidth. I administer a network for over 2,000 employees with nearly as many computers. Our Internet access has been known to slow down at many peak business hours due to high utilization of Web surfing. When I researched the problem I found that one-third of all my bandwidth was being used up in advertisements on Web sites. Not just images and text-based advertisements. But large Flash and animated GIFs. To help regain this bandwidth at the cooperate firewall, I blocked all the major advertisement companies' Web sites from my users. Now after making this one single change, when anyone navigates to a Web site where an advertisement would have been displayed they are simply given a red x indicating a missing image. Surprisingly 99 percent of all Web sites continue to work without the advertisements, plus our bandwidth utilization has decrease drastically.

However now, after listening to your podcasts, I think that maybe instead of being a great IT firewall administrator by increasing our available Internet bandwidth resources, I may inadvertently be breaking the law by not allowing advertisements to be displayed on services Web sites! And I also wanted you to be aware that advertisements not only come in small JPEG images but very large interactive Flash files.

I just wanted to confess how I have individually taken advertisement revenue of nearly 2,000 users away from the Internet services of the world.