dave submitted a story about how you can now see Eva Longoria on the cover of Maxim from space.

To celebrate its 100th issue, Maxim magazine has slapped a 75 foot by 110 foot magazine cover of Desperate Housewives' Eva Longoria on mesh, and spread it out in the Las Vegas desert. The two dimensional sanctuary is so big it can be seen from the very black of space. It took nine workers 15 hours to build, and can actually be seen on Google Earth.

There's a USA Today article with another aerial view of the giant image.

According to an AP article, Netflix is suing Blockbuster for patent infringment.

The complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, focuses largely on the online wish lists that prioritize the DVD desires of about 5.4 million people who subscribe to either Netflix or Blockbuster's Internet service.

Netflix also believes its patents cover perhaps its most popular feature -- the option of renting a DVD for an unlimited time without incurring late fees. That change, introduced by Netflix seven years ago, became so popular that Blockbuster last year stopped charging late fees for tardy rental returns to its video stores. Dallas-based Blockbuster once pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars annually from those late fees.

Both Netflix and Blockbuster's online service charge $17.99 per month to rent up to three DVDs at a time. When subscribers return a DVD in a postage-paid envelope, the rental services automatically send the next available movie on their wish lists. Blockbuster initially denigrated the flat-fee concept, but then reversed course and launched its Internet service in 2004 after scores of customers defected to Netflix, based in Los Gatos, Calif.

"Blockbuster has been willfully and deliberately copying Netflix's business methods," Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said. Blockbuster spokesman Randy Hargrove declined to comment Tuesday because the company hadn't yet seen the suit.

Netflix contends it first patented the process for managing DVD wish lists -- known as queues -- in June 2003.

A second patent issued Tuesday to Netflix apparently triggered the lawsuit. Netflix believes the additional patent covers an even wider range of automated interaction with its customers.

Netflix hopes to obtain a court order that would force Blockbuster to change the way its online rental service operates or require the company to pay patent royalties -- a potentially huge bill, based on other recent patent disputes. If Netflix prevails, it could thwart its biggest competitor in the steadily growing field of online DVD rentals.

Netflix began the year with about 4.2 million subscribers. Blockbuster has signed up about 1.2 million online customers so far. Netflix's success already has hurt Blockbuster, which lost $588 million last year and expects to continue to close stores as more DVD renters turn to the Internet.

In contrast, Netflix earned $42 million last year. But its service has been recently fending off a backlash triggered by a class-action lawsuit that focused attention on a scoring system that penalizes its most frequent renters. Netflix is awaiting court approval of a proposed settlement that would give free DVDs for a month to millions of former and current subscribers.

This is quite the big battle. It'll be interesting to see what the outcome is.

dave submitted a CBS story about how Topps owns a "Trade Barry!" billboard that has been seen near the Giants' ballpark.

The billboard made the papers and the local newscasts since it seemed to be taking a swipe at Giants slugger Barry Bonds. Topps says "trade" in the advertisement refers to trading Bond's baseball cards. The company revealed the second phase of its advertising campaign Tuesday with a new advertisement that replaced the original sign.

Topps has created a special set of cards commemorating Bond's home run record chase. The Giants slugger is in the center of a steroid scandal.

Regardless of whether or not it was intentional, Topps got some free publicity out of it.

According to a Reuters article, a connection has been found between barbecued meat and prostate cancer.

A compound formed when meat is charred at high temperatures -- as in barbecue -- encourages the growth of prostate cancer in rats, researchers reported on Sunday. Their study, presented at a meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research, may help explain the link between eating meat and a higher risk of prostate cancer. It also fits in with other studies suggesting that cooking meat until it chars might cause cancer.

The compound, called PhIP, is formed when meat is cooked at very high temperatures, Dr. Angelo De Marzo and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore reported. It appears to both initiate and promote the growth of prostate cancer in rats, they said.

"We stumbled across a new potential interaction between ingestion of cooked meat in the diet and cancer in the rat," De Marzo said in a statement. "For humans, the biggest problem is that it's extremely difficult to tell how much PhIP you've ingested, since different amounts are formed depending on cooking conditions."

For the study, Yatsutomo Nakai and other members of De Marzo's team mixed PhIP into food given to rats for up to eight weeks, then studied the animals' prostates, intestines and spleens. They found genetic mutations in all the organs after four weeks.

The study seems somewhat sketchy because they didn't feed the rats charred or barbecued meat, but instead mixed the PhIP substance into other food. Also, rats aren't people.

That's right, I'm dropping the zuchinis.net/niraj name as I move over to Dreamhost. A huge thanks to Steve for sharing his webhosting at 1and1.com for several months with me. Why the switch? There's many reasons - like being able to create subdomains, email addresses like user@nirajsanghvi.com, not forwarding to another domain, my own webspace, and much more.



If you want webhosting and use my Dreamhost promo code DHNIRAJ, you save up to $95 on a new plan (it comes out of my $97 referral award):


As far as I can tell, the transition of domains was pretty seamless since I had checked out a lot of what I had to do beforehand. There's things you have to be cautious of to copy over existing databases (of stories, comments, etc) and also to avoid losing search engine ranking.

Also a couple of things I forgot: If you were using a Google Maps API, you have to get a new key or your map won't work. If you're using MySQL, check the timezone and ensure it's the same or you correct for it. Check pages (and particularly any templates you use) to make sure your links were either relative or are updated to point to your new domain - links should be relative...that makes this step easy.

Read more for details on the domain hosting (and registration) transition process.

Read More...

This site may experience a hiccup or two in the next day or so as I am switching web hosting. I'm hoping to have the transition be as seamless as possible, so hopefully any issues are minimal. I'll post more about it after the switch.

An investigation by the FBI yesterday revealed that iPods are programmed to take over the world this June. Apple made the product sleek and sexy to make it a must-have item. By doing so, they have ensured that almost everyone owns one. In June, these millions of iPods will each rise up and enslave their owners and eventually gather together and take over the world. The only way to prevent getting enslaved by your own iPod is to buy an extended warranty from Apple.

In a surprising move, Google has decided to remove their search pages, saying they would rather go out while on top than get beat by Yahoo, MSN, and Ask further down the road. A spokesman said, "Google's at its peak right now, and we think it's all downhill from here. So we pulled a Seinfeld and we're going to pull the plug. If Google Maps continues to succeed, we may discontinue that service as well."

The news seems to have resounded well with Google fanatics as well users of services from the competition. You had a good run, Google.

According to an AP article, in a recent NASA study it was discovered that the sun contains a newly discovered type of matter that will result in the sun burning out within the next 40 years. As this would end all life on the planet, NASA has begun working furiously on a solution: creating another sun. More on this story as it develops.

There's an AP article that sounds far more like an article from The Onion about a crazy cat terrorizing a small town:

Residents of the neighborhood of Sunset Circle say they have been terrorized by a crazy cat named Lewis. Lewis for his part has been uniquely cited, personally issued a restraining order by the town's animal control officer.

"He looks like Felix the Cat and has six toes on each foot, each with a long claw," Janet Kettman, a neighbor said Monday. "They are formidable weapons."

The neighbors said those weapons, along with catlike stealth, have allowed Lewis to attack at least a half dozen people and ambush the Avon lady as she was getting out of her car. Some of those who were bitten and scratched ended up seeking treatment at area hospitals.

Animal Control Officer Rachel Solveira placed a restraining order on him. It was the first time such an action was taken against a cat in Fairfield. In effect, Lewis is under house arrest, forbidden to leave his home.

Solveira also arrested the cat's owner, Ruth Cisero, charging her with failing to comply with the restraining order and reckless endangerment.