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Ireland, Alberta, Flu, More: Fat Saturday Morning Buzz, March 15, 2014

Got any Irish in you? Ancestry.com is offering free access to Irish records through St. Patrick’s Day.

It’s been around for a while but apparently has gotten a recent update: the International Wine Research Database (IWRDB).

The Provincial Archives of Alberta has joined the Flickr Commons.

Oh, ouch: over 160,000 WordPress sites were used to launch a DDOS attack. “By sending spoofed Web requests in a way that made them appear to come from the target site, the attacker was able to trick the WordPress servers into bombarding the target with more traffic than it could handle.” Read the comments, too.

Wolfram|Alpha crunches Pokemon data. Squirtle!

Still have Windows XP? You’ve got less than a month before Windows stops providing security updates. If you’re interested in switching to Linux as opposed to updating to Windows 7 or 8, here are three alternatives. We still have about a dozen XP computers where I work and we’re trying to switch some of them to Zorin.

If you are planning to stay with XP — *twitch*, *shudder* — CERT is asking that you at least dump IE.

More from Amit Agarwal: how to check if an e-mail address is valid an exists. Doesn’t work for all e-mail addresses. One of those “so simple I slapped my forehead” solutions.

Apparently Google Flu Trends is neither all that nor a bucket of wings. “The system has consistently overestimated flu-related visits over the past three years, and was especially inaccurate around the peak of flu season – when such data is most useful.”

Yelp has teamed up with Yahoo and its reviews are now going to show up on Yahoo Search. Some folks thinking this is a big deal for Yelp. I think it’s a bigger deal for Yahoo.

WordPress 3.9 Beta 1 is now available.

Interesting: 6 Ways to Promote Your Business With Pinterest Places.

Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) has launched a minor in free and open source software and free culture. “RIT’s 15-credit-hour minor, open to undergraduates across the university, includes three core courses from the B. Thomas Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences and the College of Liberal Arts. Students also select two elective courses that can be chosen from a list of computing and liberal arts courses. Electives from additional disciplines will likely be added over time.” Good morning, Internet…

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3 replies »

  1. Re: how to check if an e-mail address is valid an[d] exists
    And if you enter a valid e-mail address, the true user now has to reset his/her password. Right?

    • I don’t think so. In my experience just because someone tries to reset your password doesn’t mean you have to do it. I have occasionally used one of those links and then remembered my password, and was able to just use it without going ahead and doing a reset.

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