Pumpkin Pi!

This ranks right up there with the Pi pie (which I'll post in a couple days) for awesomeness in the geekery category.

How men and women think different

Apparently this is a real assignment received by an English Professor.
(Update: now you can actually read it!)

RECEIVED FROM AN ENGLISH PROFESSOR: This assignment was actually turned in by two of my English students:

Rebecca --last name deleted-- and Gary --last name deleted-- English 44A, SMU'S Creative Writing, Prof Miller

In-class Assignment for Wednesday Today we will experiment with a new form called the tandem story. The process is simple. Each person will pair off with the person sitting to his or her immediate right. One of you will then write the first paragraph of a short story. The partner will read the first paragraph and then add another paragraph to the story. The first person will then add a third paragraph, and so on back and forth. Remember to reread what has been written each time in order to keep the story coherent. The story is over when both agree a conclusion has been reached.
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At first, Laurie couldn't decide which kind of tea she wanted. The chamomile, which used to be her favorite for lazy evenings at home, now reminded her too much of Carl, who once said, in happier times, that he liked chamomile. But she felt she must now, at all costs, keep her mind off Carl. His possessiveness was suffocating, and if she thought about him too much her asthma started acting up again. So chamomile was out of the question.

Meanwhile, Advance Sergeant Carl Harris, leader of the attack squadron now in orbit over Skylon 4, had more important things to think about than the neuroses of an air-headed asthmatic bimbo named Laurie with whom he had spent one sweaty night over a year ago. "A.S. Harris to Geostation 17," he said into his transgalactic communicator. "Polar orbit established. No sign of resistance so far..." But before he could sign off a bluish particle beam flashed out of nowhere and blasted a hole through his ship's cargo bay.

The jolt from the direct hit sent him flying out of his seat and across the cockpit. He bumped his head and died almost immediately, but not before he felt one last pang of regret for psychically brutalizing the one woman who had ever had feelings for him. Soon afterwards, Earth stopped its pointless hostilities towards the peaceful farmers of Skylon 4. "Congress Passes Law Permanently Abolishing War and Space Travel," Laurie read in her newspaper one morning. The news simultaneously excited her and bored her. She stared out the window, dreaming of her youth -- when the days had passed unhurriedly and carefree, with no newspapers to read, no television to distract her from her sense of innocent wonder at all the beautiful things around her. "Why must one lose one's innocence to become a woman?" she pondered wistfully.

Little did she know, but she has less than 10 seconds to live. Thousands of miles above the city, the Anu'udrian mothership launched the first of its lithium fusion missiles. The dim-witted wimpy peaceniks who pushed the Unilateral Aerospace Disarmament Treaty through Congress had left Earth a defenseless target for the hostile alien empires who were determined to destroy the human race. Within two hours after the passage of the treaty the Anu'udrian ships were on course for Earth, carrying enough firepower to pulverize the entire planet. With no one to stop them, they swiftly initiated their diabolical plan. The lithium fusion missile entered the atmosphere unimpeded. The President, in his top-secret mobile submarine headquarters on the ocean floor off the coast of Guam, felt the inconceivably massive explosion which vaporized Laurie and 85 million other Americans. The President slammed his fist on the conference table. "We can't allow this! I'm going to veto that treaty! Let's blow'em out of the sky!"

This is absurd. I refuse to continue this mockery of literature. My writing partner is a violent, chauvinistic, semi-literate adolescent.

Yeah? Well, you're a self-centered tedious neurotic whose attempts at writing are the literary equivalent of Valium.

Asshole.

Bitch.

True story.

I found this at opey.

New electronic Rubik's Cube

I came across a sweet little digital toy online today that is basically an electronic Rubik's Cube. There is a little LCD on each square and you drag on them to rotate. The cube is called the Fentix Cube and is available in limited quantities from the Kinetica Museum in London.

TV-Links.co.uk taken down, owner arrested!

This is a sad day for freedom. Just yesterday, the popular website tv-links.co.uk was shut down by a multinational police investigation led by FACT, an anti-copyright infringement group. The part that really sucks is that tv-links never even hosted illegal content, AT ALL. The site merely linked to video on Google and a few other video sites. Everything that could be seen as illegal was on other sites, yet tv-links got shut down and the owner arrested for finding this content and linking to it. This effectively makes the entire internet illegal since linking to something that isn't yours is apparently infringing copyrights, and I don't think that's right. The staff of tv-links has started an online petition to try to do something about this, and I encourage everybody to sign it, just click on the link to sign.

Beer Girls

I read about a practice that I find appalling that is happening right now in Cambodia, and probably many other places. They're called beer girls, and the spend their evenings and nights working at the bar trying to sell their employer's brand of beer. That's not the disturbing part though. What really bothers me is that most beer distributors hire these girls from poor families with promises that they will earn plenty of money and be taken care of, and then throw them into the fray with less than an hour of training, and they are only paid for what they sell. This comes to an average monthly salary of US $55, which is less than half of what it costs just to survive. The girls are under heavy pressure by their employers to do anything that is necessary to sell the beer, and that means they have to drink with each of the men buying from her, often ending up very drunk at the end of the night. That also means that after working all night, drunk, knowing they will not be able to pay even for their rent, when the drunk men want to have sex with them for a better 'tip,' they frequently have to take such offers or risk becoming homeless and possibly even losing their job when the customer complains.

This is a despicable practice which is gotten away with by many of the brewers who make the most popular beers around the world, and probably by the brewer of your favorite beer. They avoid scrutiny by listing these girls wages as 'promotional' or 'advertising' costs and not disclosing that each of these $500-600 per year advertising costs are actually a persons entire salary. Because of these conditions, around 20% of these girls contract HIV/AIDS directly because of the job and with such low wages cannot afford treatment and die within 3 months to 2 years. Most of those who do are under 25 years old and are instantly replaced with casual disregard for their life and their family. What can we do about it? We can make this issue known to the public and not sweep it under the rug. We can tell these companies that we won't stand for slavery in the name of profit, and we can vote with our wallets. To find out if your normal beer company engages in this practice, visit the Beer Girls website at beergirls.org. For more information, case studies, and other research about the issue, visit FairTradeBeer's reports page.

The Essence of Human Nature

New employment technology, untapped US market

I came across an extremely interesting article about a new technology in use in Japan that I believe needs to come over here. The original article is available for your viewing pleasure at http://joi.ito.com/archives/2007/10/21/otetsudai_networks.html.

The handheld device shows the location of all of the workers located in the area, and using it, employers are able to find people who are qualified for the particular job they need filled. This is in response to an increasing trend for young professionals to be in varying positions and not be locked into one job. This is not only the case in Japan, and I think that this would be not only extremely popular, but profitable here in the US. I would like to make this a reality, and am seeking somebody who is interested in getting this project off the ground, starting here in Anchorage, Alaska. I have the connections and ability to obtain space on radio towers if the interest was generated and the technology was obtained, licensed, or developed. I think this would be a great opportunity for a new startup, and would love to work with like-minded others to make this a reality. This is clearly an untapped market in the US, and potential for a national corporation exists, so forward-looking and thinking individuals who are business-oriented and enterprising should contact me immediately and we will discuss what we can do to bring this to our country. I can be reached by commenting on this article or email at lockext &t gmail /dot/ com. Decode the address, if you're human it shouldn't be too hard. ;) I'm looking for people who are serious about doing business and want to make this happen before somebody else takes over the market! Don't wait, let's make it happen!

Ninja bear!

This bear could kick most anyones ass with a stick!

Bear Has Sick Stick Skills - Watch more free videos

Windows Vista important security announcement

It's come to my attention that there is a serious security issue in Windows Vista that all users should be aware of. It involves the use of Unicode characters to change the way that a filename appears in the explorer and desktop to make a dangerous executable in screensaver (.scr) format appear to be a harmless JPG. This vulnerability doesn't appear to exist in XP, only Vista. The following screenshots, as captured by Max Ried, demonstrate the vulnerability and show how serious the problem is.

The file on the XP desktop: The file on the Vista desktop:








As you can see the only way to identify it as not being just a picture is by hovering your mouse over it. It appears to me that this is done by using a particular character, which is actually 2 Unicode characters, one being the circle of commas, the other being the code which causes everything after it to be typed backwards. You can see how it works by copying the character, and pasting it into any text entry box, such as notepad.exe, then start typing right after you paste it. The character is at the bottom of this post as it becomes very hard to type forwards if pasted anywhere in the middle of the article. It looks like the filename is made up of the code to insert the gpj. backwards at the end of the filename (or appear as such to the viewer,) and then the actual filename, Nice Picture.scr. Apparently XP is not affected because it does not correctly support Unicode for filenames within explorer.exe and therefore the desktop. This vulnerability was first demonstrated at Heise Security and adapted here to include my additional data on the cause.

Another view of the problem in the 7Zip program, first in XP:















And in Vista:













And now the character I believe is responsible, along with the character that makes it possible to copy and paste it, otherwise the character doesn't take up any space and therefore can't be highlighted to copy, it would just cause everything you typed after it to be backwards, as I'll demonstrate here:

‫‬‭‮‪‫‬‭‮҉

this is what happens after you paste and start typing
‫‬‭

Breadcrab

Hahahahaha.. if you don't get it you obviously haven't played halflife.