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Archive for the ‘WTF?’ Category
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(via Michael Hanscom)
How utterly random
This picture showed up at the top of my last.fm profile. I have no idea what it is, or what it’s for. It’s a Flash animation, but it doesn’t actually do anything, and no part of it is a link of any kind. However, I liked it, so I felt compelled to steal it. Anyone got any ideas what it is?
Links galore
- Mr. Gosling, why did you make URL equals suck?! A useful warning to Java developers - using URL.equals may be considered harmful, because apparently it does a blocking lookup to the IP address of the machine.
- No Shredder in TMNT? Peter Laird, series creator of our favorite heroes on a halfshell, suggested the change. The villain is now a more generic ‘monsters and space aliens.’ Maybe it’s this guy, even though he didn’t really come from outer space, per se?
- The world’s most indispensable Firefox tab: Ctrl-Shift-T (or Cmd-Shift-T on the Mac) will re-open the most recently closed tab. Hallelujah!
- Slain trees haunt loggers. My coworker’s response: “heh, ent ghosts.”
- Find out your Windows Vista Experience number. Sort of like a compatibility rating between your computer and Vista - is it love at first byte, or is Vista simply too high-maintenance for a down-to-earth machine like yours? (Pardon the pun - I had to.)
- O’Reilly Media launched Hackszine.com, an online companion to the Hacks series of books gracing bookshelves for quite a while now. This is already in my RSS reader.
- MAKE Blog: Do it yourself grassroots media sites using NewsCloud. Twenty bucks a month gets you a Debian install and NewsCloud; I think they handle hosting. Or you can just do it yourself, it’s open-source.
- Dear God, it’s the Woot-Off that won’t die. The offer as I type this: a 37″ Sova widescreen HD-ready LCD monitor for $649.99 plus $5 shipping. I wish I could afford this monster.
That about covers it. I’m sort of like a bargain basement Weekend Update. (Obvious pop-culture references linked for my friend Sandra’s sake, who recently revealed she has no idea what movie features the songs “Danger Zone,” “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling,” and more. Or, for that matter, has never seen SNL.)
For once, I’m glad I can’t read Japanese
And you should be too.
(photo tipoff by jtzapp)
“the longest suicide note in history”
You owe it to yourself to read A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection if you ever even remotely considered upgrading to this lackluster joke of an operating system.
Executive Summary
—————–Windows Vista includes an extensive reworking of core OS elements in order to provide content protection for so-called “premium content”, typically HD data from Blu-Ray and HD-DVD sources. Providing this protection incurs considerable costs in terms of system performance, system stability, technical support overhead, and hardware and software cost. These issues affect not only users of Vista but the entire PC industry, since the effects of the protection measures extend to cover all hardware and software that will ever come into contact with Vista, even if it’s not used directly with Vista (for example hardware in a Macintosh computer or on a Linux server). This document analyses the cost involved in Vista’s content protection, and the collateral damage that this incurs throughout the computer industry.
Executive Executive Summary
—————————The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.
Just more proof that money > you in Microsoftland.
What the hell did I do to my arm?
So apparently, you should precede twenty straight minutes of Wii Sports boxing with stretching exercises.
Oops!
My left bicep still hates me.
ATTN: Pluto is still not a planet
Everyone seems to have missed the news that Pluto is not a planet except me. Are all my friends living under rocks?
Pluto (IPA: /ˈpluːtəʊ/), designated (134340) Pluto in the Minor Planet Center catalogue, is the second-largest known dwarf planet in the solar system. (emphasis mine)
Pluto was the ninth planet from 1930 until August 24, 2006. We started discovering a lot of other things in space that were a lot like Pluto, including Eris and Ceres, that we didn’t consider planets. So basically a bunch of astronomers got together and as of 8/24 last year, changed what a planet is. Pluto isn’t a full-fledged planet anymore; it, Eris, and Ceres are now dwarf planets.
Seriously, did everyone miss this?
Leafletter: what the heck is this?
What exactly (or perhaps better, who exactly) is Leafletter for?
I watched the demo and other than a silly Flash-enabled artist’s portfolio, I can’t figure out who would use this, or for what. Other than maybe MySpace kids, who absolutely love slapping Flash everywhere (consequently, my own MySpace profile is one of the dullest on the web, but also the most readable and possibly the quickest to load… and no, it doesn’t play that damn Nickelback song).
(Snazzy Flickr integration, but everything integrates with Flickr these days. I think a new corollary needs to be added to Zawinski’s Law, something along the lines of, “every web app attempts to expand until it can integrate with Flickr and/or del.icio.us.”)
Annoyance of the day
Why, in this day and age, can Barnes & Noble still only take one gift card per order on an online order? I don’t particularly want to traipse down to a store, have them order a book for me, wait for it to come in (because you know that this book isn’t available around here [and yes, I do know; I looked at the B&N in Florence for it, and Newport's B&N recently suffered a technology book spasm and lost about 3/4 of their section]), then come back down to get it… or pay the extra to get it sent to me. Nein, I say, nein! Why can I not just spend these two (TWO!) gift cards on the Internets?
Isn’t that what the future’s about?
Fuck flying cars, where’s my ability to spend two gift cards at once on the Internet?
Mary Worth 1: Part 1
A month’s worth of Mary Worth comics, all shot using the ‘actual’ ‘camera’ ‘angles’ and poses portrayed in the comic.
Man, I do love rippin’ on Mary Worth (though loudfan has made her sing; I did the same to Apartment 3G and Rex Morgan, M.D.). And look, here’s more!
(via jwz)
A non videogame related story, with naughty bits in it
This one deals with a giant drawing of genitalia on a rooftop. According to The Sun:
PRANKSTERS drew a willy on the roof of a top school that was so large it could be spotted from SPACE. But it went unnoticed until it was seen on Google Earth.
A group of ex-pupils was last night blamed for the rude shape — snapped by satellite.
One former pupil of £2,906-a-term independent Yarm School at Stockton on Tees, Teesside, said: “A couple of ex-students hopped over the school fence on a weekend and went unnoticed by guards.
They managed to get on the roof of the Friary building and somehow mark on the willy. They also burnt a manhood into the grass.”
Although the shape on the roof has been scrubbed off it can still be seen on Google.
(via Digg)
Who opened the floodgates?
I opened my Gmail inbox tonight and I noticed a peculiar number by my spam folder:
Why is this important?
Because it was closer to 7000 on Friday at this time.
This means, even with Google deleting any spam older than 30 days, I got approximately 3000 spam messages in two days.
Sheesh!
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