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Another one in the books - 7 July 2010
Jul. 8th, 2010 01:33 amGreetings, fans of cheesy movies pull of literalisms and puns. Airplane! has been with us for thirty years now. And at least two sequels, too.
NASA and Steam together release Moonbase Alpha, where the player takes on the role of astronauts who must recover critical life-support systems on Luna after object strikes damage the components. For those who have their Steam client installed, the game is just a click or two away.
Oh, goodness no, Blizzard. Requiring people to use their real first and last names on the forums and in the games is a bad, bad idea. Want to know why? Here, have a compilation. Starting with - ease of trolling, spamming, and other bad mojo from knowing your actual name, plus the exposure to employers or stalkers who will know for certain that someone with your name plays games, the ease at which uniquely-named persons could be tracked and stalked, plus name-based harassment based on perceived gender or ethnicity or religion. And that’s the low-hanging fruit. People think it will stop trolling? Not likely. Won’t be a trick at all to construct a new pseudonym that looks like a real name. John Smith, meet John Smith, meet John Smith, meet John Connor, nee Smith. I believe the policy will be defeated either by pseudonmys clumping together as to be indistinguishable from each other or when someone actually gets hurt, harassed, stalked, or trolled in their actual lives because their real name was exposed. I hope it’s the first, because I’d hate to be Activision when the lawyers come calling about what happened to their client as a result of the requirement to use real names.
And then, out here in the professional world, oh, not again. *siiiigh* Mother claims son is in therapy because of graphic content in adult manga shelved in adult graphic novel section that son checked out without her seeing, wants all manga banned from the library. Council President committs double-fault by claiming the library has policies in place to stop young people from checking out graphic materials, something the Library Director did not say (at least, not in the article). Cue, please, Il Trovatore, and once again, the Head-Desk Chorus.
For serious, though - a manga sent a young child into extensive therapy? I think not. Mom may have sent the child away to get the demons cleansed out of him, which I’m sure is helpful for the kid’s psyche, but I think Mom’s trying to cover her own ass that her kid managed to read something outside of her strict control. We appreciate parents taking an interest in their kids reading, really, but you have to realize that at some point the kids are going to find a way to read what they want, even if it’s not on the approved list. Also, Council President, I’d be very surprised if the library had a policy that forbade kids from checking out materials on the adult shelves - we’re access people, not restriction people CIPA requires Internet stuff to be filtered, but there’s no requirement (and shouldn’t be) on the print material.
Out in the world today, the leaders of the United States and Israel strongly expressed their shared commitment to each other and their "unbreakable" bond, as if to tell all the people writing and talking about how much Barack Obama hates Israel and would let Iran nuke it to STFU, n00bs. They won’t, of course, until the President appeases them by pre-emptively using nuclear weapons against Iran.
The United States Secretary of State also expressed support for the nation of Georgia, still recovering from a Russian invasion and occupation three years ago.
An 8 year prison sentence for revealing state secrets for a geologist who discovered and then sold information on government-run oil operations in China may make entrepreneurs skittish about doing business with Chinese national corporations, for fear that their information might suddenly turn out to be a state secret as well.
Here in the country, a word of advice. When the USGS says that fertilizer is the major component of unacceptable nitrogen in the drinking water, advocating for less regulation of agribusiness and trying to blame much of the nitrogen on deer and elk is a bad idea.
The federal government filed suit and requested a stay of Arizona's Papers Please law, claiming the state law infringes upon a duty that is solely the federal government's to do. In response, the governor accused the government of wasting time and taxpayer money, the Senators from Arizona and some House members complained about the Justice action, and they all hunkered down in support of the law, claiming the government needs to secure the borders before moving on to any sort of immigration reform. We think they’re hoping that “secure borders” will stop the problem because illegal immigrants or those attempting to cross will just be found and shot/deported in sufficient numbers to scare anyone else off.
The current administration looks a lot like the last, says the Times, gleefully rubbing their hands together, trying to pitch the article as “He promised he would be different, but look how similar he his. Where’s your hope and change now?” and glossing over the inheritance part, some of the ways the current administration has made progress on issues, even as other familiar ones stretch on, and giving a quick mention to the fact that there’s an actively-hostile opposition dedicated to stopping evertything that comes through them, no matter what.
In technology, treat photo kiosks as suspect and possible venues for malware downloads, especially if you’re in a Wollworth’s or Big W. Anybody stupid enough to put up a publicly-accessible computer without anti-virus software deserves getting beaten about the head and shoulders by anyone who hears that they did that.
A solar powered plane has taken to the skies, attempting to fly solo around the world. Best of luck and hopefully it doesn’t take eighty days to circumnavigate.
In the micro-world, stem cells can be coaxed out of blood using various gene manipulation techniques, scientists use nanoparticles to remotely control animal behavior, meaning you, too, may soon be unable to understand the name of the group that sounds like La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo, better fiber for electronic textiles, and better performance for printed electronics.
And in science, Humans may have been on Angle-land much earlier, about 250,000 years, than previously thought, thanks to the unearthing of stone tools on Norfolk Beach.
The opinions section is short but packed with most interesting things. Floating at the top is the Slacktivist pointing out that the people who are clamoring for deficit reduction and austerity measures are doing so disingenuously - most people cut their budgets, yes, but then they also look for an additional revenue source. The government does not have the luxury of taking a second job to make ends meet, but what it should be doing is trying to get all of those other people who are looking for first or second jobs to be employed. People who are screaming about deficits should also be looking to find whatever ways they can to get people back to work. That includes more than just “cut taxes and pray that the private sector uses it to hire instead of pocketing it as profit and continuing to lay off.” Massive unemployment is massive defecit spending, sure, but most people don’t want just unemploment insurance - they want to work and earn their wages, which will be far better than eny unemployment insurance payment there is.
Messrs. Biggs and Richwine complain that government workers are being paid too much and get too many benefits, saying it takes a private worker about 13.5 months to earn what a government worker does in 12. It does not, apparently, occur to them that the private sector is always interested in seeing how much more profit it can squeeze from the revenue stream, profit that can be offered up as executive compensation or shareholder dividends, and one of the easy ways to do that is to make sure your workers are underpaid for their qualifications, to not provide benefits to your workers, to only employ them part time, to fire anyone who even talks about unionization (not for that cause, of course, as that would be illegal), and to insist that they should be grateful to have a job at all and to stop whining about how they don’t make enough to meet the expenses and to pay for the overinflated goods prices the companies are charging their customers. All those things are sound corporate practice when you want profit. So instead of complaining about how much government workers make, perhaps Messrs. Biggs and Richwine would be better served complaining about how much corporations make it hard for their workers to buy their products without financial assistance and take a hard look at executive compensation, perhaps to see where a nice salary trim there could result in Mr. Ford’s dream of his workers being able to buy his cars a reality again.
Mr. Cooper lays into the President for not being able to magically stop the oil spill or hold anyone accountable for it, based on half-truths (the government stopped on-shore dredging, yes, because moving the sand would cause as much damage as the oil would, and it might not even work properly), statistics (the accusation that “Barack Obama doesn’t care about conservative people”), and lies (that the president can magically make BP more accountable than they already are without due process and the like). But no need to fear - his organization is investigating and will report back with evidence to fit the conclusion they already have in mind.
We descend further into the barrel, stopping along the way to take note of Michelle Malkin's insistence that immigrant assimilation and adoption of American culture is a major part of the solution to border problems. Down near the dregs, we spot Mr. Sowell pontificating about how the Democrats are always playing Santa Claus, giving out things we can't afford to give, and then successfully sticking higher taxes and the villain designation to the Republican Party when they try to reduce the deficit, hiding behind “bipartisanship” to get things passed and then running away from it once it is passed. Because it’s always Democrats who are giving away billions of dollars in subsidies (oil, agriculture) and entitlements (“defense” contracts, PMCs) to people who don’t deserve them.
At the very bottom of the barrel, however, we find Mr. T. Savage railing against a child's lemonade stand because they were giving the lemonade and chocolate treats away instead of charging for them, and that offends him. He extends this outward into how the American populace has come to expect everything as free and not connecting the dots between all the “free” stuff and deficit spending, higher taxes, and inflation, but really, let’s focus on the lemonade stand. The entire point of the lemonade stand, in his eyes, is to teach basic capitalism - figure out what you need to charge to make your costs back and a little more, and price accordingly. They can’t possibly be giving it away for free because it’s not theirs to give, its their parents’. And the thought that the parents might have given it to them to use, expecting no recompense, is apparently unthinkable. How cruel.
And in the dregs, one last thing. Whether abridged, so as to point out that he believes Barack Obama created the recession deliberately as payback to White America for many years of slavery, or unabridged, so we get to see that he also agrees with a guest that Michael Steele wouldn't be RNC chair if he wasn't black, he thinks that Oprah's blackness is what made her powerful, and that President Obama wouldn't have been elected if he wasn't black in addition to all that, and we get Rush Limbaugh, still overtly concerned about race and affirmative action (nice try, Mr. Sheppard, but posting the unabridged supports Mr. Olbermann’s point and then some), Worst Person In the World.
Last for tonight, the Cracked research team points out six things in history that we perceive erroneously, whether because we’re looking at it several thousands of years onward or because it’s convenient to see someone as your race instead of what his actual race would be.
NASA and Steam together release Moonbase Alpha, where the player takes on the role of astronauts who must recover critical life-support systems on Luna after object strikes damage the components. For those who have their Steam client installed, the game is just a click or two away.
Oh, goodness no, Blizzard. Requiring people to use their real first and last names on the forums and in the games is a bad, bad idea. Want to know why? Here, have a compilation. Starting with - ease of trolling, spamming, and other bad mojo from knowing your actual name, plus the exposure to employers or stalkers who will know for certain that someone with your name plays games, the ease at which uniquely-named persons could be tracked and stalked, plus name-based harassment based on perceived gender or ethnicity or religion. And that’s the low-hanging fruit. People think it will stop trolling? Not likely. Won’t be a trick at all to construct a new pseudonym that looks like a real name. John Smith, meet John Smith, meet John Smith, meet John Connor, nee Smith. I believe the policy will be defeated either by pseudonmys clumping together as to be indistinguishable from each other or when someone actually gets hurt, harassed, stalked, or trolled in their actual lives because their real name was exposed. I hope it’s the first, because I’d hate to be Activision when the lawyers come calling about what happened to their client as a result of the requirement to use real names.
And then, out here in the professional world, oh, not again. *siiiigh* Mother claims son is in therapy because of graphic content in adult manga shelved in adult graphic novel section that son checked out without her seeing, wants all manga banned from the library. Council President committs double-fault by claiming the library has policies in place to stop young people from checking out graphic materials, something the Library Director did not say (at least, not in the article). Cue, please, Il Trovatore, and once again, the Head-Desk Chorus.
For serious, though - a manga sent a young child into extensive therapy? I think not. Mom may have sent the child away to get the demons cleansed out of him, which I’m sure is helpful for the kid’s psyche, but I think Mom’s trying to cover her own ass that her kid managed to read something outside of her strict control. We appreciate parents taking an interest in their kids reading, really, but you have to realize that at some point the kids are going to find a way to read what they want, even if it’s not on the approved list. Also, Council President, I’d be very surprised if the library had a policy that forbade kids from checking out materials on the adult shelves - we’re access people, not restriction people CIPA requires Internet stuff to be filtered, but there’s no requirement (and shouldn’t be) on the print material.
Out in the world today, the leaders of the United States and Israel strongly expressed their shared commitment to each other and their "unbreakable" bond, as if to tell all the people writing and talking about how much Barack Obama hates Israel and would let Iran nuke it to STFU, n00bs. They won’t, of course, until the President appeases them by pre-emptively using nuclear weapons against Iran.
The United States Secretary of State also expressed support for the nation of Georgia, still recovering from a Russian invasion and occupation three years ago.
An 8 year prison sentence for revealing state secrets for a geologist who discovered and then sold information on government-run oil operations in China may make entrepreneurs skittish about doing business with Chinese national corporations, for fear that their information might suddenly turn out to be a state secret as well.
Here in the country, a word of advice. When the USGS says that fertilizer is the major component of unacceptable nitrogen in the drinking water, advocating for less regulation of agribusiness and trying to blame much of the nitrogen on deer and elk is a bad idea.
The federal government filed suit and requested a stay of Arizona's Papers Please law, claiming the state law infringes upon a duty that is solely the federal government's to do. In response, the governor accused the government of wasting time and taxpayer money, the Senators from Arizona and some House members complained about the Justice action, and they all hunkered down in support of the law, claiming the government needs to secure the borders before moving on to any sort of immigration reform. We think they’re hoping that “secure borders” will stop the problem because illegal immigrants or those attempting to cross will just be found and shot/deported in sufficient numbers to scare anyone else off.
The current administration looks a lot like the last, says the Times, gleefully rubbing their hands together, trying to pitch the article as “He promised he would be different, but look how similar he his. Where’s your hope and change now?” and glossing over the inheritance part, some of the ways the current administration has made progress on issues, even as other familiar ones stretch on, and giving a quick mention to the fact that there’s an actively-hostile opposition dedicated to stopping evertything that comes through them, no matter what.
In technology, treat photo kiosks as suspect and possible venues for malware downloads, especially if you’re in a Wollworth’s or Big W. Anybody stupid enough to put up a publicly-accessible computer without anti-virus software deserves getting beaten about the head and shoulders by anyone who hears that they did that.
A solar powered plane has taken to the skies, attempting to fly solo around the world. Best of luck and hopefully it doesn’t take eighty days to circumnavigate.
In the micro-world, stem cells can be coaxed out of blood using various gene manipulation techniques, scientists use nanoparticles to remotely control animal behavior, meaning you, too, may soon be unable to understand the name of the group that sounds like La-Li-Lu-Le-Lo, better fiber for electronic textiles, and better performance for printed electronics.
And in science, Humans may have been on Angle-land much earlier, about 250,000 years, than previously thought, thanks to the unearthing of stone tools on Norfolk Beach.
The opinions section is short but packed with most interesting things. Floating at the top is the Slacktivist pointing out that the people who are clamoring for deficit reduction and austerity measures are doing so disingenuously - most people cut their budgets, yes, but then they also look for an additional revenue source. The government does not have the luxury of taking a second job to make ends meet, but what it should be doing is trying to get all of those other people who are looking for first or second jobs to be employed. People who are screaming about deficits should also be looking to find whatever ways they can to get people back to work. That includes more than just “cut taxes and pray that the private sector uses it to hire instead of pocketing it as profit and continuing to lay off.” Massive unemployment is massive defecit spending, sure, but most people don’t want just unemploment insurance - they want to work and earn their wages, which will be far better than eny unemployment insurance payment there is.
Messrs. Biggs and Richwine complain that government workers are being paid too much and get too many benefits, saying it takes a private worker about 13.5 months to earn what a government worker does in 12. It does not, apparently, occur to them that the private sector is always interested in seeing how much more profit it can squeeze from the revenue stream, profit that can be offered up as executive compensation or shareholder dividends, and one of the easy ways to do that is to make sure your workers are underpaid for their qualifications, to not provide benefits to your workers, to only employ them part time, to fire anyone who even talks about unionization (not for that cause, of course, as that would be illegal), and to insist that they should be grateful to have a job at all and to stop whining about how they don’t make enough to meet the expenses and to pay for the overinflated goods prices the companies are charging their customers. All those things are sound corporate practice when you want profit. So instead of complaining about how much government workers make, perhaps Messrs. Biggs and Richwine would be better served complaining about how much corporations make it hard for their workers to buy their products without financial assistance and take a hard look at executive compensation, perhaps to see where a nice salary trim there could result in Mr. Ford’s dream of his workers being able to buy his cars a reality again.
Mr. Cooper lays into the President for not being able to magically stop the oil spill or hold anyone accountable for it, based on half-truths (the government stopped on-shore dredging, yes, because moving the sand would cause as much damage as the oil would, and it might not even work properly), statistics (the accusation that “Barack Obama doesn’t care about conservative people”), and lies (that the president can magically make BP more accountable than they already are without due process and the like). But no need to fear - his organization is investigating and will report back with evidence to fit the conclusion they already have in mind.
We descend further into the barrel, stopping along the way to take note of Michelle Malkin's insistence that immigrant assimilation and adoption of American culture is a major part of the solution to border problems. Down near the dregs, we spot Mr. Sowell pontificating about how the Democrats are always playing Santa Claus, giving out things we can't afford to give, and then successfully sticking higher taxes and the villain designation to the Republican Party when they try to reduce the deficit, hiding behind “bipartisanship” to get things passed and then running away from it once it is passed. Because it’s always Democrats who are giving away billions of dollars in subsidies (oil, agriculture) and entitlements (“defense” contracts, PMCs) to people who don’t deserve them.
At the very bottom of the barrel, however, we find Mr. T. Savage railing against a child's lemonade stand because they were giving the lemonade and chocolate treats away instead of charging for them, and that offends him. He extends this outward into how the American populace has come to expect everything as free and not connecting the dots between all the “free” stuff and deficit spending, higher taxes, and inflation, but really, let’s focus on the lemonade stand. The entire point of the lemonade stand, in his eyes, is to teach basic capitalism - figure out what you need to charge to make your costs back and a little more, and price accordingly. They can’t possibly be giving it away for free because it’s not theirs to give, its their parents’. And the thought that the parents might have given it to them to use, expecting no recompense, is apparently unthinkable. How cruel.
And in the dregs, one last thing. Whether abridged, so as to point out that he believes Barack Obama created the recession deliberately as payback to White America for many years of slavery, or unabridged, so we get to see that he also agrees with a guest that Michael Steele wouldn't be RNC chair if he wasn't black, he thinks that Oprah's blackness is what made her powerful, and that President Obama wouldn't have been elected if he wasn't black in addition to all that, and we get Rush Limbaugh, still overtly concerned about race and affirmative action (nice try, Mr. Sheppard, but posting the unabridged supports Mr. Olbermann’s point and then some), Worst Person In the World.
Last for tonight, the Cracked research team points out six things in history that we perceive erroneously, whether because we’re looking at it several thousands of years onward or because it’s convenient to see someone as your race instead of what his actual race would be.
