Reasonable success - 19 October 2007
Oct. 19th, 2007 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
silveradeptManaged to get my way through the upgrade installation and sequence to arrive at Gutsy Gibbon. At least, I’m pretty sure I’ve made it all the way there. Yay, release. I’ll have to see what’s available yet for me to play with and/or do neat stuff with, but I think things have been properly navigated.
Our lead tonight is Improv Everywhere goes shirtless. Which makes for quite the display of shirtless men, if you’re interested in that kind of thing. If, instead you prefer cartoon Gauls that can fend off Romans with super-strength, you might be more interested in learning about how well Albert Uderzo, who helped create Asterix, is doing. However, if biting political satire is your thing, rejoice in that Viacom is opening up the entire archive of The Daily Show to be watched on-line. And for those of us who hate having punctuation abused, The "blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
In technology news, shifting off certain program parts to chips called field-programmable gate arrays can improve processor performance. The processor makes a determination on which ones to send based on the most-executed sequences of instructions.
Aggravating (and possibly explaining a few things), Comcast is interfering with the transmissions of its users, blocking some attempts to upload complete files through peer-to-peer networks. With a swarming application like BitTorrent, this throttling done by the ISP can affect other people, as well. Comcast does not do this as the ISP, however, but masquerading as another computer user and sending a stop signal. This is supposedly a mechanism to prevent peer-to-peer traffic from overwhelming the network, but it definitely violates the idea that all traffic should be treated equally. (If peer-to-peer is what everyone wants, then so be it.)
Hello Kitty AK-47. That’s not just Hello Kitty Hell, that’s Hello Kitty Rambo Hell. Paired with pistol crossbows, one has quite the arsenal of damaging and death-dealing stuff. What is worrisome, however, is when robotic weaponry malfunctions and discharges its stock of ammunition, killing and wounding humans. I don’t think this will deter people from trying to develop fully robot weapons, just so that no human actually has to look as other humans are killed without remorse.
In the interest of keeping healthy over time, Australian scientists have recommended that those who have low sperm counts should have sex every day to improve their county and virility. (For those who have low count and/or DNA damage, but probably for the rest of the people, too.) Isn’t that just what someone wanted to hear? “To help you try and improve your sperm count, I’m telling you to have sex with your partner at least once daily.”
Something that appears to be more scary than substantive, unless there’s also research being done on finding ways to counteract what might result from it - an amino acid change in the H5N1 avian flu virus makes it much more able to spread in mammalian respiratory tracts. Which, I suppose, is nice to know, but what point does it have being released to the public at large?
Politics at large, internationally first: More than 100 people in Pakistan have died as a bomber detonated himself next to the opposition leader's bullet-proof bus while she was on parade. Whomever it was, I don’t think that’s going to be enough of a deterrent toward the negotiations in trying to bring a democratic government back to Pakistan. Elsewhere in the world, The United States has said it will not review plans for a missile defence shield in Europe if Iran gives up its nuclear program. Still putting pressure on Iran to cave, and at the same time, a NATO general says a seized arm shipment bound for Afghanistan originated in Iran. Can you feel it as Iran becomes the latest target of a ramp-up to attack? And all the while, more National Guard units are being called up to fight in Iran and Afghanistan. Isn’t there some rule about how the National Guard can be deployed with regard to foreign service? It doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.
And then domestically, Code Pink continues to decry the presence of a Marine Corps recruiting office near areas that are famous for their liberal politics. Additionally, Brownback is withdrawing from the 2008 United States presidential race, deciding that he’s not going to get enough votes or money to get the party nomination he wants. Something with more grist for the rumor mill is the Bush Administration's counter-terror chief saying that Iraq hasn't made America safer, and then three days later stepping down for health reasons. I’m sure there’s a joke in there about how telling the truth about Iraq pains him so much that he has to go seek help for it, but officially speaking, this is just a coincidence. Maybe in a few months we’ll find out it wasn’t.
Our beginning entry for the quiche contest is WorldNet Daily's "Christmas Defense Kit", which consists of three magnets, with the option to purchase more, or a bracelet. While they claim to ward off the “ACLU Grinches”, I don’t think they’re going to be very effective. Other than loudly proclaiming oneself to be someone thoroughly interested in insignificant things.
There’s pet abuse in these segments of our quiche contest, so if you don’t like the idea, or want to read about them, take my summary as true and don’t click. The first is someone so fed up with the cats of a neighborhood that he/she removed them and then let them loose 25 miles away. Worse than that, though, is the man who chained his dog to a wall in a gallery, refused to feed him and instructed others not to feed him, and called it art. The dog, naturally, died from this act of cruelty.
The Foot-In-Mouth department submits a transcript where Senator Clinton is called a "Vaginal-American" because the commentator wants to encourage women not to vote for the Senator on the sole basis of her being a woman, despite statistics that say if the Senator is on the ballot, they’re more likely to go out and vote. I agree that someone should vote their principles, and not gimmicks, but that was a less than tactful way of putting it. Not to mention that it sort of reinforces the idea that women are a minority group of some sort. I don’t know what the gender balance is, but I would certainly not run a campaign that treated all women as if they wanted the same things.
The RIAA cabal is trying to get out of paying attorney's fees for a case that was thrown out due to insufficient evidence. The amount of fees incurred by the defendant is supposedly larger than the judgment exacted against Jammie Thomas. Not only is the RIAA trying to shirk paying the costs, they insist that even though there wasn’t a case to move forward, that the defendant was guilty of engaging in infringement. “Well, you’re guilty anyway, so we shouldn’t have to pay anything even though our case was tossed.” I hope the judge orders the cabal to pay up, and that other judges do the same, so that the cabal stops with spray-and-pray types of lawsuits. Or that they go back and try to produce content that people will actually want to buy (and watch their piracy rates plummet downward as a result! Shock and horror!) The RIAA wins the Institutional Quiche for tonight with this act of hubris.
Something that is just scary, and wins a personal Special Quiche for whomever it is that allowed this to happen, an eight month-old baby managed to consume a tablet of ecstasy. The baby survived, luckily, thanks to the doctors, who also found out that the baby had burned through a very large portion of the drug faster than adults do. What I really want to know, however, is who the extraordinarily stupid, stupid rat creature it was that a) had the stuff, and b) had it where the baby could get it.
Finally getting out of rampant stupidity, we present the amazing talking Neandertals . As it was explained to me (as I do not have sufficient knowledge of genetics and anthropology), the premise of the piece here is to establish the idea that Neandertals had the genetic capacity to form structures that would permit speech. Not necessarily what we would categorize as human speech, but a method of communication more refined than grunts, that could be identified as a language. I was a bit surprised that the whole language thing was under serious debate, and I honestly probably wouldn’t be able to follow it, but I pass along the information for those people who can take it and run with it. My professional self is satisfied.
Speaking of my professional self, I have to get up in the morning and go to work, so I think I’ll head to bed and make it work.
P.S.: For those who are fiction writers, please take note of the following thing - Albus Dumbledore is a homosexual. Thus, the slash writers have one on the rest of you. But, I would also caution that Albus is a wise headmaster, and would not be of the pedo type, so please don’t glut the place with Harry/Albus, please.
Our lead tonight is Improv Everywhere goes shirtless. Which makes for quite the display of shirtless men, if you’re interested in that kind of thing. If, instead you prefer cartoon Gauls that can fend off Romans with super-strength, you might be more interested in learning about how well Albert Uderzo, who helped create Asterix, is doing. However, if biting political satire is your thing, rejoice in that Viacom is opening up the entire archive of The Daily Show to be watched on-line. And for those of us who hate having punctuation abused, The "blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks.
In technology news, shifting off certain program parts to chips called field-programmable gate arrays can improve processor performance. The processor makes a determination on which ones to send based on the most-executed sequences of instructions.
Aggravating (and possibly explaining a few things), Comcast is interfering with the transmissions of its users, blocking some attempts to upload complete files through peer-to-peer networks. With a swarming application like BitTorrent, this throttling done by the ISP can affect other people, as well. Comcast does not do this as the ISP, however, but masquerading as another computer user and sending a stop signal. This is supposedly a mechanism to prevent peer-to-peer traffic from overwhelming the network, but it definitely violates the idea that all traffic should be treated equally. (If peer-to-peer is what everyone wants, then so be it.)
Hello Kitty AK-47. That’s not just Hello Kitty Hell, that’s Hello Kitty Rambo Hell. Paired with pistol crossbows, one has quite the arsenal of damaging and death-dealing stuff. What is worrisome, however, is when robotic weaponry malfunctions and discharges its stock of ammunition, killing and wounding humans. I don’t think this will deter people from trying to develop fully robot weapons, just so that no human actually has to look as other humans are killed without remorse.
In the interest of keeping healthy over time, Australian scientists have recommended that those who have low sperm counts should have sex every day to improve their county and virility. (For those who have low count and/or DNA damage, but probably for the rest of the people, too.) Isn’t that just what someone wanted to hear? “To help you try and improve your sperm count, I’m telling you to have sex with your partner at least once daily.”
Something that appears to be more scary than substantive, unless there’s also research being done on finding ways to counteract what might result from it - an amino acid change in the H5N1 avian flu virus makes it much more able to spread in mammalian respiratory tracts. Which, I suppose, is nice to know, but what point does it have being released to the public at large?
Politics at large, internationally first: More than 100 people in Pakistan have died as a bomber detonated himself next to the opposition leader's bullet-proof bus while she was on parade. Whomever it was, I don’t think that’s going to be enough of a deterrent toward the negotiations in trying to bring a democratic government back to Pakistan. Elsewhere in the world, The United States has said it will not review plans for a missile defence shield in Europe if Iran gives up its nuclear program. Still putting pressure on Iran to cave, and at the same time, a NATO general says a seized arm shipment bound for Afghanistan originated in Iran. Can you feel it as Iran becomes the latest target of a ramp-up to attack? And all the while, more National Guard units are being called up to fight in Iran and Afghanistan. Isn’t there some rule about how the National Guard can be deployed with regard to foreign service? It doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense.
And then domestically, Code Pink continues to decry the presence of a Marine Corps recruiting office near areas that are famous for their liberal politics. Additionally, Brownback is withdrawing from the 2008 United States presidential race, deciding that he’s not going to get enough votes or money to get the party nomination he wants. Something with more grist for the rumor mill is the Bush Administration's counter-terror chief saying that Iraq hasn't made America safer, and then three days later stepping down for health reasons. I’m sure there’s a joke in there about how telling the truth about Iraq pains him so much that he has to go seek help for it, but officially speaking, this is just a coincidence. Maybe in a few months we’ll find out it wasn’t.
Our beginning entry for the quiche contest is WorldNet Daily's "Christmas Defense Kit", which consists of three magnets, with the option to purchase more, or a bracelet. While they claim to ward off the “ACLU Grinches”, I don’t think they’re going to be very effective. Other than loudly proclaiming oneself to be someone thoroughly interested in insignificant things.
There’s pet abuse in these segments of our quiche contest, so if you don’t like the idea, or want to read about them, take my summary as true and don’t click. The first is someone so fed up with the cats of a neighborhood that he/she removed them and then let them loose 25 miles away. Worse than that, though, is the man who chained his dog to a wall in a gallery, refused to feed him and instructed others not to feed him, and called it art. The dog, naturally, died from this act of cruelty.
The Foot-In-Mouth department submits a transcript where Senator Clinton is called a "Vaginal-American" because the commentator wants to encourage women not to vote for the Senator on the sole basis of her being a woman, despite statistics that say if the Senator is on the ballot, they’re more likely to go out and vote. I agree that someone should vote their principles, and not gimmicks, but that was a less than tactful way of putting it. Not to mention that it sort of reinforces the idea that women are a minority group of some sort. I don’t know what the gender balance is, but I would certainly not run a campaign that treated all women as if they wanted the same things.
The RIAA cabal is trying to get out of paying attorney's fees for a case that was thrown out due to insufficient evidence. The amount of fees incurred by the defendant is supposedly larger than the judgment exacted against Jammie Thomas. Not only is the RIAA trying to shirk paying the costs, they insist that even though there wasn’t a case to move forward, that the defendant was guilty of engaging in infringement. “Well, you’re guilty anyway, so we shouldn’t have to pay anything even though our case was tossed.” I hope the judge orders the cabal to pay up, and that other judges do the same, so that the cabal stops with spray-and-pray types of lawsuits. Or that they go back and try to produce content that people will actually want to buy (and watch their piracy rates plummet downward as a result! Shock and horror!) The RIAA wins the Institutional Quiche for tonight with this act of hubris.
Something that is just scary, and wins a personal Special Quiche for whomever it is that allowed this to happen, an eight month-old baby managed to consume a tablet of ecstasy. The baby survived, luckily, thanks to the doctors, who also found out that the baby had burned through a very large portion of the drug faster than adults do. What I really want to know, however, is who the extraordinarily stupid, stupid rat creature it was that a) had the stuff, and b) had it where the baby could get it.
Finally getting out of rampant stupidity, we present the amazing talking Neandertals . As it was explained to me (as I do not have sufficient knowledge of genetics and anthropology), the premise of the piece here is to establish the idea that Neandertals had the genetic capacity to form structures that would permit speech. Not necessarily what we would categorize as human speech, but a method of communication more refined than grunts, that could be identified as a language. I was a bit surprised that the whole language thing was under serious debate, and I honestly probably wouldn’t be able to follow it, but I pass along the information for those people who can take it and run with it. My professional self is satisfied.
Speaking of my professional self, I have to get up in the morning and go to work, so I think I’ll head to bed and make it work.
P.S.: For those who are fiction writers, please take note of the following thing - Albus Dumbledore is a homosexual. Thus, the slash writers have one on the rest of you. But, I would also caution that Albus is a wise headmaster, and would not be of the pedo type, so please don’t glut the place with Harry/Albus, please.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-10-20 06:49 am (UTC)And I think the people flipping out over how lethal it is are kind of silly.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-21 04:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-20 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-20 03:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-20 03:09 pm (UTC)