Ordinary Nothing

Living in a country speaking one language, and spending lots of time dealing with another one, has it’s problems. Like the tendency to borrow phrases and idioms.

I have a friend who has a big university test tomorrow. So naturally I wanted to wish my friend good luck. I speak Hebrew with this friend, like I do with most of them. But I read in English all the time, write in English a lot, and get to speak a decent amount of time in English.

The result of which was that during conversation I wished my friend "Mazal Tov". "Mazal" is the Hebrew word for luck, and "Tov" is good. It felt very natural to say good luck during the conversation.

There is one big problem, though. In Hebrew the "Mazal Tov" combination is chiefly, heck – always, used in a meaning equivalent to congratulations. Wishing someone a good luck is done by saying "Behatzlacha", which can be roughly translated as with success.

My friend was understandably miffed that instead of wishing good luck, I gave congratulations for success. Since it’s a hard test, and success is not assured, this was not taken very nicely.

Of course once I explained everything was alright… Now I just need to decide if it means I’m using too much English, or if it means I should just pay more attention to what I say…

When standing first in line at a traffic light, most drivers just look at the light, waiting until it turns from red to green. Once it’s green, and preferably after making sure that the intersection is indeed clear, they can start driving.

When standing behind someone at a traffic light, drivers usually wait until the car ahead of them moves, and then start to drive. Preferably they should also check the traffic light to make sure the driver ahead isn’t just rushing in when they shouldn’t.

My brother once stood second in line, and decided to only look at the traffic light. The light turned green, so he started driving. The car ahead of him should have, but didn’t. The rest you can guess.

Today I saw someone do the reverse, in a very odd way. The car was first in line, and the traffic light was red. Cars from the crossing lane (perpendicular to the one the aforementioned car was in) started to drive. The driver noticed that cars in front of him were moving, never mind that they were moving across him and not in his direction, and started to drive straight into the occupied intersection.

Luckily he noticed what he was doing right before crashing into someone, and stopped.

Someone broke into our office last night.

He (Maybe it was a woman, we don’t know. I’m making a statistical assumption. If any overly feminist reader wants to complain that women are also perfectly capable of breaking into offices while possibly on drugs, I concede the point) entered through a window on our second floor kitchen, and covered parts of the kitchen in mud.

The alarm went on almost straight away, since there’s a motion (volume? depth?) sensor in the kitchen. This didn’t seem to bother him too much. As it happened, the security company first calls my boss to let him know there may be a problem, and only after getting to him (or maybe if after some time they can’t) they made a call to the police to send someone. By the time the police arrived it was a long time later, and the guy was long gone.

He turned on the lights (well, if the alarm is wailing, using a flashlight to avoid notice would be stupid, that’s true), and went through the storage room, but apparently didn’t touch anything. He then went downstairs, again turned on the lights, and started to rifle through drawers.

The only thing missing (that we noticed) was the money from the petty-cash box. About 30 ILS overall. Hardly worth his time.

He also took a fireproof locked strongbox and carried it with him outside when he left. It’s not really clear why, since it was locked but they key was in the lock. After he left the building, he dedicated the time to look over the box and opened it (This was BTW still in the premise at the parking area, so he didn’t take it away with him, but spent the time still here while supposedly the police were on their way).

Sadly, for him that is, the box only contained CDs, which he apparently didn’t want. They were left strewn on the ground near the box where we found it on the afterward.

He didn’t touch the computer, or any of the equipment and devices he have in the office. No great damage was done.

Basically we can come up with four options:

1. The likeliest possibility is that it was a drug user that wanted some quick cash to buy more dope. This explains the somewhat odd behaviour.
2. Another possibility is that this was also an opportunity to scope the premise before a larger and more elaborate burglary. It could be that the purpose was to see the area and try to find out if there is anything inside that’s worth a full break-in. As a precaution we made extra sure we have backups of everything stored on the computers, but there’s nothing much beyond that to do.
3. Very unlikely, but it could also be some sort of an industrial espionage attempt, and the minor theft was to throw off the scent. While we do have competitors, there’s nothing likely to justify this, so this possibility doesn’t get much credit.
4. There is the new investigation office above us. Maybe someone wanted to get at them, and didn’t count floors properly. From the appearance of our offices it should be quite clear that we’re dealing with laser systems rather than making investigations, but who knows how observant the guy is?

This greatly amuses me.

I talked with someone who studies Biotechnology in BIU. This is a hard degree with many courses that have difficult material, or that require to study a large amount of material.

And this person had a complaint about one particular course they have to take. Students routinely get very low grades on this course, and it is considered very hard. Many students choose to delay taking the course until their later years, so they will have more time to dedicate to studying for it, or simply since they want to delay the unpleasant for as long as possible.

Mind you, in this degree they have courses which are practically infamous for being hard, such as organic chemistry, cellular structure, and various other courses of this kind. But this really worrying course isn’t one of them.

It’s a course in microeconomics. Yep, microeconomics.

As someone who finished a university bachelor degree in economics, I find this hilarious. I also have an interest in the exact sciences, though mostly as a hobby, so I know, rather than assume, that many other things that they study there are much more complicated. I’m familiar with both kind of material.

But that’s what frightens the biotech students… That’s what they get the really low grades on… Economics…

Go figure. Maybe it’s because they’re all exact-sciences types, and economics is anything but.

I knew it was just a matter of time (last paragraph). Apparently it took more time for me to find about it than for it to happen. Well, now it’s official, the cause of the Tsunami:

The Egyptian nationalist weekly Al-Usbu’ has published an investigation by correspondent Mahmoud Bakri, titled "Humanity in Danger," claiming that the earthquake and tsunami in Asia may have resulted from joint nuclear testing by the U.S., Israel, and India

Good to know. I’m glad the the relations between Israel and India are good enough now that we feel comfortable making joint nuclear testing.
Especially considering that:

The three most recent tests appeared to be genuine American and Israeli preparations to act together with India to test a way to liquidate humanity. In the[ir] most recent test, they began destroying entire cities over extensive areas. Although the nuclear explosions were carried out in desert lands, tens of thousands of kilometers away from populated areas, they had a direct effect on these areas

What can I say?
<sigh>

In a previous post I mentioned that due to high usage of English I mistakenly wished a friend good luck using an inappropriate Hebrew phrase (Using a literally translation instead of the correct semantic one).

It recently occurred to me that not only me, but many other people as well, are routinely guilty of a very similar mistake. The situation is the same one where one would like, using English, to wish "Good Luck". If the relevant activity is one that depends, even to a small extent, upon the abilities of the person, it is quite common to add something along the lines of "any may you won’t need it". This expresses the hope that the person’s abilities are up to the task, and that success would be achieved even without luck.

The good-luck semantic (though not literally) equivalent in Hebrew, "Behatzlacha", does not talk about luck, it rather just wishes a success. And yet it becomes a more and more frequent occurrence to hear people follow it by what literally means and may you won’t need it. The phrase and usage from English has entered the used Hebrew language to such an extent that it seems natural to people. Nobody ever notices that it makes very little sense to wish someone a success and that they won’t need that success. It’s understood that the second part refers to luck even though the first part has nothing to do with it.

I find it funny that there’s a common Hebrew phrase that only makes sense if you replace half of it with a semantic equivalent in English.

OK, Hotmail changed their log-in screen to provide an explanation as to why new mailboxes are now large while my old existing account remains at a measly 2MB.

As the log-in screen goes:

250MB inbox available only in the 50 United States, District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico.

And since I’m not from the US, from DC, or from Puerto Rico (nice board game, though), I can stay with the old small mailbox while new users get big mailboxes.

I was also under the impression that Washington, DC, was kind of located, well, inside the US… So the separate listing may be very PC, but does not serve any other purpose. Oh, well.

An effectively international service using an upgrade policy that depends on geographical location strikes me as odd. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t get it.

My father received an envelope sent to him from abroad by Time Magazine. In contained a page with a subscription offer. I’m not sure where they got the name and address from, since he definitely didn’t have any previous relations with them.

In this simple subscription offer where two noteworthy problems:

1. They presented the prices in a very interesting way. After a supposed discount, the price came to "Ns249". I have no idea what this "Ns" is. The obvious explanation is "New Shekel", but nobody writes that as "Ns", and certainly not as a prefix to the number. The official way to denote Shekels is by "ILS" that stood for "Israeli Shekel" and now stands for "New Israeli Shekel". Everybody that does international commerce in multiple coins manages to find this hardly hidden info, so it’s surprising Time couldn’t. There’s a different abbreviation that is sometimes used "NIS" for "New Israeli Shekel". It’s not correct, but it’s common. But no, they had to go and invent "Ns". Not very inspiring. Unless of course it means something else, in which case I think it’s worse since it’s even less clear.
2. They offered a free (assuming you believe a "price includes" kind of offer, possibly after a matching price increase, can be considered free) digital camera to subscribers. I took a short look at the camera’s details, and one line caught my attention: "High Resolution 100K Pixel". Yep, they said "High Resolution" in the same sentence as "100K Pixel". Because, you know, a simple mainstream mid-low-range digital camera today would take pictures of about what ? 3.1 megapixels ? 4 megapixels ? That’s only roughly about 40 times more pixels. So 100 kilopixels would fit the definition of high resolution about as much as a 14Kbps modem dial-up connection would fit the definition of broadband. Cute. Or maybe the envelope was just delayed at the post office for a few years…

And in case anyone wonders, no, Time Magazine did not gain a new subscriber.

There’s a new anti smoking law in Italy that recently went into effect.

The law, which bans smoking in indoor spaces unless they have a separate area with continuous floor-to-ceiling walls and a ventilation system, is one of the toughest in Europe.

Smokers ignoring the ban face fines of up to $363, while owners of premises risk penalties as high as $2,904.

Sounds like they’re taking it seriously.

I especially appreciate the continuous floor-to-ceiling walls bit. It has gone past silly and into absurd to see that the difference between the smoking area and the non-smoking area at most places is an arbitrary imaginary line inside the building.
I never quite figured how the smoke is supposed to know that it’s not allowed to cross a one meter distance between a smoker and me, just because we’re in those two different areas. Apparently the smoke usually isn’t able to figure it out either, and stumbles into the non-smoking areas quite freely.

Complaining against the smokers has no effect, since they’re in the allowed area. Complaining about the smoke also has little effect, maybe just because it’s a smoking-free area and not smoke-free area, though possibly also because smoke isn’t a legal entity and cannot be sued. Hmm…

It also appears that they not only have a law, but are actually paying attention to it and trying to enforce it:

Minutes after the law went into effect after midnight, a young man was fined for smoking in a bar in Naples, TV stations showed. The man’s plea that a cigarette was only normal after a coffee won him no reprieve, and he was fined the minimum penalty of $36.

Hopefully it’s indicative, and not just police playing with a shiny new toy before they’ll get bored. Even more hopefully, maybe more countries will pay attention and decide to make such a law of their own.

Maybe even around here, sometime… Hey, one can hope…

Not that it should really surprise anyone.

And yet, the following correction appeared in the Yedioth Ahronoth (One of the three largest newspapers in Israel) newspaper on Sunday morning (translation into English by yours truly. Needless quotation marks and needless repetitions of the word "company" were in the original):

Elaboration: In an article that appeared in our paper on Friday about the new mobile phone by "Samsung" company, which is capable of "translating" SMS messages, there has been an error: "Samsung" did not acquire "Motorola" company.

So everyone can relax now. Especially the Motorola people that probably had no idea that they were for sale, or that Samsung was buying…

A pity I didn’t keep the Friday edition. It would have been interesting to see how someone managed to slip such breaking news into an article about yet another new cellphone model.

It’s so nice when people botch up translations.

I just logged into my Hotmail account, went to the inbox, and on the top of the page there appeared an ad from Microsoft. The ad was for the MSN Toolbar, and in Hebrew.

I think what they wanted to say was along the lines of "The pop-up blocker is one click away", or something of the sort. What they did say was "The ad blocker is one click away"… In their banner ad…

Which is a good point, I don’t want to see this ad. It’s quite refreshing to see simple ads that can not only describe a product, but also demonstrate that you really need it.

I have my doubts that the MSN Toolbar will work on my Firefox browser, though. But I do have the (quite wonderful) AdBlock extension, so I’m proud to report that I will now no longer need to see this ad. And they were perfectly right, it was just one click away… Thanks for the reminder.

BTW, I am aware that using the free service without seeing the ads is not very nice. But if they can discriminate against me just because I don’t live in the US or in Puerto Rico, then I’m allowed to be pissed off and not see their ads.

Industrial laser marking machines are usually adorned by some warning stickers, to inform people that there’s laser radiation, and that the machine should be operated without all the necessary precautions.

Today I noticed someone that got a teensy bit carried away with the radiation thing. The machine didn’t have any warning against not operating it with the protective doors close, or about using protective eyeglasses.

What did it have? Something like this:

DANGER – RADIOACTIVE

Which is a total nonsense, of course.
Any dangers of operating such a machine are solely from the laser beam itself, and the danger is to the eyes. Lead underpants won’t help, and are not necessary…

I very much hope that they don’t force anyone to wear protective anti-radiation gear…

I do admit that picking on people that decide to call in to participate in silly radio programs is not very sportive. By definition they won’t be the best and the brightest, so making fun of it isn’t nice.

But still.

I got to hear about 1-2 minutes of some radio show. I didn’t listen long enough to actually figure out what’s their point or what the show is about. All I know is that they have callers which are apparently competing with each other for, or about, something. Also, since I managed to catch a glimpse (can I say glimpse when it’s radio? What’s the proper alternative?) of this show in the past, I know they like to ask the callers to describe things in a reverse order as part (all?) of their challenges.

When I tuned in they asked a participant to briefly describe the plot of Back to the Future, in reverse. The participant responded by an inspiring "eh… back from the future?… hmm… I… err…" . Either she didn’t have a clue what they were talking about, or, as the host of the show told her on the air, she was wasted after drinking too much alcohol.

The second participant was asked to describe making a salad, in reverse. While paying more attention, the poor guy couldn’t get his mind around the fact that he was required to describe the process in reverse. His reply: "A tomato, to cut. A cucumber, to cut. To mix". After finishing to giggle, the host kindly said that it’s not that bad on the salad part (possibly the host never ate a salad in his life? To me the salad part sounds wholly inadequate as well), but totally wrong on the reverse part.

At about this stage I decided it’s not really for me and switched channel. Depressing to know that people with this high caliber of intelligence are wandering around and feeling proud enough in themselves to go live on air.

I never used any serious desktop search tool until now, not considering the basic OS supplied ones, or a simple dir, or ls, command.

The main reason up until a while ago was that everybody wanted money for their tools. This is perfectly legitimate and fair. I’m actually quite capable of paying money for software I want and use, and have certainly done so in the past. But since I’m fairly organized in the way I keep files, I never saw such tools as more than a potentially minor convenience for me, and so not worth me spending my money.

Recently, however, some has been released for free. The first, or at least the one that got the most hype, was the Google desktop search tool. I considered giving it a spin, but decided not to due to several simple reasons (Which from the first reports I read also pretty much apply to the MSN desktop search tool):

1. If it’s a real local program, and is indexing local files, I want a real interface and not an HTML one. No matter how well made, a browser rendered HTML page is not the same, and has its limitations. For a web service that runs on a different computer, that’s fine. But if I already have a program running on my computer, why cripple the interface?
2. I don’t want to run a web server, and talk to a computer on my own computer via HTTP. Why would I need to allow a search program to provide web interface? Why should I need to deal with networking/firewall/communication settings for a program that’s fully local?
3. I want a clear distinction between what’s on my computer and what’s not. This is apparently different from the vision all those search companies are having, where information could be accessed similarly whether it’s stored on the local computer, or on some server on the Internet. What’s on my computer is mine, and I chose to put it there. What’s on the Internet someone else put there, and most of what’s there doesn’t interest me. Even searching for the same keywords, I’d choose these options totally separately and independently. But those search tools try to make everything more integrated and seamless.

The Yahoo! desktop search program is a program with a regular user interface, doesn’t require to install a web server, and doesn’t get confused between file searches and web searches. So it seemed worth a try. In addition, it’s supposed to be based on the X1 program, which exists for quite some time and has gotten pretty good reviews.

So I decided to download and try it. Now Yahoo! did set up a forum/message board for comments. I tried getting in there numerous times, with hours of difference, but it didn’t respond. I did succeed in entering the message board just one time, but after a very initial browse, to see what’s already reported, it stopped responding again.
So I’ll comment here. I assume nothing I have to say is totally new or unique (How much can I notice from a short use?), so it shouldn’t be a problem if nobody notices it.

The good bits:

1. Indexing is fairly fast.  Of course I didn’t have anything else to compare it too, so I can’t vouch for how it is in relation, but it progressed in a nice pace and it didn’t take too long for it to index (and re-index when I made some changes) everything.
2. The built-in preview is nice, and supported the basic file types I tried to search for. Not having to open each file in an external program just to see if it’s the one I’m looking for is convenient.
3. It’s easy to run additional filters based on file name, type, directory, dates and so on. The main options are on the same window, but arranged sensibly and without cluttering the display.

The bad bits:

1. Changing parameters caused the program to re-index everything instead of trying to sensibly find the differences (If I add a single file extension to index, why not simply search and add those files?). Actually, it’s far worse, simply entering the configuration dialog and then closing it, without chancing anything, caused the program to re-index everything.
2. The search edit box, where the search query is entered, doesn’t match the default system code-page. Meaning to say, the test system was a Win2k computer, with an English interface, but also support for Hebrew. But I couldn’t search for Hebrew characters since when I tried to change the input language I got the "western European" characters instead of the Hebrew ones. I assume this means no UNICODE support, also.
3. The installation placed files in places that were different from where the search interface was looking for them. When I selected a file that it could not preview, it tried to show in the preview pane an HTML file that came with the program, containing the message that the file cannot be previewed. Instead I got an error message that it cannot find the HTML file it tried to show. The files were installed into the program directory, but it looked for them under the user profile directory.
4. When it could not find a file that was indexed, the error came up in the form of a message box. This means that whatever I was doing was interrupted until I pressed the OK button. This is really really bad. It means that when I started to enter a search term, it would cut me off in the middle to show this box I need to confirm. And when I scrolled through several files, again it would occasionally just cut me off and break the flow. Errors like that should be presented without interrupting the user. You can’t find the file? Then let me go on to choose another one instead of interrupting me. Take the same text you’re showing on the message box, and show it in the preview pane instead of a fancy HTML. Due to the previous problem, this came up a lot.
5. Sometime it couldn’t find and open files for no good reason. The files were real, and exactly where it listed them as being. But no, I got an error message stating that the file cannot be found. Many of these files contained spaces in the file name or directory name, but I think not all of them.
6. When the files did contain a space, it was listed in the messages as %20, not as a space. This is fine when sending it to a browser, but not for a regular message box.

The would-be-a-nice-addition bits:

1. Index also email messages from Thunderbird/Mozilla and other mail clients. Not just Outlook or Outlook Express.
2. When rendering HTML files in the preview, maybe allow to use the Mozilla/Firefox engine instead of IE? I don’t think this is a trivial thing to do, and since these are only local files it’s not as critical as when rendering content from unknown web server, but it would be nice.
3. Try to determine file content/type for extensions that were not selected to index. Maybe this would require a separate do-not-index list for people that want this for security/privacy reason. It’s good to have control, and I could (and did) add my extra extensions myself, but I was surprised not to get full-text indexing for text files, even if their extensions were not on the list. On some level I expected that things like .log files, or .cpp and .h files, will be indexed and searchable. They’re just text after all.

That’s either about it, or about what I recall now.

What mostly bothers me about the bugs I found isn’t so much that they’re there (since that can, and probably will, be fixed), but that they’re the things that very basic beta testing should have found. Since it’s based on an existing product, and since Yahoo! are certainly capable of affording a QA team, I’m not sure how these things got through…

Overall YDS is really nice, does a good job, and is much better than the internal windows search option. I still don’t think I need any file search tool enough to pay for it, but for a free version I’ll probably keep using YDS once they get rid of those constantly popping message boxes.

North Korea is apparently a wonderful country in good condition. It’s after all a well known fact that you only get to deal with minor trivia once all the major problems are no longer pressing. So knowing that they have no pressing military, social or economic problems must be a comfort.

I mean, how else can you explain the fact that they have the time to worry about hair length?
Which should be shot. Sorry – a Freudian slip there, I meant short.

They even have a good reason for it, you see it just so happens that:

It stressed the "negative effects" of long hair on "human intelligence development", noting that long hair "consumes a great deal of nutrition" and could thus rob the brain of energy. Men should get a haircut every 15 days, it recommended.

Yep. That’s what they say. If it weren’t a real country, and there weren’t real policies that affect real human lives based on this, I’d say it’s really really funny. As it happens, it’s just tragic.

• Hair grows regardless of it’s length.
• Hair doesn’t consume any nutritional resource by itself. Dead men tell no tales, and dead cells don’t eat. Hair is dead cells. Hair growth does take a small amount of nutrients, but hair grows regardless of it’s length.
• Even if hair did consume lots and lots of nutrition – it still wouldn’t effect intelligence. Unless they’re claiming that this is what brings people to starvation. But if it causes starvation, long term effects on intelligence are the least of their concerns. Hair growth doesn’t barrow down into the brain to suck nutrients. Honest.

Now if you’d tell me that the persons that came up with this plan, and with these justifications, had really really long hair, I may be willing to reconsider. It still won’t prove a cause and effect relationship, but it would at least show strong correlation between hair length and negative effects on intelligence. That’s something…

A Harvard Dr., in an informal speech, mentions that there may be innate differences <gasp> between men and women (link to NY Times article, registration required so I’ll quote heavily)
Naturally some women got offended, and demanded that he apologize.

The problem:

In citing a second factor, Dr. Summers cited research showing that more high school boys than girls tend to score at very high and very low levels on standardized math tests, and that it was important to consider the possibility that such differences may stem from biological differences between the sexes.

Or to present it plainly:

Dr. Freeman said, "Men are taller than women, that comes from the biology, and Larry’s view was that perhaps the dispersion in test scores could also come from the biology."

The reaction, by someone who I’d have referred to as an hysterical women, except she’d take offense:

"When he started talking about innate differences in aptitude between men and women, I just couldn’t breathe because this kind of bias makes me physically ill," Dr. Hopkins said. "Let’s not forget that people used to say that women couldn’t drive an automobile."

Yes, let’s not forget that. Let’s also not forget the people that say that men can’t get pregnant. Heck, let’s not forget those darn bigots that talk about X and Y chromosomes as if there’s some difference in their distribution between men and women. Or those people that say chromosomes have any effect whatsoever on anything. A pity Dr. Hopkins didn’t go into linguistics instead, I bet she could have made a fascinating research about why most cultures develop different words for "men" and "woman" as if they’re different in any way.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this Dr. Summers is a known womanizer, who always disparages women and think little of them. Maybe he didn’t intend to raise any legitimate issues for consideration but just wanted to insult women in general? Maybe not:

"A lot of people who absolutely disagreed with him were not irritated, and he said again and again, ‘I’m here to provoke you,’ " said Richard Freeman, an economics professor at Harvard who directs the bureau’s labor studies program and invited Dr. Summers to speak. "He’s very good at stimulating debate, but he cares deeply about increasing diversity in the science and engineering workforces, especially since we have many more women getting Ph.D.’s in science and engineering than ever before."

Naturally, he didn’t apologize. There’s really nothing to apologize for:

The president of Harvard University, Lawrence H. Summers, who offended some women at an academic conference last week by suggesting that innate differences in sex may explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers, stood by his comments yesterday but said he regretted if they were misunderstood.

"I’m sorry for any misunderstanding but believe that raising questions, discussing multiple factors that may explain a difficult problem, and seeking to understand how they interrelate is vitally important," Dr. Summers said in an interview.

People need to calm down a bit, and not get offended when nobody tries to offend them. People are different any any number of ways based on any number of criteria. It’s possible to raise these issues in a derogatory manner, but it’s also quite possible to discuss differences scientifically and rationally.

Update: It reached our local newspapers this morning. Unsurprisingly, they didn’t bother reading what they reported, and instead went for the attention grabbing headlines. Translated: "Harvard Chief claims: ‘Women’s genes are inferior’ ". Which he of course didn’t.

I find this totally hilarious.

The production of the new Dr. Who series has some serious difficulties. One of the kinds of aliens in the series are supposed to be small blue aliens. And since they’re small, they were looking for dwarf actors.

So what’s the problem? There aren’t that many dwarf actors, and most of them got taken by either the new Harry Potter movie, or the Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie.

The Dr. Who production was left with roles for little blue aliens that they couldn’t cast. Oh, the horror.

On the other hand, good news for unemployed short people everywhere: Acting career is what you’ve been looking for. You don’t even need to know how to act, you just need to be short – and you’ve got this down pat. Simple laws of supply and demand. And remember: don’t sell yourself short.

I ran across this article, where a Greek reporter complains that the FCC in the U.S. is considering censoring parts of the Greek Olympic Games opening ceremony. Which would be very stupid and ridiculous of them, and which I agree with her can be seen as an insult to Greece, but it would be far from the first time the FCC has made a stupid decision.

In any case, I decided to try and look for myself on the FCC website exactly is it that they have to say about the issue.
I entered the search screen, searched for Olympic Games, and clicked the link to sort results by date, since this is a new issue.

Should be simple enough, right?

Wrong.

Click the thumbnail to open a picture of the returned results I got, or just go ahead and run the search yourself (to see if they fixed it, maybe).

The dates are clearly listed on the right-side column.

If you’re wondering whether maybe those dates are wrong and the sorting is done on a different and correct date field (Which would be a problem all by itself), that’s not the case. Some of the summaries contain the date as text inside them, and you can see they all match perfectly.

It seems sorted by relevance, despite the fact that it clearly states that the results are sorted by date. And after requesting a sort by date, sorting by relevance is not very… relevant.

The relevance factor seems skewed as well. How can the same document published on the same day(check the file names and summary), once in a plain text version and once in a Word document, have different relevance values? The text should be identical…

Oh, well, making important telecommunication decisions that effect the U.S., and often the entire world, doesn’t require being able to perform basic sorts.

Note: I also sent this to This is Broken, but since the auto-reply let me know that it isn’t likely it will get posted there, and will take a long time even if it does, I decided to post about it here as well.

I actually still remember the outrage from locksmiths (well, what I remember is the reports and discussions about it in the computer security circles, but still) when a couple of years ago Matt Blaze published a paper about a security weakness in mechanical locks with master keys. Those people believe in the misguided notion of security by obscurity, so got understandably upset when someone removed some obscurity and showed actual problems that nobody bothered to address.

In any case, he recently published another paper, about security of physical safes this time. And unlike the previous paper, his attitude was pretty positive about many aspects.

Still, the paper includes some explanations and pictures, so the locksmiths are up in arms again. Sending many angry, and sometimes abusive, messages both to him and to the administration of his university. Not nice, but part of the deal.

What I found particularly amusing in his report is that some of them went to the direction of suggesting he is guilty of copyright violations, by publishing pictures of safes with the paper.

While Penn’s support for the basic principles
of academic freedom would protect me even if these officials agreed
that my paper was somehow inappropriate, some of the letter writers
seem to have unwittingly stumbled upon a weapon that could potentially
be very effective (in other contexts) at silencing Internet-based
debate.  They have accused me of copyright infringement.

My paper is heavily illustrated with photographs of safe locks and
their components.  Several letters have (accurately) pointed out that
these photographs are protected by copyright and that by distributing
my paper I’m also distributing copyrighted material.This, I must
admit, is entirely correct.

That’s not the amusing part, yet. The poor US has a very serious problems with their copyright legislation. They’re getting totally out of whack, and it often gives the impression that violating copyright in the states will be considered only a little bit worse than murdering someone. I do hope they’ll straighten themselves out soon, before the attitude will get exported too much…

What amused me was that in this specific case:

But I created every one of the images
myself, in my own studio, and with my own materials, cameras and
computers.  I arranged the subjects, lit them, and photographed them.
The results are copyrighted, to be sure, but I hold the copyrights.

And as he’s well aware, he was still lucky that his university bothered to speak to him before removing the material out of the fear of lawsuit. The common response this days by ISP’s and date hosts is to cover their asses be careful and remove anything that may make them liable, even if they didn’t spend the time to check the facts

Go read his whole story, it’s interesting.

It was one of those moments that make me sorry I don’t always carry around with me the digital camera that I don’t have… (Note to self: Consider buying a decent digital camera, then consider lugging it around at all times)

Late Friday night. I was walking with a friend along one of the large streets in Tel-Aviv. The very large majority of stores and shops were closed. As we were walking we passed next to a large building front, with locked heavy metal bars on the entrances/windows. And on the wall, between such two locked areas, was a sign. With one word (in English): "Exit".

This, as I mentioned, on the outside of the building.

After we finished chuckling, we decided to look exactly what kind of store would place such a sign on the wrong side of the door. Turns out it wasn’t a store. Further to the side there was another metal plaque identifying the building (also in English). "…Consulate… Embassy of the People’s Republic of China".

Now, I can understand it if the Chinese word for entrance can be translated into English as several different words, and one of them is "Exit" (My Chinese isn’t good enough to know, it’s just an assumption). But surely someone must have noticed that it’s the wrong word and told them to fix it, no ?!

On the same perambulations with a friend in the previous post, we also walked along the promenade at the beach. We discovered there’s a part of the promenade to the north of what we always considered it’s end. It looks rather new, and some parts are still under construction, so possibly it really wasn’t there a while ago and it wasn’t just years during which we managed to miss the whole area.

In any case, along one stretch of the walk there was a car driving towards us in the other direction. So we moved to the side of the road (which was bricked like a sidewalk, not covered is concrete or asphalt like a road for cars) and let it pass. And noticed a large sign ahead of us, roughly translated as "Passing beyond this point is not allowed for either vehicles or pedestrians". Mind you, the car came from beyond this sign…

We decided to take our lead from the car, and went walking forward, past the sign. There was no matching sign on the other side, but instead a sign for cars marking that it’s a joint pedestrian-vehicle road, and the speed limit is 25KPH. Very consistent… It also wasn’t marked as a one way street (Not that I’ve heard of one-way roads for pedestrians)

As a side note, along the same secluded stretch of beach there was something else that I didn’t personally encounter before. A beach area specifically for the Jewish religious community. It was walled from all sides, and a sign near the entrance specified the division into days in which only men are allowed into the beach, and days in which only women are allowed into the beach…

Just got another scam message, in the well known mould of the average Nigerians. These things are going on for years now, and yet they didn’t really change those messages much. I do admit that most of those that currently go around at least aren’t written in all capital letters, and aren’t riddled with spelling errors (oh, wait, they still are) but it’s nearly the exact same bogus tales and fishy offers. And yet people must fall for this, or they would stop…

So, in the spirit of having a somewhat boring day, here’s the recent one I got, with comments that I’ll refrain from sending to as a reply to avoid confirming my live email address…

Dear Friend,

We’re not friends. I don’t know you. I’m happy to make new friends, but I rather have a choice before they become such.

      Greetings to you,With warm heart I offer my friendship, and greetings, and I hope this mail meets you in good time. However strange or surprising this contact might seem to you as we have not met personally or had any dealings in the past, I humbly ask that you take due consideration of its importance and the immense benefit it will be to you.

Yep, it met me in good time indeed. As proof, I didn’t just delete it outright. The best reply such a message received from me in years.
And don’t worry, I did not find your message to be surprising or strange in the least. You could say I even expected it, or one very much like it. I’m a well known unscrupulous philanthropist the world over, and receive many such calls for help.
As for considering the benefits for me, I did. Anything that can amuse me and hold my interest for a while is a benefit, especially on a rather boring day. Thank you for providing this bit of entertainment.

     After careful consideration with my children, we resolved to contact you for your most needed assistance on this mutually beneficial and riskfree transaction which i hope you will give your urgent attention. I duly apologize for infringing on your privacy, if this contact is not acceptable to you, as I make this proposal to you as a person of integrity. First and foremost I wish to introduce myself properly to you.

It saddens me to know that even careful considerations did not stop you from sending these messages. It’s even sadder to know that your little innocent children are no longer so innocent, and would consent to this. I think you should invest your billions in the education system of your home instead of trying to smuggle them outside.
I’m also somewhat curious about your definition of "riskfree". You want to take away my money, no? How is that risk-free ? Or do you mean that it’s risk-free for you and your children? I admit, that may indeed be that case…
Glad to hear you’re a person of integrity, though. I’d hate to be ripped off by a person with no integrity.

   I  am Mr.William Koroma  I am moved to write you this letter, this was inconfidence considration,for our present circumstances and situation, i escaped with my wife and children out of Sierrial-Leone to The Nedelands through the aid of the United Nations Evacuation Team where we are now presently residing on temporary political asylum.

It’s Sierra-Leone, not Sierrial. Let’s go over it again, letter by letter, so you will know how to spell the name of your home: N-I-G-E-R-I-A. Better, right?
Last time I heard you escape to Ghana, though. Why did you change your mind?
I though you’d like consideration. I never considered that you’d prefer considration instead. What is considration? Some new slang word from Sierrial?

     However, due to this situation I decided to change most of my Billions of  Dollars deposited in Swiss Bank and other countries into other forms of money coded for safe purpose because the new head of state Ahmed Tijjan Kabba made arrangement with the Swiss Goverment and other European countries to freeze all my treasures deposited in some   european countries, hence i and my wife along with my children,decided laying low in this our tempoery political asylum camp here in Grou   Jirnssum in the Nedelands to study the situation till when things gets better, since president Tijjan Kabba taking over goverment again in   Sierria Leone. One of my chateaux in Southern France was confiscated by the French Goverment, and as such we had to change  our identity so that our investment will not be trace and confiscated.

Mind your punctuation friend. I know you’re excited and agitated, but it doesn’t excuse sloppy writing.
I was unaware that there were forms of money that could be coded for safe purpose. I guess it’s true that one learns new things every day.
I’m glad to see that you improve with spelling your home country’s name, though. Not there yet, but you’re getting better. Maybe next time…
Frankly, I’m quite amazed by the influence your benevolent head of state has in the international banking community. Getting banks all over the Europe to freeze accounts is quite a feat. And doing it to such a large client as yourself, with billions in those accounts, in literally unheard of.
Next time you have to flee for your life, consider converting some of your treasure to gems. They’re easy to carry and can be easily traded for cash in many locations.
There’s one point I’m not entirely clear on, please help me understand. You have lots of old accounts all over Europe. The government and banks of all those countries agreed to freeze those accounts. So you changed your identity in order to make them not realize that those accounts are yours?! How does it work, exactly? You can’t really go to all those banks and retroactively change the account details after all…
Oh, and just to keep you appraised on local politics, All those countries you talk about have governments, not goverments. Just so you’d know. If you’re fleeing one and complaining about others, at least know your enemy.
Although one of them did grant you asylum. Even if only a tempoery one. Which must be some legal definition I never heard of, of a at least not an English term. I hope for you that it doesn’t mean that the asylum is only temporary and they will stop granting it.

I  have deposited the sum of Twenty-eight Million Dollars only{US$28,000,000.00} with a security company for safekeeping.

All those billions of dollars and treasures, and you only want to liquidate a few million dollars? What, you’re going to leave the other billions there to be located and confiscated? Isn’t it a shame?
Or is it that you don’t really trust me? That you don’t really want to be my friend? Maybe you sent similar messages to thousands of people making the same offer, eh? I’m hurt. It’s also foolish of you, since the handling fees of making all those thousands of accounts would be quite a lot. It’s also very easy to trace a quick opening of thousands of different accounts, thereby making everything not so risk-free for you…

  The funds are security coded to prevent them from knowing the actual content .  What I want you to do now is to indicate your inetrest that you will assist me and my immediate family by receiving the money on our behalf.

How do you security code funds? If you deposited the money with a security company, they must know how much you deposited? Or it it your beloved head of state you’re worried about? But if he can’t trace the account to you, he won’t know the content anyway, and if he can’t, how would security coding anything hinder him?
You certainly piqued my interest, if not my inetrest that you so wanted.
For a man with so much money, you’re not thinking clearly. Or is it that you had to leave your financial and security advisers behind? Find someone else, you can certainly pay them to give you better advice.

     The  Account required for this project can be personal, company or an offshore account that you have  total control over, your area of specialisation will not be a hinderance to the successful execution of this transaction.

I just need a bank account, any account with any bank, right? No bank will ask questions when I transfer those millions in, try to connect the money to you, or report to the authorities, of course.
You can’t begin to imagine how relieved I am to hear that my area of specialization will not hinder the transaction. I was worried that the bank will stop the money transfer simply because I’m a computer programmer, or have a degree in economics. Banks usually heavily frown on these sorts of things. But since you assure me that in this case it won’t be a problem, everything is fine. I have complete confidence in you.

Ackowledge this message, so that I can introduce you to my family as our foreign trusted partner who shall take charge of our investment abroad where we now plan to settle.

What, you want to come and settle in Israel?! Are you sure that’s a good idea? Immigration may give you a hell of a time if you’re not Jewish, you know…
And frankly, me dear new friend, I don’t really want to meet your family. Like I wrote earlier, seeing your children would just be sad.
So sorry, I’ll neither ackowledge this message, nor acknowledge it.

    I want you to assist us in investing this money,but I will not want  our identity revealed. I will also want to buy properties and stocks in multy- national companies and to engage in other safe and non speculative investments.

Your identity is safe with me. I have no clue who you are, so I can’t really divulge that info to anyone else. No worries.
Why exactly do you need me to manage this money for you, though? If you’re coming to live here, you can deal with it on your own. Or hire a firm that specializes in these things. I really can’t compete.

   We have been through a lot of health and spiritual turmoil, hence will need  your understanding and assistance.

It’s not really clear if you’ve been through a lot of health, or if you’ve been through a lot of health turmoil. I’m not sure either option is particularly appealing, so you have my sympathy. Not so sure about my understanding. And a big no for my assistance. Sorry. It’s just that I have reason to suspect (possibly it’s just that your new head of state spread those vicious rumours about you) that you don’t really want me to take this money, but instead will at some point ask me to transfer some money to you, to help facilitate some aspect of the transfer, and I will then not hear from you again (Not because you’d steal it and disappear of course, but because you’ll get caught. But still, there’s a risk in this risk-free venture that I don’t feel I’m willing to take).

May I at this junction emphasize the  high level of confidentiality which this business demands and hope you will not betral the trust and confidence which we repose in you.I  shall put you in the picture of this buiness, i.e tell you where the funds are currently being maintained and also discuss other modalities including remuneration for your services.

Full confidentiality. Nobody will ever know you contacted me. I won’t tell a soul. Everything going on between us will be done with the utmost privacy. One thing I can absolutely guarantee is that I will not betral your trust. I can’t betral your trust. I can’t betral much of anything, and neither can anyone else.
I also don’t want anything to do with this mysterious buiness of yours. I don’t know what a buiness is, I never seen a buiness, and am not in the mood of meeting one right now.
On the other hand, you can perfectly spell modalities and remuneration. Hmm…

   I   shall also inform you with the next line of action as soon as   i receive your response.Is this preposition is attainable? If it is, Please kindly funish me immediately by E-mail with your direct telephone number and fax number to enhance the confidentiality which this business demands.

The position is not quite attainable, no. Dreadfully sorry.
I also regret that I cannot funish you anything, for much the same reasons that I could not betral your trust previously.

  Best Regards,
Mr.William Koroma
NB:Please send all Reply mail to my comfidential email address(removed)

I don’t think so. I may hear more from you if I do. Depending on your friend, I may even as a side bonus get more offers to lower my mortgage, buy a fake Role, or enlarge parts of my anatomy. None of which I will truly need once I have access to all those millions of yours…
And I don’t care how comfy is that comfidential address of yours.

N.B.PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL AND COMPLETELY FREE FROM TERRORIST, DRUG MONEY OR MONEY LAUNDERING.THIS IS COMPLETE LEGISTIMATE BUSINESS TRANSACTION.

N.B.PLEASE BE INFORMED THAT THIS BUSINESS TRANSACTION IS 100% LEGAL AND COMPLETELY FREE FROM TERRORIST, DRUG MONEY OR MONEY LAUNDERING.THIS IS COMPLETE LEGISTIMATE BUSINESS TRANSACTION.

Sorry, did I say something about not using capital letters? Sorry, sorry, sorry. My mistake. That would teach me to read things to the end before making wild statements. The all-caps are back.
Good to know that this is totally legal. That may be true some place, but not according to the laws in this country I live in, and that you want to settle in. Maybe you should reconsider your choice of residence.
It’s of course even better to know that there isn’t even a single terrorist involved in this. I’d hate to think I’m being defrauded by a terrorist instead of by a lying scoundrel of a thief.
What isn’t clear to me is how you can assure me that no drug money is involved. How do you know where the money you want to steal from me comes from? Maybe it is drug money, eh? You can’t complain, after all, not after telling me that my specialization will not effect the transaction.

Well, at least you didn’t claim it’s a legitimate business transaction. Legistimate I’m willing to concede to you.

Have a nice day, and may you spend lots and lots of happy years in jail with your friends and family.
Your new best friend,
Yaron.

There’s a lot of noise and discussion about the new rel="nofollow" attribute that can be now added to links in order to prevent search engines from giving a higher rank to the destination (a gross simplification, but it has been all said in other places).
The idea was to reduce the incentive for comment spam, and most (All? Depends how big is big) big search engines and blogging platforms embraced this in an incredibly short duration.

Only that, as with most things, the advantages come with some disadvantages. Since this is a TypePad hosted blog, and all they said was that they implemented it completely, I decided to ask them about making it an option, and let their users decide.

The short version is that they say they made it effect all comments on all posts on all TypePad blogs in roder to get a quick result (which is a bit odd, since it will take time to achieve an effect. It doesn’t prevent anyone from making comment spam, just gives them less of a reason to want to, in the long term. But the sooner it’s done, the sooner the results, so alright), and will think about making it an option. They’re rather vague, and don’t give a definite answer or time estimates.

I hope they’ll come to their senses soon and understand that control should be with the blog writer, and that giving limited choice is not a good idea. With the amount of comments I’m having here myself, this isn’t a real problem here, but I still don’t like not having an option. It’s certainly an argument for not staying with TypePad, though not a compelling one for me at this time.

Here’s the whole correspondence.
First my original message. I tried to be nice, and to ask a general question, since after all this is rather new, and I wasn’t entirely sure what they’re doing, or not:

Hi.

I wanted to know if you plan to make the "nofollow" attribute on comments links an option instead of compulsory, and if so then how soon?

Making in on by default for all user is alright, but making it an automatic decision is not. As any quick look around the web, or even on trackbacks to your own blog, will show, this idea has merit but also some problems.

Installing some complex system that allows to choose which comments/commenter/links will get the nofollow attribute, and which won’t, is understandably complex and could take a lot of time and effort. But at least making it a global yes/no choice of the user who write/own each blog shouldn’t be a technical problem.

It’s true that the effect of the attribute is weaker if it’s not globally adopted. But still, deciding for all your users to adopt it is a bit harsh. Many people don’t yet seriously (if at all) suffer from comment spam, and have comments, and commenter, that they would be perfectly willing to reward with the minuscule addition to search engine rankings.

If you did implement it as an option, I apologize. But I just went through all the settings and configuration pages and did not find it. I didn’t actually made any comment with a dummy link to check, but you officially announced that you started implementing it for all users, so it seems likely I can take you at your words on that. Even if the announcement was premature, it didn’t come with a mention of an option, so it’s still worth letting you know that at least some of your users things you should…

Yaron.

Here’s the response I received:

Hi Yaron,

Thanks for taking the time to let us know your thoughts on this new feature. We’ve turned it on for all accounts to get it working right away against spammers. In the future, we will look at adding more options for how this works, but we wanted to get this part of it working to help protect our users who are getting a lot of spam.

We do block tens of thousands of comment spams a day for our users that are hit by comment spammers. So from what I gather from our team, this could help our users who are getting spam from commenters that are trying to improve their page rank by posting seemingly legitimate comments. The commenters of this type may realize that they are wasting their time. Of course, there are a lot of variables going on here, and I don’t know all of the issues that made our team decide to make this change. These are just my observations so far!

Again, we appreciate your feedback, and look forward to adding more options to make all of our users happy!

Have a nice day,
Kristine

I find it odd that the customer support rep claims to not quite be in the loop, and not know what the development team is doing. Six Apart are not a a large company that should have a sprawling bureaucracy…

I didn’t receive anything that describe their actual intents and plans, so I figured it’s worth it to let them notice that they do have users who care, and ask again about their future intentions.

hi, Kristine.

Of course this has a good chance of helping "users who are getting spam from commenters that are trying to improve their page rank by posting seemingly legitimate comments". There’s not much argument about that. That’s the all purpose after all.

The problem is that it would to a similar extent hurt people who are posting really legitimate comments, and removing some of the incentive for them to spend their time. So less search ranking to people that actually contribute, and less reason for them to make the investment of commenting on blogs that use this new attribute.

I’m not saying it’s a bad idea. What I’m saying is that it should be up to the blog owner to decide if they want links in their comments deprecated or not.

Starting it on all your hosted blogs straight away as a sort of a stopgap method is alright, but you really should provide users the ability to turn it off for their blogs if they want to…

Thanks for your response,
Yaron.

This is their second response:

Hi Yaron,

Thanks for your feedback, we do appreciate you taking the time to let us know what you are feeling on this new situation. We are letting our team know that we do have users who would like this option – I know that they are looking at some options surrounding this, but I don’t have a timeline on that yet. For now, we just wanted to get this in place, like you said, as a stopgap measure.

Thanks again,
Kristine

Very polite, not very informative. They do claim to look at the issue, and that they’re not entirely settled. And admit that they are aware users would like more control (Can I say "duh", or would it just be childish?).

I don’t particularly I like the disconnect, or sure about the reason. I assume they try not to commit to anything until they make up their mind. But if that’s the case they should go out and say so. It should not take them that long to decide, after all what I’m saying is that they need to provide an option, a measure and mechanism of control, not that they need do drop the idea.

Still that’s what they have to say now, so I’ll just wait a while and see what, and hopefully not if, they actually do.

I sent a simple thanks for the response, and decided not to keep pursuing the issue right away. I don’t have any point to raise that I didn’t already, and that they’re not aware of. It doesn’t seem likely they want to provide any further information, or make any commitments right now. So keeping on it would just be badgering, which would be justified and for a good cause, but not likely to be a good idea or to help any.

If nothing changes, I’ll try opening the issue again, a bit louder. I would also have more information to point them towards and to quote, to illustrate that they are indeed being (more than) a tad unreasonable.

This story ran about 10 days ago on CNN with the title Attorney meets the ‘jury pool from hell’ .
At a first glance it looks like a funny (for an outside observer, at least) story about a trial, where quite a few or the potential jurors turned out to be grossly unfitting to serve as jury.

One admitted to being on drugs, one is certain that the specific defence lawyer involved is always representing guilty parties, one was a violent mental case, one was once arrested for soliciting sex…

But when I think of it, this is a complete non-story. Just a cheap publicity stunt for the defence lawyer (His name is mentioned in the article a few times). It’s rather well known that most Americans are not all that keen on serving as Jury. So it’s only naturaly they’d come up with ways to to be released, whether the reasons are true or not (or borderline, but can be presented either way).
I hear and read about many cases where people try to squirm out of Jury duty, but not on so many cases where people try to get in a Jury…

The article also doesn’t say how large was the initial pool. The four people mentioned there might have even been well within the normal probability distribution…

If this is what this defence lawyer really sees as a jury pool ‘from hell’, maybe he’s too soft, kind, and naive to be in the business…  ;-)

The fact that too many things are censored around here, I’m already used to. We have a large percentage of the population who are religious Jews, and they carry a lot of political clout. Even when things are not officially forbidden or illegal, they get censored in order to cater to a larger audience.
Not something I’m happy with, but it’s a part of life.

The US, however, generally presents a different façade. Land of the free and all that, you know. Not convincing for quite some time, but the recent stories of TV/Movie censorship there is still unexpected.

Especially when they are as ridiculous as this educational cartoon that was prevented from being broadcasted, because it happens to present a same-sex female couple.

There weren’t any sex scenes or anything of the sort. And it wasn’t even the main point of the show, just some of the characters that live in a manner that may be different than that of some Americans (but no some other, I’d expect…)

  Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said the "Sugartime!" episode does not fulfill the intent Congress had in mind for programming. By law, she said, any funded shows must give top attention to "research-based educational objectives, content and materials."

"Many parents would not want their young children exposed to the lifestyles portrayed in the episode," Spellings wrote in a letter sent Tuesday to Pat Mitchell, president and chief executive officer of PBS.

Shocking, right? Exposing little kids to… lifestyles. Oh, the horror. Think of the children.

This isn’t the best part yet… You can still claim that maybe it isn’t the duty of an educational cartoon to show any lifestyle that isn’t the official mainstream. So what is this specific cartoon series about, and what are it’s educational purposes? Well…

In the show, Buster carries a digital video camera and explores regions, activities and people of different backgrounds and religions.

Ha! Take that! The show focuses on presenting people of different backgrounds and religions, from various regions… It’s the declared purpose. That’s why they’re broadcasting it, and that’s why the education department funds it.
Just as long as the different backgrounds are not different enough to include a lesbian couple…

And crash is quite literal when you talk about cars…

Where did anyone come with the idiotic idea of making Bluetooth enabled cars ?!
Is it any surprise that now cars can get computer viruses ?!

Sticking an embedded computer into everything, a standard CPU that can run a standard OS, I can understand. It makes development, changes, additions, and fixes much easier.

But any OS would have all the problems of that OS, and would likely be able to run other programs that were designed to run on it.
Including viruses or other malware.

So the one thing you don’t do, is make it very easy for anyone at all to insert external programs to run on your embedded computer. For example, if there is no very compelling reason to do so, you don’t add Bluetooth support in. Actually, you wouldn’t add any common wireless protocol. But if you do, you should at least try for a standard that includes some sort of authentication. And authentication is far from being Bluetooth’s strong side.

On the other hand, maybe some people want to give full control over their car to bored kid on any street they happen to drive along?

And I thought making Bluetooth enabled ski jackets was stupid… I wonder what will they add connectivity to next…

It has been quite a few years ago since I’ve seen this, but I was reminded of it again right now, and think I didn’t post about it previously (searches agree, but I recall wanting to post it in the past, so sorry if I did and am just repeating myself).

An acquaintance of mine that spent a few years in the US came back and had with him some nice brochures from leading universities.

One these includes pictures of students, and a sentence explaining why they wanted to go to this specific university.

There were many that detailed the high academic level, how prestigious the university is, and so on and so forth.

And then there was this nice girl that said (University name may not be correct, I don’t remember which one it was, so am picking one at random)

I wanted to go to Harvard because I wanted to be mentally challenged

This was during the time when PC speech issue was hot. Everybody was running around complaining that they are metabolically challenged, visually challenged, emotionally challenged, and the like (instead of fat, blind, and sociopathic. Well, maybe the sociopaths didn’t exactly came out in an outcry, but you get the point, I trust)….

So all in all, I’d say she succeeded admirably. But that she came like that from home, and the university probably didn’t deserve much of the credit.

I didn’t like these exaggeration of PC speech to begin with, but I think this incident really cinched it for me.

Let me start by saying that I’m not a The West Wing viewer. Mostly for historical reasons (Didn’t start to watch the first season, didn’t have the time to catch up a little afterwards, was told it’s not really worth it to catch up during the later seasons, and don’t have the time to catch up on six whole seasons now). The reviews I hear from people who watch it are that the latest is season is really good, and on par with the first ones.

But they are making lots of noise in the media lately. It seems that hardly an episode goes by without someone getting insulted.

Early on December, they had an episode when they were dissing the hospital in Anchorage. And the mayor was greatly offended.

Last week they ran an episode saying some not-very-nice things about the NASCAR races. And about the races’ fans. Which in turn got very upset.

And in the latest episode, they managed to rile the corn industry.

And I’m not sure why. If the latest season was bad, I’d believe they’re desperately trying to get more viewers. But that’s not the case…
Naturally most shows could easily manage to anger someone. It’s easy to anger most people. But The West Wing is doing it best lately. I don’t follow The West Wing on the news, and yet I heard about these. That’s more than for other shows.

And it may be that Americans need to start taking their entertainment TV shows a hell of a lot less seriously. And fast. That would be another way to make everyone happier.

Ah, the joy of seeing gender biases reflect through the eye of the American media…

As you can clearly see, the presented view is according to the age old stereotype. TV is presenting women as the more stupid and incompetent sex.

Eh, no, wait! That’s not it at all. There is a new stereotype. Since presenting women as stupid is not really allowed (huh?) TV is presenting men as the more stupid and incompetent sex.

There. Clear enough, isn’t it? Those swine that run TV shows show a clear gender bias. They’re picking up on men… women… men… women… Everyone! The feminist male-chauvinist hypocrites!

So rightfully enough, instead of lauding the TV industry for it’s overall fairness and equal representation, everybody complain.

Enough to give me a headache, but that can be expected considering I’m a member of one of the two stupid sexes.

I will not make fun of the mentally challenged. I will not make fun of the mentally challenged. I will not make fun of the mentally challenged. I will not make fun… Oh, heck, I suppose I will.

This seems like someone that wants help writing an antenna program. He doesn’t need help communicating to an antenna through some interface, no, he wants to write the whole darn Antenna in code. Just run it on any computer, and start receiving. No physical antenna required.

Amazing. Simply amazing. If this works I suppose all those Video-In cards are the next to go, since you could write a program that receives TV broadcasts.

Why stop there? Why not write an edible computer program? Copying computer programs are easy, so we could end world hunger there and then.

Sometime people just amaze me.

Hat tip to The Daily WTF.