Isn't it procrastic?

The irony escaped me yesterday; I guess procrastination when it comes to blog posts isn't good...

Stephenson <=> Protagonist

So I installed the Six Degrees Facebook app, and while browsing famous and/or interesting people I found that Neal Stephenson is friends with... Hiro Protagonist.

<=>


Talk about life imitating art. Or is that life intimating art?

Halo 3 secret ending

thanks God Mode

A true bad-ass

The story of a true bad-ass

A couple from Montana were out riding on the range, he with his rifle and she (fortunately) with her camera. Their dogs always followed them, but on this occasion a Mountain Lion decided that he wanted to stalk the dogs (you'll see the dogs in the background watching). Very, very bad decision...

The hunter got off the mule with his rifle and decided to shoot in the air to scare away the lion, but before he could get off a shot the lion charged in and decided he wanted a piece of those dogs. With that, the mule took off and decided he wanted a piece of that lion. That's when all hell broke loose... for the lion.

As the lion approached the dogs the mule snatched him up by the tail and started whirling him around. Banging its head on the ground on every pass. Then he dropped it, stomped on it and held it to the ground by the throat. The mule then got down on his knees and bit the thing all over a couple of dozen times to make sure it was dead, than whipped it into the air again, walked back over to the couple (that were stunned in silence) and stood there ready to continue his ride... as if nothing had just happened. Fortunately even though the hunter didn't get off a shot, his wife got off these 4.

Brilliant comments

Ace reader comments on this ITWeb article: Cable require local ownership

The ownership of the international cable company cannot be dictated by the South African government as the cable lies in international waters. It is curious that the government does not think that Intelsat should be owned by South Africans as it provides international satellite capacity to South African broadcasters and telecoms companies.

and

If every country where a cable lands demands local majority ownership, there will be no cables.

Take that! Slash, parry...

South African Landing Rites

From a recent allAfrica article:

South Africa's decision to nationalise its landing rites is also expected to affect the East Africa Submarine cable (EASSy).

No wonder SEACOM and EASSy are so confused. What strange magick is the government practising in order to confuse the ICT sector?

I predict we will soon have to rename all accounts with UID==0 as beetroot.

[available at allafrica.com as of 11-09-07]

Wheels within wheels

A Second Life art-installation / mash-up by a fabjectory (fabbed+object+factory) that uses rapid prototyping machines to create real life objects from the avatars and sculptures that people make in SecondLife, using a Second Life copy of a real life mash-up of a Science Fiction story about people using fabjectorys to make their real life better.

[I forgot to mention that this is today's tongue twister]

No FBI

Considering Kenya's past involvement with the FBI, it seems a bit strange to name their new national backbone NO FBI! And the three main contractors are all Chinese!

[Insert more scare tactics here...]

One slip and you're...

[via Schneier - hey that rhymes]
[and the word verification was spsfuql]

Sorry kids

No Christmas this year.

[credit - Reuters/Chile]

and then

Superfluity

See that sign? Don't go too fast! Bad motorists.
[Returning on Ou Kaapse Weg from a New Years Day celebration]

Klingons!

I saw this and I almost cried.

The Dark Side of the Rings of Uranus

Actually it's a scientific paper:

The rings of Uranus are oriented edge-on to Earth in 2007 for the first time since their 1977 discovery. This provides a rare opportunity to observe their dark (unlit) side, where dense rings darken to near invisibility, but faint rings become much brighter. We present a ground-based infrared image of the unlit side of the rings that shows that the system has changed dramatically since previous views. A broad cloud of faint material permeates the system, but is not correlated with the well-known narrow rings or with the embedded dust belts imaged by Voyager. Although some differences can be explained by the unusual viewing angle, we conclude that the dust distribution within the system has changed significantly since the 1986 Voyager spacecraft encounter and occurs on much larger scales than has been seen in other planetary systems.

Supplier Ca-noodling

Couldn't resist the headline when I saw this AP story on purported price-fixing in the Chinese instant noodle (Ramen) industry.

The report came amid a nationwide probe into whether price-fixing or hoarding by producers is to blame for a 15.4 percent jump in food prices in July over the year-earlier period. The government accused violators of damaging social stability. [emphasis mine - Al]

and finally buried at the end of the article on Page 2, a better discussion of the real issue: collusion of the producers:

"Some industry groups have organized coordinated price rises," the agency said in an Aug. 3 statement. It said the collusion "influences social stability." [emphasis mine - Al]

There's that delicate social stability again.

Cheers China! Where everybody knows your name...

Torvalds on OoO

NB - not OpenOffice.Org

Linus Torvalds on Via's new Isaiah / CN:

I really don't understand why some people are so against
OoO. Is it more complex than in-order? Of course!
But it's still better than the alternatives (one of which
is: "you can't sell it because it's too slow").

and

I may not be a CPU designer, but dang, I could play one on
TV.

Gigantic flash drive

I make this post knowing that, in a few years, people might look back on it and laugh.

But I just couldn't help getting excited at having a 'gigantic' flash drive:



Yes, just that single folder is nearly 24 GB. The truth is that there was a terrible dismounting accident and the entire folder ended up full of corrupt entries (rudely named & undeletable).

Mosaic Law

Does Mosaic Law imply an </i> for an <i> ?

Tony Soprano vs Pablo Francisco

Hmmmm, is this life imitating art?


This - Exploding device kills man near Vegas casino

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (AP) -- A homemade bomb left on the top of a car in a casino parking garage exploded early Monday, killing a man who tried to pick it up, authorities said.

The blast shortly after 4 a.m. left a 12-inch hole in the man's car on the second floor of the garage behind the Luxor hotel-casino, authorities said. A woman with the man was standing nearby but escaped injury.

The man, who had just finished his shift at a hot dog stand inside the casino, was considered to be the target, though police don't know why.

vs
This - Little Tortilla Boy

Wrykipedia

from Year 2038 problem

Using a (signed) 64-bit value introduces a new wraparound date in about 290 billion years, on Sunday, December 4, 292,277,026,596. However, this is not widely regarded as a pressing issue.

Oh those wacky editors! Let's hope no-one notifies the Humor Police

The internet consists of six servers

At least, according to Creamer's Engineering News it does.

Previously, third- and second-tier ISPs, such as MWeb, had to connect to first-tier ISPs, such as the South African Internet Exchange and Internet Solutions, from where their traffic was relayed by Telkom to either London or New York.

Only then were they connected to the global Internet, which consists of six large servers [emphasis added].

At least they realise that large servers would be needed. Roll on IBM!

And some documentary evidence, once the [inevitable] edit [hopefully] happens:

The problems with custom numberplates

If you're going to do something bad:


then don't get custom plates.
[yes, this is private property - a parking lot at UCT]

I guess if the local traffis' get their act together like their up-country brethren, then that plate should be changed to just "KY WP"...