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Domain: ridiculopathy.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to ridiculopathy.com.
Comments · 596
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Adams as the Ghost of Christmas Future...Adams has, one must admit, lost his ability to write a cohesive tale. Lost. Found. Buried in soft peat.
For anyone who needs evidence for this, simply read anything written by Adams after the eary eighties. Conclusive evidence comes in the form of Adams' return to his bread-and-butter, H2G2.
This is his way of trying to stir up interest among a community he thinks he started. In interviews and speeches, he pretends as though he invented the idea of smarmy sci fi. He did not.
We've moved on. He, it seems, has not.
But I wonder if he is not just a shadow of things to come- for us. We all like to slap ourselves on our backs and talk about this wonderful information revolution we're helping to foster. But after we're all obsolete in ten years, will we all be talking that same way?
"Where's the gratitude?" we will whine. "Why don't kids understand my considerable contributions to the art?"
"Why, at some point in 2001, my karma was up to about forty!"
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People who will, will. People who won't, won't.If a person has already spent their lives denying a century of scientific research, what can this new development possible mean to them?
"The Allmighty made men and women genetically similar to other animals to throw us off the scent. He knew about the concept of biology millions of years before the field of study began and planted little clues here and there to make believing in Him all the more difficult."
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Hanssen a spy?And how did one of those kids get into the FBI, anyway? I undestand that pubescent girls love Hanssen, but that's no reason to give them access to our nation's greatest secrets.
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Scientists discover extra-solar 1950's-era office...complete with water cooler and carbon paper for typing forms in triplicate.
Accountants in space. It all makes sense now.
How quantum gravity affects tax withholding and other actuarial issues...
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Home security systems violate my free speech rightInformation should be free.
If people would just stop locking their doors at night, their valuables would be free as well- and I could get back to what I do best.
Cat burglaring just hasn't been the same since that deadbolt lock salesman came to town. How can they do this? Is this even Constitutional?
Join me in my struggle. stand up for your fundamental right to pilfer!
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Did Vince McMahon just buy the XML?It's like the regular HTML, but we now have extra tags like:
- <TAUNT>
- <FLYING BUTTRICE>
- <CHAIRWHIP>
Some say that the XML isn't even a real language, that in spite of its proclaimed extensibility, it is "fixed." But I think they're cultural elitists.
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Boobies. Boobies? Boobies!Good with computahs? Like to hunt for pohrn on the Intahnet?
The South Australia Boobie Patrol needs you!
Legislation of this type usually wraps itself in the idea of "protecting children." But this law surely is just an attempt to get a patronage job for some Australian Senator's porn-hungry nephew.
Or perhaps it is a merchandising play. Imagine the gross revenues for "Official South Australia Porn Inspector" T-shirts. It boggles the mind.
Hey South Australia, take a look at this
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Proposal: on-line text adventuresIn good games, plot has always been king. The best I can remember were all plot (i.e. Yoho!, H2G2, Planetfall, etc.).
I'm not kidding on this one. I swear.
I've been thinking about this over the past few weeks and I think using PHP & MySQL (and perhaps a little Java) you could hammer out an interesting (hopefully entertaining) structure for MUD/MUSH-like multiplayer text adventures.
The idea of bringing MUDs into the 20th century intrigues me - kinda like everquest.
If this doesn't sound dumber than rocks, let me know.
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huh?Here's what I'm hearing:
1) Microsoft products suck.
2) Microsoft better not limit my access to their software.What doesn't make sense here? I'm honestly confused.
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Hello foot, eat lead!The idea of subscripts made sense two years ago when the whole industry was swimming in OEM revenue.
I know, let's piss off our only remaining stable revenue stream in an attempt to shore up second quarter profits!
As a consumer, if you didn't have a reason to buy a new computer before when software ran "forever," why would you buy one now (the advantage being increased tech support that you don't trust, anyway)?
[I apologise for the previous convluted sentence. Do not attempt to diagram.]
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Sheep run the showFace it. We think we're all l337 and everything. But the future of HTML is like the future of any language. It is defined by the users, good and bad ones.
You cannot legislate language (see: The failure of German spelling reform of last year). You can only react to how people use it.
If I can't stop people from using impact as a verb, we certainly can't stop folks from using Frontpage to make their Geocities home pages.
We may know more about the language. But we cannot define it.
Sheep run the show. And the corporations on whose land they graze are the only ones who will profit.
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Optical componentsEveryone talks about fibre as the Cadillac solution (because it costs about as much as a caddy per station). But there are a lot more elements to consider other than the drive bay adapters. Just getting the optical cable installed with its various freaky components drive up the cost in a hurry.
Fibre is also a solution with few big players- and loads of tiny less-stable providers. I don't want to get stuck on the bleeding edge with a company with a crappy web site [cough. Cionic. Cough.]
[I'm sure cionic is getting slashdotted right now. And from a quick check of network solutions, it seems that the poster has a vested interest in that.]
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Star Trek: Cash CowAn enormous golden calf roams through the outer-regions of the known universe to exploit merchandising opportunities and maximize the ROI of Paramount investors.
There will be no human actors. In a merchandising first, the actual toys will finally take center stage.
And, of course, Roddenberry's widow will play a bit part. She will appear on alternate episodes to feed the cow.
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Hanibal: 90 minutes of talking is scaryForget horror movies of the past, I'll take a Merchant & Ivory historical drama every time. All that talking - with accents no less. It scares the crap out of me. I won't watch Room With A view alone ever again!
A book that Thomas Harris didn't want to write. A movie that Jodie Foster flat-out refused to participate in. A sluggish plot more reminiscent of a costume drama. I almost wet myself with fear.
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My rubber cement & Jello(TM) Jabba Suit!1) Spraypaint a Hefty bags lime green- unevenly.
2) Tape the bags together on the sides- don't forget the shoulder reinforcements.
3) Fill said bag with semi-set Jello(TM)
4) Cover the while thing with globs of rubber cement.
Alternative method: watch the first three movies 400 times while eating pork rinds and taking no exercise.
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Other sites under the gun...People who prefer to misspell a particular form of lumbardial back injury are suing us over the name "ridiculopathy.com."
It's a made-up word. We haven't had a chance to tell them that. They believe that rAdiculopathy is so common a misspelling that we have no right to do business under our proper name.
Our only hope is to get the word ridiculopathy entered into Websters next edition.
Ridiculopathy n : 1. A phenomenon brought about by ridiculous circumstances; 2. A field of science studying ridiculous phenomena. Ridiculopath a practitioner of the science of Ridiculopathy.
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The Mir's fate as interpreted by a Mac user..."It's going to pull out of this any day. The head of the space agency told me at the annual meeting in Star City, and I believe him."
"The rescue mission has been delayed another six months. Not to worry. This is actually good news."
"Sure it's now sitting on the bottom of the Ocean in several chunks. There's no better way to store it for later use. People of today are just too small-minded to understand Mir. Wiser people generations from now will reassemble it and revere it for what it almost was."
My Father always said: "Never get in anything Russian made with an airlock."
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Hyperbole "Generates Hits" with "Little Effort"
Who needs news when you can wrap a non-event in the tortilla of technopolitics and pump up the hit counters.
Advertisers must be "paying money." And I believe that VA Linux investors are "happy about this."
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My SETI@Home client compiled for the VIC-20The compiled binary was so large, it took up two sixty minute cassettes.
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DVD Player CompatibilityWhat happened to Apple's DVD player software? From what I understand, some commercially-produced DVD's do not play properly. Some older set-top boxes do not support certain features.
How will this Linux player fare?
Wasn't that the whole point of DVD in the first place- a rock solid standard?
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forget BSD Networking- where was slashdot?
Slashdot was down and I couldn't report it anywhere- even on slashdot!
I wonder if mirosoft.com will cover the outage. Slashdot certainly isn't yet.
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Mission completed, NEAR "ready for a shower, nap"excerpts:
Scientists admit that the surface of Eros was not as interesting up close as it had been from wider views. "We definitely had 'space goggles' on," explained Farquhar.
NEAR stayed on the asteroid for a few hours, made breakfast and idle chit-chat. But after a while, he could tell that it was his time to go. Firing its reverse-thrusters, NEAR left the surface never to return. NASA engineers excitedly noted that the landing and take-off have prepared the asteroid for future landings.
This Won't Hurt A Bit. We're Just Going To Shove This Probe Up Your Asteroid
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Older PPC Macs incompatible with Ones, ZerosI knew I shouldn't have bought the Mac with "Binary Plus."
Zeros, Ones, and sometimes Twos.
I could kick my own ass for thinking different.
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So my Mac is incompatible ...with MacOSX (It's a 604e PPC), with all windows software (emulation sux0rz) and now with the main trunk of Linux.
Youch.
I'm sure glad I thought different.
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NEAR sleepy moments after landing...NASA engineers, after suffering many unsuccessful landings with much more preparation, felt more than a little vindicated when the operation concluded successfully. "I was beginning to think that I just couldn't do it. I got used to saying, 'it's not you, Mars, it's me.'"
NEAR stayed on the asteroid for a few hours, made breakfast and idle chit-chat. But after a while, he could tell that it was his time to go. Firing its reverse-thrusters, NEAR left the surface never to return. NASA engineers excitedly noted that the landing and take-off have prepared the asteroid for future landings.
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NEAR sleepy moments after landing...NASA engineers, after suffering many unsuccessful landings with much more preparation, felt more than a little vindicated when the operation concluded successfully. "I was beginning to think that I just couldn't do it. I got used to saying, 'it's not you, Mars, it's me.'"
NEAR stayed on the asteroid for a few hours, made breakfast and idle chit-chat. But after a while, he could tell that it was his time to go. Firing its reverse-thrusters, NEAR left the surface never to return. NASA engineers excitedly noted that the landing and take-off have prepared the asteroid for future landings.
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NASA promises to call Eros "real soon"NASA says that they weren't planning on placing a probe on Eros. "It just sort of happened," said NASA spokesman Bob Farquhar. "We don't normally do this kind of thing. It was the heat of the moment. NEAR had traveled about 2 billion miles, and Eros was looking so good. Please, Oh God, don't tell my wife."
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How much do virus *myths* cost businesses?That's the real question.
As a sysadmin at a small-ish company, I get dozens of bogus virus warning e-mail messages per week. That's not the problem, though. It's when they pass the message on to the company at large because they don't think I'm taking it seriously enough. It's the "I've got a virus/get me a new computer" mentality when they've downloaded too much pr0n.
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Surprise: CowboyNeal was not in the Village People
I watched that VH-1 behind the music on them and I never saw CowboyNeal once.
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But where did the PowerSpam- er PowerPost go?I clicked all over than dang screen and I can't see any way to post to usenet. We all want to post, but who wants to subscribe to the groups - that means readin'. I just want to post.
How am I going to spread my links all over usenet?
Dangit!
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What DCS stands for.DCS There was a factual error in this story. DCS stands for "Dork Correction System" and does not collect information from ISPs. It does translate skript kiddie speak into something the FBI can understand. It seems that most "l337 h4xx0rz" aren't smart enough to encrypt conversations, conducting all kinds of business right out in the open.
Here's a snippet from a recent chat on AOL's Br1ttn3y Sp34rz chat room.
H4xx0rB0y3210932: Phr34kz & Cr4ckz here
l337H0ney: Yo. Check my cr4ckz. Ph0t0sh0p 3.1. C0rr3l Dr4w 1.6. GIMP 1.4
H4t3: Dud3. You us3d an "e" in y0ur n4me. And G1MP is fr33.This translates into:
Nefarious Character 1: Hello, fellows. I have many items of stolen software merchandise.
Nefarious Character 2: I am elite. The software I have stolen is available on my world wide web site.
Nefarious Character 3: Unintelligible. -
Whose pride? Who's Fall?If martial arts movies have taught me anything it is to not stand over a presumably dead guy and gloat.
[insert bad lip-sync here] "Aha, you had no honor and I had to put you down." [gloating man turns away as "dead" guy rises slowly]
Not to give the guy too much credit, Bill Gates has more business accumen (translation: "evil") in the tip of his colon than all of us have together. Katz, I presume, never went to business school. But it seems they make a big deal there about making money, marketing products to actual customers. And I know this sounds weird, but they say that giving your stuff away to a restrictive, insular market might be considered "bad for business" and might force the company to "file for bankruptcy."
Go figure.
With the recent round of Linux company layoffs (correl for one) I begin to wonder
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I literally loved his use of "literally"I literally cannnot understand why people don't like it when I over-use that word. It's as though people can't literally get around the idea that I'm a user of the English language just like them.
Actually, I know why you can't "literally" put the book down. Its cover has been soaked in superglue. Beware - literally beware!
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Just wait until I fab that Proche... just wait!Sure, the parts are made of a substance much like paper mache. But as soon as I get more shelack on those gaskets, we'll be tearing up the road.
Bwahahaha!
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Screw Q3, I'm porting Ms. Pac-Man!Who needs contemporary PC games ported to a stable platform like Linux?
I'm running Tic-Tac-'Doh! on a sweet linux box with the 2.4 kernel. Be careful, it learns from every game- and pretty soon, even it will be unstoppable. Watch out Gary Kasperov [sic] or your Tic-Tac-Toe equivalent! Content-O-Matic is comin' to throw down!
Content-O-Matic sez: "Props to my dead homiez."
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Screw Q3, I'm porting Ms. Pac-Man!Who needs contemporary PC games ported to a stable platform like Linux?
I'm running Tic-Tac-'Doh! on a sweet linux box with the 2.4 kernel. Be careful, it learns from every game- and pretty soon, even it will be unstoppable. Watch out Gary Kasperov [sic] or your Tic-Tac-Toe equivalent! Content-O-Matic is comin' to throw down!
Content-O-Matic sez: "Props to my dead homiez."
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I'm changing my name to HotSexyMan AtAOLDotComThat way, I'm sure to keep my way cool screen name. The ladies (or at least the ones I'm pretty sure are ladies) seem to love it.
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A lot of people sure dislike Jon KatzBut they always seem to post messages on his stories, making him look successful.
We ask our new intern to research new ways to make fun of Jon KatzL
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A lot of people sure dislike Jon KatzBut they always seem to post messages on his stories, making him look successful.
We ask our new intern to research new ways to make fun of Jon KatzL
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HDTV is dead. Long live HDTV.With such a setup you can record the HDTV broadcasts of Monday Night Football- oh, wait. That was last year. ABC discontinued HDTV simulcast in 2000. And your local affiliates have to broadcast an HD stream to maintian their FCC obligations, right? In my market, that means a tape loop- which rewinds on the air.
HD cinema may have a future. But if you assume that HDTV is the defacto future of television, go out to your local CircuitCity and check out their crappy HD demo. HD is a great technology (undersold and compromised by broadcasters hungry for free bandwidth) that may never get much of a reception due to poor business practices. To think of it that way, it sounds like an Apple product.
hack your PS2 to make a device that improves sit-come writing! (now that's a device we can all use)
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I can smell a Napster "straw man" a mile offGet over it already. Napster is not a library.
We protect libraries because they give information access to anyone, regardless of income level.
We deplore shoplifting because it raises prices for everyone else and puts small stores out of business.
We as
The amazon.com honor system won't work- we singed up just to prove it
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Spelled ****, pronounced ****Of course Microsoft gets it. They can get anything they damn well want.
This is Microsoft's way of licensing Java without losing face.
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Does Salon like to run unattributed quotes?I can't remember. Does Salon snag comments from their TableTalk boards and sell them?
I honestly can't remember.
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Will it crash my system like other floppy drives?I sure hope so. An iffy floppy can bring down an SGI Octane. I've seen it happen.
I sure hope these new drives aren't reliable or anything. That would sure spoil everything.
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XFL proves that even fixed football is boringJust kidding. Okay, not really.
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XFL proves that even fixed football is boringJust kidding. Okay, not really.
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Sounds great- but I'm not carrying your luggageBut still, to even ask for tips, you're basically contending that your content is as good as your average lounge singer. I'm not sure we qualify.
I'm a bigger fan of Zero Click Ordering technology for revenue enhancement. Your customers don't even need to order anything- the ultimate in convenience!
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New "Nanobot" category on Battlebots!You'll need special electromagetic microscope cameras to see them fight, but it'll be awesome.
My money's on the bot with the hydraulic thumb tack spike.
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Store SecurityWith this line of argument, a retail outlet can either simply let people shoplift willy-nilly or impose draconian security measures. According to Jaron (who has never been wrong about anything I am lead to understand) there can be no middle ground. Either record companies go out of business providing content for people who refuse to pay for it or they violate the rights of people who buy the content.
Guess what, we've no legs to stand on. digital-blue-ink-tags.com
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Just as the Cubs are mathematically eliminatedfrom the pennant in early March, the Sega has already marked the Mark II for obsolescnense between now and the time it is released to the public.