* One shot every thirty minutes the install or upgrade process takes.
* One shot if you have to start over.
* Drain the bottle if it ATE YOUR GODDAMN DATA.
After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with anything Apple or AT&T might vaguely think about in the far future and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil(tm) as a corporate policy.
"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to Windows Mobile. Ha! Ha!"
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."
"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. I mean, 'Bing.' Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
"We want to be more responsive to your needs," said Sam Ramji of Microsoft during a Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit panel this week as he wiped rotten tomatoes off his suit.
"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine. We'll also be funding the Wine on Windows initiative."
The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all accompanying documentation is in OOXML. Also, all your data belongs to Microsoft.
The overwhelming dominance of Microsoft was assured, he said, pointing to their success in paying netbook manufacturers to use Windows XP and paying US retailers not to stock the Linux versions of the computers. "We're also enforcing our patent on right-clicking. And on the number seven." Ramji reassured journalists of his absolute faith in the power of Microsoft's vision, just before quitting to work somewhere -- anywhere -- else.
This is an impassioned plea on news.com.au for Google to give Murdoch money. It's one Murdoch paper reporting on something in another Murdoch paper. Note the Google ads.
In an admirable display of synergy between hard-headed business sense and sensitivity to artistic rightness, New Line Cinemas has hired Adam Sandler to direct The Hobbit, the prequel to The Lord Of The Rings.
"Peter Jackson may have made us three billion dollars and paved our goddamn driveways with Oscars," said a spokesdroid, "but when he dared question the three nickels and a gum wrapper payment, well. We knew we just couldn't work with someone so risibly unprofessional."
Sandler is likely to be working under renowned producer Uwe Boll. "Okay, here is what I am thinking, ja? Your Bilbo Baggins will be a WOMAN in Nazi Germany. A naked woman. And the One Ring will not show up. And she gets raped by Hitler! Gandalf will be played by Keanu Reeves. I AM THE DIRECTOR! I mean programmer. PRODUCER."
Jackson has lost weight, shaved his feet and gone back to his roots to make a warmhearted New Zealand-based family film in the style of his earliest works, under the working title Zombie Cancer Bukkake Pus-Nodules, with a budget in the range of over forty New Zealand dollars.
Work at New Line continues. "We at New Line are convinced that Professor Tolkean would have agreed with us that Adam Sandler will realise her artistic vision eleventy-one percent. We've bought three years' worth of shark futures."
I was terribly unfair to Microsoft in the story summary (which is pretty much what I wrote) - per TFA, this flaw is actually an exciting new feature of Vista, not of Windows 7.
And before anyone says "but Win7 is beta!" - this flaw is present in the gold master.
* One shot for every "ethnic" face in an install graphic.
* An extra shot if it's pasted over the head of a white person.
* One shot for every white face pasted over the head of a non-white person.
* One shot for every program with the Office 2007 "ribbon" toolbar stuck on it completely inappropriately.
* One shot for every exciting "new" feature that's been in Mac OS and Linux for the past five years.
* An extra shot if the exciting "new" feature's been in Mac OS and Linux for the past ten years.
* One shot every time you reboot during the install.
* One shot every time the system asks to reboot just because it feels like it.
* Two shots every time it reboots even though you said "no."
* Drain the bottle if there's an actual feature that makes Windows 7 so much better than sticking with XP that you'll spend actual money to get it.
* Spitting your mouthful and cursing when Windows Genuine Advantage decides your full-price copy is actually a bootleg.
* A bitter mouthful every time the system blue-screens.
Rainforest destruction legend Robert Jordan has successfully evaded paying off the advance on what was originally a four-page satire of ridiculous fantasy cliches, The Wheel of Time.
The epic originated as a piece of semi-amusing cubemail circulating on a private mailing list for writers bored with their day jobs. "But I just kept adding and adding to it," Jordan confessed years later. "Then someone snuck it into an Eye Of Argon reading session. And the idio-- I mean, tasteful and discerning consumers of science fiction and fantasy loved it! They couldn't get enough of it! Certainly more than I could be bothered with, anyway. If only I could find the Caribbean island Elvis, Jimi, Janis and Kurt are hiding out on..."
The process of writing was reflected in the work. "You get long, stringy drips of various elements. All recycled. Then you weave them together. We thought of using a wiki, but people kept putting Pokemons in. 'My Pokemans, let me show you them.' Idjits."
Plaudits came in from fellow fantasy writers around the globe. "I always found plot and characterisation overrated," said master fantasist J.R.R. Tolkein. "They only get in the way of exploring a really interesting constructed language. The more demanding sort of reader can be so very tiresome at times."
"Bugger," said David Eddings, frantically casting his eyes about for fresh sources.
"Who are you, and where did you get this number?" said Neil Gaiman.
Readers will be over the moon to learn that Kevin J. Anderson has contracted to finish the series in a suitable manner. "I figure there's another twenty, thirty books needed to finish it properly. Lotta unanswered questions, yeah. I should have 'em done by next week."
Woolheaded shepherds the world over fold their arms beneath their breasts, tug at their braids, smooth their skirts and bow their heads today, and remember Jordan's wise words:
"Plagiarism^WResearch is lighter than a feather; advances already received, heavier than a mountain."
The pharmaceutical industry is reeling from the news that more and more new drugs do no better than a placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in research and development, the FDA approved only 19 new drugs in 2007 and 24 in 2008.
The placebo effect has been little-understood. Trials in different countries and cultures can show different results. Ratings by trial observers can vary significantly from one test site to another. Advertising has conditioned people into thinking a little branded pill will make them all better.
"This throws R&D spending into significant doubt," said Cylon Number Six of GlaxoSmithPfizerMonsanto. "It's clear that marketing has always been the way to go, and that spending four times as much on marketing as research was the best thing we could possibly have done for humanity."
Researchers are now going full steam to discover new forms of nothingness to apply to new diseases. Explorers have been sent into the Amazonian rainforest to find new plant species to dilute to the point of no molecules of the original being present. Traditionally ineffective tribal remedies from around the world have been patented in Western countries. "If '4'33'' can be copyrighted, we can patent the placebo gene!" The treatments will be publicised in the new Elsevier journal, The Australasian Journal of Nothing Whatsoever.
Homeopaths are up in arms at the pharmaceutical industry "muscling in on our territory," said Ravenwoo Granola of the Specialist Homeopathic Institute of Technology. "We developed the finest, most refined and provably harmless snake oil in existence! There's nothing homeopathy can't cure! Er, there's nothing that isn't brought to us for consideration and helping the patient trigger the placebo effect themselves. A snip at £5.99 a bottle and fifty quid a consultation! And we absolutely proved it harmless! We did double-blind tests against placebo... Bugger."
Yep! Until someone suggested this (compacting the tables), I'd assumed the only way to fix this was to delete my profile. An extension is a good place to put it, with a view to it going into the base.
for i in ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/*.sqlite; do sqlite3 $i "vacuum;" ; done
FF3.x does everything in sqlite. Some of the tables fill with crap 'cos deleted rows are marked "deleted" rather than actually being deleted and compacted. I hope future versions will run a vacuum automatically every now and then.
On this Ubuntu 9.04 box I had to apt-get install sqlite3.
If only Scientology had been on hand for the Great Recession! Just consider the following questions from the Personality Test, applied to financial executives:
2. When others are getting rattled, do you remain fairly composed? 8. Are your actions considered unpredictable by other people? 23. Do you resent the efforts of others to tell you what to do? 24. Is it normally hard for you to "own up and take the blame"? 30. Do you enjoy telling people the latest scandal about your associates? 59. Do you consider the modern prisons without bars system "doomed to failure"? 76. Do you sometimes give away articles which strictly speaking do not belong to you? 124. Do you often make tactless blunders? 125. Are you suspicious of people who ask to borrow money from you?
And everyone knows the current Federal Reserve system was set up as the result of a bet between Alan Greenspan and L. Ron Hubbard.
Apparently 'cos Charles Arthur (the technology editor) thinks he's great. Charles Arthur is a good bloke and pretty on the ball, but he likes some of his more clueless and/or insane writers (Seth Finkelstein is another good example) more than you or I would.
Dear God, please turn up a lead on that floating point article.
Daniel Eran Dilger noted on roughlydrafted.com that the newly released Apple [INSERT GADGET NAME HERE] would need to be fueled on pain, angst, the destruction of the ecology, the torture of kittens and the tears of widows and orphans, plus Apple Store employees roaming the streets raping children -- but put together a devastatingly convincing and very lengthy explanation as to why Apple's actions were the only humanly acceptable option for the consumer, the technology industry and the future of humanity, that Jobs' Nobel Peace Prize was ridiculously overdue and that black was in fact white and up was in fact down. And that all problems were clearly Microsoft's fault.
Slashdot Mirror
.. the Windows 7 Drinking Game exists. Let's add:
* One shot every thirty minutes the install or upgrade process takes.
* One shot if you have to start over.
* Drain the bottle if it ATE YOUR GODDAMN DATA.
Any others to add?
After bricking unlocked iPhones, kicking applications off the iPhone store that might even slightly compete with anything Apple or AT&T might vaguely think about in the far future and filing a wave of patents on basic well-known computer science, Apple Inc. today filed a Form 8-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission declaring that it was openly adopting Evil(tm) as a corporate policy.
"Fuck it," said Steve Jobs to an audience of soul-mortgaged thralls, "we're evil. But our stuff is sooo good. You'll keep taking our abuse. You love it, you worm. Because our stuff is great. It's shiny and it's pretty and it's cool and it works. It's not like you'll go back to Windows Mobile. Ha! Ha!"
Steve Ballmer of Microsoft was incensed at the news. "Our evil is better than anyone's evil! No-one sweats the details of evil like Microsoft! Where's your antitrust trial, you polo-necked bozo? We've worked hard on our evil! Our Zune's as evil as an iPod any day! I won't let my kids use a lesser evil! We're going to do an ad about that! I'll be in it! With Jerry Seinfeld! Beat that! Asshole."
"Of course, we're still not evil," said Sergey Brin of Google. "You can trust us on this. Every bit of data about you, your life and the house you live in is strictly a secret between you and our marketing department. But, hypothetically, if we were evil, it's not like you're going to use Windows Live Search. I mean, 'Bing.' Ha! Ha! I'm sorry, that's my 'spreading good cheer' laugh. Really."
Sounds good to me - nicely Darwinian for dealing with speeding idiots before they could hurt someone else!
"Hyurk, I'll drive at 100mph, no radar in sight ... oh shit, blue lights."
*cough*
Microsoft has announced Microsoft CodePlex, its new Open Source foundation.
"We want to be more responsive to your needs," said Sam Ramji of Microsoft during a Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit panel this week as he wiped rotten tomatoes off his suit.
"We want all open source innovation to happen on Windows. In practice, Windows is too slow, and just putting Linux underneath the same software stack triples performance. So we're running the Windows versions of the software on Linux using Wine. We'll also be funding the Wine on Windows initiative."
The new Microsoft Amazingly Open And Genuine Public License allows you complete freedom to use, modify and redistribute the software provided that every copy comes with a DVD of Windows Vista Ultimate, you acknowledge that Microsoft's FAT patent protects a remarkable and valuable innovation in computer science and all accompanying documentation is in OOXML. Also, all your data belongs to Microsoft.
The overwhelming dominance of Microsoft was assured, he said, pointing to their success in paying netbook manufacturers to use Windows XP and paying US retailers not to stock the Linux versions of the computers. "We're also enforcing our patent on right-clicking. And on the number seven." Ramji reassured journalists of his absolute faith in the power of Microsoft's vision, just before quitting to work somewhere -- anywhere -- else.
This is an impassioned plea on news.com.au for Google to give Murdoch money. It's one Murdoch paper reporting on something in another Murdoch paper. Note the Google ads.
Illustration: Rupert Murdoch saying "My preciousssssss".
Yeah, I whistle down the phone at 500kHz for DSL. It's not too hard once you can speak dolphin.
In an admirable display of synergy between hard-headed business sense and sensitivity to artistic rightness, New Line Cinemas has hired Adam Sandler to direct The Hobbit, the prequel to The Lord Of The Rings.
"Peter Jackson may have made us three billion dollars and paved our goddamn driveways with Oscars," said a spokesdroid, "but when he dared question the three nickels and a gum wrapper payment, well. We knew we just couldn't work with someone so risibly unprofessional."
Sandler is likely to be working under renowned producer Uwe Boll. "Okay, here is what I am thinking, ja? Your Bilbo Baggins will be a WOMAN in Nazi Germany. A naked woman. And the One Ring will not show up. And she gets raped by Hitler! Gandalf will be played by Keanu Reeves. I AM THE DIRECTOR! I mean programmer. PRODUCER."
Jackson has lost weight, shaved his feet and gone back to his roots to make a warmhearted New Zealand-based family film in the style of his earliest works, under the working title Zombie Cancer Bukkake Pus-Nodules, with a budget in the range of over forty New Zealand dollars.
Work at New Line continues. "We at New Line are convinced that Professor Tolkean would have agreed with us that Adam Sandler will realise her artistic vision eleventy-one percent. We've bought three years' worth of shark futures."
Illustration: New Line studio heads. "My preciousssss.
I wrote that text and it was passed unaltered, so blame me for the pissed-off tone.
But Macs cost too much, and Linux is too hard. And Microsoft only hits me because he loves me.
Yeah, reading error on my part. Sorry about that. Let's give Vista credit where it's due!
I was terribly unfair to Microsoft in the story summary (which is pretty much what I wrote) - per TFA, this flaw is actually an exciting new feature of Vista, not of Windows 7.
And before anyone says "but Win7 is beta!" - this flaw is present in the gold master.
This is in the RTM gold master.
Added!
The Windows 7 drinking game so far includes:
* One shot for every "ethnic" face in an install graphic.
* An extra shot if it's pasted over the head of a white person.
* One shot for every white face pasted over the head of a non-white person.
* One shot for every program with the Office 2007 "ribbon" toolbar stuck on it completely inappropriately.
* One shot for every exciting "new" feature that's been in Mac OS and Linux for the past five years.
* An extra shot if the exciting "new" feature's been in Mac OS and Linux for the past ten years.
* One shot every time you reboot during the install.
* One shot every time the system asks to reboot just because it feels like it.
* Two shots every time it reboots even though you said "no."
* Drain the bottle if there's an actual feature that makes Windows 7 so much better than sticking with XP that you'll spend actual money to get it.
* Spitting your mouthful and cursing when Windows Genuine Advantage decides your full-price copy is actually a bootleg.
* A bitter mouthful every time the system blue-screens.
Rainforest destruction legend Robert Jordan has successfully evaded paying off the advance on what was originally a four-page satire of ridiculous fantasy cliches, The Wheel of Time.
The epic originated as a piece of semi-amusing cubemail circulating on a private mailing list for writers bored with their day jobs. "But I just kept adding and adding to it," Jordan confessed years later. "Then someone snuck it into an Eye Of Argon reading session. And the idio-- I mean, tasteful and discerning consumers of science fiction and fantasy loved it! They couldn't get enough of it! Certainly more than I could be bothered with, anyway. If only I could find the Caribbean island Elvis, Jimi, Janis and Kurt are hiding out on ..."
The process of writing was reflected in the work. "You get long, stringy drips of various elements. All recycled. Then you weave them together. We thought of using a wiki, but people kept putting Pokemons in. 'My Pokemans, let me show you them.' Idjits."
Plaudits came in from fellow fantasy writers around the globe. "I always found plot and characterisation overrated," said master fantasist J.R.R. Tolkein. "They only get in the way of exploring a really interesting constructed language. The more demanding sort of reader can be so very tiresome at times."
"Bugger," said David Eddings, frantically casting his eyes about for fresh sources.
"Who are you, and where did you get this number?" said Neil Gaiman.
Readers will be over the moon to learn that Kevin J. Anderson has contracted to finish the series in a suitable manner. "I figure there's another twenty, thirty books needed to finish it properly. Lotta unanswered questions, yeah. I should have 'em done by next week."
Woolheaded shepherds the world over fold their arms beneath their breasts, tug at their braids, smooth their skirts and bow their heads today, and remember Jordan's wise words:
Illustration: Robert Jordan silenced at last.
The pharmaceutical industry is reeling from the news that more and more new drugs do no better than a placebo. Despite historic levels of industry investment in research and development, the FDA approved only 19 new drugs in 2007 and 24 in 2008.
The placebo effect has been little-understood. Trials in different countries and cultures can show different results. Ratings by trial observers can vary significantly from one test site to another. Advertising has conditioned people into thinking a little branded pill will make them all better.
"This throws R&D spending into significant doubt," said Cylon Number Six of GlaxoSmithPfizerMonsanto. "It's clear that marketing has always been the way to go, and that spending four times as much on marketing as research was the best thing we could possibly have done for humanity."
Researchers are now going full steam to discover new forms of nothingness to apply to new diseases. Explorers have been sent into the Amazonian rainforest to find new plant species to dilute to the point of no molecules of the original being present. Traditionally ineffective tribal remedies from around the world have been patented in Western countries. "If '4'33'' can be copyrighted, we can patent the placebo gene!" The treatments will be publicised in the new Elsevier journal, The Australasian Journal of Nothing Whatsoever. Homeopaths are up in arms at the pharmaceutical industry "muscling in on our territory," said Ravenwoo Granola of the Specialist Homeopathic Institute of Technology. "We developed the finest, most refined and provably harmless snake oil in existence! There's nothing homeopathy can't cure! Er, there's nothing that isn't brought to us for consideration and helping the patient trigger the placebo effect themselves. A snip at £5.99 a bottle and fifty quid a consultation! And we absolutely proved it harmless! We did double-blind tests against placebo ... Bugger."
Exxxxcellent! Then there's NO DAMN REASON this shouldn't be in the main program ...
*cough* indeed. I was somewhat disconcerted. I'm writing this from Chromium 4.
Yep! Until someone suggested this (compacting the tables), I'd assumed the only way to fix this was to delete my profile. An extension is a good place to put it, with a view to it going into the base.
on Unix, anyway. Exit Firefox, then do:
for i in ~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/*.sqlite; do sqlite3 $i "vacuum;" ; done
FF3.x does everything in sqlite. Some of the tables fill with crap 'cos deleted rows are marked "deleted" rather than actually being deleted and compacted. I hope future versions will run a vacuum automatically every now and then.
On this Ubuntu 9.04 box I had to apt-get install sqlite3.
I think if they were upfront about Xenu they'd still get a lot of recruits.
If only Scientology had been on hand for the Great Recession! Just consider the following questions from the Personality Test, applied to financial executives:
2. When others are getting rattled, do you remain fairly composed?
8. Are your actions considered unpredictable by other people?
23. Do you resent the efforts of others to tell you what to do?
24. Is it normally hard for you to "own up and take the blame"?
30. Do you enjoy telling people the latest scandal about your associates?
59. Do you consider the modern prisons without bars system "doomed to failure"?
76. Do you sometimes give away articles which strictly speaking do not belong to you?
124. Do you often make tactless blunders?
125. Are you suspicious of people who ask to borrow money from you?
And everyone knows the current Federal Reserve system was set up as the result of a bet between Alan Greenspan and L. Ron Hubbard.
Apparently 'cos Charles Arthur (the technology editor) thinks he's great. Charles Arthur is a good bloke and pretty on the ball, but he likes some of his more clueless and/or insane writers (Seth Finkelstein is another good example) more than you or I would.
Dear God, please turn up a lead on that floating point article.
Daniel Eran Dilger noted on roughlydrafted.com that the newly released Apple [INSERT GADGET NAME HERE] would need to be fueled on pain, angst, the destruction of the ecology, the torture of kittens and the tears of widows and orphans, plus Apple Store employees roaming the streets raping children -- but put together a devastatingly convincing and very lengthy explanation as to why Apple's actions were the only humanly acceptable option for the consumer, the technology industry and the future of humanity, that Jobs' Nobel Peace Prize was ridiculously overdue and that black was in fact white and up was in fact down. And that all problems were clearly Microsoft's fault.
Illustration: Apple iButtPlug.