By Heath's calculation, the amount of ecgonine [an alkaloid in the coca leaf that could be synthesized to create cocaine] was infinitesimal: no more than one part in 50 million. In an entire year's supply of 25-odd million gallons of Coca-Cola syrup, Heath figured, there might be six-hundredths of an ounce of cocaine.
So, yes, at one time there was cocaine in Coca-Cola. But before you're tempted to run off claiming Coca-Cola turned generations of drinkers into dope addicts, consider the following: back in 1885 it was far from uncommon to use cocaine in patent medicines (which is what Coca-Cola was originally marketed as) and other medical potions. When it first became general knowledge that cocaine could be harmful, the backroom chemists who comprised Coca-Cola at the time (long before it became the huge company we now know) did everything they could with the technology they had available at the time to remove every trace of cocaine from the beverage. What was left behind (until the technology improved enough for it all to be removed) wasn't enough to give a fly a buzz.
I had an intermittent problem with my cable modem for weeks that kept getting worse. The connection would slow down at random times, often coming to a complete halt. I would go down to where my masq box is hooked up to the cm, check the lights, ping the nameservers, etc -- all would usually check out, though with lots of packet loss. I'd call and they say it sounded like moisture in the cable!
Eventually I started losing connection alltogether. I'd go down and the status lights on the cm weren't blinking. I'd unplug, plug back in, run pump -R and try it again. Sometimes it would work, usually not. Again I called Comcast and they would schedule a tech visit, only to have the connection start working again a couple hours later and I'd call to cancel.
Every time, Comcast could see my cm online and insisted it must be my computer -- if they came out and the problem was on my end, they would charge me.
Well shit, they're gonna come out, see the POS 386 machine connected to the CM, see that it's running Linux, walk out and charge me -- so I ran the cm upstairs to a machine on the first floor and hooked it up directly so the tech would see that everything on my end was supported and fine.
Guess what -- started working again... for an hour. Then stopped. Then started. Then stopped again. This was nuts.
I went ahead and called them again and once again scheduled the service call -- working or not. I figured the worse that would happen now is they would come out and find it was working and I'd have to keep calling them back until they either fixed it or I had an anurism.
I went to work the next day and my wife called mid-day to tell me that the problem was fixed: "something had chewed through the cable and they had to replace it".
Sounded like the biggest bullshit explanation I ever heard until I got home and saw for myself. Sure enough, they had pulled the coax out from under the deck and run a new line -- the old line laying in the yard so I could see. Some little cocksucker with an overbite had chewed through the insulation.
The explanation the tech left with my wife was that the flakyness with the modem was probably because of varying dampness depending on outside temperature, time of day, dewpoint, etc. I think the modem dropped out everytime that buck-toothed, plastic-munching, broadband-killing fuckwad was out there nibbling on my cable!
>the fact he has children is news to him in episode 4...
Been a while since I've seen 4-6, but I'm pretty sure he knew about Luke, but it was Leia he didn't know about until the end of 6.
In Empire, Darth has a tele-conference with the boss where he says "we have a new enemy... Luke Skywalker. He could destroy us." and Darth replies "he's just a boy, Obi-Wan can no longer help him" and emperor says "the son of Skywalker must _not_ become a jedi".
In ROTJ, Darth probes Lukes thoughts and discovers the truth about Leia "so, you have a twin sister -- Obi-Wan was wise to hid her her from me".
Leia says that she remembers her mother "just images really" so we can assume she is at least a few years old when she is separated or her mother dies.
I think the limitations on what Anakin knows when are that he's not around at the birth and Obi-Wan has a hand in keeping Leia's existance secret (Jimmy Smits is introduced as Bail Organa who presumably takes Leia and raises her at some point).
I would imagine that he knows Padme is pregnant but does not yet know she carries twins at the time Obi-Wan knocks him on his ass into the lava. By ep 5 he knows Luke is "the son of Skywalker" but doesn't find out about Leia until right before his death in the final battle with Luke in ep 6.
When she goes into a place and says "..and a Pepsi", they damn well better not bring her a Coke or she raises holy hell. She'd rather have water, thanks.
"Is Coke ok?" is preferable to just assuming Coke/Pepsi == whatever-cola-is-sold-at-this-establishment.
why the "(sic)"? Did Linus change the spelling of his name since yesterday?;-)
I imagine you meant _Linux_ kernel vs linus, but I think that's what we're talking about here, kernel built straight from Linus' tree with no patches, eh?
I hear this over and over again from anyone that has experienced this, and I can tell you it's the god's-honest-truth!
I worked for a company that provided services for AT&T Wireless (actually this was while it was McCaw before AT&T bought them).
Same thing, they brought in D&T "consultants" that were little more than college grads that had been through their training camp and put in a nice suit. The guy I interacted with was bright and everything, he just didn't know shit about telecom or IT.
I got really tired of explaining things to him
"So, how does the system know how long the subscriber called? How does that record get to the billing system? etc, etc"
All valid questions and I started by carefully answering each one, at first. Then I realized this guy was being billed at $100+ an hour and was basically being paid to assimilate knowledge.
I cut him off, not because I wanted to spite the guy, but because I didn't have time (and it wasn't my job) to teach this guy about the wireless business. I did actually feel kinda sorry for him. Nice kid, wasn't his fault D&T had put him where he was.
>And you're right, driving a marked car at the speed limit would probably work... for the couple of minutes in the particular area where that car was driving through
Illinois had a program where they parked decommissioned patrol cars under overpasses on the highways to give the appearance of a speed trap and get motorists to slow down.
They would move them around every week so drivers would not get used to them and to keep them guessing which ones were real (sp would often replace real patrol car in the same spot after the dummy was moved to try to catch anyone who thought they were wise to the trick).
Guess what? Traffic fatalities from accidents involving speeding went down. But so did revenues from tickets. In the end, they stopped the program saying it wasn't practical, too expensive, whatever.
Jeff Foxworthy had a good bit that this reminded me of (I wish I could find the exact quote, but this is paraphrased).
When your wife is about to have a baby, they tell you _not_ to have sex after the water breaks. Is this really that big of a problem!? I mean, that's common sense, right? Except you _know_ they wouldn't have to say this unless somebody already did this.
<heavy-southern-drawl action='tugging at belt'>
c'mon darlin, jus how far-part is those con-trak-chins?
After a brief visit to Canneto di Caronia, the head of the Committee for the Control of Paranormal Claims has ruled out demons or poltergeists -- at least for the time being.
Well, duh!
They guy's whole job appears to be to debunk claims of supernatual activity, right? What, was he going to show up and pronounce "Holy mamma! This has _got_ to be the work of the devil!!!"
Kelinda: This business of love...you have devoted much literature to it. Why do you build such a mystique around a simple biological function? Kirk: We enjoy it!
The Kelvans commandeer the Enterprise so they can travel back to the Andromeda galaxy and return to invade us.
Along the way, the entire crew, except Kirk, Scott, McCoy and Spock are reduced to softball-sized crystals, which, while retaining the original person's complete physiology and memory allowing eventual resoration, are extremely fragile and destroying one effectively kills the person.
Stardate 4657.5: Responding to a distress call from an Earth-like planet, a landing party from the Enterprise beams down to investigate. Soon, Kirk and the others learn that those responsible for the faked message are actually aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy sent out to scout for other galaxies to conquer. They managed to penetrate the energy barrier, but their ship was destroyed in the attempt. Now they need the Enterprise in their return trip to Andromeda, a voyage which will take 300 years and many generations of Kelvans to complete. The Kelvans are ruthless in their methods, planning to eventually return to this galaxy from Andromeda and conquer all other civilizations in their path. Kirk is unable to fight the paralysis field the Kelvans employ against them, and he seems willing to accept their fate. But once out of the galaxy, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty, the only Enterprise crewmembers not reduced to crystalline form, discover a weakness in the Kelvan's plans. Because they were forced to take human form, the Kelvan's seem to show confusion over their newly acquired human senses and emotions. In order to save the ship, Kirk and the others work on giving the Kelvan's an overload to their senses. Scotty gets one of the Kelvans drunk while Kirk makes advances towards the Kelvan female, Kelinda, which makes the Kelvan leader, Rojan, extremely jealous. McCoy injects one of the other Kelvans with an irritant, claiming it to be vitamins, which causes him to be quarrelsome. A fight breaks out between Rojan and Kirk over Kelinda, and Kirk manages to convince Rojan that because of they're exposure to humans the Kelvan descendants that finally reach Andromeda will be so alien to other Kelvans that they will be considered invaders. Rojan accepts Kirk's offer of help from the Federation, and McCoy suggests that the planet they took refuge on would make a perfect place to begin their own colony.
Hey, yah -- just like that star trek episode where the cute alien chick was turning the crew into little styofoam octagon shapes and then, as long as you hadn't stepped on any, you could re-consitiute them (memory and all)!
duplos mostly suck because they won't hold together very well. my kids have a couple of sets and they got pretty frustrated when things fall apart in the middle of a build.
I think the idea is that they will come apart easily for small hands (in some cases I swear lego have become bonded at the molecular level because of the difficulty in separating two bricks).
What you say about stepping on them is true. I have let out some loud curses in the middle of the night while heading for the bathroom and stepping on one of those little 2x2 bricks. OUCH, DAMMIT!!!
#1: The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest In 1957 the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in, and many called up wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. To this question, the BBC diplomatically replied that they should "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." Check out the actual broadcast archived on the BBC's website (You need the RealVideo player installed to see it, and it usually loads very slowly).
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and Bureaucracies live forever.
So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
The CERT Coordination Center has received reports of weaknesses in
Alien/OS that can allow species with primitive information sciences
technology to initiate denial-of-service attacks against MotherShip(tm)
hosts. One report of exploitation of this bug has been received.
When attempting takeover of planets inhabited by such races, a trojan
horse attack is possible that permits local access to the MotherShip
host, enabling the implantation of executable code with full root access
to mission-critical security features of the operating system.
The vulnerability exists in versions of EvilAliens' Alien/OS 34762.12.1
or later, and all versions of Microsoft's Windows/95. CERT advises
against initiating further planet takeover actions until patches
are available from these vendors. If planet takeover is absolutely
necessary, CERT advises that affected sites apply the workarounds as
specified below.
As we receive additional information relating to this advisory, we will
place it in
ftp://info.cert.org/pub/cert_advisories/CA-96.13.R EADME
We encourage you to check our README files regularly for updates on
advisories that relate to your site.
I. Description
Alien/OS contains a security vulnerability, which strangely enough
can be exploited by a primitive race running Windows/95. Although
Alien/OS has been extensively field tested over millions of years by
EvilAliens, Inc., the bug was only recently discovered during a
routine invasion of a backwater planet. EvilAliens notes that
the operating system had never before been tested against a race
with "such a kick-ass president."
The vulnerability allows the insertion of executable code with
root access to key security features of the operating system. In
particular, such code can disable the NiftyGreenShield (tm)
subsystem, allowing child processes to be terminated by unauthorized
users.
Additionally, Alien/OS networking protocols can provide a
low-bandwidth covert timing channel to a determined attacker.
II. Impact
Non-privileged primitive users can cause the total destruction of
your entire invasion fleet and gain unauthorized access to
files.
III. Solution
EvilAliens has supplied a workaround and a patch, as follows:
A. Workaround
To prevent unauthorized insertion of executables, install a
firewall to selectively vaporize incoming packets that do not
contain valid aliens. Also, disable the "Java" option in
Netscape.
To eliminate the covert timing channel, remove untrusted
hosts from routing tables. As tempting as it is, do not use
target species' own satellites against them.
B. Patch
As root, install the "evil" package from the distribution tape.
(Optionally) save a copy of the existing/usr/bin/sendmail and
modify its permission to prevent misuse.
The CERT Coordination Center thanks Jeff Goldblum and Fjkxdtssss for
providing information for this advisory.
Really. Being hit by a planetkiller that causes extinction of humans on the earth doesn't worry me. Who will miss us?
My biggest fear is that we will be hit by a not-quite planetkiller that will cause enough devastation to ensure the survivors live in misery for the rest of their (short) lives. That would suck.
>Possibly it was created using open source libraries for certain components?
That would appear to be the case:
The author(s) of Phatbot chose to abandon Agobot's IRC and P2P implementations altogether and replaced them with code from WASTE, a project created by AOL's Nullsoft division (and subsequently canceled by AOL).
Slashdot Mirror
By Heath's calculation, the amount of ecgonine [an alkaloid in the coca leaf that could be synthesized to create cocaine] was infinitesimal: no more than one part in 50 million. In an entire year's supply of 25-odd million gallons of Coca-Cola syrup, Heath figured, there might be six-hundredths of an ounce of cocaine.
So, yes, at one time there was cocaine in Coca-Cola. But before you're tempted to run off claiming Coca-Cola turned generations of drinkers into dope addicts, consider the following: back in 1885 it was far from uncommon to use cocaine in patent medicines (which is what Coca-Cola was originally marketed as) and other medical potions. When it first became general knowledge that cocaine could be harmful, the backroom chemists who comprised Coca-Cola at the time (long before it became the huge company we now know) did everything they could with the technology they had available at the time to remove every trace of cocaine from the beverage. What was left behind (until the technology improved enough for it all to be removed) wasn't enough to give a fly a buzz.
I had an intermittent problem with my cable modem for weeks that kept getting worse. The connection would slow down at random times, often coming to a complete halt. I would go down to where my masq box is hooked up to the cm, check the lights, ping the nameservers, etc -- all would usually check out, though with lots of packet loss. I'd call and they say it sounded like moisture in the cable!
Eventually I started losing connection alltogether. I'd go down and the status lights on the cm weren't blinking. I'd unplug, plug back in, run pump -R and try it again. Sometimes it would work, usually not. Again I called Comcast and they would schedule a tech visit, only to have the connection start working again a couple hours later and I'd call to cancel.
Every time, Comcast could see my cm online and insisted it must be my computer -- if they came out and the problem was on my end, they would charge me.
Well shit, they're gonna come out, see the POS 386 machine connected to the CM, see that it's running Linux, walk out and charge me -- so I ran the cm upstairs to a machine on the first floor and hooked it up directly so the tech would see that everything on my end was supported and fine.
Guess what -- started working again... for an hour. Then stopped. Then started. Then stopped again. This was nuts.
I went ahead and called them again and once again scheduled the service call -- working or not. I figured the worse that would happen now is they would come out and find it was working and I'd have to keep calling them back until they either fixed it or I had an anurism.
I went to work the next day and my wife called mid-day to tell me that the problem was fixed: "something had chewed through the cable and they had to replace it".
Sounded like the biggest bullshit explanation I ever heard until I got home and saw for myself. Sure enough, they had pulled the coax out from under the deck and run a new line -- the old line laying in the yard so I could see. Some little cocksucker with an overbite had chewed through the insulation.
The explanation the tech left with my wife was that the flakyness with the modem was probably because of varying dampness depending on outside temperature, time of day, dewpoint, etc. I think the modem dropped out everytime that buck-toothed, plastic-munching, broadband-killing fuckwad was out there nibbling on my cable!
>Personally there is not ONE scene in movie 2 I would keep.
I dunno, I kinda liked the sequence with Anakin and Padme frollicking in the grass</sarcasm>
god that movie sucked ass...
>the fact he has children is news to him in episode 4...
Been a while since I've seen 4-6, but I'm pretty sure he knew about Luke, but it was Leia he didn't know about until the end of 6.
In Empire, Darth has a tele-conference with the boss where he says "we have a new enemy... Luke Skywalker. He could destroy us." and Darth replies "he's just a boy, Obi-Wan can no longer help him" and emperor says "the son of Skywalker must _not_ become a jedi".
In ROTJ, Darth probes Lukes thoughts and discovers the truth about Leia "so, you have a twin sister -- Obi-Wan was wise to hid her her from me".
Leia says that she remembers her mother "just images really" so we can assume she is at least a few years old when she is separated or her mother dies.
I think the limitations on what Anakin knows when are that he's not around at the birth and Obi-Wan has a hand in keeping Leia's existance secret (Jimmy Smits is introduced as Bail Organa who presumably takes Leia and raises her at some point).
I would imagine that he knows Padme is pregnant but does not yet know she carries twins at the time Obi-Wan knocks him on his ass into the lava. By ep 5 he knows Luke is "the son of Skywalker" but doesn't find out about Leia until right before his death in the final battle with Luke in ep 6.
Demolition Man where Sandra tells Rocky:
"Wow, you really licked his ass!!!"
"Kicked. I really kicked his ass."
move is one of my guilty pleasures (mostly because of SB in a tight cop uniform).
>Remember, opinions are like assholes - kindly stop shoving yours in my face ;-)
;-)
Heh, that's a good one. I've heard that "opinions are like assholes, everybody's got one", but that's a nice visual.
Might just qualify as a new sig if can be made short enough;
--
Opinions are like a-holes, everone's got one -- kindly stop shoving yours in my face!!!
I always order iced tea for that reason ;-)
Seriously, my wife drinks Pepsi. Period.
When she goes into a place and says "..and a Pepsi", they damn well better not bring her a Coke or she raises holy hell. She'd rather have water, thanks.
"Is Coke ok?" is preferable to just assuming Coke/Pepsi == whatever-cola-is-sold-at-this-establishment.
install a vanilla linus (sic) kernel..
;-)
why the "(sic)"? Did Linus change the spelling of his name since yesterday?
I imagine you meant _Linux_ kernel vs linus, but I think that's what we're talking about here, kernel built straight from Linus' tree with no patches, eh?
I hear this over and over again from anyone that has experienced this, and I can tell you it's the god's-honest-truth!
I worked for a company that provided services for AT&T Wireless (actually this was while it was McCaw before AT&T bought them).
Same thing, they brought in D&T "consultants" that were little more than college grads that had been through their training camp and put in a nice suit. The guy I interacted with was bright and everything, he just didn't know shit about telecom or IT.
I got really tired of explaining things to him
"So, how does the system know how long the subscriber called? How does that record get to the billing system? etc, etc"
All valid questions and I started by carefully answering each one, at first. Then I realized this guy was being billed at $100+ an hour and was basically being paid to assimilate knowledge.
I cut him off, not because I wanted to spite the guy, but because I didn't have time (and it wasn't my job) to teach this guy about the wireless business. I did actually feel kinda sorry for him. Nice kid, wasn't his fault D&T had put him where he was.
Got my attention -- took a while to get the meaning of balls through windows as in hitting a baseball through a window.
Seems a poor metaphor to me. Batting a ball through a window is usually acccidental. Rocks. Should have been rocks.
>And you're right, driving a marked car at the speed limit would probably work... for the couple of minutes in the particular area where that car was driving through
Illinois had a program where they parked decommissioned patrol cars under overpasses on the highways to give the appearance of a speed trap and get motorists to slow down.
They would move them around every week so drivers would not get used to them and to keep them guessing which ones were real (sp would often replace real patrol car in the same spot after the dummy was moved to try to catch anyone who thought they were wise to the trick).
Guess what? Traffic fatalities from accidents involving speeding went down. But so did revenues from tickets. In the end, they stopped the program saying it wasn't practical, too expensive, whatever.
Jeff Foxworthy had a good bit that this reminded me of (I wish I could find the exact quote, but this is paraphrased).
When your wife is about to have a baby, they tell you _not_ to have sex after the water breaks. Is this really that big of a problem!? I mean, that's common sense, right? Except you _know_ they wouldn't have to say this unless somebody already did this.
<heavy-southern-drawl action='tugging at belt'>
c'mon darlin, jus how far-part is those con-trak-chins?
</heavy-southern-drawl>
After a brief visit to Canneto di Caronia, the head of the Committee for the Control of Paranormal Claims has ruled out demons or poltergeists -- at least for the time being.
Well, duh!
They guy's whole job appears to be to debunk claims of supernatual activity, right? What, was he going to show up and pronounce "Holy mamma! This has _got_ to be the work of the devil!!!"
Moderation suggestion: -1, too geeky even for slashdot!
Episode 51. By Any Other Name
Kelinda: This business of love...you have devoted much literature to it. Why do you build such a mystique around a simple biological function?
Kirk: We enjoy it!
The Kelvans commandeer the Enterprise so they can travel back to the Andromeda galaxy and return to invade us.
Along the way, the entire crew, except Kirk, Scott, McCoy and Spock are reduced to softball-sized crystals, which, while retaining the original person's complete physiology and memory allowing eventual resoration, are extremely fragile and destroying one effectively kills the person.
Stardate 4657.5: Responding to a distress call from an Earth-like planet, a landing party from the Enterprise beams down to investigate. Soon, Kirk and the others learn that those responsible for the faked message are actually aliens from the Andromeda Galaxy sent out to scout for other galaxies to conquer. They managed to penetrate the energy barrier, but their ship was destroyed in the attempt. Now they need the Enterprise in their return trip to Andromeda, a voyage which will take 300 years and many generations of Kelvans to complete. The Kelvans are ruthless in their methods, planning to eventually return to this galaxy from Andromeda and conquer all other civilizations in their path. Kirk is unable to fight the paralysis field the Kelvans employ against them, and he seems willing to accept their fate. But once out of the galaxy, Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Scotty, the only Enterprise crewmembers not reduced to crystalline form, discover a weakness in the Kelvan's plans. Because they were forced to take human form, the Kelvan's seem to show confusion over their newly acquired human senses and emotions. In order to save the ship, Kirk and the others work on giving the Kelvan's an overload to their senses. Scotty gets one of the Kelvans drunk while Kirk makes advances towards the Kelvan female, Kelinda, which makes the Kelvan leader, Rojan, extremely jealous. McCoy injects one of the other Kelvans with an irritant, claiming it to be vitamins, which causes him to be quarrelsome. A fight breaks out between Rojan and Kirk over Kelinda, and Kirk manages to convince Rojan that because of they're exposure to humans the Kelvan descendants that finally reach Andromeda will be so alien to other Kelvans that they will be considered invaders. Rojan accepts Kirk's offer of help from the Federation, and McCoy suggests that the planet they took refuge on would make a perfect place to begin their own colony.
Hey, yah -- just like that star trek episode where the cute alien chick was turning the crew into little styofoam octagon shapes and then, as long as you hadn't stepped on any, you could re-consitiute them (memory and all)!
(\(\
(^.^)
o(")")
hmm, it doesn't line up for me - are you using hidden characters to make it work?
duplos mostly suck because they won't hold together very well. my kids have a couple of sets and they got pretty frustrated when things fall apart in the middle of a build.
I think the idea is that they will come apart easily for small hands (in some cases I swear lego have become bonded at the molecular level because of the difficulty in separating two bricks).
What you say about stepping on them is true. I have let out some loud curses in the middle of the night while heading for the bathroom and stepping on one of those little 2x2 bricks. OUCH, DAMMIT!!!
> bad harvest of the italian spaghetti crop
Swiss, and it was a bumper crop, not a "bad harvest"
it ranks #1 on the Top 100 April Fool's Day Hoaxes of All Time
#1: The Swiss Spaghetti Harvest
In 1957 the respected BBC news show Panorama announced that thanks to a very mild winter and the virtual elimination of the dreaded spaghetti weevil, Swiss farmers were enjoying a bumper spaghetti crop. It accompanied this announcement with footage of Swiss peasants pulling strands of spaghetti down from trees. Huge numbers of viewers were taken in, and many called up wanting to know how they could grow their own spaghetti trees. To this question, the BBC diplomatically replied that they should "place a sprig of spaghetti in a tin of tomato sauce and hope for the best." Check out the actual broadcast archived on the BBC's website (You need the RealVideo player installed to see it, and it usually loads very slowly).
Third base!
*April 1st, and 5 mod points -- going to be a fun day!
ok, -1 redundant for me: didn't look at the parent post's link until after I posted this 8-(
ever wonder what horse's ass came up with this specification?
The US Standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England, and the US railroads were built by English expatriates.
Why did the English people build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.
Why did they use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Okay! Why did the wagons use that odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing the wagons would break on some of the old, long distance roads, because that's the spacing of the old wheel ruts.
So who built these old rutted roads? The first long distance roads in Europe were built by Imperial Rome for the benefit of their legions. The roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts? The initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagons, were first made by Roman war chariots. Since the chariots were made for or by Imperial Rome they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing.
Thus, we have the answer to the original question. The United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches derives from the original specification for an Imperial Roman army war chariot. Specs and Bureaucracies live forever.
So, the next time you are handed a specification and wonder what horse's ass came up with it, you may be exactly right. Because the Imperial Roman chariots were made to be just wide enough to accommodate the back ends of two war horses.
Hmmm, maybe the twist will be that HIV mutates to MIV and the invaders all die of AIDS.
/usr/bin/sendmail and
On the mac + alienos thing, remember this?
Independence Day - CERT alert
From: CERT Bulletin
Newsgroups: comp.security.announce,rec.humor
Subject: CERT Advisory CA-96.13 - Alien/OS Vulnerability
Date: 4 July 1996 20:52:15 GMT
Organization: CERT(sm) Coordination Center - +1 412-268-7090
CERT(sm) Advisory CA-96.13
July 4, 1996
Topic: ID4 virus, Alien/OS Vulnerability
The CERT Coordination Center has received reports of weaknesses in
Alien/OS that can allow species with primitive information sciences
technology to initiate denial-of-service attacks against MotherShip(tm)
hosts. One report of exploitation of this bug has been received.
When attempting takeover of planets inhabited by such races, a trojan
horse attack is possible that permits local access to the MotherShip
host, enabling the implantation of executable code with full root access
to mission-critical security features of the operating system.
The vulnerability exists in versions of EvilAliens' Alien/OS 34762.12.1
or later, and all versions of Microsoft's Windows/95. CERT advises
against initiating further planet takeover actions until patches
are available from these vendors. If planet takeover is absolutely
necessary, CERT advises that affected sites apply the workarounds as
specified below.
As we receive additional information relating to this advisory, we will
place it in
ftp://info.cert.org/pub/cert_advisories/CA-96.13.R EADME
We encourage you to check our README files regularly for updates on
advisories that relate to your site.
I. Description
Alien/OS contains a security vulnerability, which strangely enough
can be exploited by a primitive race running Windows/95. Although
Alien/OS has been extensively field tested over millions of years by
EvilAliens, Inc., the bug was only recently discovered during a
routine invasion of a backwater planet. EvilAliens notes that
the operating system had never before been tested against a race
with "such a kick-ass president."
The vulnerability allows the insertion of executable code with
root access to key security features of the operating system. In
particular, such code can disable the NiftyGreenShield (tm)
subsystem, allowing child processes to be terminated by unauthorized
users.
Additionally, Alien/OS networking protocols can provide a
low-bandwidth covert timing channel to a determined attacker.
II. Impact
Non-privileged primitive users can cause the total destruction of
your entire invasion fleet and gain unauthorized access to
files.
III. Solution
EvilAliens has supplied a workaround and a patch, as follows:
A. Workaround
To prevent unauthorized insertion of executables, install a
firewall to selectively vaporize incoming packets that do not
contain valid aliens. Also, disable the "Java" option in
Netscape.
To eliminate the covert timing channel, remove untrusted
hosts from routing tables. As tempting as it is, do not use
target species' own satellites against them.
B. Patch
As root, install the "evil" package from the distribution tape.
(Optionally) save a copy of the existing
modify its permission to prevent misuse.
The CERT Coordination Center thanks Jeff Goldblum and Fjkxdtssss for
providing information for this advisory.
If you believe that y
Really. Being hit by a planetkiller that causes extinction of humans on the earth doesn't worry me. Who will miss us?
My biggest fear is that we will be hit by a not-quite planetkiller that will cause enough devastation to ensure the survivors live in misery for the rest of their (short) lives. That would suck.
That would appear to be the case:
The author(s) of Phatbot chose to abandon Agobot's IRC and P2P implementations altogether and replaced them with code from WASTE, a project created by AOL's Nullsoft division (and subsequently canceled by AOL).
Skynet _is_ the virus!!! There was never any super-computer complex to blow up!
I had to watch that a couple of times before gave up. I want by 4 1/2 hours of my life back!