Childish insults by the US House of Representatives and Senate on Wikipedia

Congressional Staffer Edits - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Blue Packet

Marketing takes Management and Purchasing to a live on-site demo, where Purchasing finds that the whole thing costs slightly less than the Space Shuttle. Management, pressured by Marketing, signs off on a trial nonetheless.

The Tao of Mac - blog/2004-11-08 - The Blue Packet

The music industrie and the cost of manufacturing

Digital Music Question And Answer On The BBC - The Digital Music Weblog

Brandon: As if there weren't already enough reasons to laugh at Nickelback

It's probably no surprise that I don't enjoy 'popular' or 'Top 40' music. It's corporate, bland, overplayed, unoriginal, boring, bland, and boring. It's also dumb. But just because I don't enjoy it doesn't mean I don't listen to it. I mean, how can you not when radio and TV is infested with this crap.
...
I felt it was my duty to share this song in order to spread the word on how horrible music is today, and I hope you all do the same.

Brandon: As if there weren't already enough reasons to laugh at Nickelback

Chris McKinstry announces his suicide online and commits it afterwards

I didn't knew Chris. And I didn't read the forum on Joel Spolsky's site.

But I know the blog posts of Joel. And I was puzzled when he announced that he shut down the forum on his site. He was very vague about what happened, but one "eye witness" told us what happened.

I don't know what to think about this, I haven't been following this.

Yet, in one of his suicide notes, he posts a couple of quotes. One, I find very interesting.

"Suicide sometimes proceeds from cowardice, but not always; for cowardice sometimes prevents it; since as many live because they are afraid to die, as die because they are afraid to live" - Charles Caleb Colton

Mindpixel Blog: Very Serious Thoughts on Suicide

To anybody nurturing thoughts of suicide: Life your life. Choose to life your life. If you think you have the freedom to take away your life, you have the freedom to life your life.

You have the freedom to life your live the way you want.

But life your life. Make it a conscious decision.

[Update] If this isn't enough, then read this.

F#ck

There are two factions jockeying for control in the Pentagon. ... [One] believes that China has to be smacked down, before it bulks up to superpower status.

TP: "Jederzeit jeden Krieg gewinnen"

MPAA admits to unauthorized movie copying

MPAA makes unauthorized copies of a movie and complains about an invasion of the MPAA's privacy.

Oh, the irony! Either way, the MPAA can't be happy about being put into a position where they are forced to justify the same actions they decry when undertaken by a consumer.

MPAA admits to unauthorized movie copying

The 48 Laws of Power

The 48 Laws of Power
Is this how it is? Is this how it should be?

(Via Rands In Respose)

Music thing: What's on the Behringer photocopier this year?

Does Behringer ever worry that someday they'll capture the market and have noone left to copy their ideas from?

Nice user comment.

Music thing: What's on the Behringer photocopier this year?

Software from hardware companies?

Hardware companies should NOT be allowed to make software. Companies that are in commodity businesses should not be allowed either. They just DON’T CARE about usability and they DON’T RESPECT YOUR PC.

Truer words have seldom be spoken.

It’s times like these where I long for the days of using a Mac where Apple has NAILED the bluetooth experience (like 2 years ago).

shahine.com/omar/ - Bluetooth on XP

Visit Grokster and have your IP "LOGGED"

YOUR IP ADDRESS IS BLAH.BLAH.BLAH.BLAH AND HAS BEEN LOGGED.

ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US

Thomas Hawk's Digital Connection: More to Laugh About, the RIAA is LOGGING Your IP Address

P2P bad?

The Fishbowl: Online Video, Three Stories

Things to do before flattening a PC

If you use any downloadable pay for music services, make sure to de-authorize the computer. This will save you at least 10–20 min later asking tech support for that service to manually de-authorize for you. I was constantly hitting my 5 machine limit with MSN Music because of this.

One could make sure not to buy this kind of "music" in the first place.

shahine.com/omar/ - Things to do before flattening a PC

A reboot a day keeps Dr. Watson away

When you are not sure if you have all the latest patches installed on a windows server simply check the uptime. If it is greater than 30 days you propably missed some patches.

How to tell if your windows server is missing security patches � lino: logic is not obsolete

Wikipedia troll or paid journalist in a mainstream news-source?

What's easier: correcting a malicious Wikipedia entry about you or correcting a malicious news-story about you? In the past year, I've had the opportunity to do both, and for me, it's clear that if you're going to have your name dragged through the mud, it's a better deal if it comes at the hand of an anonymous Wikipedia troll than from a paid journalist in a mainstream news-source.

Boing Boing: Correcting the Record: Wikipedia vs The Register

(via Ross Mayfield)

When Software goes wild

The Old New Thing : The decoy display control panel

PowerCore 2.0

Plug-ins view – it’s pretty important to have a clear picture of the optional TC plug-ins and what the status of them is. This view gives you information about the type, status and action for the individual plug-ins in the system.

What the fuck?

... one push of a button let’s you automatically check for updates.

All-in-one installer

Demo Bonanza

Now, that is nice.

But can someone explain me the PowerCore Unplugged? Does this product make sense?

Uncle Sam Says: "Micromanagement sucks!"

Until relatively recent history, most countries depended upon their officer corps to micromanage strategy, tactics and virtually every other aspect of military operations. Current military theory in the U.S. and UK has begun to emphasize the 'strategic corporal,' recognizing that combat decision-making by NCOs is potentially of vast importance.

United States Army - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists | Applefritter

Data Mining 101: Finding Subversives with Amazon Wishlists | Applefritter

(via Schneier)

Spyaxe SpySheriff Spywarestorm Spyware Stormer Myspywarecleaner Spyware Cleaner - Mark's Sysinternals Blog: The Antispyware Conspiracy

Mark's Sysinternals Blog: The Antispyware Conspiracy - Spyaxe SpySheriff Spywarestorm Spyware Stormer Myspywarecleaner Spyware Cleaner

Now, that's quality

"This CD can't be burnt onto a CD or hard disc, nor can it be converted to an MP3" and "This CD may not play in DVD players, car stereos, portable players, game players, all PCs and Macintosh PCs." Best of all, the insert explains that this is all "in order for you to enjoy a high quality music experience." Now, that's quality.

Boing Boing: Coldplay's new CD has rules: No MP3s, no DVD players, no car stereos

Being the Averagest

There are plenty of bad, insecure, incompetent, neurotic managers in every organization, including ours, and you don't need to keep them in business by working hard to make them look good.

Being the Averagest

Ten Challenges

So far, the research indicates that all people who like J2EE should be strapped to a rocketship and blasted out into space. But it's just our preliminary findings, and we're not quite ready to publish yet.

I just love his writing.

Ten Challenges

Ten Predictions

A prediction of flickr.

Prediction #6: A new internet community-hangout will appear. One that you and I will frequent.

Reason for prediction: People like to socialize.

Where's the internet community? I don't see it. People don't hang out on Amazon's website, or Google's, or eBay's, or Microsoft's. Not anywhere, really. There are little chat rooms here and there, and some static link-in sites where you can answer a bunch of questions about your hair color and favorite taco sauce. Yawn.

Someone told me recently that the consensus among online gamers is that the success of Sony's EverQuest is largely due to its strong in-game community. In order to support so many simultaneous players, Sony had to make the monsters really tough, and you have to spend a long time (like half an hour) healing after every fight. So people have nothing to do but sit around campfires and taverns, and socialize.

Hey, remember AOL? There's a blast from the past, eh? Oh wait, I guess they're still around. Admittedly no self-respecting geek would ever use AOL, but you have to admit: AOL's big draw, for those who use it, is the community features. And that's a big draw. Big enough to let AOL buy giant entertainment/media conglomerates like Time Warner.

Socialization has to be real-time; i.e., things like chat rooms, IRQ, instant messaging. But those are so boring, so passé. People also need a reason to hang out, some sort of shared goal or shared frustration that gives them something to talk about during those awkward silences.

Like, games. Or sports. Or gambling. Or discussion groups about books with names like "He's Just Not That Into You: The No-Excuses Truth to Understanding Guys."

It's an uncomfortable truth that most Americans spend the majority of their free time watching television. They like their mindless entertainment. But going to the movies is more fun, because there are people there, all ooh-ing and aaah-ing and boo-ing along with you. Too bad you can't go to the movies and stay at home on your couch simultaneously, eh?

Games, movies, and chat rooms are all converging, because people want to hang out, be entertained, and be slightly challenged, all while sitting on their couch. Or possibly sitting in an internet cafe, as 5 percent of the population of Korea does at any given time, playing the online game "Lineage". They've got it figured out better than most other countries.

Wikis, newsgroups, mailing lists, bulletin boards, forums, commentable blogs -- they're all bullshit. Home pages are bullshit. People want to socialize, and create content, and compete lightly with each other at different things, and learn things, and be entertained: all in the same place, all from their couch.

Whoever solves this -- i.e. whoever creates AOL for real people, or whatever the heck this thing turns out to be -- is going to be really, really rich.

Practical Magic

What a wonderful author:

These folks have been burned by the appearance of slick new magical forces, claiming to give you seven years of high availability if you'll just sign on the dotted line. They advise you to hold on to your low-level knowledge, acquiring it by force if necessary.

Practical Magic

Lisp Wins (I think)

Folks who know me well enough to have seen me sloshed and mumbling incoherently about languages just before passing out, know that I've been on approximately a year-long quest to find a replacement for Java.
...
Every language has some amount of it: code that doesn't affect the computation, and only exists (presumably) to help the compilers who were at the bottom of their class in Compiler School.
...
Common Lisp is practical and industrial-strength, just like owning your own elephant.

Funny.

Lisp Wins (I think)

Singleton Considered Stupid

having a Tripleton is about as desirable as having three Balrogs show up at your tea party. And even if you're a synchronization expert and get the double-check idiom right, you've still got one Balrog to deal with, and they're no picnic

Singleton Considered Stupid

10 Web Trends That Should Die in 2006

Here’s a new years resolution for the web at large: stop doing silly things to users. Following are top trends that I just hope will not see 2007.

10 Web Trends That Should Die in 2006