There's nothing quite like a good sysadmin rant:

[Quoted from an article by Farhad Manjoo arguing that corporate IT departments are too ready to block the use of cool new software and web sites:]

You might argue that firms need to make sure that people stay on task Рif employees were allowed to do whatever they wanted at work, nobody would get anything done. But in many instances, that claim is ridiculous. My fianc̩e works at a hospital that blocks all instant-messaging programs. Now, she and her co-workers are doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals Рthey've been through years of training in which they've proved that they can stay on task even despite the allure of online chat. Can anyone seriously argue that the hospital would suddenly grind to a halt if they were allowed to use IM at work?

Can you guarantee that the content of such IMs would never contain confidential patient data that could be seen by someone else on the same IM program on that network that has no need, and therefore no authorization to see that data? Can you guarantee that the IM program you want to use would allow for multiple levels of security and access restriction? Do they support SSL and/or Kerberos? Can they tie into LDAP? Do you even know what some of the data leakage issues are for IM in a medical situation, and the time, work, and money required to properly handle them so they don't get reamed by a HIPAA audit? Does any of that even exist in your world, or is this yet something else you know nothing about, and therefore think there's no difference between what you do at home, and what is required of the network that doctors and nurses use at a hospital?

The entire post is well worth a read. First, because it's both hugely entertaining and approximately 500% better thought through that Manjoo's article. Second, because it reinforces one key point that tends to get overlooked now that a large proportion of the workforce has a computer and an internet connection at home: running a corporate network that is operational throughout working hours whilst providing technical support for hundreds or thousands of users scattered across multiple sites is nothing whatsoever like using and maintaining a computer connected to the internet at home.

All told, it's a fine read.

[Via Tao of Mac]

The event: a Town Hall Meeting on Health Care Reform. The place: Berlin. The year: 1939…

Protester #4: Hey, what about the fact that Hitler combs his hair over to hide his democratic sympathies?

Nazi Rep: Well, I have to admit that that would be an extremely odd way for the Führer to hide something like that. But you can rest assured that he has no such predilections. He believes in totalitarianism and the power and judgment of the state. It's a wonder I'm even here right now, soliciting opinions and questions from you all. You can rest assured that nothing you say will make it back to the Führer.

Protester #4: What about the secret holes he has in his nose where he hides his boogers?

Nazi Rep: Those, sir, are what I believe are referred to as nostrils. Everyone has them.

Protester #4: And if someone doesn't – are they entitled to free health care under Hitler's crazy plans for reform?

Nazi Rep: No, it's my understanding that people without exactly two nostrils will likely be shot.

I wasn't very taken with Jon Ronson's The Men Who Stare at Goats back when it showed up as an episode of his TV series The Crazy Rulers of the World. Happily, the film adaptation looks like being much more fun.

Meet Inbred Jed:

MY ROOMMATE IS A ZOMBIE. The news arrived by e-mail with a link to a movie trailer – I don't recall if it was Zombie Farm, Zombie Nation, or Zombie Ninja Gangbangers. Only that my college buddy Jed had, by the evidence of the trailer and a quick Google search, built a prolific career, and a cult following, as a B-movie horror actor who excelled at playing zombies.

This came as a shock – Jed studied English – but not an enormous one. You never expect the guy next to you in critical theory to go on to a career in the undead, of course. But Jed was always a little different. [...]

[Via Alyssa Rosenberg]

Timelines: time travel in popular film and TV is beautiful and informative. Nice work.

However, I fear that pulling off that feat has afflicted the folks at Information is Beautiful with a gigantic case of hubris. Why? Because their post ends with the following declaration-cum-invitation:

So who wants to work with me on the Dr Who one? I'm serious.

First of all: it's Doctor Who, dammit! Second: they're going to need more dimensions than our puny 21st century technology is capable of displaying to pull that one off.

Perhaps they should try something simpler, like plotting the definitive version of the Summers Family Tree…

Microsoft have reportedly applied for a patent on a method for forcing users to read online ads if they want to interact with a site, e.g. by posting a comment or logging in:

Microsoft's idea, as depicted in the accompanying diagram, is to present users with a product image, slogan, or some other form of advertisement — then require them to type in the name of the product or related text to complete the human proof.

Three thoughts spring to mind:

1. (Immature, but deeply satisfying!) Fuck Bill Gates. Fuck Bill Gates, and Steve Ballmer, and anyone at Microsoft who was involved in applying for this patent.¹
2. Suddenly, registering to comment at sites looks a much more attractive proposition.
3. Looking on the bright side, the drive to develop software capable of understanding these CAPTCHA/adverts and filling them in so human beings don't have to could be the greatest spur to the development of weak A.I. – or at any rate, seriously good pattern recognition – in decades.

[Via rc3.org]

1. I don't believe for a second that they're doing this to stop anyone else from implementing the idea. ↩

Victoria Coren was apprehensive prior to her guest appearance on Charlie Brooker's You Have Been Watching:

The chairs worried me most of all. I stared at them intently on the dvd. Great vast squashy things. Chairs in which one could not, with any decency, wear a skirt. Chairs from which the feet of anyone under 5 foot 6 would not touch the ground. Chairs in which Kate Moss would look fat. And they ask why women don't do panel shows! I phoned Ruth, the producer, and told her she was an Uncle Tom. I told her that it was bad enough making me go in there with a couple of alpha males who'd have so many one-liners and comic riffs that I would have to force my way into the conversation if I was going to say anything, and forcing oneself into conversation is most unladylike, so I'd just be a completely silent guest – and now it turned out, examining her horrific set furniture, that I would be a silent and ESPECIALLY SHORT AND FAT guest. A sort of Ernie Wise role, with fewer jokes.

[Via Feeling Listless]

What could go wrong?

After years spent hunting for the buried remains of prehistoric animals, a Canadian paleontologist now plans to manipulate chicken embryos to show he can create a dinosaur. Hans Larsson, the Canada Research Chair in Macro Evolution at Montreal's McGill University, said he aims to develop dinosaur traits that disappeared millions of years ago in birds. Larsson believes by flipping certain genetic levers during a chicken embryo's development, he can reproduce the dinosaur anatomy, he told AFP in an interview.

[Via James Nicoll]

To anyone who lived through the Cold War, it's not really a surprise that the Soviet Union had prepared meticulous plans for conducting an invasion of the UK.

It's the little details that pique your interest:

1974 was a terrible year for Manchester, with United relegated to the second division for the first time in four decades and power cuts forced by the three-day week declared by Edward Heath's collapsing Tory government.

But the city would have been even more jittery had it known that in Moscow Soviet generals were eyeing the A56 between Deansgate and Stretford and checking that T-72 battle tanks could use the Mancunian Way.

[...]

The maps were analysed to get a sense of Soviet spies' efficiency, which fell down on the intricacies of the then-developing industrial estate at Trafford Park. Like many local visitors, the mapmakers got lost in the maze of new factories, and decided to steer their tanks past on the A57 and the Chester Road.

It's enough to make you wonder whether the occasional wacky set of travel directions from Google Maps or the AA Route Planner is part of a campaign of misinformation rather than a consequence of an inadequate algorithm or shortcomings in their mapping data.

Boycott Scotland!

Abdel Baset al-Megrahi did not show his victims any humanity or mercy, so why did Scotland decide to show him any? How can we possibly show these terrorists that we will not be intimidated if we continue to be better than they are?

[...]

The actions of the Scottish government are despicable. They have freed a man responsible for the mass murder of 270 innocent civilians, therefore, they, and the rest of Scotland must be held responsible, for ultimately the people of a democratic nation are responsible for its leadership.

Because of this I urge every American to Boycott Scotland. It is the only way we Americans can ensure that every nation maintains and respects our rules, our laws, and shares our viewpoint. [...]

[Via GromBlog]

I preferred the second best joke at this year's Edinburgh Fringe:

2) Paddy Lennox – "I was watching the London Marathon and saw one runner dressed as a chicken and another runner dressed as an egg. I thought: 'This could be interesting'."

[Via The Null Device]

Not that anyone should ever consider taking fashion advice from me, but I'm guessing that Winkers aren't going to conquer the catwalk or the high street any time soon.¹

[Via Screenshot]

1. Don't stop watching the video until you've seen the ducks! ↩

August J. Pollak might just have convinced me to go and see Tarantino's latest effort:

Inglourious Basterds is one of the greatest cartoons I've ever seen in my life. If you haven't seen the movie you'll be very confused by that statement, and once you see it and for the love of God do that right now you'll understand exactly what I mean. "Ridiculous" is a word that we abuse greatly in the English language – it doesn't just mean something is silly or nonsensical, but that it is so absurd or offensive that it merits outright ridicule. Rush Limbaugh is ridiculous. The Creation Museum is ridiculous. But to call Inglourious Basterds "ridiculous" would be like calling a 1942 Daffy Duck cartoon where Daffy sneaks into Hitler's office and puts a stick of dynamite in his trousers "ridiculous." To assume what you are watching is worthy of ridicule is to assume that at some point you were actually taking even a second of this seriously, and if you were doing that, that the only person worth being mocked is you. This movie is a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful cartoon.

Dave Winer is worried about the web:

We pour so much passion into dynamic web apps hosted by companies we know very little about. We do it without retaining a copy of our data. We have no idea how much it costs them to keep hosting what we create, so even if they're public companies, it's very hard to form an opinion of how likely they are to continue hosting our work.

[...]

This system is terrible. It's a bubble, like the real estate bubble. It's going to burst, and when it does, it will take a lot of our history with it. [...]

I wonder if attitudes about the preservation of our work online will turn out to vary by generation, the way attitudes to online privacy do? Is the backup and export of the words and pictures we put online something only the techie subset of my generation of internet users cares about?¹

[Via Memex 1.1]

1. In part, that depends upon whether danah boyd was right about teens' willingness to discard their profiles as they move on to the next big thing. ↩

Sir Patrick Moore versus space-related rock.

[On Muse's Supermassive Black Hole]

Sir Patrick says: "I remember this one! I think it's dreadful."

What is the difference between supermassive black holes and common or garden black holes?

"Well, I'm not trying to be funny, but the answer is mass, of course! Supermassive black holes exist at the centre of galaxies and ordinary black holes are formed by the collapse of a single star. A supermassive black hole is the merger of several, and that's why they're in the middle of galaxies."

When the Large Hadron Collider was activated, did you think that we might be consumed by an accidental black hole?

"Ha ha! No, I didn't think that. Don't panic."

What is the nearest thing we have to physical evidence of the existence of black holes?

"Well, you can't see them, obviously, but they're there at the centre of our galaxy. We know where the centre is and we can see stars moving, and they're going round at such a speed that they must be going around some immensely massive object. That's a black hole. We know they're there because there are gravitational effects."

What would happen to us if we fell into a black hole?

"We don't really know, but you certainly wouldn't come out of it alive. Absolutely nothing can escape from a black hole, therefore our ignorance is complete. Inside a black hole, all the ordinary laws of science break down, and all the ordinary laws of common sense break down. Just like the House of Commons! Ha ha!"

[Via Ben Goldacre]

The customer reviews for Uranium Ore at Amazon are a hoot:

Ok for cleaning teeth, not so great for killing ants.., December 3, 2007

By Nero Goldstein "Bemused by a Muse" (The Great Nation of Texas)

Picked this up for use in one of my kid's 'diversity' projects in school (Great Success!), and stuck the leftovers in the cabinet next to the baking soda.

Ran out of toothpaste, and remembered how you're supposed to be able to use baking soda to clean your teeth, so of course, I accidentally used this instead, and Wow! all I can say is, my teeth have never been cleaner! They sparkle, they tingle, and for some reason, they STAY clean now, no matter what. Highly recommended!

However, when I ran out of that fire-ant killer powder stuff, I figured I would try some for that too.

Big mistake!

Boy, it sure did not kill those ants!

Fortunately, those suckers get slower as they get bigger, so I have been able to use a shovel to take care of most of them, one at a time though, the sneaky devils.

And the darn trash man refuses to take them away..

I would have given this product 5 stars for the teeth and the project on embracing diversity, but I deducted one star because of the giant mutant ants.

[Via The Early Days of a Better Nation]

If David Lynch directed Dirty Dancing…

[Via David Rothon, posting at Word Magazine Blog]

Sad to say, society has yet to reach a state of enlightened Post-Monsterism:

Humanitarian groups applauded when Battlestar Galactica actor Edward James Olmos presented an Adama-esque homily on race to the United Nations last March. "As if there was a Latino race, an Asian race, an indigenous race – there never has been a Latino race and there never will be! There's only one race and that's the human race!" he said.

But for one group dedicated to fighting stereotypes, Olmos's speech was just the latest sin of omission that has kept its message from gaining traction.

"Werewolves are humans too, most of the time, but no one ever brings that up," says Jerry Grant, spokesperson for the Human Monster Anti-Defamation League (HMAL). "Mummies… do you stop being human when you die? Or what if you never die, like our vampire members? Frankenstein made his monster out of human parts." [...]

[Via The Morning News]

When Magazines Merge!

[Via The Browser]

A billion here, a billion there … pretty soon you're talking real money.

[Via Word Magazine newsletter #76]