« Irony | Home | Recent Comments | Categories | Cartoons »
New Age terrorists develop homeopathic bomb
[Quote:]
The world has been placed on a heightened security alert following reports that New Age terrorists have harnessed the power of homeopathy for evil. “Homeopathic weapons represent a major threat to world peace,” said President Barack Obama, “they might not cause any actual damage but the placebo effect could be quite devastating.”
[...]
Homeopathic bombs are comprised of 99.9% water but contain the merest trace element of explosive. The solution is then repeatedly diluted so as to leave only the memory of the explosive in the water molecules. According to the laws of homeopathy, the more that the water is diluted, the more powerful the bomb becomes.
[...]
“A homeopathic attack could bring entire cities to a standstill,” said BBC Security Correspondent, Frank Gardner. “Large numbers of people could easily become convinced that they have been killed and hospitals would be unable to cope with the massive influx of the ‘walking suggestible.’”
Irony
[Quote:]
using my iPad to watch a video from the WSJ of Adobe’s CEO talking about how essential Flash is to publications like the WSJ.
BP-Halliburton Oil Disaster Could Surpass Exxon Valdez In A Week
[Quote:]
By today, about 7 million gallons will have been spilled, taking the Deepwater Horizon disaster more than halfway to the 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez, which dumped 11 million gallons into Alaska’s Prince William Sound — one of the nation’s worst environmental disasters. This catastrophe — which occured as Halliburton was cementing the well — will exceed the scale of the Exxon Valdez within a week.
[Quote:]
Every asshole who ever chanted ‘Drill baby drill’ should have to report to the Gulf coast today for cleanup duty
[Quote:]
9
This image provided by the U.S. Coast Guard Saturday April 24, 2010 shows oil leaking from the drill pipe of the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig after it sank Thursday. (AP photo/US Coast Guard) #
10
This April 22, 2010 photo provided Sunday, April 25 by the US Coast Guard shows the arm of a robot submarine in an unsuccessful attempt to activate a shutoff device known as a blowout preventer (BOP) to close off the flow of oil at the Deepwater Horizon well head. (AP Photo/US Coast Guard) #
Cartoons
Hewlett-Packard To Kill Windows 7 Tablet Project
[Quote:]
Hewlett-Packard has killed off its much ballyhooed Windows 7 tablet computer, says a source who’s been briefed on the matter.
The device was first unveiled by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer at CES 2010 in January and was supposed to hit the market in mid 2010.
You know, for once I understand if Steve decides to throw a chair or two. Promoting it at a CES keynote and having it killed three months later is not something I’d be happy about..
|
Thoughts on Flash
[Quote:]
We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.
This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.
Flash is a cross platform development tool. It is not Adobe’s goal to help developers write the best iPhone, iPod and iPad apps. It is their goal to help developers write cross platform apps. And Adobe has been painfully slow to adopt enhancements to Apple’s platforms. For example, although Mac OS X has been shipping for almost 10 years now, Adobe just adopted it fully (Cocoa) two weeks ago when they shipped CS5. Adobe was the last major third party developer to fully adopt Mac OS X.
|
Cartoons
Priest Sex-Tape
[Quote:]
In the small Brazilian city of Arapiraca, tucked away in the poor, conservative northeast corner of the country, a hidden-camera video showing an octogenarian priest having sex with a young altar boy is being hawked on the street. For $5 to $10, vendors here will sell you the video, downloading it directly into your cellphone via Bluetooth. The price depends on the quality and length of the footage. According to one street vendor, the most popular download is the “complete” version. Buyers, he says, are “almost everybody—not just the curious.”
[..]
Other bombshells dropped during the three days the senate inquiry took place in Arapiraca. Father Duarte admitted he had sexually abused both Flávio and Fabiano, but suggested his victims were wrong to come forward. “I regret that these accusations have come from people who ate at my table,” he intoned. “Just as Jesus said: ‘Those who ate my bread are those who betray me.’”
And the third accused priest, Father Gomes, denied that any abuse took place at all, insisting he was victim of “revenge,” and accused a third altar boy, Anderson Farias Silva, of attempting to extort money from him. Silva said that Father Gomes had abused him since he was 14.
Furthermore, because Father Duarte is cooperating with the investigation, Brazilian police say he fears for his safety. “He asked for protection during the [senate inquiry] because he had denounced the others and he was scared,” says Officer Sousa. Father Duarte also said he believes Father Gomes to be “dangerous.”
Deepwater Horizon
Don’t secure your wifi!
[Quote:]
Obviously this is not legal advice, but sounds pretty simple to me – the new Digital Ecomony Act actually encourages people to run public wifi to make themselves immune to the copyright infringement reports, technical measures, and even direct civil cases.
One UK provider has implemented this already.
|
HP to Acquire Palm for $1.2 Billion
[Quote:]
HP and Palm, Inc. today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which HP will purchase Palm, a provider of smartphones powered by the Palm webOS mobile operating system, at a price of $5.70 per share of Palm common stock in cash or an enterprise value of approximately $1.2 billion.
|
IFPI’s child porn strategy
[Quote:]
”Child pornography is great,” the speaker at the podium declared enthusiastically. ”It is great because politicians understand child pornography. By playing that card, we can get them to act, and start blocking sites. And once they have done that, we can get them to start blocking file sharing sites”.
The venue was a seminar organized by the American Chamber of Commerce in Stockholm on May 27, 2007, under the title ”Sweden — A Safe Haven for Pirates?”. The speaker was Johan Schlüter from the Danish Anti-Piracy Group, a lobby organization for the music and film industry associations, like IFPI and others.
|
Microsoft’s FUD goes mobile
[Quote:]
HTC has agreed to pay Microsoft a royalty when it sells a mobile phone running Google’s Android operating system.
But why does Microsoft make money from Google’s software? Android is based on open source software – and Microsoft has long raised fears that aspects of Linux may infringe on its patents.
The deal with HTC is described as a patent agreement which “expands HTC’s long-standing business relationship with Microsoft”. HTC also sells phones based on Windows Mobile.
The deal could be seen as a veiled threat to other handset makers choosing Android – if they don’t have such an agreement in place then presumably Microsoft is at liberty to sue them for patent infringement?
|
The “fair use economy” is enormous, growing, and endangered by the relatively tiny entertainment industry
[Quote:]
The IT industry’s US lobby group has released a report calculating the size of the “fair use economy” in the US — all the businesses that rely on fair use, including web hosting companies, private schools, search engines and many others. The total for 2007 (the last year for which stats are available) is a whopping $4.7 trillion — one sixth of US GDP — with over 17 million people employed.
The report is a counterpoint to those crazy Hollywood stats that show that every job in America will disappear unless copyright is extended to infinity, all network connections are surveilled, and every infringer is fined her entire net worth and stuck in jail.
the Staggering Work of Obviousness
[Quote:]
And it’s better that people misunderstand a product, at first, than not understand it at all.
Apollo 11 Saturn V Launch HD Camera E-8
[Quote:]
This clip is raw from Camera E-8 on the launch umbilical tower/mobile launch program of Apollo 11, July 16, 1969.
Berating the Rating Agencies
[Quote:]
When Goldman Sachs employees bragged about the money they had made by shorting the housing market, it was ugly, but that didn’t amount to wrongdoing.
No, the e-mail messages you should be focusing on are the ones from employees at the credit rating agencies, which bestowed AAA ratings on hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of dubious assets, nearly all of which have since turned out to be toxic waste. And no, that’s not hyperbole: of AAA-rated subprime-mortgage-backed securities issued in 2006, 93 percent — 93 percent! — have now been downgraded to junk status.
What those e-mails reveal is a deeply corrupt system. And it’s a system that financial reform, as currently proposed, wouldn’t fix.
My First Cavity Search
Airspace Rebooted
[Quote:]
A visualisation of the northern European airspace returning to use after being closed due to volcanic ash. Due to varying ash density across Europe, the first flights can be seen in some areas on the 18th and by the 20th everywhere is open.
Autopsy on shooting victim inconclusive
[Quote:]
A spokeswoman said today’s autopsy failed to conclusively determine the cause of death of 55-year-old Neil Begin, who was shot by police on Friday and died early the next day.
Eh, what?
|
Think!
Goldman Sachs Emails: Firm Traded Against Clients, Profited Off Their Losses, And Spread ‘Poison Throughout System’
[Quote:]
“Goldman Sachs made billions of dollars from betting against the housing market, and it placed those bets in some cases at the same time it was selling mortgage-related securities to its clients,” said the committee’s chairman, Carl Levin (D-Mich.). “They have a lot to answer for.”
Goldman says it always puts its clients’ interest first. It’s a position the firm has stuck by as Levin’s investigation has produced emails and internal documents apparently showing otherwise.
“Our clients’ interests always come first,” Goldman says on its website.
That’s like Jeffrey Dahmer claiming he’s a vegetarian.
|
Psychedelic trips aid anxiety treatments in study
[Quote:]
“The world was made up of jewels and I was in a dome,” she recalled. Surrounded by brilliant, kaleidoscopic colors, she saw the dome open up to admit “this most incredible luminescence that made everything even more beautiful.”
Tears trickled down her face as she saw “how beautiful the world could actually be.”
That’s how Nicky Edlich, 67, began her first-ever trip on a psychedelic drug last year.She says it has greatly helped her psychotherapeutic treatment for anxiety from her advanced ovarian cancer.
xkcd: HDTV
|
Superspy in the sky could soon be patrolling over British cities
[Quote:]
A Top-secret US unmanned drone used to locate Al Qaeda and Taliban hideouts in Pakistan and Afghanistan could soon be patrolling over British cities to search for hidden terror cells.
The controversial move would allow MI5 and GCHQ, the Government’s eavesdropping centre, to step up surveillance operations over the UK. Until now, the £23million Global Hawk aircraft has not been available for foreign sale.
Don’t worry. It’s for your safety.
|
Goldman e-mails show how crash turned into cash
[Quote:]
NEW YORK — As the U.S. housing turned downward in January 2007, a Goldman Sachs trader wrote in e-mails to a woman he apparently was courting that investments he had sold were “like Frankenstein turning against his own inventor.”
The party of no … credibility
[Quote:]
To keep on top of urban myths of all kinds, I subscribe to the Snopes.com update list, and I noticed a pattern there that I thought deserved to be examined more arithmetically. It struck me I was seeing a lot more rumors about President Obama, and a lot more false rumors, than I remembered from earlier years. So I ran the numbers, as of this week.
After eight years in the White House (with Snopes.com around all that time), George W. Bush has been the subject of 47 internet rumors. After less than two years in office, Barack Obama has been the subject of 87, or nearly twice as many.
Even more telling is the relative accuracy of those stories. For Bush, 20 rumors, or 43%, are true. Only 17, or 36%, are false. The remainder are of mixed veracity (4), undetermined (4), or unclassifiable (2).
In contrast, for Obama only 8 of the 87 rumors, or 9%, are true, and a whopping 59, or 68%, are whoppers. There are 17 of mixed veracity and 3 undetermined.
[..]
This evidence accumulated over ten years shows a shameful but undeniable fact of American politics: Our right wing now contains a lot more liars, and a lot more folks who spread lies out of gullibility or wishfulness, than our left wing.
|
They have the power to switch off your brain
[Quote:]
Certain parts of the brain – which control scepticism and vigilance – appear to deactivate in some people when they’re in the presence of a speaker who they believe has divine healing powers, scientists in Denmark have found.
|
AIG May Be on the Hook in Lawsuits Against Goldman Sachs Board
[Quote:]
American International Group Inc. may be required to pay to defend lawsuits against Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s top executives, including Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein, under directors and officers insurance policies held by the company.
AIG, which was rescued from collapse by the U.S. government, sold so-called Side A directors and officers’ coverage to New York-based Goldman Sachs, according to a person with knowledge of the policy. Goldman Sachs was sued last week by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which claimed it misled investors about collateralized debt obligations tied to subprime mortgages in 2007.
|
Florida One: some assembly required
|
« Older Entries
When do we get to see the bumper stickers saying
Spill here, Spill now