Various amusing or interesting topics, or things that shock and appall me. Kind of a miscellaneous bin.
This is satire, but wickedly on the mark. Obviously poking fun in the direction of Microsoft, but that’s not the only target — I saw at least one other large company using the same tactics, just before I dumped their product in disgust. I’ve no doubt that several other companies (that I’ve been fortunate enough …
Continue reading ‘“Bloated, slow and leaky – what version numbers really mean”’ »
I love it. Lounge around in your underwear all day and still keep an eye on those shiftless no-good employees of yours. 😉 I doubt it’ll catch on in the near future though. And I hope the robot has a good software security system… if it has arms (something I can’t determine from the two …
Continue reading ‘“Boss leaves robot in charge of office”’ »
I always wondered at the popularity of zombies in popular fiction. They have no skill and no intelligence, and they move very slowly, their only truly horrifying trait (other than their dire need of cosmetics) is that they won’t stop so long as they can move even a single digit in your direction. It requires …
Continue reading ‘“We like zombies… because we *are* zombies”’ »
I saw something in a science fiction book once (I don’t recall which one, but it might have been David Brin’s Earth, though I can’t locate my copy of it now to verify that). It described a young man’s first encounter with a printed book, after spending all his life with a World Wide Web …
Wow, talk about Back to the Future. Though at that price, it’s more like back to the bank’s loan officer… I don’t think I’ll be indulging in this one. (They’ll either make a mint or lose their shirts, depending on how many people are rich enough — and interested enough — to buy one. But …
Continue reading ‘“DeLorean goes electric for 2013 roll-out”’ »
This is why I love the Ig Nobel prizes: this one has temporarily eclipsed even my favorite website in my affections.
So violent video games make people who play them more violent, but also absorb that violence, making society safer? A little round about, but whatever works. 🙂
I never knew where the Jack-o’-Lantern came from, but a newsletter that I get (for a company that I cannot recommend, so I won’t name) described one version of the legend behind it recently, and it’s sufficiently interesting that I wanted to pass it on. The tale, apparently hundreds of years old, comes from Ireland …
I’ve always said, if it’s worth doing, it’s worth overdoing. 😉 And apparently overdoing this is also pretty lucrative.
Ridiculous. The belief that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old is about on par with the heliocentric geocentric model of the solar system — the evidence is pretty damning against both. However, as I suggested recently to a voluble evolution denier, they’re welcome to try. The discipline of science is self-correcting, and will …
Continue reading ‘“Creationists are infiltrating US geology circles”’ »