Meanwhile: Don't worry, we'll still enjoy our cricket - International Herald Tribune
Topic: Miscellaneous
6:22 am EDT, Mar 23, 2007
Last week, the greatest sporting event of the year in terms of audience began in Jamaica, when the West Indies beat Pakistan in the inaugural match of the 2007 Cricket World Cup
a lovely piece about cricket from a a departing under secretary general of the United Nations i've been known to enjoy a game although in terms of watching sport football (aka soccer to u Americans) is my first love however watching cricket is something u sink into and luxuriate in like a warm bath
Life is short for a meme, it seems, and unpredictable, to boot.
Unlike baby mammals, a meme cannot expect to go from conception to birth in a standard, more or less fixed period of time. Some memes are born immediately, whereas others may linger in gestation for years on end. Because prenatal care is so poor in the meme world, miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant mortality rates are quite high. Even worse, abortion and infanticide of new memes are commonplace in some quarters.
However, also unlike mammals -- and in fact most higher organisms -- a meme reaches reproductive age only moments after its birth. If it only manages to find its way to a target-rich environment, growth opportunities abound.
Yet even the most successful families of memes can go from pauperdom to dynasty to death to dust, all in the span of a few days.
Fortunately, here at MemeStreams, they don't bury or incinerate our beloved memes of yore. Instead, the crack team of scientists at the Industrial Memetics Institute has developed a highly advanced cryopreservation service. Unlike similar services for humans and other mammals, the service provided by MemeStreams is active today. It allows you -- in fact, anyone -- to reanimate a suspended meme of your choosing, and then to deposit it in the memetic meat market that is your blog.
Sadly, I have found that most MemeStreams users only rarely -- if ever -- avail themselves of the benefits of these remarkable cryorestoration services. As an independent profit center with no annual allocation from the IMI budget, the cryo unit is perpetually at risk of closure. For months now, the unit has been unable to hire staff to replace three of its senior technicians lost to headhunters in Q4FY06.
As part of the upcoming "Reanimemer" promotional campaign aimed at a Q3FY07 turn-around for the ailing cryo unit, I have scoured their voluminous records to provide you with a small sampling of what is presently on offer. I encourage you to plan your own visit soon.
RE: Satire: Experts call for restrictions on childhood imagination - CNN.com
Topic: Miscellaneous
2:53 pm EST, Feb 22, 2007
Decius wrote:
"Defuse the ticking time-bomb known as your child's imagination before it explodes and destroys her completely," said child-safety expert Kenneth McMillan, who advised the HHS in composing the guidelines. "New data shows a disturbing correlation between serious accidents and the ability of children to envision a world full of exciting possibility."
The guidelines, titled "Boundless Imagination, Boundless Hazards: Ways To Keep Your Kids Safe From A World Of Wonder," are posted on the HHS website, and will also be available in brochure form in pediatricians' offices across the country.
According to McMillan, children can suffer broken bones, head trauma, and even fatal injuries from unsupervised exposure to childlike awe. "If your children are allowed to unlock their imaginations, anything from a backyard swing set to a child's own bedroom can be transformed into a dangerous undersea castle or dragon's lair," McMillan said. "But by encouraging your kids to think linearly and literally, and constantly reminding them they can never be anything but human children with no extraordinary characteristics, you can better ensure that they will lead prolonged lives."
Somehow, when I saw this meme.. My eyes did not parse the "Satire" part at the beginning of the subject, but did parse the "CNN.com" part, before reading the quoted text. There is nothing quite like going from a jaw dropping "wtf?" to a good belly laugh.
Please sponsor me for Swimathon 2007 and help support Marie Curie Cancer Care to provide nursing care, free of charge to give terminally ill people the choice of dying at home supported by their families.
some tips from my experience, your mileage may vary
1. Kludges that we'll fix in the next release never get fixed in the next release...
2. if you dont do it right now, you (or some poor bastard that replaces you) will have to do it right later...
3. it always costs more to do it later...
4. beware of anyone in a suit...
5. if you don't talk to your customers to see what will make them happy, then sooner or later someone else will...
6. Sales guys can be powerful allies for interoffice BS, but if you make yourself too available they will never leave you alone...
7. Management has no idea what the customer wants...
8. Engineering has even less idea what the customer wants...
9. Assume every engineer you work with is an idiot, try not to let on that you know...if you find engineers that are obviously not idiots, find a way to keep them...
10. Never outsource your core competency...
11. Lazyness and incompetence are contagious...
12. no-one cares if you read wikipedia all day every day if you get your work done on time...
13. your code is not finished until you've tested it...
14. never assume they have tested their code...
15. engineers that think lack of documentation is job security should be fired sooner rather than later (otherwise you'll make them right)...
16. Contrary to popular belief, third party libraries reduce portability of your code...
17. Engineers thinking something is "cool" is not a business case...
18. Engineerings job is to say yes, no matter how stupid management's requests are...good engineers find ways to say yes that spotlight their intelligence and managements stupidity...(e.g. if they ask you to turn lead into gold, tell them you will if they allocate a few trillian dollars and a fusion reactor)...
19. the night before its due is probably not the best time to start integrating your code in a large project...
20. you can be really good at your job, and a dick, or you can be so so and your job and a really nice guy...you cannot be a dick who is bad at his job...
21. Time estimation is really hard...it will take longer than you think it will...
22. demonstrating that your compeditors suck isn't enough to get anyone to buy your product...
23. don't ship anything you're not proud of...
24. your code will be used in ways you never thought of...plan accordingly...
25. if you can't settle on one way of doing something, do it both ways and make it a configurable option...
26. don't ever have arbitrary limitations, or if you do, hide them better (e.g. "max users 256"...hmmmm?)...
27. strive to make a really good 1.0, then move on to other, more fun projects...you'll still get all the glory for that first project, but you won't have to do the work anymore...
28. in general, meetings are the opposite of getting things done...
29. an engineering manager's job is... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]
The above quote was Decius's first comment after seeing Friendster back in 2001 when we were already underway coding the initial version of MemeStreams. I can now say with authority that we qualify as "sexy". MemeStreams now has both image and video display capability.
This comes with several improvements to the way messages are edited and displayed. In addition to inline display of images using the img tag, we have also added the HTML tags u, center, and pre, in addition to the already existing support for b, i, and a. blockquote can be used as blockquote, bq, or quote. When pre is used, any HTML tags within are escaped, so you can now display snippets of code and other previously impossible text without losing formatting. For instance, here is an example of an image tag:
Image tags can be justified left or right using the align attribute so text wraps around them, such as the image in this post. All implemented tags support standard HTML attributes to the degree we support the attributes.
When posting, the interface now displays error messages in realtime about formatting problems above the edit window. Eventually we will have this functionality include better information about to what types of HTML is allowed and how it can be used. In general, the system will display posts better and more uniformly. It is no longer so ridged about spacing after quotes, posts will now display properly regardless of if you have a newline after a quote or not. Characters such as > and < can now be used in posts without being part of an HTML tag as well.
Any Google/YouTube/Revver videos that are primary links will be displayed automatically at the top of the post. Videos can also be displayed inline with a tag like this:
We will add other video services as we become aware of them. Let us know if there is a service you would like us to support.
We would like to single out Acidus for praise. His help made this update happen. We are very excited to have him actively involved with MemeStreams developlment. His work is present in several aspects of this update, such as the on-the-fly picture resizing and the realtime post validity checking. Be sure to tell him how much he kicks ass. We have never worked with anyone better when it comes to web security and javascript.
Be sure to tell terratogen he kicks ass as well. For years now, he has been providing us with with all our graphic design needs. You can see his work in the site's logo and the various graphical icons used throughout the site.
As always, if you encounter any problems, let Rattle or Decius know. More information and site updates are on the way.
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