So, during the recent floods I found out that on my side of town, yes people will in fact steal from flood victims while the floodwaters are still running high and had my brand new netbook bag (the netbook inside was used when I got it last week, so no big deal there) and full-face motorcycle helmet stolen from right outside my door.
Replacing the stuff is turning out to be a big mess. I'm just plain screwed on the helmet, which was an HJC CL-15 "Crypt" in XXXL (if you suspected I had a large cranium before, I think this serves as proof) which had to be special-ordered to begin with. It was a 2008 style and basically, I'm f**ked for ever seeing one of those again. There's a marginal chance that I'll be able to stuff my head into a mere XXL, but I'll have to find one in that size to try on first, and that's a long drive across town.
The netbook is not a big deal since it wasn't very expensive to begin with, and it's not like they're going to get top-dollar from anyone for it since it has "only" 20Gb of SSD storage. Last night I ordered an EEE PC 1000 with 40Gb total SSD storage in it, and should anyone be getting any ideas about intercepting it upon delivery by using the work badge that was stolen... Make sure your life insurance policy is paid up and your worldly affairs are in order.
No, it turns out the real bitch was the three thumb drives which contained just about every little fiddly bit of art I've done over the last several years, as well as archived bookmarks, notes, code, software installers, malware removers, pictures of friends, a few pieces of operating systems here and there, but most importantly... The goddamn lanyards.
Lanyards are cheap to make, and it used to be that every thumbdrive you bought came with one. Nowadays, not so much! Let me say this to thumbdrive manufacturers right now: You might be wanting to save every penny you can, but I guarantee you that if your drive is the fifty cents or so more expensive than the next guys because it has a lanyard in it, most people aren't going to even blink at spending that piddling extra money.
After quite a bit of poking around, I finally found someone online that sells the damn things with the proper silk cord and breakaway bit on the end like what used to come with the Sandisk Cruzers. It actually took more searching to find replacement lanyards of the proper type than it did to finally locate another ASUS EEE PC with SSDs in it (which are damn few and far between now). I'm linking this here because I can't be the only person I know who is trying to find a decent string lanyard without going to the cell phone store to paying fifteen bucks for 38cm of shoestring and some plastic bits.
As to the title, I'm not convinced I should bother mincing words about this.
About a week ago, FOXNews.com ran a story involving a former member of the Wikipedia staff who was making claims that Wikipedia is literally rife with all kinds of dreadful pornography.
That article was, in a word, bullshit.
Sure, there's some porn on Wikipedia because anyone can upload anything to it at any time. To that extent saying so is not a whole lot different than making claims that there's pictures of thimbles in Wikipedia. Both statements contain varying degrees of truth, but how long the porn stays is another matter entirely. A large amount of the porn "on Wikipedia" is simply the act of internet vandals looking to shock people--in reality this is not much different from a miscreant slipping snippets of nudie magazines into random books at your local public library. The only difference here is that it's a lot easier for people all over the world to engage in the prank, but it's still just as easy for it to be undone by librarians (and anyone else who knows that shouldn't be there). The rest appears to be by people who genuinely think that there needs to be categorized porn on Wikipedia--but where Wikipedia is concerned, there's many other places on the Internet dedicated to just porn so there's little point in them keeping it around.
Much of the porn only survives for mere minutes (if not seconds) as automation software run by it's administrators triage the information about new edits and bring anything that appears out of place to someone's attention almost immediately. Everything else (and I mean everything else) gets scrutinized by someone the "old-fashioned way"--by a Wikipedia editor logging in and looking at the list of changes in their favorite little section of the system. So... as fast as someone can upload some porn to Wikipedia, it gets deleted by someone else.
This is the way it is now, this is the way it has been in the past, and is likely the exact same way it will continue to be in the future--yet FOX has been waving this particular baton for about a week now, hoping to provoke a reaction from Wikipedia, and since that didn't happen they have simply declared an "EXCLUSIVE" story that Wikipedia has started to purge porn from the site.
That is, in another word, a lie. To use two words (or three words and a hyphen if you're a potential Wikipedia editor) it's a bold-faced lie. Wikipedia cannot start purging porn from the site now because it has never stopped purging the porn from the site. The entire article hinges on the reader not being smart enough to see the fallacy in the following compound question:
"When did the FOXNews.com editors stop molesting children for better ratings?"
Probably the only thing protecting FOX at this point is that Wikipedia isn't really in a good position to sue them for publishing phony stories.
As to the title, I'm not convinced I should bother mincing words about this.
About a week ago, FOXNews.com ran a story involving a former member of the Wikipedia staff who was making claims that Wikipedia is literally rife with all kinds of dreadful pornography.
That article was, in a word, bullshit.
Sure, there's some porn on Wikipedia because anyone can upload anything to it at any time. To that extent saying so is not a whole lot different than making claims that there's pictures of thimbles in Wikipedia. Both statements contain varying degrees of truth, but how long the porn stays is another matter entirely. A large amount of the porn "on Wikipedia" is simply the act of internet vandals looking to shock people--in reality this is not much different from a miscreant slipping snippets of nudie magazines into random books at your local public library. The only difference here is that it's a lot easier for people all over the world to engage in the prank, but it's still just as easy for it to be undone by librarians (and anyone else who knows that shouldn't be there). The rest appears to be by people who genuinely think that there needs to be categorized porn on Wikipedia--but where Wikipedia is concerned, there's many other places on the Internet dedicated to just porn so there's little point in them keeping it around.
Much of the porn only survives for mere minutes (if not seconds) as automation software run by it's administrators triage the information about new edits and bring anything that appears out of place to someone's attention almost immediately. Everything else (and I mean everything else) gets scrutinized by someone the "old-fashioned way"--by a Wikipedia editor logging in and looking at the list of changes in their favorite little section of the system. So... as fast as someone can upload some porn to Wikipedia, it gets deleted by someone else.
This is the way it is now, this is the way it has been in the past, and is likely the exact same way it will continue to be in the future--yet FOX has been waving this particular baton for about a week now, hoping to provoke a reaction from Wikipedia, and since that didn't happen they have simply declared an "EXCLUSIVE" story that Wikipedia has started to purge porn from the site.
That is, in another word, a lie. To use two words (or three words and a hyphen if you're a potential Wikipedia editor) it's a bold-faced lie. Wikipedia cannot start purging porn from the site now because it has never stopped purging the porn from the site. The entire article hinges on the reader not being smart enough to see the fallacy in the following compound question:
"When did the FOXNews.com editors stop molesting children for better ratings?"
Probably the only thing protecting FOX at this point is that Wikipedia isn't really in a good position to sue them for publishing phony stories.
Students sent home for wearing American flag shirts
Topic: Miscellaneous
2:39 pm EDT, May 7, 2010
I'll make this simple.
It doesn't matter where you came from now that you are here. If you're here legitimately, you're an American.
You're either an American or you're not. "Mexican-American" is bullshit. If you don't have dual-citizenship (which very few people do) you are not a "Mexican-American", you're an American.
You absolutely don't get to complain about students wearing shirts with an American flag on them, Cinco de Mayo or not. You particularly don't try to force them to be sent home from school because you want to feign being offended. If you want to celebrate a "Mexican" holiday without anything of this country being involved, do it in Mexico. ...otherwise you're just another selfish asshole trying to force other people do to things your way.
Doing such a thing completely disrespects why this country was created in the first place.
CCISDA means "California County Information Services Directors Association".
Basically, this is the policy document which basically states explicitly that Terry Childs shouldn't have given any passwords to his bosses just because they're his bosses.
While browsing for the latest Zero Punctuation gaming review I noticed something down low on the screen that at first I was horrified that I hadn't already heard of. I'll cite the teaser for it, because it pretty much explains everything.
It's D&D. With Strippers and Porn Stars. On Video. Every Wednesday. Featuring adult film performers Kimberly Kane, Zak Sabbath, Mandy Morbid, and Satine Phoenix, with a stripper named Connie, and a hairdresser named Frankie. Guest-starring Sasha Grey. Only at The Escapist.
Again... O. M. G.
Hot chicks, playing D&D. Now that is some serious nerd pr0n. (Aside from some language, I think it's technically SFW.)
