I'll admit to a bit of ancestor worship going on (take that babtist upbringing!)...

Oh Machine Gods on the High Councel of Turing, elegant be thy designs, thy inspiration come. thy project be done, on powerpc as it is on x86, give us this day our daily code, and forgive us our build breaking checkins, as we forgive them of others. And lead us not into management; but deliver us from bad engineers. Amen.

alternatively...

Oh Machine Gods, grant me the serenity to accept the code I can not rewrite, the courage to rewrite the code I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

[ HAH! Nice. I might have to print these out and stick them on some cubes around here. Then again, it might be taken as offensive... there are some relatively uptight godly's up in this.

In the meantime, I'm trying to picture the background imagery for these. The original quote that inspired your second prayer is usually set against a sunset over an ocean or some shite... what do we do with this? Someone zenning out in front of a few flatscreens? -k]

Today's Prayer to the Machine Gods

This webpage will produce a boarding pass good enough to get anyone past TSA, and thus, into the "secure" gate areas of the airport terminal.

I have a big "i told you so" (tm) to say about this one...

btw, i can just see the headlines now "Juniper Researcher Michael Lynn helps terrorists board planes illegally" for posting this link...

[Yeah, this is no surprise at all really. There are ways to do this right, and they just haven't bothered. totally lame. -k]

The Northwest Airlines Boarding Pass Generator

But Ms. McGee, 51, a popular art teacher with 28 years in the classroom, is out of a job after leading her fifth-grade classes last April through the Dallas Museum of Art. One of her students saw nude art in the museum, and after the child’s parent complained, the teacher was suspended.

You know what, fuck it. All parents are henceforth required to homeschool their own kids. No one's allowed to hire experts or use private schools. The public school system will be disbanded. Parents are so fucking sure all the time that they're the only ones who have any fucking clue what's good and bad for their kids then they can fucking do it themselves.

I'm sick to death of stories like this. One asshole, puritanical, repressive dipshit parent gets up in arms and a teacher takes the heat. A teacher takes the heat for trying to expose her students to something of the wider world. And all this person can think about is that some of the art had a cock.

I fucking hate people.

Museum Field Trip Deemed Too Revealing - New York Times

I love these guys, they always make such great interfaces...

Remember last scene in the movie "WarGames" where the WOPR learns about the futility of war whilst the warroom massive screens play out crazy nuclear nightmares...

DEFCON is a game that looks just like that but badass!

This game is a product of Introversion Software the makers of UPLINK... which is great because I'm already adicted to their products.

--timball

[ Looks fucking rad. Too bad they're currently showing "Confidence : LOW" for a Mac release in November. If they can get me some mac action, I'm on it. -k]

DEFCON - Introversion software

Vote y'all.

There are some decent ideas on here, but more critically, it's a cool concept.

Takes about 5 minutes to scan the entries, 10 to be diligent and then pick the ones you like

My Dream App � Live Voting Results

Um, can someone explain to me what the hell NBC is doing?

Are they trying to be self deprecating? Is Tina Fey making fun of them and they don't know it? Is it just a mistake?

Because, see, they already have Studio 60 (which I think is pretty good) which is a show about the same thing. Not kinda the same thing, *exactly* the same thing. Running a late night comedy show. As oddly reflexive as it is for Tina Fey and Tracy Morgan to do a show about, effectivley, themselves (for shit's sake Tracy Morgan's characters name is, no kidding, Tracy Jordan...) why would NBC make two shows about the same topic?

Are they that short on ideas? Are they hedging their bets? Is it a grand experiment to see if people like the "serious" one better or the "goofy" one better?

I'm so confused. And sad, becaue one of these shows isn't gonna survive, and it's gonna be NBC's fault, more than likely.

NBC.com - 30 Rock

[ I have not the words.

Olberman is regularly insightful and uncompromising, but this... this is a dissection. A lambasting that cuts like a scalpel and pulls no punches, takes the president and his empire to task. I've said too much, just watch it.

Absolutely remarkable.

-k ]

Quicktime link.

CountDown-SpecialComment-ClintonInterview.mov (video/quicktime Object)

After securing the Liberal Democratic Party's presidency Wednesday, Shinzo Abe will become Japan's first prime minister born after the end of World War II, with a clear eye toward re-examining the postwar era.

Hm. This should be interesting. I'm a bit concerned in truth, but I admit to not being an expert. Some of the verbiage here is worrisome.

Abe's rise to force new look at postwar Japan - Asia - Pacific - International Herald Tribune

On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being not so extreme and 10 being extremely extreme, I give it a 0.

And may god have mercy on it's soul.

(yeah, that's right, I'll mix and match quotes from whatever movies I want. I CRAZY!)

T.M.X Elmo debuts. The 'X' is for 'eXtreme', dude!

The reliability of information collected from at large Internet users by open collaborative wikis such as Wikipedia has been a subject of widespread debate. This paper provides a practical proposal for improving user confidence in wiki information by coloring the text of a wiki article based on the venerability of the text. This proposal relies on the philosophy that bad information is less likely to survive a collaborative editing process over large numbers of edits. Colorization would provide users with a clear visual cue as to the level of confidence that they can place in particular assertions made within a wiki article.

I got published in this month's issue of First Monday! Make sure you check out the issue because there are a number of good articles in it.

[ Good stuff, as usual, Tom! Congrats! -k]

Puppy smoothies: Improving the reliability of open, collaborative wikis