The Den

http://ursulav.deviantart.com/art/The-Biting-Pear-of-Salamanca-29677500

Apparently *URSULA FUCKING VERNON* painted the original "LOL WUT" pear. If one were to assemble a council of the Elder Gods of Fur Fandom, she'd be on it, representing the "porn? What porn?" aspect. I mean, christ, I remember her from Yerf, from like 2001. I think she was an admin; she certainly did more sitework than Dingo ever did. Her forum tag was "It's on the tip of my brain", which I always thought was clever.

Jesus. My mind has just been *completely* broken.

So, I was cruising for expensive apartments I will never, ever be able to afford (side note: Since when is an apartment a "condominium"? Condos are, like, identical row housing by the beach. Not apartments.) and I came across this:

http://www.bensontower.com/
http://www.pdxvtours.com/devans3/small2.htm

The abuses of webdesign, Quicktime, and Photoshop apparent here speak for themselves. So I sent the broker this email:

[BEGIN QUOTE]

To whom it may concern:

Please, for the good of your prospective tenants, the industry and all involved: Fire your photographer/virtual tour company. They are *terrible* at what they do.

Photography - OH. MY. GOD. The *windows* have HDR blooms around the edges. (Do you see how the part of the sky next to the window frame is a completely different shade of blue than the sky in the middle of the pane? The sky does not look that way!) The skyline is a vomitous mix of overly bright color that makes the buildings look like they were shot on a Kodak disposable camera and then photocopied a few times. Clearly, whoever took these photos does not know how to use Photoshop, or even when it is appropriate to do so. Perhaps they have heard that HDR can create more realistic images. Clearly they have not, however, learned how this is accomplished, because the only thing they have created is a mess. Looking out the window of your virtual apartment, I found myself wondering if the year could possibly be any later than perhaps 1987, which was to say the least incongruous given the flatscreen TV.

Virtual tours, in the software you're using for them, are designed to be more than just a simple 360-degree view. That little cursor that appears, that allows you to drag around the window? That cursor, when it is placed over a door, or a hallway, or something of that fashion, is designed to turn into a pointer that lets the user click to *move forward* into that room, or hallway, or whatever. The software then loads a *new* 360 degree photo, seamlessly, such that the user *feels like he is walking around the place* - hence, the term "virtual tour". The company you have hired has elected to completely ignore this immersive feature in favor of a drop-down box selecting various places in the penthouse. This is.... superfluous, to say the least, and criminally negligent, to say the worst. Not to mention that this dropdown box then leads to several useless pages, including a slideshow of photos (as a Quicktime video - why not a gallery?) whose aspect ratios are incorrect and an information page which contains no useful information. If it is vital that this content exist, couldn't it have its own link?

Fit and finish - the page title is "pdxvtours Plus Tour devans3", which I take to mean that this is the third plus tour that you, D. Evans, have ordered from this company. What? How is that description, accurate though it may be, useful to the customer in any way?

Seriously. For the good of everyone who works in the web design industry, or even the photography industry, fire your company (PDXVtours). They are the lowest commmon denominator. They are dragging down the entire profession by making this haphazard, slipshod work out to be excellent or even acceptable. If you and other real estate companies stop funding them, they will hopefully cease to exist. Such an event would be cause for celebration.

I will not further examine here the abuses to which your sales website subjects customers; among them are an asinine reliance on Adobe PDF and a preponderance of sales-related links which lead to external sites. (Perhaps you should fire your web designer as well?) I would suggest, if you wish to see what a really good apartment-sales website looks like, that you check out The Ardea (http://theardea.com), which caters to a similar clientele but has an exponentially better sales site. Perhaps you could find out who coded it for them and hire that individual or company for your next property, because the individuals who are creating your sales material now are doing a disservice to your property: they're making it look much worse than I'm sure it actually is.

Thank you kindly.

-Mellor Suntiger

[END QUOTE]

(Yes, I actually signed it "Mellor Suntiger". It has a nice ring to it.)

By the way, the place I linked to near the bottom (The Ardea) is, while not as downtown as this, INCREDIBLY nice. Check it out.

Anyways. I felt like posting this exercise in snark for any of you who still listen (Does anyone except Wolf still read this?)

(Side note: Do I use too many parentheses? (Be honest!))

Because Comedy Central sucks at servers.

World Builder from Bruce Branit on Vimeo.

You seriously need to watch this.

HOLODECK WANT.

$2500-ish. Granted it was with a student loan, but you don't have to pay 100 a month in minimums on a student loan when you're in school and jobless.

I feel like this calls for happiness.

Howl at the moon, baby!

I had never realized how much Matthew Broderick in Ferris Bueller's Day Off reminds me of a younger version of Christopher Walken, both visually and in his acting style.

Creepy. And kind of sexy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Kushner

Edit: Holy God, I just realized that the entirety of A Bright Room Called Day is one gigantic Godwin (the Republican Party are Nazis)!

I don't know if that makes me like it more, or hate it more.

http://www.suntiger.dnsdojo.com/Music/Artists/GH/Garbage/Version%202.0/07%20-%20Push%20It.mp3

And I do mean fuck. That kind of "hmm, think I'll forget everything but my raw animalistic lust for whoever I've got my cock in" fucking. Probably involving foxes. Or slutty felines. And biting. Lots of biting.

Mmmm.

That most of my "best" (and by best I mean most enigmatic) writing, for papers or otherwise, is done while severely cracked out. This cracking-out is usually from massive lack of sleep (papers mostly) but can also be from serious emotion (really long bitchy diatribes on nothing) or just fucktons of caffeine (papers again). If I'm not cracked out, I can't put words to paper. It just doesn't work, and if it does it's half-assed. I have to be desperate, up against a deadline, passionate, or all of the above. (This is not a good situation for schoolwork.)

Hallmarks include reckless use of parentheticals and semicolons. Also fragments. And archaic language.

It also occurs to me that I don't write very much. I don't know that it would be a good thing if I did.

Obama wins. That's it.

This is a historic fucking day. Now we can finally move on from the ass-backwards shit that has characterized national politics. Now the future is actually hopeful.

I'm lost for words, I really am. I have more faith in humanity tonight than I have in a really, really long time.

"This journal does not have a vote, and does not claim any particular standing from which to instruct those who do. But if it did, it would cast its vote for Barack Obama."

That's from Nature (the self-proclaimed "international weekly journal OF SCIENCE!!!").
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v455/n7217/full/4551149a.html

Apparently this is the first time they've ever endorsed a candidate. Kind of impressive that they, one of the mouthpieces of the scientific world, felt a need to do so this year.

So, remember how I noted that the RIAA had finally won a case, in the amount of $9250 a song?

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/09/not-for-publica.html

Not so fucking much. A judge just declared that a mistrial, since it turns out everyone was right - making available does not count as copyright infringement. This basically means the RIAA has to prove someone downloaded it from you - and they can't do that. Ever.

This is like ripping the teeth out of anything they do from now on. I'm fucking stoked. Serves you right, you money-leeching dirtbags!

http://www.christianexodus.com

It's like the Free State libertarians, only so much more creepy!

Salient point: There is now a movement to move as many arch-Christian activists to South Carolina as possible in order to use its arch-conservative government to establish as Biblical a state as possible. From there, they'd move outward into other states.

I had never heard this story, but apparently that quote is a direct reference to it:

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/1977/09/dowie.html

Salient point: in the 70s, Ford produced, for eight years, Pintos they knew were nearly 100% prone to fuel tank explosions in rear-end collisions because it was less expensive to pay court settlements than to make an $11 alteration to every car.

Funny how you can grow up and never hear about shit like this, which has to be one of the key moments in the history of car safety.

Orson Scott Card is a brilliant science fiction author. So why does he have to be such a douchebag?

http://mormontimes.com/ME_blogs.php?id=1586

To everyone living in the Birchwoods: Do any of you have a vacuum I can borrow this afternoon to clean up my apartment as I'm moving out? I can't for the life of me find one.

Thanks!

http://cache.boston.com/bonzai-fba/Third_Party_Graphic/2008/08/02/1217652386_7548.jpg

I love how "McCain" doesn't even show up in Obama's tagcloud.

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=gosford%20to%20wyoming

Edit 8/26/08: Damn, they pulled it. Bastards. It used to say "Kayak across the Pacific Ocean (estimated time 43 days)."

I wonder what the new one is?

Edit 11/10/08: Hey, it's back! Only now it routes you through Hawaii and Japan (???) including driving directions through Japan *laughs*

http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/Creepypasta
http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/The_Holders

Also lolcats, but we all knew that.

Apparently I'm 20 now.

I can't exactly say it snuck up on me, but it's an interesting thought that assuming I'm going to live to 100 (generous), I'm 1/5 through with my life. And I'm not even out of college. Weird. Oh well, just more fuel for my desire to freeze myself.

I cannot reconcile myself to death. I don't think that I'll ever be able to, even if I do live for 80 more years. I refuse utterly to allow all that is me to be over and done, and in all likelihood forgotten; for one because it would be a horrible waste (it is for anyone, I don't just overvalue myself), and for two because god damn it, I was born *maybe* 100 years too soon for my own good. I want to see what happens in the future - we're on the verge of a wholesale technologically provoked reorganization of everything about our culture, and I want to be there to see the process or at least the results.

In other time-related news, does anyone else find it sad that the 80s ended nearly 20 years ago?

Ralph Nader is running for President again, as an independent this time.

Why, you motherfucking tool? Why? You know you haven't got a prayer. You didn't win a single Electoral College vote last time around. Furthermore, you fucking LOST THE 2000 ELECTION TO BUSH. You *asshole* - why would you risk doing that again, with this one as close as it's going to be?

I mean, yes, the man hates both major parties, but I think he has to agree that the Democrats have it slightly more in hand than the Republicans do - and that he's going to regret the next four years if he fucks this one up.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/02/nations-spies-w.html

Why, god, why?

CIA goon 1:"Okay, guys. We need to find some high-profile terrorists before November. Ideas?"
CIA goon 2:"What if Osama plays Counterstrike?"
CIA goon 3:"Or WoW. I mean, 10 million people out of six billion, our odds are pretty good, aren't they?"

Further proof that what the USA needs is a violent revolution and subsequent total reconstruction of government.

http://www.engadget.com/2008/02/13/spy-bill-passes-senate-with-carrier-immunity/

Basically, there was a bill in the senate to extend Bush's wiretapping abilities and make telcos (VZW, AT&T, Sprint, and so forth) immune to lawsuits about said wiretapping - this protection being extended retroactively to cover the lawsuits already in process.

It passed. By a lot. Obama and Dodd voted against it. Lieberman and McCain voted for. Hillary, despite being in the area, was one of only two Senators who did not vote.

You know, miss Clinton, not voting at all does not make you appeal to moderates. You can't sit on the fence like this - either you lose one group or you lose the other. You cannot keep both.

This is what I've disliked about her from the start - she panders to both sides, and it ends up in shit like this where she can't take a position on something for fear of losing constituency on either side. I don't like someone who'll change or not express their opinions just to win a vote.

I keep finding cool shit. I keep posting it. This is the way of the world.

Again via elfs: http://booksthatmakeyoudumb.virgil.gr/. Popular books at colleges plotted against average SAT scores at said colleges. Lulz ensue.

Where "this thread" is the Mississippi Congress, apparently.

Via elfs: Someone actually proposed a law to prevent restaurants from serving people defined by said law as "obese".

Again, what? Why would you think this would help anything? It'd just result in the people who actually have overeating problems going and eating at home or at whatever category of eatery is exempt from the law and people whose weight isn't their fault getting denied a peaceful night out. Also, can you seriously expect every single restaurant in an entire fucking state to weigh everyone who comes in? We've all been in restaurants during the dinner rush. Can you imagine if they had to weigh us too? No fucking way.

Thankfully this hasn't a hope of passing, but the thought process is pretty scary.

So Microsoft would like to fork over $44.6 billion to purchase Yahoo, as announced today. The general consensus is that this is because neither one of them is having any kind of success competing with Google. Basically, this is Steve Ballmer admitting that he's having trouble with his plan to "fucking kill" Google and needs a bit of help.

However, I found the following paragraph, from the MS press release, hilarious:

"Today, the market is increasingly dominated by one player who is consolidating its dominance through acquisition. Together, Microsoft and Yahoo! can offer a credible alternative for consumers, advertisers, and publishers."

Does their description of Google, particularly the negativeness of the wording, remind you of one company in particular? The company that drove Netscape out of the market illegally? The company that has, since its inception, attempted to control and eliminate all competitors from any field it enters using any means necessary with no regard for law or ethics?

I think it's great to see Microsoft having to sweat over another company outcompeting them, to the point where they have to basically accuse the other company of acting like they do - complete with the implied "Hey, that's only fair when we do it!" Karmic justice, bitches!

This is the coolest thing I have ever seen. Basically some guys promoting some drink or other went and bought a gigantic robot arm, drove it out to the desert, and used it to throw shit at other shit.




I hereby suggest that we obtain one of these for Renn Fayre and use it to lob paint balloons or watermelons or something cool like that.

Apparently she's cribbed the "Gardasil makes teens have more sex because it feels safer" argument from the other side and applied it to a heroin overdose lifeline drug.

Here's a rather erudite Elf Sternberg post on the subject.

Personally, both the Clinton quotes in that post scares me with the line of reasoning it goes down and makes me want to keep her as far away from power as I can. Seriously, what's next, "gay marriage is bad because it makes them seem normal"?

Actually, hasn't someone already said that?

Edit: Apparently that wasn't actually a Hillary quote, just a Bush puppet quote; see comments. And even if that's the kind of thing we expect from them by now, that doesn't make it any less fucked up. Also, just because Hillary hasn't actually gone as far as I thought she had doesn't make it any more of a good idea to vote for her. Go read the link.

Ebay racketeers are apparently so far gone:

Screen protectors for Palm Foleo

that they will attempt to sell screen protectors for a product that was never released.

God, I love the accessories market.

Man chugs liter of vodka in airport security line.

I so totally want to see someone do that on Friday. Choice line: "and was quickly unable to stand or otherwise function". Also mad points for use of "quaffing".

Edit: Thanks to EnglishRussia.com and Slog commenters, a video of some crazy Russian dude doing this:

Also also, apparently Jodie Foster admitted her lesbianicity. Who knew? More importantly, who cared?

And believe me I am STILL ALIVE!

EPIC FUCKING FAIL.


Seriously, read some of their fucking rhetoric. Doesn't it make you want to go on a 300-esque rampage through their homes, offices, and churches?

So they apparently opened a short streetcar line today.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SLUT

http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/12/the_slut_was_made_for_me

http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/12/disappointing_slut

http://slog.thestranger.com/2007/12/red_light_district_the_sluts_virgin_jour#more

Come on! It's easy, guys. Look at Portland. Look at how much we love our light rail. It's fast, it's efficient, it's clean, and it's cheap. Why do you have so many issues with doing something similar?

So Wolf and I were trading Soviet Russia jokes, and we got onto the subject of Portal, and I came up with this gem:

"In Soviet Russia, Weighted Companion Cube euthanizes YOU!"

PEARS!

Freshmen, you'll find out next semester.

"He thinks that he is entitled to this justice because he is a god, and by that fact alone. When he does not recieve it, he has his revenge by first forcing, through mindbending, all the women of the city to worship him, and then by forcing them to kill their ruler (and one of their sons) because he has deluded them into thinking that the king is a lion and because he has brought the king to them thinking he is going to see hot lesbian sex involving his mother. So here we have an awfully sadistic, vengeful god with a horrible sense of entitlement and a diseased mind. And we thought Creon was bad! Moreover, this is Bacchus; he is famous for his love of wine, of parties, and of sex, and for the expression of these loves by his worshippers. So in addition to all the other characteristics we just found in him, he's a pleasure-obsessed, promiscuous, alcoholic hedonist as well."

From my Hum midterm last year. Just thought I'd post that in honor of this year's Hum midterm.

So who wants a free copy of Vista Ultimate?

http://wfp.microsoft.com/.

The catch: you only get the software if you let Microsoft spy on you for three months and take a survey every two weeks. They say they're only looking at usage patterns (IE no checking what websites you visit or anything like that) for Office and Vista, but some people won't trust MS as far as they can spit.

Personally, I was surprised as hell that I actually got my copy last time around, so I'll be going for this one too. Hey, if nothing else, Vista Ultimate is a good $260 on eBay.

From the Vista Service Pack 1 Release Candidate 1 Release Notes:

"Also coming with SP1 but not in the current release candidate, we will also be including updates that deal with two exploits we have seen, which can affect system stability for our customers. The OEM Bios exploit, which involves modifying system files and the BIOS of the motherboard to mimic a type of product activation performed on copies of Windows that are pre-installed by OEMs in the factory. The Grace Timer exploit, which attempts to reset the “grace time” limit between installation and activation to something like the year 2099 in some cases."

One, fuck. There go the best ways to pirate Vista. Two, notice how they called it an "exploit" "which can affect system stability"? No. It's a crack which affects Microsoft's obscene profit levels. Here's another quote from April:

"Implementing exploits involves extreme alterations to key system components and can seriously affect system stability. So we are taking action. SP1 will include updates that will target those exploits and disable them," Sievert added.

Like hell. I love how you're couching it in terms of system stability. They're trying to give the impression that the reason it's being patched out is because it affects stability (which it doesn't), and not that it enables piracy.

So I ask you this, Microsoft: If I find a way to pirate Vista that doesn't heavily alter key system components, will you let it stand?

I think not, because it's already happened. It's called OEM Bios.

From here: <Bowles For President.

"Free Healthcare
Zero Interest Mortgage Loans
Humanitarian Relocation Of All Non-Whites
5% Flat Tax (no other taxes)
A Strong Constitutional Republic
Defending Traditional Marriage (not gay marriage)
A Strong Border Patrol
No Outsourcing Of American Jobs
Zero Unemployment
Bring All The Troops Back Home
No More Foreign Aid To Any Country
A Strong Social Security System
Elimination Of Anti-White Laws & Holidays
A Healthy Environment
Where do the other candidates stand on these vital issues?"


My god. It's like, ooh, free healthcare, no unemployment... relocation of all non-whites!

The combination of deranged sociopathic insanity and relative normalcy boggles the mind. I honestly can't help but wonder what a country with these men in charge would be like. It'd make some great dystopian SF.

http://elfs.livejournal.com/725529.html

Holy shit, Tancredo. You asshole.

What. The. Fuck.

Apparently the US State Department thinks that ambassadors' pets are more important than ambassadors' same-sex partners.

There are simply no fucking words.

Bad Jokes And Other Deleted Nonsense has itself been deleted. I knew this was coming, the way things were going, but I never expected it to actually happen. It feels as thought all the fun has somehow gone out of the universe... that Wikipedia has become its own antithesis (that is to say, it fancies itself as Britannica).

The day when Wikipedia can no longer laugh at itself is the day that the old Wikipedia has finally died, because those of us who cared enough to maintain it as it was have abandoned it in the face of an overwhelming inability to get anything accomplished. I was there, though; I saw it as it was, as it will probably never be again. When articles were kept or deleted through Votes for Deletion, rather than this presumptive "Articles for deletion" shit. When fair use was still okay for images, because all of Wikipedia is arguably designed for education and the spreading of knowledge. When "You Have Two Cows" had a 15-page list of jokes and no one minded. When there were checks on Admin power. When discussions were had and consensuses were reached as a group, when people listened to each other, when 3RR meant something, when we all realized that the one thing that had no place on Wikipedia was censorship and removal of valid information...

In short, I was there when the project was new, bold, ambitious - but not insistent on taking itself so damn seriously. It's lost that now. It's been in the process of losing it for a long, long time, but this is finally it. Goodbye, bad old days. Some of us will still miss you.

The original can still be found off Wikipedia here, if you're interested.

USCBP are funny.

Why must there always be tits???

If you get both references, congratulations, you are a fantastic nerd.

...and yes, I came up with this. Thanks, LolCat Builder.

Or better yet, a thesis.

Background is Here

Can I have his shirt, please?

For the record, I think this might be the only song in the world where the original singer looks sillier performing it than I do lipsyncing it while wearing headphones. Seriously. Just watch the first verse and chorus. Gawd.

Also, does anyone honestly believe he's older than 17 in this video?

Edit: According to the Wiki, he's 30. How, exactly?

So apparently, between the two of us, Wolf and I used 11,381 cellphone minutes in the month of September.

I love free mobile-to-mobile. If I wanted that kind of talk time without it, I'd have to pay like $600 a month. I don't even know if you *can* get that many minutes. The highest the sales brochure goes to is 6000, at $300 a month!

And yet, between three lines, we're on the 550 minute plan, and routinely average around 492 new rollover minutes a month. This is along with data usage, too, and we pay like $100 a month pretax. How fucking sweet is that deal? It honestly feels like I'm cheating AT&T out of an obscene amount of money by using that many mobile-to-mobile minutes.

And then I remember that the entire cellphone biz is so overpriced as to be an obscenity, and I don't feel quite so bad *grins*

Oink's Pink Palace is dead. Raided. For those of you who don't know, it was one of the best-reputed private torrent trackers to have existed in recent times, focusing on high-quality music rips. I had an account for the last two months of its life; they had some excellent ebook collections as well. It was nice to at least see what all the rep was about before it got closed down.

Christ. Who goes down next? And how the hell did they get Oink but not Demonoid?

More to the point, is BitTorrent dying? Is it time for the next wave of piracy to follow, as Kazaa, Morpheus, Grokster, and eD2K did from Napster and as BitTorrent has from those services? If so, what's next? Can't be Usenet; nothing's going to catch on if it's not free. Maybe BT will just keep spawning new trackers... but that can't go on forever. Can it?

Keep trying, **AAs. No matter who you arrest and what sites you paste nasty-looking warnings over, there will always be freeloaders, and there will always be resourceful people among them who code, hack, rip, or otherwise get around your protections. Sooner or later, more bands will follow Radiohead and all the other non-label artists, because artists on your payroll will *no longer be selling, and you'll pay them, your lifeblood, less and less to keep your profits high.* What are you going to do then? Lawsuits will only get you so far, and you're approaching that point at a fairly rapid clip.