21 Jul 2006
Man in chicken suit cries fowl over abuse

The best quote: "People don't take this costume seriously..."

No shit.

AP - To Steven Turnage, it was bad enough to dress up in a chicken suit and stand along a city street in 105-degree heat. Having passers-by shoot bottle rockets at him has him crying foul.

(link) [Yahoo! News: Top Stories]

19:40 /Humor | 1 comment | permanent link

Paul Thurrott Bitten by WGA

You're not a customer, you're a crook! Given some of the bootlicking rhetoric towards M$ from Mr. Thurrott in the past, I have to say that it couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Perhaps he'll get wise and buy his next computer here.

Paul Thurrott, one of the most important Microsoft advocates, has been bitten by Windows Genuine Advantage. As some Slashdot users have reported, Paul installed a bunch of updates in his machine and now Microsoft thinks that he is using pirated software." From the post: "Truthfully, I can only imagine what triggered these alerts. The software was installed to a VM a long time ago and archived on my server. I no doubt used a copy of XP MCE 2005 that I had received as part of my MSDN subscription. If the WGA alerts are to be believed, it's possible that Microsoft thinks I've installed this software on too many machines, though that seems unlikely to me. I can't really say. Anyway, that's what it looks like to be a suspected pirate. Like many people who will see these alerts, I don't believe I did anything wrong. I'm sure that's going to be a common refrain in this new era of untrusting software and companies. Ah well.

(link) [Slashdot]

14:44 /Technology | 1 comment | permanent link

Apple Reaches 12% Market Share In U.S. Notebooks

There's hope ...

Apple's U.S. notebook market share has doubled to 12% after shipping 1.33 million Macs in the quarter. Apple also shipped 8.11 million iPods, topping analyst estimates, for a net income of $472 million. Remember when Apple was dying?" From the article: "The iPod shipments appeared to calm investors worried that growth in that red-hot business was slowing and Apple's results topped what analysts had said was a conservative forecast. Shares of Apple were down some 24 percent since early May. 'Apple looked good,' said Jane Snorek, technology analyst with First American Funds. 'The PC numbers were great, too.'

(link) [Slashdot]

14:32 /Technology | 0 comments | permanent link

Congress targets deceptive 'sex' sites

Could somebody explain to me what possible motivation a porn site operator could have in "luring" underage viewers? I mean, generally speaking, kids don't have credit cards to pay for the material, so where's the economic motive?

And if it's perverts setting up sites to "groom" future victims, I doubt that they'd put hard core porn anywhere it could be accessed by a "casual visitor" anyway. And such activities (stalking, trolling for victims, etc.) are already illegal. Why do we need another law for this?

The bill also includes a ban on the sale of "date rape" drugs over the Internet, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, except that these drugs are almost all prescription only anyway, so it's already illegal to sell them without a script. Again, why another law? Just so they can say they're "doing something"?

Furthermore, this bill shows the absolute lack of technical understanding in the Congress. It says:

Whoever knowingly embeds words or digital images into the source code of a Web site with the intent to deceive a minor into viewing material harmful to minors on the Internet shall be fined under this title and imprisoned for not more than 20 years...

The term 'source code' means the combination of text and other characters comprising the content, both viewable and nonviewable, of a Web page, including any Web site publishing language, programming language, protocol or functional content, as well as any successor languages or protocols.

For those unfamiliar with the habits of coders, especially maintanence coders, it's common practice to use expletives in comments - such as "I don't know what the f**k this variable really does, but it must be init'd here...". So if this thing becomes law, and I embed a comment with an obscenity in the HTML for this page, I'm potentially a Federal felon!

Sometimes I think the politicians won't rest until everyone is a Federal felon.

Senators vote for crackdown on "harmful to minor" Web sites, Net drug sales and sex offenders. Bush is expected to sign bill next week.

(link) [CNET News.com]

14:31 /Politics | 2 comments | permanent link