Hey, suckas. I got all into NetVibes over the last couple of days, and got agitated about the fact that BuzzFlash doesn't have an RSS feed. I check BuzzFlash on a daily basis for news, and my NetVibes setup wouldn't be complete without headlines from BuzzFlash. So I went ahead and made a goddamn RSS feed myself.
This brings up a point that I'd like to share with all my fellow web developers out there: for God's sake (or Hera's sake, or Ra's, or Allah's, or Buddha's, or just for Goodness' sake) please let's all agree on a strict xhtml doctype from now on, ok? If the BuzzFlash homepage had an xhtml doctype, I could have created the RSS feed in about half an hour. Instead, because of the sloppy goddamn loosey-goosey html doctype, it took me about three hours to do the job. I had to parse the entire document's contents, doing all kinds of string search functions to find the positions of the beginning of anchor tags and the ends of them, and blah blah blah -- if you've ever done this kind of screen-scraping shite, you know what I'm talking about. If you haven't (or don't), you can't be bothered with the details. I'm bored just thinking about it. Tedious.
If, on the other hand, the BF homepage had a strict xhtml doctype, I could have just parsed the whole goddamn thing as xml, sucked all the links out, and completed the same task in just about no time flat.
If you set up a NetVibes account and add the feed to your setup, be sure to check the box that says 'open link directly' because there are no descriptions for the link, so the RSS reader would look pretty barren.
Check it out, but keep it on the down-low. I don't need the whole damn world hitting my poor little server. This is just between us friends. If you appreciate my efforts and want to demonstrate that appreciation, then post something good here, or make a donation to the ACLU, or give the finger to the next 5 people you see with "W '04" stickers in their cars, or whatever.
22 June, 2006
21 June, 2006
Dear Wendy's
I don't usually acquire sustenance from fast-food poison-peddlers like Wendy's, but today I found it convenient to pick up a caesar salad at your drive-thru. Imagine my horror when I got back to my desk and discovered that the culinary abortion you call a 'caesar salad' contained bits of bacon sprinkled throughout it. Who the FUCK puts bacon on a caesar salad? You make a caesar salad, and then sprinkle it with bacon bits, and what you end up with is NOT a caesar salad, but some kind of bastard variant that demands a different name! Call it a "bacon caesary salad" or something, but it is most definitely not a caesar salad! Granted, in this part of the country (the upper Midwest) many people don't even consider something to be food unless it's got meat on or in it, but I searched the internet for caesar salad recipes, and every single one I could find (and I found a metric assload) unanimously excluded the ingredient bacon.
The only goddamn thing I've ever worried about when ordering a caesar salad is whether it would have anchovy paste on it, because I know that to be a traditional caesar salad ingredient and I hate that shit too. I didn't bother to ask at the drive-thru whether your caesar had anchovies on it because I assumed the chances of that were roughly the same as the chances that some demented fuck would concoct a caesar salad with fucking bacon on it!
Since I'd rather get a headache than pick out every little fleck of pig shit from my salad, that's what I now have. So fuck you very much.
Sure wish I'd checked your website before I went out for lunch; I'd have discovered that you not only inform your customers of this shameful practice, but you seem to actually brag about it by pointing out that the bacon is "real". Oooh! Real bacon on my caesar salad! Because people are used to getting fake bacon on their caesars? Gosh, you guys are really right there in the vanguard of salad innovations, aren't you?
Assholes.
The only goddamn thing I've ever worried about when ordering a caesar salad is whether it would have anchovy paste on it, because I know that to be a traditional caesar salad ingredient and I hate that shit too. I didn't bother to ask at the drive-thru whether your caesar had anchovies on it because I assumed the chances of that were roughly the same as the chances that some demented fuck would concoct a caesar salad with fucking bacon on it!
Since I'd rather get a headache than pick out every little fleck of pig shit from my salad, that's what I now have. So fuck you very much.
Sure wish I'd checked your website before I went out for lunch; I'd have discovered that you not only inform your customers of this shameful practice, but you seem to actually brag about it by pointing out that the bacon is "real". Oooh! Real bacon on my caesar salad! Because people are used to getting fake bacon on their caesars? Gosh, you guys are really right there in the vanguard of salad innovations, aren't you?
Assholes.
Norwegian Doomsday Vault -- Already Pointless
A number of scientists (including Stephen Hawking - go figure) have, in recent years, advocated the idea that we humans had better start augmenting and enhancing ourselves through gene modification and therapy, cybernetic implants, and other crazy shit in order to survive as a species. No joke. One concern is that artificial intelligence will develop surprisingly quickly, and the machines will take over and try to wipe us out much like it was portrayed in the Terminator movies. Others say that's just batshit, and that it's sure to be much more like the dystopia portrayed in the Matrix movies. Personally, I figure one would lead to the other. As the machines get smarter, they'll figure out it's more practical to use humans as a fuel source than it is just to have mountains of bones all over the place.
The other day, Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced another milestone in the (unintentional) quest to make robots the dominant lifeforms on Earth. They broke their own speed record, and made a transistor that can run at 509Ghz when cooled at a temperature that approaches absolute zero. That's holy-fuck fast at holy-fucking-shit cold. We're talking about processing speeds about 250 times faster than the computer you're using right now, the one that can do math about a kajillion times faster than you can and can whip your ass at chess. The one that can generate a five-star sudoku a billion times faster than you can solve an easy one.
I don't know who's currently working on the cyborg or genome shit right now that's going to save us from the robots (and ourselves), but the crafty Norwegians have taken another approach, and a very practical one at that. In the event that a bunch of liquid metal motherfuckers do end up roaming the earth, exterminating the virus known as humanity, or some similar cataclysmic eventuality comes to pass, they're building a wicked huge vault dug into a frozen arctic mountainside that's going to hold seeds from every food crop in the world.
Great idea, right?
Sadly, no -- the plan has a couple of serious flaws. First of all, if we're reduced to roving bands of post-apocalyptic tribes, running from the fucking robots, foraging for food, how the fuck are we supposed to GET to the vault on the Svalbard Islands, much less get INTO the vault, which will be protected by fences, steel airlocked doors, and polar bears? Big problem for Mad Max, but the flying robot squids could vaporize the whole goddamn vault without too much effort.
Problem number 2: thanks to the Internet, the robots already know about the Doomsday Vault! This plan would have been awesome if it'd been kept super-secret somehow. I'm not sure how that would work, since humans have to know about it -- a lot of humans -- while at the same time it'd be imperitive to keep it a secret from the machines. Since the word is out, the plan is fucked.
Back to the drawing board, humans! By this time next year I want to see plans for a moon-launched Genesis machine (that will repair the Earth's ecosystem and unblacken the sky), one-way cybernetic implants that will allow me to hear what the robots are thinking (without broadcasting my own thoughts to the collective), and a Pangalactic Gargle Blaster. That last one isn't going to help save us from the robots; it's just way overdue.
The other day, Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign announced another milestone in the (unintentional) quest to make robots the dominant lifeforms on Earth. They broke their own speed record, and made a transistor that can run at 509Ghz when cooled at a temperature that approaches absolute zero. That's holy-fuck fast at holy-fucking-shit cold. We're talking about processing speeds about 250 times faster than the computer you're using right now, the one that can do math about a kajillion times faster than you can and can whip your ass at chess. The one that can generate a five-star sudoku a billion times faster than you can solve an easy one.
I don't know who's currently working on the cyborg or genome shit right now that's going to save us from the robots (and ourselves), but the crafty Norwegians have taken another approach, and a very practical one at that. In the event that a bunch of liquid metal motherfuckers do end up roaming the earth, exterminating the virus known as humanity, or some similar cataclysmic eventuality comes to pass, they're building a wicked huge vault dug into a frozen arctic mountainside that's going to hold seeds from every food crop in the world.
Great idea, right?
Sadly, no -- the plan has a couple of serious flaws. First of all, if we're reduced to roving bands of post-apocalyptic tribes, running from the fucking robots, foraging for food, how the fuck are we supposed to GET to the vault on the Svalbard Islands, much less get INTO the vault, which will be protected by fences, steel airlocked doors, and polar bears? Big problem for Mad Max, but the flying robot squids could vaporize the whole goddamn vault without too much effort.
Problem number 2: thanks to the Internet, the robots already know about the Doomsday Vault! This plan would have been awesome if it'd been kept super-secret somehow. I'm not sure how that would work, since humans have to know about it -- a lot of humans -- while at the same time it'd be imperitive to keep it a secret from the machines. Since the word is out, the plan is fucked.
Back to the drawing board, humans! By this time next year I want to see plans for a moon-launched Genesis machine (that will repair the Earth's ecosystem and unblacken the sky), one-way cybernetic implants that will allow me to hear what the robots are thinking (without broadcasting my own thoughts to the collective), and a Pangalactic Gargle Blaster. That last one isn't going to help save us from the robots; it's just way overdue.
20 June, 2006
Lt. Ehren Watada: Brainwashing Flunky
Mr. Watada is not a peacenik nor a conscientious objector. The Army Lieutenant is willing to serve in Afghanistan, but, he says, when his unit is deployed to Iraq, he will refuse to board the plane. Why? Because he believes he has an obligation to ignore illegal orders, just like Americans told the Nazis at the Nuremburg trials. You see, back then, the United States told German soldiers that "I was just following orders" was no excuse for violating international law. Today, "I was just following orders" is the standard excuse offered by the depraved sickos who took over the management of Saddam's torture chambers. That, and we no longer acknowledge even the concept of international law.
As a result of his open refusal to participate in the Iraqi horrorshow, Watada is likely to face a court martial, prison time, and maybe hard labor. Not to mention incredible quantities of shit from his fellow soldiers until that day comes.
Some folks will tell you that you have to support our troops because they put their lives on the line in order to 'protect your freedom'. Maybe so. Lt Watada deserves at least the same amount of respect for being willing to sacrifice his own freedom to avoid becoming a co-conspirator in a massive crime. And perhaps a little extra respect for demonstrating the capacity, unlike most of his brothers-in-arms, to think for himself.
As a result of his open refusal to participate in the Iraqi horrorshow, Watada is likely to face a court martial, prison time, and maybe hard labor. Not to mention incredible quantities of shit from his fellow soldiers until that day comes.
Some folks will tell you that you have to support our troops because they put their lives on the line in order to 'protect your freedom'. Maybe so. Lt Watada deserves at least the same amount of respect for being willing to sacrifice his own freedom to avoid becoming a co-conspirator in a massive crime. And perhaps a little extra respect for demonstrating the capacity, unlike most of his brothers-in-arms, to think for himself.
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