Silicon Asylum

A family member recently forwarded this to me and I thought it made a good commentary on how busted our world is becoming: Jack pulls into school parking lot with rifle in gun rack. 1973 - Vice Principal comes over, takes a look at Jack's rifle, goes to his car and gets his to show Jack. 2006 - School goes into lock down, FBI called, Jack hauled off to jail and never sees his truck or gun again. Counselors called in for traumatized students and teachers. ++++++++++++++++++++++ Scenario: Johnny and Mark get into a fist fight after school. 1973 - Crowd gathers. Mark wins, Johnny and Mark shake hands and end up best friends Nobody goes to jail, nobody arrested, nobody expelled. 2006 - Police called, SWAT team arrives, arrests Johnny and Mark. Charge them with assault, both expelled even though Johnny started it. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Scenario: Jeffrey won't be still in class, disrupts other students. 1973 - Jeffrey sent to office and given a good paddling by Princi...

And you always thought flying was the most safe form of travel. "'The pilot of a Lan Chile Airbus A340 ... notified air traffic controllers at Auckland Oceanic Centre after seeing flaming space junk hurtling across the sky just five nautical miles in front of and behind his plane...'" Space Debris Narrowly Misses Airliner That's just messed up, I mean I knew that space junk posed a threat for our satellites, rockets, the shuttle, ISS, etc but having to worry about it entering the atmosphere just sucks. I mean yay one less thing for our extra-atmospheric endeavors to collide with but still messed up. I wonder if my house insurance covers "impact from flaming space debris". I know I get most bizarre "act of god" type things but that's pushing it.

Ran across this the other day, a sadly true Microsoft'ism. "Error Message: Your Password Must Be at Least 18770 Characters and Cannot Repeat Any of Your Previous 30689 Passwords" http://support.microsoft.com/kb/276304 Also for those who haven't heard me talk about it yet, if your a programmer or any type of techie checkout The Daily WTF (recently renamed).

This is an oldy but a goody. It's a new version of the digital clock done in flash: http://www.solvang-thomsen.dk/hand.swf

In follow-up to my earlier post When College isn't College . I noticed on House the other night that Dr. Gregory House (the main character) made a comment about being the Dr. and making the diagnostic choices he was making because he "...went to college." WTF? In Canada all Dr. go to University for their degree. Is "college" just the US'ism for Post Secondary Education in general?

" Sun May Be Warming Both Earth and Mars " .... hmmmm sounds like scientists may have jumped the gun on the whole Global Warming thing. Warming occuring on Mars now has some thinking that the Sun is to blame. Of course this won't be the final answer, science will have to flip-flop on the answer about another 1000 times over the next 100 years before we come to some kind of conclusion. Next we'll find out cell phone use really is unhealthy ;)

Ok this has been driving me nutts lately. In Canada there is a pretty distinct line between College and University. BUT in the US everyone seems to refer to post-secondary education as College (whether it's actually College or University). Is there really no difference between a College Diploma and a University Degree in the US? Is one not hands on (college) and the other book (university) learning like it is in Canada? (Yes that last line is over generalized but that's basically how it boils down.)

Just ran across this @ slashdot and couldn't NOT mention it here. (Nice double negative there eh?) Anyway....... "For the second year running, no U.S. city has made the list of the world's top Intelligent Communities of 2007" but Ottawa is on the list (as is Waterloo). Slashdot Story Original Story As announced by ICF chairman John Jung, the intelligent city finalists are: Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom Gangnam District, Seoul, South Korea Issy-les-Moulineaux, France Ottawa-Gatineau, Ontario-Quebec, Canada Sunderland, Tyne & Wear, United Kingdom Tallinn, Estonia Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Just found this site..... http://thedailywtf.com/ one of the recent entries caught my attention http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Chocolate_Covered_SQL.aspx (Scroll down till you see the package of chocolate they actually printed their SQL query [not the results] ont he packaging).

Today's Dilbert was particularly good (IMHO) so I thought I'd pass it along. http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20070122.html

So you decide to post a scan of a cheque (check) or a credit card or perhaps even a picture of a travel bug (for the geocachers in the crowd) and you blur out the important number(s). Well with scripting and storage the way it is these days that doesn't really cut it. Picture someone creating a "dictionary" of pictures with sequential blurred numbers to check against. This would be very much akin to a standard dictionary attack where all the words are passed through the same one way hash and compared against your one way hash. (Create all the possible iterations of the image, blur and compare against your image). Get the whole story here > http://dheera.net/projects/blur.php . In the future, black out the number(s) (make sure you don't have multiple layers).

Hinterland Who's Who Spoof Spiders on drugs . Freaky Octopus Camo (colour changing) etc....

Well I wrote my CISSP (Certified Information Systems Security Profession) Exam back in Dec. and have finally received an email stating that I've passed! YAY! Now I just have to complete all the endorsement paperwork (another CISSP or qualified person has to vouch for me and I have to submit a resume). Once that's done I'll add it to my LinkedIn Profile . As I said to m y wife, I was more excited to find out I'd passed and would be attaining this certification then I was graduating college (once you're in the middle of your final year you know what's gonna happen, there are no mysteries, either you have the # of credits or not).

Do you still you Microsoft's Internet Explorer? Well here are some more reasons why you should Get Firefox .

I was very disappointed when I saw this headline over at /. : The 2004 and 2006 surveys by Dittmar Associates Inc. revealed high levels of indifference among 18- to 25-year-olds toward manned trips to the moon and Mars. How can that be? What normal person in that age bracket doesn't love all things sci-fi and space related? I just don't get it..... Am I missing something are the kids I hang around with just out of whack or something? What kid doesn't love the idea of being an astronaut (astronut) or digging for dinosaur bones? I'm only 30 can I really be "that" old? (Hmmmm on second thought maybe it's a male thing and a whole bunch of females were polled and are skewing the results?) Linkage: Slashdot Blurb Full Story Update: NASA only understand part of the picture . While I think it's great to attract the normally nerdy section to the space program we also need the support of the general public.

As some of you know I'm a great fan of pointing out individuals would should be Darwin Award winners or runners up. Anyway without being long winded the 2006 winners are here . For those of you who have never heard of the awards here's a little blurb explaining further: "Named in honor of Charles Darwin, the Darwin Awards salute the improvement of the human genome by honoring those who accidentally remove themselves from it, thus ensuring that the next generation is one idiot smarter. Of necessity, the Awards are generally bestowed posthumously." Update: This kid deserves a Darwin award....I know I always try to plug-in electronics when I'm dripping wet having just come out of the pool :D DUH!

Ignoring the rather pathetic movie featuring "The Rock", DOOM's 13th Birthday was yesterday (11-Dec-2006). Honestly I'll admit I was never hooked on DOOM, rather QUAKE was my first addiction to FPS games. Quake, Quake CTF, and Quake II wasted many a day during my college career (though I'm no worse of for having played till my hands went pins-and-needles on a few occasions....at least not that I know of so far). Related linkage: DOOM 13th BDay on theRegister Doom @ IDSoftware.com

I don't know if any of you out there are regular reads of theRegister but I their BOFH column is priceless for anyone working in IT. Their most recent Episode really made me laugh this morning. Canadian Site

Darin lead me to this: What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. The Inland North   Philadelphia   The South   The West   The Northeast   Boston   North Central   What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz I've always told people I don't have an accent (not that accents are bad things), I just always thought I was pretty neutral. (I can't believe the quiz doesn't ask about milk [Milk, Melk, Malk......people really manage to mangle that word].

Well he didn't kill himself so he's not up for a Darwin Award , but he's pretty close. Get the details here .