Silicon Asylum

A colleague of mine sent this along yesterday: Are you a computer security professional? It's a very accurate description of me and basically everyone I work with directly, kind of scary that it's so close actually.

I came across a neat little screencast that covers a bunch of the new features in Firefox (about 4 mins long). If you're a fan and haven't installed a beta or release candidate you might wanna check it out. Maybe even if you have installed the beta you'll wanna check it out as it can give you some tips that you may not know.

* Hancock . Will smith, dysfunctional comic book superhero movie. Just caught a commercial for this one last night while watching TV, looks pretty good.

As some of you may know I do work involving IT Security for a living. To make my life easy I often use BackTrack . BackTrack is a Linux LiveCD that includes a whole load of IT Security tools (nmap, kismet, nikto...100s of tools). As with many online communities these days they offer forums for their users to ask questions etc. What amazes me is the sheer idiocy of some of the people we get on the forums. I can completely understand that lots of people want to been a l33t h4x0rs. But SERIOUSLY...WTF PEOPLE! For every good post (someone with a decent technical question or someone that wants to share something cool) there are 20 posts from truly clueless individuals, like: "If i Don`t have any clients connected to my wep ...." WTF are people doing trying to crack WEP and "test" Wireless Access Points, if they don't even know how the freaking things work.....actually strike that not how they work but just the basics of the terminology surrounding the thing. You d...

Looks like I missed some notable ones: * X-Files 2: I Want to Believe . (Downloadable trailers here and other info here .) * Journey to the Cener of the Earth . Based on the Jules Verne classic.

Note: I've linked to Apple's trailers, the links are likely to become invalid over time. Just google the movie names and you'll find the official sites. * Wanted This one was completely unknown to me until this morning. Angelina Jolie & Morgan Freeman in an awesome Mr. & Mrs. Smith meets Transporter kinda flic. * Mongol . The Genghis Khan story. * Hulk . * Indiana Jones - Kingdom of the Crystal Skull . * Hellboy 2 - The Golden Army . * IronMan . Starts tonight (2 May 2008). * Bangkok Dangerous . Nicholas Cage plays an assassin in Thailand. * Get Smart . Action comedy remake of the classic series with Maxwell Smart and Agent 99. * WALL*E . Pixar's next, about a little lonely robot. * The Spiderwick Chronicles . I just found this on Apple's site, however it says Feb 2008 and I don't recall seeing it in previews or commercials. The official site says DVD June 24. * Batman - The Dark Knight .

http://www.portfolio.com/interactive-features/2007/06/salary_comparison It loads a flash animation...move the slider left/right. Gist: 1970 - CEOs made 28 times more than average workers. 2005 - CEOs made 465 times more than average workers. Gouge!

Homonyms are words that are similar, but have different meanings. Examples of homonyms include: two/to/too, accept/except, and there/their/they're. All of which I have no problem with. The one that always catches me is affect/effect. I've tried to google up some simple rules but haven't had much luck. According to YourDictionary.com there are 5 rules for their use. Including 2. It is appropriate to use the word "effect" if one of these words is used immediately before the word: into, no, take, the, any, an, or and. As if I'm ever going to remember that (along with 4 others) while I'm writing a document. Some people say it's simple. That "affect" should deal with influence while "effect" should deal with result or causality. But to me that doesn't clarify it sufficiently, sometimes something can be interpreted as both resultant and causal. For example, I had to send an email this morning with the following line: Not to mention ...

I'm a big fan of Numb3rs which is usually on Friday nights, the good news is it's now back with new episodes (post-writers guild strike). It looks like CBS has put together a spoof on Apple's PC vs. Mac commercials. I found it kinda amusing so I thought I'd post it.

Found this great collection online today and thought I'd pass it along. Freaky Light Graffiti Gonna have to play with this concept a little over the summer with my new DSLR.

I've NEVER seen anything like this before. You know you goto parties and there's always an annoying person that has to make their crystal wine cup sing but that's just completely annoying and ear breaking compared to this. It's safe for work. Just watch it. You'll need headphones. Crazy Crystal Glass Music Making

I found this amusing so I thought I'd pass it along. Gallery of trees "eating" things , you know if you leave something on/against a tree long enough the tree will claim it as it's very own. I really liked the motorbike and Christmas light pics. The bike doesn't loot that old but it's leaning against one of those crazy fast growing tropical trees.

For anyone geeky enough to care, NOAA is reporting that Solar Cycle 24 has begun (as of Jan 4th). This means that solar activity (storms, flares, wind etc.) is now on the up-swing. The solar activity maximum is expected around 2011/2012. For anyone that doesn't know solar storms can seriously mess with our little planet by disrupting satellite communications, power grids ( MTL 1989 ), etc. For all the latest greatest on astronomical events which might affect us check out spaceweather.com .

Well it's a New Year so I'm going to start with a new rant. I hate the forward button, I understand it's place in the evolution of email etc. but it seems that the only time I hear from certain relatives is when they're taken in by a stupid forward/chain email they got. This time of year there seems to be a reoccurring one suggesting that people should refrain from purchasing gas on a particular day. You know the email, I'm sure you've seen it. Basically it states that if everyone refuses to buy gas on a certain date it will cost the oil/gas companies so many 10s of millions to billions of dollars. Here's a few reasons why these forwards/chain mails are complete stupidity. The calculations are always wrong. 1) Yes, there are ~33.3million Canadians, but guess what? NOT ALL OF THEM DRIVE. Even if we assume the entire population between 15 and 64 drives that's only ~23million. Now what happens to that ~23million if we remove say 10% for public transit, 10% ...

http://www.dragonmount.com/News/?p=326 "Tor Books has announced that Brandon Sanderson has been selected to complete A MEMORY OF LIGHT , the final novel in the Wheel of Time saga."

In a Past Life... You Were: A Kind Priest. Where You Lived: Turkey. How You Died: Killed in Battle. Who Were You In a Past Life? Wow, I was a priest? and a kind one at that. Are there many mean (or unkind) priests around?

Looks like various forces in the industry are trying to get USB 3.0 "SuperSpeed" out next year. @ 4.7Gb/s it will be 10x faster than today's 480 Mb/s. http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2007/11/29/intel_seeks_usb_3_contribs/ I wonder if Apple et al are working on Firewire 4000?

I recently came across this article Firefox Homepage JavaScript Execution , which asks the question: "how often do you click on the Homepage button?" To which I think to myself, "as often as I need to visit about:blank....ie: never." How often do other people use the Home button? Personally I always found it kind of useless.

Will wonders never cease, eh? Reading through some comments on Bad Astronomy BLOG I came across this . "11 kilopicoseconds as Earth’s escape velocity makes no sense. http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/correct.htm" At first I didn't understand what the commenter was talking about. "kilopicoseconds, wtf" I thought to myself. After reading the colostate URL info it struck me, Phil had written "11 kps" in his blog. "The symbol for a compound unit that is a quotient of two units is indicated by a solidus or by a negative exponent. * RIGHT: km/h or km·h-1 (for kilometers per hour) * WRONG: kmph or kph (do not use p as a symbol for "per".) * BUT: It is correct to say or write "kilometers per hour"." I know lots of people that use p as "per" but now I know better. I'll stick with the "/" in the future.

The green sign above says it's an Exit (even Green for GO!!!!). The signs to the left say 1st floor stairwell & "-> Exit this floor". The sign on the door says "Not an Exit". WTF? In case of fire, get stuck in logic loop, burn, die....GAH!