Month: May 2005

Your objective is simple: World Domination.

Your motive is a little bit more complex: Love (Yes, it works)

Stage One

To begin your plan, you must first traumatize a news reporter. This will cause the world to swallow nervously, confused by your arrival. Who is this evil genius? Where did they come from? And why do they look so good wearing the skin of another human?

Stage Two

Next, you must steal the Town’s Water Supply. This will all be done from a obsidian citadel, a mysterious place of unrivaled dark glory. Upon seeing this, the world will weep uncontrollably, as countless hordes of evil clowns hasten to do your every bidding.

Stage Three

Finally, you must reveal to the world your armies of destruction, bringing about an end to sanity. Your name shall become synonymous with dear god no, and no man will ever again dare steal your woman. Everyone will bow before your cunning intelligence, and the world will have no choice but to give you control of the planet.

Interested in an evil plan of your own? Get yours here.

Tags: humour

The beep has been found at last.

It was quite anticlimatic having read through the 1645 previous posts, I was hoping it was something hidden within the walls. At least reading through them all was a better way to spend a few hours than watching the new series of Big Brother.

I really don’t know how bigcb37 could put up with this for almost a year.

Tags: beep

This discussion on a Tivo Community Forum is making the rounds on the internet but I thought I might as well jump on the bandwagon also.

This poor guy has been suffering with a mytserious intermittent beep that emanates from somewhere in his house for over a year now. He writes that it is definitely not any of the smoke alarms as he has disconnected and tested them all and that the beep remained even when his neighbourhood suffered a power cut.

As mysterious as the beep is the number of people replying who must have missed those crucial pieces of information in his description of his problem as quite a number are suggesting it must be one of his smoke alarms or suggest that he trip the circuit breakers one by one to track down the source of the beep.

Some people have even offered to go to his house in order to help him track down the beep and eliminate it.

Tags: beep

Mindjack, the digital culture webzine, examines the impact of BitTorrent on TV shows and asks whether this distribution model should be embraced by the television companies.

Part one: Hyperdistribution

Part two: The new laws of Television

Post-Script: The Swarm Manifesto

Tags: bittorrent, copyright, TV

Philippine group protests country’s electronic surveillance plans

EFF Obtains Draft PATRIOT Bill

Alan Moore slams V for Vendetta movie, pulls LoEG from DC Comics

Speccy nostalgia 48k FTW.

Tags: comics, computing, surveillance

Halo 2 and the Criminal Mind
The story of how a nice family man was corrupted by the video game Halo 2 and turned into a sociopathic clan leader within a single day.

“Watch the language around the boys, dear.” She’s gesturing to John’s two toddlers, now playing on the living room floor. The oldest is opening a recent birthday gift, a plastic playset in a box marked with a cartoon man with a ponytail and a goatee. The words Brett The Communal Farmer are marked in pink above his head, below it says And His Life Partner, Tim! There is not a toy gun or G.I. Joe to be found in the house.

“I’m not gonna censor myself. Dave’s doin’ an article on the mind of the average gamer and I can’t filter my thoughts. And my first unfiltered thought is that Halo 2 be da filthy.”

This early exchange with the wife didn’t bode well for the future, as we can see in this later episode.

She examines the TV, watching John stride up behind an unsuspecting opponent and blow holes in his back.

“Wait a second,” she said. “Why did you kill that guy? Isn’t he another human?”

John shook his head in frustration. “He’s wearing blue armor.”

“So… the guys in blue armor were also born evil?”

“Honey, if you would take a moment to think before you talk, you’d see that the uniform means he’s on the other side. It’s a game. Like football.”

“But… you’re blowing their guts out. So, like, in the Halo universe are you saying that it’s a normal human pasttime to-“

“-I’m trying to play here! Don’t make me get Ghraib on your ass!”

“If you talk to me like that again, I’ll never let you touch my…” she trails off into stricken silence. “John, what the hell are you doing?”

What John’s wife had just observed was the Halo custom known as “tea bagging.” This is a sort of celebration where the victor squats over the vanquished’s face to simulate dipping his testicles into the cold, dead, open mouth of the corpse much in the same way one would dip a teabag into a cup of hot water.

The article was written by David Wong and John Cheese.

John Cheese? Wasn’t that the former name of John Cleese before he changed his surname?

Tags: games

It was the Queen’s Speech today in which she outlined what her government would be doing in this parliament.

Tony Blair has pledged to create a “culture of respect” as he put moves to tackle crime and disorder at the heart of his third term agenda.

Public service reform also figured strongly in the Queen’s Speech, setting out the government’s new programme.

A total of 44 bills and six draft bills are in the 2005 Queen’s Speech – ensuring a packed legislative schedule in the parliamentary session that follows the general election.

The 44 bills for Parliament to debate by November 2006 included ID cards and laws against religious hatred.

The Conservatives say Labour has copied much of their agenda. The Lib Dems say Mr Blair has not listened to voters.

BBC News: Queen’s Speech at-a-glance or in full.

As outlined in the speech the government has not yet given up on it’s planned National ID card scheme.

Controversial plans to introduce a compulsory identity card scheme have been unveiled in the Queen’s Speech.

The cards, which had to be dropped ahead of the election, will be linked to a National Identity Register holding information on all UK residents.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke said there had been “technical” changes to the new bill to take account of previous objections to the plans.

The Lib Dems say the plans could be defeated with Tory and Labour support.

I really wonder why they insist on pursuing this ill-conceived plan that will be both costly and inefficient, and will certainly not provide increased national security.

Further reading:
• My analysis of the scheme.
• The text of the Identity Cards Bill
• NO2ID NewsBlog

Tags: ID cards, politics, security

An abandoned Ministry of Defence facility that my father used to work at about 25 years ago. They were I believe the computer services department of the MOD and had a computer the size of a house.

The entirety of this set of photos is viewable at Flickr.com.

Tags: photography

I watched the great war movie The Dambusters again this weekend as part of Channel 4’s 100 Greatest War Films Weekend and was a bit shocked to learn that they had named their dog Nigger and that it was the codeword to be used on the mission for a successful breach of the Moehne Dam after the dog.

Nigger, a black Labrador Retriever who gave his name as the codename for the Dam Busters mission in World War II. (He was given the name solely because he was black, but it is usually edited out of modern versions of the film about the mission.)
This text licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article “List of historical dogs”.

Such were the innocent times of the 40s when heroic British pilots could name their pets with derogatory terms for other races.

Tags: movies, World War II

Richard Feynman wrote letters to all kinds of people. Here are some of them.
This is particularly beautiful.

On loss

Arline Feynman died on June 16, 1945. The paper on which this letter was written is well worn, and it appears as though he reread it often.

To Arline Feynman, October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart … It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing. But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and what I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector.

Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures. When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried.

Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want to stand there.

I’ll bet that you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls … and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you. I love my wife. My wife is dead,

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.

Tags: love, Richard Feynman