Month: May 2006

If you’re going to rip someone off on eBay by selling them a broken laptop, make sure you wipe the hard disk. Ah, the common con artist held to ridicule… a classic web story.

I know I mentioned as recently as yesterday that I wouldn’t be writing anything here, but something has happened since to make me rethink that idea. I think of myself as a fairly tough guy; I keep a lot of things to myself without showing much emotion at all. Yet sometimes even people like me come across a story so sad, poignant and connected that we just can’t help but have a good cry about it. This moment came for me today at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It came as I read the story of Sadako Sasaki and her origami cranes. Continue reading “The Saddest Museum in the World”

Indeed not much has been going on here recently… the reason is that I’m on vacation in Asia. So far I’m really enjoying Japan generally and Kyoto in particular; tomorrow it’s Hiroshima, then Tokyo for four days, then the Taiwanese capital Taipei. Let’s face it, I’d rather go sight-seeing and picture-taking than staying in my hotel editing pictures and thinking of witty things to say, so this blog will return (for real!) in early June.

Oil industry think-tank puts out pro-CO2 TV ad. Don’t miss their next ad: “Cyanide: tastier than you think”.

I was thinking about this last night: the first PHP version of this site appeared just about 5 years ago. I’d been laid off by my former employer about a month previously, and had decided to use my free time for something constructive (for a change). That’s when I got into PHP, a hobby that took me the way of certification and, we’ll say, two and a half major updates containing significant functionality upgrades. Continue reading “5 years later…”

Is Karl Rove smoking crack? Maybe not, but anyone who actually believes his bullshit certainly is.

The US National Security Agency has a database listing all phone calls made since late 2001. And guess who was in charge of that program — the man picked by George W. Bush to be CIA director. If you think the warrantless eavesdropping thing was a big deal, the Bush Administration wants to tell you that “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

Finding it harder to flog their wares, Microsoft turns to intimidation and coercion to force companies into signing long-term open-ended consulting contracts. It’s apparently all part of a grand strategy too… as an open-source kind of guy I’m always amazed at the amount of crap companies will put up with from Microsoft. And for what, ultimately?

What’s worse than finding a worm in an apple? Drinking a barrel of rum with your buddies and finding a corpse at the bottom of the barrel. I’ll bet the rum had a certain je ne sais quoi extra compared to the stuff you buy in bottles!

Count me out. So, why is it that Canada’s census operations have been outsourced to an American merchant of death? Is there any way to ensure that data entered on census forms won’t be making its way straight to US government databases? There are just too many questions without answers.