When they discover the center of the universe, a lot of people will be disappointed to discover they are not it. -- Bernard Bailey Could Your CD Contain Corn? Sanyo uses vegetables to build an environmentally friendly disc. Microsoft backs e-mail controls Well something had to be done...will this do it? How NOT to install computer hardware For sale: Penthouse magazine Who ever thought that porn would be lacking in sales. Village invited to test cheap, clean nuclear power A Japanese corporation wants to thrust the Interior community of Galena into international limelight by donating a new, unconventional electricity-generating plant that would light and heat the Yukon River village pollution-free for 30 years. Click to enlarge Ziggy admits network flawed TELSTRA chief executive Ziggy Switkowski has admitted the company has not paid enough attention to its internet network, resulting in email chaos for BigPond users over recent weeks. Light Sails to Orbit NASA watches from the sidelines as Cosmos 1, the first solar sail, goes up SGI hopes NASA's Linux spend will boost results SGI's latest results edged closer to profitability, as it announced NASA had bought a Linux machine with 256 Itanium 2 processors and was planning to buy more The 'Real World' is Embracing Open Source More Traditionally dominated in the past by OEM vendors hawking off-shore CD-R drives and line printers for resale, COMDEX this year has shifted toward more of a software focus, including Open Source, says LinuxWorld senior editor James Turner wearing a different hat as a conference track chair. This one was from Funky Junk A Titan II ICBM being launched with a sattelite payload (More details) (C) Shouting Red Goanna Inc.

Who's Interested???

Terry Pratchett's CARPE JUGULUM
Friday, October 17, 2003
to Friday, October 31, 2003
8pm Tues to Sat - (10pm on Fri Oct 24) ~ $10 - $22

Terry Pratchett’s CARPE JUGULUM

OPENS FRIDAY 17 OCTOBER – 10 SHOWS ONLY!!!

Adapted for the stage by Stephen Briggs
Directed by Sally Daly

Mightily Oats has not picked a good time to be a priest. He thought he’d come to the mountain kingdom of Lancre for a simple little Christening. Now he’s caught up in a war between vampires and witches, and he’s not sure there is a right side.

There are the witches – young Agnes, who is really in two minds about everything; Magrat, who is trying to combine witchcraft and nappies; Nanny Ogg, who is far to knowing; and Granny Weatherwax, who is big trouble.

And the De Magpyrs are the sort of vampires that would have Count Dracula spinning in his grave: modern, forward-looking and no longer afraid of holy water, garlic, religious symbols or, indeed, anything else. They’ve got style and fancy waistcoats. They’re out of the casket and want a bite of the future.

Mightily Oats knows he has a prayer, but wishes he had an axe.

Season: Oct 17 to 31 / Tues – Sat at 8pm.
(Please note: there is no performance Saturday Oct 18)

Preview Oct 16 - $10
Discount Tuesdays only $10
Late Night Show Fri 24 Oct 10pm
Halloween Special ! 31 Oct – Show & Supper $22

Come & See Carpe Jugulum and receive a 10% Discount on any Science Fiction, Fantasy and Graphic Novels on presentation of your ticket at Borders bookstore (162 Albert St. Bne)


Bookings / Office 3369 2344

Stupid People

Sometimes (although, it shouldn't) the stupidity of people amazes me. That this, for example. It's from a conversation on a mailing list I belong to (a rpg list no less), and emerged from a 'debate' (more a stupidly pedantic arguing really) about whether the word Samaritan was appropriate for the world setting.

You might also be interested to note that the word "picnic" is rooted from the phrase "Pick A Nigger." This was where White Americans would "pic" a Black person to lynch and make this into a family gathering. There would be music and a "picnic." ("Nic" being the white acronym for "nigger.")

Okay...... I don't know how someone manages to get that definition from a word which has a French origin.... And this person honestly believed this because they read it on "black community website". Of course, if they'd just read the right web-site, or maybe even applied some common sense, they'd have seen right through this...

On another topic, here's a picture of some bad driving.

Anybody who watches three games of football in a row should be declared brain dead. -- Erma Bombeck "VOLNA-TC" ROCKET-SPACE SYSTEM BASED ON SSN-18 MISSILE FOR SOUNDING OF TROPICAL CYCLONES Now this is what cold-war tech should be used for...science. Warfare at the speed of light Kilowatt for kilogram, this is the world's most powerful solid-state laser. Its invisible beam drilled Yamamoto's inch-thick steel plate in two seconds. Add larger crystals and it will eat steel a mile or more away. Water sparks new power source A new way to generate electricity from water which could be used to power small electronic devices in the future has been developed by Canadian scientists. Microchip 'could do away with pills' Scientists in the United States have developed a new way of taking medicines which could improve the effectiveness of some treatments including HIV therapy. Regrow Your Own Broken heart? No problem. New liver? Coming right up. The road to regeneration starts here. NASA to Test Fire Most Powerful Shuttle Motor Sun Versus Linux: The x86 Smack-downSun has really shifted gears lately with regards to Solaris, SPARC, and x86. For many years, Sun seemed to relegate Solaris x86 to the status of red-headed stepchild, undeserving of attention, nurturing, and support. It furthered this perception when in January of 2002, Sun announced it would not release Solaris 9, the newest upcoming Solaris operating system, on the x86 platform. Solaris 9 was to be a (more lucrative) SPARC-only platform release Source of Worry for Microsoft With more than $32 billion in sales last year, Microsoft doesn't usually worry about losing one customer. But this one may be different. Leopard wanders into college A GUARD trapped a leopard today after it sneaked into one of India's most prestigious engineering colleges in Bombay, the seventh such tawny cat to be snared within a year in the complex. (C) Shouting Red Goanna Inc.

Review: Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne Final Titan 2 Carries Military Weather Satellite to Orbit The Titan 2 missiles were the former ICBM's for the United States. Since their wide-scale decommissioning their warheads have been removed and the missiles have been used as a cargo lift platform. The Most Widely Used Operating System in the World It's not Windows, Unix or Linux , but ITRON, a Japanese real-time kernel for small-scale embedded systems. ITRON runs on mobile phones , digital cameras, CD players and countless other electronic devices. Enterprise Unix Roundup: Solaris x86 Resurgent, Sun's Side of the Story Several weeks ago, we cocked a collective eyebrow at Sun. When executive VP Jonathan Schwartz said "we do not believe that Linux plays a role on the server. Period," we didn't have much of a choice. Linux vs. FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD Scalability Compared These benchmarks are the result of a scalable network programming research. The interest in this area is to see how scalable and fast network applications can be on standard PC hardware. Linux 2.4/2.6 is compared to BSDs. Read the accompanied PDF paper here. Moms Battle Genetic Engineering Full Size image A group of New Zealand mothers led by a former pop star have launched a provocative billboard campaign to protest their government's decision to allow agricultural genetic engineering. Open Source: The Whole Product Interesting article Open source is an easy choice for the Early Adopter customer: low cost, time to market, and extensibility offer significant business advantage. It's not such an easy choice for Pragmatists, however, as a single provider will never deliver the Whole Product. SCO's Brilliant Business Maneuver? "Who would trust [SCO] after the IBM suit?" IDC vice president Dan Kusnetzky said. "And they have threatened end-user customers with litigation. In effect, they have destroyed themselves as either a Unix or Linux supplier." Is Microsoft Behind SCO's $50 Million Cash Infusion? (C) Shouting Red Goanna Inc.

Coonballs - the website!

Some of you may recall that weird japanese ad that I think James started circulating in our little group. The one with Little Red Riding Hood and the horde of animals and the raccoon with really big testicles.

At the time, we all thought, 'what the fuck?'

Now, most of our questions have been answered.

God bless the Internet.

Says it all really...

120 Gigabytes, but probably only 115 Gibibytes

Tired of trying to figure out if a GB is 10^9 bytes, 2^30 bytes, or some combination thereof? Well, help resolve the confusion by using the right words for the binary versions.

giga = 10^9; gibi = 2^30
mega = 10^6; mebi = 2^20
kilo = 10^3; kibi = 2^10

(Oh and the headline? That's the size of the new harddrive I'm installing this weekend)

This is just f*cked up

Again - just check this site out. This is a little bit of weird territory we're enterin' here...

Mini-Kiss!!!

This is scary. I wonder if any of them are in danger of crushing Stonehenge...

First Sign of Impending Stellar Catastrophe Chinese Astronaut Marvels Over Space Trip Damaged Shuttle to Dock at Space Station Under New Plan AMD sets date for son of Opteron Although Weber declined to provide technical details about the K9, processors that are based on the architecture will likely be capable of containing multiple chip cores--the "brain" of the chip--and of running one or more application threads. Mac Supercomputer: Fast, Cheap The brand new "Big Mac" supercomputer at Virginia Tech could be the second most powerful supercomputer on the planet, according to preliminary numbers. Third serious radioactive spill at mine Seaweed possible cancer treatment I, Cringely: No Feather in Our CAPPS: How We Are About to Spend a Lot of Money and (Again) Alienate Our Allies by Building a Computer System That Invades Privacy and Does Nothing to Make Us More Secure Windows: More Flawed Than Ever Open Source Everywhere Software is just the beginning … open source is doing for mass innovation what the assembly line did for mass production. Get ready for the era when collaboration replaces the corporation. But software is just the beginning. Open source has spread to other disciplines, from the hard sciences to the liberal arts. Biologists have embraced open source methods in genomics and informatics, building massive databases to genetically sequence E. coli, yeast, and other workhorses of lab research. NASA has adopted open source principles as part of its Mars mission, calling on volunteer "clickworkers" to identify millions of craters and help draw a map of the Red Planet. Jaco Strauss' Tech Support Excuse Generator For EG: Redundant, bidirectional comms desynchronisation Intermittant, deprecated precondition error Undiagnosable, fatal metadata desynchronisation Not time to shut Windows yet SCO backs off Linux invoice plan The SCO Group has backed off a plan to send invoices to corporate users in order to prod them into buying licenses for their use of Linux, an operating system the company argues violates its Unix intellectual property. Linux a go, SCO or no (C) Shouting Red Goanna Inc.

heh

I love Penny Arcade.

Especially For Grant

Check it out.

I rather like The Beer Collection Turn That PC Into a Supercomputer A small chip-design firm will unveil a new processor Tuesday it says will transform ordinary desktop PCs and laptops into supercomputers. China Launches Its First Piloted Spaceflight Angle-Grinder Man - Wheel-clamp Superhero / Vigilante This is the Web-Site of Angle-Grinder Man, the world's first wheel-clamp and speed camera vigilante cum subversive superhero philanthropist entertainer type personage. Dogs off Victorian menus (C) Shouting Red Goanna Inc.

...Oh Dear

THINGS & BITS

And now for something completely different China scraps live TV space plan

Top 10 Questions: China's March to Space
I wonder if one of the questions is: "What odds do you give that the rocket will explode or crash on a village?"

Dog in court over Nazi salute

Anna Kauzaboner has retired
Now middle-aged loners will have nothing to do in tennis season

Why Mozilla matters

Getting real about SCO

...so here’s my point of view on the whole mess: yawn

I Come Bearing News

Fear not to evils of Hollywood. For every Constantinemobile that crops up, there are always gems of great ideas (woohoo - more Irish ganster shooting sprees!!!)

Besides, even in the darkest of hours, there is always the prospect of New Who!!!

Mwaaa hahaha

STUFF FOR TODAY
The Oracle of Bacon
This is nuts. and it is weirdly funny.

I, Cringely I'm With Stupid:
How Having Friends Might Be the Key to Both Privacy and Identity

Final test for China's astronauts
Three astronauts short-listed to be China's first man in space have arrived at the launch site in the remote Gobi Desert, state media has said.

Why your boss is a hack

Shaheen is a computer tutor to corporate big shots, giving pointers in the fine arts of opening e-mail attachments, navigating Excel spreadsheets and performing other PC chores the executives’ minions probably can do in their sleep.

China unveils mammoth grid project
The Ministry of Education in China hopes to foster tighter collaboration within academia by using grid technology, and has sought the help of computing giant IBM.

Samba beats Windows
Samba 3 runs rings around Windows Server 2003 in file serving performance

Dear. God. No.

Once again, Hollywood screws the pooch.

Maybe Hollywood really is the Devil, and this is just its way of getting revenge on John Constantine, after all.

Whoah...

THE GREEN BRIDGE
**** TRANSMISSION INITIATED ****

Isn't the Goodwillbridge wonderful? Doesn't it get a lot of use. When I drive past it every day I see 4, maybe 5 people use it. WOW! what a great way to take $30 Million and FUCK IT AWAY. Need I mention Health? Education? Police? These are the orgaisations that could put that $30Million to a more productive use. Why build a fucking bridge? So the lazy bastards don't have to walk all the way to the Victoria Bridge? If the powers-that-be were smart thery would have added a bus route that people need to pay a little bit for to use. This would at least help pay for itself. The Blowout Goodwill Bridge will only cost us money.

Now they want to put in a foot, cycle and bus bridge to UQ that is going to cost $50 million.

FUCKING WHY? There is already a shit load of public transport that goes to UQ! The governments are not going to make money from it. There is already a fucking ferry on that side! and since when did any self-respecting uni student give half a flying fuck about getting to a lecture on time!

Ah, but you might say that busses can use it to cut travel times accross the river to service areas such as St Lucia, Towoong Indooroopilly and the like. WRONG. The following is a portion of an article from The Courier Mail:

Approval was granted on the condition that buses using the bridge would not travel through the campus and a guarantee that the city's next river crossing would never be opened to general traffic.

Its a good thing that the governments are doing things that will waste a fuck load of time, effort and money...
...and DONT get me started on that FUCKING STADIUM!

You have just been reading another Brain Fart from Grant
****TRANSMISSION TERMINATED****

Man comes 'back to life' at burial

D'OH, Well at least I'm not Poof-boy Crusher

DUDE!

Whooo!

CNN.com - Bubbly milk? Schools are buying - Sep. 1, 2003

Ghettopoly game maker faces lawsuit - where do I get a copy of this game?

Which Fantasy/SciFi Character Are You?

Some amusing spam I just got...

The spam consisted of two images and a little bit of writing. The first little bit read, "[username] I look like hell."

I deleted it before the images could load. With a leadup like that, can you blame me? Learn to sell yourself, spammer! You're already a whore, so be a good one!

I'm sure there is a special circle of Hell for those who give advice to spammers on blogs. I've just joined the ranks. Huzzah!

STUFF

VAXbar shows a VAX 11/780 turned into a bar, with schematics.

SCO's case gets clearer
SGI's code-comparison tactic sheds some light on SCO's case against Linux vendors.

ACCC seeks details from SCO over Vic group's complaint
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has asked the SCO Group to provide information regarding complaints filed with it, about SCO's IP claims and statements regarding the need for commercial Linux users to obtain a Unix licence, according to the company's latest quarterly filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

NEWS.com.au | Japan firm denies organising orgy (October 9, 2003) - is this why Lance moved to China?.....

Kick-Arse Democracy

Total recall: Arnie grabs victory (October 8, 2003) - of course we've seen the news coverage use every single movie pun in announcing Ahnuld's victory. I'm just wondering if we'll get to see the Predator team-up between California's new Governor and the former Minesota Governor...

THE NERD NEWS
Simple brush may solve shuttle problem

Physicists Win Nobel for Explaining Superconductivity, Superfluidity

What's the "Scroll Lock" key on my computer for?

Microsoft toys with open source

STUFF
Top 50 Agenda Setters

1. Steve Jobs
2. Bill Gates
3. Greg Dyke
4. Hu Jintao
5. Linus Torvalds

Vivendi's 'Half Life II' code stolen
Firm delays video game's release after hacker breaks into e-mail, steals a third of source code.

New Photos of 'Astounding' Mars

Has Sun Shot Itself in the Foot Once Too Often?
Sun's troubles are coming home to roost, thanks to McNealy's failure to give up Solaris on SPARC and embrace Linux on Intel.

-Digital Blasphemy- Rocks

Cameron Diaz Has Something To Tell You

THIS. IS. STUPID.

IS IT MOVING OR NOT?

Excitement Plus

That's right. The magic of the Internet has now brought you the opportunity to watch paint dry from the comfort of your very own home.

Wow.

I think I can hear my brain.

STUFF FOR TODAY
Case modding lunacy

China to send lunar mission in 3 years

Tight Test Schedule Ahead For Missile Defense Shield

Hell Yeah:

Mink eat each other after animal rights break-in

Little Miss Springfield | If They Mated - some rather disturbing concepts of Simpsons characters here....

idleworm: sci-fi - trek wars! kirk vs. picard - Must Play This!

Johnny Cash Had Something To Tell You

Another Random Newsgroup Quote

This cropped up on alt.callahans - I'm quoting from this post by Dan Goodman, just so no-one thinks I'm stealing this.

"...Years ago, I looked in at a Scottish politics
newsgroup. I wanted to see how Scots discussed politics.

What I found was Canadians talking about Australian gun laws."

Aaah, Usenet.

Further to Adam's Bomb Plans

Taken from alt.books.tom-clancy

Or. put it another way. If Al-Qeada had a nuke, would they be willing to spend approximately 10% of their entire net worth in order to nuke a US city? My guess is yes.

Eric Pinnell

***************************

The trick is getting one. The Russians are not that dumb with nuclear weapons.
They treat political instruments with care. Then you have to make it work.
Harder than people think. In the 1970s, the United States Government did
something amazingly intelligent (for them). They gave the Soviets American PAL
(permissible action link—the safety system for a nuke) technology on the
theory that their nuclear weapons should be as safe as ours. They’re probably
big and clunky by out standards, but they probably work if you can get past the
PAL. That’s the hard part.

A friend who knows about these gadgets once told me that to defeat one you’d
better be very smart and very lucky. Oh, and after you fail the third time, the
weapon completely deactivates, and must be remanufactured. It’s designed to
kill tamperers. Not sure how, but several possibilities offer themselves. Feel
free to speculate.

In 1985 I was at a book-signing in San Francisco. Gary Larson was there (cool
guy—just the way you’d expect him to be), along with Tim Conway, and a few
other interesting people, like Douglas Adams of “Hitchhiker” fame, may the
Lord rest his soul.

Also there was the late Harry Blackstone, Jr., the magician. In the course of
our conversation I learned he had a “Q” clearance. Nuclear weapons
technology. In another uncharacteristically smart move, the government must
have decided to have him back-check the PALs. (I inferred this. He didn’t say
why he had the Q-card.) Smart move. At the book store he faked me out of my
jockstrap with some card tricks (I mean, DAMN, he was an artist!), and was an
impressive chap. He cracked locks and such for a living, but I bet he
couldn’t crack a PAL either. Or if he did, they fixed the goof.

TC

Something else for Adam to overcome as part of his nefarious plans. (BTW - the TC is Tom Clancy himself)

Best Error Page Ever! after maybe this one. Of course, this one is just scary.

Bum Wines - for those of you planning a life on the streets.

Now Adam can probably build this

This guy is also nuts about paintball guns

heh

Paul is dead (because THE KING IS NAKED!)

Dilbert.com - Weasel Awards

TIME.com: Life Beyond The Far Side -- Oct. 06, 2003

THIS IS NOT GOOD

Hollywood - thy name is Moron

Okay - one of the current trends in Hollywood is to buy the rights to comic book characters and translate them to the big screen. You see there can be alot of money in it for the studios if they do this right (see Spiderman, X2, etc) if they do it right - not so much money if the screw it up (see Bulletproof Monk, Steel, etc). If you remember all the way back to Batman Returns, you'll remember that probably the best bit of the film was Michelle Pfieffer's portrayal of Catwoman. Heck - what heterosexual male doesn't like seeing a good-looking girl parade around in pvc (witness the success of Underworld for proof of that). Naturally the bean counters at Warner Brothers think "Hey - here's a good idea - let's do a spin-off movie staring Catwoman". So development gets underway.

Fast foreward to today and it appears that shooting is finally underway on the Catwoman movie. Keep in mind it's over 10 years since Catwoman last appeared on screen. So what's the storyline for this movie? Is it a continuation of the Selina Kyle story? Is is based upon the recently relaunched and critically acclaimed Catwoman comic book? Guess what - it's none of the above. This is the supposed storyline - pinched from Dark Horizons

"Patience Price, a mild mannered graphic artist, is murdered in order to keep her silent about an accidental discovery she made. An ancient myth is played out, when an Egyptian Mao cat, indebted to Patience for saving her it's own life, breathes life back into the young woman. Patience is reborn with an independent attitude, carefree behavior and the heightened senses of a cat. Now she must investigate the circumstances behind her murder and learn to accept both parts of herself"

Umm.... Hello??? WTF is this shit? Would you believe that someone probably got paid a high six figure salary to come up with this steaming pile of tripe. But then again - if you think that's bad - wait till you check out the costume she's wearing.
This is Catwoman - as portrayed by Michelle Pfieffer.

This is Catwoman - as drawn in the current book series.

And this is Catwoman, as portrayed by Oscar-winning actress and thespian super-star Halle Berry.

I believe the words you are looking for are What The F@ck. Everyone knows that if you want to fight crime the best way to protect yourself is to run around wearing a bra and ripped pleather pants.....

Ahh Hollywood - no matter how much you polish it, a turd is still a turd. A bad movie is still a bad movie. And dumbshit stupid ideas like this will still continue to get funding...

Who Likes NASCAR?

Nerve.com - The Unsexy List by the Nerve staff

Ten Technologies That Deserve to Die By Bruce Sterling - an interesting read.

DVD Debate.com - Borg Mega-CubeAt a rrp of £449.99, this is scary.

MY KIND OF SCIENTIST!
Low IQs 'shouldn't have children'

A DANISH academic has sparked an uproar by calling for state measures to encourage childbearing among intelligent people but to dissuade those with low intellectual ability

A New Way To Annoy Your Radio Operator

I've been working at comms for about a year now. In that time, I've been a radio operator a fair bit, and there are a few things that cars do pretty regularly that annoy pretty much everyone. These include:

Not supplying enough of your callsign. Police cars in Brisbane have callsigns that basically consist of a letter followed by three numbers. So far, so good. However, out on the road the cars will often drop the letter in front of their callsign. There is one radio area in Brisbane where this is almost understandable - the South Brisbane area, where virtually all crews will have 'S' in front of their number. This is well and good. Every other radio area, though, the operator is dealing with at least two prefixes. In some channels, it's dodgy-but-workable to leave the letter off - the numbers can be distributed such that it's clear who's from where even without the letter. But this doesn't work for the Wynnum or Oxley channels, since there's duplication of numbers - but that doesn't stop 'em from dropping that letter. It can be just plain annoying to have to play radio chasey with someone just to find out who the fuck they are and what the fuck they think they're doing.

Expecting comms to be psychic. We don't know everything. We can't know everything. And we sure as hell can't know what a car's doing if that car doesn't tell us what they're doing. I've had cars ask for units to help them "at our location" - without bothering to let us know what that location is. If they're in trouble, they better stay clear long enough to tell us where they are or they're not getting any help.

Closely related is Constantly booking back on. It's nice for a car to let comms know when they're back on from doing something, to let us know that they're available if they're needed. What gets annoying is when the only thing we hear from a unit is that they're booking back on. That way, we know they were doing something - just not what, or where.

And then the catchall of Bitching and moaning. Yes, sometimes things crop up that will drag people away from their meal breaks, or what have you. We don't invent these things. If a car is the only one available, even if they're heading off for a bite to eat, when someone starts walking down the street with a gun, we can't afford to wait for them to fill their bellies. Much as we'd like to. We're not heartless up at comms, and we do feel for the crews who get unjustly flogged because of the amount of shit that's going down. If a crew bitches a lot, though, they give us a headache - and will often get the pick of the shittier jobs if comco's feeling vindictive.

However, I was amazed to discover something a crew did last night, that shitted me up the wall, that I hadn't actually encountered before. This was Never giving a straight answer. This crew was at the scene of a crime - what crime isn't important, just that it was one. The offenders were possibly still in the area. Some crews from a slightly different division offered to help. So it kind of ran like this (callsigns changed to protect the guilty)

Helper: VKR, does Blathermouth need assistance at that unspecified crime?
Me: I don't know - Blathermouth? Helper's wondering if you needed some help there.
Blathermouth: Well, we kind of turned up, and we thought we saw someone there, but they weren't there when we got in, but we think they might still be around somewhere. We're checking around at the moment.
Me: So... do you need Helper?

... that's right, they were asked a yes or no question, and they got it wrong. And it wasn't the last time they pulled it.

This may have been the first shift I've worked on both the phones and the radio where the radio has been more head-beatingly frustrating than the phones. And given that even morons can dial 000, that's saying something.