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TOP 12 THINGS LIKELY TO BE OVERHEARD IF YOU HAD A KLINGON PROGRAMMER

12. "Specifications are for the weak and timid!"

11. "This machine is a piece of GAGH! I need dual Pentium processors if I am to do battle with this code!"

10. "You cannot really appreciate Dilbert unless you've read it in the original Klingon."

9. "Indentation?! -- I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!"

8. "What is this talk of 'release'? Klingons do not make software 'releases.' Our software 'escapes' leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake."

7. "Klingon function calls do not have 'parameters' -- they have 'arguments' -- and they ALWAYS WIN THEM."

6. "Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak."

5. "I have challenged the entire quality assurance team to a Bat-Leth contest. They will not concern us again."

4. "A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment his code!"

3. "By filing this PTR you have challenged the honor of my family. Prepare to die!"

2. "You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!"

1. "Our users will know fear and cower before our software. Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!"

Roz and I put up a new website yesterday: My Cat Is Silly.

It's a copy of Stuff On My Cat right down to using the same CMS they are - NucleusCMS.

It took us about an hour to put it up from start to finish.

If you have silly cat pictures, email them to: mycatissilly1@gmail.com

From BoingBoing:

The Senate Commerce Committee's hearings on the "Broadcast Flag" and "Audio Flag" proposals have been derailed because senators on the committee now use technologies that would be threatened by the flags.
...

But in yesterday's Commerce hearings, two Senators altered the course of events. First MIT grad John Sununu of New Hampshire said that government mandates "always restrict innovation" and then 82-year-old Ted Stevens of Alaska talked about the iPod he'd gotten for Christmas and put the RIAA's Mitch Bainwol on the spot about whether his proposal would break Stevens' ability to move digital radio programs to his iPod and listen to them in the most convenient way (it would).

Read all the story here.

Look at these beautiful radio controlled steam powered things!

Yes, steam powered!

The steam powered centipede is teh bomb!

And over at Plan59 they have plenty of it!

Plan59.com is a family-friendly Web site dedicated to the commercial art of mid-century America. Although it's more like a museum than a store, we do provide illustrations to corporate as well as nonprofit clients for print, promotional, educational and Web use.

Yummy....

Also Sci Fi and other stuff! From the Lower Hudson Valley Paper Model Club's gift shop.

Highlights include:

• A working hydraulic crane!
  
• A beautiful Tie fighter!
  
• The bridge of the original Enterprise!
  
• The Flying Sub!
  
• A 4 foot tall Saturn V rocket!
  
• A Mercury Capsule!
  
  

Amazing and FREE! I need more spare time...

I think I know what I'll be doing during the Olympics!

What are they thinking? The original version was more than two hours of suckage.

Roger Ebert gave it one star and says:

"It's like a dream," my friend from Hollywood was explaining. "It doesn't make any sense, and the special effects are straight from the dime store but if you give up trying to understand it, and just sit back and let it wash around in your mind, it's not bad." That was not exactly a rave review for a movie that someone paid $40 million to make, but it put me into a receptive frame of mind for DUNE, the epic based on the novels by Frank Herbert. I was even willing to forgive the special effects for not being great; after all, in an era when George Lucas's STAR WARS has turned movies into high tech, why not a film that looks like a throwback to FLASH GORDON. It might be kind of fun.

It took DUNE about nine minutes to completely strip me of my anticipation. This movie is a real mess, an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time. Even the color is no good; everything is seen through a sort of dusty yellow filter, as if the film was left out in the sun too long. Yes, you might say, but the action is, after all, on a desert planet where there isn't a drop of water, and there's sand everywhere. David Lean solved that problem in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA, where he made the desert look beautiful and mysterious, not shabby and drab.

Link to the Roger Ebert review.
Link to the Extended Edition site.

Of course, I couldn't even read the books...

The Motion Picture Assn. of America, the leader in the global fight against movie piracy, is being accused of unlawfully making a bootleg copy of a documentary that takes a critical look at the MPAA's film ratings system.

The MPAA admitted Monday that it had duplicated "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" without the filmmaker's permission after director Kirby Dick submitted his movie in November for an MPAA rating. The Hollywood trade organization said that it did not break copyright law, insisting that the dispute is part of a Dick-orchestrated "publicity stunt" to boost the film's profile.

And then they start making excuses...

The filmmaker said that when he asked MPAA lawyer Greg Goeckner what right his organization had to make the copy, Goeckner told him that Dick and his crew had potentially invaded the privacy of the MPAA's movie raters.

"We made a copy of Kirby's movie because it had implications for our employees," said Kori Bernards, the MPAA's vice president for corporate communications. She said Dick spied on the members of the MPAA's Classification and Rating Administration, including going through their garbage and following them as they drove their children to school.

"We were concerned about the raters and their families," Bernards said. She said the MPAA's copy of "This Film Is Not Yet Rated" is "locked away," and is not being copied or distributed.

The standard the MPAA is using for itself appears to be at odds with what the organization sets out for others: "Manufacturing, selling, distributing or making copies of motion pictures without the consent of the copyright owners is illegal," the MPAA's website says. "Movie pirates are thieves, plain and simple…. ALL forms of piracy are illegal and carry serious legal consequences."

So, because the film maker may have invaded the privacy of their raters, they feel it's okay to make illegal copies of his movie?

Can you say double-standard? I knew you could...

Read the rest of the story here.

I heard this quote from Karl Rove on NPR the other day and it pissed me off so much that I started yelling "Fuck You!" at the radio.

Karl Rove said:

"Republicans have a post-9/11 view of the world. And Democrats have a pre-9/11 view of the world. That doesn't make them unpatriotic, not at all. But it does make them wrong — deeply and profoundly and consistently wrong."

I'm getting pretty damn tired of the fucking Republicans using 9/11 all the god damned time.

The Patriot act. The illegal wiretaps. The shitty airport security. The war in Iraq. It all goes back to 9/11.

And do I feel any safer? No. I'm more scared of my government than I am of the terrorists.

The Republicans are still using 9/11 to push their agenda down the throat of the American people and I'm getting pretty tired of it.

Alberto Gonzales spoke before law students at Georgetown today, justifying illegal, unauthorized surveilance of US citizens, but during the course of his speech the students in class did something pretty ballsy and brave. They got up from their seats and turned their backs to him.

They also held up a sheet with the words "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither" on it.

Rock on!

More details and links here.