taint.org: Justin Mason’s Weblog

A while back a friend of mine mailed us all with this classic of overweening health-and-safety bureaucrats gone wild:

The company are now installing wallpaper on our PCs with their 5 golden safety rules:

1. Always hold the handrail

2. Always reverse park

3. Assess Risks

4. Accept Challenges

5. Wear PPE [Personal Protective Equipment] gear

We also have to drink from metal cups with plastic lids on them.

The thing that really got me was #2 — ‘always reverse park’. Apparently, someone decided that reversing into the parking space was safer than going in head-first, and to such a significant degree that it was worth mandating it across a medium-sized company. On the other hand, another friend noted:

The college i went to [in the US] would ticket you if you backed into a parking space — they said it was a “fire hazard”.

so we’ve got “fire hazard” in one direction and “unsafe” in the other. Parse that.

Another friend was told that she couldn’t bring her folding bike in the lift because “what would happen if the president was in the lift going to the board room?”. She says “I could not work out the health and safety implications.”

What health and safety insanity have you encountered recently?

Tags: bureaucracy, funny, health-and-safety, idiots, omgwtf

In the current run-up to the local elections here in Ireland, it’s pretty obvious that Fianna Fail, the ruling party who’ve screwed the economy with mismanagement and rampant cronyism, are in line for a massive drubbing. So much so, in fact, that their own candidates are attempting to hide their party affiliations.

Check out this poster for candidate Kenneth O’Flynn (son of FF TD Noel O’Flynn):

what logo, you ask? Look closer:

Compare that to what FF posters used to look like, 2 years ago:

Meath FF councillor Nick Killian has removed the logo from his leaflet’s front page entirely, too.

Thanks to martinoc for the Bertie’s Team poster, and Ivor in the comments of this post at On The Record for the photos of Kenny’s posters. There’s gold in those comments…

Tags: fail, fianna-fail, funny, kenneth-o-flynn, politics, small-logo-party

hahaha. a lovely Google AI “doh” moment:

Needless to say, “Angry GAA Fans” is not a recurring section on the Irish Examiner’s site…

Tags: angry, doh, funny, google, irish-examiner

Here’s a great example of numerical illiteracy spotted by my mate Tom:

some classic reporting in the Irish Examiner today…

“Department staff clocked up 20,000 sick days in the three years” is the headline. Closer examination of the article reveals there are 5,000 people in the department. Do the maths (which the paper doesn’t – I wonder why) and that’s a SHOCKING 1.3 sick days a year.

Even better is this quote: “Department of Agriculture staff clocked up 3,095 uncertified sick days last year – 653 of these on a Monday”

So that would be about a fifth of the sick days being taken on one of the five working days in the week. DISGRACE!

Let’s hear it for old media’s commitment to quality journalism!

Tags: funny, innumeracy, irish-examiner, lazy, mathematics, newspapers, reporting, statistics, stupid

life imitates art:

Tags: funny, ghost, omgwtfbbq, tampons, top-tips

Oh man, this Twitter Ruby-vs-Scala language spat is hilarious; talk about handbags at dawn. I loved this exchange in the comments to this post in particular:

BJ Clark:

I’m mostly surprised that a guy who wrote the book on Scala comes out and says that Scala is better than everything else and someone actually listened and took him seriously. He has a vested interest in saying that Scala is the next big thing and I’ve yet to see any evidence that Kestrel is better (at anything) than RabbitMQ.

And frankly, I still get fail whales at Twitter on a daily basis, so, what exactly are they so proud about over there?

Steve Jenson:

Kestrel pages queues to disk: if you get more messages than you have memory, it’s fine. If RabbitMQ gets more messages than memory, it crashes. We talked to them extensively about this problem and they’re going to address it. We were hoping we’d be able to use RabbitMQ or another message queue. We didn’t want to be in the message queue business. At this point, given that we know the code and it’s performance inside and out, it makes sense to continue using and developing it.

BJ Clark:

I don’t feel like arguing with you but your logic isn’t clear to me. It would make sense that if you don’t want to be in the message queue business, you’d submit patches against an established message queue to make it work in your situation instead of writing your own message queue, twice. This is overlooking the fact that twitter is basically a massive message queue and you are, in fact, in the message queue business.

Zing!

Tags: coding, funny, handbags, ouch, queueing, twitter

Some people, when facing a problem, think “I’ll use regular expressions.” Now they have HORDES OF CUTE PEOPLE WANTING TO SLEEP WITH THEM

– Yoz, on twitter

Tags: funny, quotes, twitter

• Vint Cerf interviewed on spam, malware etc. : pretty much the EFF party line, I think: “every man for himself”. also talks about net neutrality
  (tags: vint-cerf internet filtering spam malware abuse network-neutrality anti-spam eff)

• video of a fake e-Passport being accepted by airport security reader : an e-Passport for “Elvis Aaron Presley”, no less, happily scanned by an Amsterdam passport security station. hahahaha!
  (tags: elvis funny security e-passports video via:slashdot rfid)

• Facebook adds Ireland as a Friend : ‘Dublin will be the centre for Facebook’s international operations and will provide a range of online technical, sales and operations support to Facebook’s users and customers across EMEA region.’ good news
  (tags: facebook dublin ireland web2.0 emea)

• RFC-5321 (Obsoletes: 2821) : The newest rev to the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (via fanf)
  (tags: rfcs rfc-2821 standards internet smtp email rfc-5321)

• RFC-5322 (Obsoletes: 2822) : the newest rev to the Internet Message Format for email (via fanf)
  (tags: via:fanf rfc rfc-2822 rfc-5322 standards email internet)

Tags: abuse, anti-spam, dublin, e-passports, eff, elvis, email, emea, facebook, filtering, funny, internet, ireland, malware, network-neutrality, rfc, rfc-2821, rfc-2822, rfc-5321, rfc-5322, rfcs, rfid, security, smtp, spam, standards, via:fanf, via:slashdot, video, vint-cerf, web2.0

• ExMH dependencies in fink : a few bits and bobs required to get this excellent (though ugly) UNIX mail reader app working on MacOS
  (tags: exmh mail macos porting fink)

• metamail for OSX patch : fixes this ExMH dependency to build on OSX
  (tags: metamail macos exmh)

• Salon.com Life | Old people Facebook disasters : “The funny thing about Facebook is that you’re there with your colleagues and your friends [...] and the next thing you know, you’ve forgotten that your status update is all about how hung over you are.”
  (tags: salon funny facebook privacy generation-gap age 30s online-life life social-networking)

• Stanislav Petrov Day : last Friday, but worth celebrating. on 26 September 1983, a little-known Russian military officer averted global nuclear war, by disobeying procedures and correctly identifying a missile-launch report as a false positive. phew!
  (tags: stanislav-petrov war nuclear russia cold-war 80s anniversaries history)

Tags: 30s, 80s, age, anniversaries, cold-war, exmh, facebook, fink, funny, generation-gap, history, life, macos, mail, metamail, nuclear, online-life, porting, privacy, russia, salon, social-networking, stanislav-petrov, war

• Neuros set-top box lets you crowd-subtitle TV : ‘Neuros has a new technology to superimpose text from a dedicated chat room in real time on a TV set, allowing a sort of ‘crowd narration’ for events or shows.’ ‘crowd heckling’ more like; this is a great idea that Danny O’Brien talked about a few years back
  (tags: for:malaclyps tv set-top-box video chat irc discussion heckling backchannels)

• Is That Your Final Answer? : ‘As Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where do they go? It’s Alaska. It’s just right over the border. Some people out there in our nation don’t have maps.’ it’s like Frances McDormand in Fargo, channeling Dan Quayle
  (tags: funny omgwtfbbq sarah-palin foreign-policy incomprehensible babbling gibberish via:mat)

Tags: babbling, backchannels, chat, discussion, for:malaclyps, foreign-policy, funny, gibberish, heckling, incomprehensible, irc, omgwtfbbq, sarah-palin, set-top-box, tv, via:mat, video

• Cisco home page FAIL : for 2 hours, all instances of the letter “t” in the cisco.com home page’s HTML were missing, resulting in a broken page and lots of “Abou Cisco” and “Regiser” links
  (tags: cisco fail funny inept web html regexps oops)

Tags: cisco, fail, funny, html, inept, oops, regexps, web

• Linux x86_64 frozen by heavy I/O on Dell PowerEdge 2950 : starting to think we may be running into this on our build machine; annoying. bookmarking for future reference
  (tags: poweredge dell hardware linux drivers performance sysadmin)

• Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deletionpedia : hahaha. WP deletion gnomes argued that Deletionpedia should not have an entry due to non-notability, just 24 minutes after that entry was created
  (tags: wp wikipedia funny deletion processes bureaucracy deletionpedia)

• Atrivo/InterCage depeered : the ISP’s AS (AS27595) is now offline, due apparently to coordinated lobbying of its upstreams
  (tags: atrivo isps abuse intercage spam malware hosting)

Tags: abuse, atrivo, bureaucracy, deletion, deletionpedia, dell, drivers, funny, hardware, hosting, intercage, isps, linux, malware, performance, poweredge, processes, spam, sysadmin, wikipedia, wp

• Build a Web Page Monitor with Google Docs : incredible. the GDocs spreadsheet supports getting a remote URL, extraction using XPath, and RSS output, making it a pretty credible scraping platform
  (tags: google-docs google xpath rss feeds scraping)

• PayPal phishes their own customers : ‘Your monthly account statement is available anytime; just log in to your account at https://SECURE.UNINITIALIZED.REAL.ERROR.COM/au/HISTORY.’ doh
  (tags: paypal phish phoul funny errors anti-spam via:risks)

• laptopsdirect.ie crappy reviews : wow. I dodged a bullet when I bought my work Thinkpad T61p last year; since then they’ve accumulated a truly atrocious customer service reputation. avoid
  (tags: laptopsdirect.ie laptops shopping ireland boards.ie reviews customer-service cluetrain)

Tags: anti-spam, boards.ie, cluetrain, customer-service, errors, feeds, funny, google, google-docs, ireland, laptops, laptopsdirect.ie, paypal, phish, phoul, reviews, rss, scraping, shopping, via:risks, xpath

• Va. Supreme Court Strikes Down State’s Anti-Spam Law : argh! IMO the judge has confused misleading forged headers with anonymous speech
  (tags: anonymity legal law jeremy-jaynes spam anti-spam virginia)

• Watch out for that Dropbox Public Folder : Joe has a good point: ‘you hereby grant all other Dropbox users a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, sublicensable, perpetual and irrevocable right and license to use and exploit Your Files in your public folder.’ wtf
  (tags: dropbox ip backup legal terms-and-conditions legalese)

• Microsoft Open Source inside Google Chrome : namely the Windows Template Library, now distributed under the (OSI-approved) Microsoft Public License. strange days (via reddit)
  (tags: microsoft open-source osi google chrome wtl windows)

• Irishmen buy up island of England : ‘an Irish consortium has emerged as the buyer of the island of England in The World development, a man-made scheme off the coast of Dubai.’ hahaha!
  (tags: funny ireland england dubai unintended-consequences property the-world)

Tags: anonymity, anti-spam, backup, chrome, dropbox, dubai, england, funny, google, ip, ireland, jeremy-jaynes, law, legal, legalese, microsoft, open-source, osi, property, spam, terms-and-conditions, the-world, unintended-consequences, virginia, windows, wtl

• eircom advertising on ThePirateBay.org?! : oh dear, someone really screwed up there
  (tags: piracy pirate-bay eircom ads doubleclick google oops funny via:damien)

• Cheney Waits Until Last Minute Again To Buy Sept. 11 Gifts : pure Onion genius
  (tags: cheney 9/11 theonion onion humor us-politics)

• We haven’t changed the name of the conference to ‘Over Quota’ : moral: don’t try hosting anything useful on Google App Engine until it’s ready — which it decidedly isn’t yet
  (tags: app-engine google quota fail bandwidth hosting via:simonw)

Tags: 9/11, ads, app-engine, bandwidth, cheney, doubleclick, eircom, fail, funny, google, hosting, humor, onion, oops, piracy, pirate-bay, quota, theonion, us-politics, via:damien, via:simonw

• The Trifecta of FAIL : ah, the hazards of monkey-patching core classes illustrated perfectly; a Ruby point-release upgrade broke Rails (via chromatic)
  (tags: ruby rails monkeypatching ouch programming coding oo subclassing apis)

• best intranet form ever : ‘The software my employer uses for booking holidays has recently been “upgraded” and we now need to specify an absence reason.’ there are several hundred reasons, including ‘Abortion’, ‘Stroke’, ‘Warts’, ‘Dementia’, ‘Rectal Problems’, ‘Manic Depression’ and, um, ‘Wax’. best of all, this is for booking time off in advance…
  (tags: intranet funny inept hr wtf daily-wtf bureaucracy pto holidays)

• Sup : ‘a console-based email client for people with a lot of email [..] The goal of Sup is to become the email client of choice for nerds everywhere.’ Looks like they’ve nicked a few ideas from GMail, too (via Luis)
  (tags: via:tieguy console linux unix sup mail mail-readers ui apps)

Tags: apis, apps, bureaucracy, coding, console, daily-wtf, funny, holidays, hr, inept, intranet, linux, mail, mail-readers, monkeypatching, oo, ouch, programming, pto, rails, ruby, subclassing, sup, ui, unix, via:tieguy, wtf

TechCrunch UK campaigning for a “Digital Hub” I have to say, the Digital Hub is actually a great place to work; it’s well worth duplicating, if such a thing is possible

419eater anti-scammers fool 419ers into performing the Dead Parrot sketch “Possibly, he is pining for the fee-ords”

Google taking action against Nigerian/419 fraud spammers Good news. About time, too ;)

Tags: 419, anti-spam, charts, digital-hub, dublin, fjords, fraud, funny, google, ireland, mail, monty-python, pining, scams, spam, tech, work

Del.icio.us 2.0 goes live yay! I’ve been waiting for this for yonks

10 years of Boards.ie massive ~50GB RDF/XML dump, for open crunching, to generate interesting “SIOC Semantic Web” apps

Postmaster.comcast.net how to get mail delivered successfully to Comcast, the usual stuff

Why we’ll never replace SMTP ‘The reason that e-mail is uniquely useful is that you can exchange mail with people you don’t already know. The reason that spam exists is that you can exchange mail with people you don’t already know.’ +1

“Bikes-for-Billboards” scheme exposes major planning flaws ‘what was initially hailed as “free bikes” has become one of the biggest planning controversies to hit Dublin in years.’ No shit. 70% of sites are on the Northside, rather than the richer Southside; and each bike will cost over EUR300k in ad revenue!

Rob Enderle’s page on Wikipedia detailing this analyst’s hilariously wrong pro-SCO, anti-Apple/Linux predictions over the years. John Gruber: ‘the only way it would be worthwhile for reporters to [quote him] would be if they were willing to describe him as “almost always utterly wrong”‘

Tags: ads, advertising, analysts, anti-spam, apple, bikes, billboards, blogging, boards.ie, comcast, cycling, del.icio.us, dublin, email, enderle-group, funny, fussp, guidelines, history, internet, ireland, isps, jc-decaux, john-gruber, Links, linux, mail, microsoft, oh-dear, planning, postmaster, releases, rob-enderle, scandals, sco, semantic-web, sioc, smtp, spam, tech, urban, via:archiseek, wikipedia

soc.culture.irish on “Cuil” meaning knowledge ‘eagerness, fearsomeness, a gnat, a horsefly, a beetle, a bluebottle, and (with the addition of a fada) a rear end, a reserve or backup, a corner, and an arse. The one thing it isn’t, according to the four dictionaries I just checked, is knowledge.’

Tags: arse, cuil, funny, gaeilge, irish, via:derek

After lolcats and lolbots, it appears we now have lolspam, via kris:

Tags: funny, lolcats, lolspam, spam

Wow, here’s a new one — and kind of appropriate, given my surname ;) Masonic spam!

To: xxxxxx at taint.org

Subject: Dear Benefactor Of 2007 Masory Grant,

From: Dr.Lavine Ferdon Ferdon

Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2007 15:40:26 +0100 (CET)

Dear Benefactor Of 2007 Masory Grant, The Freemason society of Bournemout under the jurisdiction of the all Seeing Eye, Master Nicholas Brenner has after series of secret deliberations selected you to be a beneficiary of our 2007 foundation laying grants and also an optional opening at the round table of the Freemason society. These grants are issued every year around the world in accordance with the objective of theFreemasons as stated by Thomas Paine in 1808 which is to ensure the continuous freedom of man and toenhance mans living conditions. We will also advice that these funds which amount to USD2.5million be used to better the lot of man through your own initiative and also we will go further to inform that the open slot to become a Freemason is optional, you can decline the offer. In order to claim your grant, contact the Grand Lodge Office co-secretary Dr.Lavine Ferdon Ferdon Grand Lodge Office Co-Secretary’s email: (lavin_ferd_law at excite.com)

Dr.Lavine Ferdon Ferdon,

Co-Secretary Freemason Society of Holdenhurst Road,

Bournemouth.

Sir David Hurley,

Secretary Freemason Society of Holdenhurst Road,

Brilliant. But why Bournemouth?

Tags: 419, bournemouth, freemasons, funny, mail, scams, spam

Yay! Kudos to Richi Jennings, who’s been trumpeting the dangers of backscatter to InformationWeek recently. It’s a great article. I particularly like how it digs up this impressively off-the-mark quote:

Tal Golan, CTO, president, and founder of Sendio, maker of a challenge/response e-mail appliance used by more than 150 enterprise consumers, disagrees strongly with Jennings’s assertion that challenge-based filtering has problems. “Without question, the benefit to the whole community at large drastically outweighs that FUD [fear, uncertainty, and doubt] that’s out there in the marketplace that somehow challenge/response makes the problem worse,” he says. “The real issue is that filters don’t work. From our perspective, challenge/response is the only solution. This whole concept of backscatter is just not true. Very, very rarely do spammers forge the e-mail addresses of legitimate companies anymore.”

hahahaha. Well, since last Thursday, “very very rarely” translates as “214 MB of backscatter in my inbox”. The facts aren’t on Tal Golan’s side here…

(PS: SpamAssassin 3.2.0 will include backscatter detection.)

Tags: anti-spam, backscatter, bounces, challenge-response, filtering, funny, richi-jennings, sendio, spam

Here’s some pics of Hog, our new kitten, from earlier this week: Hog helps with the painting. (Warning: sickeningly cute.)

Tags: cats, cute, funny, hog, mishaps, painting

OK — looks like I’ve found the perfect poem for our wedding ceremony; allow me to present “Gravity of Love”:

One day, one day I asked myself
What is the right number or symbol?
What is the perfect equation?
What truly is LOGIC?
And who decides right reasoning?

In cause of no answer to my quest,
I traveled through the physical and metaphysical,
I traveled through the delusional and mystical
And at last back to the physical.

I made most important invention of my life career
That it’s only in the mysterious equation; logic of love
Any logical; mystical and psychological reasoning can be found.
It’s you in me I only believe that’s true and real

All I can say is — Wow.

Tags: funny, poetry, vogon, weddings, wol

Blurred Keys: Blogorrah.com – the start of empire building with ‘very few overheads’. Blurred Keys, “an Irish media blog”, brings the revelation that Blogorrah “copies” Gawker.com.

Honestly, though, this is blatantly obvious — and I’d consider it unfair to call this “copying”. It’s simply taking a successful format and adapting it to the local market, and doing so very well indeed if you ask me.

Blogorrah is a hilarious read. If you’re Irish and you’re not subscribed, you’re really missing out… it’s the funniest thing on the Irish web these days.

Tags: blogorrah, dublin, funny, ireland, weblogs

ongoing: The ASF Server:

Tim Bray: Which Apache project burns the most resources?

Mads: Spamassassin by a wide margin. [...]

Heh, we win ;)

Helios, the Zones server, has been an incredible resource for us. SpamAssassin isn’t a traditional open-source software project in one respect: we use a lot of centralized “phone home” infrastructure to support rule and score generation. Having a virtualized server of this quality and horsepower to use for this has been fantastic.

(thanks to John O’Shea for the pointer!)

Tags: apache, asf, funny, heh, solaris, solaris-zones, spamassassin, virtualization

Happy BillG-Scheduled Spam Solved Day!

“Two years from now, spam will be solved,” Microsoft’s Bill Gates said [at the 2004 World Economic Forum in Switzerland].

So is it? Weeeeell…..

To “solve” the problem for consumers in the short run doesn’t require eliminating spam entirely, said Ryan Hamlin, the general manager who oversees [Microsoft]’s anti-spam programs. Rather, he said, the idea is to contain it to the point that its impact on in-boxes is minor.

In that way, Hamlin said, Gates’ prediction has come true for people using the right tactics and advanced filtering technology.

Ha. I am reminded of ‘weapons of mass destruction-related program activities’.

As one slashdotter says, ‘when you fail, try try again; or conversely, change the requirements and make it look like a success, which is exactly what BG has done.’

It’s not washing, though, unsurprisingly. The poll on the same page, asks ‘do you agree with Microsoft’s contention that the spam problem has been “solved”?’ Right now, with 1169 votes, it has 7.2% (in other words, the MS employees) agreeing, and a whopping 92.8% not going for it.

Tags: anti-spam, billg, dark-is-the-new-standard, end-of-spam-day, funny, microsoft, spam

Ever wondered what today’s internet meme images would look like on mid-’80’s home computing hardware?

Wonder no longer!

Tags: c64, commodore, computing, funny, hacks, hardware, internet, meme, today

Myself and the lovely C are planning on getting married, hopefully sometime this year. I’ve just come across some details about Japanese weddings, and apparently:

‘If you are attending a Japanese wedding reception, you are expected to bring cash for a gift (called Oshugi). The amount depends on your relationship with the couple and the region, unless the fixed amount is indicated on the invitation card. The average is 30,000yen ($250) for a friend’s wedding. It’s important that the cash is enclosed in a special envelope called Shugi-bukuro and your name is written on the front.’ … ‘It is a grave insult to give less than $200.’

That gives me a great idea… ;)

Tags: funny, japan, marriage

Funny: AFP: Cambodians Eager to Dine on Rats:

‘At first I just cooked them for my family to eat, but guests who tried them said they were tasty, so I started selling a few fried rats to the villagers,’ he said. Business boomed so he devoted his menu to them.

‘ We only eat the small rats — we dare not eat the big ones because they have too much hair.’

Big in Laos, too — although I don’t think I’ve heard of sit-down restaurants selling them. When I was travelling in Laos, one of the first tips I heard from other travellers was, ‘if you see something that looks like a fried rat — it is‘. urrgh.

(BTW, there’s actually good reasons not to eat rat-meat; wild rats and mice are truly filthy animals, vectors of all sorts of nasty diseases.)

Tags: afp, big, business, dine, family, funny, hair, menu, rat, rats, something

Funny: The Daily Show’s GWB reelection film: ‘George W. Bush — Because He Says So’ (Quicktime MOV, 6MB). This is the funniest thing I’ve seen in ages.

Remember — don’t listen to the facts — listen to the words!

(thanks to anaxamander for the file. This URL is cached through CoralCDN, so pass it on!)

Tags: anaxamander, daily, film, funniest, funny, gwb, mov, quicktime, reelection, show, thing

Funny: Some of the taint.org readership (that’s you, Nishad) may be familiar with BEST SONG EVER.mp3 — it’s an insane, 10-minute workout: one guy ranting at a high pitch in some east-asian language at an incredible speed over some cheesy Casio, hardly taking a breath, punctuated by bizarre 7-Zark-7-style ribbits and squawks. By the end of it, he’s nearly hoarse. It is incredibly bizarre. Turkopop has nothing on this.

Well, it’s origin has been discovered — he’s called E Pak Sa, and the style is called ‘Pansori’. His version is a modern take on this ancient traditional style — ‘While singing, he would imitate the sound of all of the instruments used in the prelude and interlude, and even the sound of the whistle used to gather the tourists.’ From there, he grew in popularity, especially in Japan:

‘Sell-out concerts, myriad television appearances, riots at in-stores, and Japanese teens speaking Korean are all products of E Pak Sa’s impact in Japan. E had infiltrated the popular culture of Japan and paved the way for other Korean artist to do the same.’

And guess what — his Encyclopedia of Pon-Chak album can be listened to online! The YMCA cover — track 2 — is strongly recommended.

Tags: best, ever, funny, nishad, org, pak, readership, song, sound, style, taint

Funny: Kiera Knightley’s photoshop boobjob has been all over the place recently — it’s a pretty extensive reworking. But then, that’s standard practice nowadays…

However, best comment goes to stephendann:

In photo 2, she has the quad damage. The skin colour darkens, the chest expands, the stomach contracts and the character skin is obviously altered so the rest of the players know she’s supercharged. In POTC:King Arthur, it’s a more subtle damage modified than (the) UT2K4 glowing purple bow.

LOL!

Tags: boobjob, colour, damage, funny, photo, photoshop, place, practice, quad, skin, stephendann

Funny: BBC: DVD pirate’s pitch ends in arrest:

A man has been arrested after trying to sell counterfeit DVDs – at a Trading Standards Office.

The man had apparently missed the sign on the office in Beehive Lane, Chelmsford, Essex, and asked if anyone would like to buy pirated films. Staff said they were very interested indeed in what he had to sell, but when he realised where he was he ran off, leaving his wares and £210 in cash.

Police later arrested the man in a supermarket in Chelmsford.

Tags: arrest, bbc, chelmsford, counterfeit, dvd, dvds, funny, man, office, pirate, pitch

Funny: NYPD alerts cops to ‘terror indicators’.

The NYPD has ordered its patrol force to be more vigilant about spotting and reporting possible signs of terrorism, including individuals who “express hatred for America.” …. The cards advise them to contact counterterrorism investigators when they have suspicions over anyone who is, among other things, carrying driver’s licenses from different states, videotaping utilities and tunnels or wearing fake uniforms.

Sounds like the Village People won’t be playing NYC any time soon, then ;)

Tags: anyone, counterterrorism, driver, force, funny, hatred, nypd, patrol, terror, terrorism, vigilant

Funny: Who knew there was a Commodore 64 gang sign? PRESS PLAY ON TAPE, that’s who!

Spam: Ever wanted to ask a question of one of the biggest ‘e-mail deployers’ on the planet? Aunty Spam’s providing the venue, and accepting questions for Scott Richter, erstwhile star of the Daily Show. There’s a few already up there.

Tags: aunty, commodore, funny, gang, planet, play, press, question, sign, spam, tape

Funny: via swhackit! — Language registration: en-Spam-porn:

‘One is very much tempted. It is certainly a unique orthography.’

Indeed. When I was offered “[t]ons of dwolnaoadble mvoies, pohtos and sotires”, I quickly read past “mvoies” and “pohtos”, but was stumped for a while by “sotires”. Perhaps I was blocked by interference from “satires”.

But I think that registration will fail, because there are no descriptive works provided for the Language Tag Reviewer to consult.

Tags: en, funny, interference, language, orthography, registration, reviewer, spam-porn, swhackit, tag, while

Funny: Here’s the
Daily Show segment with Scott Richter (WMV, 9.8MB).

Just ignore the lame subtitles added by whoever encoded the file… the rest of it’s seriously funny! ‘Clitorious’, indeed.

Update! 2004-04-13: thanks to Lisa Rein, there’s now a 10MB Quicktime .mov version, sans unfunny subtitles. I’d strongly suggest downloading that instead.

Tags: clitorious, daily, file, funny, mov, quicktime, rest, segment, show, update, wmv

Funny: EFFector Vol. 17, No. 11a April 1, 2004. Some pretty funny gems in this one: USPTO to Start Granting Indulgences, Microsoft Wins Patent for Software Industry Monopolization, and SCO to Sue Over Unauthorized Use of Earth’s Resources:

Lindon, UT – On the heels of its campaign against users of the Free Software program Linux, the SCO Group today announced that it will begin a new round of lawsuits against users of other free resources, including fire, water, air and land.

‘People think they can just use free things without paying for them,’ said SCO CEO Daryl McBribe. ‘This kind of ’socialism’ is anti-American and a violation of the Constitution. It’s up to corporations like SCO to crush that kind of idealism.’

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Funny: Feds Cancel Flight on ‘Psychic’ Bomb Tip: an American Airlines flight was cancelled because of a tip-off from a self-reported psychic.

The purported psychic’s call was ‘unusual,’ conceded Doug Perkins, local administrator for the federal Transportation Security Administration director.

‘But in these times, we can’t ignore anything. We want to take the appropriate measures,’ he said.

Suuuuuuure.

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