A blog about life, linux and photography
School drugs mix-up angers mother - Police apologise after a bag of speed is inadvertently left in a schoolgirl’s bag during an anti-drugs day. [BBC News]
This has to be the most amusing thing today…
How do police get away with doing a drug demonstration and end up supplying? Surely they should be charged with supplying drugs? Or is it only supplying if you are charging for it?
Perhaps this is a loophole for dealers. I wouldn’t want to put it to the test though.
Well, Sony’s rootkit copy protected cd’s are now being used to hide trojans.
The copy protection they use installs a rootkit on your windows
computer, which allows Sony to protect your cd by interfering with the
way Windows works. The rootkit hides certain files from not just the
user in Windows, but even from antivirus programs. This obviously
allows virus writers to write viruses that can easily escape detection.
Removing
the rootkit is difficult too, as it has no uninstall and simply
deleting the file will break your computer and stop it booting.
There is a list of cd’s which have this protection, and the sooner Sony stops using it the better. The list of cd’s actually has some nice info on how to spot the protected cd’s so that you can avoid destroying your computer.
Why have Sony done this? They seem to think that their copyright is more important than your rights or your computer’s security. As such they are being sued for the software under several Californian computer laws, designed to protect people’s computer security and privacy.
Perhaps not the best business move for Sony. Eh?
In a talk at work yesterday by a senior manager about the review process used, the audience was asked about their watch. If you own an analogue watch (do not look at it), and it has roman numerals, how would you suppose that the number 4 is written on it.
IV right?
Wrong… IIII
This is apparently a common psychological demo/experiment, as most people have no idea what is actually written on their watch, even though the look at it many times a day. At this talk, about 20 or so people put their hands up for IV, whereas only 3 (including me, and I had been told about this thing only two weeks earlier) put their hands up for IIII.
Apparently the reasoning for this is not that you might get it mixed up with VI (six), as that would be quite silly as you should be able to figure which way round your watch goes. IV apparently has an alternate meaning of Jupiter or God. Now why that is a problem on a clock I am not sure, but presumably people were worried by the fact that it was a Roman god (Jupiter was a roman god, wasnt he?)
Anyway, that is my random fact for the year (well… I will probably spew forth some more bullshit soon)
I missed the nice train home. Now I am stuck with a train that takes almost two hours to get me home. If I had left the pub even 30 seconds earlier, I could have been on a train that would have taken almost half that time to get me back, and then would have got more than six hour sleep.
Suffice to say that the train service in the UK sucks. Big time.
I could have stayed on a sofa/floor here, but apart from not actually being home to see my girlfriend (who would no doubt be asleep even if I had caught the earlier train) I have been roped into bringing my camera and tripod for a team photo for everyone running the biggest school’s even in the company. I am more than happy to take a group photo, but the fact that I could have got more sleep otherwise is annoying.
In the pub tonight (ultimate frisbee social) was a guy who had seen my blog and was asking about software to use on his. The best part was the domain name he had just bought… WarningMayContainNuts.com
That is a domain that I wish I had bought, as it has to be one of the best domain names for a blog site I have ever seen. I cannot believe that it was actually available!
Work has been ok recently. I am annoyed with the quality of the software I am working with, especially with the state of the Interim Fixes that I am testing, Not only could the fixes have been prevented in the orginal realease (and should have been) but it takes 2 patches to solve the problem as the first patch does not fix the problem completely. It needs a second fix to correct the errors that the first one leaves!
Sometimes I wonder how people can seriously pay so much for software. It reminds me of a software testing book I got as reading for my job. It states that there are 3 things in the world that one should never ask too much about the process of manufacturing: hot dogs, laws and software. Now I know why…
I have found a new tool, w.bloggar, which will hopefully mean more frequent blog updates. It is a blogging program, and all it does is allows me to write my posts offline in it, and then it can publish them when I am online again. It supports the xmlrpc which many blogging web software uses, so I could probably post to any large online blog.
I have started wondering about an internal blog at work. Several people have them, but to most are quite frankly boring [probably very much like this site is to anyone who is not me]. I cannot think of much I would really want to write about inside work that cannot be written outside on my personal blog. Of course I could get an external blog at work, but then I would have to think very carefully about what I write - I happen to like the anonymity of this blog, as I am more free to write about work and not get into trouble.
About 2 weeks ago I graduated. It was in the Royal Albert Hall, which was rather scary. 800 students were graduating with me (half of the year for first degrees), and heaven knows how many parents and family members.
Fireworks night was fun. Work actually had its own fireworks night on Friday, so I went along to that (via the pub) and then on to the pub with colleagues. It was great fun, but all ended when I missed the last train home, so had to find a sofa to sleep on.
Hung over the next day, I decided (after going home and back again with some sleep in the middle somewhere) that lighting fireworks would be a great idea for someone who is hungover. Thankfully by then I was no longer hungover, so I helped light a firework display with a mate from work. It was incredibly exciting.
When you are lighting fireworks and the guy setting them up says to you “I am worried about this one. Light it, but walk as fast as you can to the back of the yard. DO NOT RUN!” then you start wondering what exactly he is expecting the firework to do. At the same time it also show that he is not treating the explosives lightly, which is a good thing.
Thankfully the only casualties that night where the grass and the state of the back yard (not mine) as it now had firework rubble and packaging all over it.
I found the coolest name generator ever…
And Mieczyslaw produces an even better result!
Check your name
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