September 25, 2004
Morals Or Money
Instapundit suggests that Paypal are becoming the Web Morality Police:
Beginning Friday, PayPal will begin penalizing users who buy things it doesn't want them to: prescription drugs from unverified pharmacies, material with even a whiff of sex and gambling or lottery services. . . . Its policy on adult materials is especially stringent, banning not only any material or services suggesting sexual activity but also "non-adult services whose Web site marketing can be reasonably misconstrued as allowing adult material or services to be purchased using PayPal."I rather suspect that this has nothing at all to do with morality - and everything to do with customer complaints. Unverified pharmacies? Read "scam artists". (And spam artists, judging from the state of my inbox.) There are legitimate (if that's the word) adult services online - Playboy now has an online service - but the area is rife with scammers and spammers as well, because it has a solid track record of actually making money. I don't know whether online gambling is profitable, but it has attracted the spam-and-scam crowd too. I don't think Paypal give a damn about what you spend your money on; what they do care about is giving refunds. They hate giving refunds. And note these paragraphs from the article at inernetnews.com:
A year ago, eBay paid $10 million to settle charges by the U.S. District Attorney that it violated the U.S. Patriot Act by transmitting funds earned through online gambling. When it announced the acquisition, eBay said it would stop PayPal's gambling payments.
Merchants using PayPal to sell pharmaceuticals online must be certified by the National Association Boards of Pharmacy's Verified Internet Pharmacy Practices Site program.It's not about morals, it's about money.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:22 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 24, 2004
News From The 21st Century
After two injections of the vaccine, sheep burped 8 per cent less methane in a 13 hour test.(New Scientist, 25 September 2004)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:59 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Got Sims?
I do.
See you in a week or so!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:56 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Floppies? Bah!
The drivers for my new RAID controller are on floppies.
My computer does not have a floppy drive.
Bah.
(You're supposed to feed it the floppies when you're installing Windows, so just downloading the drivers doesn't actually help very much. How it can then find the drivers when it needs the drivers to access the hard disk which contains the drivers is one of those unanswered questions.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:18 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 23, 2004
Well, Now
So, I bought another gigabyte of memory for Kei, my Windows XP box, mainly so that I can play with virtual machines (which gobble memory like candy).
I thought I'd see if it made any difference to performance when I wasn't running any virtual machines.
It does.
Windows XP is quite noticeably faster with 2GB of memory than it is with 1GB of memory.
For what it's worth.
And no, I'm not going to go out and buy another 2GB of memory to see what that does. It won't fit, for one thing.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:27 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Creative Problem Solving: The Throw Money At It Approach
I have three disk drives playing up at the moment. None of them have actually failed, but they are all causing errors often enough to be annoying.
So I've bought four new disk drives.
And a RAID controller card.
Um, and a gig of memory, because Virtual PC goes through memory like a rabbit through a carrot patch.
And a gigabit switch, because Windows networking is utterly retarded.*
And a bunch of fans, because Summer is just around the corner, and I'd rather all those new disk drives didn't melt. Alas, my copy of The Sims 2 hasn't arrived yet, so I'm stuck with my old Sims for now. * It's a long story.
And a RAID controller card.
Um, and a gig of memory, because Virtual PC goes through memory like a rabbit through a carrot patch.
And a gigabit switch, because Windows networking is utterly retarded.*
And a bunch of fans, because Summer is just around the corner, and I'd rather all those new disk drives didn't melt. Alas, my copy of The Sims 2 hasn't arrived yet, so I'm stuck with my old Sims for now. * It's a long story.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:33 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 22, 2004
Birthday Presents And The New Economy
So, as well as the huge party and all the money (thanks guys!), I also got several new computers, a house, a family, and a new job.
Curiously enough, all of them are virtual.
The party was on the MuNu forums (big thanks to Susie and Renata); the money was pengos, the Munuvian currency (slightly pointless since I own and operate the mint, but the thought is appreciated), the new computers come courtesy of Microsoft Virtual PC, the house and family come bundled with The Sims 2, and the new job is...
Well, the new job is interesting. I'm now working for an ISP again, after a break of several years. But I haven't left my old job, it's just that we now have an internet division. Except that we don't really have an internet division; it's all, well, virtual. All we do is run a web server and handle level one tech support* - and billing - and everything else just sort of happens.**
Strange place, this 21st century of ours.
* Is your computer turned on?
** Yeah, right.
** Yeah, right.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:59 PM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 20, 2004
Birthday Song
Happy birthday to me!
Happy birthday to me!
All hard disk drives suck,
As does Windows XP! Mmm, chocolate... The nicest present I got today was this: 20-year-old girl at office: (Sings) Happy birthday to you!
You're a hundred and two!
Me: Thanks!
Girl: So how old are you?
Me: Thirty-eight.
Girl: No, how old are you really?
Happy birthday to me!
All hard disk drives suck,
As does Windows XP! Mmm, chocolate... The nicest present I got today was this: 20-year-old girl at office: (Sings) Happy birthday to you!
You're a hundred and two!
Me: Thanks!
Girl: So how old are you?
Me: Thirty-eight.
Girl: No, how old are you really?
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:50 PM | Comments (20) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
(can I have a bite, please?)
What The New York Times Meant To Say
Sometimes you have to read between the lines:
After days of expressing unfounded confidence about the obviously bogus documents used in a deeply biased "60 Minutes'' report that might have raised new questions about President Bush's National Guard service were the evidence in question not transparently false, CBS News officials finally have admitted to grave doubts about the authenticity of the material, network officials said last night. The officials, who asked not to be identified because if this gets out they will lose their jobs, said CBS News would most likely make an announcement as early as today that it had been deceived about the documents' origins which was obvious to any reasonably bright nine-year-old. CBS News has already begun intensive reporting on where they came from although here we are using the word intensive as the direct opposite of the term extensive, and people at the network said it was now finally possible that officials would open an internal inquiry into how it moved forward with the report when anyone with the intelligence given to the average jellyfish would have canned it in the first five minutes. Officials say they are now beginning to believe the report was too flawed to have gone on the air and that Dan Rather may not, in fact, have brought the commandments down from Mount Sinai as he previously claimed. But they cautioned that CBS News could still pull back from an announcement and resume their absurd attempts at a bluff when they no longer hold any cards. Officials met last night with Dan Rather, the anchor who presented the report, to go over the information it had collected about the documents one last time before making a final decision and see if he was willing to go quietly. Mr. Rather was not available for comment late last night as he had to be restrained following the meeting.(For the irony impaired, the words in italics are mine. The words not in italics are not mine.)
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:36 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 17, 2004
Where There's Brickbats
There must be roses. (What the hell is a brickbat, anyway?)
So, a big un-pox to the guys who wrote rsync, which un-sucks about as much as any piece of software could.
Oh, and likewise to the creators of Cygwin which lets me run rsync on Windows.
Hmm. "File has vanished". It's never said that to me before. Probably not a good sign.
Hmm hmm. Maybe I could delete some files? Half a million on this disk alone and still scanning like mad. No! Ack! Urk! What am I saying?! I haven't deleted anything since 1996 and I'm not about to start now!
Hmm once more: 741,241 files. On one disk. One out of... Uh, several. Rsync is now considering these 741,241 files, or so it tells me.
Hmm for the last time. I forgot how pathetically slow rsync is on Windows. Argh. Yuck. Bleah. Foo. This is going to take forever.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:03 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
A Pox, I Say!
A pox on all makers of disk drives and designers of file systems!
A pox!
Yes, while I was backing up everything on my Windows box so that I could attempt to convince it that the boot disk was not the G drive and that the system disk was not that spare disk I installed one day with a certain amount of comfort that I would not lose every last one of my files, my trusty* external disk decided that it didn't want to play any more. Well, it decided it was going to make some unhappy noises and refuse to write anything more and Windows decided that that was a good enough excuse to lock up completely.
So I've now pressed my emergency back-up Linux box into play. It's built up out of all the spare parts I have lying around from previous systems, and it has so far stubbornly refused to die. Of course, it's old and clunky and slow, but it actually works.
So now I can copy all my files onto that, reformat everything attached to my Windows box, reinstall Windows for the third time in a week, and then copy everything back again. Joy.
Then I'm going to buy me a UPS.
* It hasn't suffered massive file corruption for, like, months.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:30 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Democrats Suck!
Three-year-old Sophia Parlock cries while seated on the shoulders of her father, Phil Parlock, after having their Bush-Cheney sign torn up by Kerry-Edwards supporters on Thursday, Sept. 16, 2004, at the Tri-State Airport in Huntington, W.Va. Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards (news - web sites) made a brief stop at the airport as he concluded his two-day bus tour to locations in West Virginia and Ohio. (AP Photo/Randy Snyder)(Yahoo! News via comment at Ace of Spades) Update: LGF has more. Sharp-eyed lizards noted that the guy at the left is holding part of the girl's sign. Update: Okay, everybody in the world had this story before me. So here's a picture of a kitty.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:21 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 16, 2004
In All Fairness
Andrew Sullivan may be a little slow, but he's not completely insane:
When I first read the CBS story, I thought the docs were "devastating." I'm not backing this president for re-election. But all that is completely beside the frigging point. Journalists are supposed to provide accurate evidence for their claims. CBS didn't. And its response to the critics is to stonewall and try and change the subject. The correct response - the one they'd teach you in kindergarten journalism class - is immediately to check the authenticity of the documents as best you can, and if the doubts persist, to apologize immediately and yank the story.(His italics.) Compare and contrast with this roundup of your favourite bottom-feeders courtesy of Dr. Rusty.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:13 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Bored Now
From: Reverend Pixy Misa
To: Dan Rather You're dead. Fall down.
To: Dan Rather You're dead. Fall down.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 07:03 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 15, 2004
Birthday Girl
Harvey's not the only one celebrating a birthday.
A Lady Who Thinks She Is Thirty Unwillingly Miranda wakes,Happy birthday Jennifer!
Feels the sun with terror,
One unwilling step she takes,
Shuddering to the mirror. Miranda in Miranda's sight
Is old and gray and dirty;
Twenty-nine she was last night;
This morning she is thirty. Shining like the morning star,
Like the twilight shining,
Haunted by a calendar,
Miranda is a-pining. Silly girl, silver girl,
Draw the mirror toward you;
Time who makes the years to whirl
Adorned as he adored you. Time is timelessness for you;
Calendars for the human;
What's a year, or thirty, to
Loveliness made woman? Oh, Night will not see thirty again,
Yet soft her wing, Miranda;
Pick up your glass and tell me, then--
How old is Spring, Miranda? Ogden Nash
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:08 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Boobies for Harvey
It's Harvey's birthday (well, yesterday, but only just) and he's asked for boobies.
This one's These two are for you, Harvey!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:58 PM | Comments (30) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 14, 2004
Blub
Had a power outage here at Pixy Central this morning, and my two main computers are still sulking. Yuri, my Linux box, has at least come out of its room and is willing to talk (albeit in monosyllables); Kei, my Windows box, still refuses to open the door.
I'll be back in a bit.
Honey, could you pass me that wrench? No, the big one.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:00 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 11, 2004
One Day At A Time
The sky is blue, the sun is warm, the water in the harbour sparkles in the light.
I spent the day with my family. We had lunch, and talked, we saw a movie, we had dinner and watched videos.
But though I go on with my life as we all must, I shall never forget what happened in New York three years ago today.
Jennifer, Sarah, and Ted offer their thoughts.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:49 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Clippy Weighs In
Okay, my last post on this particular brouhaha, I promise, but this is hysterical!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:51 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Two Thoughts On Yesterday's Kerfuffle
First, CBS News says:
60 Minutes consulted a handwriting analyst and document expert who believes the material is authentic.To anyone who has the slightest idea of how documents were produced in the early 70's, the memos scream fake, and a clumsy and childish fake at that. So either CBS are lying and they did not bother do get the documents authenticated at all, or their handwriting analyst and document expert is a retarded hamster. Second, as Dean Esmay noted yesterday and others have noted since, the Democratic National Committee was busy pumping this story at the very moment it was melting down:
Date: Thu, 9 Sep 2004 22:42:39 -0500 .... Back in February, President Bush sat down in the Oval Office for an interview with Tim Russert and spoke about his service in the National Guard. Bush told us, "I put in my time, proudly so." He said, "And I'm telling you, I did my duty." But now we know that Bush dishonored the Oval Office by lying to the American people. New investigations from multiple media sources have revealed the truth about President Bush's service. New military documents show that Bush disobeyed a direct order from his commander to take a flight physical and "failed to perform to U.S. Air Force/Texas Air National Guard standards" — and was grounded as a result. New evidence supports claims that Bush missed months of service and that he never showed up for service with the Alabama National Guard. New evidence shows that Bush received special treatment. His supervisor wrote that he felt pressured from above to "sugar coat" Bush's records.This stands in stark contrast to the Republican Party's distancing itself from the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth. Very very stark contrast. So stark that some people are wondering:
From the Kerry perspective a scandal involving forged documents is a disaster. Kerry had yesterday to get in front of the story and he missed that boat. Instead of being able to stay on message and trying to beat down the post convention pulse which has sent Bush several points ahead in various opinion polls, Kerry is likely to face questions about who was responsible for the forgeries. While it would be astonishing if anyone inside the Kerry organization had a hand in them, it is a question that will be asked. Moreover, the spectacle of Kerry announcing that his campaign organization and the Democratic Party had nothing to do with issuing those documents will occupy several critical news cycles and focus attention on character -- exactly where Kerry does not want to be.At the bottom of the story, though, is this point: CBS have been extremely, extremely stupid in their handling of this. The Democratic Party have been nearly, if not equally, as stupid. Whether they involved themselves in this mess deliberately, or were unwitting dupes of the forgers because they wanted to believe, it is transparently clear that they are not particularly bright. Tell Me Again Why I Need You, Karl. Damned if I know.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:39 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 10, 2004
And The Have-Nots
Quoth Andrew Sullivan:
MEMOS, MEMOS: The Bush-wing of the blogosphere keeps asking questions, which is a good thing. But it seems to me the money graf in the latest AP report is the following:Indeed, we have already seen... We who have not turned our eyes away.CBSBut we'll see, won't we?
stood by its reporting. "As a standard practice at CBS, each of the
documents broadcast on "60 Minutes" was thoroughly investigated by
independent experts and we are convinced of their authenticity," CBS
News said in a statement.
The White House distributed the four memos
from 1972 and 1973 after obtaining them from CBS News. The White House
did not question their accuracy.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:35 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Set The Wayback Machine To 1972!
So, the TANG memos from '72 and '73 critical of the then Lt. Bush are forgeries. CBS got a little 'splainin to do.
As usual, Scott Ott and Jim Treacher are all over the story.
For those looking for more serious stuff, Stephen Macklin has more here and here, and Powerline is covering the story in detail: here, here, here. here, and here. INDC Journal does the work CBS should have done and follows up here.
Dr. Rusty notes:
Forget the swiftie thing, it took us weeks to get the mainstream press in on the story. This...this took a matter of hours. We are the press now.Steve the Llamabutcher has something to offer CBS. Triticale speculates on the evil genius of Karl Rove... Though admittedly it's easy to look like an easy genius when your enemies are total morons. Nick Queen informs us that CBS is now doing what it should have done before running the story. Ace points out that even Associated Press - they of the missing "boo" - quote an expert dismissing the documents as forgeries. The quote is actually kind of funny:
Independent document examiner Sandra Ramsey Lines said the memos looked like they had been produced on a computer using Microsoft Word software, which wasn't available when the documents were supposedly written in 1972 and 1973.Yeah. It's like someone trying to peddle photographs of King Henry VIII. Ace has more here, here, here, here... Heck, just go to his blog and read from the top. Nathan of Brain Fertilizer has a question on the etymology of "CYA". And annika is angry. We still like her when she's angry, of course. Dean Esmay notes that the DNC doesn't read blogs. Ilyka needs to quit being such a pessimist. And Tim Blair notes that the documents were checked by phone. That is, the "experts" that CBS relied on never actually looked at the documents.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:39 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 08, 2004
It's Monkeys All The Way Down
Via the inimitable Ghost of a Flea, we bring you The Monkeysphere!
Yes, it's Frank's own personal hell. It's also insightful and funny and disses the French, all in one monkeyful bundle. Read!
Picture a monkey. A monkey dressed like a little pirate, if you wish. We'll call him Slappy. Imagine you have Slappy as a pet. Imagine a personality for him. Maybe you and he have little pirate monkey adventures and maybe even join up to fight crime. You'd be sad if Slappy died, wouldn't you? Now, imagine you get five more monkeys. Tito, Bubbles, Fluffy, Marcel and ShitTosser. Imagine personalities for each of them. Maybe one is aggressive, one is affectionate, one is distant and quiet. And so on. They're all your personal monkey friends. Now imagine a hundred monkeys. Then a thousand.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:04 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
I Can't Believe It's Not Butter
Maybe I need to arrange a side by side taste-test, because right now I can't taste any difference between triple cream brie and double cream brie.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:00 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
September 06, 2004
You Took The Best Of Me...
The 40th Edition of the Best of Me Symphony is now up at The Owner's Manual. Your hostess: Dorothy Parker.
Say my love is easy had,
Say I'm bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad --
Still behold me at your side. Say I'm neither brave nor young,
Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue --
Still you have my heart to wear. But say my verses do not scan,
And I get me another man!
Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:49 PM | Comments (22) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Processing 0.02, elapsed 0.1186 seconds.
48 queries taking 0.1071 seconds, 126 records returned.
Page size 100 kb.
Powered by Minx 0.8 beta.
